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I normally watch a movie of some sort on a Sunday evening. I’m not tonight because: (1) I did see The Wild Robot earlier this week. (2) I did have viewing time this afternoon watching and listening to the livestream of a Detroit Symphony Orchestra concert. Former music director Leonard Slatkin directed and featured a piece by his son Daniel Slatkin, who is doing quite well as a video game composer. There was also music by Rachmaninoff and Prokoviev. And (3) I’ve got a couple articles (and will include more as time permits) that are more appropriate before the election than after (and I won’t be able to write tomorrow or Tuesday).
Kos of Daily Kos reported the Des Moines Register released a poll by Ann Selzer showing that Harris is ahead by three points in Iowa. Yeah, it is one poll, and an outlier at that. But...
Selzer is one of the most accurate pollsters. The poll found white, older, rural women are a big reason for Harris being on top. They’re the most reliable voters. Kos wrote:
So the polling aggregators? Throw them out. Even Nate Silver admits that the data inputs for them—public polls—are garbage, with “herding” driving risk-averse pollsters into releasing the exact same numbers as their peers.
“Specifically, the odds are 1 in 9.5 trillion against at least this many polls showing such a close margin,” Silver wrote. Yet somehow he refuses to make the next leap—if the data is quite literally impossible, then how can his model still be of any insight given that it is based on that garbage data?
That goes for 538 and all the other aggregators. Throw them out. This is a different kind of election.
This is saying the polling numbers we’ve been obsessing over throughout the last year and certainly over the last three months are not accurate predictors of who will win. This is not saying Harris will win, so vote, if you haven’t yet.
Kos followed that up with polls in Kansas, which show a big swing towards Harris, but maybe not enough to win the state. And Omaha’s blue dot in Nebraska, which can allocate its Electoral College vote according to the Congressional district and not the statewide vote, is looking quite blue.
There is something happening in rural America, in exactly the kind of districts that Trump and Republicans are depending as the foundation of their electoral chances.
And it all comes down to women.
Yesterday, Scott Detrow and Miles Parks of NPR debunked election disinformation.
The nasty guy claims that if he loses it is because of Democrats encouraging immigrants to vote. The facts: Voting by immigrants – non citizens – is illegal. It can risk a path to citizenship, possibly also deportation, a powerful deterrent. It is also quite rare. Georgia recently showed 20 confirmed cases of non citizens voting out of 8 million votes.
Some states do not require proof of citizenship to register to vote. But, through drivers license and Social Security numbers they do have access to citizenship data. Parks said:
I think the sense from election officials I've talked to is that the election narratives of 2020 were starting to get a little bit stale. And so when you look ahead of 2024, what is the major political point on the right right now? It is immigration. And so what experts see is basically a marrying of these two narratives. You've got an issue that is very politically salient, and you've got Trump trying to kind of activate people on that.
The other thing I'll note in terms of why this is a successful election conspiracy theory is, like I mentioned, it does happen occasionally. Every election cycle, you'll see this - a few people get arrested for this. And so it's much harder to bunk a narrative like that that actually has a little bit of truth to it as opposed to voting machines are being controlled by a satellite or something.
Elon Musk is claiming that mail in ballots don’t require proof of citizenship. But returned ballots go through rigorous checks. Mail in ballots might be slightly more vulnerable to fraud. But there has been no evidence of widespread fraud.
Parks talks about what I’ve written about before. The nasty guy might claim fraud when mail-in ballots show Harris pulling ahead. That’s because mail-in ballots take longer to count.
Yes, Republicans have already been filing suits against the election results. A bit of verifying only legal votes are counted happens every year.
What's interesting this cycle, when you talk to election experts - it seems like the Trump campaign and Republicans more broadly are kind of already setting the stage for things, kind of giving breadcrumbs to issues that they might bring up to try to challenge the election results should Trump lose after the election.
