A General thread for 2024 Presidential Elections

[Rolodex]

Thank goodness I *finally* got my packet of postcards to send voters. They are a GOTV but I hope all my addresses are people who are registered.
But hurricane weather is perfect for addressing 100 postcards!

I am sure they are all Dem party current registered voters. You'll be fine.
Thank you for helping.

Finally opened the package - all the addresses seem to be in Nevada, Las Vegas specifically. I imagine they go blue anyway, but every vote matters. They didn't leave a lot of room to write a personal message, but I'll do my best (writer's cramp yo).

[Slim Cognito]

[poplove]

Thank goodness I *finally* got my packet of postcards to send voters. They are a GOTV but I hope all my addresses are people who are registered.
But hurricane weather is perfect for addressing 100 postcards!

I am sure they are all Dem party current registered voters. You'll be fine.
Thank you for helping.

Finally opened the package - all the addresses seem to be in Nevada, Las Vegas specifically. I imagine they go blue anyway, but every vote matters. They didn't leave a lot of room to write a personal message, but I'll do my best (writer's cramp yo).

There's a possibility that my name or my daughter's name is on your list. She's non-partisan. I'll PM you.

[RTH10260]

FINALLY! Trump and Vance Will Face…CRIMINAL CHARGES?!!!

MeidasTouch
25 Sept 2024 Legal AF Podcast

In breaking news, new criminal charges have been brought against Trump and Vance for their hate speech and criminal acts directed at the beleaguered but proud Haitian community in Ohio. Michael Popok explains how the charges were filed under a unique Ohio law, and what happens next as a judge and prosecutor consider whether to indict them both while they are on the campaign trail.

[RTH10260]

an opinion piece

Elon Musk’s Twitter coup has harmed the right. They are now simply ‘too online’
Democrats were fooled by their social media echo chamber in 2016. Now Republicans may be falling into the same trap

Paolo Gerbaudo
Wed 25 Sep 2024 13.00 CEST

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s shock victory in 2016, one common explanation for why the Democrats had not seen it coming was that they had succumbed to the social media echo chamber. The fact that many digital platforms, such as Twitter (now X), tended to be dominated by liberals had lured Democrats into a false sense of security. This, so the explanation went, made them complacent, leading to inconsiderate gestures that alienated sections of the electorate: Hillary Clinton’s infamous jab at Trump’s supporters as “deplorables” was often cited as a prime example.

With the internet ever more captive to the caprices of timeline algorithms, the risk of echo chambers is even greater in this election cycle. However, it is now Trump and the broader political right that is – to use the internet lingo – “too online”.

The rightwing surge seen in many countries’ recent elections, especially in Europe, has been paralleled (and supported) by a significant rise of the right’s influence online. As documented by much academic research on social media and politics, the leading influencers on platforms such as YouTube, X and the instant messaging platform Telegram are rightwing. On many of these platforms, the conversation has increasingly shifted towards rightwing themes and positions, with rightwing messages tending to circulate more widely.

This social media hegemony, which has been in the making for many years and was cemented by Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, has now created a right that harbours a similar sense of delusion and complacency to the one that, in the past, has proved so detrimental for progressives.

Consider the way vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has brazenly doubled down on his 2021 comment about “childless cat ladies”; or widely ridiculed – and dangerous – online hoaxes about cats and dogs being eaten by Haitian immigrants, which appear to have travelled from Facebook to the mouth of the Republican candidate in a matter of days; or Musk’s creepy rebuke concerning Taylor Swift after the pop singer endorsed Kamala Harris, offering to “give her a child”. Such extreme messaging does cater to the Maga (Make America great again) crowd of true believers – but it comes at the electoral cost of potentially alienating large swaths of the moderate voting-age population.



https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... epublicans

[RTH10260]

another opinion piece

Trump’s on Truth Social MAKING NO SENSE AT ALL AGAIN
We are all now so desensitised to Trump that it can be easy to forget he lacks the ability to string a sentence together. Yet he’s frighteningly close to being back in charge

Arwa Mahdawi
Wed 25 Sep 2024 12.00 CEST

Ladies, are you DEPRESSED and UNHAPPY? Do you feel POORER and LESS HEALTHY than you did four years ago? Do you pray one day your little woman brain will NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION all the time? Well, don’t worry, Donald Trump is going to FIX ALL OF THAT.

