stevenkesslar

I think President Toxic is making lots of mistakes that will bite him in the ass in the end. First, he's coming dangerously close to endorsing violent organizations. This would be like Biden saying anti-fa is just a bunch of great patriots. There's no way to argue that whoever killed the guy in Portland did so in self-defense. So it's not quite apples to apples. President Toxic can argue that vigilantes have the right to take up guns in self defense. But many people hear that as a toxic President just fanning the flames. Biden is the only candidate who has unambiguously condemned anyone who kills, for any reason, and instead focused on trying to get back to unity. I think it's better when he lets the Black mother of a guy that was shot seven times say that for him. Even though Biden has now wrapped his heart around the message publicly and passionately. The main mistake President Toxic is making is the same one he's been making his entire Presidency. He plays to his rabid base. I get that he has no choice. If he wasn't a racist who race-baited, he wouldn't be President. You can argue that Democrats, or at least the forces of history, are partly to blame. When a better and more decent man ran in 2012, he lost. Some Republicans decided that the only way to win was, to quote one analysis, "to bring a gun to a cultural knife fight." Need I mention that the McCloskeys fit right in to this party? Which is not to say that every Republican - or even most Republicans - agree with President Toxic. That's the problem for him. They don't. That's why they abandoned the party in droves in 2018. And seem to be primed to do it again. To quote Michael Steele, the former Black head of the RNC in happier times, "How do you stop the slide once it starts?" He was specifically talking about whether Republican Senators can hold on and only lose four seats. Or whether the slide will take out more like seven. I won't replaster this thread with all the poll data I posted in the Lichtman thread. But Biden's positions on race and crime, at least as I hear them, play to where the vast majority of Americans are at. True, 30 % of Independents think Biden will make America less safe. That suggests to me that those "Independents" are basically conservative Republicans who just don't want to own the stench of Trump's Republican Party. But almost half of Independents think there will be "more violence" if President Toxic has four more. years. That's Independents. Not Democrats. If pro-Trump Republicans think it's awful that Democrats are blaming President Toxic for the violence happening in "their" cities, maybe they should have a heart to heart with all these Independents who believe that President Toxic is a racist. And that more of him means more violence. Trump's approval rating with Black voters soars by 60% during RNC: poll HarrisX-Hill survey finds Black support increases from 15% to 24% As a Democrat who wants more racial equality and justice, I hope that's true. Having two political parties that compete for the votes of Blacks (and suburban women, and White working class men) is a good thing. This is, of course, why the Republicans put Michael Steele, a principled economic conservative, in charge of their party in better times. In terms of the big picture and trends, as the article above notes, President Toxic lost a sliver of White approval even as he was gaining among Blacks during the RNC. I'm going to assume, or at least hope, that those Whites were ones who couldn't quite stomach the McCloskeys. As far as the Black speakers went, they mostly did a good job, I thought. The particular Harris poll cited showed President Toxic with a -12 % net disapproval rating after the show was over. That is actually three points worse than the current - 9 % net disapproval rating the RCP average shows. So if conservatives are looking for the silver lining in the cloud, I'd rather have them conclude that they will maybe get more Black support if they focus on creating a party that is actually more inviting to Blacks. The conservative-slanted article above points out that the message that Blacks pushed at the RNC offsets what "Democrats" are saying: that President Toxic is a racist. That's fair enough. They don't mention that one reason President Toxic may have a 24 % ceiling with Blacks, even after a week of his very own reality TV show, is that in any poll I've seen at least 3 out of 4 Blacks say he's a racist. It's a bit of a hard sell for Whites, or even Black conservatives, to argue that 3 in 4 Blacks are stupid. But if 10 % of the Black community took this as an opportunity to think that maybe President Toxic isn't so racist after all, I'm good with that. The reality TV show is over, and we're back to reality. So let's just see. It may have also helped President Toxic's cause that even some of the thoughtful speakers, like Jack Brewer, didn't tell the truth. I know, it's shocking! Black Lives Matter is not trying to destroy the nuclear family, as he stated. Maybe he lied. I'd tend to give him the benefit of the doubt. I think it may be a perfect symbol for how, and why, we are at civil war. We try to disrupt a system that we view as unjust. They genuinely see that as destruction. Why would Black Lives Matter speak up for Black single Moms, and Black queer Dads? Isn't it obvious? They must be socialists out to destroy America and ................................. wait for it .................................. abolish the suburbs. This article speaks the truth about Black Lives Matter, in their own words: I can easily imagine that the same people who had a problem with LGBTQ rights and same sex marriage read that and go, "What the fuck?" This is a very big part of my problem with Daddy, and all the Republicans I've known for a few decades or so who I am no longer friends with. I think of it as "free ride" racism. The people who should understand the importance of tolerance and diversity the most - because our liberties and lives and even websites depend on it - are instead spouting racist nonsense. As a belief system, I can see how you can argue that Gay Lives Matter and Drag Queens Matter and Gay Marriage Matters, but Black Lives Matter is racist. There's a pretty good parallel with the same sex marriage fight. As a volunteer knocking on doors, we targeted non-White areas where people know what discrimination is. So I spoke with a number of Black Evangelicals who thought slavery and homosexuality both involved sin. For them, it was a sin for Whites to enslave Blacks. And it was a sin for a man to have sex with another man - let alone marry him. But they could at least empathize with the fact that I felt discriminated against. As a practical matter, there are more Blacks than Gays or lesbians or transgender people. So if we're playing our cards that way, it's not too late for us to lose the game. We are a minority among minorities. Had Justice Bork been the swing vote rather than Justice Roberts, who knows if we'd have same sex marriage today? We probably would. But that's because we won the culture war that was fought around the concepts of acceptance and diversity and empathy. I think they want a free ride. They want to be able to have Gay rights, and hire escorts, and maybe even wear a dress. But they won't stick up for Blacks who are protecting our rights, like Black Lives Matter. And who are pushing things that I suspect most Americans frankly find easier to stomach than an old Gay guy who likes to wear a dress. If we assume that the 24 % of Blacks who are open to Jack Brewer's message also feel the way he does about this "nuclear family" stuff, that's good news. At some time fairly recently, we got to the point where the majority of Blacks now accept same sex marriage. (It's mostly religion, not race, in that so many Blacks are Evangelicals.) I think the only segment of society left that still harbors majority opposition and disdain