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

Update: All of this was wrong. All of this was a lie. All of America is fucked up, don't tell me otherwise.

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

Update: ...

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.

Think Happy Thoughts

I woke up Tuesday morning to a bad thought that if I waited until Election Day itself - November 5th, kiddos! - that I could show up to my precinct and find out the local Republicans somehow submitted a fake ballot in my name and take away my vote. 

Paranoid as I was - they can't really do that, right? - I decided to forgo the tradition of voting on the day itself. I went to the Bartow Early Voting location to go ahead and get my vote in the machine.

At the Polk Street Community Center

As I talked about earlier, there were key matters to vote on this 2024 election cycle, above all making sure donald "34 Felony Counts" trump won't cheat his way back into the White House and voting for a saner, competent Kamala Harris:

BALLZ TO THE WALZ, AMERICA

I made sure to vote for the Senate seat:

FCK YOU, "MEDICARE FRAUD" SCOTT

I made sure to vote Democratic for the Congressional, State legislative, and county seats by the by.

And of the six Florida Amendment referenda, here's my votes YES on Three (decriminalizing marijuana) and Yes on Four (Abortion rights for women).

Damn, the ballot sheets are longer than my arm...

Let there be no confusion: This is about letting
women control their own bodies instead of the
Culture War wingnuts

Part of me is worried I didn't ink that completely filled...

So now at least for myself, it's all over except waiting for the ballot counts.

And GODS HELP ME, I'm still stressed about it. And I know I'm not the only one. 

So let's try to look for the positivity reflected in how there is a better mood among Democratic and Left-leaning Independent voters heading into November. Anne Laurie over at Balloon Juice shared some good vibes via a post on Substack from Kevin Dillon:

My texts are full these days of “are we gonna be okay?” and, then, a beat later, “are you really sure?” Over and over, my answers are basically “yes” and “as sure as I can be...”

So, to save some time and in the spirit of “to hell with it,” here in one place is what data and my gut tell me I believe: she’ll win and outperform the polls. Trump will be rejected, as he has been in every election since he first became president - 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023 - either where he was on the ballot directly or by proxy through candidates closely identified with him, including in multiple of the same swing states we’re all obsessing over now.

His campaign’s relentless focus on anti-trans ads will come to be seen as an epic strategic blunder, in addition to unforgivably morally repugnant. We’ll acknowledge that the supposedly disciplined, well-planned campaign to beat Biden never quite found its footing ever again once the candidate changed. We’ll remember that his one and only, and very close, win in 2016 came when he was, despite controversy, new and fresh and funny (to his people at least - and no small amount of journalists.) He was energetic, went EVERYWHERE, and was able to at least occasionally give the impression of being in on the joke and enjoying himself. In 2016, he had an underrated strategic ambiguity on what kind of Republican he was, whether promising to protect Social Security or maintaining a wink-wink ambivalence on abortion, aided by voters’ inability to truly imagine him doing the most outrageous things, or the horror of Roe being overturned. In his own way, he had a kind of disciplined, positive and constructive message about what he would do: make America great again, build the wall, drain the swamp. In 2024, he has none of it, much less the vitality and clarity of eight years ago.

We’re going to see afresh what’s been staring us in the face since 2022: Dobbs was a political earthquake, with aftershocks still reverberating out. It wasn’t just digested and processed in 2022 and now behind us. As much as Roe catalyzed a new movement for its opponents, brought in new groups of voters (many crossing old partisan lines), and energized activists for decades; Dobbs is doing the same here and now.

To the extent poll error happens, I believe it is likelier to be in her favor than his after eight years of pollsters obsessively focused on how to not miss Trump supporters. We are all understandably so traumatized by 2016’s loss, and so many were surprised by 2020’s margin (though notably, not the Biden campaign itself) that, even though there are fairly convincing theories for how each happened, we’ve become hostages of superstition and anxiety - even when we can’t quite articulate a good theory for why it would happen this time. And all this despite the various modeling geniuses gently and repeatedly reminding us there’s no iron law that every error happens in the same direction cycle after cycle, indeed that it might be a little weird for it to happen three cycles in a row...

We have to remind ourselves that trump's NEVER won the popular vote, that he's incredibly unpopular among the broad range of voters (even among some Republicans). We need to remember that unpopularity hurts him against Harris whose popularity numbers have gone up during the final stretch of the campaign (much like Obama's in 2008). I've said before people tend to vote for the candidate they like the most - it's not rational but emotional - and similar to Biden (who was popular then) outperforming trump in 2020 Harris can do the same this 2024.

