Everybody Hold On Tight Election Day 2024 Edition

This is what we know going into Election Day this November 5th.

There is a gender gap in the voting trends, with more women showing up to vote than men.

There is a Dobbs Effect, where a number of deeply-held Republican states are seeing a massive shift of votes towards Democratic candidates and pro-abortion state referenda after the Dobbs ruling in 2022 allowed those Republican states to enact harsh anti-abortion laws. What we don't know is how massive those shifts will be and if they will flip enough Red states Blue.

There will be a harsh rebuke from Latino voters - especially Puerto Rican voters - towards Republicans in key battleground states Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Florida. When you have 85 percent of Puerto Ricans telling pollsters they're siding with Harris, that's a huge voting bloc numbering hundreds of thousands in each state giving Democrats advantages in places that were decided by mere thousands of votes.

The governors and Attorneys General in some of the Red states are going to do everything they can to block federal officials from the Justice Department to oversee vote counting, because they dare not let honest tallying take place. So we know the Republicans are going to try and disenfranchise voters they don't like as much as possible.

trump will claim he's winning in every state, and then when a state's counting starts shifting to Harris he will scream "Stop the Steal" and that there's mass voter fraud in that state. Then again, he did this LAST time during the 2020 count, and he threatened to do it in 2016 before that election, so this was going to happen anyway. trump can never admit he's losing.

What people should know going into tomorrow's election: When you get in line before the polls close, STAY IN LINE. It helps to get there as early as possible. Bring your own bottle of water or something because some of the Republican-controlled states banned people from providing drinks and health aid for people stuck in long lines.

If some Proud Boy asshole challenges your right to vote, defend your vote (and see if the precinct security guard can charge that SOB for election interference). If a poll worker challenges your right to vote, demand a provisional ballot. Bring a friend - go with a group of neighbors or family members who can vote at that precinct with you - so you won't be alone and easy to intimidate.

Do be prepared for the craziest election day our nation's ever seen: Crazier than 1968, more chaotic than 1876, and - oh gods, help us - probably more violent than anything (and it's shocking how many violent elections - at least at the local level - we've had).

Stay safe. Use your power to vote. And here's hoping for a strong Blue Wave to wash trump and his criminal ways from our land.

I Need to Blog Something to Open This Month of November So...

I don't want to stress.

I don't want to stress.

I don't want to stress.

I don't want to stress.

(grabs a Gatorade and guzzles it all in one gulp)

via GIPHY

I DON'T WANT TO STRESS.

I AM PERFECTLY FINE.

via GIPHY

ALL THE EARLY VOTING REPORTS AND FINAL WEEK OF POLLING, I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANY OF THAT.

(stops self from writing a prolonged blog essay freaking out over the post-election scenarios)

I AM AN OASIS OF CALM.

I'M FINE. I'M PERFECTLY FINE.

GODDAMMIT WILL WE JUST CONFIRM KAMALA HAS 99 MILLION VOTES ALREADY AND BE DONE WITH THIS?!

(slap)

via GIPHY

Okay. Okay. Whew. Better now.

(grabs the edge of the computer monitor to scream at the nine blog readers here) GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT FOR KAMALA AND EVERY DEMOCRAT ON THE BALLOT! GET IT DONE! 

via GIPHY

As Spock would say, "Party hard, you Vulcan motherf-ckers."

We're gonna need ALL the Romulan Ale by Tuesday night.

The Nightmare of 2024

As befits the day of All Hallows Eve, I need to describe the recurring nightmare that keeps haunting me as we get closer to Election Day.

The absolute utter dread that somehow donald motherfucking trump might sneak his way back into the White House.

It's been a nightmare being stuck in the Darkest Timeline since November 2016, not just coping with the reality that a solid plurality of my fellow Americans are happily siding with a known racist sexist idiotic shitgibbon like him. It's watching time and again trump committing public faux pas and mental meltdowns, and getting exposed as a financial fraud and adjudicated rapist; all the while violating every known rule of political gravity that should have ended this madness ages ago.

It's unnerving to even contemplate trump could win. Not through any honest means, obviously, but through deceit, rigging, and overt bullying.

