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Early Voting Starts Tomorrow in N.C.

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 16, 2024

Be a cool kid

Screenshot

North Carolina in-person voting starts Thursday. It started Tuesday in Georgia.

Record number of early votes cast in Georgia as election gets underway in battleground state (CNN):

A record number of early votes have been cast in Georgia on Tuesday as residents headed to the polls in a critical battleground state that is grappling with the fallout from Hurricane Helene and controversial election administration changes that have spurred a flurry of lawsuits.

More than 328,000 ballots were cast Tuesday, Gabe Sterling of the Georgia secretary of state’s office said on X. “So with the record breaking 1st day of early voting and accepted absentees we have had over 328,000 total votes cast so far,” he said.

The previous first day record was 136,000 in 2020, Sterling said.

Please, be a cool kid. Whether you live in a swing state or not, vote on Day 1 of early voting. It’s about enthusiasm. It’s about showing Democratic strength. It’s about providing “social proof” that tells neighbors voting is what all the cool kids are doing.

It’s also about helping Democratic campaigns focus their resources on a smaller pool of harder-to-turn-out voters than you. (It will also quickly stop your campaign calls and door knocks.)

A caution

But don’t get overconfident about those big numbers in Georgia.

My early vote caution to excited freshman candidates here in NC when they see Democrats outvoting Republicans by 2 to 1 is this: Republicans bat last.

Nevertheless, here in N.C., we’ve got game. The GOP has Donald Trump and Mark Robinson.

It’s no secret that Josh Stein is in the driver’s seat in the race for governor against Robinson, but despite polls showing other statewide races being close, internal polls show Democrats in positive territory. The election is, as they say, within the margin of effort.

About having “game,” this from The New York Times (shared article):

In the final weeks of the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump are staking their chances on two radically different theories of how to win: one tried-and-true, the other untested in modern presidential campaigns.

Ms. Harris’s team is running an expansive version of the type of field operation that has dominated politics for decades, deploying flotillas of paid staff members to organize and turn out every vote they can find. Mr. Trump’s campaign is going after a smaller universe of less frequent voters while relying on well-funded but inexperienced outside groups to reach a broader swath.

Interviews with more than four dozen voters, activists, campaign aides and officials in four pivotal counties — Erie County, Pa., Kenosha County, Wis., Maricopa County, Ariz., and Cobb County, Ga. — reveal a diffuse, at times unwieldy Republican effort that has raised questions from party operatives about effectiveness in the face of the more tightly structured Harris campaign operation. Democrats, in many places, are outpacing Republicans in terms of paid staff and doors knocked, and are counting on that local presence to break through a fractured media environment and to reach voters who want to tune out politics altogether.

Rep. Jeff Jackson, candidate for N.C. attorney general, told a group here over the weekend that the numbers of field contacts this year rivals the Obama campaign of 2008. The number of Harris field offices and staff here is perhaps unprecedented. Another potential game-changer is what’s happening in Mecklenburg County (Charlotte). Maricopa in Arizona and Meck in N.C. are two counties of keen interest in this election.

Mecklenburg has traditionally been a drag on Democrats’ statewide performance, but that may be changing. Drew Cromer, Meck’s new under-30 chair, has brought new energy and big fundraising to his county, as well as an organizing effort not seen before.

Simon Rosenberg and his Hopium community have raised over $700k for the state party led by Anderson Clayton. Out-of-state groups like Swing Blue Alliance are directing funding and volunteers to Meck. If they can boost Meck’s turnout a point or two that will be huge. 

So go vote tomorrow, all y’all in North Carolina!

Flooding The Zone With Fake Polls

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 16, 2024

The GOP’s phony Red Wave 2024

“Of last 15 general election polls released in PA, 12 have right/GOP affiliations,” tweets Simon Rosenberg. “Their campaign to game the polling averages and make it appear like Trump is winning – when he isn’t – escalated in last few days.”

