Those of you who read this blog know about the Republicans’ affinity for the bandwagon effect — tell everyone you’re winning and in the end people will want to go with the winner. Trump is especially enamored of this because he brags about everything anyway. Dan Pfeiffer has a piece today explaining that it might not be the smartest move this time out. Believe it or not, there are strategic reasons why Republicans publicly assert they are winning no matter what the polls say, and Democrats always hypothesize that a stunning defeat is right around the corner. However, this election is unlike any other. The electoral coalitions have shifted, and the Trump campaign did not adjust its playbook to address the new reality. For the longest time, the Republican coalition was comprised of older, mostly college-educated voters who participated in every election. Democratic success, on the other hand, depended on turnout from lower-propensity voters who rarely voted in midterms.
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Axios reports: In the heat of this historic election, educated elites who should know better — billionaires, elected officials, journalists — keep falling for fakes, conspiracy theories and outright lies… Each day on the digital campaign trail has brought a torrent of false or misleading claims, often courtesy of partisan accounts with massive audiences. In the last few weeks alone: -MAGA influencers breathlessly spread the false claim that Vice President Kamala Harris used a teleprompter during her Univision town hall, which the X algorithm then promoted in its trending topics as fact. -Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) posted a purported screenshot of a headline in The Atlantic that read: “To Save Democracy Harris May Need To Steal An Election.” It was fake, and Roy deleted the post. -Bill Ackman, a hedge fund billionaire with 1.4 million followers on X, obsessively promoted allegations from an ABC News “whistleblower” that the network had given Harris questions in advance of her debate with Trump.
What Michael Sokolove found in a tiny Pennsylvania town Comprehending what’s become of a large faction of Americans and a majority of the Republican Party will be the object of study for historians and psychologists for decades. Reporting from Riegelsville, Pa., a hamlet of 800 that voted in 2020 for Donald Trump by a mere two votes, Michael Sokolove found not one of the 60 Republican and Democrat voters he spoke with is changing sides this election. Just why will be the subject of doctoral dissertations (gift link): Most of the Harris supporters I spoke to in Riegelsville cited the vice president’s personal qualities — what they perceived as positivity and decency — along with a desire for a president who might somehow calm our rancorous political climate. Most of the Trump supporters were unconcerned with matters of character. If they ever had a hope that a U.S. president would be someone they admired, a person who might represent the best of us — a war hero, say, like Dwight Eisenhower; a straight arrow like Jimmy Carter; or a trailblazer like Barack Obama — they had abandoned it. Many said that was an outdated or even naïve notion.
To follow up on Tom’s post below, Democracy is great and all but … damn: “Trump is obviously insane, and then Harris, I don’t think she has a plan,” said Clayton Ewing, a 63-year-old retiree from Shelby Township, Mich. who has voted for Trump in prior elections. Ewing said he may wait until he gets to the polls to make a final decision. Regina Gallacher, a 58-year-old physical therapist from Rochester Hills, Mich., said she is looking for a third party candidate because Trump “really scares me” but and she doesn’t “get warm fuzzies” when she hears Harris talk and found her replacement of President Biden on the ballot “very slimy.” Her husband, a union Democrat, is voting for Trump for the first time but they don’t talk about it at home because Gallacher, who grows repulsed when Trump appears on television, would rather avoid a heated conversation with her husband, who is unlikely to change his mind. If she has to choose between the two, it will be Harris, she said. But she is unsure. “We’ll get through it” if Trump wins, she said.
She turns 60 today. She’s just the right age for the first woman president. She’s had enough time to gather the experience any woman would be required to have (unlike a man who vcan get away with none, apparently) and yet she’s young and vigorous enough to get the job done. This was nice: I don’t know if everyone knows that Kamala Harris has a rabid fan base that’s been with her ever since the 2020 primaries. It’s called the KHive and they are true believers of the kind only Obama and Trump can boast. This was their birthday present to her.
There’s a new ratfucker in town 404 media reports: An Elon Musk-funded group called Future Coalition PAC is targeting Muslim voters in Michigan and Jewish voters in Pennsylvania with diametrically opposed political advertisements about Kamala Harris.
Coming from the man who has demeaned and insulted every judge in every one of his cases except for Aileen Cannon in Florida who was clearly biased in his favor, that was pretty rich. Just yesterday he did it again: Trump called the release of the documents “election interference” during his podcast appearance and said it was “a terrible thing, what’s happening. And the judges, this judge is the most evil person.” “They all said, ‘Well, make sure you don’t get Chutkan.’ And who did I get? I got Chutkan. So, you know, they supposedly pick, they pick balls, right?” Trump continued, referring in lottery-like terms to the random selection system used to assign federal judges to cases. “It’s not— I don’t think it works that way, but that’s what they say. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. You pick out of a hat, and that’s the judge.” I guess it’s not very useful to point this stuff out because almost half the country doesn’t think his addled hypocrisy even matters. But it’s important, I think, to at least put it on the record.
And because she asked Don’t hold me to these back-of-the-napkin figures, but an out-of-state friend asked this morning if Hurricane Helene was impacting voter turnout here in Asheville. Here’s how I replied (edited to add post-coffee clarity): Current statewide registration: Ds: 31%, Rs: 30%, UNAffiliated (registered independents): 38% Despite the lines we saw on Th and Fr (my tweet has almost 10 million views), turnout is down about a third from 2020. The hurricane took out 4 of our planned 14 early voting sites and shortened daily voting hours to 9-5 in this county. We’ve got new voting machines adding to slowing the process. Can’t speak to other WNC counties. But despite that depressed vote and a strong first-day vote by Republicans here, we seem back to our normal pattern of Ds outvoting Rs in Buncombe County by over 2:1.
Have we ever had to think about genitalia in political discourse more than we have since Donald Trump came on the scene? Actually, did we ever have to think about it in politics before? We’ve heard about his own dick size constantly, starting when he talked about it in a presidential primary debate all the way back in 2015. We heard him say that he liked to grab women by the pussy and dozsens of women have testified to the fact that he did that routinely. He’s been found liable of doing even worse to e.jean carroll. Stormy Daniels also testified about the size and shape of his penis. Just this week, as his closing argument apparently, Trump can’t stop talking about genitals. He complained about Harvbey Weinsten being “schlonged” and then dropped this insane comments: He also said he could hit a golf ball farther than Palmer which I guess means his dick is actually bigger? This story seems to be getting a lot of traction in the media today which I guess is good? I just don’t know anymore. I’m feeling so cynical about the half of the American people who are going to vote for this cretin that I wonder if this will actually help him.
Trump thinks he would have settled the slavery question before the civil war. I suspect he thinks he could have “settled” it the way he “settled” the abortion quesiton: by giving the assholes everything they want and then saying it was what everyone wanted all along. Also: He looks tired. Does he have the “strength and the stamina” to be president for four more years? I don’t think so: Former President Donald Trump has pulled out of a string of campaign events and interviews over the last two months, often leaving his hosts frustrated after being promised a visit by the GOP presidential candidate. The staff of The Shade Room, an entertainment site with wide reach among young and Black audiences, shortly after wrapping an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris last week were left feeling that their “feet were being dragged in the Trump campaign,” according to two sources who spoke to Politico Playbook.