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Stop The Steal Redux

Published by digby on November 4, 2024

So, right-leaning pollsters dropped a whole bunch of new polls showing Trump doing well today. There’s no reason for it except to gin up the expectations among the Trump cult so that if he loses they can … do what? Write amicus briefs? Stand outside courtrooms holding signs? I don’t think so.

Here’s a little preview of what they may be planning:

Brandon Matlack, a coordinator for a group boosting former president Donald Trump’s election effort, was camped outside an election office in Pennsylvania’s Northampton County when he posted a video Tuesday on the social network X asking his 3,000 followers for help identifying a “very suspect” man he’d seen just drop off “an insane amount of ballots.”

Within minutes, his video had gone viral — cross-posted to Facebook groups, Rumble videos, Telegram channels and pro-Trump forums as visual evidence of election fraud. On X, the video raced to the top of a special “Election Integrity” feed newly promoted by its billionaire owner Elon Musk, where posts sharing the man’s face and license plate were viewed millions of times.

“A nervous operative of the Dem. cheating machine,” one X user wrote. On the social network Gab, another wrote, “Shoot him dead and figure it out later. Remember 2020 !!!”

The Post broke down the nine races and three long shots that could determine whether Democrats lose control of the Senate. Forty-three competitive races will determine whether Republicans retain their narrow control of the House.

But the man Matlack had recorded was actually a longtime U.S. Postal Service worker making a routine delivery, according to Lamont McClure, the county executive. The video ricocheting across X as proof of a conspiracy actually just showed the man doing his job.

The video’s near-instant virality was a victory for the organized network of conservative activists and conspiracy theorists who have spent years building online followings by promoting their belief in corrupt elections. On platforms controlled by Musk — and Trump, the majority owner of the online platform Truth Social — they have worked to stand up a preemptive infrastructure stronger than the “Stop the Steal” movement that grew after Trump’s 2020 loss.

Yikes.

[B]The viral claims could also help shape Republicans’ legal strategy to challenge election irregularities, as seen in the state lawsuits echoing Trump’s Truth Social posts about the purported risks of counting ballots from U.S. citizens or military service members stationed overseas. Last month, Musk shared a post saying Democrats planned to “steal elections using ‘overseas’ ballots”; two days later, Trump shared his post, adding, “Lawyers at RNC — STOP THIS FRAUD, NOW!!!”

Dean Jackson, a former investigative analyst on the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 insurrection, remembers watching the “Stop the Steal” movement rapidly assemble in Facebook groups after the 2020 vote. But he now worries about the damage that could be caused by election deniers’ four-year head start.

Major social media companies have rolled back content policies they enacted around the 2020 election. Musk and right-wing influencers have lent the movement prominence and legitimacy. And many deniers have moved on to more opaque online networks, including encrypted channels and private group chats, that make it harder for law enforcement to track.

“They have had four years to prime the base to believe and take action around false claims of fraud,” he said. “It feels like open season. It feels like we didn’t learn any of the lessons of 2020.”y contesting the results of the election even before any votes for Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris have been tallied, they have set the stage for a national resistance plan that online observers worry could echo the run-up to Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in support of his baseless claims that the election was rigged.

Like most people I doubt that there will be an exact re-enactment of January 6th. But somebody is going to do something.

And by the way, Republican officials are going to go along with it:

Trump’s unwavering claims about the nation’s election system being “rigged” have steadily gained more acceptance among rank-and-file Republicans voters over the past four years, and his biggest Republican critics in Congress have either retired, will retire soon or have lost sway…

“The strength of the cult of Trump amongst voters is strong so members are reflecting what their constituents want them to do,” said a Republican strategist and former Senate leadership aide. “The other angle is there are a lot of concerns about how elections are being conducted and the power of social media and our partisan news,” the strategist said. “Republicans watch a lot of Twitter and Fox News, and they see voting irregularities,” they continued, pointing out a recent Detroit News report that a Chinese citizen attending the University of Michigan voted illegally by absentee ballot, and election officials weren’t able to retrieve it.

