We claim the right to report that there's no knowable result

My new computer is closer to what I want and need it to be. I was able to copy my stash of browser tabs from the old computer (you go ahead and debate whether that’s good or bad... I’ll catch up later). I’m still getting used to the different layout of the keyboard. It has lots of new things for Windows 11 (much I’ll probably never use) and some keys, like “End,” are in slightly different positions. The only major computer thing not resolved is what to do about my music composing program – I haven’t had any composing time since before the switch. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos wrote that Rachel Maddow, on her show Monday night, discussed Republican election games in Georgia. The Republican dominated Georgia State Election Board has passed a bunch of changes that would allow election officials to “question, delay, or otherwise sabotage election certification.” Democrats are trying to stop it. Einenkel wrote:

“I think part of understanding the importance of this tactic is that confusion and mistakes are probably the point,” Maddow explains. “It's one thing to say we want the right to flip an election result. That's going to be sort of a hard sell. It's another thing to say we want the right, and we claim the right to essentially report that there's no knowable result here, that there isn't any discernible result, that there's a big question about it, that it seems like there's a cloud over the result.”

Maddow saw hope in that Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has asked the state attorney general whether or not he has the right to remove obstructive members of the board. Part of Kemp’s effort might be because the nasty guy has been critical of him. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about campaigns raising and spending money. Harris has significantly outraised the nasty guy, with her mostly drawing from small donations and he drawing mostly from billionaires. As for spending, the New York Times reported that during the 2020 campaign about two-thirds of the money the nasty guy spent went to one company, American Made Media Consultants. What did this money buy? AMMC is a private company, so doesn’t have to say where it spent the money it received. The only hint is that it is run by the nasty guy’s former campaign director Brad Parscale. Also involved are son Eric and the Pandemic Prince. Receiving payment on a smaller scale is Red Curve Solutions. We do know a bit more about this one. Campaign Legal Center says Red Curve is used to pay the nasty guy’s legal bills. Another company is Launchpad Strategies and about this one is no information of who runs it and where the money goes.

These billionaires cut Trump big checks, then the checks go into a big black hole. What comes out doesn’t appear to be any recognizable campaign activity. Even before Harris entered the race, President Joe Biden was outspending Trump three-to-one on television advertising. The money going into these companies seems to disappear … which certainly makes it hard to discern whether Trump is running his campaign in a legitimate fashion or simply pocketing hundreds of millions in bribes.

Matt Davies posted a cartoon he titled Stop the Stale. It shows an elephant approaching the 2024 Word Salad Bar that contains tubs of “Wilted grievances” “Stolen Election Re-hash” “Stale insults” “Belittle Veterans” and a few more. In a pundit roundup for Kos Dworkin quoted William Kristol and Andrew Egger of The Bulwark:

As political obsessives, we confess it: We’re already getting a little sick of the “weird” thing. Weeks of seeing the same point every day about these guys! Surely there’s some other way we can— What’s that? There’s new audio out of JD Vance yukking it up with a podcast host who says that “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female” is to help raise their grandkids? Okay, a few more days of “weird” won’t hurt.

Contrast that with this meme posted way down in the comments by exlrrp, showing Walz stopping to pet a cat. The caption says, “When you’re famous, they let you do it.” Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suspended his campaign for president and endorsed the nasty guy. I heard a lot about this over the weekend and don’t have time to track down the sources. Some say he did it because those who didn’t like Biden and went to Kennedy have now shifted back to Harris. That left Kennedy polling at 7%. All that shows the whole ploy, the whole purpose of his campaign, was to pull voters from Biden to help the nasty guy. McCarter then went on to document all the Kennedy siblings and cousins denouncing his move, much the same way they denounced his candidacy when he started. Kennedy has asked to be removed for several state ballots. He won’t be removed from Michigan’s ballot because he was nominated by a minor party and they don’t have time to hold another convention to nominate someone else. In another pundit roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Bunch described the placement of American flags around the hall during the Democratic National Convention.

Moments later, those flags were fanning the last and strongest waves of euphoria at an unforgettable Democratic National Convention, as the vice president pivoted toward defining American freedom as the right to make family choices, breathe clean air, or cast a ballot, and she vowed to defend those rights through strength. The Democratic delegates kept chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!” — as if they were watching Steph Curry draining three-pointers against France in this cavernous basketball arena instead of an acceptance speech — as Harris staked her claim to the red, white, and blue.

A quote from Molly Ball of the Wall Street Journal:

“I am really happy to see that the Democratic Party is taking our rightful place as the patriotic ones,” said Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland, a rising star in the party who has been arguing for a forceful embrace of patriotism since he ran for office two years ago. “We cannot forfeit this idea of patriotism to people who claim it when they are not actually willing to sacrifice anything for their country.” Yet the convention’s unapologetic embrace of liberal causes, from abortion and gun control to climate change, was also a defiant insistence that their ideology is the new American majority, the new American normal—that it is those who insist on bygone gender roles and restrictive mores who are the “weird” ones, that a diverse, multicultural array of identities can lay claim to apple pie and the American dream. ... One strategist noted after watching Walz’s rural Minnesota football-coach presentation, “We’re not giving up on white guys”—as long as they are the type of white guys who aren’t afraid to cry and support their wives’ careers.

And a quote from Greg Sargent of The New Republic discussing the convention speech Harris gave.

But, in mulling what Harris means by all this, it’s crucial to appreciate what she did not do. Harris offered all this outreach to voters outside the core Democratic coalition without making serious concessions to the ideological preoccupations we associate with MAGA-style right-wing populism. There was no real accommodation with what might be called The World According to MAGA. Instead, Harris treated Trumpism and the MAGA movement as forces that must be decisively repudiated—and unequivocally left behind.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme from Occupy Democrats listing some of the tough issues Harris avoided, including: “Electric boars versus sharks. ... With wind power you can’t watch TV when the wind isn’t blowing.”