Elections; 2024 by THG

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Elections; 2024

POSTED BY: THG
UPDATED: Thursday, October 31, 2024 17:45
SHORT URL:
VIEWED: 59074
PAGE 89 of 89

Tuesday, October 29, 2024 11:27 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Harris is tied or ahead with every single group except one: old men, where she's behind by 12 points. But what can you do about that? This is the core Fox News demographic, and they've been told for years that Kamala Harris is a radical leftist fanatic who's determined to let in a ravaging horde of Mexicans who will destroy America. There's not much hope of ever getting through to them.

https://jabberwocking.com/ces-says-kamala-harris-is-comfortably-in-the
-lead/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, October 29, 2024 11:29 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The white working class has been trending Republican for a long time, but Donald Trump seems to be doing especially well with them this year — and especially among men. Why? A bunch of reasons, but this is probably one of them:

https://jabberwocking.com/the-wages-of-the-white-working-class/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, October 29, 2024 2:35 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:

Harris is tied or ahead with every single group except one: old men, where she's behind by 12 points.

https://jabberwocking.com/ces-says-kamala-harris-is-comfortably-in-the
-lead/

Well none of that is true.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Tuesday, October 29, 2024 3:05 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

On this day in History, October 29th:

0000000000000000---2024----000---2020---000----2016-----
National00000000Trump +0.4000Biden +7.4000Clinton0 +4.6
--------------------------------------------------------
Wisconsin0000000Trump0 +0.5000Biden +6.7000Clinton0 +6.5
Pennsylvania0000Trump0 +0.4000Biden +4.3000Clinton0 +5.0
Ohio000000000000Trump0 +7.0000Trump +0.0000Trump000 +1.2
Michigan00000000Harris +0.3000Biden +8.2000Clinton0 +7.0
Arizona000000000Trump0 +1.3000Biden +0.0000Clinton0 +1.5
Nevada0000000000Trump0 +0.7000Biden +4.0000Clinton 0+1.7
North Carolina00Trump0 +0.9000Biden +0.6000Clinton 0+3.0
Georgia000000000Trump0 +2.3000Biden +0.4000Trump000 +2.5
Florida000000000Trump0 +8.5000Biden +1.6000Clinton0 +0.6

Here's where Trump stands in the battleground states compared to 2020...

National:000000 Trump +7.8
--------------------------
Wisconsin:00000 Trump +7.2
Pennsylvania:00 Trump +4.7
Ohio:0000000000 Trump +7.0
Michigan:000000 Trump +7.9
Arizona:0000000 Trump +1.3
Nevada:00000000 Trump +4.7
North Carolina: Trump +1.9
Georgia:0000000 Trump +1.9
Florida:0000000 Trump +10.1

And here's where Trump stands in the battleground states compared to 2016...

National:000000 Trump +5.0
--------------------------
Wisconsin:00000 Trump +7.0
Pennsylvania:00 Trump +5.4
Ohio:0000000000 Trump +5.8
Michigan:000000 Trump +6.7
Arizona:0000000 Trump +2.8
Nevada:00000000 Trump +2.4
North Carolina: Trump +3.9
Georgia:0000000 Trump -0.2
Florida:0000000 Trump +9.1

Harris took a 0.3 lead in Michigan today because of a Lefty outlier poll by Susquehanna that has her up +5. There has not been anything close to +5 for Harris in Michigan since both Marist and Quinnipiac (also both lefty polling firms) gave her +5 back in mid September. Even Quinnipiac is giving Harris +4 in Michigan now, even though just 20 days ago they were giving Trump +4. At this point, I think at least the Quinnipiac polling in Michigan should be thrown out the window since their last three polls were Harris +4, Trump +4, Harris +5 and they clearly have no idea what they're doing.

As of October 29th, Trump was not winning a single swing state in 2020. There was a tie in Ohio and Arizona, and Biden lead anywhere from +0.6 (North Carolina) to +8.2 (Michigan). In 2016 the only states that Trump was leading was Ohio +1.2 and Georgia +2.5.

Democrats have routinely fallen apart in the month leading up to the election the last two election cycles and it appears that this cycle isn't very different in that regard. The only difference is that Harris came into October so low that the crash isn't as pronounced as it was with Biden* and Clinton.

For more comparisons, I got the actual vote percentages in the battleground states to compare.

https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_battleground_states,_2020

2020 Presidential Election vote margins by battleground state:

National:000000 Biden +4.4
--------------------------
Wisconsin:00000 Biden +0.3 (49.4% Biden / 49.1% Trump)
Pennsylvania:00 Biden +1.2 (50.0% Biden / 48.8% Trump)
Ohio:0000000000 Trump +8.1 (53.3% Trump / 45.2% Biden)
Michigan:000000 Biden +1.8 (50.6% Biden / 47.8% Trump)
Arizona:0000000 Biden +0.3 (49.4% Biden / 49.1% Trump)
Nevada:00000000 Biden +2.4 (50.1% Biden / 47.7% Trump)
North Carolina: Trump +1.3 (49.9% Trump / 48.6% Biden)
Georgia:0000000 Biden +0.2 (49.5% Biden / 49.3% Trump)
Florida:0000000 Trump +3.3 (51.2% Biden / 47.9% Trump)

What do those numbers mean in relation to the numbers posted earlier?

Let's compare the polling averages 4 years ago today with the actual election results...

National:000000 Biden POLLS: +7.4 - ACTUAL: +4.4 = -3.0
--------------------------
Wisconsin:00000 Biden POLLS: +6.7 - ACTUAL: +0.3 = -6.4
Pennsylvania:00 Biden POLLS: +4.3 - ACTUAL: +1.2 = -3.1
Ohio:0000000000 Biden POLLS: +0.0 - ACTUAL: -8.1 = -8.1
Michigan:000000 Biden POLLS: +8.2 - ACTUAL: +1.8 = -6.4
Arizona:0000000 Biden POLLS: +0.0 - ACTUAL: +0.3 = +0.3
Nevada:00000000 Biden POLLS: +4.0 - ACTUAL: +2.4 = -1.6
North Carolina: Biden POLLS: +0.6 - ACTUAL: -1.3 = -1.9
Georgia:0000000 Biden POLLS: +0.4 - ACTUAL: +0.2 = -0.2
Florida:0000000 Biden POLLS: +1.6 - ACTUAL: -3.3 = -4.9

For the above table I flipped any state that Trump won to negatives for Biden instead so the numbers make more sense. In the national polling on today's date 4 years ago, they had Joe Biden +1.9 higher than the actual vote count. As you can see, every battleground state was polled hard in favor of Democrats compared to actual voter turnout, many of them far outside their stated margin of errors. This was just as bad if not worse in 2016. Maybe I'll get around to doing comparisons to both years as election day draws near for comparison too.

