IMO Jim Carrey is not a good Biden. I do like Alec Baldwin as Trump.

Carrey is just too ... energetic/animated (?) and doesn't fit the low key Biden.

Don't think the Hunter thing will too adversely impact Biden. And Biden's response that I won't answer that, it's a smear campaign is a good response. It would have been better if team Trump attacked Hunter a month ago and steadily increased the pressure.

But I can see continued investigations to dog Biden during his presidency. My guess is although there may not be anything illegal, there could be something unethical about Hunter leveraging his relationship.

I suspect the Trump campaign attacking Biden about ethics would backfire splendidly.

Trump is making a list and checking it twice.


Attention Required! | Cloudflare

The "lock her up" chant obviously works to rile up Trump's base pretty well.

Biden doesn't have an equivalent. However, I would propose a campaign around "crazy uncle". I think that definitely resonates and makes fun of Trump which he will absolutely hate.

How about we stop calling for our political opponents to be jailed for no reason?

nope, it's too effective, instead we're just going to drag our nation down to that level

Hunter could be unethical. He was not and is not elected to any office. If he didn't break any laws, then it doesn't matter at all if he traded of his last name to make money (like say the Trump kids do). Having a family member who makes mistakes has never disqualified a President before (see pretty much every President ever). Why should it matter one whit what Hunter did? If you really take a step back, if Hunter being "unethical" is the worst thing you have on Biden, then you have proven what a good candidate he is.

Agree that Hunter himself and actions are irrelevant. However, I can see the GOP trying to connect Hunter "irregularities" to Biden e.g. what did Biden know and when, did Biden get any special contributions etc.

Some GOP members will want to distract and "payback" for the Dems dogging Trump.

The more I read about the 70s, the more I feel like we're living through a dumber Nixon administration.

SI

Because everyone assumes that he will start a crazier Fox News alternative if he loses, he still has the power to hurt GOPers who turned against Dear Leader in his darkest hour.

Even if you are 99% sure he won't be President, you still have to worry about him helping someone primary you in 2022.

They could have had Jeb. They could have had Rubio. They could have had Kasish. Jesus, they could have even had Cruz.

Instead, they decided to put a stupid low-rent mob boss in charge of their party.

I'll never never understand the 2016 GOP primary.

I remain of the opinion that we really need to understand the why, particularly as weaker echoes of it can be seen in the support for Bernie Sanders. A big part of healing, both here and elsewhere in the world, is grappling with why the wings are becoming more attractive and the disenchantment the public has with how they've been represented by mainstream, establishment parties.

This might be slightly oversimplified, but I think if you start getting too much in the weeds on any single point here, it risks missing the forest for the trees.

The GOP knows they're losing the demographic battle but the more devoted core following due to fundamentalist core elements. So their best play is to try and disenfranchise people. They do this by trying to prevent government from working (starving it resource-wise and running it ineptly). This has two beneficial effects. It helps reinforce their messaging as a self-fulfilling prophecy: "see the government doesn't work (because they sabotaged it)". And it demoralizes those who want to vote Democrat, decreasing their turnout and weakening them.

Getting a little lost in the "weeds" here, let's assign "0" to the center, "-1" to the right, and "1" to the left. On the right, this is a perpetual motion machine: the more we break things, the better for us so there's this race to the regressive (-0.5 to -1) end of the spectrum. On the left, they splinter between a center-left (0-0.5) and far left (0.5-1) factions. The center left could easily keep the far left in check because if you can point to incremental change (say, 0.3) as working, most people be content with that. However, the far left would argue that this is become more and more futile against increasing resistance and that the only way to change things wholesale and/or break things because the incremental change that's "halfway" is now right of center (0.3-0.5=-0.2) not left of center so compromise is actually just going backwards and that makes the far left as a more appealing place to start negotiations. I'm guessing those on the "socially" conservative side of the right see the same equations but that the social issues are more important than what they see as more marginal changes to if government is or isn't functioning.

SI

I don't think Trump starts anything, as that's too much work. I expect he'll work with OANN to become an alternative to Fox.

And without anyone controlling him, dear God will he be crazy.

dola

Cornyn is so damned brave!

Cornyn says he broke with Trump on deficit, border wall, but kept opposition private https://t.co/EqtAIdnDyA

— Fort Worth Star-Telegram (@startelegram) October 18, 2020

Hunter Biden is the 2020 GOP boogeyman and Ron Johnson is on the case.

He was running ads all during the KU/WVU (snicker... at me for watching it) football game on Fox (guffaw... because it was the only Big XII game so Fox had to run it) where he was trying to paint himself as a non-partisan who wants to reach across the aisle to get things done.