I know it can't happen through the popular vote. trump never won the popular vote in 2016 or 2020 in spite of all his gaslighting lies, and there is no sign that trump can win the people over this 2024. 

It could happen through the Electoral College's broken system. For all the hope of a Blue Wave - for all the signs of higher voter turnout leaning towards Kamala Harris and the Democrats - there is still the nagging reality that nobody's really going to know until voters actually vote how the battleground states will play out. All it can take is three or four of the key states - Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina - to go in favor of trump to have the Electoral College negate the popular vote. Much like how Hillary in 2016 clearly won the popular vote by 3 million nationwide but lost the Electoral by 30,000 votes in Wisconsin and Michigan: Kamala could be up by 7 million over trump but if she loses Pennsylvania AND Georgia AND Wisconsin by 7,000... The absolute EVIL of the Electoral College will tear this nation apart.

If there's any good news about the likelihood of the Electoral College failing (AGAIN) is that most of the battleground states have polls and early turnout trending away from trump. trump is already complaining about "stolen votes" in Pennsylvania so there may be internal polling suggesting he's about to lose that state (it is considered the key battleground state: Winning it points towards winning states with similar populations like Michigan and Wisconsin).

If trump is hoping to stage another chaotic mess of fake electors or getting his allies in certain states to refuse to certify the results - anything to force chaos and make the system convert to the fallback option of having the US House choose a winner - that is unlikely to happen: The current election laws and mechanisms point towards having it all resolved in the Electoral College anyway.

None of that is the real nightmare.

The nightmare scenario is that Kamala Harris wins both the popular and Electoral votes in a decisive manner - it could be by 500,000 votes and a slim EV count, it could be by 20 million and an Electoral blowout - and yet still "loses" because trump gets his allies in the court system - especially the Supreme Court - to buy his false claims of stolen votes and throw the results to him.

Considering how this Roberts Court already bent over backwards to undo previous court rulings - and run roughshod over established norms - all to give trump a Get Out of Jail Free card - LITERALLY - we can't ignore the possibility that the six Conservative Justices on the high court will ignore the basic facts of 1) trump never having evidence that the elections are rigged, and 2) the clear majority of voting Americans sided with Harris and the Democrats on who should lead this nation.

What will happen if Harris gets over 90 million voters - as I'm hoping - while trump gets barely over 50 million, with a majority of states flipping Democratic Blue in the process, only to have six Justices whom no one directly elected tell that American majority their votes and their voices and their power don't count?

That's what terrifies me heading into next Tuesday: The response by angry American voters - not just Democrats but the Indy and anti-trump Republicans - betrayed by a corrupt Supreme Court. What the hell do we do if Harris and the Democrats honestly win and yet trump and the Republicans steal it away?

What If: the 2024 President Election Is an Honest-to-God Harris Landslide

I'm still thinking about that USA Today report about early voting where Kamala Harris has a 63 percent lead in the ballots over trump's anemic 34 percent (with the difference going to third parties, natch).

Given how most of the modern - at least 21st Century - Presidential elections were not so heavily favored either way - balancing between 52-47 percent or closer - seeing THAT huge of a lead is stunning (and stirring up way too much hope for my own good, I admit it).

Logic dictates that the early voting is not a full representation of the likely voter turnout for this cycle. We're barely at a quarter of expected turnout - although with a week to go the numbers will go up - and more than half of the voters tend to wait until Election Day (some because they're still undecided, many because it's kinda traditional) anyway. We should expect a downward shift on that percentage lead to where the voting share fits the trends of a closer (say 55-45) election result.

We could be looking at the likelihood that a large number of Democratic - or Dem-leaning Independents - are voting earlier than the more traditional Republican voters who wait... except those early voting numbers show a near-level balance of Dem and GOP voters. So that narrative's a bit off.

The implications I'm seeing are 1) this is how the voting trends are going, and 2) there's a shocking number of Republican voters adding to that 63 percent Harris lead that can't be ignored.

So (dammit, my giddiness is getting the better of me), we are within the realm of positing a "What If": What if Harris really is getting close to 63 percent of the national vote this November?