Like Dillon noted, a lot of us on the Center-Left of the political spectrum were emotionally scarred  watching trump grab the Electoral College away from the popular vote winner Hillary (her unpopularity due to decades of hathos was a major factor in her loss). A lot of us still can't comprehend how 74 million people voted for trump in 2020 after all of the incompetency, aggression, open graft, and failures of his administration; and we're arguably terrified of the possibility he's convinced even more to vote again for him after his felony convictions and civil court fraud and rape findings.

We have to look to the sizable number of Republican voters showing signs of refusing to vote for trump again. There is hefty opposition by former GOP officials and former members of trump's own Cabinet, publicly denouncing him on a scale never before seen. We never had a similar number of aides and Cabinet Secretaries do this to the likes of Nixon or Ford or Carter or Reagan or Bush the Elder or Bill Clinton or Bush the Lesser or Obama; even when those administrations - especially Dubya's considering the failures of the economy and the mismanaged War on Terror - were clear disasters. These are things even disconnected voters will notice as they make their choice.

We need to enjoy the reality of how Harris and her Veep co-runner Walz are conducting themselves in this last mad dash to the finish line: With joy and exuberance and feistiness and hope. We need that hope to convert into turnout by the millions - higher than the 81 million Biden secured in 2020 - and to regain a kind of spiritual balance we lost 8 years ago.

Let's get the vote out, everyone, and vote for the right things: Vote for sanity and stability in the White House with Kamala. Vote for women's rights and freedom from wingnut cruelty. Vote for better representatives in our legislatures both state and federal. Vote FOR the bright future of 2025 and not the darkness of a trumpian dystopia.

(Hands still shaking while drinking iced tea) I'm calm... I'm perfectly fine... I AM A CENTER OF PEACE AND SERENITY! Ahem. Sorry.

This Is It. Early Voting Begins for 2024.

Early voting started in a number of states already, and while the turnout is higher than expected in several of them - North Carolina and Georgia especially - there's not really any hope that this turnout favors the Democrats over the evil that is MAGA trump.

We're in the final lap of this damned election cycle, yet another horse race for a national media that treats it all like a game while the rest of us living in the real world are terrified of the outcomes. I've been here before - on the edge of a war none of us can escape - we all have, and our nerves are as frayed as my friend Emily's:

So I've been feeling anxious & a little paralyzed about a lot of things that I very much have no control over & I'm trying to remember that I have no control over those things but I can have input. Election Day is coming up FAST. We can't control the outcome, but we can have input. Here's one way ⬇️

[image or embed]

— Emily L. Hauser (@emilylhauser.bsky.social) October 20, 2024 at 1:11 AM

If we existed in a nation that wasn't coping with a broken Electoral College system - and a voting system vulnerable to trumpian sabotage - maybe we'd be feeling more calm and saner heading towards Election Day. 

All we can control - each of us, in the corners of America where we live - is making sure we can get out to vote when we can - for example early voting to avoid the lines on Election Day for those who haven't gotten mail-in ballots - and then making sure within our circle of friends - the ones voting for Kamala Harris and for Democratic Senators and for Democratic Representatives and for Democratic State officials - also get their votes in when they can.

I would recommend getting to early voting if you're in battleground states especially ones where trump and his RNC lackeys are threatening to send in "poll workers" to delay, derail, or deny voters their right to vote on November 5th itself. It's harder for them to do it at the Early Voting locations due to the likelihood of interfering with NPA or GOP voters (they're hoping to sabotage the Democratic-heavy precincts filled with ethnic and youth voters).

The Republicans do not trust the actual majority of voters: They themselves are a minority party using suppression and gerrymandering to give them political power they don't deserve. The best way to stop the GOP from sabotaging - overwhelming the zone with their shit - is to overwhelm the ballot boxes with actual voters voting against that shit.

We can do this America.

Vote Democratic Party across the board. Deny trump and his Far Right cohort any victory everywhere.

trump Off The Rails But Will The Beltway Even NOTICE?

Something weird has happened to this Darkest Timeline to where the only way to describe the craziness is simply copy/paste the AP News headline:

I felt it was necessary to include a photo of his hand gesture

I haven't dared check to see how the New York Times tried to "sanewash" - yes, that is a word now, and ironically it was aimed at liberals back in 2020 - trump's increasing public displays of dementia and idiocy.

