Quarantine is just a fancy word for hiding. What a bunch of wussies.

They can play bridge with Biden while hiding in the basement.

But do they have their purses with them?

Which of these do you believe? I'm not going to further debate which one I think is correct at this point, but polls either mean something or they don't. Which proposition do you believe?

Biden is acting smart because he is weak. Trump is strong, so that's why he's acting stupid. Anyone who's grown up around Southern Men fully understands the Stupid=Strong and Smart=Weak dynamic that the White House likes to project. You either survived it or thrived within it.

According to the polling, it looks like when people see it in action, they realize how silly the whole thing is.

A lot of Trump/MAGA puts its tail between its legs and slinks away when exposed to the light. One of the good things Trump has inadvertently done is say all the quiet parts out loud. That 40% was always there. But a lot more of the 60% now get that these clowns really don't need all the disproportionate power we've been giving them for the last 100 years.

So no economic aid until Trump is re-elected now.

That should go over well.

Still think he'll win.

If this country does win by voting him out, he'll scorch Earth until election day.

Either way...I hate most Republicans for letting this happen.

"I told McConnell no deal" means "The GOP members of Congress didn't want a deal, and I'm so gullible and stupid that McConnell talked to me for five minutes and convinced me that tanking my own re-election was my idea."

Markets down only 1%.

They knew no deal was coming.

Trump is going to get his bitchy little ass whupped.

So now Pence is going back on the deal for a plexiglass divider. I think they are going full in on the "we're strong, they're scared" argument. You know Trump directed Pence to do this.

300 point drop as of now.

I'd tell him to fuck off. They need the debates more than Biden does.

Its almost like POTUS is daring voters to vote against him...

The scorched Earth tantrum begins...

Ah, I missed the part where he framed it as "just re-elect me, then you'll get your money."

A con-man until the end. He has one trick, and he'll keep using it.

This time, he's sure to keep his word.

Those grapes were really sour, you know . . .

We all knew the kid like this in high school. He wasn't smart enough to pass the test, so he made a big show of going out and getting drunk the night before. So when he failed, it was just because he was so awesome.

I guess Trump is what happens when that kid's dad happens to be a millionaire.

Well, they have limited options for reversing what appears to be a foregone conclusion, but I think they are trying to tap into that segment of the population that is tired of all the restrictions and looking for any reason to finally push back and say enough is enough, I don't know anyone who has gotten sick or died, fuck the new normal I want the old normal and I want it now. And if Biden is elected, we're likely going into national lockdown and there's no way I will go along with that.

I know I'm not the target of the comment, but I don't quite fully believe any of it after being so off in 2016, I don't really have confidence that we've got polling "correct" again yet in this dystopian MAGA world, but the huge gap that seems to be growing is hard not to get excited about.

Even if that's true though, every single day in October could feel like years as far as ridiculous news/bombshells real or fake, and they won't all be the kind that hurt Trump. Feels like there's a lifetime to go until the election.

I fully endorse as many of them dying as soon as possible; I know they feel the same about me.

How many people in that population segment haven't already bought into the propaganda that Biden winning means all our cities burn down, full socialism is instituted immediately, your guns get taken away, and a likely Civil War? aka, people already voting out of fear.


Like, isn't that just his base already?

Polls don't mean much if you don't let people vote. But he's so far down now that it's near impossible to suppress that many votes. Their shenanigans will save a couple Senate seats I'm sure but you aren't making up 10 points in Michigan.

I don't know how much of it overlaps with how people voted in 2016 and whether it will help them gain more votes now, but they don't have many options. I see people on my FB feed who might already be Trump supporters, but they are buying into the passive-aggressive "facts not fear" BS. I've had 2 or 3 people ask me if I know anyone who has tested positive. There's a pretty skeptical group of relatively intelligent people who are just done with this and looking for any excuse to go back to their old lives. Some of it is being pushed by personal choice narratives, or the arbitrariness of the lockdowns (this comes up quite often from the religious folks who are keenly aware of how churches are being treated versus other large gatherings). It's a hodge podge of different types of people.

Let's say he loses and concedes (he won't), the months leading up to the transition of power, he and his cohorts will dismantle, damage, and distort any sort of reconciliation (more so if they lose the Senate as well).

I can see massive pardons and massive rioting.

I can see him unleash the Proud Boys and order no legal or law force restrictions on them.

I can see him cut as much aid he can to any "offending" state or city; god help us if there are more disasters looming.

He won't care if businesses falter due to COVID, even mom and pops. It'll be to unleash full anger and blame on Democrats.