One thing we shouldn't do is speculate on the final turnout numbers. Although there's signs of increased voter registration, there's still no guarantee of increased voter turnout (although the turnout numbers did go up in 2020 due to excessive use of mail-in ballots that made it easier to do so).

So let's go by the 2020 total turnout count, which was 158,429,631 Americans.

If that percentage trend (63) persists for Harris, she's looking at roughly 99,810,667 votes.

(jaw drops)

Considering Biden got roughly 51 percent and a total of 81,283,501 votes, I'd say that's a huge boost to the collective Democratic ego.

By comparison, trump's possible 34 percent will garner around 53,866,704 votes. It will be a decided drop off from the 74,223,975 he got in 2020 and also below his 2016 numbers of 62,984,828. It would be a massive rejection by voters tired of trump's antics the third time around.

Not only would the percentage difference be huge (Harris will win by 29 percent) but the vote total will be embarrassing (Harris will win by 45,943,963 votes). trump and the Republicans will try to scream "stolen votes," but on a scale that large there's no way even Far Right judges will buy that (or risk challenging it). 

(Also: Try imagining trump calling the Georgia Secretary of State and begging him to "find me 45 million votes.")

It would be a legitimate blowout for a Presidential election, something we haven't seen in decades. Looking back, the next closest election with that huge a percentage win gap was in 1984 when Reagan demolished Mondale 58 to 40 percent. Reagan won the Electoral votes of 49(!) states with roughly 54 million over 37 million. There's a reason why Democrats have campaigned with little joy until now, and that smackdown inflicted a ton of PTSD for years afterward.

You could consider Nixon's victory in 1972 over McGovern one of the biggest results in all of U.S. history - where he won 60 percent over McGovern's 37 for a massive popular vote win 47 million over 29 million - but then you have to remember Nixon and his CREEPs orchestrated a dirty tricks campaign to guarantee running against a massively unpopular McGovern.

The most recent Democratic win on this scale would be in 1964, with LBJ riding on Kennedy's legacy and against an (then) extreme conservative opponent in Goldwater where Johnson got 61 percent over Goldwater's 38 percent and a 43 million over 27 million popular vote turnout. 

I could go back to 1936 when FDR blew Alf Landon out of the water with a 60 percent vs. 36 percent result, but you get my drift. Harris getting 63 percent would top every other electoral trouncing to achieve a Blowout For the Ages. Even if that percentage slides down, if she's anywhere near Reagan's 58 percent turnout we're still talking a huge win trump and the GOP can't lie about.

One other thing that accompanied those big blowouts in 1984, 1972, 1964, and 1936 (and even the milder landslides we'd see from Eisenhower's 1952-1956 wins for example) were the Electoral College results (maps are from the 270towin website):

It would be pretty to see a Harris/Walz Electoral Map where most of the United States will color in as Blue...

I would argue that back in those days the geographic divisions between Democratic and Republican - or Liberal and Conservative - voters were not as severe as we have today. Back then, the states were pretty well mixed between the major parties, and moderates between them would slide one election to the next between candidates without fear of being disloyal. 

You could get an Electoral College map that would overexaggerate the popular vote wins because the winning candidate got past the bare minimum to win there (Mondale almost lost his home state in 1984 by 2000 votes! And we know how Hillary lost Wisconsin and Michigan by similar margins to our detriment...). In today's partisan environment - and where liberals and conservatives relocated to states more attuned to their worldviews - it's not as likely for Harris to flip so many states Democratic the way LBJ and FDR did in their day. 

Having said that, if Harris is garnering - and keeping - 63 percent of voters by Election Day, that HAS to mean a large number of once-solid Republicans are abandoning their partisan stance (at least for this cycle), and across a number of otherwise solid Republican-held Red states to where a massive Electoral College win is in the pipeline. Not just Harris keeping the states Biden won in 2020, and not just flipping key battleground states like North Carolina and maybe Florida, and not just the almost-real possibility of finally flipping Texas: I'm talking nearly every Red state could be in play with those numbers (save for of course deep Red states like West Virginia, South Carolina, Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho). Dear 9 readers of this blog: Even ALASKA is in play.