I don’t know if these people have just decided that if you can’t beath ’em join ’em or if they’ve become believers themselves. Not that it makes any difference. But if anyone’s expecting them to fight this, they need to think again. I can’t imagine what would make them cross him at this point.

He’s Always Been This Way

Published by digby on November 4, 2024

Here’s the 1986 cover story of Spy Magazine’s first issue: “The 10 Most Embarrassing New Yorkers.”

He hasn’t changed a bit in 40 years.

* Note that they said way back when that he had the Times in his back pocket…

Only The Die Hards Are Left

Published by digby on November 4, 2024

I think we can call that “low energy” don’t you?

Losers In Scranton

Published by digby on November 4, 2024

It’s not the Democrats

Philip Bump of the Washington Post always travels to Scranton Pennsylvania in the days before the presidential election to check out the Get Out The Vote operations of both parties. His observations are very interesting this year. (gift link)

As I did in 2016 and 2020, I traveled to Scranton to see how the campaigns were tackling this task. Both of my prior visits were, at least in retrospect, revealing. In 2016, I was surprised to see little activity for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and a bustling turnout operation for Donald Trump. Four years later, it was Joe Biden — who often speaks of the time he spent in Scranton as a child — who was running an effective operation. Trump’s supporters seemed to be more focused on handing out lawn signs and boisterous parades of trucks.

In other words, in 2016 and 2020, the campaigns with the more robust GOTV field operations in Scranton (and presumably across the state) ended up winning. In Scranton in 2024, that was clearly the operation being run by Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign and its allies.

The Republicans:

Crossing a bridge over Roaring Brook brought me to the Republican Party headquarters for Lackawanna County, where volunteers in the parking lot were putting lawn signs into their cars.

Inside, about 20 more people were milling around. Some were there to knock on doors for the local Republican House candidate, Rob Bresnahan. Others were at a sign-in table where Robin Medeiros, 64, was preparing to lead a training.

Those volunteers, though, weren’t going out to turn out voters. Instead, Medeiros was helping them fill out the documents they’d need to be poll watchers on Election Day. Others were being trained to be greeters, welcoming people at polling places and providing information about Republican candidates. The focus was on managing those who came out to vote, not on making sure they came out in the first place.

Back in April, the then-new co-chair of the Republican Party, the Republican nominee’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, made clear that poll-watching would be a central focus for the party in November. It was an institutional bet on the idea that Trump’s 2020 loss was attributable not to having more Biden voters turn out, but to that pro-Biden majority being a function of some wrongdoing at the polls. Never mind that there were poll watchers in 2020, too (including some I spoke to then). The party would in 2024 have its volunteers combat imaginary illegal voters instead of turning out real, legal ones. That latter task would be mostly left to outside groups, including, in Pennsylvania, Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s America PAC.

Meanwhile, the Democrats:

Babij and Orren-King had come with others on a bus that morning, arriving at a building so nondescript that Ken August, who lives in a Trump-flag adorned house across the street, didn’t know it was Harris’s headquarters. That, despite the activity: There had been five busses from Montclair, N.J. on that day, Babij said. Inside, the office had dozens of people coming and going.

Importantly, they were being tasked with trying to encourage voters to vote. There were scripts for what to say and an app on their phones with the people they were supposed to contact. There were stations through which volunteers would progress from sign-in to getting their materials and maps of their targeted neighborhoods.

The reasons offered by the volunteers for their participation with the campaign were often very personal. For example, Daryl Fanelli, 34, teaches English as a Second Language at a high school in Scranton. “I want my kids to be able to stay here,” she explained, and to have the opportunities that America provides. Even though they were still in high school, she said, they were very “riled up” about the election.

Sheli Pratt-McHugh, 44, wore a sweatshirt for the gun-control-advocacy group Moms Demand Action. She was volunteering, she said, “for my daughter’s future.” That daughter, Penny, 6, hugged her mother’s leg as she spoke.

Any GOP activity like that?

I saw any number of door hangers and fliers for the Democratic candidates: Harris, incumbent Sen. Bob Casey, Rep. Matt Cartwright and others. I saw no one walking on behalf of Trump and only one pro-Trump leaflet, paid for by Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania. (An email to Musk’s America PAC inquiring about its efforts wasn’t returned. Other reporting has described its work as chaotic, if not exploitative.)

