A General thread for 2024 Presidential Elections

[bill_g]

I vote bravo. Keep 'em on their toes.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

That's the first normal thing ever to happen in a Trump campaign office. Huh. Office prank. Who'd a thunk?

[Uninformed]

Lindsey Graham being interviewed by Stephen Sackur on the BBC. Is there anything he actually believes in, or any truth he won’t deny or deflect from?

[Rolodex]

I was reading an article earlier (I think in The Atlantic). It was about Mike Lee. How he was a run of the mill LDS guy who grew up with a powerful dad (solicitor general in DC) but had to take the bar twice and not the genius his dad was. He got more political as he came out of law school.

In the 2016 GOP convention, he worked to get the rules changed to try to get Trump off the ticket. He was big bus with Cruz and there was a movement to get a Cruz/Rubio ticket bc they hated trump.

But then...trump won and the next thing you know, Lee is working hard to overthrow the 2020 election to keep trump in power.

The interviewer ponders why the 180 and has talked to several folks in his orbit. The upshot is that if you line up behind trump you can get so much of what you want. Lee was a nobody until he maga'd out. No bills sponsored, nothing.

Found the article.

“Had he not gotten caught up in Tea Party movement when he first got elected, he might have had a very different career. He might have been much more of a mainstream Republican,” Spencer Stokes, Lee’s first Senate chief of staff, told me. “But Mike craves respect. Those groups on the right gave it to him. And because there were no accolades from the mainstream, he stayed where the accolades were.” (Lee’s response to this: “I stayed where the truth was.”)

The senator had begun to view Trump as something greater than a president. He was an avatar of masculinity and individuality, a middle finger to the governing class that had shown insurgents like Lee the same disrespect it had shown Trump. Lee was more than smitten; he was spellbound. And it was under that spell that he turned his back on American democracy.

I forgot why I dropped this post in this particular thread (CRS strikes again), but it's appropriate as Lee has been floated as AG if shithead wins. It IS a very good article.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... rt/679565/

[andersweinstein]

The GOP is unhappy that the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court has Ruled against disenfranchising voters over incorrect dates on mail in ballots

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pennsy ... 024-08-31/

Alas, PA Supreme Court has now vacated that ruling, though not on the merits:

In a brief, two-page order, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined to rule on the merits of the case, which was brought by a coalition of voters’ rights groups. Instead, it found that the lower court, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, lacked jurisdiction in its order last month because the lawsuit named only Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties, and not all of the state’s 67 counties, as defendants.

Friday’s ruling means that state election officials will not be counting misdated or undated ballots in the general election unless the courts decide to intervene again between now and Nov. 5. The plaintiffs could file a new lawsuit that tries to address the jurisdiction issue, but whether they will do so is unclear.

Three of the court’s seven justices dissented, writing that the State Supreme Court should have exercised its special jurisdiction as Pennsylvania’s highest court to decide the case because “a prompt and definitive ruling” on the date question “is of paramount public importance.”

In a statement, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State called the ruling “disappointing,” saying that it “leaves unanswered the important question of whether the dating requirement violates the Pennsylvania Constitution, as the Commonwealth Court found.”

The ruling could have a substantial impact on the presidential race in the battleground state ... State election officials disqualified nearly 16,000 mail-in ballots for irregularities in April’s primary election. Almost half were disqualified because of issues like missing signatures and wrong dates on outer envelopes.

NYT Report (gift link)

[I live in Pittsburgh, BTW. I'd be happy to bank my Harris vote as early as possible, but feel like there's less risk of error if I just vote in person on election day.]

[Volkonski]

I imagine that Trump voters are more likely to make mistakes about dates than Democratic voters.

[andersweinstein]

I imagine that Trump voters are more likely to make mistakes about dates than Democratic voters.

But Democratic voters have been significantly more likely to vote by mail. Another notorious thing the Rs in the PA legislature have done is prohibit processing mail-in votes before election day. That ensures the PA results won't be known for days and there's likely to be some level of "red mirage" from the initial count of in-person votes which they can exploit.

[bill_g]

Oregon is 100% mail-in ballot, and we don't process any of it until election day. The only thing they know before that is how many have been returned. They don't even strip envelopes until the day of. They simply neatly place envelopes in trays as they arrive so they can be fed into the machines.

[zekeb]

Oregon is 100% mail-in ballot, and we don't process any of it until election day. The only thing they know before that is how many have been returned. They don't even strip envelopes until the day of. They simply neatly place envelopes in trays as they arrive so they can be fed into the machines.