is White evangelicals. This is what "free ride" racism means to me. They expect acceptance and diversity for themselves. Or at least tolerance and safety. But they won't give it back. News flash: this is not only kind of unfair. It's also a great way to lose, not to win. President Toxic, aka President Divide And Rule, gets this. In fairness, I know from years of experience that many of these Gay conservatives aren't .......................................... Gay conservatives. They don't culturally identify as Gay. They are not out. They didn't fight for same sex marriage and don't especially care. I could name the ones who were more excited by bombs dropping on Iraq than by winning same sex marriage, but I won't. They have every right to their beliefs, and their prejudices. So it's not like they really want a free ride. They're still back in the Greater America that encouraged people like them to just shut up and be happy enough in the closet. Just like Brewer obviously thinks Blacks should be happy with what they've already got with President Toxic. What's not to like about "our first Black President", to quote him? For the conservatives who are openly Gay, and have been for a long time, this is definitely a free ride. These two words I cited already best sum up the problem for me: "disruption" and "destruction". As in, BLM wants to disrupt things so that Black drag queens or Black Queer Dads feel safe. Many White conservatives, and presumably Brewer, see that as "destruction". And it's not just President Toxic. I keep going back to Jeb Bush's line about same sex marriage: "Thousands of years of religion and culture are being wiped away at warp speed. And I just don't get it." He didn't get it, of course. But it's basically the same resistance. What we saw as disruption to make things better they saw as destroying religion, marriage, and culture. The disruption is happening, and will likely accelerate, because we want to move forward. I think especially on issues like race and crime and LGBTQ rights, there's a majority that wants to move forward. We'll know soon. To end where I started, this is why I'm glad Brewer spoke at the RNC. And I'm glad there is a debate. My guess, sadly, is that most older White conservatives just can't change. Even the Gay (or closeted) ones. These attitudes and prejudices are just too deeply ingrained. And with President Toxic, they get constant reinforcement that they're not racist. It's Black Lives Matter and the Obamas that are racist. If President Toxic morphs into Ex-President Toxic, leader of the Toxic Cult, many of these folks will be with him until they die. That said, just like with same sex marriage, many will come around. Biden is basically doing what worked for us on same sex marriage. Go the high road. Call on people to have an open mind. And especially an open heart. We taught the world it works. We should be taking a victory lap for that. And hopefully another one in November. This is all helping me to process how I feel. I feel sad a lot. To me, the fact that the free ride racists see it the way they do is a tragedy.

Juxtaposition of two videos from Kenosha: A Black man gets shot seven times from behind; a white teen with a gun walks past police

Let me turn that into a positive statement. If you don't want to see examples of victim blaming and people who proudly wear their racism for all to see, avoid Daddy and his forum, like Steven Kesslar decided to. It's easy. And you'll feel better.

As much as I'm a Lichtman guy, I have to admit that Wall Street and JP Morgan had a perfect track record in 2016: Wall Street reacts: Here’s what the markets will do after the election PUBLISHED MON, NOV 7 2016 9:41 AM This is good news. If Biden wins, they'll be 3 for 3.

We're of course being bad boys, and ignoring Prof. Lichtman's advice to not follow the noise of the polls. But, hell. I doubt he'd be against a little more intellectual masturbation. Let's just make sure not to get any goo, or hot air, on the pages of his books. The story says Emerson had Biden 4 points ahead of President Toxic in July. Now it's 2. So the trend is the same. Emerson is calling it closer than the national polling average, which has moved from as high as 10 to about 6 today. Most of these national polls have margins of error in the ballpark of 2 - 3 %. With the state polls it's usually a bit bigger. Axelrod has said field work/GOTV can be worth 2 - 3 %. Another way to think of that is a different electorate can be worth 2 - 3 %. None of these pollsters know what future turnout will be, and whether Democrats will stay home (2010) or Republicans will (2006). And then there's the issue that these days a Democrat can win the popular vote by millions and still lose. So the national polls would have to be in the high single digits a day or two before the election to feel pretty secure. And this year will be different, too, because of all the early voting. As we know, it would have been worse for Bernie on Super Tuesday, because the early mail-in voting was more favorable to him. So, basically: anything can happen. And guess what? I just told everybody something they already know. This headline speaks for itself: Don't get too excited about Biden's lead in the polls: a close election is dangerous Biden is leading in the polls now, but bigger leads than his have been blown so the only way to get Trump out of office will be to have an overwhelming win. This paragraph is worth quoting: I think this paragraph from that Emerson poll article you posted is worth quoting, too. The reason that jumped out at me is that what's clearly the most dangerous form of voting - in person on Election Day - is what Republicans will do the most. People should of course vote however they want. My reading of what the Democrats are saying is people should be able to have multiple choices to vote safely - by mail, in person and early, and in person and on Election Day. President Toxic is clearly saying people should vote in person - except perhaps in states like Florida where he thinks voting by mail might help him. To me it's just another example of President Toxic's reckless disregard for human life. And of the Republican bullshit machine. Herman Cain was diagnosed with COVID-19 less than two weeks after he went to President Toxic's Oklahoma rally. It's pushing the limit to say that President Toxic was responsible for Herman Cain's death. Cain can, and did, choose to do what he wanted. But President Toxic did a whole hell of a lot to create the toxic and unsafe environment that Cain died in. So to me, this is another example of where he just doesn't give a shit if more people die - including former Republican Presidential candidates. Dem’s Blaming Violence in American Cities on Trump Is Despicable I wasn't able to read that story from the right-wing Epoch Times because it's behind a pay wall. But the headline says it all, I suspect. So Biden comes out and unequivocally and passionately denounces violence and looting. His message was clearly directed to both sides. While I doubt Biden scripted Jacob Blake's Mom, he has been speaking with her. He clearly listened to her. And I'd bet money there is some choreography between her eloquent statement about national unity and his comments in Philly, which quoted her extensively. It wasn't Gandhi or MLK. But I thought he did really well. Meanwhile, the right wing will slam him and Democrats as in the headline above. And they will cheer when the vile, racist, and deplorable words keep coming out of President Toxic's mouth. On either mail-in voting or President Toxic's goading people to hate and be violent, all you have to do is listen to the words coming out of President Toxic's mouth. Or the exact words of the key people around him. Biden was smart to quote a few of those statements, verbatim, during his speech. There's an endless sewer of bile to choose from that came out of President Toxic's evil mouth. I give Biden extra points for actually calling President Toxic .......................................... wait for it ..................................................................... "toxic". He's right. This is a very easy one to defend rationally .... not that reason, facts, or logic matter. Forget about what Democrats says about President Toxic. 