No voters I spoke to said they’d seen any Trump walkers, either. One man told me he’d heard from just about everyone then clarified that he’d seen a walker wearing “flag-themed attire,” and just assumed that they were supporting Trump.

In Scranton, at least, Lara Trump’s vision for the 2024 election appears to have been made manifest: prioritizing the prevention of illegal in-person voting in lieu of promoting in-person voting by Trump supporters. Not useful for maximizing turnout, but potentially useful for ginning up reports that might be used to once again claim the existence of rampant fraud.

Trump told everyone that he didn’t need a Get Out The Vote operation because he was all that was needed. He even said “we don’t need any more votes.” So they’ve put their efforts into contesting the vote that they must assume they will not win.

They are losers and they know it.

“By 9 o’clock”

Published by digby on November 4, 2024

He actually thinks that in a close election you can count all the votes by 9 o’clock on election night. He’s is literally brain damaged.

If he didn’t need Artizona and Nevada I wouldn’t be surprised if he declared victory at 9 pm est tomorrow night, long before the polls have closed in the rest of the country. In fact, he may just do it anyway, declaring that he has it won in already in the Blue Wall and Georgia/N Carolina regardless of the count.

I wish I believed that his cult would see how ridiculous that is but they won’t. He has nothing to lose by declaring victory immediately because the actual results don’t matter either way. If he wins, he’ll say he should have won bigger and if he loses, well … we know how that goes.

This is lunacy.

This Is Bad

Published by digby on November 4, 2024

Greg Bluestein is a reporter with the Atlanta Journal Constitution. That’s for real.

Trump’s rallies are getting more and more pathetic. This is Georgia, one of his alleged stronghold swing states.

He’s not doing well. Not well at all. The Huffington Post asked the campaign if he’s ok and this is what they got:

Will Women Be The Nail In His Coffin?

Published by digby on November 4, 2024

Oh, I hope so. I really hope so.

What a creep

Tomorrow is election day, the last day of voting in this tumultuous 2024 campaign. What a long, strange trip it’s been. Just a year ago, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was challenging former president Trump for the GOP nomination by saying the word “woke” at least a hundred times a day while former S. Carolina Gov Nikki Haley competed for what’s left of the “normie” Republican vote. A clown car full of grifters and kooks, meanwhile, used the primaries as an opportunity to suck up to Trump, whom everyone knew would inevitably be the nominee. After all, he’d been running non-stop since 2015.

Meanwhile on the Democratic side, incumbent president Joe Biden was an unchallenged shoo-in for the Democratic nomination and most people felt he’d probably be able to replicate his 2020 win despite being unpopular due to a lingering hangover from the pandemic. After all, Trump had incited an insurrection and was facing lawsuits and felony trials in federal court and two different states stemming from a variety of alleged crimes. Surely, he couldn’t possibly win after all that?

Since that time, Joe Biden was revealed to be just too old to run for president again and was replaced by his younger Vice President, Kamala Harris who sparked a massive rise in enthusiasm among Democrats. And Donald Trump has likewise shown that his millions-strong cult of personality is fully intact and they are ecstatic about putting him back in the White House in spite of his many flaws (maybe even because of them.) We could find out the winner as soon as tomorrow night — or maybe not.

If it’s as close as many of the pollsters say it is it could take a while before we know the final results. And it goes without saying that unless they call the race for him right away, Trump is planning to cry”fraud” and will do everything in his power to create the illusion that he won regardless of the count and we can expect chaos. He’s made that very clear.

The polls have more or less shown a tied race nationally and in the swing states for the past couple of months. Whether that’s correct or not, we don’t know. Because they missed some Trump voters in 2016 and 2020, everyone is on edge that the same thing has happened again despite the pollsters’ going out of their way to correct the problem this time. With the polls this close that error could translate to a repeat of 2016 which has a whole lot of people losing sleep these last few weeks.