1) You're the #2 GOP member in the Senate. Is anyone really buying that?
2) Wait? You're tracking towards the center to try and steal some votes from the center rather than ramp up your GotV enthusiasm? During a football game? In Texas? Their internal numbers must be awful right now and they have to be expecting Trump to get slaughtered.

I hope this stuff eats them alive at the polls as their base realizes they're trying to betray their great and powerful leader.

SI

Sounds like the same ads he’s been running no stop up here on the DFW network affiliates. Basically just footage of him in a mask listening compassionately to soccer moms and promising he’ll never let insurance companies take away coverage for pre-existing conditions. That and how bipartisan he is. He’s spending a lot of money trying to convince people he’s Joe Biden.

My wife's mom sums up his base. She loves MJ Hegar and her ads, doesn't think Cornyn has accomplished much of anything, but still plans on voting for him because he has an R next to his name.

Haha no fucking shit it will and hope the R’s go for it.

I voted curbside earlier this morning in my car. It wasn't really time efficient but I can see this being a thing in the future for people with disabilities who don't want to mail in their ballot.

I just voted in person in cincy. Lotsa people there.

someone is controlling him?

Who would put their hand up THAT ass?

I voted in a small rural suburb of Lexington on Friday afternoon and it barely took 5 minutes.

What part of Cinci are you?

Just dropped off our mail in ballots at one of the early polling places where we live. In and out, no wait, one of "Trumps Army" in a MAGA hat was "patrolling" near the entrance looking people over, all 130 pounds of him. :rolleyes:

Can't wait for this element of society to melt back into the wood paneling

right... pattern anyone? (yes i recognize, two different states, but we're seeing this in tons of places)...

rural {cough}white{cough}republican{cough} places seem to have perfectly adequate space and locations for voting, it's really easy and accessible... however some of the other {cough}black{cough}democratic{cough} places seem to have fewer places, less convenience, longer lines, and more obstacles

it's a feature, not a bug

How soon before we have a violent confrontation because one of these clowns accuses a brown person of not having the right to vote?

It has to be coming, these people will need to justify their reasons for being there.

I don't know if I am alone in this but I feel like the jack is out of the box and these folks aren't quietly going to just go back into hiding. Regardless of what happens with the election I don't anticipate a return to normalcy anytime soon.

I voted on Saturday morning. Polls opened at 7am, I got there at 6:45, and was already the 30th in line. By the time I left, there were a couple of hundred people in line.

I don't know the mechanisms involved in a place like Georgia, where I've seen this talked about a lot. Is it all state-run with little/no local control? Question of funding? Roughly half the population of that state is in metro Atlanta, and just about all of the "city" locations are run by Democrats, and the rural/suburban areas more run by Rs. Is there no local ability to increase poll workers/locations? Is this a baked-in issue in early voting related to population density that somehow the Rs snuck through on the Ds????

I'm asking the above because, anecdotally, I have seen several FB posts from friends in the northern suburbs of Atlanta (i.e. heavily white and heavily R) that indicate long lines there, but though they are solidly R, they are also places with fairly large populations.

FWIW, in this purple state (D Governor with 2 R Senators, one of whom may lose to a D this time,) my wife went to vote today at a very white/suburban location. She's going to have to go another time due to the 100+ person line at the time she got there.

Agree, they will be a focal minority for some time to come, but at least their "voice" will be somewhat muted, not being paraded about at Trump rallies and parades and all the other crap. Now they will just curse the radical left on social media, stare at their piles of worthless MAGA shit and hopefully that will be the extent, though sadly, I see the fringe elements more than likely perpetuating some violence


Sadly yes, but I think most of these are paper Tigers, who if they do anything, it will be against people they perceive as weak/vulnerable, who hopefully will be protected by others at the polls that have a sense of decency.

Federal Appeals Court ruled that the injunction in TX is stayed. The issue was about signature mismatches. The court's ruling today means if your signature is ruled a mismatch you don't have to be contacted to fix it until weeks after the election, by which time it's too late to fix it.

Here's my take based on my experience with these types of people. I know these people because every male in my family are these people. I lived my HS years in a community made up of these people.

We know who they are today because the POTUS speaks to them and gives them validation. Since they have the POTUS on their side, they are the big, bad, tough guys.

Once Trump is gone, we'll hear from them for a little while, but then they climb back into their holes and we won't hear from them any more. In reality they talk a big game, but in the end they're really cowards.

My ballot in Colorado was ridiculously long, probably 18 inches, double sided. Besides the normal races there were a dozen ballot questions. No idea how I would have gotten through all that at the polling place, as it was I spent about an hour on the ballot, looking up the different questions as the meaning on some of them definitely was not clear.