So he says, anyway. At 11.42pm on Friday night Trump flexed his fingers, hit the all-caps key, and ranted on Truth Social about how UNHAPPY women are under the Biden administration. What happened at 11.41pm to prompt this, I wonder? Did he get a preview of some new polls which show him trailing Kamala Harris, partly thanks to a historic gender gap that sees Harris leading among women 58% to 37%? Did Trump decide, in his infinite wisdom, that the best way to fix this was an all-caps rant? Because I am not sure that is a winning strategy.

I know you’d probably rather bleach your own eyeballs, but I do encourage you to have a look at Trump’s incoherent post for yourself. Really take in his rambling – unedited by journalists desperately trying to make his various unhinged utterances coherent – and remind yourself that there is a very real chance that this guy might become president again. We are all so desensitised to Trump that we sometimes forget that he lacks the ability even to string a sentence together. No respectable employer would hire someone who posted the sort of stuff he does, yet he might soon land the biggest job in the world. Again. While Harris may be leading Trump in the latest polls, the numbers are still within the margin of error. The race is extremely close.



https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -all-again

[Slim Cognito]

Fuck this (word I'm not allowed to say here) and the shitgibbon she rode in on.

https://www.newsweek.com/jill-stein-how ... se-1961100

Jill Stein: How and Why I Will Stop Kamala Harris Winning the White House

[tek]

Stein finds another target of opportunity.

[RTH10260]

Rudy Giuliani’s daughter backs Harris and grieves ‘loss of my dad to Trump’
Caroline Rose Giuliani decries ‘destructive’ Trump and calls relationship with father ‘cartoonishly complicated’

Richard Luscombe
Mon 30 Sep 2024 23.41 CEST

Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has won the endorsement of Rudy Giuliani’s daughter, who declared: “I’ve been grieving the loss of my dad to [Donald] Trump. I cannot bear to lose our country to him too.”

Caroline Rose Giuliani was writing in Vanity Fair, where she lamented how her father, who was once the former president’s personal attorney and trusted adviser, became caught up in the “destructive trail” and chaos of the Trump administration and its aftermath.

“I’m unfortunately well suited to remind Americans of just how calamitous being associated with Trump can be, even for those who are convinced he’s on their side,” wrote Giuliani, a California-based film-maker and activist who has frequently taken issue with her father’s political positions.

“I am constantly asking myself how America is back here, even considering the possibility of electing Donald Trump again, after all of the damage he has caused, both in office and since. There are unmistakable reminders of Trump’s destructive trail all around us, and it has broken my heart to watch my dad become one of them.”



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... rts-harris

[RTH10260]

Vance and the future of the anti-democracy movement
Vance has been anointed its future leader

Robert Reich
Oct 03, 2024

JD Vance, the Republican candidate for vice president, will almost certainly be the Republican presidential candidate in 2028, regardless of whether Trump wins in November.

But who is JD Vance, really? An opportunist chameleon who once viewed Donald Trump as “Hitler” and is now his pit bull?

Or does Vance have an agenda over and above mere political ambition?

In one of the most important exchanges of Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, Vance refused to say that Trump lost the 2020 election, and he downplayed the violent events of January 6, 2021. Vance also declined to rule out challenging the outcome of the upcoming election even if votes were certified by every state leader as legitimate.



cont. on substack at https://robertreich.substack.com/p/vanc ... f-the-anti

[poplove]

Yesterday, after I got my monthly massage at Massage Envy, I was chatting with the three young ladies at the counter. I said I would be back the Saturday after the election. I asked if they were all under 30, yes they were. Then I asked if they were registered to vote, and yes they all were. I told them I was all about women's rights and that I was in Air Force basic training 52 years ago at this time and our TI made us sit down and apply for absentee ballots or register and apply because it was our duty, especially if we were serving our country. They all agreed that it was a duty as a citizen to vote. I added so is jury duty, you should never try to get out of it as it can be very interesting to serve. Heads nodded. I also told them that in 1971 I worked for $1.65 minimum wage, but it was $1.75 for men. They were like, WHAT? I recommended they watch the movie 9 to 5 which was all about misogyny, "I need a man in that position" but a fun movie just the same. Before I left, I said I didn't care who they voted for, just vote! One said that you can't complain if you don't vote and we all agreed. Smart young ladies.

[p0rtia]

[Rolodex]

Hooray for you, pop!