Now let's take the Democrat bias in the polls from 2020 and apply them to our current day polling...

National:000000 Trump POLLS: +0.4 - 2020 BIAS: -3.0 = Trump + 3.4
--------------------------
Wisconsin:00000 Trump POLLS: +0.5 - 2020 BIAS: -6.4 = Trump +6.9
Pennsylvania:00 Trump POLLS: +0.4 - 2020 BIAS: -3.1 = Trump +3.5
Ohio:0000000000 Trump POLLS: +7.0 - 2020 BIAS: -8.1 = Trump +15.1
Michigan:000000 Trump POLLS: -0.3 - 2020 BIAS: -6.4 = Trump +6.1
Arizona:0000000 Trump POLLS: +1.3 - 2020 BIAS: +0.3 = Trump +1.0
Nevada:00000000 Trump POLLS: +0.7 - 2020 BIAS: -1.6 = Trump +2.4
North Carolina: Trump POLLS: +0.9 - 2020 BIAS: -1.9 = Trump +2.8
Georgia:0000000 Trump POLLS: +2.3 - 2020 BIAS: -0.2 = Trump +2.5
Florida:0000000 Trump POLLS: +8.5 - 2020 BIAS: -4.9 = Trump +13.4

Am I saying Trump is going to win all the battleground states by those huge margins? Maybe. I'm not ready to make that prediction right now. But I have just illustrated that historical polling trends suggest this outcome to be a possibility.

Also, to note... Joe Biden* never once fell below +4 points above Trump in the 2020 election. Harris has now been behind in the national popular vote aggregate for 4 days straight. She's had a pretty linear fall from her peak of +2.2 on October 3rd, down to -0.5 behind Trump today. If nothing changes, Harris would be the first Democrat in at least 3 election cycles that goes into election day losing it in the polls.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Tuesday, October 29, 2024 9:07 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Well none of that is true.

Compared to the medium Texas Trumptard, you are a bigger asshole and that is the Truth. No Texas Trumptard has the guts to be a complete asshole like 6ix because they know for a fact that they would be beaten to death and dumped in vacant lot for vultures. That knowledge keeps their behavior within certain wide limits. Meanwhile, Trump maintains no limits on himself:

Donald Trump is already lining up a scapegoat if he loses the election - chair of the Republican National Committee Michael Whatley.

Trump has given Whatley the mission of building the Republicans’ sizable “election integrity” group. The ex-commander-in-chief has been using his false claims about election fraud to argue that he didn’t lose the 2020 election and has been saying during the 2024 campaign that Vice President Kamala Harris can only win by cheating.

The Republicans claim that they have accumulated as many as 200,000 poll watchers and poll workers. The program is set to be used to gather evidence of voter fraud amid GOP lawsuits taking aim at rules governing voting eligibility and ballot processing procedures, Axios notes.

The program has taken on a larger role within the party than actual voter outreach.

Trump called out Whatley during a rally in North Carolina, where Whatley has been the state GOP chair, last month, saying, “We’re counting on this guy ... you better win or you’re never going to be able to come back here. He doesn’t win, he won’t be at RNC and he will no longer be in North Carolina. He’ll be looking for a job.”

In private, Trump has said that the only reason he may lose is if Whatley fails in upholding “election integrity,” . . . (Couldn't possibly be Trump's fault for losing.)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-has-already-selected-a-s
capegoat-if-the-election-doesn-t-go-his-way/ar-AA1t8KJa

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, October 29, 2024 9:32 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Well none of that is true.
Compared to the medium Texas Trumptard, you are a bigger asshole and that is the Truth.

Quote:
No Texas Trumptard has the guts to be a complete asshole like 6ix because they know for a fact that they would be beaten to death and dumped in vacant lot for vultures.

I know dude. I'm absolutely horrible. All that terrible shit I've done to other people like... um... hmmmmmmm.... Nope. Nothing worth beating me to death and dumping me in a vacant lot for the vultures comes to mind.

Maybe you have a for instance you'd like to discuss? Apparently I kicked some sand up into your vagina at some point that got you all riled up over me 24/7.

HINT: Telling me that voting for Trump qualifies me for being murdered and fed to the vultures is saying that you believe this should happen to half of the country for disagreeing with you.

I don't know exactly where the line should be, but when you're saying that half of the country should be murdered and fed to the vultures because they don't see eye to eye with you politically, that's a you problem, Adolf.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024 7:14 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

ONE WEEK AWAY | Lichtman Live #84

If you're just reading headlines and going off those polls, you'd be anxious right now because according to them it's a neck and neck race.

But the keys to the White House do not change. They are not based on polls, punditry, or campaign events. They are based on the fundamental forces that drive elections and that is the strength and performance of the party holding the White House. In other words, collectively at least, the American electorate is smart or at least has been for the last 160 years, making the very pragmatic decision: Does the party holding the White House merit four more years? That's really mostly what the keys tap into.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024 7:38 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

HINT: Telling me that voting for Trump qualifies me for being murdered and fed to the vultures is saying that you believe this should happen to half of the country for disagreeing with you.

I don't know exactly where the line should be, but when you're saying that half of the country should be murdered and fed to the vultures because they don't see eye to eye with you politically, that's a you problem, Adolf.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

Until the last 24 hours of Hitler's life, he killed nobody. All he did was run his mouth. How dare anyone restrict his freedom to express himself! Same with most Nazis. They expressed themselves and defended their country. How dare anyone to see them as anything but patriotic! It was the Americans who were evil with the bombing raids killing women and children in their beds and homes. 6ixStringJack, the worst people always feel they are the best people, at least in their own imagination. If they actually could understand consequences for what they do, they won't do it. But, like you, they understand nothing but their own feelings. Other people's words about evil people? Those are all lies and propaganda and fake news to evil people. That's why America bombed the Germans, in order to get around the nonsense swirling inside the minds of Germans about themselves. I deal with Trumptards all day long and their minds are full of nonsense about themselves. I can see they understand nothing, nothing at all, about why their lives are difficult. They have truly convinced themselves that they are not to blame. The Nazis did the same, could understand nothing about themselves, nothing other than it wasn't their fault and Nazis were not to blame for what happened to them. It was the evil Americans, the evil Brits, and those horrible Jews causing problems for all the tens of millions of good Germans who just so happened to be Nazis.

(P.S. The Confederate slave-owners were the good people in their imagination. It was Lincoln who was evil, evil I tell you! Pure evil who looked like an ape! Ape Abraham Lincoln. Confederates were patriotically defended a Southern tradition and a way of life as old as the Bible: the owning of slaves.)