Donald Trump’s ever-tenuous grip on realty is spiraling downward like the price of shares in his media company. The Dow Jones briefly halted trading in Trump Media Tuesday when the bottom dropped out. The decline in Trump’s mental state has become too obvious for the press to ignore. At issue in these next few weeks is whether voters who’ve bought into Trumpism will dump it too. Or will they be duped again into buying the BS the Trump campaign is selling?

There are signs they may not. Anecdotal, perhaps, but signs.

But first, as predictable as the fall leaves, Democrats are engaging in their traditional pre-election panic attack. Polls are nail-bitingly close. What if Trump and his Nazi-adjacent supporters regain the White House? What country is safe to flee to? What do I do with all my my stuff?

“Republicans are going to extraordinary lengths right now – red wave polls, releasing ‘nternals,’ Polymarket voodoo – to try to make it look like Trump is winning the election when he isn’t,” Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg cautions. “Democrats should not be helping them.”

Those close polls are another red mirage. The horse-race press naturally laps them up like mother’s milk. Yet, Democratic strategist Rosenberg warned a month ago that Republicans would flood the zone with fake polls just ahead of voting to deceive the public into believing that Trump was doing better than he really is.

And it’s happened, Rosenberg explained in a Tweet thread:

“Of last 15 general election polls released in PA, 12 have right/GOP affiliations. Their campaign to game the polling averages and make it appear like Trump is winning — when he isn’t — escalated in last few days.

“I urge journalists and researchers to dive into FiveThirtyEight and see how the red wave pollsters have flooded the zone again. MT, PA, NC were initial targets but now it’s all 7 battleground states.

“This 2024 red wave op is much larger and involves many more actors and polls than the red wave campaign in 2022. It also involves new players — Polymarket, Elon — and feels far more desperate, frenetic, unhinged. Trumpian.”

Republicans did it in 2022. They’re doing it again, says Rosenberg, as part of “red wave 2024.”

In fact, Trump is losing bigly among white women. His margin with them is six points lower than in 2020, CNN’s Harry Enten explains. (Could it be … I don’t know. ABORTION?!)

“In fact, he is doing the worst if this holds for a GOP candidate, this century among White women.”

“So when we are talking about five, six-point shifts, seven-point shifts in Kamala Harris’ direction, we are talking about that among a major part of the electorate and that can actually move the overall electorate more than ginormous shifts among a considerably smaller part of the electorate,” Enten said, meaning supposed Trump gains among Black men.

So, let’s get to one of those anecdotes. CNN visited Brantley County, Georgia, where 90% of voters vote Republican. They found plenty of Trump supporters, strong ones. But also some dissenters. Old white ones at that.

“I ain’t gonna vote for no criminal,” said Corbet Wilson, a Republican-voting independent, citing the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“The last time you saw him talking did you watch his lips?” asks Donald Lewis. “Were they moving? He’s lying.” He won’t be voting for Trump this time. (He doesn’t say he did before.)

“I feel about it like he’s anti-American. He’s trying to overthrow our government.” His choices are to vote for Harris or not vote.

“She’s the only choice other than Trump,” Wilson chimes in.

It won’t take a lot of dissenters like them to sink Trump. Okay, maybe not in Georgia.

MAGA In The States

Published by digby on October 15, 2024

Believe them. They carry out their agenda when they get the power to do it:

Trump talks a lot about the 1890s as America’s golden era. That’s when he thinks America was great. Child labor was a big part of that:

Court documents unsealed in the Western District of Arkansas reveal accusations of child labor at Tyson processing plants, which have since prompted searches by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Applications for inspection warrants were filed in September 2024 for Tyson Foods Rogers and Tyson Foods Green Forest.

The applications, which included narratives from an investigator at the Houston District Office for the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor, claim that there is reason to believe minors are employed in violation of labor laws at the Tyson locations in Rogers and Green Forest.

The warrants were seeking records relating to the employment of minors, and the searches were meant to gather records relating to employees for Tyson Foods or affiliates and contractors of Tyson Foods, according to the applications.