Last Tuesday Kos of Kos reported that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man (according to Forbes) has been talking about economic hardship – for us, not him. One cause of the hardship would be the mass deportations the nasty guy has been talking about. Another would be the chainsaw Musk wants to take to the federal government (there’s been talk of the nasty guy appointing him to reduce the deficit and he has his eye on two trillion). Together, the two would cause the markets to “tumble,” triggering an economic “storm.” That’s because the economy is supposedly propped up with debt and illegal immigration is artificially suppressing wages. But after that storm passes and people see we’re on sounder footing there will be rapid recovery.
Kos explains what is really going on. This is the economy that is the envy of the world and Musk wants to crash it. To keep our economy humming we could use more immigrants. The undocumented workers we do have subsidize programs such as Social Security and Medicare they must pay into but are ineligible to receive benefits from. To reduce the deficit Musk wants to cut every program for the poor and middle class, plus programs for veterans and farmers (the nasty guy’s base).
And the thing is, Musk and Trump aren’t hiding their agenda. People are just too captivated by the Republican campaign’s racism and misogyny to care.
People are being promised that they will lose their jobs and prosperity, and this election is still close.
Oliver Willis of Kos discussed what Musk gets out of crashing the economy. At the top of the list is more tax breaks.
Kos reviewed the “closing argument” speech Harris gave at the Ellipse in Washington. She intentionally chose the spot where the nasty guy encouraged his minions to attack the Capitol.
The crowd was estimated to be about 75K – almost four times the capacity of Madison Square Garden where the nasty guy held his Nazi rally.
Harris talked about the nasty guy’s inability to campaign for anyone but himself. She said the fact that “someone disagrees with us does not make them the enemy within.” She said he has an enemies list, she has a to-do list. She defended immigrants. She promised to restore federal abortion rights. She won’t denigrate and will care for the men and women in the military. She will strengthen America’s global leadership. She promises calm instead of chaos and says she will listen even to people who didn’t vote for her. Kos wrote:
Unlike Trump’s closing statement at Madison Square Garden, she kept things short and sweet. No one left early. No one was insulted in the most vulgar terms.
And in the end, she made people feel good about supporting her, about heading out to do all the GOTV work we need to do to bring this one home. She’s kind, hopeful, unifying, composed, and coherent.
The contrast couldn’t be starker.
A week ago Detrow visited the Cross Assembly Church in Raleigh, North Carolina to speak to its lead pastor Chad Harvey. The sanctuary holds nearly 1,700 people and about 3,000 hear his sermon every week. Then it is put on social media. His words are heard by a lot of people. And, yes, he is evangelical.
Harvey’s most important issues are the sanctity of life (translation: anti-abortion), religious liberty (which I usually hear as the liberty to discriminate), and the transgender thing.
This is what caught my attention in this 12 minute segment – Harvey speaking:
What I've told our congregation is we look at the platform, not the person. And so you can have some people with some pretty deep moral struggles who are upholding a platform that we support. And I tell our people, don't pay as much attention to the struggles. Pay attention to the platform because here's what the Bible says. There's none righteous - no, not one. We're all messed-up people. This core message that we have of the Gospel - it's the good news. The bad news of the good news is we're all messed-up people.
That’s his way of saying he doesn’t care how morally awful the nasty guy’s character might be. If that nasty guy upholds what he wants he’ll vote for him.
I keep going back to the - we're all messed up people. Trump is messed up. Kamala Harris is messed up. Joe Biden has had accusations thrown at him. We're all messed-up individuals.
While true, Harris is significantly less messed up than the nasty guy.
Detrow asks if that means his vote provides for no personal accountability. Harvey responded if a candidate did something you can’t support, fine. But use the same standard for all candidate.
Harvey doesn’t describe that standard, but it sounds like it is “has that candidate ever sinned?” Of course, we have all done something wrong. Harvey’s description allows him to excuse a great number of quite large sins.
Detrow asks about God commanding us to show justice and love mercy. Harvey replied that the nasty guy shows more justice and mercy to the unborn and post-born than the left.
Perhaps, but that justice and mercy to the unborn is at the expense of women, who are not shown justice and mercy.
I finished the book The Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst. The story is narrated by Will Beckwith, gay grandson of Lord Denis Beckwith. Will went to boarding school and college and, now in his mid twenties, lives in a flat in London paid by his grandfather. He doesn’t have or need a job, though seems busy doing not much.