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024 12:08 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump is a lying sack of shit, not to mention that Trumptards have squandered their lives:

If Donald Trump wins next week’s election, it would be the first time in US history that a candidate wins based on such a huge lie – his falsehood that we have “the worst economy ever”. The former president’s big lie has distorted the views of millions of Americans, wrongly convincing many that the US economy is in bad shape.

“In the 35 years I’ve been an economist, I’ve rarely seen an economy performing as well as it is,” Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, said recently. “I’d give it an A+.” But the US public, still upset about the surge in inflation several years ago, sees things very differently: 62% say the economy is in bad shape, while just 38% say it’s in good shape, according to an October AP-NORC poll.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/30/trump-biden-harr
is-us-economy

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024 2:22 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Well none of that is true.
Compared to the medium Texas Trumptard, you are a bigger asshole and that is the Truth.

Quote:
No Texas Trumptard has the guts to be a complete asshole like 6ix because they know for a fact that they would be beaten to death and dumped in vacant lot for vultures.

I know dude. I'm absolutely horrible. All that terrible shit I've done to other people like... um... hmmmmmmm.... Nope. Nothing worth beating me to death and dumping me in a vacant lot for the vultures comes to mind.

Maybe you have a for instance you'd like to discuss? Apparently I kicked some sand up into your vagina at some point that got you all riled up over me 24/7.

HINT: Telling me that voting for Trump qualifies me for being murdered and fed to the vultures is saying that you believe this should happen to half of the country for disagreeing with you.

I don't know exactly where the line should be, but when you're saying that half of the country should be murdered and fed to the vultures because they don't see eye to eye with you politically, that's a you problem, Adolf.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

Until the last 24 hours of Hitler's life, he killed nobody.

Boy you write a lot of bullshit.

Anybody reading these threads on the outside knows who the bad guy is. It's the lunatic who goes around talking about assassinating people and how half the country should be murdered and fed to vultures.

You are disgusting.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024 2:24 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:
ONE WEEK AWAY | Lichtman Live #84

If you're just reading headlines and going off those polls, you'd be anxious right now because according to them it's a neck and neck race.

But the keys to the White House do not change. They are not based on polls, punditry, or campaign events. They are based on the fundamental forces that drive elections and that is the strength and performance of the party holding the White House. In other words, collectively at least, the American electorate is smart or at least has been for the last 160 years, making the very pragmatic decision: Does the party holding the White House merit four more years? That's really mostly what the keys tap into.

The keys weren't applied correctly and Lichtman is going to regret trashing his system for an atta boy from the Left.

Trump wins this in a blowout. It won't even be close.

Tick Tock

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024 2:37 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

It's been an interesting day.

Joe Biden* calls half of Americans garbage. Then when he was told later that he said this he claims that he never said it. When asked about that by reporters, Harris claims that she would never call people names based off of who they vote for, despite the fact that she has done so many, many, many times already over the last 2 months.

Your party sucks. Democrats suck. Americans hate the Democrat Party.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024 2:41 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
It's been an interesting day.

Joe Biden* calls half of Americans garbage. Then when he was told later that he said this he claims that he never said it. When asked about that by reporters, Harris claims that she would never call people names based off of who they vote for, despite the fact that she has done so many, many, many times already over the last 2 months.

Your party sucks. Democrats suck. Americans hate the Democrat Party.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

And the Democrat Party hates Americans.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024 2:55 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
It's been an interesting day.

Joe Biden* calls half of Americans garbage. Then when he was told later that he said this he claims that he never said it. When asked about that by reporters, Harris claims that she would never call people names based off of who they vote for, despite the fact that she has done so many, many, many times already over the last 2 months.

Your party sucks. Democrats suck. Americans hate the Democrat Party.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.
And the Democrat Party hates Americans.

Indeed it does.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024 4:08 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And the Democrat Party hates Americans.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

Democrats hate tax-cheaters, rapists, fools, liars - all the things Trump is. Trumptards? None of that is problem for them:

A brief summary of Donald Trump’s plan for America

Here is Donald Trump's apparent governing plan so far:

Enact 20% tariffs on all imports.¹

Cut $2 trillion from the federal budget.²

Let RFK Jr. "go wild" on health, food, and medicine.³

Mass deportation of illegal immigrants.¹, ²

Big tax cuts for corporations and the rich.¹

Abandon Ukraine. Maybe Taiwan too.4

Use the military to fight "the enemy within."5

Build a strategic Bitcoin reserve.³

Fire thousands of nonpartisan civil servants so he can replace them with MAGA drones.6

Repeal any and all efforts at combating climate change, which is a hoax.³

Implement "concepts of a plan" to repeal Obamacare, including its provision that protects people with preexisting conditions.7

Take unspecified revenge against Meta and Google.³

Blow up the federal deficit.¹

How is it possible that there are lots of people who actually want this? Do even conservatives really want this? Even if Trump loses, it's apparent that we've lost our collective mind.

Footnotes
¹ Would wreck the economy and spike inflation.
² Not actually possible, thank God.
³ Come on, man.
4 Would encourage two-bit dictators worldwide and make it clear that nukes are a country's only real protection.
5 Obviously unconstitutional.
6 Delusions of grandeur, anyone?
7 Would hurt lots of people for no perceptible reason except retribution against Obama.

https://jabberwocking.com/a-brief-summary-of-donald-trumps-plan-for-am
erica/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024 4:45 PM

THG

VP Harris Speaks at PACKED RALLY in Pennsylvania

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024 4:59 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

GDP grew 2.8% in Q3

The Atlanta Fed's forecast was spot on: real GDP grew 2.8% in the third quarter.

This is an ideal reading. Growth remains strong, but not so strong that the Fed goes all aflutter about the economy overheating.

https://jabberwocking.com/gdp-grew-2-8-in-q3/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024 5:27 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

This election is already over.

Tick Tock

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024 5:48 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Trump on Biden "Garbage" Comment: "Please Forgive Him, For He Not Knoweth What He Said"

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/10/29/trump_on_biden_garb
age_commnent_please_forgive_him_for_he_not_knoweth_what_he_said.html

Quote:
President Trump commented on President Biden appearing to refer to Trump's supporters as garbage (Biden's handlers claim he misspoke).

"Remember Hillary? She said deplorable... Garbage I think is worse?" Trump said.

"Please forgive him, for he not knoweth what he said," Trump intoned, paraphrasing the Bible. "Terrible to say a thing like that, but honestly, he doesn't know."

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024 5:56 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Ultra-Left pollster Quinnipiac just gave Trump +2 in Pennsylvania.

https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/pennsylv
ania/trump-vs-harris

Quinnipiac's last two polls for Pennsylvania had Harris up +2 on 10/3 and +5 on 9/12.