I pull this out for every election. Based on our turnout rates, it's accurate and gives a stunning visual, imo.

didn'tvote.png (431.19 KiB) Viewed 758 times

[Dave from down under]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-10/ ... /104449064

In short:
US citizens who live overseas rarely get the attention of politicians in the lead up to elections.
But this year "candidates are looking for votes under every rock they can find".
What's next?
With millions of US citizens living overseas, their votes could help decide crucial states.

Me: has a handy map of which nations have the most overseas US over 18’s

[Ben-Prime]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-10/ ... /104449064

In short:
US citizens who live overseas rarely get the attention of politicians in the lead up to elections.
But this year "candidates are looking for votes under every rock they can find".
What's next?
With millions of US citizens living overseas, their votes could help decide crucial states.

Me: has a handy map of which nations have the most overseas US over 18’s

U.S. Embassies overseas set up drop-boxes for folks with overseas ballots. This is for both American staff and for American citizens living locally. I'm turning in my Florida ballot either tomorrow or Friday to get sent back out.

[RTH10260]

Opinion piece

This is the future for Kamala Harris: unless she solves this economic mystery, Trump wins
She is losing the tussle between head and heart. The economy is better than it has ever been, but ordinary people don’t feel it

Aditya Chakrabortty
Thu 10 Oct 2024 07.00 CEST

The defining question in US politics was asked 44 years ago this month. One week before the 1980 presidential election, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter squared up to each other for a televised debate. A former Hollywood actor, Reagan was also proving a lethal Washington aphorist. At the close, he spoke into the camera: “Next Tuesday, all of you will go to the polls. You’ll stand there in the polling place and make a decision.” Watching at home were more than 80 million Americans. “When you make that decision … ask yourself: are you better off than you were four years ago?” Is it easier to buy things, he asked, is unemployment lower?

A few days later, voters gave their answer, handing Reagan a 44-state landslide. Every presidential contest since has been framed in large part by his simple, deadly question. Ask it in the final stretch of this election and you get to the great mystery of why the race remains so close.

Are Americans better off than they were four years ago? Pretty much every mainstream economist would say: you bet. Many go further. “I’ve hesitated to say this at the risk of sounding hyperbolic,” wrote Mark Zandi, the respected chief economist at Moodys, just a few days ago. “But … there is no denying it: this is among the best performing economies in my 35+ years as an economist.” Growth: up. Jobs: up. Wages: rising. The value of your home: up. Share prices: booming. Inflation: falling. Borrowing rates: dropping.

In 2020, Donald Trump warned that his defeat would produce “a depression”. Today, even while Germany and Japan face recession, magazines toast the US economy’s “superstar status”. Yet ask Americans if they feel better off, and many answer: no.

Under Reagan’s law, this election ought to be in the bag for Kamala Harris. As Joe Biden’s number two, she can claim co-authorship for this boom. Instead, she is neck and neck with a convicted criminal (never forget: three weeks after polling day, a judge will decide if Donald Trump should be jailed over the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels). On the economy, Trump regularly polls ahead of Harris. The issue that ought to be winning for her is instead losing.

How come? It ranks among the most consequential questions of our time, yet, however hard they scratch their heads Washington’s finest can’t give a good answer. Many on the centre left paint it as a PR problem: that Biden has failed to claim the credit or that voters are too dumb to realise how good things are. But another suggestion emerges in a new report from a progressive thinktank, the Democracy Collaborative. And its argument should be heeded by Keir Starmer and the European left.

The authors examine much the same economic dashboard as everyone else – growth, jobs, wages – but over a far longer timeframe. Behind each graph lies the implicit question: are you, your family, your community better off than you were not four years ago, but two, three, four decades ago? And for many people the numbers say: no.



https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... nomy-wages

[keith]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-10/ ... /104449064

In short:
US citizens who live overseas rarely get the attention of politicians in the lead up to elections.
But this year "candidates are looking for votes under every rock they can find".
What's next?
With millions of US citizens living overseas, their votes could help decide crucial states.

Me: has a handy map of which nations have the most overseas US over 18’s

U.S. Embassies overseas set up drop-boxes for folks with overseas ballots. This is for both American staff and for American citizens living locally. I'm turning in my Florida ballot either tomorrow or Friday to get sent back out.

Mine will be emailed this evening. Arizona does email for MOSV, doesn't Florida?