And then drove by the ballot box yesterday, dropped it off, all done. Thank god for mail ballot voting.

Kindof like how the Tea Party fizzled out pretty quickly?

SI

KY under Bevin would have been a nightmare. The fact that as an R with R control of both the house and senate in the state, he felt obligated to fuck things up as hard as he could, and ultimately it got him canned. Beshear has done a really nice job of finding the sweet spot and make good common sense decisions. The R's have done a good job at looking at what is best for the people and this whole voting thing, at least in KY, feels like one they both get to 'win' with. Without any sort of controversy, we had no reason mail in absentee voting, early voting for anyone starting last week for a month, and then they have been forthright about election day saying, "hey, there's only going to be one or two locations open day of, so get it done when you want, ahead of time". The day we voted, it was about 15 minutes to wait, and when I went with my son for his first time voting, it was closer to 20-25. It's been orderly, and handled professionally. Not something I typically equate with KY, but they get the W from me on this after looking around the US at the problems others have dealt with. Maybe it's because it's still a mostly white state, with little drama in the way of who is going to win the elections here, but it does seem like they were very concerned about the quality and authenticity of the election and made sure (at least in our county) that everyone could be served however they needed to be.

I saw an interview with the Atlanta mayor and she indicated it was state run and she didn't have any control over it.

So I don't hang out at places like Breibart and Fox. I'm just wondering if they are showing totally different poll results than "neutral" polls, are they only showing poll results for Republicans in the lead, etc? Just curious what the "other side" is saying about the elections?

The last few FOX news polls (I guess for a few months now) show Biden with a big lead. I'm sure they show those, but then I guess try to spin them?

I think the basic problem we have is that poll workers in most cases are elderly volunteers. Two-thirds of the country didn't have enough of them in '16, forget about now during a pandemic.

This raises a thorny question IMO. If we can't find enough volunteers to do the job, and we obviously can't, do we revamp the whole thing nationwide and have poll workers be paid government employees? There's all manner of conflict of interests issues there that we've avoided by having volunteers. Accusations of partisanship, both true and false, would fly faster than you can spit.

I still keep coming back to the people don't really care about this side of it, which is why you have things like the infamous butterfly ballot in Florida in 2000 for Bush - Gore and the same thing basically being used in the next election. The only way this gets resolved IMO is if the public demands to pay for it and also demands impartiality, not 'favor my side'. Fat chance of that in the current environment.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politic...s-to-mute-mics

Debate Commission adopts new rules muting mics. Trump may have to pick a new strategy.

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I don't know exactly where to put this but since it occurred during an "election simulation" this will work well enough I figure.

Will "pulling a Toobin" become a new euphemism , or is he too obscure for it to gain traction?

The Tea Party became Q Anon.

I'd only caveat this by saying "one faction of the Tea Party". (It was pretty factional as I understood it, at least once it morphed into being a catch-all term)

Exactly, except a decade or two shorter.

This seems like a good compromise.

Biden will need to be more assertive and project more during the open discussion portion. You know Trump will try to hog all that open time.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mi...click#cxrecs_s

Why will Biden need to be more assertive? The more Trump speaks the more likely he says something stupid. If I was Biden I would give him all the time he wants.

South Carolina sets a new record for absentee ballots with over 520,000 so far. Likely due to easing restrictions on them due to COVID-19, but also some enthusiasm for a Dem candidate who has a real chance at beating Graham.

Was it the 'dumb' part?

Or the part that really didn't believe what they were saying?

I'll dola and say that Rick Santelli hasn't exactly been having his daily meltdoowns like he did under Obama, when we're arguably in a much worse situation now than we were in then.

So I saw where Neil deGrasse Tyson is warning an asteroid could hit the earth the day before election day. Yep, 2020.

I saw his FB post; it was more a "this is going to give us a drive-by, but things are fine. If things are going to blow up before Election Day, it's gonna be something else."

Read about it a while ago. Isn't it only the size of a truck or something, so it'll burn up anyway?

Yep. It won't actually hit Earth, at worst it'll distintegrate in the atmosphere - and it has less than half a percent chance of even doing that, but it's not big enough to actually get through the atmosphere and impact the planet itself.

Unless it's The Little Meteor That Could.

In 2020, I wouldn't bet against it.

Well, sure, maybe in some other horrible year. But in the land of rainbows and unicorns that is 2020, there's no way it could destroy the earth.

They probably didn't forget to carry the "1" when measuring how big it is.

Or it's definitely not some freakish meteor that is shaped like, I dunno, a pencil and all we can see is the tip.