For comparison's sake, in 2020 Quinnipiac's final poll for Florida had Joe Biden* winning by +5. Trump won Florida by +3.3 (a +8.3 point bias toward Democrats).

https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2020/florida/
trump-vs-biden

Also, Quinnipiac's final national poll saw Biden up by +11 points and he only won by +4.5 (a +6.5 point bias toward Democrats).

https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2020/trump-vs
-biden

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Thursday, October 31, 2024 8:03 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

A Closing Case Against Trump

If Trump wins the presidency again, conservatism will be homeless, a philosophy without a party, for at least a generation.

By Peter Wehner | October 29, 2024, 9:56 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/10/conservative-argumen
t-against-trump/680438/

Trump has transformed the Republican Party in his image in ways that exceed what any other American politician has done in modern times.

Start with character. The GOP once championed the central importance of character in political leaders, and especially presidents. It believed that serious personal misconduct was disqualifying, in part because of the example it would send to the young and its corrosive effects on our culture. It lamented that America was slouching towards Gomorrah.

In 1998, when a Democrat, Bill Clinton, was president and embroiled in a sexual scandal, the Southern Baptist Convention—whose membership is overwhelmingly conservative —passed the “Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials,” which said, “Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God’s judgment.” It added, “We urge all Americans to embrace and act on the conviction that character does count in public office, and to elect those officials and candidates who, although imperfect, demonstrate consistent honesty, moral purity and the highest character.”

Yet for a decade now, Republicans, and in particular white evangelicals, have celebrated as their leader a felon and pathological liar; a person whose companies have committed bank, insurance, tax, and charity fraud; a sexual predator who paid hush money to a porn star; a person of uncommon cruelty and crudity who has mocked the war dead, POWs, Gold Star families, and people with disabilities. Under Trump, the party of “family values” has become a moral freak show.

Trump has also profoundly reshaped the GOP’s public policy. The GOP is now, at the national level, effectively pro-choice, and, due in part to Trump, the pro-life movement is “in a state of political collapse,” in the words of David French, of The New York Times. The Republican Party, pre-Trump, was pro–free trade; Trump calls himself “Tariff Man” and referred to tariff as “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” (In July, Trump proposed across-the-board tariffs of 10 to 20 percent, and rates of 60 percent or higher on imports from China.) He epitomizes crony capitalism, an economic system in which individuals and businesses with political connections and influence are favored.

For several generations, Republican presidents have, to varying degrees, promoted plans to reform entitlement programs in order to avert fiscal catastrophe. Trump has done the opposite. He has repeatedly said that entitlement programs are off-limits. As president, Trump shredded federalism and made a mockery of our constitutional system of government by his use of executive orders to bypass Congress. He made little effort to shrink government, and lots of efforts to expand it.

On spending, $4.8 trillion in non-COVID-related debt was added during Trump’s single term, while for Biden the figure is $2.2 trillion. Trump added more debt than any other president in history. A Wall Street Journal survey of 50 economists found that 65 percent of them see Trump’s proposed policies putting more upward pressure on the federal deficit than Harris’s, and 68 percent said prices would rise faster under Trump than under Harris. And the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that Trump’s policies would increase budget deficits by $7.5 trillion over the next decade, compared with $3.5 trillion for Harris.

Pre-Trump Republican presidents celebrated the diversity that immigrants brought to the nation, and the contributions they made to America. “All of the immigrants who came to us brought their own music, literature, customs, and ideas,” Ronald Reagan said in a speech in Shanghai in 1984. “And the marvelous thing, a thing of which we’re proud, is they did not have to relinquish these things in order to fit in. In fact, what they brought to America became American. And this diversity has more than enriched us; it has literally shaped us.” George W. Bush urged America to be a “welcoming society,” one that assimilates new arrivals and “upholds the great tradition of the melting pot,” which “has made us one nation out of many peoples.”

Trump is cut from a very different cloth. He curtailed legal immigration during his presidency. Temporary visas for highly skilled noncitizen workers were reduced. Refugee admissions were slashed. Trump, who peddled outrageous lies against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, says he plans to strip them of their legal status. (At his rallies, Trump has whipped the crowds into a frenzy, getting them to chant, “Send them back! Send them back! Send them back!”)

Edith Olmsted pointed out in The New Republic that during his first term, Trump rescinded Temporary Protective Status orders for immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Nepal, and Honduras, “placing hundreds of thousands of legal residents at risk for deportation.” Trump, who refers to America as an “occupied country” and “a garbage can for the world,” also said he plans to reinstate a ban on travelers from some countries with Muslim-majority populations. And although previous Republicans have attempted to slow illegal border crossings, none has dehumanized those crossing the border by using language from Mein Kampf (“poisoning the blood of our country”). Trump believes American national identity is based not on allegiance to certain ideals but on ethnic and religious background.

It is in foreign policy, though, that Trump may be most antithetical to the policies and approach of modern conservatism. Reagan was a fierce, relentless opponent of the Soviet Union. “The one thing Reagan was more passionate about than anything else was the unsupportable phenomenon of totalitarian power, enslaving a large part of the world’s population,” according to Edmund Morris, a Reagan biographer.

Trump is the opposite. He admires and is enchanted by the world’s most brutal dictators, including Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, and others. Trump is at best indifferent to the fate of Ukraine in its war against Russia; one suspects that deep down, he’s rooting for his friend Putin. Reagan mythologized America; Trump trash-talks it. Reagan was a great champion of NATO; Trump is a reflexive critic who, according to his former national security adviser John Bolton, would withdraw from the alliance in a second term. Reagan made human rights a centerpiece of his foreign policy; during his term, Trump praised China’s forced internment of a million or more Uyghurs as “exactly the right thing to do,” according to Bolton.

Here and there, now and then, Trump is conservative—on court appointments, for example—but it’s something that he’s stumbled into, for reasons of political expediency, and that he’s just as liable to stumble away from. (Trump was pro-choice before he was pro-life before he moved once again toward the pro-choice camp.) Trump is fundamentally a populist and a demagogue, a destroyer of institutions and a conspiracy theorist, a champion of right-wing identity politics who stokes grievances and rage. He has an unprecedented capacity to turn people into the darkest versions of themselves. But he is something even beyond that.

IN RECENT WEEKS, Trump has been called a fascist—not by liberal Democratic strategists, but by people who worked closely with him. They include retired General John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff; retired General Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Trump presidency; and Mark Esper, Trump’s former secretary of defense, who has said that Trump has fascistic “inclinations” and is “unfit for office.” In addition, retired General James Mattis, who also served as Trump’s secretary of defense, has said he agrees with Milley’s assessment. And Dan Coats, Trump’s former director of national intelligence, has said he suspects that Trump is being blackmailed by Putin.

The historian Robert Paxton, one of the nation’s foremost experts on fascism, was initially reluctant to apply the term fascism to Trump. The label is toxic and used too promiscuously, he believed. But January 6, 2021, changed all of that.