40 % of Independents say he is the "cause of the chaos". That's actually radical to me. When the people who are NOT Democrats and slightly right-of-center on almost every poll question say the President is the cause of national chaos, that's deeply fucked up. Worse, as I said above, just about half of Independents - not Democrats, but Independents - say that re-electing President Toxic will result in "more violence". Their words, not mine. And the weak, morally timid Republicans who support President Toxic just shut up when their leader spews more bile and hate and lies. i should qualify that. They shut up, and clap loudly. Or worse, they shout in support without masks on. This election is a little bit like therapy fro me. Especially now that the gloves are off, and people are saying what they really think. Of course, President Toxic himself does that about 99 % of the time, anyway, which is a big part of the problem. When I read things like that quote above - that Democrats are "despicable" for saying President Toxic is causing violence (and also for denouncing violence ourselves, of course) it triggers lots of memories. Years and years and years and years and years of conversations with Republicans I was very close to. If I had to date this I would date it to the early Tea Party days, like 2010. And it wasn't that people said things they'd never thought or believed before. I think it's that The Tea Party movement and the culmination of it - Trumpism - made it okay to say it. My go-to example is White conservatives i knew saying they're not racist, but Barack and Michelle Obama are. They were convinced that the Obamas believed that anyone White who disagrees with them on anything is automatically a racist. Like the birther bullshit, it became an entrenched emotional lollipop that both explained away conservative racism, and fueled it. One of the enduring mysteries to me in the latter years of Obama is that "respectable" Republicans I knew very well, who were close to high profile "respectable" Republicans like Mitch Daniels or Jeb Bush, would say they hated the Tea Party. And yet they kept saying things that sounded exactly like I was reading in the most inflammatory Tea Party rags. Including, of course, that Obama himself is the biggest racist around. I think I've made clear with poll data above that if I had to explain why I think Hillary lost in 2016 in a bumper sticker, I would say, "It was the economy, stupid." The poll data undeniably states that many people who voted against were feeling economic pain. That said, there's a big minority of other people who that does not describe. I know this for a fact, because these conversations I had happened in Italy, and France, and Mexico, and in very expensive restaurants or hotels. So this had nothing to do with economic pain. This had to do with racism and hate. Or, to put the polite bumper sticker on it, "cultural anxiety". I don't like the idea of cancel culture at all. That said, I cancelled these people from my life. On an individual and interpersonal level, I feel I have the right to do that. I'll never feel good about that. My guess is these feelings will just gradually dissolve away over years as sadness, and tragedy. But revisiting all this in the heat of a campaign when these words and attacks trigger the memories and feelings, I do feel it's fair to believe these Republicans disqualified themselves from conversations. Because my experience of conversation was that they'd say shit like this. When Hillary denounced violence, it just proved what a bitch or a liar she was. When President Toxic said punch em in the face and he'd pay the legal bills after they were carried away in stretchers, they popped little chubs over that. The experience was consistent and unpleasant to the point where conversation and relationships no longer made sense to me. When I told them why to their face, like I was tired of the racism or the attacks on Republicans like Kasich as RINOs, and the total antipathy to compromise, and the ever deepening support for President Toxic's ever shallower leadership, it did not go well. No surprise. I'm quite sure my decision to speak so bluntly reflected the fact that I'd already decided the relationships just weren't worth it any longer. This is also why I feel that it's very important, especially as a Democrat, to honor and defend Republicans like Kasich, and the Lincoln Project types. Even if I disagree with most of their ideology. To me, they are vessels of light in a time when the nation is led by a vessel of darkness. Of course, I'm not God. I don't get to decide who is the light, and who is evil. But I do think historian John Meacham called it right. This is not a difficult choice. Leaders (and their followers) are making who they are and what they stand for very clear. Biden tried to change the tone today. I hope he keeps doing it. And I hope it sticks. Some of this will be a debate about tax plans or deficits or complicated health care funding schemes or trade deals. But Biden invoked MLK and John Lewis, and made this into a kind of moral crusade. Biden explicitly and implicitly claimed the high ground of hope. I give President Toxic's most devoted followers credit for at least feeling the same way. This rhetoric about evil hordes rampaging or cancelling the suburbs and the end of America as we knew it resonates to them because they do see this as a moral crusade. That is actually how and why we got to where we are today. Ideological disputes and political conflicts end in compromise, ideally. Moral crusades are like civil wars. None of this should be surprising. Back in the 1980's, when Donald Trump was publicly promoting killing Black thugs, he said "maybe hate is what we need if we're going to get something done". Same hate, different decade. They knew what they were voting for. Biden in particular has to relentlessly speak the language of unity and hope. And on a political level, I think that is exactly where people like Stuart Stevens and John Kasich and a lot of Republican Governors are. I'm also quite sure if President Toxic loses, some Republican MOCs will feel like it's a nightmare that ended. And now we can get back to normal. Back in the days of the Reagan Revolution, which was my political coming of age, I read conservative opinion leader George Will a lot. He was usually eloquent and interesting, even if I mostly disagreed with him. If he was writing about Reagan or like-minded Republicans winning elections, or winning conservative policies, he was right a lot more than he was wrong. So it says a lot to me that he's a Never Trumper. And that he just said on MSNBC that after the election some factions are going to be purged from the Republican Party. His words, not mine. I hope he's right about that one , as well. My reason for skepticism is that he's not even talking about his party anymore. He left it when President Toxic was elected. Some Never Trumper Republicans say they want to burn the party down. Because if President Toxic loses he will then just become a true cult leader, in effect, and gradually guide a constantly diminishing party to its end. If this is a battle between ex-President Toxic and people like George Will, I kind of feel sorry for George Will. Either way, the toxicity preceded President Toxic. And I'm pretty sure it will survive his Presidency. The good news about this to me is that if Biden wins, that is not primarily our problem. The massive challenge for Democrats will be to try to effectively govern our way out of the deep hole we're in.

