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

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.

This from Dan Pfeiffer: Looking at the fundamentals, we shouldn’t even be in this race. This is a brutal political environment. Three-quarters of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Two-thirds are unhappy about the economy. The incumbent President ran for reelection despite huge misgivings about his age and then had a debate so disastrous that he had to drop out only a few months before the election. Nate Cohn summed up the challenges in the New York Times: For the first time in decades, Republicans have pulled even or ahead in nationwide party identification. Polls also find Republicans with an edge on most key issues — with democracy and abortion standing as significant exceptions. The Democrats’ challenge appears to be part of a broader trend of political struggles for ruling parties across the developed world. Voters appear eager for change when they get the chance. The ruling parties in Britain, Germany, Italy, Australia and most recently Japan all faced electoral setbacks or lost power. Mr. Trump himself lost four years ago. France and Canada might well join the list. Trump should be running away with it.

This gold standard poll, which called the last two presidential election when everyone else had it wrong, in September had Trump 47 and Harris 43. This is all about women including independent women and women over 65 breaking hard for her in the last month. I wonder why? The analysis from most of the strategists say that this portends victory, at the very least, in the Blue Wall states and could indicated a massive shift from women, particularly white women (Iowa is almost all white), elsewhere. Let’s just say that Democrats are pretty stoked right now.

Your vote, your citizenship, still means something Don’t it always seem to goThat you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone? @whistlingvivaldi knows what he’s got and what it means. Don’t let that Big Orange Garbage Truck take away any more of what you’ve got. @whistlingvivaldi https://www.vote.org/ #election #politics #dnc #rnc #election2024 ♬ original sound – Whistling Vivaldi 🇭🇹 🇺🇸 >

Millionaire garbage and billionaire fools American politics look different with a little geographic perspective. 7News Melbourne has plenty of distance for it. I had to check to be sure this wasn’t an Australian version of SNL’s Weekend Update. Stuart Stevens says what we’ve all known about Donald Trump’s subcontracting the RNC’s GOTV operation to Elon Musk and PACs like America Pac, Turnout for America, Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action and America First Works. The con man is being conned: One of the more amusing aspects of this campaign has been watching @elonmuskmake a fool of himself babbling on about a subject he is completely ignorant. The consultants he is paying to set up an “organization” are taking advantage of him like an 18 year old frat boy with $1,000 in a strip club. They tell him what he wants to hear, and he puts in more money. There is a view that Musk is not some genius, that he stumbled into making a fortune in PayPal (which was a stumble; read Peter Thiel’s biography, “The Contrarian”) and had a lot of ambition and passions and a high risk tolerance.

A great surrogate speech: Some people just surprise you. She’s really good at this.

On the homepage and across two pages in the paper: Their headlines and story placement have been terrible this year. But they’ve come around here at the end with some great features on the stakes and the editorial board is not pulling any punches.

[*sigh*] To paraphrase the Giant in Twin Peaks…”It is happening again.” What I’m referring to, of course, is life imitating the art of a certain 1964 film: The General elaborates further: General Jack D. Ripper : Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk… ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children’s ice cream. Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake : [very nervous] Lord, Jack. General Jack D. Ripper : You know when fluoridation first began? Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake : I… no, no. I don’t, Jack. General Jack D. Ripper : Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works. Context? JICYMI: From my 2016 piece on Dr. Strangelove: “Mein fuehrer!

“Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face” The anti-fluoridation conspiracy theory is so old and crazy that Stanley Kubrick warned us about it in Dr. Strangelove (1964). For a half century it was THE political litmus test for nutjobs. RFK Jr is now trying to normalizing it.🙄 pic.twitter.com/ylpk4Kzm7r https://t.co/iPVCiS4ZEm — Sanho Tree (@SanhoTree) November 3, 2024 Anti-flouridation conspiracy theories were a staple of Bircher propaganda back in the day. It was so ubiquitous that Dr. Strangelove, 1964, mocked it in the greatest satire of the right ever made. Unfortunately, we are not living in a movie satire. Check this out: That would be just another crazy RFK rant except for this: He’s not backing down: The Republican Party continues to show itself to be completely spineless toadies. If Trump pulls out a win he will be seen as the unbeatable Colossus, a literal god, and they will do anything to please him. After all, they already are. It will only get worse.