“The turn to violence was so explicit and so overt and so intentional, that you had to change what you said about it,” Paxton told Elisabeth Zerofsky, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. “It just seemed to me that a new language was necessary, because a new thing was happening.”

Trump’s “open encouragement of civic violence to overturn an election crosses a red line,” Paxton wrote in Newsweek shortly after Trump supporters violently stormed the Capitol. “The label now seems not just acceptable but necessary.”

Paxton could add to the parade of horribles the fact that Trump encouraged the mob to hang his own vice president, came very close to deploying 10,000 active-duty troops to the streets of the nation’s capital to shoot protesters, invited hostile foreign powers to intervene in our election, and extorted an ally to find dirt on his opponents. Paxton could have mentioned that Trump threatened prosecutors, judges, and their families; referred to his political opponents as “vermin” and the “enemy from within”; and called the imprisoned individuals who stormed the Capitol “great patriots.” He could have cited Trump’s call for the “termination” of parts of the Constitution and his insinuation that Milley deserved to be executed for treason.

Trump’s supporters may be enraged by the fascist label, but they cannot erase the words or the deeds of the man to whom the label applies. And the only way for the GOP to become a sane, conservative party again is by ridding itself of Trump, which is why even conservatives who oppose Harris’s policies should vote for her. Harris’s election is the only thing that can break the hold of Trump on his party.

Acquaintances of mine, and acquaintances of friends of mine, say that they find Trump contemptible, but that they can’t vote for Harris, because they disagree with her on policy. My response is simple: The position she once held on fracking may be bad, but fascism is worse. The position she holds on any issue may be bad, but fascism is worse.

Read: Trump wants you to accept all of this as normal

A friend told me he won’t vote for either Harris or Trump. If Trump wins a second term, he said, “I suspect he will give more attention to his golf game than to siccing the IRS, FBI, or whoever on his political opponents.” His message to me, in other words, is to relax a bit. Trump may be a moral wreck, but he won’t act on his most outlandish threats.

My view is that when those seeking positions of power promote political violence, have a long record of lawlessness, are nihilistic, and embody a “will to power” ethic; make extralegal attempts to maintain power and stop the peaceful transfer of power; and use the words of fascists to tell the world that they are determined to exact vengeance—it’s probably wise to take them at their word.

If Trump wins the presidency again, conservatism will be homeless, a philosophy without a party, probably for at least a generation. And the damage to America, the nation Republicans claim to love, will be incalculable, perhaps irreversible. The stakes are that high.

Harris becoming president may not be the best thing that could happen to conservatism. But if she becomes president, she will have prevented the worst thing that could happen to conservatism and, much more important, to the country.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, October 31, 2024 10:15 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump Wants You to Accept All of This as Normal

The former president is psychologically preparing Americans for an assault on the electoral system.

By Anne Applebaum | October 28, 2024

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/maidison-square-g
arden-election-fraud/680429/

In the final week of this election season, the Republican Party is running two different campaigns. One of them is an ugly and angry but conventional political enterprise. Donald Trump and other Republicans make speeches; party operatives seek to get out the vote; money is spent in swing states; television and radio advertisements proliferate. The people running that campaign are focused on winning the election.

Last night, in New York City’s Madison Square Garden, we caught a glimpse of the other campaign. This is the campaign that is psychologically preparing Americans for an assault on the electoral system, a second January 6, if Trump doesn’t win—or else an assault on the political system and the rule of law if he does. Listen carefully to the words of Tucker Carlson, the pundit fired from Fox News partly for his role in lying about the 2020 election. Warming up the crowd for Trump, he mocked the very idea that Kamala Harris could win: “It’s going to be pretty hard to look at us and say, ‘You know what? Kamala Harris, she got 85 million votes because she’s so impressive as the first Samoan Malaysian, low-I.Q., former California prosecutor ever to be elected president.”

“Samoan Malaysian” was Carlson’s way of mocking Harris’s mixed-race background, and “low-IQ” is self-explanatory—but “85 million” is a number of votes she could in fact win. And how, Carlson suggested, could there be such a “groundswell of popular support” for a person he demeaned as a mongrel, an incompetent, an idiot? The answer was clear: There can’t be, and if anyone says it happened, then we will contest it.

All of this is part of the game: the Trump campaign’s loud confidence, despite dead-even polls; its decision, in the final days, to take the candidate outside the swing states to New York, New Mexico, and Virginia, because we’ve got this in the bag (and not, say, because filling arenas in Pennsylvania is getting harder); the hyping of Republican-early-voter numbers, even though no evidence indicates that these are new voters, just people who are no longer being discouraged from voting early. Also the multiple attempts, across the country, to remove large numbers of people from the rolls; the many claims, with no justification, that “illegal immigrants” are voting or even, as Trump implied during the September debate, that illegal immigrants are being deliberately imported into the country in order to vote; Vance’s declaration that he will accept the election results as long as “only legal American citizens” vote.

At Madison Square Garden, Trump doubled down on that rhetoric. He repeated past claims about the “invasion” of immigrants; about “Venezuelan gangs” occupying American cities, even Times Square; and he offered an instant solution: “On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get these criminals out. I will rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered, and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail.” But he left open the question of who exactly all these “criminals” might be, because he seemed to be talking about not just immigrants but also his political opponents, “the enemy within.” The United States, he said, “is now an occupied country, but it will soon be an occupied country no longer … November 5, 2024, nine days from now, will be Liberation Day in America.”

The insults we heard from many speakers at Madison Square Garden, including the description of Puerto Rico as “garbage” or of Harris as “the anti-Christ” or of Hillary Clinton as a “sick son of a bitch”—insults that can also be heard in a thousand podcast episodes featuring Carlson, Elon Musk, J. D. Vance, and their ilk—are part of the same effort. Trump’s electorate is being primed to equate his political opposition with infection, pollution, and demonic power, and to accept violence and chaos as a legitimate, necessary response to these primal, lethal threats.

As I wrote earlier this month, this kind of language, imported from the 1930s, has never before been part of mainstream American presidential politics, because no other political candidate in modern history has used an election to undermine the legal basis of the American political system. But if we are an occupied country, then Joe Biden is not the legitimately elected president of the United States. If we are an occupied country, then the American government is not a set of institutions established over centuries by Congress, but rather a sinister cabal that must be dismantled at any price. If we are an occupied country, then of course the Trump administration can break the law, commit acts of violence, or even trash the Constitution in order to “liberate” Americans, either after Trump has lost the election or after he has won it.

This kind of language is not being used accidentally or incidentally. It is not a joke, even when used by professional comedians. These insults are central to Trump’s message, which is why they were featured at a venue he reveres. They are also classic authoritarian tactics that have worked before, not only in the 1930s but also in places such as modern Venezuela and modern Russia, countries where the public was also prepared over many years to accept lawlessness and violence from the state. The same tactics are working in the United States right now. Election workers, whose job is to carry out the will of the voters, are already the subject of violent threats and harassment. At least two ballot boxes have been attacked.

