The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[N.E. Brigand]

Fox 59 in Indianapolis reports: "'This is political bulls**t': Former Republican candidate charged with stealing Madison County election ballots".

He was part of a group participating in a test run of ballot counting that was done to provide transparency into the process. He seems to have stolen two ballots deliberately in order to undermine the integrity of the election by throwing off the count, because he claimed shortly afterward on social media that would happen.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump Jr. says that his father, if elected president, should appoint talk show host Alex Jones as his press secretary.

Alex Jones is a conspiracy theorist most famous for claiming that the Sandy Hook school shooting, in which 26 people were murdered including 20 children aged 6 and 7, never happened and that the parents of the dead children were "crisis actors".

Jones was sued multiple times for defamation by these families for making these claims. This led to two civil trials in which juries found that Jones must pay the plaintiffs $49 million (August 2022) and $1,438 million (November 2022).

[N.E. Brigand]

Don't know what it means, but women are outvoting men in swing states' early vote by an average of 55.3% to 44.7%. That ranges from a 14-point gender gap in Georgia down to no gap at all in Nevada. Meanwhile a CNN poll today found Kamala Harris leading by one point in Arizona but Donald Trump leading by one point in Nevada.

[Sunsilver]

I SO need this for my vehicle!

[N.E. Brigand]

Elon Musk and Breitbart are claiming, falsely, that the Harris/Walz campaign is giving up on North Carolina and moving money from that state to shore up Virginia. And yet, Kamala Harris has an event scheduled tomorrow in North Carolina.

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Daniel Nichanian and his team at Bolts track a lot of elections around the country. Here he rounds up the ten most important judicial races.

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The Fox affiliate in Atlanta says that the Puerto Rican community there is "incensed" at Sunday's "joke."

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A poll of Pennsylvania's 8th Congressional district finds the incumbent Democrat, Matt Cartwright, leading his opponent 50%-43%. Cartwright has been in offices in 2012. He won 53.8%-46.2% in 2016, 54.6%-45.4% in 2018, 51.8%-48.2% in 2020, and 51.2%-48.8% in 2022: the district through that year, which includes Joe Biden's hometown of Scranton, seemed to be slowly moving right. Biden himself lost the district to Donald Trump by 4.4%. The new poll shows Trump beating Kamala Harris there 49%-46%, so it appears that district is on track to repeat the 2020 results. (The boundaries have shifted a little: Biden would have lost the current map by 3%.0

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Donald Trump again claims to have been a better president than Abraham Lincoln or George Washington.

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Former President Bill Clinton and former Representative Joe Walsh of Illinois (not to be confused with the Eagles's guitarist) were on hand to support the Harris/Walz campaign at an event in Pennsylvania. Walsh was not only a Republican but was a Tea Party Republican who subsequently hosted a nationally syndicated conservative talk show. He's been an opponent of Donald Trump's since at least 2019 (when he announced a primary challenge against the then-president), but it's still striking to see these two men togther:



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A very large poll of 49,000 likely voters finds Kamala Harris leading 51%-47% nationally and has these swing state results:

Michigan -- Harris 51% - Trump 46%
Nevada -- Harris 51% - Trump 47%
Wisconsin -- Harris 50% - Trump 47%
Pennsylvania -- Harris 49% - Trump 48%
North Carolina -- Trump 50% - Harris 48%
Arizona -- Trump 51% - Harris 47%
Georgia -- Trump 51% - Harris 46%

They also broke out Texas, where Trump leads Harris 51%-47%.

That's obviously a very close race, dangerously so for Harris in Pennsylvania.

As in an earlier iteration of this poll, Harris does better among registered voters than among likely voters, suggesting that her potential supporters aren't motivated.

[Frelga]

Trump press secretary on Trump rally speaker calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”: “The crowd didn’t mind”

video

Yes. That's the problem.

A few years ago, I've been explaining my concerns about American political direction to my dad. He objected, "But that would only make sense if most Americans were racist."

Screenshot_20241003-120653.png (176.81 KiB) Viewed 117 times

[N.E. Brigand]

Appearing on Fox News, Nikki Haley has some advice for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance: "This is not a time to have anyone criticize Puerto Rico or Latinos. This is not a time for them to get overly masculine with this bromance thing that they've got going."