Remember how angry I was at the mainstream media for how they went after Joe Biden's increasing signs of aging and mental fatigue? trump had been showing similar signs, with public displays of meandering thought, failure to keep names straight, open angry outbursts that were one N-Word drop away from becoming blatant five-alarm fires: And yet the major news outlets - the Times especially - were going out of their way to clean up trump's ramblings to make him appear functional and coherent (via Jon Allsop at Columbia Journalism Review):

As applied to Trump, the idea is that major mainstream news outlets are routinely taking his incoherent, highly abnormal rants—be they on social media or at in-person events—and selectively quoting from them to emphasize lines that, in isolation, might sound coherent or normal, thus giving a misleading impression of the whole for people who didn’t read or watch the entire thing. In her column, Molloy called out CNN for sanitizing a Trump screed about tomorrow’s presidential debate and the New York Times for omitting an allusion to a conspiracy theory about vaccines and autism from its summary of a Trump pledge to tap Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to help make health policy; since then, she and others have applied the same analysis to coverage of Trump’s incoherent remarks—particularly around the costs of childcare and a proposed Elon Musk–led “efficiency commission”—at an economic forum in New York. “This ‘sanewashing’ of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism,” Molloy wrote. “It’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy.”

The threat being a dementia-riddled trump in the White House will act even worse than how trump behaved between 2017 to 2021, and rely even more on handlers and lackeys who will get free rein to commit their own atrocities with trump's rambling racist seal of approval.

But these were signs cropping even back then - Recall how trump tried to redraw literal maps to cover for his brain farts - and it should have been the mainstream media's duty to highlight trump's growing dementia and failures to prove himself capable of leadership.

The presidency is not a horse race: It's not about who wins or who loses. It's about who LEADS the nation, and that requires a level of coherence and competency to ensure a majority of Americans - and most of the free world - are safe and secure in their persons and livelihoods.

trump's inability to even pretend - allowing his mind to ramble off in directions it really shouldn't go - should be a massive warning sign to Americans - especially those of us who are voting - that he and his Republican allies can't be trusted with high office.

For the LOVE OF GOD, America. trump's brain is toast. Do NOT vote for him.

trump Normalizing Terror

Update: Thank you again Batocchio, for including this blog at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! To everyone showing up, I hope you're getting the vote out for Democrats across every ballot. I'm heading to the Florida Early Voting poll place in a few minutes. Balz to the Walz, America! And uh, please ask your friends to buy my book. (hey if trump can grift, so can I and with better product!) --->

While my part of the world of Central Florida is recovering from the wreckage of Hurricane Milton, other states are still recovering from the damage left by the previous storm Helene. Places like upper Georgia and the mountain regions of North Carolina and Tennessee were ravaged by mass flooding and erasure of entire towns.

At least, some of those places ought to be recovering with help from the federal government, except that recovery officers are avoiding efforts in areas suddenly swarming with so-called "militias" convinced that FEMA is a threat to "their liberty and property" (via Gary D. Robertson and Sarah Brumfield at AP News):

Federal disaster workers paused and then changed some of their hurricane-recovery efforts in North Carolina, including abandoning door-to-door visits, after receiving threats that they could be targeted by a militia, officials said, as the government response to Helene is targeted by runaway disinformation.

The threats emerged over the weekend. The Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Monday that it received a call Saturday about a man with an assault rifle who made a comment “about possibly harming” employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency working in the hard-hit areas of Lake Lure and Chimney Rock, in the North Carolina mountains.

Authorities got a description of a suspect’s vehicle and license plate and later identified him as William Jacob Parsons, 44, of Bostic, a small community about 60 miles west of Charlotte. Sheriff’s officials said in a statement that Parsons — who was armed with a handgun and a rifle — was charged with “going armed to the terror of the public,” a misdemeanor. He was released after posting bond.

Threatening harm with firearms is a MISDEMEANOR???

FEMA confirmed in a statement Monday that it adjusted operations. It emphasized that disaster-recovery centers remain open and that FEMA continues “to help the people of North Carolina with their recovery.”

Workers from the agency’s disaster-assistance teams — who help survivors apply for FEMA aid and connect them with additional state and local resources — have stopped going door to door and instead are working from fixed locations while the potential threats are assessed, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they could not publicly discuss details of the operations...

The Washington Post reported Sunday that the U.S. Forest Service, which is supporting hurricane recovery work, sent a message to multiple federal agencies, warning that FEMA had advised all federal responders in Rutherford County to leave the county immediately.

The message stated that National Guard troops had encountered “armed militia” saying they were “out hunting FEMA.”

Which begs the question "WHY are they hunting federal agents who are working on RECOVERING devastated communities in their literal neck of the woods?"

