Elon Musk and Charlie Kirk taking over the Trump field operations may be one of the worst decisions he’s made and that’s saying something: Donald Trump’s ground game in Arizona and Nevada may be undercut by canvassers working for America Pac using GPS spoofing to pretend they have knocked on doors when they haven’t, according to multiple people familiar with the practice and a leaked how-to-fake-location video. The ramifications for Trump may be far reaching, given America Pac has taken on the bulk of the Trump campaign’s ground game in the battleground states, and the election increasingly appears set to be decided by turnout. A bootleg how-to-spoof video, made by an America Pac canvasser in Nevada and obtained by the Guardian, shows the apparent ease with which locations can be changed to fake door-knocks, calling into question how many Trump voters have actually been reached by the field operation.
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Those two quotes are correct. The first, the second. I share this after having watched a bunch of evangelicals drool all over Trump as if he’s the second coming and I’m reminded that we don’t have to listen to the Christian Right about morality ever again. There was a time when they’d be trotted out as the avatar of Real American values. No more. They showed themselves to be simply lackeys for a demagogic cult leader. I don’t think we have to have any doubt WJWD.
Jeffrey Goldberg has published a story in the Atlantic compiling many of the grotesque commnts from Trump about the military. I guess I’m not shocked by it anymore but I confess I’m still pretty stunned that Republican voters don’t care. I suppose they believe it’s all lies but on some level they do know he’s lying and have chosen to pretend to believe him when he says it didn’t happen. I will never understand what makes them so attracted or loyal to this man but that’s another story. I’m linking with a gift link so that you can read the whole story. Much of it isn’t new but it’s still good to see it all in one place. The newest piece is here. Trump had offered to personally help pay for funeral expenses for vaness Guillen a young soldier who had been killed by a fellow soldier. Months after the fact, he asked if they had ever received a bill: According to attendees, and to contemporaneous notes of the meeting taken by a participant, an aide answered: Yes, we received a bill; the funeral cost $60,000. Trump became angry.
One of my favorite TV scenes was in a show called “6 Feet Under” in which Kathy Bates brings her friend to a department store and tells her to go ahead and shoplift because once a woman goes through menopause she’s invisible. It’s kind of true … I thought of that today when I read this: New polling shows Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump with women over the age of 50 by more than any presidential candidate since 2016. The survey shows that 54% of women in that demographic plan to vote for the vice president, over just 42% for Trump. It’s a huge improvement from Joe Biden, who only led Trump by three points with women over 50 in January. The numbers are also better than Hillary Clinton‘s numbers in 2016, who polled 48%-40% over Trump. […] ‘Our polling over the years has shown them to be a key swing voting bloc,’ said AARP Executive Vice President Nancy LeaMond. In the same survey, Democrats led Republicans 51%-42% on votes for who should control Congress. Overwhelmingly, women over 50 say that the economy and affordability are their biggest issue.
You should opt out Dan Pfeiffer this morning examines the GOP push to psych out the public: Despite minimal evidence, a full-bore effort is underway to make Democrats think Kamala Harris is losing the election. This effort is abetted by preternaturally anxious Democrats expressing their concerns on social media. I have written a lot recently about the vibe shift in Democrats after Kamala Harris’s nomination. I don’t think the data validates such an extreme shift in emotions. However, I won’t shame anyone for being on edge these last two weeks. The stakes are enormous. Reproductive freedom, health care, democracy, and the planet are on the line in an election that could be decided by the weather in a random suburban Wisconsin county. Simon Rosenberg has been on about Republicans flooding the zone with conservative “red wave” polls meant to skew polling averages in Donald Trump’s favor. This is a GOP psyop meant to a) depress Democrat enthusiasm and, b) lay the groundwork for another “stop the steal” movement post-Nov. 5.
IYKYK There’s a difference. A big one.
Politico took a look at what the Trump[ers are plotting in the event he loses the election. It’s a long shot, but it’s theoretically possible: “No one knows exactly what Trump’s attack on the electoral system will be in 2024,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Jan. 6 select committee. “What will he do this time?” The answer, according to lawmakers, congressional investigators, party operatives, election officials and constitutional law experts, goes something like this: — He will deepen distrust in the election results by making unsupported or hyperbolic claims of widespread voter fraud and mounting longshot lawsuits challenging enough ballots to flip the outcome in key states. — He will lean on friendly county and state officials to resist certifying election results — a futile errand that would nevertheless fuel a campaign to put pressure on elected Republican legislators in statehouses and Congress. — He will call on allies in GOP-controlled swing-state legislatures to appoint “alternate” presidential electors.
What a wonderful world it won’t be Noah Smith (Noahpinion) published a grim picture of what the world might look like if Donald Trump regains the U.S. presidency. He’s admittedly not an expert on geoplitics. Neither am I. But you should read it. It’s compelling. So much of our focus is captured by concerns closer to home: to women’s reproductive freedoms in our country, to our economy, to the threat Trump and Project 2025 pose to the future of our adolescent republic, to the horse-race dynamics of our presidential contest, etc. Smith asks us to pull back and consider the global implications of a second Trump presidency on a world threatened by what he calls the New Axis: North Korea, Russia, and China. Smith warns, “The free world is teetering on the edge of a knife.” The United States since World War II has been the indispensable nation, the anchor for the western alliance that held the Soviet bloc in check during the Cold War. That was our pride. That was the problem: But the U.S.’ importance to the democratic alliance system always represented a single point of failure.
First they ignore you…. The Washington Post this morning offers a “narrative busting” poll, says Simon Rosenberg. But still within the margins of error or, as activists put it, within the margin of effort: Among these key-state voters, Harris runs strongest in Georgia, where she has an advantage of six percentage points among registered voters and four points among likely voters, which is within the margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. Harris also is slightly stronger than Trump in the three most contested northern states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — but by percentages within the margin of error. The seventh battleground state, Nevada, is tied among likely voters though Harris is three points stronger than Trump among registered voters. Naturally, the polling from North Carolina has me concerned. I’ve repeatedly made my pitch for turning out more neglected independents in heavily blue urban precincts where they underperform Democrats. But shaving GOP margins in rural areas is also part of a winning equation. Democrats’ state chair Anderson Clayton and friends at groups like Down Home North Carolina are on it.
So Mike Johnson textd with is erstwhile friend Liz Cheney after her appearance on Meet the Press last week. He told Axios they “agreed to disagree.” Liz says, not so much: Cheney disputed Johnson’s characterization of the exchange, telling Axios that she and the speaker “used to be friends, but we did not ‘agree to disagree.'” Johnson said he had not spoken to Cheney in a “very long time,” but decided to text her after “she said some very uncharitable things.”“I do not have faith that Mike Johnson will fulfill his constitutional obligations,” Cheney told NBC on Oct. 13. Johnson told Axios he shared “how disappointed I was in that, to make things personal, because I’ve not done that.