[RTH10260]

Millionaire ‘apostle’ summoning women to DC for Christian nationalist rally
Jenny Donnelly, leader of anti-trans Don’t Mess With Our Kids, to host pre-election gatherings in Washington

Alice Herman
Sat 12 Oct 2024 12.00 CEST

Less than a month before the presidential election, multilevel marketing professional-turned-Christian “apostle” Jenny Donnelly is summoning women to the National Mall to fast, pray and uphold “the Lord’s authority over the election process and our nation’s leadership”.

It’s the first of a series of Christian nationalist gatherings in DC to rally believers to the Capitol ahead of the 2024 election.

The pro-Trump influencer has billed the event as a rallying call for mothers concerned about changing gender norms in modern America, gathering women under pink and blue banners emblazoned with the anti-trans hashtag #DontMessWithOurKids. In her promotional materials, Donnelly casts the event at the Capitol as an opportunity for women to stand their ground and play a pivotal role in changing the cultural and political trajectory of the US.

Although Donnelly will headline the prayerful demonstration, the event is a collaboration organized by multiple far-right Christian leaders affiliated with the New Apostolic Reformation – a movement on the Christian right that seeks to establish Christian dominion over government and society in the long term – and get Trump elected in the nearer future.

Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, said the effort was aimed at “creating a network – a mass of people – who see it as their spiritual mission to take over Washington DC”.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... list-rally

[Resume18]

Millionaire ‘apostle’ summoning women to DC for Christian nationalist rally
Jenny Donnelly, leader of anti-trans Don’t Mess With Our Kids, to host pre-election gatherings in Washington

Alice Herman
Sat 12 Oct 2024 12.00 CEST

Less than a month before the presidential election, multilevel marketing professional-turned-Christian “apostle” Jenny Donnelly is summoning women to the National Mall to fast, pray and uphold “the Lord’s authority over the election process and our nation’s leadership”.

It’s the first of a series of Christian nationalist gatherings in DC to rally believers to the Capitol ahead of the 2024 election.

The pro-Trump influencer has billed the event as a rallying call for mothers concerned about changing gender norms in modern America, gathering women under pink and blue banners emblazoned with the anti-trans hashtag #DontMessWithOurKids. In her promotional materials, Donnelly casts the event at the Capitol as an opportunity for women to stand their ground and play a pivotal role in changing the cultural and political trajectory of the US.

Although Donnelly will headline the prayerful demonstration, the event is a collaboration organized by multiple far-right Christian leaders affiliated with the New Apostolic Reformation – a movement on the Christian right that seeks to establish Christian dominion over government and society in the long term – and get Trump elected in the nearer future.

Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, said the effort was aimed at “creating a network – a mass of people – who see it as their spiritual mission to take over Washington DC”.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... list-rally

I'll never forget watching a political roundtable in the run-up to the 2016 election. One pundit on the panel predicted that the Xtian Right was in its death throes. I didn't reconize that guy, but he was sure wrong.

[RTH10260]

'Dead heat': Trump pulls even with Harris in NBC News poll

Mark Murray
Sun, October 13, 2024 at 5:00 PM GMT+2·

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are deadlocked in the latest national NBC News poll, with Trump bolstered by Republicans coming back home to support him after last month’s rough debate and a subsequent polling deficit, as well as by a favorable voter assessment of Trump’s term as president.

These are among the findings of a new survey released three weeks before Election Day, which also shows Harris’ popularity declining compared to a month ago, after she got a big summertime boost; a massive gender gap between support for Harris and Trump; and voters viewing abortion as a top motivating issue heading into the 2024 vote.

“As summer has turned to fall, any signs of momentum for Kamala Harris have stopped,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “The race is a dead heat.”

McInturff said “headwinds” for Harris have helped narrow the presidential contest, including concerns that the vice president doesn’t represent change from President Joe Biden and voters seeing Trump’s presidency in a more positive light than Biden’s.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/dead-heat-tr ... 41332.html
(original: NBC News)

[Slim Cognito]

What THE FUCK Is wrong with people

[Frater I*I]

What THE FUCK Is wrong with people

Dumbest population of any industrialized nation...

Period.

This is what happens with the QOP spending a half century dismantling the DoE...

[tek]

including concerns that the vice president doesn’t represent change

oh FFS

[neonzx]

From CNN...

More than 300,000 votes cast on first day of Georgia early voting, 123% higher than previous record

[Suranis]

What THE FUCK Is wrong with people

I'm just assuming that this is the media lying via polls a la the red wave.