Because those "militias" are getting hit by "runaway disinformation" coming directly from donald trump himself (via Barbara L. McQuade at Bloomberg): 

Shortly after the storm, presidential candidate Donald Trump told rallygoers in Michigan that the Biden administration “stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.” This is not true (and undocumented immigrants can’t vote). Yet these claims have been amplified on social media by billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump adviser Stephen Miller. A scroll through the replies to FEMA’s posts on the Musk-owned social media platform known as X shows a slew of ugly insults and statements echoing their lies.

In addition, Trump has also baselessly alleged that the Biden-Harris administration has failed to communicate with the affected states, a claim refuted by their governors, both Democrats and Republicans. Trump has also said without evidence that Biden and North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, denied relief to Republican communities...

trump is lying because he knows enough members of his wingnut voting base already believe the worst about federal support - thanks to decades of anti-government narratives pushed by conservative Republicans from Goldwater to Reagan to Gingrich to today's GOP leadership - and will believe whatever he says they're doing is criminal even without any proof to his allegations.

trump wants his followers angry: Angry enough to make vile insults and threats on social media and government websites; Angry enough to arm themselves and go "hunting" for those agency workers to commit whatever level of violence they wish to inflict.

trump's objective with demonizing federal relief efforts - more than just trying to weaken those efforts to make Biden (and Harris by proxy) look bad to the national voter base - is to normalize violence towards our government. he's making it easier for these self-appointed "revolutionaries" to go on the warpath should he lose this November.

trump is trying to terrorize us. To make us cower or whimper for his mercy. To make us too afraid to do anything to stop him.

The only honest response is to stop him, and deny his effort to bully and steal his way back into the White House. These threats of violence are acts of desperation: trump cannot appeal to the broad base of American voters and so he's lashing out the only way he can. He's more afraid of us than we need to be of him.

The MAGA factions are already riled up to the point where they will attack their fellow neighbors, their communities, their fellow Americans - in victory, convinced trump will sanction their violence towards Latinos, Blacks, and women; in defeat, convinced they need to force insurrection and ruin - no matter what. In some respects, there's no stopping the wave of violence that's about to hit our communities.

But we need to be ready. We need to prepare to stand up for what we know is right and true about America, to deny trump's angry mobs any power over us.

You want to help people affected by the hurricanes? Provide aid to the recovery efforts as best you can. And get the vote out for Democrats from Harris on down who will deny trump and his ilk any future chance to threaten us again. 

I Survived Hurricane Milton But

Milton tore the roof off of Tropicana Field.

 

Image from CNN

The hurricane took the tarp cover but left behind the damned catwalks! NOOOOOOO.

LOOK HOW THEY MASSACRED MY BOY.

Seriously, Milton's caused a lot of damage, there's a number of horrifying deaths - most from a tornado that spawned on the Atlantic coast (Palm Beach Gardens) when the outer bands reached there - and as of Friday afternoon a lot of Hillsborough and Polk Counties are out of power.

Especially where I live. I'm doing this from my library workplace - Bartow had their grid back pretty quick this time - and part of me doesn't want to go home right now because they'll be no air conditioning or Internet access waiting for me.

Gotta go feed the kitties though.

Hopefully by tonight they'll have the power fixed. Hoping.

Florida 2024 General Election Ballot: LET'S EFFING GOOOOO

So here I am coping with the outer bands of Hurricane Milton crossing overhead, finding the Sample Ballot for the 2024 general election sitting in my mailbox.

I don't do mail-in, I tend to vote on Election Day itself, but in the meantime here's the information my fellow Polk County residents need and for my fellow Floridians to consider whenever they submit their votes to the ballot boxes.

(The nine regular readers of this blog probably already know how this is gonna play, but it doesn't hurt to refresh)

President

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AMERICA APPLE PIE AND EVERYONE YOU HOLD DEAR: do NOT vote trump. Considering everything I've written in the past eight years, my tune has not changed. trump is the most dangerous, self-absorbed, greedy, wrong-headed, racist, sexist, hate-driven son of a bitch this nation ever produced.

On the positive side, Kamala Harris has a record and reputation for competency, empathy, focus, commitment, sheer will. There is every GOOD reason to vote for Kamala.

Ballz to the Walz, people.

Meanwhile, RFK Jr is noticeably not on the ballot - which is funny in its own way - but he is on the ballot in other states, desperately trying to draw votes away from the Democratic tickets. Pay him no mind: His anti-vaxxing stance and his troubling personal misdeeds make him unlikeable to the liberal base. I'm asking all the independent voters (or the ones thinking to hold a protest vote re: Israel's genocide of Gaza) to just don't. The primary objective is to not give trump any advantage. HE'S the real threat.

