The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where Allentown is located, is about an hour north of Philadelphia. Northampton County is just to the east, along the Delaware River that separates Pennsylvania from New Jersey. They have been considered bellwethers for the state as a whole. Carbon County is north of these two. It is reliably Republican. In 2020, Joe Biden led Donald Trump 53.2%-45.6% in Lehigh Co., 49.8%-49.1% in Northampton Co., while Donald Trump won 65.4%-33.3% in Carbon Co. A new poll finds Kamala Harris leading Trump 52%-45% in Lehigh (slightly behind Biden), 41%-47% in Northampton (notably ahead of Biden), and losing to Trump 63%-37% in Carbon (also notably ahead of Biden). Here's hoping those numbers hold up!

bellweather" counties that was much worse for Harris, so who knows. I'm still following the polls closely but I've stopped posting about them here (even though I'm commenting about this one.

Whatever else you may say about Anthony Scaramucci, he is able to laugh at himself.

[RoseMorninStar]

Ex-Trump aides emerge to back Kelly’s harsh warnings

I can't imagine any other candidate for office getting away with talking about someone like General Kelly, a veteran, a Gold star father, the way Trump does.

___________

Musk is very concerning. I think a lot of people are worried that he'll basically be running the government through Trump.

[Sunsilver]

Has any reporter even asked Donald Trump what he thinks about Adolf Hitler?

The problem with that, N.B. is Trump is very good at telling people what he knows they WANT to hear.

That's how he wooed the evangelicals, that, and milking his connection with Norman Vincente Peale's church as a child, when probably the only time he's set foot inside a church since was for a publicity photo.

Here's what Cohen had to say, after observing evangelical leaders lay hands on Trump:

Screenshot 2024-10-25 124007.png (50.29 KiB) Viewed 186 times

me: the split second when I knew Trump would be president one day.

[N.E. Brigand]

Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where Allentown is located, is about an hour north of Philadelphia. Northampton County is just to the east, along the Delaware River that separates Pennsylvania from New Jersey. They have been considered bellwethers for the state as a whole. Carbon County is north of these two. It is reliably Republican. In 2020, Joe Biden led Donald Trump 53.2%-45.6% in Lehigh Co., 49.8%-49.1% in Northampton Co., while Donald Trump won 65.4%-33.3% in Carbon Co. A new poll finds Kamala Harris leading Trump 52%-45% in Lehigh (slightly behind Biden), 41%-47% in Northampton (notably ahead of Biden), and losing to Trump 63%-37% in Carbon (also notably ahead of Biden). Here's hoping those numbers hold up!

Sorry, as you may have guessed (or confirmed for yourself if you followed the link), what I've bolded above was a typo. This poll found Harris leading Trump 51% to 47% in Northampton County, which is a three-point improvement on Biden's 2020 result in that bellwether county.

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Meanwhile, the Washington Post has announced that the paper will be "returning to our roots" and not endorsing a presidential candidate this year.

That is simply cowardice, as Marty Barron, the Post's former editor notes. It's fine for a newspaper not to make endorsements, but if you only change a policy you've had since 1976, that needs to be done well in advance of the election so it doesn't look like you're bowing to pressure. The Post's owner, Jeff Bezos, is afraid Trump will win and use regulatory power to punish Amazon, which he also owns.

Edited to emphasize how full of shit the chief editor's explanation is. He says that until 1976, the paper had a long-standing policy of not endorsing that it only broke once, in 1952, due to the extraordinary circumstances of that year. But both of the leading candidates, Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, were completely normal! Similarly they say that the decision to begin endorsing in 1976 was driven by circumstances, but again the candidates, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, were both mainstream political figures.

Edited again to add this link to the Post's own reporting on this story.

[N.E. Brigand]

Hear, hear: "Men voting for Trump are taken seriously when they say it's because 'the economy' and the price of gas and eggs, while women voting for Harris because abortion are 'single-issue voters' even though having a kid means more gas, more eggs, and roughly $1 million in other expenses."

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Meanwhile the New York Post, having written in 2022 that "Trump has proven himself unworthy to be this country's chief executive again," just issued a front-page endorsement.

[N.E. Brigand]

"President Biden runs to the White House press corps":



He jogs away at the end, too. Joe Biden right now is more mobile than I am, after I slipped crossing a rainy street last week as I was walking, ironically, to a hearing where I was confirming that one of our employees was indeed injured on the job when she slipped crossing the street last year and should be covered by workers' compensation insurance. Twisted up my left foot something fierce with nasty bruises on my instep and big toe, and while they're starting to fade and I'm not visibly limping anymore, but it still hurts a bit.

And I don't want the following to come across as ableism, but I'm very skeptical that Donald Trump could run even in the short distance that Biden does in that clip. Biden also regularly bicycles. I don't think we've seen Trump do anything more athletic than walk and swing a golf club over the past eight years.

As Biden notes, he was off to Arizona to deliver a formal apology to American Indians for, as he says, "the way we treated their children for so many years." As noted at the link:

From 1819 through the 1970s, the federal government established and supported Indian boarding schools throughout the country to assimilate Alaska Native, American Indian and Native Hawaiian children into White American culture by forcibly removing them from their families, communities and belief systems. Many children who attended these boarding schools endured emotional and physical abuse, and some died, the Department of the Interior detailed.