With Portland's vote tally coming in last, dashing the early hopes of the Republicans.

[bill_g]

Oregon is 100% mail-in ballot, and we don't process any of it until election day. The only thing they know before that is how many have been returned. They don't even strip envelopes until the day of. They simply neatly place envelopes in trays as they arrive so they can be fed into the machines.

With Portland's vote tally coming in last, dashing the early hopes of the Republicans.

Yep. The tail rarely wags the dog, but that may change. The tri-county area population is about 2.5M with a state total of 4.2M. When you consider that not everyone in the Portland Metro votes D, and that not everyone outside Portland votes R, we find the breakdown by party pretty close sometimes. Oregon is purple.

[RTH10260]

Analysis

A day in Elon Musk’s mind: 145 tweets with election conspiracies and emojis
A controversial tweet may make it to the news, but reading every post from the world’s richest man shows how frenzied and extreme he really is

Nick Robins-Early
Sat 14 Sep 2024 09.30 CEST

It’s just after midnight mountain standard time in the US on 13 August when Elon Musk makes his first post of the day on X, the platform he bought for $44bn when it was known as Twitter. Musk has been tweeting for hours about his interview with Donald Trump, and he will continue into the night before taking a few hours’ break – presumably to sleep – and then logging back on to tweet dozens more times.

Over the next 24 hours, Musk will post over 145 times about a range of obsessions, projects and grievances to his 195 million followers. He will share anti-immigrant content, election conspiracies and attacks against the media. He will exchange tweets with far-right politicians, conservative media influencers and sycophantic admirers. He will send a litany of one-word replies that say “yeah”, “interesting” or simply feature a cry-laughing emoji.

As a means of showing what Musk promotes online and who he interacts with, the Guardian has taken a granular look at one day of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s posts on X. Musk posted a photo of himself at a “friend’s ranch in Wyoming” on the day in question, and as a result all timestamps of his tweets are assumed to have taken place in that state’s timezone, mountain standard time.

The 24-hour snapshot of Musk’s posts, which are largely representative of his average daily output, are a revealing look into how the world’s richest man spends a large part of his day, almost every day. Though Musk receives huge amounts of media coverage for his various legal battles and business ventures, it can be easy for people who are not constantly online to miss just how prolific his output is on X and how extreme the content is that he promotes there. He tweets so often that his own bot scanners have flagged his account in the past. He has replaced Donald Trump as the tweeter-in-chief.



https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... conspiracy

[Dave from down under]

A long read - feel free to disagree

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-15/ ... /104305618

America can’t escape the shadow of its history

Two different versions of the US are on the table, but both of them are captive to the past.

By Nick Bryant for ABC’s Long Read

[sugar magnolia]

I imagine that Trump voters are more likely to make mistakes about dates than Democratic voters.

But Democratic voters have been significantly more likely to vote by mail. Another notorious thing the Rs in the PA legislature have done is prohibit processing mail-in votes before election day. That ensures the PA results won't be known for days and there's likely to be some level of "red mirage" from the initial count of in-person votes which they can exploit.

I'm not sure how they can "exploit" votes that are already received.

[New Turtle]

I imagine that Trump voters are more likely to make mistakes about dates than Democratic voters.

But Democratic voters have been significantly more likely to vote by mail. Another notorious thing the Rs in the PA legislature have done is prohibit processing mail-in votes before election day. That ensures the PA results won't be known for days and there's likely to be some level of "red mirage" from the initial count of in-person votes which they can exploit.

I'm not sure how they can "exploit" votes that are already received.

The day-of votes will be counted and reported first, so it could look like a big lead. Then all the GOP will run around saying lookat that lead, they are gonna win PA. The early vote will be reported later in large batches. The lead will go away quickly and then they cry foul.

[Suranis]

The day-of votes will be counted and reported first, so it could look like a big lead. Then all the GOP will run around saying lookat that lead, they are gonna win PA. The early vote will be reported later in large batches. The lead will go away quickly and then they cry foul.

That's basically what happened in 2020. Only his vote was so shit that Biden still got a slight lead

[sugar magnolia]

But Democratic voters have been significantly more likely to vote by mail. Another notorious thing the Rs in the PA legislature have done is prohibit processing mail-in votes before election day. That ensures the PA results won't be known for days and there's likely to be some level of "red mirage" from the initial count of in-person votes which they can exploit.