Senate

There is a Senate seat open this cycle, the one occupied by Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott who is most deserving to get kicked out of it. Partly because it'll be funny to watch his ambitions to become the Senate Republican caucus leader crumble to ash; Mostly because Scott has been a terrible Senator and a destructive presence in Floridian politics.

Running against him on the Democratic ticket is Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a one-term congresswoman (who had won as part of the 2018 Blue Wave) with a background in academics and social work. She's mostly focused on gun background checks and relief efforts for Venezuelan refugees. She's solid and she's cool. VOTE FOR HER.

Congress

There's 28 House seats up for election in the state of Florida and 20 of those districts are ridiculously gerrymandered towards Republicans (Go FUCK yourself, DeSantis) so it would be an absolute delight if enough Democratic and Indy voters turned out the vote to where Democratic candidates can win about 14 or 15 of those seats to give DeSatan BOTH middle fingers. Please and Thank You.

If there's good news, it's that state party leader Nikki Fried worked to get a Democratic challenger in every congressional district, giving local voters incentives to show up and vote. So let's do that, Florida. Flip the Sunshine State Blue.

State Legislature

I know it's hard going at the state level, but with every House seat up for vote and half the state Senate seats up for vote, it sure would be nice for Democratic turnout to break the near-absolute hold the Republicans have held on Tallahassee since the 1990s. Given all the lobbyist corruption and calcification - the failures by the GOP to fix our homeowner insurance regulations and lowering of costs has become painful to residents and HOAs across the state - we need a shift in the power alignments to force through needed reforms that one-party rule will never seek. This is serious, Floridians. Pay attention to the state officials who need to get swept out of the legislature for failing to serve our needs.

State Supreme Court

Our state uses a retention voting process for appellate and Supreme Court positions, and in this cycle two state Justices - Renatha Francis and Meredith Sasso - are up for consideration after being on the bench one year (retention will earn them a six-year term). 

Both Francis and Sasso are DeSantis appointees: On that alone, voting them out would be a huge - and deserved - black mark on DeSantis' standing. Francis in fact was denied an earlier appointment to the high bench back in 2020 (!) but it was more procedural - she hadn't been on the state bar for the 10-year requirement - than political. However, Francis has had a troubled history as a circuit judge even before her appointment in 2023, and she was clearly a partisan hire.

Both Francis and Sasso were part of the ruling upholding a horrific "six-week ban" - which is medically impossible - and dissented on the decision to allow the Abortion referendum - which would codify women's rights to get the health care they need, undoing that six week ban and requiring more sensible state laws - so their position on abortion rights are pretty clear. Kick them off the bench, vote No. While it's likely DeSantis will replace them with other Far Right appointees, the signal needs to be sent to the Republicans that Floridians want their rights over our own persons upheld.

County Sheriff

For Polk, it means Grady Judd is up for re-election (where are the damn term limits?) but at least this cycle he's facing a challenger in Theodore Murray. Judd, I swear, is more of a media hog than DeSantis, and whether he's good at his job or not he's been in that seat for too long (five terms since 2004!). Vote for Murray. It's time for fresh leadership.

Supervisor of Elections

Well, Lori Edwards does such a good job of mailing out notices and providing information and offering proper electoral services. Also she's NPA and the other choice is a Republican. Keep up the good work, Lori!

State Amendments

I've posted about the 2024 referenda earlier, but here's a recap:

Amendment One is allowing Partisan School Board elections. I'm of a mind to allow it because it means we'll see who the Far Right Republicans support, but the common consensus is that this will make an already fraught electioneering for vital community offices - especially as the wingnuts are warring on teen reading and trans students - more combative. I was leaning the other way - not because I'm pro-Party but because I'm pro-:Let's See Who The Crooks Are" - but by now I've decided to vote No on this.

Amendment Two is over the Right to Hunt and Fish, which would open up more hunting seasons - and hunting targets - across Florida. This would be a massive disruption to already fragile ecosystems and a severe threat to many of the endangered animals still in our open lands. This ought to be a huge No from all us voters.

Amendment Three is to Legalize Marijuana for recreational use. We had a medicinal use amendment pass earlier, but now - especially as the federal government is looking to reschedule pot as a lesser banned substance - there's the need to reduce the criminalization and incarceration that's become a gross injustice in our War on Drugs. Again, I don't encourage drug use, but I also don't see why we're over-pursuing punishments for a non-lethal drug like marijuana. We should be treating pot use as a health issue, not a criminal one. I'm a Yes on this one.

Amendment Four is the biggie: Protecting Abortion Rights for women. This would enforce the right of access to the medical procedure for women at-risk and ensure the bans are set at more appropriate time limits (say 23 weeks instead of 6). DeSantis and the other hard-liners are fearmongering like crazy to stop this one from passing, but it's polling above the 60 percent supermajority needed to pass and in order to save the lives of thousands of at-risk women we need to vote Yes for this.