The natural human instinct is to dismiss, ignore, or downplay these kinds of threats. But that’s the point: You are meant to accept this language and behavior, to consider this kind of rhetoric “baked in” to any Trump campaign. You are supposed to just get used to the idea that Trump wishes he had “Hitler’s generals” or that he uses the Stalinist phrase “enemies of the people” to describe his opponents. Because once you think that’s normal, then you’ll accept the next step. Even when that next step is an assault on democracy and the rule of law.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, October 31, 2024 10:41 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

‘Stop Counting Votes, or We’re Going to Murder Your Children’

Election officials are under siege.

By Matteo Wong

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/10/election-worker
s-threats-trump/680362/

Melissa Kono, who began training election workers nine years ago, recently added a training section dedicated to identifying and reporting threats.

When Melissa Kono, the town clerk in Burnside, Wisconsin, began training election workers in 2015, their questions were relatively mundane. They asked about election rules, voter eligibility, and other basic procedures. The job was gratifying and enjoyable; they helped their neighbors while sipping coffee.

But over the past few years, everything has changed. Kono now finds herself fielding questions about what to do when approached by suspicious voters who ask provocative questions or gripe about fraud. She’s added an entire training section dedicated to identifying threats and how to report them. “I never in a million years imagined that that would be part of my curriculum,” she told me. Kono has yet to receive any direct threats herself—perhaps, she thinks, because Donald Trump won the popular vote in her area in 2016 and 2020—but she fears that things may be different this time around. “What I do hear is I know the election is not rigged here, but in other places,” she said. “And I’m honestly worried sometimes: What if Harris wins? What if it gets too close? And now they start questioning me or coming after me, when I have nothing to do with the outcome.”

Around the country, election officials have already received death threats and packages filled with white powder. Their dogs have been poisoned, their homes swatted, their family members targeted. In Texas, one man called for a “a mass shooting of poll workers and election officials” in precincts with results he found suspicious. “The point is coercion; the point is intimidation. It’s to get you to do or not do something,” Al Schmidt, the secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, told me—to get you to “stop counting votes, or we’re going to murder your children, and they name your children,” a threat that Schmidt said he received in 2020. This year, the same things may well happen again. “I had one election official who said they called her on her cellphone and said, ‘Looks like your mom made lasagna tonight; she’s wearing that pretty yellow dress that she likes to wear to church,” Tammy Patrick, the chief programs officer at the National Association of Election Officials and a former elections officer in Maricopa County, Arizona, told me. “It’s terrorism here in America.”

These workers, from secretaries of state to local officials to volunteers, are bearing the immediate, human toll of a campaign to discredit the integrity of American democracy. They are the most direct and vulnerable targets for people who have embraced conspiracy theories about fraudulent and “stolen” votes following the 2020 election—unfounded claims that have been directly promoted by Trump and many other members of the Republican Party, who still will not accept that he lost his first reelection bid. Where candidates used to compete against each other, Schmidt told me, some are now “attacking the referees.” In the most extreme narratives, election workers are accused of fabricating, shredding, or double-counting ballots, which leads to suspicion and harassment. “Since the 2020 election, we have seen an unprecedented spike in threats against the public servants who do administer our elections,” including shootings and a bomb threat, Attorney General Merrick Garland said last month. A survey conducted in February and March by the Brennan Center for Justice found that 38 percent of election officials reported being harassed, abused, or threatened—up from 30 percent a year earlier.

This is not just a story about assaults on individual workers, although that would be bad enough. Election administration is “underappreciated as the foundation upon which all of our representative government thrives,” Rachel Orey, the director of the Bipartisan Policy Center Elections Project, told me. In a very real way, these officials represent the soul of democracy. Many of them are undertaking their duties while also juggling child care and everyday errands such as grocery shopping. Without their diligence, nobody could be elected, period. The form of government that Americans recognize and celebrate could not exist.

Dissuading or preventing people from going to, or otherwise attempting to interfere with, the polls are century-old dirty tactics, and there are all manner of legal ways to suppress or dilute the vote, many of which target racial minorities. But Trump’s attempts to unilaterally dictate election results are different. As far back as 2012, he criticized Barack Obama’s reelection as a “total sham and a travesty.” Victory in 2016, and the conversion or defeat of nearly all of his Republican rivals, gave Trump the power to mount a serious and systematic attempt to discredit the democratic process. He and his furious supporters, in turn, have unleashed a sustained assault on national and state elections alike.

“I wasn’t aware of any real threats or harassment or wide-scale verbal abuse on election officials prior to the 2020 election cycle,” Tina Barton, the vice chair of the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, told me. The outrage and attacks that emerged in 2020 have now been harnessed into a well-funded campaign: Republicans have reportedly donated upwards of $100 million to a network of so-called election-integrity groups to lay the groundwork for contesting the results should Trump lose again. Although poll watching is itself normal, the GOP is training and deploying armies of monitors with the presumption of fraud, flooding election offices with public-records requests, and filing endless challenges to voter-registration records. “I don’t think there’s any question that there is a more coordinated and sophisticated effort ahead of this election to discredit it than there was in 2020,” Lawrence Norden, the vice president of the elections and government program at the Brennan Center, told me.

This election cycle, one of the “dominant narratives” is about noncitizen voting, Thessalia Merivaki, a political scientist at Georgetown University who studies how election officials combat misinformation, told me. Republican activists, politicians, lawmakers, and pundits have especially seized on false fears about immigrant and foreign voting to burnish a conspiracy theory that noncitizen votes from overseas will turn the election. These claims have been widely debunked, but all the energy behind them could delay vote counts and disenfranchise citizens. Republican groups are filing more and more lawsuits in battleground states about voter-identification requirements, absentee ballots, and other basic procedures, “setting up an opportunity afterwards to cast doubt on the election results,” Norden said.

When I began reporting this article, I was curious about whether election officials had concerns over new technologies. The internet has changed substantially since 2020. For the past couple of years, I’ve written about the rise of generative AI and its attendant issues: In terms that are most directly relevant to the election, that means the arrival of easy-to-create and highly convincing deepfakes, the concoction of micro-targeted conspiracy theories, the overall degradation of our information environment, and the possibility that our sense of shared reality might be wiped out altogether. It’s easy to imagine that AI could wreak havoc around Election Day—earlier this year, a robocall that cloned President Joe Biden’s voice was used in a voter-suppression effort—and experts have made their concerns about the technology clear.