I have a hangover from my intellectual masturbation marathon this weekend. And yet there's still a few other interesting pieces of data that I'm going to post because I think they may determine the outcome. I already mentioned the "better or worse than four years ago" thing above. There is another question in the YouGov poll where you can do a direct apples to apples with exit polls from 2016. So the CNN exit poll from 2016 asked voters to describe their "financial condition compared to four years ago". The 31 % who said "better today" voted Clinton 72/23. The 41 % who said "about the same" voted Clinton 47/45. The 27 % who said "worse today" voted for President Toxic 77/19. We now know that Hillary knew all this as it was happening. Stan Greenberg in particular wrote a lot about how she was trying to both run on the Obama/Biden legacy, but also speak to the fact that a lot of people didn't feel any better off. Biden will of course have the same challenge. Here's the thing, though. Today only 17 % of voters say they are "better off financially than they were one year ago", whereas 27 % say they are worse off. 51 % say they are the same financially as a year ago. It's not quite apples to apples, since the 2016 exit survey compares it to four years ago, and this current survey compares it to last year. But if Hillary had a weight around her neck in 2016, President Toxic has the same one in 2020. Except it's much heavier. And unlike Hillary, President Toxic was President. Biden will, and should, keep hammering the shit out of President Toxic for never really wanting to take responsibility for anything that happened while he's been in charge. Other than the great reality TV shows. All of this suggests Lichtman will likely be 10 out of 10 when the votes are counted. And it will be the economy, stupid. One other little tidbit. Hillary was up in Florida about three points right around now in 2016. In Florida Biden is doing a little better than Clinton, but a little worse in the Rust Belt states, compared to the same time in 2016. We should take nothing for granted. The comparisons to Hillary will probably make Biden look good by mid-Sept., since that was when she was actually in the worst polling shape. (Deplorables, walking pneumonia.) In the Florida polls President Toxic had a small lead in Sept. Then in mid-Oct. during the debates Hillary was way out front. So this is why I think every day in Sept. and Oct. all we should be talking about is "Did you vote?" and "Did you make sure your ballot was received?" I actually got an email from the California Secretary of State today saying they now have a "track your ballot" system up. We need that in every state.

This whole word "Independent" is a catch all for all kinds of things. There's the conservative Never Trumpers, the Black progressives who unlike their parents don't want to identify as a Democrat even though they vote that way, and then the people in the middle who truly go back and forth between each party. The military slants hard Republican, but when you add in that they are Millennials or Gen Z that may offset it. It's a tragedy with Hillary that for whatever reason she seemed to be good at playing to the worst stereotypes about her. You'd have to know her to understand that, I think. People who know her and admire her have written that all the decades of scars led her to build up an emotional wall around herself that comes down in private. I know that even though she was labelled as a phony, I always felt that Elizabeth always came through as authentic in a way Hillary often didn't. I can't explain it, and now it's history. Joe comes through as authentic. I'm just loving what I read. The minimum needed is what he said: rioting and looting is NOT protesting. But these other lines are great: “Ask yourself: Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioting? Really?” “Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is reelected?” Biden is clearly reading the polls. I did try to select the most important questions from that massive trove of YouGov poll data. But here's a few more that may help explain this. Among Independents, 46 % say there will be "more violence" if President Toxic is re-elected. 33 % say the same, and only 23 % say "less violence." So by saying that President Toxic will just fuel the violence, Biden has no votes to lose, and probably many Independent votes to gain. 72 % of Independents say "racism" is either the most important factor or an important one in explaining the unrest. 65 % say "lack of economic opportunity" is either the "most important" (21 %) or "an important" factor in explaining the unrest. So Biden has the vast majority on his side on things President Toxic won't even talk about. The danger for Biden is that 59 % of Independents say "liberal policies" are the most important or an important factor in explaining the unrest. The 29 % who say liberalism is the "most important" factor are no doubt part of the 40 % of Independents that I think are a lost cause for Biden, anyway. But this is where progressives should probably be happy now, even though we may pay a steep price for it in the future. The idea that Biden is soft on crime and Harris is too weak to throw Black men who are bad in jail just won't sell. The pattern on COVID-19 is essentially similar. Most Independents think Biden would have done a better job (42 %) than President Toxic, or the same (17 %). Only 30 % think he'd have done worse. Biden ought to be able to win the Independent vote, perhaps handily. Like he was in some polls this Summer. I think closing the deal is all about the economy, stupid. The only sad thing about President Toxic maybe being the new President Carter is that he almost certainly will not be one of the most admired ex-Presidents. Poor Donald just can't catch a break, can he?

Quite honestly, one silver lining in the cloud if President Toxic is re-elected is that we get to watch Mike and Karen dance again. I'm all for silly walks and goose steps. But sometimes the simplest things in life are the best.

Biden Beats Trump on Economy in New Poll This Newsweek article is from mid-July. After I asked my question above I Googled "Why is Trump beating Biden on the economy?" I got this and several other articles saying he isn't. If it's true that 60 % or so of Independents feel that we're worse off than four years ago, it seems like Biden should be able to end up where that July poll shows with them. Like with Biden getting up to half the Independent vote or a bit more, and President Toxic maybe low 40's. If that happens, and Democrats (who outnumber Republicans) turn out at similarly high rates as Republicans, it's a wipe out.

I agree. If there's one thing I would point to where I keep feeling, "This can't be true. It's too good to be true. It's bullshit." that would be the polls in Florida. Florida is always close. And as you say, if Biden wins there it is game over. So I have a hard time believing he is running away with it. Unlike the national polls, President Toxic was tied to or slightly ahead of Biden in Florida this Spring. So what goes up can come down. But if the primary driver is COVID-19, its not going to be easy for President Toxic to reverse the perception that he just botched it. So an apology and a question. I just reread my last post above. There's like half a dozen typos and some words left out. Sorry about that. It's probably transparent, but I use these posts when I want to learn something to process my thoughts. My project this weekend was to learn what I could about where swing voters are at. On the other website my habit was to post, then edit. Here I've now figured out that shortly after you post, you can no longer edit. In this case, I was starving and ran out to get a pizza and by the time I got back I couldn't edit anymore. Here's the question. With Independents, as I posted above, the issue that Biden is doing the worst on relative to Trump is the economy. 44 % of Independents say they are for Trump, 34 % for Biden right now in this YouGov poll. In terms of who would do a better job on the economy, 43 % say President Toxic and 28 % Biden. My strong gut feeling, based on this data, is that what's holding Biden back with Independents is this stuff on the economy ..... not COVID-19,. not race, not anything else. Why? I don't quite get it. I understand that until March anyone for President Toxic could argue, and also genuinely believed, that the economy was the best ever. But now it's the worst ever. Lichtman has incorporated this in his analysis. Before COVID-19 he was saying it's too early to tell, but at this point it looks like Trump. The three things that changed were the short term economy, the long term economy, and the social unrest - which I actually believe is not just race, but also all these young people of every race who feel they've been left behind by the economy, and now stand on common ground. Independents don't see it this way. At least not right now. I'm not sure if it's fear that Biden will go too far left, a lack of faith in Biden because he represents the Establishment that has failed, something else, or some combo of all the above. The most salient number to me is 60 %. As I said above 60 % of Independents say we're worse off than four years ago. Based on past election cycles, like the exit poll data from 2016, Biden should be winning like 75 % to 80 % of these "thing are worse" Independent voters. It seems like he SHOULD be able to get up to the high 40's of all Independents, as opposed to the mid-30's where he's at right now. Ideas?