...

Okay, with all THAT said, this "What If" fantasy is pretty to think so, but in the real world my track record for predicting things hasn't been all that great to begin with.

Like I said near the beginning of this wishful thinking, that early 63 percent lead can easily slide down as more voters show up and if more of them are leaning Republican and trump. The trend may look nice but actual voter turnout is what counts, and the early pro-Harris counts from Republican voters could just be that voting bloc getting their ballots done before they change their minds.

But... given that a sizable GOP voter bloc IS voting Harris and getting away from the once-rigid partisan voting habits, we ought to consider the reality that Harris is getting way above the now-standard 50-to-52 percent of winning we've seen in recent cycles. Even if Harris matches the more modest result of Obama's big win in 2008 of 53 percent, we're talking 83 million votes (a nice boost over 2020) and numbers that trump can't challenge.

Voter turnout remains key, fellow Americans.

We need 99 million or so of y'all to show up and vote Harris/Walz for the blowout we need to keep America free from trumpian misrule.

This is what 99 million Harris votes could look like

Let's do this.

What the trump Hate Rally Means

In the final push towards Election Day, trump announced in early October a major rally in Madison Square Garden this Sunday with all the big name celebrities he could find - along with a number of Far Right media rage artists - to make his "big pitch" to the American People.

A lot of observers immediately compared it to the infamous American (Nazi) Bund rally of 1939, as trump's open love of Hitler and open desire to impose his brand of fascism on the nation made such comparisons unavoidable.

Well, this Sunday trump held his rally.

This is how bad it was. (via Marina Dunbar at the Guardian (US)):

Outrage is continuing to mount following the racist anti-Puerto Rican remarks at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in New York as Democrats, celebrities and even some Republicans condemned the incident.

Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe came under fire for comments made about Latinos and Puerto Rico at the Sunday rally.

“I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” he said, among other controversial remarks.

In the hours following, Democrats and Hispanic groups on both sides of the political aisle have condemned the comments as “offensive” and “derogatory”.

trump never did work with dog whistles. he always went straight for the bullhorn to express his rage and fear towards Latinos (and Blacks, and Asians, and women, and Jews, and every other demographic that he couldn't comprehend or respect). And at that rally, he let the haters and fearmongers like Hinchcliffe go straight for the bullhorns to announce as loud as possible how vicious they are.

That quote Dunbar referenced wasn't even the worst of it. David A. Graham at the Atlantic documented more Far Right atrocity:

We might as well start with the lowlight of last night’s Trump campaign rally at Madison Square Garden. That would be Tony Hinchcliffe, a podcaster who’s part of Joe Rogan’s circle, and who was the evening’s first speaker.

“These Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside,” he joked. “Just like they did to our country...”

Hinchcliffe defamed and derided every Latino in the United States, not just the migrants crossing the borders to find work and homes for their families, but also every Latino whose lineage in this country stretch back centuries: As far back as the Mexican Tejanos who sided with Sam Houston to form a Texan Republic in the 1830s, and with all the Californian and Southwest Latinos who came with the territory grabs after the Mexican-American War in the 1840s.

Hinchcliffe - and by extension trump and every Republican who worked that rally - basically insulted Puerto Ricans - who are by birth American citizens and every bit the equals of these Republican haters - for no other reason than that they are Spanish-speaking Hispanic residents of the United States.

None of this was a joke. It was intentional. All of trump's rally was a festival of racist drivel (as Graham notes):

Other speakers were only somewhat better. A childhood pal of Donald Trump’s called Vice President Kamala Harris “the anti-Christ” and “the devil.” The radio host Sid Rosenberg called her husband, Doug Emhoff, “a crappy Jew.” Tucker Carlson had a riff about Harris vying to be “the first Samoan-Malaysian, low-IQ former California prosecutor ever to be elected president.” Stephen Miller went full blood-and-soil, declaring, “America is for Americans and Americans only” (In 1939, a Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden promised “to restore America to the true Americans.”)...

Only after this did Trump take the stage and call Harris a “very low-IQ individual.” He vowed, “On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history.” He proposed a tax break for family caregivers, but the idea was quickly lost in the sea of offensive remarks...