The election workers and officials I spoke with did express worry about AI and its ability to accelerate disinformation and election-interference campaigns. But they also described problems that came from more familiar sources. They spoke with me about how videos of entirely proper and legal election procedures—snippets of livestreamed election procedures, for instance—had been miscontextualized to suggest that officials who were simply following the rules were actually smuggling in ballots, rigging voting machines, or otherwise manipulating the results. Blatantly false headlines and incendiary posts spreading on messaging apps and among social-media groups have done and continue to do plenty of damage. Sometimes, the details are irrelevant. As my colleague Charlie Warzel recently wrote, manipulated media and misinformation is useful not necessarily because it convinces some population of undecided suckers, but because it allows the already aggrieved to sequester themselves in a parallel reality. A voter might say, “Let’s just set the facts aside,” Patrick, of the National Association of Election Officials, told me, “and I’m going to tell you what I think or what I feel about this.”

Amy Burgans, the clerk-treasurer in Douglas County, Nevada, herself had doubts about the outcome of the 2020 election when she started in her role that December. (The previous clerk-treasurer had resigned—the pandemic and contentious election cycle, Burgans told me, had been “a lot.”) Burgans said that she had heard in the news, on social media, and from people she knew that there “must have been” some foul play. But once she was in charge of running elections and administered the 2022 midterms, she said, she saw the rigor at every step of the process and understood that the allegations of widespread, systemic fraud were impossible.

Now she’s the one fielding questions, frequently about voting machines. Burgans has explained to voters all of the controls in place, that she’s “never seen even one error” after an election audit. Still, people ask her about election procedures at almost every event she attends, or “even if I’m at the Elks Club just hanging out,” she said. Burgans said she has “no issues with” and tries to address these questions. But doing so takes time and energy—and these comments are just the tip of the spear.

Burgans received a threat in the mail in 2022. Although it was mostly a broad rant about the government, it did make her worry for her children’s safety, and she installed a security system in her home. Her county’s election facilities are stocked with personal protective equipment and Narcan, in the event of suspicious substances or powders (which might be fentanyl) arriving in the mail—something that has already happened at election offices in several states. She also recently installed bulletproof glass in the office, where Burgans and full-time staff work—as a precaution rather than a response to any particular threat, she said. Election deniers are “consistently coming into [election] offices saying things like ‘You’d better watch your back’ or ‘Don’t you forget: I know where your kids go to school,” Barton, the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections vice chair, told me. What was unprecedented in 2020, Barton said, is now an “ongoing onslaught.”

This attack on American elections is not an invasion so much as a siege. And just as hateful, outlandish, and conspiracist misinformation have eroded Americans’ trust in one another, institutions, and basic facts, this environment is taking a psychic toll on election workers. They find themselves having to put in extra hours to field questions, accommodate an influx of poll watchers, process voter challenges, sort through public-records requests, and prepare for any emergencies and attacks—all while fearing for their safety. For more than two decades, running an election has become steadily more complex and involved. After 2000’s infamous hanging chads, election workers had to become IT professionals. After long lines became a key issue in 2008 and 2012, they became logistics experts. After 2016, they learned cybersecurity, and in advance of 2020, they studied public-health protocols and how to process enormous quantities of mail-in ballots. Now election workers have to be communications experts as well. “We’ve had poll watchers in here every single day since September 26,” when early voting began, “sometimes three or four of them in a small space,” Aaron Ammons, the clerk and recorder of deeds in Champaign County, Illinois, said in a recent press briefing.

Meanwhile, support and resources for these emerging responsibilities are frequently missing. The result, inevitably, is burnout: The job keeps getting harder and requiring more hours, but resources for hiring, buying new equipment, improving security, and more have been inconsistent and haphazard. “There have been new challenges and new expectations put on election administrators, but funding hasn’t kept pace,” Rachel Orey said. Hours spent on election work have ballooned since 2020, according to a recent national survey of election workers conducted by Reed College. Meanwhile, nearly one-third of election offices don’t have any full-time staff, wages are pitiful, and turnover rates grew from 28 percent in 2004—already high—to nearly 39 percent in 2022.

This burden “has taken away from [election officials’] ability to just focus on the mechanics of that very important election,” Kim Wyman, a former secretary of state for Washington who recently served as a senior election-security adviser at the Department of Homeland Security, told me. Skeptics will use innocent mistakes and logistical snares—which are mundane and easily rectified—and even the act of correcting “as gasoline on the fire to ‘prove’ their point or their claim of voter fraud,” she said. This, in turn, only fuels the exhaustion. “People just make up stuff about what we do and are coming after us,” Kono, of Wisconsin, told me. She’s seen many longtime clerks and election workers leave, telling her, “I can’t do another presidential election” and “I don’t want to have to deal with voters.”

Those who remain do not take the job lightly. In 20 years working in election administration, Barton told me, “I have never seen election officials train so much in four years’ time”—improving security, being transparent at every step of the process, speaking at events and posting on social media to educate their communities. They’ve been preparing for November 5, 2024, for four years, Wyman told me. “This is my Olympics,” Kono said.

The misinformation crisis is commonly understood as a clash between two “realities” that is most visible online, in the words of high-profile politicians, or during spectacular flashpoints such as the January 6 Capitol riot. But for four years, and especially in the weeks leading up to and after November 5, these battles have and will be quotidian and interpersonal. “We are your soccer coaches. We are the moms helping at the schools, the dads coaching baseball, the grandmothers that are going on field trips,” Burgans said. This everyday warfare, waged against the neighbors and teachers and elders and bus drivers who administer the polls, and in turn democracy, may be more consequential than any single vote or outcome.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, October 31, 2024 3:43 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

On this day in History, October 31st:

0000000000000000---2024----000---2020---000----2016-----
National00000000Trump +0.50000Biden +7.4000Clinton0 +1.3
--------------------------------------------------------
Wisconsin0000000Harris +0.2000Biden +6.7000Clinton0 +5.4
Pennsylvania0000Trump0 +0.8000Biden +4.3000Clinton0 +3.5
Ohio000000000000Trump0 +6.9000Biden +0.0000Trump000 +2.7
Michigan00000000Harris +0.4000Biden +8.2000Clinton0 +6.3
Arizona000000000Trump0 +2.5000Biden +0.0000Clinton0 +4.0
Nevada0000000000Trump0 +0.5000Biden +4.0000Trump 000+2.0
North Carolina00Trump0 +1.0000Biden +0.6000Trump 000+1.0
Georgia000000000Trump0 +2.4000Biden +0.4000Trump000 +5.7
Florida000000000Trump0 +8.5000Biden +1.6000Clinton0 +0.3

Here's where Trump stands in the battleground states compared to 2020...