Court documents said reviews of the processing plants began in June 2024 after anonymous complaints were received by the Wage and Hour Division.

For the Rogers application, the Wage and Hour Division cited an anonymous tip from a teacher at a nearby school, who reported that one of her 14-year-old students discussed working at the Tyson facility with his mother for the summer.

For the Green Forest application, the complainant said she was a mother of middle schoolers and overheard children between 11 and 13 years old discussing their employment at the Green Forest plant on the night shift, which runs from 11 p.m. to 7 or 8 a.m. The children were allegedly heard talking about not knowing how to get money from their paycheck out of the ATM, the documents said.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is as MAGA as it comes. And she thinks child labor is a-ok, even signed a bill that loosened the laws against it. I think we can be fairly sure that a Trump labor department will agree with her.

Future Serial Killers Of America

Published by digby on October 15, 2024

You won’t be surprised that the latest head of the NRA is a charter member:

Douglas Hamlin, who was appointed to lead the NRA this summer in the wake of a long-running corruption scandal at the gun rights group, was involved decades ago in the sadistic killing of a fraternity house cat named BK, according to several local media reports at the time.

Hamlin pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty brought against him and four of his fraternity brothers in 1980, when he was an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The charge was brought against Hamlin under a local Ann Arbor ordinance. All five members of Alpha Delta Phi were later expelled from the fraternity.

The details of the case, described in local media reports at the time, are gruesome. The house cat was captured, its paws were cut off, and was then strung up and set on fire. The killing, which occurred in December 1979, was allegedly prompted by anger that the cat was not using its litterbox.

The case caused such a furore locally that some students and animal rights activists wore buttons and armbands in memory of BK.

Hamlin was the president of the fratermity and was singled out by the judge for failing to stop it.

I feel sick just thinking about it. But I can’t say I’m surprised that someone involved in such an atrocity would become the head of the NRA. After all, most serial killers started off as animal torturers and killers. It makes sense.

Respectable Cultists

Published by digby on October 15, 2024

Here’s a story in the NY Times about a phenomenon that should have been investigated long before now. We know there are a bunch of true believers out there who dress up in stars and stripes regalia and deck out their trucks and boats for Trump. But that’s just the hardcore of the Trump base. What about the rest of them?

The Times interviewed some of them at Trump’s Detroit economic club interview. They know he’s a liar so they think he’s lying about all the terrible stuff he plans to do in his second term. So they’re fine with him:

There were a few hundred people there. They were not the sorts of people one encounters at a Trump rally. They weren’t construction workers or truck drivers or forklift operators; they carried business cards and had very active LinkedIn pages. They did not wear red hats or T-shirts with images of Mr. Trump’s bloodied face; they wore windowpane suit jackets and loafers and rather conspicuous cuff links.

They did not want to hear about “one really violent day” or about the deep state or the Marxists or the fascists or any of the other radical or antidemocratic visions that Mr. Trump describes in baroque detail at his rallies. They just wanted him to tell them that he would be good for business.

So, he did. For nearly two hours. There were rough edges in his remarks, and some talk of a stolen election, but mostly he made them feel content in their choice to vote for him. They chuckled at his self-deprecating wisecracks about his age, his body, his hair and his wealth. He talked about American muscle cars and regaled them with tales of how he went toe-to-toe with various world leaders and about his new buddy, Elon Musk. They cooed when he told them his daughter Tiffany was newly pregnant, and clapped when he said, however improbably, that he would work with Democrats to get stuff done. This was the version of Mr. Trump in which they (and their 401ks) wanted to believe.

They found it easy to tune out the other versions of him.

“I think the media blows stuff out of proportion for sensationalism,” said Mario Fachini, a 40-year-old Detroit man who owns a book publishing company. His black hair was gelled back and he had on a boxy, black pinstriped suit with a gold pocket square peeking out. There were tiny model globes hanging from his cuff links. He held up his wrist and gave one a spin.