This is how far fear and racism have driven the modern Republican Party. And this is what trump thinks is a winning message for his campaign, even as the expected outrage and blowback are dominating this last week of the election.

Republicans who are not MAGA diehards reacted with dismay and horror—presumably at the political ramifications, because they can’t possibly be surprised by the content at this point. Politico Playbook, a useful manual of conventional wisdom, this morning cites Republicans fretting over alienating Puerto Ricans and Latinos generally (Yesterday, Harris visited a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia and received the endorsement of the Puerto Rican pop superstar Bad Bunny.).

“Stay on message,” pleaded Representative Anthony D’Esposito, a New York Republican in a tight reelection race. That’s ridiculous. This—all of this—is the message of Trump’s campaign. Other Republicans may cringe at the coarseness of these comments, or worry that they will cost votes, but they made their choice long ago, and have stuck with them despite years of bigotry and other ugliness.

Trump is running on nativism, crude stereotypes, and lies about immigrants. He has demeaned Harris in offensive and personal terms. He’s attacked American Jews for not supporting him. His disdain for Puerto Rico is long-standing, and his callousness after Hurricane Maria in 2017 was one of the most appalling moments of an appalling presidency. He feuded with the island’s elected officials, his administration tried to block aid, and he tried to swap the American territory for Greenland...

Reports on social media are rife with planned pro-Harris rallies in major Puerto Rican communities in places like Allentown, Pennsylvania, a battleground state that can easily side to Harris if enough angry Puerto Ricans show up at the ballots. I can tell you Florida holds one of the largest stateside population of Puerto Ricans, and I know them to be insanely patriotic as well as culturally attuned to their own community (and the ones I knew were mostly Republican, one was even deeply MAGA. I wonder how they're feeling about their idol trump now).

The residents in Puerto Rico are ironically enough American citizens, but because of the territorial status they can't vote in federal elections. They must be fuming at their inability to punch back at trump and the Republicans for this travesty. (If the Democrats win Congress this 2024, they need to address this injustice by granting Puerto Rico statehood at the earliest.) One can hope that the 5.6 million who DO live in the states and who CAN vote will avenge their loved ones back home.

This does beg a question: Why? Why at this late stage when trump and the GOP need to scrounge for every undecided voter still out there, when they need to appeal to a more broad - and less racist - demographic of Americans, why did trump and company go Full Racist on the national stage?

Part of it is because trump genuinely believes this is a winning message. he ran on an openly racist campaign against Mexicans, Chinese, and Middle Easterners the second he came down that escalator in June 2015, and he thinks it helped him "win" a broken Electoral College that 2016... even as he ignores how he lost the popular vote that year, and that the same campaigning failed him in 2020. 

The other major reason is desperation. The early voting numbers, while not officially counted, are arguably trending towards Harris and the Democratic Party by landslide numbers. The way the turnout is going, it's looking like Harris can easily win enough battleground states to where trump's cries of "stolen votes" or act of sabotage won't work.

So he's doing what he did in the lead-up to the January 6th Insurrection: Rile up his faithful and violent MAGA base with derogatory race-baiting. Make the racists who are already believing the worst about Mexicans and Haitians and now Puerto Ricans into fearing them even more, driving that fear into hate and making that hate fuel acts of violence.

I said this earlier:

The observation gained by trump's constant calls for his followers to "show up, be wild" is that he wants confrontation between the Far Right and the rest of the nation. He wants more Charlottesvilles, trump wants more moments where his extremists have free reign to attack the Left-leaning counter-protests, and induce terror in average Americans so that they dare not question him or his grabs for power and money. trump believes he can profit from the chaos spurred by street fights sparked by the Nazis and extremists that back him, and that when the blood starts flowing the rest of White America - who are not as to-the-bone racist as he is, but still driven by certain prejudices - will panic and side with him and the Republicans in the coming battle...

If trump doesn't win at the ballot box this November 5th, and if trump can't win in the courtrooms following the election with his false claims of "stolen votes," trump will go to Phase Three: street war and chaos. If he cannot rule he will do everything to ruin.