Amendment Five is another Homestead Exemption bill, this time to Adjust exemptions to Annual Inflation. It'll basically use the Cost of Living Index to increase tax cuts to homeowners with dire impact to city and county governments that NEED property tax revenues to balance their budgets. This is a hard No, even coming from a Florida homeowner, because I'm tired of these Republican tricks to gut tax revenues.

Amendment Six offers to Repeal Public Financing for Statewide Campaigns, which would essentially allow PACs and dark money to overtake the costly campaigning at the state level where candidates who can't afford to run will be shit out of luck. We need to go the other way and require public financing for ALL campaigns, to get the goddamn corrupt forces of lobbyists and the uber-rich dominating our electoral choices. This should be a hard No, everyone.

Polk County Amendments

There is one item for the county Charter - Merging the Efficiency Commission to the Charter Review Commission - which would clear out some of the committee requirements and extend the Efficiency commission's work cycle from 8 years to 12 years. I don't know, this doesn't seem all that efficient to prevent the commission from working in closer cycles to keep up with the constant changes and demands on county services and resources. This could increase the bureaucratic logjam instead of lessening it. I'm inclined to vote No unless someone can show me honest projections of costs and improvement.

Pasco County Mosquito Control Board

You know, when I lived in Pasco County this was a big deal. I even had people show up on this blog because it was the only thing posting any information about the choices. Well, alas, I don't live there anymore so I can't be sure. I do know there's two seats open (One and Three), all of the candidates are from New Port Richey (seriously, Land O Lakes?) this cycle and the best I would suggest is voting for the candidates with the coolest names (owstophittingme).

--

As I wrap this up, the hurricane weather is picking up, I'm hearing thunderstorms in the distance, and I know damn well the local McDonalds is closed. Gods help me, Milton is coming.

If I don't make it out: Promise me. PROMISE ME NED. Promise you will vote Kamala Harris and Democratic party straight down the ballot. Promise me, Floridians, to vote Yes on Amendment 4 to save women's lives.

I hope to see you at the ballot this November.

The Oncoming Milton

As I write this, a hurricane formed off the coast of Mexico and is projected to do something few hurricanes do: head straight east towards Florida. The models all predict Milton will hit the Tampa Bay area - between St. Petersburg and Bradenton - by Wednesday night. It's already a Category 5 and threatening to be one of the strongest storms we've ever seen (thank you, decades of climate denialism!). Even if an incoming northern front can break Milton into a lesser Cat, we're talking devastating storm surges along the Tampa Bay shoreline to where everything south of Clearwater and half the landmass in Tampa itself gets washed away forever.

I am living right in the path of that monster. And yet, I have my duty to my workplace: I have to stay and prep the library with my coworkers for any possible damage. By the time we're done with that, I won't have time to get out of the way of Milton. I'll have to do what I've done before: Hunker down with my cats, pray that my place doesn't get destroyed by high winds and that the flooding won't happen in my area, and wait for the power to come back on.

This is going to be a stressful week.

I'll try to blog once or twice before the power goes, but if I don't make it... If you don't hear from me by next week... Promise me you'll vote for Kamala Harris and every Democratic candidate across the board and stop that Shitgibbon once and for all.

(muttering) why the fuck won't that Weather Space Laser flatten the hell out of Mar-A-Lago, huh...?

What Trump Threatens

Update: Thank you Steve In Manhattan for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. I hope to see you all on the other side of Hurricane Milton as I'll be hunkering down in central Florida. If I don't make it... PLEASE get out all the votes for Harris/Walz and make sure trump goes away for good. And if I do make it... PLEASE get out all the votes for Harris/Walz and make sure trump goes away for good! Peace.

The hope is that the popular vote support for Kamala Harris - much like for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 - outpaces the vote for donald trump and that Kamala's numbers are strong enough like Joe's to win in convincing fashion with the Electoral College. trump has done nothing in his 2024 campaign to boost his standing with voters - he remains incredibly unpopular as of October 4th - to where it's unlikely he will ever win the popular vote.

What's troubling is how broken the Electoral College system is, to where trump can either repeat the upset he gained in 2016 or worse create enough chaos disrupting vote-counting to crash the election altogether.

American voters need to understand what's at stake here. People need to remember how disastrous trump was in the White House between 2017 through January 2021. We need to realize how trump threatens to be so much worse if he ever regains the presidency.