The remaining Republicans will obstruct (Turtle ain't going anywhere) and they pass more judges and get that nitwit on the Supreme court.

There will be mass violence and upheaval and the stock market will plunge just as Biden takes charge.

It'll be four years of damage and Fox news blaming Democrats as they try to provide recovery (much like the Bush years).

Trump will Twitter all the way and gloat.

I'm really surprised to read you saying this. It's been discussed to death around here, but almost all of the polls were correct in '16. A few of the state ones were off, mostly in states that don't get polled much to begin with (i.e., sample size), the national results were extremely close to what was predicted, etc.

Basically, I dream of some day being only as wrong as the polls were last cycle, because there's almost certainly nothing I ever have done, am doing, or will do that it is accurate as what they did there.

My daughter left college to school remotely; all her roommates have tested positive.

JFC, Trump tested positive and was hospitalized...they fucking dumb.

This may well be my ignorance then, I've never followed polls as more than a casual interest and probably didn't read enough about "what happened in 2016", so maybe I'm just spouting off the rhetoric that isn't actually true.

My memory is that 538 had Clinton as about a 66% favorite on election day, which is based on their analysis of polling, which may feed my ignorance? Hmmm, interesting.

He's such a fucking bitch.

He does realize that this is like a call to arms for any middle/lower class people on-the-fence democrats to make damned sure to show up to vote, no matter what ? Nothing they can do about anything if all 3 are democrat controlled.

538 was like bear-ish on HRC as the favorite. Other places had her at like 99.5% to win, i think NYT was one of them.

I think the poll misconception has a lot to do with people not understanding percentages well (ie assuming a 75% chance is a sure thing) and not understanding that you need to apply the margin of error to BOTH candidates' numbers. Example: a Biden 8 point lead with a 3.5 point margin of error indicates that anything between a 1 point Biden win and a 15 point Biden win is in the expected range.

Complicating things, these numbers are usually reported with a 95% confidence interval. Which means 1 out of 20 times the result should fall outside even THAT broad range of potential outcomes.

Edit: bad math, of course.

Is this like Quint destroying the radio in Jaws? You have no choice but to ride with me or die?

They also adjusted their formula to compensate for mistakes made in 2016 and Biden is up way more than Hillary was in it. 538 has Biden at 83% and I believe Hillary was only like 66%.

Yeah it's been mentioned on here many times, but polls adjusted after 2016 and some at 538 have mentioned they may have gone a touch overboard to overcorrect polling that wasn't far off from what we had seen the previous 20 years. Polling favored GOP by a couple of points for the 2018 midterms, for example.

If the election was held today 538 would have trump somewhere in the neighborhood of a 6-7% chance to win.

538 had her at 71% on election day:
Final Election Update: There’s A Wide Range Of Outcomes, And Most Of Them Come Up Clinton | FiveThirtyEight

I also could have sworn Silver laid out 3 factors as he did there and then did a thing about where if 1 or 2 went against her, she'd be ok but if all 3 did, then she's in trouble. But it's not in that story and I can't find it now - maybe it was a Tweet.

SI

So 538 had Hillary with an 88% chance to win in mid-October but that dropped to around 71% by election. It did drop all the way down to 64% a couple days prior but then started shifting back up for HRC.

The thing people fail to mention is both HRC and Trump were upside down in polls regarding likeability, and those people who didn't like either overwhelmingly broke for Trump. This time Biden is considerable higher than Trump, and has a positive likeability leaving a lot less undecideds.

He had a post about how they adjusted the formula. Seems like it gave more uncertainty the more undecideds were out there and skew more toward a tighter race as election comes up.

Biden is up to 67 cents now on PredictIt.

You know, two things happened--the debate and him getting COVID--that let the American people see him.

Not him-through-the-filter-of-the-bothsides-media. But the raw footage of him being him.

That might be the October surprise. When you see Trump as he is and not as the please-don't-take-away-our-White-House-access New York Times packages him, you get buyer's remorse.

Trump defeats COVID commemorative coins go on sale at gift shop

What the actual fuck?

Biden had a good speech at Gettysburg. Close with that unity message. I wonder if he could win 60-40. It seems to be trending that way.

I wonder how much will come out 25 years from now just how on the brink we were as a nation during the hopefully last months of this presidency. Other superpowers have to at least be discussing going for our jugular. This has to be the most vulnerable we have been as a nation in modern history.

Right moves but unfortunately, 3.5 years too late.

I think India is the key here. I know Indian government loves Trump, unsure about Biden.