We cannot let trump win either way. Stop him at the ballots, and stop his followers from whatever acts of violence they hope to inflict on the rest of America.

Get out the vote, people. Make it a Blue Wave, to wash away every trace of trump's rage and fear.

Let This Be a Sign Of a Strong Blue Wave This 2024

I still check on Infidel753's blog every Sunday - he does a weekly wrap-up of other online tidbits to read that are solid and cool - and I picked up on his article "Why I Anticipate a Blue Wave" from a few days ago. Inf makes some reasonable observations about what he calls "The Dobbs Effect":

My main reason for expecting a very substantial Democratic win is straightforward.  Since the Dobbs decision, I have believed that this election will be dominated by the abortion-rights issue, and nothing that has happened since then has given me any reason to change that assessment.  The need to restore and protect abortion rights will lead some Republicans (mostly women) to vote for Democrats, and will motivate many people to vote who would not otherwise have bothered.  These effects will swamp and overwhelm all other factors and will determine the outcome.

My supporting evidence for this claim is the results of all the abortion referenda, and almost all the elections, held since the Dobbs decision.  Every time abortion rights have been put to a public vote, they have won overwhelmingly, even in very red states.  Moreover, turnout in these referenda has been high, suggesting both that many Republicans are voting for abortion rights, and that many new voters are being motivated to participate.  As for the elections, in case after case since Dobbs, Democratic candidates have done ten or fifteen points better than the historic norm for the state or district involved.  Sometimes that shift has been big enough to allow the Democrat to win in a "red" district, sometimes not, but the point is that the shift is almost always there.  This recent election in Alaska continued the pattern.  Voters are well aware that Democrats in office will uphold abortion rights, while Republicans will attack them.

Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.  This axiom applies to voting as much as to anything else.  I can't think of any reason why the abortion-rights factor would not dominate the federal election just as much as it has dominated other elections since Dobbs (if anything, it's increasing in importance).  Moreover, most of those surprising election and referendum results since Dobbs were not anticipated by polling, which predicted much closer, more "normal" outcomes.  This shows that the Dobbs effect is not being captured by polling.  That may be because many Republicans are telling pollsters they expect to vote Republican again and only changing their minds at the last moment, in the voting booth; it could also be that the pollsters' turnout models are not capturing the effect of so many new voters participating.  It's likely that the current polling we're seeing for the federal election is similarly missing the Dobbs effect, for the same reasons...

Infidel shared in his Sunday round-up link to a USA Today report that is tracking the Early Voting turnout - which has seen an increase in turnout compared to 2020 - showing that where overall turnout is balanced between Democratic and Republican voters, the percentage voting for Harris is at 63 percent(!). All things being equal, we can conclude that a significant percent - at least double-digits - of Republicans have crossed the aisle to support the Dems. Whether this translates to down-ballot seats isn't known, but if the Dobbs ruling is truly pushing moderate pro-choice Republicans to change sides those results should favor the whole Democratic ticket.

Again, this is not just speculation or wishful thinking.  It requires only that the voters behave as they have done in every election since the Dobbs ruling, and that the polls fail to predict this effect just as they failed to predict it in all those earlier cases.  Imagine if this November every state and district votes ten percent more Democratic than it historically has, or even just five percent.  A swing of five percent would mean a landslide; ten percent would be an annihilating tsunami.  I'm not saying something like that definitely will happen, but it would be consistent with the pattern of the last two years...

The polling, as Infidel noted, doesn't seem to pick up on the shifts happening with women voters - they seem to stick to the same 2020 models that White Women voters will stay with a Republican Party that devastated their health care rights two years afterward and are threatening even more harm to come - and as always the caveat is that voter turnout still matters. That 63 percent vote for Harris in early voting (with 34 to trump) is tempered by that same article noting the voters waiting for Election Day itself support trump at 52 percent over Harris' 35 percent with the same group... but that's nowhere near the numbers Harris is getting and promises to get by November 5th. Put those two sets together and the average you get - 63+35 for Harris, 34+52 to trump - splits to a 49 percent Harris vs. 43 percent trump result (the 7 percent different is going to third parties as usual). 