I know this will get long-winded, but know this:

trump threatens the entire concept of the Rule of Law. Just by his very existence. Never in our history - should trump bully, cheat, and lie his way into the White House - has a convicted felon reached the high office of the presidency. We had Eugene Debs running for it back in 1920 but he never stood a chance. We've had bad men, men with questionable morals at best - Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, LBJ, Nixon - as President but never before someone with 34 guilty counts from a New York jury and facing more felonies once the election passes. We will have a lawless criminal in a position to avoid legal judgment, willing to break even more laws - now that the Supreme Court made sitting Presidents virtually untouchable - to ensure he never answers for his crimes.

And trump will extend that lawlessness to exact revenge on his enemies, whomever he feels was responsible for "humiliating" him with these charges and convictions. he turned the Department of Justice - especially under William Barr - into an instrument of his vengeance, seeking any means to bring Hillary Clinton to trial over her accusing him of illegal ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign. In his second term, trump will go after everyone - Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary again, Obama, even Republicans like Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney who opposed trump in the public arena - he thinks wronged him. trump will even use the presidency to destroy the prosecutors, judges, and juries who held him liable in civil trials and guilty in the New York criminal trial. E. Jean Carroll will be the target of his darkest ire. 

trump will do everything he can to wipe clean the documented history of his sins, and will punish everyone to do so.

trump threatens the rights and welfare - the very lives - of women across the board. Thanks to trump's tenure between 2017 to 2021, the Republicans placed three Far Right anti-abortion Justices on the Supreme Court, the culmination of their 50-year war to undo the Roe V Wade ruling in 2022. They did this to appease their Culture War supporters, but doing so was an unpopular move. This 2024, the Republicans - trump included - are trying to hide their responsibility for taking away women's personal rights, but it's an open secret the Far Right want a total national ban on abortion - and even all forms of birth control - and trump will happily sign that kind of legislation for them.

You can tell trump is still eager to push for stricter abortion bans because he's spreading bald-faced lies about "post-birth abortions" happening in Democratic-led states that he conveniently won't name. You know his campaign is looking to curtail women's rights with his Vice Presidential pick JD Vance out there attacking "childless cat ladies" and insisting women should be at home in the kitchen birthing babies.

trump back in the White House means more women will find themselves punished in some form or another - hit with "childless" taxes, pushed out of the workplace, squeezed out of higher education grants/scholarships, gods help us even directly attacked by wingnut community groups looking to punish and conform - in order to force women - White and Young (even high-school age!) - into life roles they didn't want.

trump and his Republican allies will take away women's rights. This is not fearmongering: This is fact.

trump threatens the rights and safety of Latino / Black / Asian / Arab communities, even the ones who are citizens and legal residents. We know this already: trump has been openly racist and unapologetic about it for decades. We also know what trump did during his tenure: One of the first official acts of his administration was imposing a travel ban on people from the Middle East, creating a massive outcry and incredible burdens on families and foreign allies. We know trump created harsher policies dealing with illegals crossing the southern border, pushing a family separation policy that ruined thousands of families, and led to the disappearance of hundreds of children (did we ever find ALL of them?).

A second trump administration will be worse. It's already public that trump's strongest anti-immigration ally Stephen Miller wants to deport 20 million alleged illegals and migrants, something on a scale beyond even previous attempts by hardline administrations (I will not repeat the name of that operation here, it was blatant racism). The horrifying thing is that based on reports there's not 20 million illegals - it might not even be 11 million - so if trump implements this agenda he will be forcing our government - trump wants to use military force to do it as well, an unconstitutional abuse - into rounding up thousands if not millions of legal U.S. residents all because of their skin color and lack of ID (and for those with ID the accusation those records are fake). We will be seeing the most vulnerable group of that getting targeted: Our children, our teens, our young adults rounded up and punished for trump's nativist rage. This will be the Republican Party - no, worse, the United States because we let this happen - at their our most cruel.

trump threatens to undo our nation's economic stability with his obsession to shift from income taxes to massive tariffs. Even after all the shocks to American industries and markets that trump's tariffs caused during his tenure, he's obsessed with the (false) belief that tariffs worked wonders in our nation's history - he's been pumping up the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890 as a (bad) example - and wants to make it so that all the taxation is done via tariffs. In spite of all the evidence - and basic understanding of economics - that tariffs place higher burdens on the poor while the rich get richer even as products get scarcer and more expensive. 

trump and his lackeys do not care that the last time we had massive tariffs put in place - the Smoot-Hawley Act - it made the economic crisis in 1930 go from a standard panic to THE GREAT DEPRESSION. Never mind the trade wars trump will trigger with other nations (depending on if trump uses the threat of tariffs to make those nations or industries pay him off). all trump cares about is ending taxes on incomes and dividends for the uber-rich. Everyone else will lose jobs, lose homes, lose lives.