Pompeo Rails Against China At 'Quad' Meeting With Foreign Ministers In Tokyo : NPR

I also think people in general have short memories and this period leading up to the election has turned into "can we deal with 4 more years of THIS"

Unilaterally withdrawing from stimulus negotiations is something the Dems need to beat the GOP over the head with, over and over again. Covid and failure of stimulus have a direct impact to voters and can help Dems win big in Congress.

That is, unless the Dems get distracted by the next shiny object and lose their focus.

Stephen Miller tests positive.

Or, as someone tweeted - Covid tests positive for Stephen Miller.

Ha! Sorry, that made me spit out my drink. First time I've felt sorry for Covid.

Guess we will learn if covid can kill someone who is already dead inside

Seeing a lot of polling out of safe Trump states that show a 15-25 point swing towards Biden. He won't win those states, but the popular vote may be a landslide.

Trump won KY by 30 points in 2016 and it's around or just under 20 points right now.

Most recent poll of Alaska (Sep 20-23) had Trump only up by 1. The only Dem to ever win Alaska was LBJ.

How does anyone get to this place in their thinking?

Yes, I was treated much the same way when I used to walk around town without any pants on. “Stand back!” they’d say. “You can’t come in!” https://t.co/z0meWkG0oT

— Charles Ghoul-ba (@charles_gaba) October 6, 2020

.

.

That should be criminal if it isn't already.

25% chance to win is just flipping a coin 2 times and getting heads twice. That's it. Every one of us has done that before.

But, but “pro-life”...

Dola


“But her emails” is apparently the newest strategy to throw at the wall to see if it sticks.

He just tweeted that Congress should pass airline and small business relief funding and he will sign it.

So stimulus talks are . . . back on? Still off?

At least the tweets are so stupid that we know it's him and not an aide faking it.

And he just said he'd sign a standalone $1,200 stimulus check bill. All of these things were in the covid relief bill that he tanked. Please make it stop, Biden.

He’s off his rocker even for him.

...and why not another round of "the REAL crime was the way they investigated the crime"

Or is this part of the movie where it finds so vile a host that it mutates and kills us all?

SI

Today is a renminder of how trump and his staff separated families and locked them in cages until some of them died or were raped. It's a reminder because one of the people most in favor of this caught covid today

Isn't weird that there is no report on Chris Christie's condition? The last thing I saw was he did talk to a reporter on Monday. He said Christie sounded raspy, but would not say what his condition was.

I would like to know about all their conditions and the treatment they are taking.

If I'm in early stages, I want 5 doses of that Remdesivir!

It's good that he is back at the table. They should just split the difference and get it done, there is danger to Pelosi/Dems in sticking to their $2.6T (?) to spite the other stuff ... at this stage, something is better than nothing and the Dems can do the rest if/when they sweep.

At this point why should the dems come back to the table other than its the right thing to do. Why give Trump any kind of win three weeks prior to the election when they can just reference his own words when pressed.

Yeah, Trump destroyed all his leverage.

If he and the GOP want to take the Dem deal, then the Dems should do it.

But why should they meet the GOP halfway when Trump took the political hit for a non-deal unto himself?

What kinda sucks is being a tiny voice in all this advocating for the first responders and health care workers who don't have elastic state/local budgets to support them, like the federal government does. IMO that's a worthy target for some emergency relief, and a lot of policymakers (on both sides of the aisle) say so... but phrases like "bailout for failed Democrat states" is so politically powerful, the issue looks like it's just been set aside.

It's possible that there are indeed dopes out there who'd like to divert covid funds to boost up their broke pension plans or whatnot, and most of "us" would gladly accept strings of that sort from the feds. But budgets below the federal level are mostly bad and about to get a ton worse when the federal patch-over kicks in. Sucks to be laying off nurses in your health department during a mass pandemic - but, hey, it's only "Democrat states" that care, I'm reliably informed.

No, no, Quik. It's that the Dems are sticking to their $2.6T (because they are number-obsessed weirdos, I guess?). Not that the Dems are actually advocating for the amount of money necessary to actually help firemen, nurses, and police officers. You need to read more tweets.

(Your point adds a lot of dark humor to the whole "defund the police" argument, too. The stimulus failed because Dems refused to back off their demands to fund local police departments and the GOP refused to back off their demands to not fund local police departments. But somehow Biden has to keep proving that he does not want to defund the police. When TRUMP ACTUALLY IS NOT FUNDING THE POLICE)

I don't know the specifics on this bill, but the previous bills had a bunch of unrelated garbage attached to them which made it easy for either side to refuse to agree on anything, rather than just narrowly focus on the easiest pieces to agree on - because "we" have to use our leverage to get something we otherwise couldn't get on its own. I'm guessing there's some of that going on now. And once again, the Simpsons were right.