Will frequently goes to the Corinthian Club, the “Corry,” which is all male and seems all gay male. He does some of his exercising in the weight room and mostly in the pool. The showers afterward seem to be a place for the men to display their assets and Will sometimes leaves the Corry with someone to have sex with. And there is a lot of sex in the story. For much of the tale Will’s favorite lover is Phil, though the relationship is far from monogamous. Will is friends with James and they feel their friendship is better without sex. While the book was published in 1988 there is no sign of AIDS.
Will becomes friends with Lord Charles Nantwich, well into his 80s. Charles, also gay, believes he has led an interesting life and wants Will to turn it into a book – it’s not like Will has anything more important to do. Will is doubtful, but begins to read Charles’ diaries.
So in addition to Will talking about gay life in London in the 1970s-80s we also get Charles discussing gay life in the 1920s-50s. That includes Charles working as a British government official in Sudan. In that Charles expresses his admiration for the black male. Charles also endures police entrapment.
The title wasn’t explained until about the middle of the book. At Will’s boarding school the boys were put in charge of various parts of the campus – the dining hall, the chapel, etc. The job title was “Librarian” no matter the place. Will was given the job of librarian of the swimming pool and it seemed to be a place for teenage skinny-dipping. And his father joked that if the swimming pool has a librarian there must be a swimming pool library.
As for what I think of the book – I finished it. With so much sex that didn’t involve love I did think of giving up. But I persisted. Hollinghurst is a good writer, but Will doesn’t have a lot of personal growth over the story.
Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported the nasty guy’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio sent a memo saying the nasty guy is “on the verge” of victory. He did not provide his own numbers. Instead, he used RealClearPolitics numbers that include data from Republican junk pollsters.
Yeah, professional polls show the race is tight. But if Fabrizio had numbers showing a nasty guy victory he would release them. Instead, his work seems like an effort to stroke a massive ego.
However, the chest-thumping by Trump’s campaign and other Trump allies could also be more sinister. The overconfidence could make Trump’s most fervent supporters believe victory is inevitable. And if Harris wins and overperforms polling averages, it could lead those supporters to believe the election was rigged and make them cause the same kind of chaos we witnessed after the 2020 election.
That could prompt a repeat of the slog through the courts and the Capitol attack.
A comedian hired by the nasty guy campaign called Puerto Rico garbage. Biden called the comedian garbage, but stuttered in such a way that some people accused him of calling all MAGA people garbage. The nasty guy showed up at a rally in a garbage truck dressed as a trash collector. Kos of Kos reported that many of the nasty guy’s supporters are now wearing garbage bags, some with “Trump Trash” printed on them.
In this wacked-out election cycle, that gaffe was at best a 24-hour brouhaha. But because MAGA minions are nothing if not weird, they have decided that leaning in and calling each other garbage, dressing as garbage, and spending time around garbage somehow … makes them look good? It’s all so freakin’ bizarre.
...
MAGA will never let Trump look stupid all by himself. So they sprung into action, making sure they would all look stupid in solidarity.
...
One side knows how to close strong. The other side is closing with: “We are garbage”—and helpfully providing visuals to drive the message home.
Singer mentioned some of the conservative talking heads who are upset that women would vote differently than how their husbands told them to vote.
But new polling from YouGov found that a significant number of women voters have voted differently than their partner without telling them.
The poll found that 12% of women said they voted for a political candidate without telling their partner. A similar 9% of men reported doing the same.
Many people are voting for the nasty guy and saying it is because inflation was so much lower under him than under Biden. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported billionaire Mark Cuban was on NewsNation's preelection town hall Wednesday to explain why Harris is the better economic choice. As part of that Cuban talked about the root of inflation.
In April 2020, when the nasty guy was in the Oval Office the average price of gas was $1.87. American oil companies said to him the price is too low, we can’t make money. So the nasty guy talked to Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and Putin of Russia, asking them to cut production, which would drive up prices. And that was the start of inflation.
Inflation and gas prices started to come down when the nasty guy’s deal ended in June of 2022.
The nasty guy has been campaigning that he’ll bring down gas prices. Don’t believe him.