But something unexpected happened this past weekend that may have called those assumptions into question. The Des Moines Register poll, considered one of the best in all of politics due to pollster J. Ann Selzer’s excellent track record, dropped its final poll of the cycle and it landed like a nuclear bomb. Iowa is a solid red state and the previous poll had Trump winning the state handily as expected. Now the numbers showed Harris beating Trump 47-44. Boom.

Iowa is one of the whitest states in the union, so race isn’t a factor which makes it an interesting proxy for white voters in other swing states with similar populations (like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, for instance.) The paper reported that while Trump has maintained his base of men, evangelical voters, rural residents and non-college educated voters, women, specifically older and politically independent women, have swung in large numbers to Harris. And just as surprising, Harris is winning voters over 65, which has been a GOP base vote for decades. What in the world does this mean?

First, it’s pretty clear that reproductive rights are driving this race for a whole lot of people. Iowa, in particular, is now living under a draconian 6 week abortion ban that was upheld by its far right Supreme Court last summer. Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his notorious opinion that “women are not without electoral or political power.” It appears we may be about to find out the truth of that.

People expected that younger women would vote in large numbers on this issue but there seems to be some surprise that older women would be motivated to do so. Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno was caught on video bemoaning the “single issue” women voters and wondering why women over 50 would care about it.

I guess it’s hard for right wingers to understand why anyone would care about someone other than themselves. But it’s more than that. The reversal of Roe vs Wade was deeply offensive to many women of all ages, something we could only see as a direct attack on our basic human rights by a group of men (and one very conservative woman) determined to turn back the clock to a time when women were literally second class citizens. Women can see where this is leading and it isn’t toward freedom and equality — for any of us.

The Republican party and its leader, a predator found legally liable for sexual assault, is running for election on a platform of flagrant misogyny. Donald Trump literally said, ‘I was able to kill Roe v. Wade’ until he belatedly realized it wasn’t popular, at which point he came up with his fatuous rationale that “everyone wanted it to go back to the states” which is utterly absurd and most people know it. He’s lately taken to saying that he’ll be women’s “protector” which coming from him, is more of a threat. In fact, in recent days he’s said that he’ll “protect” women “whether the women like it or not.”

Then you have his choice for Vice President JD Vance, who thinks that women should stay in abusive marriages, thinks abortion should be banned nationally even in cases of rape and incest and wants to prevent women from travelling out of state to obtain them. And he famously believes that “childless cat ladies” are the cause of everything wrong in our culture and agrees that “the whole purpose of the post-menopausal female is child care.”

And people are surprised that women of all ages are refusing to vote for these people?

This Iowa poll may be an outlier and all the chatter about this remarkable result will end up being nothing more than election year lore. Most analysts still seem to think that it’s nearly impossible to believe that Harris will actually win Iowa. But this poll is one of the very few that caught the hidden angry non-college educated Trump vote in 2016 and 2020. There is every reason to believe that it may be catching the hidden pissed off college educated and independent women Harris vote in 2024. Nothing would be more satisfying than for this voting block to be the one to spell the end of Donald Trump’s political career. 

Update: A Trumper

That’s going to work out just great.

Salon

Our Turn

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 4, 2024

All the way through the tape

Historian Heather Cox Richardson, from her Facebook page.

Heather Cox Richardson recounts how when in the 1850s it seemed “elite enslavers had become America’s rulers,” Americans (might we say real Americans?) organized and fought back, ending slavery once and for all:

In less than ten years the country went from a government dominated by a few fabulously wealthy men who rejected the idea that human beings are created equal and who believed they had the right to rule over the masses, to a defense of government of the people, by the people, for the people, and to leaders who called for a new birth of freedom. But Lincoln did not do any of this alone: always, he depended on the votes of ordinary people determined to have a say in the government under which they lived.

In the 1860s the work of those people established freedom and democracy as the bedrock of the United States of America, but the structure itself remained unfinished. In the 1890s and then again in the 1930s, Americans had to fight to preserve democracy against those who would destroy it for their own greed and power. Each time, thanks to ordinary Americans, democracy won.

Now it is our turn.