Asked if he believed Mr. Trump would purge the federal government and fill its ranks with election deniers, Mr. Fachini sipped his iced tea and thought for a moment. “I don’t,” he said. So why was Mr. Trump saying he wanted to do that? “It could just be for publicity,” Mr. Fachini said with a shrug, “just riling up the news.”

Mary Burney, a 49-year-old woman from Grosse Pointe, Mich., who works in sales for a radio station, described herself as an independent-turned-Trump-voter. She did not believe the former president would really persecute his political opponents, even though he has mused about appointing a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and members of his family. “I don’t think that’s on his list of things to do,” she said. “No, no.”

Tom Pierce, a 67-year-old from Northville, Mich., did not truly believe that Mr. Trump would round up enough immigrants to carry out “the largest mass deportation operation in history.” Even though that is pretty much the central promise of his campaign.

“He may say things, and then it gets people all upset,” said Mr. Pierce, “but then he turns around and he says, ‘No, I’m not doing that.’ It’s a negotiation. But people don’t understand that.”

Did Mr. Pierce, a former chief financial officer, believe Mr. Trump would actually levy a 200 percent tariff against certain companies? “No,” he said. “That’s the other thing. You’ve got to sometimes scare these other countries.” (Indeed. In an interview on Fox News on Sunday, Mr. Trump said, “I’m using that just as a figure. I’ll say 100, 200, I’ll say 500, I don’t care.”) Mr. Pierce added, “He’s not perfect. And I don’t necessarily care for his personality, but I do like how we had peace and prosperity.”

I’m not conviced they are so deluded that they look at their balance sheets and their 401ks and fail to see that the economy is roaring right now. Sure, they’re looking for the invitable GOP tax cuts but really, they’re no different than the silly cultists singing YMCA at the rallies.

They just don’t want to admit that they like what this monster is saying.

The utter chaos of his first administration, his denunciation of long time allies and cozying up to dictators, the endless lies, the handling of the pandemic and then the Big Lie and January 6th does not qualify to any thinking person as “peace and prosperity.” They’re onboard with the chaos.

They’re liars and they admire him for being a liar. They are cultists too.

The First Draft Of History

Published by digby on October 15, 2024

Bob Woodward’s book “War”:

Steady and purposeful. That’s what we all signed on for in 2020 and for the most part we got it. (Israel-Gaza remains a conundrum…)

Biden’s legacy is secure, especially considering his Washingtonian exit. He did well under very difficult circumstances.

No, It Wasn’t A Dance Party

Published by digby on October 15, 2024

For weeks the press was obsessed with Biden’s “age problem,” examining everything from the shoes he wears to his sleeping habits. They demanded that his doctors appear before the media and take questions even after they testified to his good health. They pored over white house logs to determine if a specialist was secretly visiting him. Ok, fair enough. His performance at the debate in June validated the idea that he was no longer the man he once was and that another four years was probably too much.

Then the younger Kamala Harris replaced him and they have dogged her mercilessly for failing to give enough interviews feeding the Trump campaign’s theme that she’s avoiding the press because she’s incapable of doing them. Now she’s talking to anyone who will listen, even Fox news tomorrow and possibly Joe Rogan’s podcast. They still don’t seem satisfied.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump sounds like an addled old man after having one too many down at the pub, rambling on about the old days and yelling about all the foreigners eating the pets, (and he doesn’t even drink.) He’s holding rallies in places he can’t win and last night stopped his town hall for some medical emergencies in the crowd and never started up again, instead opting to play his (very weird) DJ playlist and bob around on the stage for 39 minutes. He’s cancelling one interview after another. Just today he abruptly backed out of one with CNBC’s Joe Kernen,

I’m just not seeing the same emphasis in the media put on Trump’s bizarre behavior as the press put on Biden and Harris. He’s not behaving normally, even for him.The reporting suggests that everything’s going as planned but it’s hard to imagine they actually believe that. Something is off and it sure looks like it’s Trump.