A dose of positivity from Simon Rosenberg

In the last few weeks Republicans have dropped more than 60 polls into the polling averages to make it look like Donald Trump is winning an election he isn’t. They would only be going to these extraordinary lengths to game the polling averages if they believed he wasn’t winning. In a Twitter thread a few days back, I wrote this:

So, a short thread about why it is so important to Trump that it be perceived that he is leading in the polls when he isn't. In sum - it’s his campaign's primary strategy to obscure his historic ugliness.

Trump may be a rapist, fraudster, traitor and 34 times felon but he is leading in the polls and is strong. Trump may be a dangerous extremist, a bigot, misogynist and a racist but he is leading in the polls and is strong.

Trump may want to end the global economy which has made us prosperous, end the Western alliance which has kept us safe, end American democracy which has kept us free but he is leading in the polls and is strong.

Trump is leading in the polls and is strong is a way to make all his ugliness disappear. Which is why his campaign is working so hard to create a false impression that he's ahead. To Trump it is arguably the most important "issue" in the election

Their flooding the zone with these right wing polls is a sign of weakness, not strength, my friends. It is a tactic to help obscure his ugliness and extremism, and we should prepared for far more of it this week. We should also be prepared for:

the “hidden Trump vote” argument which may have been true in 2020 but has not been true for Trump or Republicans since Dobbs. We have been the party with the hidden vote of late as we’ve been overperforming polls for 2.5 years now.

Dems need to win by 4-5 points to win the Electoral College. Again, this is 2024 not 2016 or 2020. Every election is unique, and has it’s own dynamic. Thinking 2022 would be a like typical midterm caused people to miss the election that was in front of them. In this election, the polls remain steady, remarkably steady, and we are right now in my view favored to win the Electoral College even with a 2.4 point national popular vote lead. Here’s 538’s latest national popular vote average:

unnamed.png (110.54 KiB) Viewed 77 times

Trump is weak not strong. He was dragged over the finish line by Russia and James Comey in 2016. Trump and MAGA had disappointing elections in 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023, early 2024 and he underperformed public polls in 19 of his first 20 Republican primary elections. As so much of our commentary in 2022 started with the idea that election was going to behave like other recent mid-terms elections, so much of our commentary this year has been based on a belief this election would behave like 2016 or 2020 and Trump would overperform public polling. That he had super powers, and there was this secret Trump vote that would come out and red wave the Democrats. But this isn’t what happened in 2016; he lost the Presidency in 2020 (most incumbent Presidents are re-elected); and he and his party have really, really struggled since Dobbs. When looking at all this what we should have seen was Trumpian weakness, an uphill climb of a failed, extremist politics. Instead what we’ve gotten in the chatter is this lingering assumption of strength and power that was never actually there. He and his party have been far more losers than winners over these past nine years and this idea of “strength” when looking at that ugly thing is blustery, MAGA bullshit enabled by the right wing noise machine.

Which leads me to all of you. A central reason I think we’ve been overperforming expectations in our elections since Dobbs is all of you. Millions of Americans have just decided that democracy was not going to slip away on their watch. They have gone to work. They’ve donated, info warriored, postcarded, canvassed, texted and phonebanked. Your passion, your intensity, your hard work has given us the most powerful campaigns we’ve ever had. The money we’ve had has allowed us to control the information environment in our races, and mitigate their clear information superiority in the day to day. This money has allowed our campaigns to build unprecedented capacity to channel your volunteering and work into touching voters which has repeatedly allowed us to perform at the upper end of what was possible in election after election. Our super power, particularly since Dobbs, has been all of you. You have built the most powerful grassroots political machine we’ve ever had. This year you’ve written 80 million - 80 million - postcards!!!!! And now my friends, we need to take these muscles, these capacities and super charge them and together turn these close elections into victories across the country. This work is more important than ever before for the VP doesn’t have a big October debate to engage voters and get them to turnout. We have to fill some of that void with our work and energy. As the Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon likes to say, “we can do hard things” and right now we have hard but very necessary and doable things we need to do all across the country.

A sign that we are doing it where it matters right now - again - and closing strong - again - is in the daily tally of the early vote in the seven battleground states. While it is still early, and this data is mostly from MI, PA and WI, I would much rather be us than them.

unnamed.png (36.87 KiB) Viewed 77 times

Heads down, let’s keep working hard all. Be sure to review my new post on our home stretch strategy to close strong and win the election. My one big ask today - please donate to Harris-Walz today and sign up for a shift of calls or canvassing. Beating Trump is job # 1 today, yesterday and tomorrow.