Of course, results will vary from state to state - not every Red state will shift 10 percent to favor Democrats, some may not even shift 5 percent - but if enough states DO shift in favor for Harris and the Democratic Party, we should see an increase in states (and Electoral Votes) more than Biden's results in 2020.

Those hopes I have of securing battleground states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin grow stronger. The odds of keeping Georgia Blue as well grow greater. The possibility of flipping Texas, Ohio, Florida, even Kansas and Nebraska (maybe even Missouri) - any other states where the abortion rights referendum have happened or are happening now - are within reach of Democratic - and pro-choice - voters angered by the Culture War bullshit of the Far Right in their own communities.

Again. Voter turnout matters. Every vote in favor of Harris - and Democratic Senators, and Democratic Congresscritters, and State Legislators - needs to get into the ballot boxes now while Early Voting is still happening or on Election Day itself on Tuesday November 5th. Every blue vote matters, everybody. Stopping trump and stopping the Republican War on Women (and minorities, and immigrants, and schools, and Social Security, and...) is the mission.

Let's fucking GOOOOOO, America. Vote for Harris and every Democratic candidate you've got on the ballot. Vote like your life and your liberty and your families and friends are on the line. Because it all is on the line this 2024.

Update: thinking again about how close certain states were in 2020, if we consider a five percent shift minimum in favor of Harris for the Electoral count, the website 270towin has a map where states within five percent popular vote were left blank:

Now consider ALL of those blank states flipped Blue for Harris. Some already went for Biden - Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and especially Georgia - but now add in North Carolina and Florida(!). Even without the huge gain of flipping Texas - or my personal desire to see Kansas and Nebraska flip because THAT would break the "Heartland of America is Conservative" narrative in the Beltway media - that's still a massive 349 EV count and a good chance the popular vote for Harris goes over 90 million(!).

The only thing to worry at this point is if DeSantis goes full MAGA and declares secession in order to stop the Electoral certification. If Texas flips Democrat, I'll guarantee you the state GOP led by that jerkass Abbott will.

Beltway Cowards

Whatever happened to the courage of the Washington Post?

News broke today about one of the major providers of news, as word got out that the Washington Post publisher squashed a planned endorsement for Kamala Harris for President, going with a weak "no endorsement" message that violates the editorial freedom that the newspaper enjoyed for decades. Via David Folkenflik at NPR:

Even though the presidential race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is neck and neck, The Washington Post has decided not to make a presidential endorsement for the first time in 36 years, the publisher and CEO announced Friday.

"We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates," Will Lewis wrote in an opinion piece published on the paper's website. He referenced the paper's policy in the decades prior to 1976, when, following the Watergate scandal that the Post broke, it endorsed Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter. The last time the Post did not endorse a presidential candidate in the general election was 1988, according to a search of its archives.

If the WaPo refused to endorse in 1988, it happened at a time and between candidates - Bush the Elder and Mike Dukakis - where the stakes weren't at severe as today. What's galling is that the editors of the paper were working on an actual endorsement, only to get shut down by their paymaster:

Colleagues learned the news from the editorial page editor, David Shipley, at a tense meeting shortly before Lewis' announcement. The meeting was characterized by two people with direct knowledge of discussions on condition of anonymity to speak about internal matters.

Shipley had approved an editorial endorsement for Harris that was being drafted earlier this month, according to three people with direct knowledge. He told colleagues the decision was to endorse was being reviewed by the paper's billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos. That's the owner's prerogative and is a common practice...

But had newspaper owners before stepped in like this? I don't recall anything from the 1988 non-endorsement situation where the owner intervened. If it happened back then, it should have led to massive rebukes and resignations, because the independent decision-making and integrity of the editors and reporters would have been disrespected beyond repair. (Personal note, I was in Journalism school at UF at the time, and if that had happened we'd have been discussing the consequences for months afterward.)

Colleagues were said to be "shocked" and uniformly negative. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan, who has been highly critical of Trump as autocratic, told NPR he had resigned from the editorial board as a consequence.

Former Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron, who led the newsroom to acclaim during Trump's presidency, denounced the decision starkly.