My intellectual masturbation marathon this weekend has involved wondering what Independents think about Biden and President Toxic. If there's anybody who actually is still undecided, which is itself questionable, they are probably Independents. So this long ass post is my masturbation about what Independents seem to be saying that actually matters. Let's start with this: US election 2020: Trump handed huge boost as Biden makes major mistake - Exclusive poll There's people online saying this is a fake poll based on crappy assumptions. Trafalgar is out with a poll saying President Toxic has a slight lead in Michigan. So I see no reason to dismiss the idea that President Toxic may win. I'd rather break the glass and act as if these polls are right on the money. There is one specific point I'd like to make about this poll. This is what the clearly pro-Trump people who put it out said: What I predicted is that Team Toxic will say Biden is full of shit about violence unless and until he takes up arms and, much like a vigilante, go kills some Black looter. And then they will condemn him for it. This comes close. They are trying to portray Biden's denunciation of violence - and call for President Toxic to do the same - as a sort of flip flopping. My category for this is simple. It goes in the "desperate people do desperate things" file. John Kerry did flip flop oh his vote for war in Iraq. Biden, and Jacob's Mom, are actually articulating how the vast majority of Americans think and feel. At least according to the polls I'm reading. On the polling trend itself, I already pointed out that Rasmussen, a Republican poll that is an outlier compared to most polls, said that Trump's approval rating increased during the DNC, decreased during the RNC, and after two weeks of conventions his - 6 % net approval was one point worse than before either convention. Again, this is a Republican poll which in 2020 is an outlier showing much more approval for President Toxic than most polls. They are not arguing that President Toxic won the election this week. Or even that he gained any ground. I'd tend to go with Rasmussen on the trend. All this data about Independents reinforces the point I just made. At least in 2020, they seem to NOT like most of what either Biden or President Toxic say. At least the small group of Independents that aren't mostly Republicans or Democrats. When Democrats talk, Independents like President Toxic just a little more. When he talks, they like him a little less. I think part of it, based on years of relationships with Independent clients, is they just kind of disdain the whole sausage making process. So anyone who makes sausages is someone they are skeptical about, and in some cases just look down on. Out of curiosity, I tried to find data about how Independents viewed Obama during the 2008 campaign. This is an interesting but tangential point: Independents abandoned Obama quickly after the 2008 election, and were a big part of the 2010 Democratic wipeout. This resonates with my lived experience. The good part of it is that these people held Obama accountable to his campaign rhetoric about unity. That said, I know several of the ones I've known have been involved in lobbying and writing federal regs on business matters that affected them. So I've always felt they tend to hold all politicians up to a higher standard than they hold themselves to. Beyond that, I think some of the messages at the DNC reinforced specific economic fears Independents have about Biden. And some of the messages at the RNC - like around racism - reinforced things they don't like about the whole President Toxic experience. I'll get into specific poll data on that below. But it would explain what Rasmussen's data suggests: that the Democratic convention gave Trump some points, and the Republican convention took them back. That said, there's some slightly contradictory data in this huge YouGov poll that could explain any convention bounce President Toxic had. When asked whether the RNC made them more likely or less likely to vote for Trump, 47 % of Independents said more likely and 25 % said less likely. That right there would be sufficient to explain a possible bounce of a few points. Particularly because a few months ago, Biden was winning a slightly higher percentage of the Independent vote. So if Independents shifted a little more toward President Toxic, is that .... the economy? the looting or violence? the choice of Harris? the RNC being a good show? We can't really know. But the RNC itself is a good enough explanation to me. If you are worried about some new poll that says President Toxic will win, here's a blast from the past. In early September, a few days after the RNC, USA today put out a poll showing that John McCain had a 10 point lead over Barack Obama. In the early September averages, McCain led. The last poll showing McCain with a lead came out in later September 2008. I think in a month we'll have a much better picture of whether this is going to be a nail biter. Alan, welcome to the conversation. Professor Lichtman would point out that the Republicans had so many fundamentals working against them in 2008 that there was basically no way either Barack or Hillary could have lost that election, regardless of which one was nominated. He'd say most of this campaign stuff is just noise. This Gallup report says if you look at who was ahead BEFORE the conventions, the leader BEFORE THE CONVENTION won 12 out of the 15 Presidential races. This of course suggests Biden is way more likely to win. The objective fact I come back to is that it's been almost exactly one year since RCP started measuring a Biden/Trump horse race. Of those 365 days, President Toxic has been in the lead for exactly 0 of 365 days. The closest he's gotten to Biden, so far, is about 4 % in the national popular vote. If Biden wins by 4 % (as opposed to 2 % like Hillary) it's very hard to slice and dice the math so that he loses the electoral college. From here on out in this post, I'm going to focus on what this YouGov poll says Independents are thinking. My assumption is that most voters still in play are Independents. And their thinking offers insights into the underlying trends. My related assumption is that Lichtman is right. So what's really of interest is data about underlying voter trends about fundamentals. Therefore, the most useless question is the horse race poll question. But some of these other questions paint a picture that is less "sticky", and in many cases seems to already be hardened into concrete. I said already several posts up that I think about 40 % of Independents are a lost cause to Biden. I'd put that number in the low 40's. 42 % of Independents say Biden is not mentally fit to be President. 