The race is tied and this man could be elected president again in three short weeks. He’s 78 years old and if there’s something going on with him, we should know it. Why is there not the kind of full court press on his medical records that there was on Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Biden last summer? Why aren’t they asking every Republican and every surrogate to explain why he’s acting so strangely? I realize they will lie but the media knows very well that it’s te asking of the question that draws attention to the problem.

If he wins it will be a nightmare. And sadly, if he doesn’t make it, a bizarre, virtually unknown chameleon by the name of JD Vance will be president. The media owes it to the country to sound the alarm. Trump isn’t right, even by his standards and it’s getting worse.

He’s fine. Nothing to worry about. Move along.

Published by digby on October 15, 2024

Here’s a hunched over, tired Trump looking like he slept in his make-up and just decided to trowel on more doing a “beautiful” job on Bartiromo:

That’s the one that got him in trouble saying that he was going to all out the military on “radical leftists.”

Then yesterday he held a “town hall” Pennsylvania in an overheated venue, with puppy killer Kristi Noem asking the questions. He took a few and then some people fainted from the heat and they never went back to the questions. The Washington Post wrote this up:

The town hall, moderated by South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R), began with questions from preselected attendees for the former president. Donald Trump offered meandering answers for how he’d address housing affordability and help small businesses. But it took a sudden turn after two attendees required medical attention.

And so Trump, after jokingly asking the crowd if “anybody else would like to faint,” took a different approach. “Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” he said.

For 39 minutes, Trump swayed, bopped — sometimes stopping to speak — as he turned the event into almost a living-room listening session of his favorite songs from his self-curated rally playlist. He played nine tracks. He danced. He shook hands with people onstage. He pointed to the crowd. Noem stood beside him, nodding with her hands clasped. Trump stayed in place onstage, slowly moving back and forth. He was done answering questions for the night.

[…]

Some in the crowd began to leave. Some looked around, wondering if he was done speaking for the night and how much longer the dance — or sway — session would last. Many stayed holding their cameras and watched as Trump took the music in, at times looking over at a screen beside him that showed videos of James Brown singing “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’sWorld” and Sinéad O’Connor performing “Nothing Compares 2 U.”

The evening began to take a different trajectory when a man appeared to faint in the crowd. Trump paused his remarks. Attendees fanned the man and began to sing “God Bless America.” As the man waited for medical help, Trump mused: “While we’re waiting. So we had a beautiful evening. And I don’t know if they could get this song up quickly, but if they could work really quickly backstage while we’re waiting. ‘Ave Maria.’” The song began to play.

Trump then resumed. Minutes later, another attendee needed medical attention. Trump stopped again: “Take your time, doctor.” “Ave Maria” began to play again. Trump then quipped to the crowd: “Would anybody else like to faint? Please raise your hand. Let’s do it now.”

Trump then referred to a chart with immigration statistics that he credits with saving his life: “My all-time favorite chart. And let’s listen to Pavarotti sing ‘Ave Maria.’ They gave me the ‘Ave Maria’ with no voice.” He then pointed to a Gold Star couple whose son was lost in battle, saying: “That’s for your boy, stand up.”

He briefly returned to talking about the election and the importance of winning Pennsylvania. After Noem gave Trump the option of closing “with a specific song” or taking “two more fast questions,” he addressed one of his aides: “So Justin, how about a couple really beauties and we’ll sit down and relax.”

It was time to listen to Andrea Bocelli’s “Time to Say Goodbye.” After listening to James Brown, Trump began to speak again, as if remembering that he was still at an event that was billed as a town hall. “This is the most important election in the history of our country,” Trump said, once again accusing Democrats of weaponizing elections. But then he went back to his music.

“Those two people that went down are patriots and we love them and because of them we ended upwith some good music, right?” he asked. “So play ‘YMCA!’ Go ahead, let’s go nice and loud!”“Here we go, everybody,” Noem interjected.