Haley adds: "They also need to look at how they're talking about women ... You've got affiliated PACs that are doing commercials about calling Kamala the C-word. Or you had speakers at Madison Square Garden referring to her and her pimps. That is not the way to win women."

(That reminds me that in a staff meeting this morning, we talked about how to provide support next Wednesday, if necessary, for any employee who might feel overwhelmed by the election results (however it works out). It was an almost entirely apolitical discussion, except for one memorable moment where one colleague said it was hard to ignore the fact that on Sunday, "the Vice President was called a prostitute on national TV.")

And yet Haley continues to support Trump, even as she notes that the Trump campaign hasn't reached out to her for help. (She says she last spoke with Trump himself in June.) Maybe the Trump people are nervous about what she'd say, given how she responded when asked, "You have no doubts that this president is not a threat to democracy, is not dangerous, is not unhinged?"

Haley replied, "Look, I don't have--you don't have to agree with his style. His style and his wording isn't always the best, but his policies--I am choosing policy over personality."

[RoseMorninStar]

And what policies would those be, I wonder?

America is a very racist country. I'm not happy about it, but it doesn't help to pretend it's not an issue.

[N.E. Brigand]

More Republicans supporting Kamala Harris, this time in New Hampshire, where she has the endorsements of two elder party members: Thomas Rath, who was that state's attorney general from 1978 to 1980, and Gordon Humphrey, who represented the state in the U.S. Senate from 1979 to 1990. How far to the right was Humphrey? In 1987, he criticized President Ronald Reagan for appointing an openly gay scientist to a commission on AIDS, complaining that Reagan's move might promote the idea "that homosexuality is simply an alternative lifestyle."

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Robert Reich has created a list of the "100 Worst Things about Donald Trump's Presidency."

Much more briefly, Paul Graham lists a few reasons moderates should choose Kamala Harris over Trump.

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David Shreve has written this essay about how Democrats are almost always better than Republicans at managing the economy and how voters refuse to accept that.

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New from ProPublica: "'Put Them in Trauma': Inside a Key MAGA Leader’s Plans for a New Trump Agenda. Private videos reveal Trump adviser Russ Vought's 'shadow' plans for using the military on protesters, defunding the EPA and villainizing civil servants."

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In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Will Bunch tries to understand how nearly half the country can support a mass deportation plan that have the U.S. military used domestically to forcibly arrest and put in camps more people than live in the state of Pennsylvania including legal immigrants (Trump has called for the deportation of 15 million people, which is four million more people than there are illegal immigrants in the U.S.) at a cost of more than $210 billion.

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John McEntee was Donald Trump's assistant for the first two years of his presidency, was dismissed because he was under investigation for a gambling problem, and then was rehired by Trump as the White House personnel director. McEntee played a role in the events of Jan. 6th, and he has continued to be close with Trump. He has apparently been involved with Project 2025, as well.

Did we know before today that last year, McEntee said that the 19th Amendment should be repealed and that women shouldn't be allowed to vote? (Videos at link.)

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Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House, said today that if Donald Trump wins the presidency and Republicans control Congress, they will repeal the Affordable Care Act: after a "very aggressive first 100 days," there will be "no Obamacare."

[N.E. Brigand]

"George W. Bush's Daughter Barbara Pierce Bush Endorses Kamala Harris."

She's not a politician: she runs a nonprofit called Global Health Corps and has described herself as an independent. Still notable, I think.

[Sunsilver]

Did we know before today that last year, McEntee said that the 19th Amendment should be repealed and that women shouldn't be allowed to vote? (Videos at link.)

Haley adds: "They also need to look at how they're talking about women ... You've got affiliated PACs that are doing commercials about calling Kamala the C-word. Or you had speakers at Madison Square Garden referring to her and her pimps. That is not the way to win women."

Don't know what it means, but women are outvoting men in swing states' early vote by an average of 55.3% to 44.7%. That ranges from a 14-point gender gap in Georgia down to no gap at all in Nevada. Meanwhile a CNN poll today found Kamala Harris leading by one point in Arizona but Donald Trump leading by one point in Nevada.

Um, N.E., when you add in the Republican stance on abortion, plus the Access Hollywood tape, I think it's pretty self-evident why the women are getting their votes in early. And I seriously doubt any of them are voting for Trump!