And that's just on tariffs. trump's threatening to shift our reliance on the US dollar to cryptocurrency (his, no doubt). 

trump threatens to undo the federal government itself. Do some reading on "Project 2025," which had public ties to trump's presidential campaign until people took notice and recoiled in horror (forcing them to hide from the spotlight). trump's railing against the "Deep State" and proposals to "Drain the Swamp" will all lead to undoing the civil service merit system that's been in place since Garfield's assassination. Replacing around 50,000 workers throughout the federal government - who oversee regulations, enforce policy, deal with vendor contracts, provide public services - with trump loyalists who will ignore policy and procedure and do whatever trump tells them. It'll promote corruption - especially with contract biddings and deregulation of workplace safety and protections - on a scale we haven't seen since the Spoils System.

For all the griping by conservatives and libertarians, the federal agencies overall provide good - if slow or bureaucratic - services to the public at large. I've had people come to my library needing help with Social Security disability filings, and they've told me the local SSA offices treated them well and got them on the right programs. Our national parks are beloved and enjoyed. Travelers may gripe about the TSA but we know it's a price to pay for airline travel security. For all the complaints about the IRS, most Americans accept the responsibility of paying taxes and few are ever burdened with audits or accounting errors. There's 100 other agencies in the Executive branch and most of them function as intended because they tend to hire the right people for the jobs.

All of that would go away if trump and his lackeys purge the civil service and install their own cronies. Good customer service - yes, it's practiced by federal agencies - will disappear. Access to funds and grants will fall into a rabbit hole feeding to trump's pockets (or the pockets of corrupt allies). People who were hired based on actual experience and merit will get replaced by those without relative experience or even interest in doing the job properly.

The Far Right has been looking to take a sledgehammer to a federal government they hate because it doesn't play favorites - meaning it doesn't favor only themselves - when doling out funds to poor farmers regardless of race, aiding small businesses regardless of race, or regulating business practices to reduce consumer fraud (also affecting people by race, age, and gender). trump will be willing to swing that sledgehammer at our nation's foundation just so he can profit from the ruins.

trump threatens to end American diplomacy and strong ties to Western (aka anti-Russian) republics / democracies. trump will do this not only to appease his idol/BFF Vladimir Putin, he will do this to punish our European and Asian allies he knows mocked and derided him during his tenure.

It won't be like last time, when trump tried to shakedown NATO members to pay the United States - to pay himself - like a protection racket. If trump returns to the White House, he will exact revenge not only with his tariff wars but through acts of retaliation through breaking treaties and mutual pacts (trump loves to break existing deals because he can then force people to renegotiate with him directly, increasing his chances of personal profit). Given trump's open love for Putin and Russia, we can well expect trump to follow through on forcing the United States to leave NATO, exposing nations like Poland, Germany, and the Baltic states to Russian hegemony.

If trump does force us to leave NATO, he could force our military and State Department to forge ties to Russia as a new "ally" but in truth expose us to Russian takeover of foreign policy and military capability. Anything Putin wants - even some of our best technology and resources - trump will hand over without question. Granted, there will be massive pushback by everyone - even fellow Republicans - horrified by such moves, but if trump succeeds in corrupting the civil service with loyalists the debates will be short-lived and silenced.

We need to remember how trump's mishandling of classified information - a lot of it shared from and with our allies - was a major scandal even before he was caught with boxes of high-level intel at his Mar-A-Lago residence. If trump returns to the Oval Office, he can and will demand every classified document pass through his hands because he will believe he owns those materials, to the horror and disgust of our intelligence personnel if any survive the civil service purge. Our allied nations - NATO and otherwise, even Israel - will refuse to share any further intel with us, straining our foreign relations to where the unthinkable - the end of once-strong centuries-old alliances that provided trade, travel, and trust - will happen. Isolationism wouldn't even begin to define it.

No matter what, trump in office will mean Ukraine is screwed against Russia's invasion. 

In short: trump threatens everything and everyone - even his own followers - because trump only wants to serve himself at our expense. It will be American Fascism - all in service to Overlord TRUMP and his handlers/lackeys/brute squads.

I know I keep saying this, but for the LOVE of everything - God, America, Freedom, Mom and Apple Pie - do not vote for donald trump or his Republican allies. Please vote for Kamala Harris as President, please vote for every Democratic candidate on the ballots, please vote for every Pro-Women amendment referendum in the states offering them.

Do not let trump and his kind threaten us any longer.