The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Says the person who literally tried to get him hanged.

[N.E. Brigand]

It's not clear from that video, but I think Donald Trump is referring to Kamala Harris's 2020 debate with Mike Pence, the one in which he famously became the perch for a passing fly. Which was, as I recall, a perfectly normal, orderly debate.

- - - - - - - - - -
In keeping with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's comment, cited a few posts earlier, about the Green Party's failure to achieve anything politically, I appreciated this person's statement that the (U.S.) Green Party has been a net negative for the environment, given that its candidates' presence on the ballot in 2000 and 2016 played a key role in the elections of George W. Bush and Donald Trump. How much better we'd all be if it didn't exist!

- - - - - - - - - -
Sometimes it's good to note that as awful as the politics of the American right are, they often were worse in the past. By chance, I was just reading about the riots at the University of Mississippi ("Ole Miss") on Sep. 30-Oct. 2, 1962. Students and others were protesting against the enrollment of African American student James Meredith, who was only allowed to enroll after a series of legal battles, including having been jailed on orders of the state's governor, Ross Barnett. (And yes, Barnett was a Democrat. The Republican and Democratic only became distinctly aligned with conservatives and liberals, respectively, because of the racial integration of the 1950s and 1960s, although the full sorting took well into the 1980s. But the father of modern conservatism, William F. Buckley, a key supporter of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, said explicitly in the 1960s that White Americans were justified to use violence to keep Black Americans from achieving equality he felt they hadn't earned.) The riot was instigated by retired Gen. Edwin Walker, whose name came up here six weeks ago in discussions of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, because several months before Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK in Nov. 1963, he tried to kill Gen. Walker. The riots only ended after President John F. Kennedy sent in some 30,000 troops, and by that time, 160 Deputy U.S. Marshals had been injured, of whom some 28 had been shot!

- - - - - - - - - -
This guy, Curtis Yarvin, has played an important role in the thinking of some Republican politicians, including former U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters of Arizona and current U.S. Senator and Vice Presidential nominee, J.D. Vance, here calling for the President to be "entirely in charge of the government" and claim that the presidency is currently "hogtied and held hostage" by the legislative and judicial branches:



Well now. I'd never seen the guy speak before. I can certainly see why he doesn't run for office himself! I am baffled at how he could influence anyone, except that he does share one thing with Vance and Masters -- Tim Walz could tell you what it is!

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump still believes that BleachBit, which is a computer program used to clean up disk space, is "basically acid."

-+-+-+-+-+-+-
In the same interview, Trump also said, "China paid me hundreds of billions of dollars". Say what?

-+-+-+-+-+-+-
I think Kevin Kruse is right about what must happen in response to the Trump campaign somehow getting major media to print their spin on the Arlington incident: "The Harris camp needs an ad to dispel this. Show the news coverage, show the shit-eating grin photo, show Vance denying they'd have an ad, show the ad they ran, show the Trump campaign's statements -- calling Arlington staffers mentally unstable, fighting with the Army on Twitter. Show it all."

[N.E. Brigand]

It certainly is strange that even after a week, there's been no reporting about who specifically pushed the Arlington cemetery official who tried to prevent the Trump campaign from breaking the law. If reporters really don't know -- which I think is unlikely -- it can only be because they don't want to know, i.e., haven't been chasing that story. Presumably the two thugs are journalists' regular sources in the campaign, and they don't want to lose that access.

[N.E. Brigand]

Jeffrey Goldberg, host of Washington Week on PBS: "Here's the thing. I'll make this observation. I'll own it. If Kamala Harris went from bacon to wind in her interview with Dana Bash [as Donald Trump did over the course of about five seconds in a speech last week], she would, the next morning, not be the nominee of the Democratic Party. That would be very strange. People would be, like: 'What is going on?' Do we just have an absurdly low standard now for the things that Donald Trump says and does?"

Video here. Full transcript here.

Goldberg's panelists sort of allow that he is correct and that Trump lies a lot and isn't coherent, but they don't take the obvious next step, which is to say either that they're going to parse Trump's words like they've been parsing Harris's words -- as if what he's saying should be taken seriously -- or that they're going to flatly describe his words as any rational person would: as the ravings of a lunatic. Those are the only two choices available to an honest journalist. But they're choosing instead to mostly ignore the crazy stuff that Trump says all the time.

[N.E. Brigand]

Tim Sheehy, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Montana, seems kinda racist? "In an audio clip recorded at a fundraiser on November 6, 2023, Sheehy brags about roping and branding with members of the Crow Nation. He says 'it's a great way to bond with the Indians while they're drunk at 8:00 a.m." More like that at the link.