100% that is going on, and I think that message was getting across until Trump announced he was taking his ball and going home.

dola- I used to be in the camp that when this presidency was over just let this administration disappear into the wind. I have done a total 180 on that and want every one of them thrown in jail and ruined.

I could be wrong, but I think

(1) Congressional GOP thinks that Biden will win.
(2) They want all COVID relief to come from Biden, so they can use it to start Tea Party 2. And if the delay in relief creates a second great depression they can use in 2022, so much the better.
(3) McConnell spent five minutes convincing Trump that no relief passing was in Trump's best interest and that "that's a great idea you had, sir, to cut off negotiations."
(4) Trump tweeted out that it was all his idea, which wasn't part of McConnell's plan.

I give that a 95% chance of being what happened

SI

:withstupid:

If #4 happened, then McConnell is pretty stupid because he's had 4 years to watch Trump take credit for anything he thinks is a good idea AND say things out loud he should just keep to himself.

I definitely think the problem is with the GOP senate, not the Dem House. There were reports that Pelosi and Mnuchin had an agreement yesterday, but then it all blew up. That would make Trump's tweet quoting Powell saying that there's no danger in doing too much make sense. It would also explain Trump pulling out pieces of the bill and claiming funding is already available.

The Senate isn't even in town until late October, so there's nothing they can do that will impact the election. Gien that, I think the plan is to prepare for a big Dem win and if that doesn't happen, pass something in November.

yeah, was having a similar discussion with a friend this morning after walking kids to school. I think the goal is burn down as much as possible to make it impossible for Biden to rebuild in time for 2022/2024.

Oh, yeah - Mitch has been working on this contingency plan for a couple of months. Once COVID wasn't "going away" and the economy is clearly going to get hammered even more next year, he already started planning on obstruction to set up 2022 for Congress and whatever monster comes out of the swamp for 2024 to take advantage of all Trump broke in the last 4 years.

SI

That said, Mitch seems too smart to not know how this was going to go down, right? Basically, he let Trump do what he's going to do so that he takes the fall rather than Mitch, right? Though I have to think that's some messy calculus right now as you have to know the odds of your Senate majority rises and falls with Trump.

SI

I've read a few articles over the last few days that have talked about Trump losing the groups of people that helped him get elected in 2016, ie women. His support from women is way down compared to 2016. So, lots of signs pointing to him losing.

I'm trying not to let my hopes get too high, but I think he's toast and it's not even going to be close.

Just in my little neck of the woods you've got crazy hardened trump supporters, but by and large, the volume of political support signs are way way down in northern Kentucky.

I live in a very Republican suburb of Indianapolis and I see a lot more Biden/Harris signs than Trump signs.

I just bought a house and I have counted 6 Biden/Harris signs and no Trump signs in the neighborhood. I think Trump supporters in this demographic are afraid to publically show it.

Another thing that has stood out to me is I never see Trump/Pence signs, just Trump signs.

This quote is from the other thread but my reply belongs here.


So what will happen is that we will have 300k dead and Trump will claim he personally saved 100k lives.

He'll still leave on or before inauguration day.

I laughed.

I wonder what happens with Dr. Fauci if Trump loses. Does he immediately go off on him?

I don't really pay attention to the projections any more. We have so many different ones, with a wide range.

Infection control theatre.

And seniors have started to turn on him some too, at least according to some recent state polls.

Given the circus-looking stage around it, the plexiglass looks like those rings that they set on fire before lions jump through them.

Jets invite Stephon Gilmore to team coughing party. In unrelated news, Jets to start Joe Flacco this weekend.

This is sure to bring down Trump! ;)

If the debates had vice presidential candidates jumping through rings of fire I would totally watch the debates.

Ah damn!

To be fair, Joe Flacco could bring down anyone.

I thought I heard there was going to be plexiglass between the moderators and the candidates as well.

I wonder when the GOP will be able to win back the suburbs. They may be lost for a generation. This is something hurting them in the House, as their gerrymandering plans relied on suburbs cancelling out the votes of big cities. This is how we have a Dem in GA-6 and a close race in GA-7.

Lincoln Project does it again!

https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/s...631172608?s=20

Followed by this thread:

You’ve never beaten me at anything. This is our first dance. @realDonaldTrump. Did you like #covita. @ProjectLincoln. @TheRickWilson @stuartpstevens @reedgalen. We are so much better at this than your team of crooks, wife beaters, degenerates,weirdos and losers. You are losing 1 https://t.co/w1E9ZvRaYc

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) October 7, 2020