National:000000 Trump +7.1
--------------------------
Wisconsin:00000 Trump +6.5
Pennsylvania:00 Trump +5.1
Ohio:0000000000 Trump +6.9
Michigan:000000 Trump +7.8
Arizona:0000000 Trump +2.5
Nevada:00000000 Trump +4.5
North Carolina: Trump +1.9
Georgia:0000000 Trump +2.8
Florida:0000000 Trump +10.1

And here's where Trump stands in the battleground states compared to 2016...

National:000000 Trump +1.7
--------------------------
Wisconsin:00000 Trump +5.2
Pennsylvania:00 Trump +4.3
Ohio:0000000000 Trump +4.2
Michigan:000000 Trump +5.9
Arizona:0000000 Trump -1.5
Nevada:00000000 Trump -1.5
North Carolina: Trump +0.0
Georgia:0000000 Trump +3.3
Florida:0000000 Trump +8.8

Harris still has those 2 outliers from Susquehanna and Quinnipiac screwing up the Michigan polling. WaPo just came out with a poll today giving Harris +1. Outside of those, 2 polls have the race as a tie, 4 of them have +1 Trump, and one of them are +2 Trump.

https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/michigan
/trump-vs-harris

Harris also has a 0.2 lead in Wisconsin today, but that's entirely because of an outlier CNN poll giving Harris +6 in Wisconsin. There are 10 Wisconsin polls in the aggregate currently. Marquette is the only other poll in Wisconsin showing Harris winning, and only by +1. 4 of them are ties. 3 of them are +1 Trump, and 1 of them are +2 Trump.

https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/wisconsi
n/trump-vs-harris

Democrats have routinely fallen apart in the month leading up to the election the last two election cycles and it appears that this cycle isn't very different in that regard. The only difference is that Harris came into October so low that the crash isn't as pronounced as it was with Biden* and Clinton. With only 5 days to go before election day, you can see that this was the point where Clinton fell off the cliff in the final days with that +1.3 national polling lead, which is still +1.8 higher than Harris' current -0.5 deficit.

For more comparisons, I got the actual vote percentages in the battleground states to compare.

https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_battleground_states,_2020

2020 Presidential Election vote margins by battleground state:

National:000000 Biden +4.4
--------------------------
Wisconsin:00000 Biden +0.3 (49.4% Biden / 49.1% Trump)
Pennsylvania:00 Biden +1.2 (50.0% Biden / 48.8% Trump)
Ohio:0000000000 Trump +8.1 (53.3% Trump / 45.2% Biden)
Michigan:000000 Biden +1.8 (50.6% Biden / 47.8% Trump)
Arizona:0000000 Biden +0.3 (49.4% Biden / 49.1% Trump)
Nevada:00000000 Biden +2.4 (50.1% Biden / 47.7% Trump)
North Carolina: Trump +1.3 (49.9% Trump / 48.6% Biden)
Georgia:0000000 Biden +0.2 (49.5% Biden / 49.3% Trump)
Florida:0000000 Trump +3.3 (51.2% Biden / 47.9% Trump)

What do those numbers mean in relation to the numbers posted earlier?

Let's compare the polling averages 4 years ago today with the actual election results...

National:000000 Biden POLLS: +7.4 - ACTUAL: +4.4 = -3.0
--------------------------
Wisconsin:00000 Biden POLLS: +6.7 - ACTUAL: +0.3 = -6.4
Pennsylvania:00 Biden POLLS: +4.3 - ACTUAL: +1.2 = -3.1
Ohio:0000000000 Biden POLLS: +0.0 - ACTUAL: -8.1 = -8.1
Michigan:000000 Biden POLLS: +8.2 - ACTUAL: +1.8 = -6.4
Arizona:0000000 Biden POLLS: +0.0 - ACTUAL: +0.3 = +0.3
Nevada:00000000 Biden POLLS: +4.0 - ACTUAL: +2.4 = -1.6
North Carolina: Biden POLLS: +0.6 - ACTUAL: -1.3 = -1.9
Georgia:0000000 Biden POLLS: +0.4 - ACTUAL: +0.2 = -0.2
Florida:0000000 Biden POLLS: +1.6 - ACTUAL: -3.3 = -4.9

For the above table I flipped any state that Trump won to negatives for Biden instead so the numbers make more sense. In the national polling on today's date 4 years ago, they had Joe Biden +3.0 higher than the actual vote count. As you can see, every battleground state was polled hard in favor of Democrats compared to actual voter turnout, many of them far outside their stated margin of errors. This was just as bad if not worse in 2016. Maybe I'll get around to doing comparisons to both years as election day draws near for comparison too.

Now let's take the Democrat bias in the polls from 2020 and apply them to our current day polling...

National:000000 Trump POLLS: +0.5 - 2020 BIAS: -3.0 = Trump + 3.4
--------------------------
Wisconsin:00000 Trump POLLS: -0.2 - 2020 BIAS: -6.4 = Trump +6.2
Pennsylvania:00 Trump POLLS: +0.8 - 2020 BIAS: -3.1 = Trump +3.9
Ohio:0000000000 Trump POLLS: +6.9 - 2020 BIAS: -8.1 = Trump +15.0
Michigan:000000 Trump POLLS: -0.4 - 2020 BIAS: -6.4 = Trump +6.0
Arizona:0000000 Trump POLLS: +2.5 - 2020 BIAS: +0.3 = Trump +2.2
Nevada:00000000 Trump POLLS: +0.5 - 2020 BIAS: -1.6 = Trump +2.1
North Carolina: Trump POLLS: +1.0 - 2020 BIAS: -1.9 = Trump +2.9
Georgia:0000000 Trump POLLS: +2.4 - 2020 BIAS: -0.2 = Trump +2.6
Florida:0000000 Trump POLLS: +8.5 - 2020 BIAS: -4.9 = Trump +13.4

Am I saying Trump is going to win all the battleground states by those huge margins? Maybe. I'm not ready to make that prediction right now. But I have just illustrated that historical polling trends suggest this outcome to be a possibility.

Also, to note... Joe Biden* never once fell below +4 points above Trump in the 2020 election. Harris has now been behind in the national popular vote aggregate for 6 days straight and is still falling. She's had a pretty linear fall from her peak of +2.2 on October 3rd, down to -0.5 behind Trump today. If nothing changes, Harris would be the first Democrat in at least 3 election cycles that goes into election day losing the Popular vote in the polls.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Thursday, October 31, 2024 5:45 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Politico: Black turnout is lagging in North Carolina, a warning sign for Harris

The Black share of the early vote is lagging behind what Democrats say they will need to flip the state.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/30/black-turnout-is-lagging-in-n
orth-carolina-a-warning-sign-for-harris-00186387

The American Prospect: In Philadelphia, It’s Kamala vs. the Couch

Among Black voters, Trump can’t beat her, but a key challenge is rallying voters who’d rather stay home.

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-10-31-philadelphia-kamala-vs-the-co
uch/

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Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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