And it's certainly not an interstellar weapon with a stealth mode deployed by a space-faring race that wants to eliminate humanity after we failed the "how to come together during a pandemic" test.

SI

I've seen some indication in recent days that it might be more like the "anything for attention" part.

I can't go so far as to run with "didn't believe what they were saying" cause I think some of them do believe some/all of it ... but whether they believe it or not seems less relevant to them than the attention part.

FWIW, I know a few people I would classify as QAnon; one might be more along the line of other conspiracy theorists. They definitely appear to fully believe what they're saying and they are of at least average if not higher intelligence. I think it's often overblown how different conspiracy theorists are from the rest of the population. They're really not - they just think differently and/or latched on to something for emotional reasons. Your basic ideological partisanship is different from this only in degree, and there are a lot of people who fall victim to it. It's happened to me before.

Why in the world would Pelosi set a deadline for a stimulus bill this close to election. She is giving Republicans ammo to use in campaign ads.

"Look, if you chucklefucks actually want to get aid delivered before the election, it takes time to write the bills and get the language right."

This isn't hostage-taking. This is "you have literally two weeks before election day. Do you want to do this? Then this is the deadline to actually GET IT DONE. There isn't time to get stimulus of that scope done properly otherwise."

And I'd think people who are persuadable one way or the other are going to recognize that. It's not like this is Sept 1 or Aug 1 and she's saying this.

Right, like it would literally take 2 weeks to get the bill through the House and Senate. If it doesn't get decided now, it won't get done before the election - which, btw, is the reason Trump wants the bill done. So Pelosi is trying to get this passed.

Just listened to Fox News a bit. The talking heads were complaining about the debate commission changing the rules. Then one started complaining about the moderators, saying they need people not in the main stream media, and 93% of media are dems and have biases. She said they should do 2 debates where one moderator is a lib journalist and the other a conservative. FFS the first moderator was from her own network. I can't even with these people.

Here's a fun election map from 538 to play around with:

Explore The Ways Trump Or Biden Could Win The Election | FiveThirtyEight

Ohio and Georgia are back in the red column at 538, with Biden holding at 87%.

Interesting that if you turn Alabama blue, Arkansas only turns grey.

Listening to the pod, it is interesting that all they say you really need to look at is Florida, North Carolina and Arizona. If Biden wins Florida or North Carolina, then he has won. If he wins Arizona, then he has most likely won. Of course if does pull off Georgia or Ohio he has also definitely won, but the other three states are the most likely.

The post debate bump appears to be wearing off. Assuming nothing crazy happens, I think this tightens to about 7-8 points for Biden.

Trump could completely change that if he bombs the next debate though. His best path to making this competitive is just to lay low and not be Trump for the final 12 days.

*narrator says* "That didn't happen."

It's interesting how much the states are connected. If you do nothing on the map but give Pennsylvania to Trump, he's now at 74% likely to win the whole thing, because winning there indicates he's most likely to win Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, ect. as well, and you've eliminated all of the many Biden-win scenarios that include PA.

On the other hand, if you only given Biden Oregon, Washington, California, Hawaii, New England (aside from the 1 district in Maine), New York, D.C., New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Illinois, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico - he goes from 87% to 96%. When you take away even that slight possibility of Trump winning one of those, then it just becomes more likely that Biden wins everywhere else - and it also improves his odds of flipping someplace wacky like Texas. Throw in Minnesota and Michigan too, then he's 98%.

Some idiot in Maryland arrested for making a threat to kidnap and kill Biden and Harris:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/u...e=articleShare

Whoa, crazy letter-writing doorbell cam guy went national??

?

The guy is from Frederick; I saw it pop up as a local story a few days ago and it seemed like it was just some guy who got his shorts in a twist over a neighbor's Biden/Harris sign. Didn't think much of it/underestimated how loco he might be.

You have a link to the story? My neighbors Biden sign got stolen, police got involved, etc...

Here's a non-paywalled version:

Man Arrested for Threats to Biden, Harris Left at Maryland Home With Yard Signs – NBC4 Washington

I didn't read the original story a couple of weeks ago in-depth enough to quite understand the level of crazy.

Yeah this is why Nate Silver had Hillary at only like 79% to win instead of 99% like everyone else. He knew that certain states were correlated and a polling error in one likely meant a similar polling error in another.

Crazy. Why is it we never see threats like this from the left?

It's so crazy that we will end up somewhere between "the election will be close and plunge us into months of the biggest crisis since the Civil War" or "They will call Florida or NC for Biden on election night, and that will be it."

Maybe I will vote for Biden

I like the BYEDON, haven't see that before.