A week ago, after the nasty guy did a photo op in a grocery store saying he would lower prices, Kos asked what do people think the nasty guy would do about it?
Yes, there have been lots of memes about exceptionally high prices. They are exaggerated. Also yeah, since Biden became president prices have gone up.
When the nasty guy is asked about details he talked about restricting food import, which would raise prices and lead to retaliatory tariffs, which would also raise prices.
And, really, would he do anything to stand in the way of someone’s profit, especially if it is at the cost of the working class?
I took my ballot to my city hall this afternoon. The parking lot has many cars of those doing early voting. Shortly after I slipped my ballot in the box a woman came out to empty the box and take the ballots inside.
Which means I won’t be faced with this problem: Last Monday Morgan Stephens of Kos reported that quite early that morning a ballot box in Portland, Oregon and a short time later another in nearby Vancouver, Washington were set on fire.
A fire suppressant in the Portland box meant only three ballots were burned. The fire in the Vancouver box destroyed “hundreds” of ballots. Elections personnel in both places contacted voters to say if you had placed a ballot in the box between the time of the last pickup and the time of the fire, please ask for a replacement.
A suspect vehicle has been identified and the investigation continues. This type of incident extends beyond the damage. It threatens voter confidence and participation already under strain from MAGA disinformation.
Yesterday Stephens discussed a CNN report that MAGA supporters are planning a sequel to the Capitol attack. The talk is on the usual far right social media sites.
As for the last attack, the nasty guy isn’t condemning it. Instead, he is calling it a day of love. That’s while election workers are saying they are scared.
Jen Sorenson posted a cartoon on Kos, titled The Last Firewall. The cartoon lists various people and groups that failed us – Republican leaders, corporation, federal judges (as in Aileen Cannon), the Supreme Court (presidential immunity), social media companies, and legacy newspapers. It’s up to us now, through the voting box.
Singer reported:
The co-chair of Donald Trump's would-be transition team said that if the former president is given a second term in office, his administration will work to pull vaccines off the market.
That may include putting Robert Kennedy Jr in charge of the country’s public health agencies. His goal will be to interpret the data to show vaccines are unsafe, though they very much are. The goal seems to be to make diseases great again.
I avoid Halloween. I don’t have children and for many years I needed to avoid sugar. So I didn’t see much of a need to buy candy to hand out and perhaps have some left over I shouldn’t eat.
My method of escape last night was to see the movie The Wild Robot in an actual movie theater. I think there were all of ten people there.
At the advertised time there were still parts of the “pre-show” that theaters now run when one enters the theater. Then there were at least five previews. I don’t object to previews, but most were too violent for my tastes, even if they have an interesting concept (Santa kidnapped). None of them went onto my wish to watch list. Then there were a couple more commercials about the theater chain. So the movie I came to see started about 20 minutes after the advertised time.
That reminded me of my time living in Germany about 1990. I occasionally went to a movie theater that showed movies in English. They started with 20 minutes of commercials (all in German, some rather humorous – even though I didn’t understand the German). And then there was a short break (to buy more refreshments?) before the feature began.
The Wild Robot is an animated feature about a robot that is shipwrecked on an island with no human inhabitants. It, named Rozz, is programmed to perform whatever tasks it is asked to do, but animals (all very North American) don’t speak, so it doesn’t know what to do. Rozz decodes the animal sounds (they all start speaking English) but there is still no task. Then Rozz rescues a goose egg from a fox who wants to eat it and when the goose chick hatches it imprints on the first thing it sees – Rozz. So now Rozz has to be a parent – with advice from the mama opossum and assistance from the fox. So now Rozz has clear tasks: get the chick to eat, teach it to swim, and teach it to fly before the fall migration. When the young adult goose, named Brightbeak, begins to try to swim (thinking wings, not feet, are for paddling) he encounters other geese and they make fun of him.
From there the story has lots of messages of perseverance and working together while the robot becomes more humane. It is all very enjoyable and the animation is all first-rate. This is a good one.