41 % say America would be less safe under Biden. It seems like somewhere around 4 in 10 "Independents" are basically conservative Republicans who will end up voting for President Toxic, or perhaps just not vote. Biden is disqualified for them, I think. I don't think that's about race of BLM or Kenosha or violence. Here's an example. Nikki Haley said her party is not racist. But 52 % of Independents say race relations are generally bad. 50 % say the US suffers from systemic racism. That is obviously NOT the Republican position. I think race may be an issue that is drawing people away from the Republicans. Perhaps just for appearance's sake, because they don't want to be seen as racists. Or more likely because they simply don't agree with Haley, and they do believe America has a real and big race problem. I also said several posts up that another 40 % of Independents are a lost cause to President Toxic. I'd put the number in the mid- to high 40's. Here's examples. 45 % of Independents say President Toxic is not a good person. 47 % say he does not have the mental ability to be President. 39 % say he is the source of the current chaos. To me at least, these are all disqualifying statements. You're a bad person, you're mentally unfit, and you're causing chaos. But I'll vote for you? Uh .................... probably not! I think this poll, which shows President Toxic winning 44 % of Independents, is probably getting close to as good as it gets for him with Independents. Meanwhile, Biden has 34 % of Independents in this poll. I'm guessing that's about as bad as it gets for him. Party because this poll comes right after an RNC that almost half of Independents said made them more likely to vote for President Toxic. And partly because close to half of Independents have really toxic views of President Toxic, as both a person and a leader. Finally, in most polls this year, and especially this Summer, I think Biden had a slight leads with Independents. Here's another one of Lichtman's underlying factors that I think is probably sticky, if not cemented in. 60 % of Independents say "thing have generally gotten worse" in the US over the last four years. I put the exact wording because there are variations of this question. But in general, if you think the economy is worse off, or if you are personally worse off, your chances of voting for the incumbent plummet. So, in theory, a little more than 40 % of Independents are a lost cause for Biden. But the 60 % who say the US is in worse shape would pretty much all be candidates for ending up as Biden voters, I think. If they actually vote, that is. About 20 % of these Independents care little or not at all who wins. That's why GOTV matters so much. These were some of the biggest nails in Hillary's coffin when she ran against Trump. In the 2016 exit polls, 72 % of voters said their financial situation was either better off or about the same as four years ago. Hillary won those two groups handily. But the 27 % who said they were worse off voted against her, 77 to 19. On the overall economy, about 1 in 3 voters said the economy was excellent or good. Hillary won over 3 in 4 of those votes. The 41 % who said the economy was "not good" voted for President Toxic 53/40. The 21 % who said the economy was "poor" voted for President Toxic 79/15. Cue up Jim Carville, please ... My sense is that last week was a mostly well choreographed effort by Team Toxic to convince anyone persuadable that you're better off than you were before me. And other than these few little Corona-glitches, things will be just fine. So we know from this poll almost half of Independents said, "Okay. I'm open to think about that. Maybe." But 60 % of them still feel the US is worse off. Lichtman's point is that voters are not fundamentally stupid. And the economic fundamentals, which are quite ugly, will manifest themselves in the final vote. If it's a fair vote. If that's true, what could possibly go wrong for Biden? On leadership traits, over half of all voters, including half of Independents, aren't particularly impressed with either man. Is anyone surprised? Biden does best on decency and empathy. Even there, only 4 in 10 voters say he has that quality. As opposed to only 2 in 10 who say the same about President Toxic. With strength, it's the opposite. One of President Toxic's favorite four letter words this Fall will be "weak". Because 4 in 10 voters see him as strong, as opposed to 2 in 10 for Biden. Either way, that's hardly flattering. As far as closing the deal with Independents that can still be persuaded goes, the polls suggest Harris met the "do no harm" rule. Among Independents, she has a 36 % favorable/ 52 % unfavorable rating. That may sound bad. But Biden is 39 % favorable/54 % unfavorable. So Harris did not harm. Meanwhile, President Toxic is 41 % favorable/55 % unfavorable. Again, he may be maxxed out with Independents already. If I'm right that maybe at most 20 % of Independents are in play, they are probably almost all voters who don't particularly admire either man. I doubt these perceptions will change. The good news to me is that slightly more Independents agree with what I view as the disqualifying statements for President Toxic - like that he's mentally unfit - than with Biden. So combine that with the latent fact that a majority of them thinks the country is worse off, and there's a good chance that a majority of Independents will ultimately vote for change, and Biden. Here's how Independents view which candidate who would do a better job on key issues, ranked from ones where Biden has a lead to those where President Toxic has a lead: Dealing with race relations: Biden 42, Trump 26, Biden has + 16 % advantage Dealing with Coronavirus: Biden 40, Trump 33, Biden has + 7 % advantage Foreign policy: Biden 36, Trump 40, Trump has + 4 % advantage Crime: Biden 33, Trump 37, Trump has + 4 % advantage Immigration: Biden 35, Trump 42, Trump has + 7 % advantage The economy: Biden 28, Trump 43, Trump has + 15 % advantage. I think some of the conventional wisdom may be wrong. If "law and order" means "crime", President Toxic may have a slight advantage. But it's slight. Once it gets into race, Biden has the advantage. I think it's probably in cement that Biden is viewed as more likely to be able to bring us back together. And President Toxic is more likely to create chaos and pull us apart. 