[N.E. Brigand]

Washington Post editors had already written their endorsement before it was scrapped by Jeff Bezos.

[N.E. Brigand]

I appreciate this reminder that the current Democratic position on immigration and border control -- as in the bipartisan bill that Donald Trump scuttled last year -- is pretty much in line with what Democrats wanted in 2008 (and before), when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were in basic agreement that this is how it should work (these are Hillary Clinton's words in 2008):

"If they've committed a crime, deport them. No questions asked: you're gone! If you want to become a citizen, you have to pay a stiff fine, pay back taxes, and learn English."

[N.E. Brigand]

After Kamala Harris announced her plan to have Medicare cover home health care on The View -- one of the boldest policy proposals either candidate has made in this election -- that news received 35 seconds of coverage on ABC, CBS, and NBC combined over the next two weeks. Even though journalists often complain that candidates don't discuss policy.

[N.E. Brigand]

Associated Press: "'Black Insurrectionist,' the anonymous social media persona behind some of the most widely circulated conspiracy theories about the 2024 election, can be traced to a man from upstate New York. He's white."

His name is Jason G. Palmer. This guy's Twitter account has more than 300,000 followers. He pushed phony stories about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

J.D. Vance, Donald Trump, and other Republicans shared his material. Donald Trump said of him, "I love the person."

The most prominent lie originating with this fraudster was that ABC News had given debate questions to Kamala Harris in advance.

He's also shared other lies (some originating from Russian trolls).

And Palmer, aged 51, is a shady character: he's "repeatedly been accused of defrauding business partners and lenders, has struggled with drug addiction, and [his] home was raided by the FBI over a decade ago. He also owes more than $6.7 million dollars in back taxes to the state of New York."

X (Twitter) deactivated his account a few hours after the AP asked them about it. Palmer told the AP that while he owned the account, it "was primarily operated by a friend of his who is Black [but] he repeatedly declined to identify who that person was or put the AP in touch with that person."

[N.E. Brigand]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB") was the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren (then a law professor at Harvard) and was created by the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was passed in 2010 in response to the Wall Street collapse and signed into law by President Barack Obama. Only three Republicans in the House and only one Republican in the Senate voted for Dodd-Frank. Warren herself was the top candidate to be the CFPB's first leader, but strong opposition from Senate Republicans led to her withdrawing from consideration. Republicans have repeatedly tried to repeal the law and to have courts find that the CFPB is unconstitutional. They hate it. If they ever have enough votes in Congress and a Republican president, they will eliminate it.

Yahoo reports on a new rule the CFPB has issued (after following all of its regular process to study the need for the rule, allow public comment, etc.) which is "meant to make it easier to switch your bank or credit card by porting over all of your old account data to your new one." However, "it's already facing a legal challenge from the banking industry."

[Frelga]

Off topic, NE, I'm really sorry to hear that you are injured. But what an ironic chain of circumstances!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

N.E.B., I hope you recover quickly!

[N.E. Brigand]

Thanks for the well-wishes, Frelga and V.

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In other news, Rep. Andy Harris, the Maryland Republican who heads up the House Freedom Caucus, said yesterday that North Carolina's Republican-controlled legislature should just declare that Donald Trump is their state's choice and appoint electors accordingly, regardless of how the people of the state vote. Why? Because the damage caused by Hurricane Helene in the state's western counties, which mostly vote Republican, will prevent some people there from being able to vote.

[Sunsilver]

N.E. Brigand - so much for democracy!!

[N.E. Brigand]

A reminder that our fate is, to some degree, in the hands of completely irrational people. Here's video of a focus group of undecided voters in Pennsylvania, one of whom says that stories about Donald Trump's support for Adolf Hitler are "hyperbolic" and "exhausting" and make him want to support Trump -- and most of the other voters in the group seem to agree that they don't want to hear about it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That's not at all surprising, but man, is it discouraging.

[N.E. Brigand]

I think that if such voters can be moved to do the right thing, it's only by hearing from those close to them.

Speaking of Pennsylvania, today the District Attorney for Lancaster County announced that his office has identified a voter registration fraud scheme in which some 2,500 voter registration forms appear to have been falsely submitted in other people's names. Officials said nothing about which candidate(s) this scheme was meant to help in the upcoming election. In 2020, about 281,000 Lancaster Co. residents voted for President, with Donald Trump leading Joe Biden by more than 15%.

[N.E. Brigand]

Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the top two Republicans in Congress, are upset that Vice President Harris said this week, in light of comments this week by Donald Trump's former White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly -- as well as comments released last week by Bob Woodward that Donald Trump's former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley -- that she agrees with Kelly and Milley that Donald Trump is a fascist.

On CNN, Jake Tapper shows how ridiculous Johnson and McConnell are being. Tapper plays two different clips of Trump in September calling Harris a fascist.

[N.E. Brigand]

That's not at all surprising, but man, is it discouraging.

Pete Buttigieg, not explicitly responding to that clip, tweeted, "If you are tired of all the chaos, now is your chance to vote to defeat the chaos agent."