[N.E. Brigand]

As you may have heard, Vice President Kamala Harris held a rally this evening at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. This is the same place where Trump gave the speech on January 6, 2021 that sent a violent mob down the street to the Capitol where they threatened to hang Vice President Mike Pence and succeeded in delaying the Congressional certification of Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election.

The Harris campaign initially applied for a permit for 20,000 attendees. Early today they submitted a revised application to allow for 40,000 attendees.

Apparently there were 75,000 attendees, quite a few of whom were sent to an overflow area by the Washington Monument, with more who were turned away entirely.

(The House committee that investigated the events of Jan. 6th estimated that 53,000 people attended Trump's speech that day, about half of whom were outside the magnetometers that screened people for weapons, something which angered Trump because he said that even if they were armed, they wouldn't hurt him.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Ruwa Romman, a Democratic state representative in Georgia, "is the first Muslim woman elected to the Georgia state House and first Palestinian elected to any public office in the state’s history." The Democratic National Committee wouldn't let her or any other Palestinian American speak at the convention two months ago. Despite that setback, Romman explains in a new essay in Rolling Stone that she's voting for Kamala Harris"for the people in my district and state who cannot survive another Trump presidency."

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Another Trump glitch tonight: "attorney genery."

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The way he speaks here reminds me of the two Jacks (Palance and Nicholson) in Batman:



(And I checked a Fox post of an interview clip on Youtube to make sure: the lighting and makeup in the clip above have not been altered.)

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One of Quentin Tarantino's more important contributions to world culture is the scene that gave us this image to meme:



Jane Coaston uses it here to question a statement from Steve Bannon, released today from prison.

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President Biden commented tonight on what was said about Puerto Rico at Donald Trump's rally Sunday. Biden stuttered a bit, and Republicans are trying to say that Biden himself referred to Trump's supporters as garbage. Here's the full text of Biden's remarks:

And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage." Well, let me tell you something. I don't -- I -- I don't know the Puerto Rican that -- that I know -- or a Puerto Rico, where I'm fr- -- in my home state of Delaware, they're good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter's -- his -- his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it's un-American. It's totally contrary to everything we've done, everything we've been.

(If Biden meant to refer to Trump's "supporters" rather than Trump's "supporter's demonization" as garbage, he would have said "are" not "is".)

Meanwhile, Donald Trump again said tonight of the United State that "it's like we're a giant garbage can".

Also notice the ridiculous way Trump talks. Anyone else who used that sing-song, sleepy, sullen voice would be roundly mocked on those grounds alone.

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Back to the interview on Fox, apparently filmed in the Seventh Circle of Hell. Trump is again repeating his claims that children who leave for school in the morning return home with a different gender after having undergone surgery -- in one day, no less!



Trump also said that "every time I go outside I see somebody from Puerto Rico. They give me a hug and a kiss."

[N.E. Brigand]

And, by the way ...

President Biden commented tonight on what was said about Puerto Rico at Donald Trump's rally Sunday. Biden stuttered a bit, and Republicans are trying to say that Biden himself referred to Trump's supporters as garbage. Here's the full text of Biden's remarks:

And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage." Well, let me tell you something. I don't -- I -- I don't know the Puerto Rican that -- that I know -- or a Puerto Rico, where I'm fr- -- in my home state of Delaware, they're good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter's -- his -- his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it's un-American. It's totally contrary to everything we've done, everything we've been.

(If Biden meant to refer to Trump's "supporters" rather than Trump's "supporter's demonization" as garbage, he would have said "are" not "is".)

Meanwhile, Donald Trump again said tonight of the United State that "it's like we're a giant garbage can".

President Biden has already issued a statement clarifying in case there was any confusion:

"Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump's supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage—which is the only word I can think of to describe it. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That's all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don't reflect who we are as a nation."

But Donald Trump hasn't corrected or apologized for all the vile abuse that his surrogates issued at his biggest rally of the year. On the contrary, Trump said tonight that referring to Puerto Rico as garbage that it's not a "big deal."

Nor has Trump apologized for his repeated references to the United States as a garbage can.

Nor has Trump apologized for saying that Democrats are "the enemy within."

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Anyway, here is a photo of the overflow crowd for Vice President Harris's big speech:

[N.E. Brigand]

Vice President Harris's rally is probably the day's most important news, but don't miss these two important items:

1. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said today that Donald Trump "has promised me" control over the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.