50 to 52 % of Independents believe that race relations are bad, and there is systemic racism in the US. Biden is getting the votes of 34 % if Independents in this poll. That suggests either people are lying, or Biden has room to grow support on this issue. President Toxic, right after the RNC that half of Independents say persuaded them, is actually outperforming right now. He has 44 % of the Independent vote in this poll, even though there's no issue on which 44 % of Independents think he'd actually do a better job than Biden. The other obvious thing is that it's the economy, stupid. That's where Independents say President Toxic looks the best, and Biden looks the worst. And we should add in the cohort that is basically with President Toxic on The Wall and the borders. That's 42 to 43 %. Again, there's a whole bunch of poll results that suggest for some percentage of voters in the low 40's Biden is just a bridge too far. And President Toxic already has all those people in this poll, in which he's still losing by six points. I don't think Kenosha is preventing Biden from closing the deal. When a Black mother of a guy who just got shot 7 times speaks out about violence and healing, that helps Biden. Honestly, watching how Biden is doing this, I'm pretty impressed. I'd guess that he personally encouraged Jacob's mother to do that. I actually think it inoculates him if some crazy anti-fa people kill someone. he's unequivocally against it, and saying it nonstop. President Toxic isn't inoculated in the same way. Because he says things that either explicitly or at least implicitly seem to provoke the hot heads. That's part of what I read into the poll results. if there's a way "Kenosha" hurts Biden, it's by President Toxic backing Biden into a cul de sac. There's a question that deals with that. Asked which is a bigger problem, systemic racism or a breakdown of law and order, the country is split 49/51, right down the middle. But with Independent voters, 43 % say systemic racism. 57 % say that the breakdown of law and order is a bigger problem. You could argue if Biden is the racism guy, and President Toxic is the law and order guy, that hurts Biden. Especially if you argue that Biden is somehow causing this breakdown of law and order. Which is of course what Republicans, including surrogates like Black conservative, are selling. I think it's a hard sell. The polls suggest it's not working, other than with those already coverted. Brewer can discredit BLM as socialist or against the nuclear family, but it's a lie and it's not cutting for the people who aren't like the McCloskeys. Meanwhile, Democrats - including many who are Black - will keep arguing that if you want law and order, you need to dump Trump. That almost 4 in 10 Independents say the President of the United States is very strong language - really it should be shocking. If you watered it down to "throwing fuel on the fire" more than 4 in 10 Independents would agree. Which is precisely why only 1 in 4 Independents think President Toxic would do a better job on race than Biden. As long as Democrats keep shouting that this is Trump's America, and President Toxic is making this worse, I don't see this hurting Biden. More likely, it helps him. I think what's really Biden from closing the deal is .......... the economy, stupid. And I'm not sure why. Again, 60 % of Independents say the US is worse off than four years ago. That syncs with the fact that 44 % are already voting for President Toxic. And that 43 % say he will do a better job than Biden on the economy. My guess is President Toxic is getting an overwhelming majority of the 40 % who DO NOT think that we're worse off. And a thin slice of the 60 % who do feel we're worse off, but don't blame it on him or are willing to give him more time. But there's a big gap between the 34 % support Biden has in this poll, and the 60 % who say America is in worse shape under President Toxic. I can only speculate about what that 's about. My guess is that this "socialism" thing has bite. Nobody thinks Biden is a socialist. But the "Trojan horse" argument is a slippery slope argument. Let Biden in the door, and you just can't trust who he'll bring with him (Elizabeth Warren! AOC! Bernie! Black Marxists!) or what they'll think up next. My strong hunch is that some Independents who watched the DNC had some buttons pushed, and told Rasmussen that week (but not the following week) that maybe I like President Toxic after all. Another theory is that Biden has all these word bubbles hanging over his head like "NAFTA" and "Job Destroyer" and "Green New Deal" and "tax hike". This is where maybe Axelrod and Brownstein were right. As they said, maybe the DNC should have presented a more explicit economic agenda to persuade these Independents. I think it was implicit in the choreography that both conventions were focused less on persuading Independents, and more on ginning up the base to vote, and donate, and volunteer. Biden has two months and several debates to deal with these economic questions and reservations and close the deal, if economic policy or any policy is the hurdle to be jumped. Again, the good news to me is that, at least in theory, most of the 60 % of Independents that feel that the US is worse off under President Toxic are targets to vote for Biden. he's lost the other 40 % because they think he's senile and they buyt the "Destroyer Joe" trope. But he only has a bit over half of the other 60 % in this poll. Meanwhile, President Toxic has 100 % + of the Independents who feel he's doing a better job on any issue. It that sense, this is like 1992. Biden has to close the deal. And he has the time and voters to do so. My read is that the key phrase is what we all know it is ............ it's the economy, stupid. Reinforcing President Toxic's incompetence on COVID-19 will also help. 40 % already say Biden would do a better job on that. So they should be voting for him, but for the fact that they probably haven't been sold on the economy yet. Michael Steele, former RNC Chair, asked a good question this week about Republicans: "How do they stop the slide?" The context of his statement was that his former party has probably lost 4 Senate seats irreversibly, and if the slide continues it could be 7. He's no dummy. The Republicans had their week of reality TV to present their alternative universe. So is this is what they've got, and most polls still show they're down maybe seven points, this is not good news for them. Steele sure knows that. This is another area where President Toxic may be pulling a Carter. He set expectations for Biden so low that Biden has already outperformed them. At least at the DNC. He's doing the same thing with his talk about socialists, Marxists, and Trojan horses. The policy fear with Reagan was that he'd go way too far. Reagan had to calm people down. The killer line from the one and only debate right before the election was ... "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Biden has it better and worse than Reagan. If you see Biden as a socialist, or even very liberal, that means you are a conservative Republican, and you'll be voting for President Toxic. So he doesn't have to explain that he's not radical. The bigger problem may be that he does have to explain how he was a Senator and a Vice President for half a century. And yet, to quote President Toxic, "it is what it is." How does the guy who spent half a century in power getting us into this mess now get us out of it? I've never been a student of Joe Biden before. I had no reason to be. Now I do. I'd bet he'll pass this test with flying colors, just like he did with his convention. I can think of arguments and zingers. But Biden's people will (hopefully) impress me with much better ones they think up.