Things like this give me a bit of hope:

Before the Plague Came, I Had It Made Trump Strikes a Doubtful Note in Pennsylvania | The New Yorker

If he's starting to make excuses, then maybe he will accept the results.

I mean, he will never admit he lost. But going away while claiming that he really won but it was so crooked and he's doing something so great by not fighting it and anyone else would fight it, but he love America so much he won't fight it and stay tuned for OANN/Trump TV straight from Moscow coming up in a few months and no one is giving him credit and that's OK and maybe he'll run again in 2024 and we'll make sure that they can't cheat that time

that would be fine by me. Just leave.

how is it only 5 fucking years for this type of shit.

February polling with Biden/Trump wasn't that different than current polling.

Obama spitting fire in his speech in Philadelphia.

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This is amazing. No holds barred stuff. You know he has had 4 years to chew on all this and is loving the fact he knows he is crushing Trump right now and Trump is losing his mind. You can hear the joy in Obamas voice.

Haven't seen the speech yet, but the timing is of course not lost on Obama. Little over 24 hours before the last debate. Just enough time for Trump to stew on it and perhaps get asked about it and go nutso on camera tomorrow night.

Rough day for Rudy.

So basically this then.

One of his handlers needs to take his phone from him because he’s going to be unhinged.

I have not watched a second of any of the debates but I'm tempted to tune in at the beginning just to see how Trump reacts the first couple of times his mic is cut off.

Got Christian/Evangelical family who are going to hold their nose and vote Republican because of the abortion issue? Tell them Phil Vischer says they don't have to.

What About Abortion? Should this one issue determine how Christians vote? - YouTube

(If you're out of the loop, Vischer is the guy behind Veggie Tales, which makes him practically an evangelical icon. At least until people start watching his YouTube channel, then he'll probably get excommunicated.)

Obama blistered Trump earlier today, and so far we have a reference to his inauguration crowd size and two "Barack Hussein Obama" call-outs during his NC rally.

Solid evidence Obama’s barbs hit their mark.

Late last night I was taking a leisurely stroll through the 2016 election thread. (Someone else was browsing it too - always a little creepy when that happens).

A couple of things stood out. We all recognized in the last week then that race was getting closer and closer. You could feel the tension reading the posts. Also, while the national polling ended up being correct and within the margin of error, the state polling for Michigan and Pennsylvania (and maybe other states) was way, way off. Double-digit levels of off. Based on that state polling, there was so many posts sharing some sentiment like, "Trump has to win 2 of these 6 states, and that's just not happening" (Trump ended up winning 4 or 5 of those states). A lot of times Pennsylvania wasn't even included in those breakdowns because it was locked in for Clinton.

Also, I think we tended to misunderstand the concept of 538's simulation model. We tracked the % likelihood of outcomes like we do now, but we were more likely to look at it as a basketball score rather than odds of something happening. When 538 had Clinton at 75% to win a state, and the then the last week it was down to 65%, it was still seen as a safe state for her as long as it didn't drop to 50% or below. She was still "winning" - 65% - 35%. But of course, that's not how probabilities work. Trump had a very strong 35% chance to win a state like that, and he did.

Even now, I'm not sure we appreciate the substance of those probabilities. 538's 87% overall for Biden to win seems strong, but, 13% is a significant and real number. That's just someone missing a short field goal in the NFL, it happens all the time. I believe 538 had it at around 83% right before election day in 2016. We talk about whether they're "right" or "wrong", but they just compile the polls and thought that Trump had a 17% or so chance to win, which was a substantial chance even before you accounted for the polling errors in Michigan and Pennsylvania. 13% is also a very substantial chance, and the chance is much higher than that if there are polling errors in one or more key states.

I agree with you molson, I don't think there's anyone that doesn't remember the surprise, whether you're a Trumper or not, of the Trump win. Certainly makes me and a bunch of people a whole lot more skeptical of calling things done this time around.

I've been reading about how pollsters started picking up on Trump's chances through district level polling in the last two weeks before the election. Now, the district polling is, if anything, more favorable for Biden than national polling.

I'm going to predict that swing state margins will end up being pretty closely correlated to COVID hospitalizations from Oct 1 to the election. I'm very bullish on WI for this reason.

Personally, I think the most likely outcome is that Trump loses the popular vote by a LOT more than he did last time, but the electoral vote still is very very close. People are turning out to vote against him in large numbers in places that are normally pretty red, and where they might not normally bother. Kentucky. Iowa. States that are maybe a little purple, but are safe Trump.

I think Pennsylvania and Michigan are going to be razor thin, recent polling notwithstanding, and the election is basically coming down to those 2 states.

where do you get this thought