The crowd cheered and danced to the Village People song from the 1970s, which celebrates gay cruising culture. Noem put her hands up in the shape of a “Y.” As the song began to end, Trump mouthed the words: “Nobody’s leaving.”

“Nobody’s leaving, what’s going on? There’s nobody leaving. Keep going,” he said, as Rufus Wainwright’s version of “Hallelujah” played next. “All right, turn that music up! Turn that up. Great song!” Then it was “Nobody Compares 2 U” by Sinéad O’Connor. “An American Trilogy” by Elvis Presley. “Rich Men North of Richmond” by Oliver Anthony. Trump stood and swayed.

As “November Rain” by Guns N’ Roses played, he walked off the stage. He spoke toattendees on his way out,as “Memory” from “Cats” the musical played in the background.

Trump is said to enjoy DJing at Mar-a-lago and it seems he just wanted to do it at this event, no matter what. But this is abnormal, even for him. What’s going on?

Some highights:

One word: Weird.

Drugs?

Dementia?

Little Mustache

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 15, 2024

Dear Misleader is running out of time

JIMMY KIMMEL: “Just a former presidency suggesting he’ll use the military against his fellow citizens for exercising their freedom of speech. Nothing to worry about, folks. Seriously, when is he going to grow that little mustache already? Because there’s only three weeks left, you gotta get started. You can’t — it doesn’t just appear.”

From the video’s description:

We are three weeks away from the election and it was a messy weekend for Donald, he bragged about not using a teleprompter while reading from a teleprompter, he was in Aurora, Colorado where the MAGA-faithful assembled to bask in the glow of their dear misleader, Trump said that if elected he will invoke The Alien Enemies Act of 1978, VP Kamala Harris released her medical information over the weekend and Trump has yet to do so, he has called for Kamala to pass a test on Cognitive Stamina and Agility, over the weekend he reportedly used the “r” word to describe her in front of his bigliest donors, for whatever reason Trump has doubled his support among Black American men and couldn’t wait to tell all the white people who came to his rally about it, no one mispronounces words better than Donald, and after his rally in Coachella on Saturday we spoke to Trump supporters there about the issues that seems to have them so upset.

And. They. Vote.

Do some phone banking for swing states if you’re not living in one. Hand out Democratic sample ballots at early voting, willya?

Maddow Calls BS

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 15, 2024

Just what is Kamala’s position on seabed mining?

Rachel Maddow last night put the lie to oligarch nonsense about their support for Trump being a business decision. Um, no. Think Elon Musk’s decision to buy Twitter was a sound business decsision?

“In the history of modern economics America’s three-decade outperformance is remarkable,” declares The Economist. Why would “business” types hand it over to a felon whose entire economic plan is 19th-century tariffs?

Remember those “Nine out of ten doctors prefer” ads for personal care products back when color TV was young? Well, The Wall Street Journal finds that “65% of economists see Trump’s proposed policies putting more upward pressure on the federal deficit” and “68% said prices would rise faster under Trump than under Harris.”

No. Oligarchs want to be oligarchs. Their support of Trump is not based on economics, per se. The ruling class wants to rule. As a fringe benefit, writes Brian Klass about billionaires in politics, “Politics is the most straightforward way to get rich in autocracies. When the state controls the spoils, the way to get the spoils is to become part of the leadership of the state.?) They understand backing an autocrat as an investment in their own power and expanded wealth. Backing Trump is a twofer.

The visible hand

The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust (The Economist)

After a shaky start, America delivered a strong response to the global financial crisis of 2007-09, acting decisively to clean up bank balance-sheets, and making aggressive use of monetary policy to support growth. The government’s response to the covid slowdown was yet more extraordinary, with a suite of fiscal stimulus packages that left other countries in the dust. Indeed, officials overdid it in their pursuit of a recovery, contributing to the global rise in inflation. But it is impossible to explain America’s mighty economic engine without acknowledging the government’s willingness to step on the accelerator pedal when it has sputtered.

Please. Spare us the “you’ll like his policies” BS.