"This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty," Baron said in a statement to NPR. "Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners). History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage."

The Washington Post Guild, which represents newsroom employees and other staff, posted a message on Twitter saying it was concerned about management's interference in the journalism, considering that the editorial board already had drafted a statement of support for Harris.

"We are already seeing cancellations from once loyal readers," the statement said.

The Post isn't the only paper committing journalistic malpractice on this matter. The Los Angeles Times - one of the major West Coast papers for the second-largest metro in the United States - also had their owner/publisher interfering with any editorial decision to support a presidential choice. That move did lead to major resignations (via the AP News):

The editorials editor of the Los Angeles Times has resigned after the newspaper’s owner blocked the editorial board’s plans to endorse Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president, a journalism trade publication reported Wednesday.

Mariel Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review in an interview that she resigned because the Times was remaining silent on the contest in “dangerous times.”

“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Garza said. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up...”

Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review that the board had intended to endorse Harris and she had drafted the outline of a proposed editorial.

An L.A. Times spokesperson did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

The L.A. Times Guild Unit Council & Bargaining Committee said it was “deeply concerned about our owner’s decision to block a planned endorsement in the presidential race.”

“We are even more concerned that he is now unfairly assigning blame to Editorial Board members for his decision not to endorse,” the guild said in a statement. “We are still pressing for answers from newsroom management on behalf of our members.”

Two other editors followed Garza out the door over this scandal, and I'm willing to bet the remaining editors are struggling to keep whatever remains of their staff from open rebellion.

The New York Times - the other major newspaper of record - hasn't even come out with an endorsement which is shocking seeing we're barely ten days away from the actual election and deep into Early Voting across most of the country. The silence from that editorial board - which has shown a sickening habit of whitewashing sanewashing everything trump's ever done even in the 1980s! - is deafening.

These media outlets may claim - or in the New York Times' case, they may yet claim - they aren't supporting either candidate, but by their (in)action these papers' owners and publishers are giving trump their silent consent. They refuse to acknowledge the many flaws - the felony convictions, the fraud liability, the judicial finding he committed rape, the many other criminal charges he still faces - that establish how unqualified - how inhuman - trump is for high office. They willfully ignore the many crimes trump committed and are signing off on all the crimes trump threatens to commit if he ever regains control.

These billionaires owning our newspapers and media outlets want trump to win: They know they won't get harmed in trump's promised autocratic regime, and care only for the massive tax cuts trump and the Republicans will ensure. They also know that if they refuse to support Kamala or any other Democratic candidate they won't get political backlash or punishment for it, because by their own nature Democrats are not bullies like trump and the Far Right.

The Beltway media - from the New York Times to the L.A. Times and now the Washington Post - have been washing away every sin and flaw trump committed and continues to commit on the national stage, both as a corrupt businessman and now as a corrupt political disaster.

The national media should be defending the nation from trump instead of surrendering to his threats.

Cowards. Every single one.

Update: Even the Post's columnists disagree with Bezos' and Lewis' decision.

The Washington Post’s decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake. It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love, and for which we have worked a combined 218 years. This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them — the precise points The Post made in endorsing Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020. There is no contradiction between The Post’s important role as an independent newspaper and its practice of making political endorsements, both as a matter of guidance to readers and as a statement of core beliefs. That has never been more true than in the current campaign. An independent newspaper might someday choose to back away from making presidential endorsements. But this isn’t the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution.

It's co-signed by Perry Bacon Jr., E.J. Dionne Jr., David Ignatius, Ruth Marcus, Dana Milbank, Catherine Rampell, Eugene Robinson, Jennifer Rubin, and Karen Tumulty.

I'm screen-capturing it in case Lewis or Bezos decide to wash this away as well.

The Washington Post likes to advertise that "Democracy Dies in Darkness" as part of their marketing, but today the goddamned cowards turned off the lights.

Update Also: I've been told the New York Times Op-Ed endorsed Kamala Harris back in September, back when people - myself included - weren't paying much attention. It still doesn't excuse the paper's overall willingness to sanewash trump's open racist extremism and calls to violence.