It’s going to be a long day tomorrow. It could be a long night. Then again, it could be a blowout loss for the orange blow-up doll. Filmmaker Michael Moore predicted a month ago that “Trump is toast.” He still thinks so.

Moore wrote in October:

Right now, if you know how to really read the polls, or if you have access to the various private and internal polling being conducted by and shared only amongst the elites, Wall Street, and Members of Congress, then you already know that this election was over weeks ago. 

That feels right. So I’m increasingly annoyed that the press and the Harris campaign are portraying the presidential election as razor thin. They have their reasons. Holding eyeballs, for the former. (For the press, it’s also obeying in advance.) Keeping volunteers juiced and door-knocking, for the latter. It’s as if there’s a giant, um, agreement(?) to hype a photo finish. But a close-race narrative is just what Trump is counting on to give credence to Big Lie 2.0 when he loses. Not helpful.

Be joyful warriors and keep running through the tape, as Coach Walz says. That’s helpful. Run up the score. There’s another once-and-for-all to accomplish. Because our present rhymes with our past, Richardson reminds us:

In our era the same struggle has resurfaced. A small group of leaders has rejected the idea that all people are created equal and seeks to destroy our democracy in order to install themselves into permanent power. 

And just as our forebears did, Americans have reached for whatever tools we have at hand to build new coalitions across the nation to push back. After decades in which ordinary people had come to believe they had little political power, they have mobilized to defend American democracy and—with an electorate that now includes women and Black Americans and Brown Americans—have discovered they are strong. 

Reflecting on the movement built since Trump arrived on scene, Richardson has hope. “[I]t looks to me like the revolution of the 1850s that gave America a new birth of freedom.”

What’s He Waiting For?

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 4, 2024

What are you? Get loud now.

Photo 2016 by Gage Skidmore via Flickr (modified by Nick Rogers at Medium. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Polls will be open by the time I post again tomorrow morning. Millions will stand in line to vote, to at least imagine that they are the true sovereigns of this republic. In front and behind them will be neighbors prepared — eager even — to surrender their freedoms to oligarchs, madmen, and theocrats.

America’s anxious, non-cult majority wants the 2024 elections over. Trump to be over. MAGA to be over. To return to a normal we almost can no longer imagine. Never in memory have things felt more like Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 visual tone poem scored by Philip Glass, Koyaanisqatsi, a Hopi word meaning “life out of balance.”

Compounding that sense for survivors of Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina is waiting for what comes out of our taps once more to be drinkable. For the mud to wash away. For the roads to be drivable. For the downed trees, logs and branches lining them to disappear. For bridges to be rebuilt. And lives.

Before normal returns we must have elections, including for president. God knows they won’t be anything like normal. Democrats’ slate of candidates here in North Carolina is the best I’ve seen. And Republicans’, the biggest dumpster fire.

Has the felon Donald Trump declared himself the winner yet? We’re a day and a half out. What’s the pathological liar waiting for? Actual election results? Another rendition of “Y.M.C.A.”?

November 5th is not another September 11th or January 6th. There will be no excuse for anyone to swear they did not see Trump’s preemptive victory declaration coming. “No one has an alibi.” Republicans have been broadcasting “Donald Trump Determined To Strike in US” in front of cameras for months as Trump’s mind visibly disintegrates. Gird yourselves. Remind everyone you know, loudly, what’s coming.

James Fallows last night:

The things we do know

1) That Donald Trump is already declaring victory, and will do so more stridently on November 5. The press needs to be prepared.

As I wrote recently about the powerful new movie The Apprentice, among the lessons young Donald Trump absorbed from his mentor, Roy Cohn, was: always claim victory, no matter the score. Never admit defeat, especially when you’ve lost.

Trump has been using that approach nonstop since 2020, with his “stop the steal” mantra now embraced by most of the GOP. For months he has been priming his base to believe that he is “way ahead” in all 2024 polls, so any result except a Trump victory must be a fraud.

Trump is sure to switch from saying “I will win” to “I have won” less than 48 hours from now. On Tuesday as the first exit polls come in, Trump himself will say that they look “better than anyone expected,” so a big win is ahead. The Fox team will back him up. As the first real counts come in after 8pm from Pennsylvania, they will favor Trump, because of the usual GOP-skew of same-day-vote results. Trump will use them to announce he was won the crucial state and thus the election.