Not until the closing credits did I see Brightbeak is voiced by Kit Connor, who played Nick in the Heartstopper series I saw through October. There wasn’t a time when I thought that goose sounds just like Nick! Connor’s IMDb page says he was 18 when the first season on Heartstopper came out and 20 when the recent season 3 came out. Looks like Connor’s career is thriving.
Prices: Movie $12. Popcorn $9. I skipped the popcorn.
I rarely get phone calls. Today I got a dozen, the first just before 8am. Thankfully, I either missed them or they were helpfully labeled “Scam likely.”
One gets tired of writing about the nasty guy and the current outrageous things he did, so I’ll just mention them.
Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported the nasty guy is already claiming that “Democrats have already started cheating” in Pennsylvania. There is no evidence. And some suggest if you are already laying the groundwork in case you lose, you must know you’re losing.
Oliver Willis of Kos reported the nasty guy said he’s the protector of women – “I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them.” Willis wrote, “Trump’s language was the language of an abuser, which is fitting.” Harris was quick to condemn.
Willis reported:
Donald Trump fantasized about guns being put in the face of former Rep. Liz Cheney during a campaign event on Thursday night.
“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her where the rifle’s standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about—you know when the guns are trained on her face,” Trump said.
Yup, he wants the disloyal before a firing squad. His rhetoric has been quite violent and getting more violent.
And after those violent comments against women Kos of Kos wrote that Republicans are digging the hole deeper. Some of that is in response to the add narrated by Julia Roberts that encourages women to defy their husbands and secretly vote for Harris.
In the comments of a pundit roundup exlrrp posted an appropriate meme. It says, “Donald Trump is going to lose this election because of the women in this country. Whether he likes it or not.”
exlrrp posted a second meme appropriate to Halloween: “My housemates are convinced our house is haunted. I’ve lived here for 274 years and not noticed anything strange.”
The incidents above are misogyny, which the nasty guy campaign has been featuring for the last nine years. That and the gender gap – women strongly favor Harris and men strongly favor the nasty guy – prompted Steve Inskeep of NPR to talk to pollster Frank Luntz and Richard Reeves, a researcher of the American Institute for Boys and Men.
Luntz said some of the men admire the nasty guy’s badass style and that he built an empire. Some agree with his views on climate change and other issues. They also rejected the version of masculinity demonstrated by Walz. But they don’t see the election as a gender issue and are hostile when that idea is proposed.
But they see the Democrats and liberals as anti-male. Some men believe that Democrats are declaring the only reason men could vote against Harris is because of sexism or racism they’re not willing to admit. They believe these are attempts to shame or scare men into voting Democrat.
The discussion then feature a quote from Michelle Obama to take women’s lives seriously, to not put them in the hands of male politicians who don’t care about women.
Luntz says that’s absolutely not an effective pitch because it comes across as demonizing men. It claims that if you don’t vote for Harris you are anti-women.
But most men do care about the women in their lives. They also care about other things, like the stagnating wages of men without college degrees who are poorer than their father’s were.
So this focus on women means the neglect of the genuine struggles of men.
Kos posed the question: Why did the joke about Puerto Rico and garbage become a story when the rest of the racist jokes, and much of the racism of the nasty guy’s campaign, haven’t?
Kos says he doesn’t know, though he has ideas.
The nasty guy didn’t say it. Another speaker did. The nasty guy has the reputation of saying anything and the media seems cool with it. But that doesn’t apply to anyone else.
The media was primed for it. After all the talk of Haitians eating pets that media refused to describe as racist – and after nine years of the nasty guy saying racist things and not being called racist – and all the blowback from all that media was more willing to call something racist.
Puerto Ricans are different from other Latinos in that they are US citizens. They are able to be “loud, proud, and opinionated” in ways that Latinos from other countries can’t be. And Puerto Ricans live in large numbers in many states, including (as Kos lists) in numbers in many swing states much larger than Biden’s margin of victory in 2020. They’re also in large numbers in Florida and Texas. They can do real electoral damage.
Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary. An example:
“Election Day is just a week away and a new report found that Americans are changing their vacation plans due to election anxiety. Yup, people are waiting until after the election so they know whether they’re buying a round-trip or a one-way.”
—Jimmy Fallon