But he's leading incumbent Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, in Montana polls.

[N.E. Brigand]

There are Twitter accounts that purport to debunk falsehoods tweeted by the Harris-Walz campaign. This one just told on itself:



The image posted in reply comes from the 2009 movie Inglourious Basterds. Plot spoiler to explain its meaning:

Hidden text.

A British agent disguised as a German military officer in Paris, who speaks flawless German, accidentally gives his identity away to a real German officer (the one facing us) by not using his thumb to signify the number three.

[Frelga]

Ah, we are back to pro-Trump accounts using slightly off grammar and idioms that make perfect sense as a 1-1 translation from Russian.

Like the post I saw that said "they should carry us on their hands."

Off topic, but I did a small survey in my multicultural office by asking people to count on their fingers, and the results were fascinating.

More OT but an old Soviet joke about Brits catching KGB spies no matter how flawless their cover.

Hidden text.

Finally, the KGB finds a double agent and asks how they are able to recognize the spies.

"Oh, easily. When you put sugar into your coffee, you leave the spoon in as you drink it."

KGB summons the spies and gives the appropriate instructions. The spies continue to get caught. The KGB summons the double agent again and demands an explanation.

"Yes, they take the spoon out now. But they still shut one eye when they drink."

[N.E. Brigand]

This is interesting: 18% of Republicans (but only 2% of Democrats) think it was a mistake for President Biden to drop out of the race.

That's per an August 25th-28th Suffolk/USA Today poll released today (the one that finds Biden's approval rating has risen 16 points to negative one percent) which also finds Vice President Harris leading Donald Trump 48%-43% among likely voters.

[RoseMorninStar]

Well of course, they wanted one old guy to run against an even older guy so their old guy wouldn't look quite as old.

Frelga, it's upsetting when I see/read about accounts that are obviously paid influencers or trolls. Stirring the pot. ugh.

[N.E. Brigand]

The fact that Fox News host Jesse Waters insists there was no incident at Arlington Cemetery suggests that Republicans are worried about what happened there.

[Maria]

457734487_951480327083542_5897991595805660252_n.png (301.22 KiB) Viewed 371 times

This is making the rounds, it seems. My mom sent it to me.

[River]

I live in a sapphire blue area. There was literally dancing in the aisles at the grocery store when the 2020 elkection finally got called. But political banners and signage aren't generally a thing. When they show up, it's usually around an issue or a movement than a candidate. So I was rather intrigued to see a Harris/Walz banner hanging on a house yesterday. They've got it over their garage. They live about a block away. I'm not sure if this is a sign of massive enthusiasm or they're just new around here.

[Frelga]

We also have few signs except for local elections, although bumper stickers are fairly common. I did recently see a sign.

Kamala
Naturally

And also a couple RFKJ signs.

My theory is that a. the assumption is that everyone votes Democrats, so who are you going to convince and b. no need to signal that you belong to the tribe. That assumption is somewhat undermined by the number of pro-Harris t-shirts, but there is a much greater variety of designs, and they just look cool.

[RoseMorninStar]

We live in a rural neighborhood where there are maybe 100 homes (tops) in a roughly 1/4 mile square neighborhood. We are one of the 4 democratic household that I'm aware of. We are definitely the outliers.

[N.E. Brigand]

As others have noted, Donald Trump has the affect of someone on a sedative in this interview:

[N.E. Brigand]

Trump, perhaps anticipating my comment, today said this: "You know, I do the weave. You know what the weave is? I'll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it's, like--and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say: 'That's the most brilliant thing I've ever seen." But the fake news, you know what they say? 'He rambled.'" Has he been talking to Tom Shippey about J.R.R. Tolkien's narrative "interlacement"?

"It's like Dickens."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Nice set of swing state polls from Morning Consult (despite Nate Silver's comment that Harris has "not really" had any good swing state polls since the convention).

[N.E. Brigand]

That Twitter account is often somewhat out of date. At 538, there are five polls for Pennsylvania that were added more recently than that Bloomberg poll (which spans the period Aug. 23-26), all of which show Harris with a narrower lead or even behind Trump.

The average of three reputable polling aggregators (538, New York Times, and Split Ticket) is:

Wisconsin -- Harris +2.7
Michigan -- Harris +2.0
Pennsylvania -- Harris +1.0
Nevada -- Harris +0.8
Georgia -- Trump +0.2
Arizona -- Trump +0.3
North Carolina -- Trump +0.8

These aggregators have Harris leading nationally by 3.1.

[Maria]

In Columbia, MO

Screenshot_20240904_135918_Chrome.jpg (133.43 KiB) Viewed 225 times