We saw this drill in 2020. It is likely to be worse this time. Partly that is because Trump has conditioned his entire party to expect fraud. Partly it is because the Fox News team that made a brave, correct, anti-Trump call of Arizona results four years ago has been fired for that transgression. From top to bottom Fox is now on board.

Fallows expects that “the Harris-Walz campaign team is fully prepared to rebut these false claims.” Ranks of Democratic lawyers will have legal actions ready to file and be suited up for “the inevitable courtroom battles that will follow.”

I’ve inquired with election protection leads here myself how they plan to respond to Trump’s Election Night revival of “The Big Lie.” (No, I didn’t expect an answer.) When Trump again issues orders for his minions to get “wild,” what then? Yes, I know they’ve got harshly worded lawsuits teed up. And then what are they prepared to do? It could take more. And require more of us.

November 5th isn’t the end. More likely, it’s “the end of the beginning.” For now, ignore the last-minute flood of play-by-play disinformation, Will Bunch advises:

The only things that matter between now and 8 p.m. Tuesday are casting a ballot, and talking to family and friends or even knocking on some doors to make sure as many as possible do the same. Vote as if your life depends on it. Because if you finally have health insurance, if you believe in clean drinking water, if you or a loved one plan on having a child or want control over your own body, or if you live in an immigrant community, your life does depend on it.

Normal depends on it.

The Worst Closing Argument In History?

Published by digby on November 3, 2024

It looks like the Madison Square Garden hatefest was a huge mistake

Trump actually thought it was a great idea to hold a massively covered rally in the final days in which the speakers were all given the go-ahead to insult virtually everyone including at least one voting block they desperately needed to win the campaign. Not a great idea:

“I have heard from the Puerto Rican community directly about how much they were offended” by Hinchcliffe’s remarks, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) said Saturday while campaigning for Anna Thomas, a Democratic running for Pennsylvania state representative. “I think it woke up the community in a way that is going to turn them out in even greater numbers for Kamala Harris.”

Pressed to explain why these remarks might resonate with voters who are not already firmly in one corner, when so many other Trump or Trump-related comments have failed to damage him, Shapiro said, “This is my sense from being all over the state: that it broke through, and it resonated in a way with the community, where it made them say, ‘Well, wait a minute, that guy’s not for us. That guy doesn’t respect us.’”

They report tons of anecdotes from various politicos in the state saying the same. Also voters like this:

Nilsa Vega and Neidel Pacheco of Hellertown, a borough south of Bethlehem, both said they had never voted before, but Hinchcliffe’s remarks were the reason they planned to vote for Harris on Tuesday.

“That hit the spot right there,” Vega said. “They keep saying, ‘Oh, he’s only a comedian.’ It still hurts.”

Pacheco saw Trump’s decision to pose in a garbage truck at a campaign stop in Wisconsin the following day as an additional insult. “If he didn’t have nothing to do with it, what’s he doing in the garbage truck?” Pacheco asked.

That garbage truck stunt was so MAGA insider that it went right over the heads of most people. It made little sense if you hadn’t followed the ins and out of the rally and Biden’s garbled comment and the gleeful Deplorables 2.0 hissy fit. Nobody but the most ardent Trump cultist understood it and when they started dressing up in garbage bags for Halloween it looked like mockery.

This is the problem with allowing Don Jr. and JD Vance’s little bro contingent to have too much influence on the campaign. They’re just preaching to faithful and because the faithful are a bunch of people who behave like 13 year olds and speak their own cutesy little language nobody who isn’t in it knows what the hell they’re talking about. It often goes awry.

Remember this one?

If you aren’t conversant with that meme, Snopes has a full rundown. (Has anyone mentioned that these people are just plain weird?)

It’s one thing to have your little secret handshakes and cute inside jokes but in the midst of a hardfought campaign it’s probably a good idea not to make racist jokes about voting blocks you’re counting on to vote for you. They did it anyway and it may cost them the whole enchilada.