I'm not sure how they can "exploit" votes that are already received.

The day-of votes will be counted and reported first, so it could look like a big lead. Then all the GOP will run around saying lookat that lead, they are gonna win PA. The early vote will be reported later in large batches. The lead will go away quickly and then they cry foul.

But what/who does that exploit?

[New Turtle]

I'm not sure how they can "exploit" votes that are already received.

The day-of votes will be counted and reported first, so it could look like a big lead. Then all the GOP will run around saying lookat that lead, they are gonna win PA. The early vote will be reported later in large batches. The lead will go away quickly and then they cry foul.

But what/who does that exploit?

They're exploiting their own supporters who don't regularly follow elections and don't know how vote counting/reporting works. Donald tells his people not to vote early and not by mail because their votes won't count, so the early vote breaks heavily Democratic. PA is one of the few states left that won't allow counting of early votes until after the polls close. The whole reason for making the legislation to hold the early votes is to engineer a situation that gives the appearance of shenanigans and causes outrage. Then they can send the lawyers in and try to challenge the election results.

[bob]

Creates uncertainty and doubt.

If Harris eventually wins: "ANOTHER STOLLEN ELECTION!"

If Harris loses: "PROOF THAT 2020 WAS STOLLEN."

[bill_g]

According to this person, the Haitians eating pets in Springfield OH story was started to distract from the GOP intent to take over the US Senate.

[andersweinstein]

I imagine that Trump voters are more likely to make mistakes about dates than Democratic voters.

But Democratic voters have been significantly more likely to vote by mail. Another notorious thing the Rs in the PA legislature have done is prohibit processing mail-in votes before election day. That ensures the PA results won't be known for days and there's likely to be some level of "red mirage" from the initial count of in-person votes which they can exploit.

I'm not sure how they can "exploit" votes that are already received.

I mean "exploit for propaganda purposes" to promote the Big Lie that the election is being stolen as the count shifts toward Dems. This was Trump's 2020 strategy. It is the ONLY reason Republicans block processing mail-ins before election day.

[Dr. Ken]

Iowa within 4 points?

[RTH10260]

of as a different source says:

Harris' entry into race wipes out most of Trump's lead in Iowa, new poll finds

by Nick WeigSun, September 15th 2024 at 9:09 AM
Updated Sun, September 15th 2024 at 9:15 AM

https://cbs2iowa.com/news/local/vp-harr ... poll-finds

[RTH10260]

foreign interference ?

Trump ‘likelier winner’ unless Harris tackles two failings, says ex-ambassador
Kim Darroch says the Democratic nominee must focus on US swing states and avoid repeating Hillary Clinton’s errors

Toby Helm, Political editor
Sun 15 Sep 2024 07.00 CEST

Donald Trump will remain the “likelier winner” of the US presidential election on 5 November unless the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, addresses key failings in her campaign, a former British ambassador to Washington says on Sunday.

Kim Darroch says that despite clearly getting the better of Trump in last week’s televised head-to-head debate, Harris risks making two crucial mistakes in the final weeks of campaigning, which mean the former Republican president is still the favourite.

With a Trump return to the White House on the cards, Lord Darroch says it is important that the prime minister, Keir Starmer, who met US president Joe Biden and other leading Democrats in Washington on Thursday, should also now be seeking a meeting with Trump and his team before polling day, so he has built links with both sides.

“It is important that if Starmer meets one, he meets both,” Darroch says in an article for the Observer. “It will be noticed and resented by the Trump team if he doesn’t.”

Darroch was UK ambassador to the US from 2016 to 2019, when he resigned in a row over leaked confidential emails in which he criticised Trump’s administration as “clumsy and inept”. Darroch’s position became untenable after Boris Johnson, then involved in the Tory leadership contest to succeed Theresa May, failed to give the ambassador his unequivocal backing.



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ambassador

[p0rtia]

Yes, it's Kamala's failing that 45 percent of our country has lost its collective mind and is immune to any form of mitigation.

It's Kamala's failing that the GOP collapsed and was subsumed by a pack of bullying grifters.

It's Kamala's failing that the neo-GOP is making it as hard to vote as humanly possible, and plans to do refuse to certify the election if they have to. Plus the intimidation and open threats of violence.

It's Kamala's failing that the MAGA SCOTUS has promised fuckhead he can do whatever he wants if he gets back in, starting with arresting his perceived enemies, thus upping the threats and fears.

Got it.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]