I've never heard of anyone having two Cabinet positions before. And if that happens, a lot of people are going to get sick or die as a result.

(Donald Trump tonight referred to RFK Jr. as having one of "the best and brightest minds" and said that Kennedy's portfolio would include "the goal of reducing by 50% within four years the rates of childhood cancer, depression and suicide." On that last item, remember that Kennedy's ex-wife killed herself after finding a diary that he kept during their marriage that revealed he had affairs with 37 different women.)

2. Elon Musk endorsed a Trump supporter's statement today that Trump's mass deportation policy and Musk's proposed work as a government efficiency czar will cause "an initial severe overreaction in the economy" and that "markets will tumble" and that this period of economic "[b[hardship[/b]" during which "some financial difficulty [would be] imposed on some Americans" (the terms Musk himself used a couple days ago) will last for two years.

Here are a few more tidbits to round out the day:

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David Frum notes something he wrote in 2021:

Over the past half decade, we have turned much of the country's mindscape into a group-therapy session for Trump believers. Reporters play the part of the therapist, reassuring the analyzed of a safe space for their grievances and complaints. The pro-Trump world has accepted the invitation. Even as Trump commits one constitutional, legal, and ethical abuse after another, his followers depict themselves as somehow the only people truly suffering unfairness. Trump was a perpetrator who thought of himself as a victim, and American society has indulged that same illusion among Trump supporters.

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Here is a nice clip from Kamala Harris's speech:



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Donald Trump has aged a lot over the past nine years. If you haven't watched a clip from him in 2015 in a while, you will be shocked by the difference between his appearance and voice in those two short videos.

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On The Daily Show last night, Jon Stewart defended Tony Hinchcliffe -- the comedian who insulted Puerto Ricans, women, and others at Donald Trump's rally Sunday -- by showing a clip of Hinchcliffe telling offensive jokes getting big laughs earlier this year at a roast of retired football player Tom Brady. I appreciate Ken White's riposte: "Here’s the thing: if you do ethnic jokes at a roast, you may just be a comic, but if you do ethnic jokes at a Klan rally, you’re definitely a Klansman. Like, for instance, if Colin Jost tells deliberately over-the-top ethnic jokes because Michael Che is making him and the entire point is that they're bad and Jost is being embarrassed, that's funny. If Colin Jost goes on David Duke's podcast and tells them, it's just super racist."

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"A Texas Republican had her voter registration canceled after she was mistakenly flagged as a noncitizen by the GOP's plan to purge Texas voter rolls, despite having, in her words, the 'whitest name you could have.' Did that change who she supports in the election? You already know the answer."

As I've said before, Donald Trump could shoot his own supporters, and as they lay dying, they'd still pledge their love for him.

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Last summer, Donald Trump told associates that he wasn't going to pick Nikki Haley as his running mate because she was "very nasty," because she "isn't loyal," because "I don't like her," and because she had a "complexion problem."

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Or maybe "Bad Bunny Won the Day"?

[Sunsilver]

Yes, the difference is indeed shocking!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

SCOTUS has reinstated Virginia's purge of voters considered not to be citizens, even though there is some question as to whether legal voters are caught up in the purge. As SCOTUS expert Steve Vladeck notes, most concerning is the failure of the 'conservative' majority to explain their reasoning.



A much more consequential case out of Pennsylvania, reviewing the decision of the PA Supreme Court allowing the state to count provisional ballots of voters who sent in improper mailed in ballots (Pennsylvania has an odd mail-in ballot system. In order to cast a mailed ballot, the voter must stuff their ballot inside two separate envelopes. The first, often referred to as the “outer envelope,” includes information that can identify the voter who cast a particular ballot. The second, known as the “secrecy envelope,” does not. Pennsylvania law, moreover, is unusually unforgiving to voters who do not properly stuff their ballot in this second envelope: In 2020, the state supreme court held that a ballot that is not properly stuffed is “void.” This year they ruled that the voter could cast a provisional ballot to fix the void ballot). This case once again brings the independent state legislature doctrine ("ISLD") to the forefront, and has major implications both in the short-term (given PA's importance to the current election) and in the long term (given the continued uncertainty regarding ISLD following the court's decision in Moore v. Harper last year.