Sam Stein has a useful reminder for you. Loomer isn’t the (only) problem: [I]f the presence of Laura Loomer by Trump’s side is what makes you worry that Trump will get dragged into the dark depths of conspiracy land, well, you’re way too late. The former president has been a prolific conspiracy theorist for decades. Let’s take a tour through what Trump was thinking even before Loomer joined his entourage: Trump was the de facto leader of the Obama birther movement, even casually suggesting that the director of the Hawaii Department of Health, who died in a plane crash, was murdered as part of a coverup. He openly mused that former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers wrote Obama’s memoir and that Obama never actually went to Columbia University. He floated the idea that Ted Cruz’s father had ties to Lee Harvey Oswald. He raised doubts about Vince Foster’s suicide. He wondered aloud if Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was suffocated to death. He pushed the story that Muslims in New Jersey were cheering after 9/11.
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Depends on who’s asking Ok, ok, I can’t resist. Here’s a little polling chum for a Monday afternoon. Don’t take any of it too seriously because the polls are close and polling is in crisis so we really have no earthly idea who’s ahead and who’s behind. But there are trends… From Dan Pfeiffer’s post this morning on the post-debate polls: The national polling averages remain largely unchanged. On the day of the debate, the FiveThirtyEight polling average had Harris leading Trump by 2.5%. Today, that lead is 2.8%. However, a steady stream of positive polls for Harris came out since the debate. Simon Rosenberg compiled this list in a recent issue of his Hopium Chronicles newsletter: Harris 50-45 (+5) Morning ConsultHarris 47-42 (+5) Ipsos/ReutersHarris 51-47 (+4) RMGHarris 50-46 (+4) Data For ProgressHarris 49-45 (+4) YouGov/Yahoo (LVs)Harris 49-45 (+4) YouGov/Times (LVs)Harris 47-43 (+4) TIPP InsightsHarris 50-47 (+3) Leger/NYPostHarris 48-45 (+3) SoCalHarris 44-42 (+2) Redfield & Wilton And then, on Sunday morning, an ABC News/Ipsos poll showed Harris up by six points over Trump.
Trump earlier today: Later that day:
Bolts.com has done some deep research into the elections official positions in states where they themselves are on the ballot this year. Yikes: One needs only to skim recent headlines to be reminded of the power of state elections officials to shape access to voting. Nebraska’s secretary of state just unilaterally shut down voter registration for tens of thousands of people with past felony convictions just weeks before the election. The secretary of state in Ohio, who has spent years courting the Big Lie, this month proposed to make it harder to vote by mail by limiting drop boxes. In Arizona, the secretary of state is laying the groundwork to combat election deniers who might seek to reject election results in November. All these officials were elected by voters in the 2022 midterms, a busy cycle that saw a coordinated (and largely unsuccessful) effort by followers of Donald Trump to take over election administration. Two years later, a new round of states are selecting their chief election officials.
Compiled for sharing If you’re in the mood for a breathless summary of superconmisogynisticextrabragadocious Trumpy lowlights, Seth Meyers has you covered. Bookmark it for Thanksgiving. This Zak Kimball guy has a set of explainers on his TikTok page, but this one answers The Donald’s debate challenge to Vice President Kamala Harris about why she hasn’t accomplished the things she proposes in 3-1/2 years in that office. For the civics-challenged. Tom Bonier explains why the polls are so screwed up and why they now overestimate Repunblicans’ support. And for those of you paying attention, voter registration has been way up since Biden handed Harris the baton. Voter registration has been spiked insanely since Harris trounced Trump in the debate and Taylor Swift’s endorsement. Enjoy. Update: Knew Rosenberg had these but could not find them earlier
Another family feud over a GOP candidate in AZ Most of us have them, family members who for reasons unfathomable have gone full red-hat. For other unknown reasons a lot of them run for office in Arizona. Six members of Rep. Paul Gosar’s (Ariz.-R) family made a point of asking people not to vote for him. Several appeared in attack ads against him and after Jan. 6 called for his ouster from Congress: “I consider him a traitor to this country. I consider him a traitor to his family,” Gosar’s brother, Dave, a Wyoming attorney, said. “He doesn’t see it. He’s disgraced and dishonored himself.” Now it’s Wonder Woman actress Lynda Carter’s turn, reports Mother Jones. Her sister, Pamela, “an activist prayer warrior,” is running for a state house district in suburban Maricopa County. Lynda’s distancing herself: In their quest to hold onto the legislature, Republicans have turned to a member of a famous Arizona family—Pamela Carter, older sister of the original Wonder Woman, Lynda Carter.
How can people vote again for this clown?
Ok. It’s Donald Trump who believes he can change reality simply by saying something over and over again. And for about 46% of voters, it appears that he can. Not even a 3 point lead. Yes, I still think Harris will pull out a narrow win. But what do we do about the 46% of our fellow Americans who think that bigoted conman should run the country? Their willingness to believe his lies (or rationalize them) makes them monsters too, doesn’t it? (Or dangerous fools, if we want to be generous about it.) I knew we had been a racist, violent people. But I thought we had progressed further than this, I really did.
Last night, Bill Maher made a joke about Trump and Laura Loomer having an affair. (It was cruder than that but basically that was it.) That theme was all over social media yesterday, starting with the big kahuna. above. Loomer was very, very upset about it: She should know about defamation and character assassination. It’s her entire brand: Uh huh:
The husband had been a conspiracy theorist even before COVID came along. His wife described him as almost “cultlike” in his anti-vax beliefs. It’s clear he had untreated mental illness but the anti-Vax movement sent him into a spiral that resulted in this terrible tragedy. Via The Atavist: Over the course of their marriage, Hu had watched as her now ex-husband, Stephen O’Loughlin, became obsessed with pseudoscience, self-help gurus, and conspiracy theories, spending long nights watching videos online, then sharing the details of fantastical plots with Hu, their friends, and people he barely knew. The COVID-19 pandemic had only made things worse. O’Loughlin huddled for hours at his computer streaming YouTube clips and poring over right-wing websites—what he called “doing research.” One of O’Loughlin’s fixations was vaccines. He believed that Pierce had been damaged by the routine inoculations he received as a baby. O’Loughlin was adamant that the boy be given no more shots—not for COVID-19, when a vaccine was eventually authorized for kids, nor for any other disease.