So it seems like it's "break the glass" weekend. Michael Moore is the smartest guy in the room saying, "Oh my God, this could be 2016 all over again". There are several others I admire less saying the same thing. Mostly I'm glad. Because for the next two months Democrats should be in an endless cycle of vote, donate, volunteer, repeat. Just don't vote more than once, okay? This is leading to some people saying fairly dumb shit. There's an Atlantic article I won't bother posting that is titled "This Is How Biden Loses" which runs out the Kenosha Theory. The author's idea is that Biden should go to Kenosha as a sort of shadow President and pronounce something about peace, calm, nonviolence, or something. I guess the idea is that now that he's proven he can give a good convention speech, let's try making Biden look like Jesus, Moses, and Gandhi rolled into one. It's a bad idea. A better idea is what Cedric Richmond, Biden's co-chair said, "This is Trump's America. He needs to own this moment." I think most people get that. I've been spending the weekend poring through that 273 page You Gov poll. I think there's a treasure trove of "sticky" data about how voters, especially Independents, view this election. I'll get to that. But I don' buy the idea that Biden loses because of this kind of violence. Race relations is actually his BEST issue, according to these polls. 51 % of Americans say President Toxic is a racist, including 78 % of Blacks. Independents see Biden as being better than President Toxic on "race relations" by a 16 point margin. So I get the idea that this plays to the "law and order" fears. But it also plays to the idea, which almost half of America agrees with, that President Toxic is the cause of this national chaos. Portland is kind of my political home time. I've never cared for the anti-fa people. Or the conservative people who mostly don't live in Portland who come in to push back. This has been happening all through President Toxic's Presidency. So in the last few days there's all these people waving MAGA flags. And one of them gets shot in the head twice and killed by someone who says "We have a Trumper right here." First, every Black and every Democrat needs to speak like Jacob Blake's Mom. Which is do say, we need to condemn any type of violence as a way to create change. Like Jacob's Mom, we need to keep saying what makes America great is our ability to unify around common values. Second, you don't have to guess about some of the passions driving this. It's branded. MAGA flags. "We have a Trumper right here." I'm not arguing President Toxic caused this. But his name and branding is right in the middle of it. The idea of killing anyone because they are a "Trumper" is repugnant and wrong. But how did we get to where we are? No one is doing this in the name of Joe Biden. Or going out with Biden buttons on and Biden stickers on their guns and killing people. As President Toxic would say, "It is what it is." I think people see what it is. Everything Jacob's Mom said above - every word in every sentence - is exactly what Biden has been saying. I'll pull a Lichtman and argue that much of this - especially the horse race polls - is just noise that has no impact on the outcome. His theory says, correctly I think, that social disorder is one of 13 fundamentals that suggest a political earthquake is coming that will turn out the party in power. He would argue that chaos hurts the incumbent party. 78 % of Americans say the country is out of control. 46 % of Americans say President Toxic "is the cause of the chaos". Only 27 % say Trump "will protect us from the chaos". These are bad numbers for President Toxic. It is not clear to me that this will end up being somehow blamed on Biden, or Democrats. People are much more likely to say President Toxic is causing this chaos. Or at least throwing fuel on the fire. I'm with Cedric Richmond. This is President Toxic's America. He needs to own it. A few historical notes that are relevant, I think. Like many, I worried that some White whack job would assassinate Obama. Thankfully, that didn't happen. But most people did not associate Obama, or Obama's America, with throwing fuel on fires. That said, I've known a number of White conservatives who think Obama was a racist. When you probed why, they cited things that I viewed as attempts at calming, and reconciliation. My perception is that Obama would go to Dallas after a cop was killed, or speak up about Ferguson, and say things like, "We are not as far apart as we think." He would speak up for the core values and ideas of both cops, and protesters. Some White people perceived that as anti-cop. Meanwhile, it's apparently an open secret that Michelle Obama feels that President Toxic's birther nonsense could have gotten her husband killed. All it takes is one nut with one gun. This week proved there are plenty of nuts and guns out there. My point is that President Toxic is more symptom than cause. I think all this racist bile, which includes the idea that Obama was a racist for trying to get people to meet in the middle, started to well up from the conservative or Tea Party base long before Trump came along. I know this for a fact, because I ate, slept, traveled, and talked with these people. President Toxic simply articulated - or bellowed - how they felt. I can't divorce my perceptions from my political views. But the polls I'm reading suggest most Americans perceive reality as I do. They are far more likely to associate the racism and the chaos and the violence with President Toxic. I think Democrats need to make him own it. Another historical reference. It's a well kept secret, but in 1968 the name of the President was LBJ. Nixon was challenging an incumbent party. Back to Lichtman, he suggests that social disorder signals problems for the incumbent party. So the people who cite Nixon and 1968 have to remember that the Nixon of 2020 is Joe Biden. He's the one who, like Nixon, can and is arguing that he can clean up this mess. The polls say America is inclined to believe that President Toxic is a racist. And that Joe Biden is simply better suited to calm down race relations and deal with the underlying issues causing the violence. So this is a complicated issue that could go either way. But the notion that this automatically helps President Toxic is nonsense. Nixon had a very easy case to make, because the symbol of the chaos in 1968 was all the violence associated with the Democratic National Convention. That certainly does not describe what happened at the 2020 DNC. The 2020 DNC was about "Empathy Joe," The polls suggest it worked. It mostly reinforced an image of decency among people who saw Biden that way already. It may have persuaded a single digit percentage of Independents that Joe is a really decent guy. That's not what happened in 1968. About half of America see Biden as a good person, and they see empathy and decency as his strong suits. Again, only 29 % of Americans see President Toxic as a good person. Even many Republican agree that he lacks empathy and decency. I think Biden's bigger problem is issues. More than anything, it's still the economy, stupid. There's a trove of poll data that suggests this, that I'll get into below. My point here is that I think Biden has won the "decency debate". It's probably a reason for more Independents to support Biden. Because most people don't even think President Toxic is a good person. Biden's problems probably have to do with Independents fearing he'll go too far - open borders and socialism are probably the two biggest hot buttons. This whole trope about Blacks abolishing or ruining the suburbs is mostly just inflaming Blacks who already think President Toxic is racist to the bone, I think. In my eyes, there is no question at all that President Toxic is a racist. And that he is fueling the fire. In part because he is what he is. And in part because polarizing and dividing is his sole path to win re-election. I am clear that not everyone agrees with me. But the polls suggest that Americans, including Independents, tend to view it more my way than President Toxic's way. I'll post more of this poll data below. It makes what I think are some very interesting points about underlying drivers in this election. But this post I wanted to focus mostly on the questions of race and violence. And on what I view as the mistaken idea that this will somehow lead to Biden's undoing. If anything, I think it helps Biden at the margin, for the reasons I said above. People see Biden, not President Toxic, as the guy better suited to deal with this issue.

Everyone here is just being so unfair, and jumping to conclusions. There's a lot of good reasons he might not want to release his DNA. For example, in this massive You Gov poll I've been citing, only 29 % of voters think President Toxic is a good person. What if they aren't saying Trump is bad? What if they are saying he actually isn't a person? Bill Maher actually out on front on this issue. Sadly, he didn't have the DNA to prove it. Maybe this explains everything.

There's actually a part II to the last long rant of mine directly above. I was editing what I had posted and fact checking all these poll numbers from the Morning Consult poll. And I guess the edit function on any post times out after some relatively brief period of time. So I'm going to reprint the final paragraph from above about whether voters even care from this huge poll, and then post the remainder. Then there's a question about whether voters care who wins. 90 % of both Democrats and Republicans care "a lot" or "somewhat". 10 % of both Democrats and Republicans say they care only a little, or not at all. So my read of that is that there is no real difference in partisan motivation. Both parties are on fire. And turnout will likely be really high for both parties. If that happens, Democrats win. Because there are more registered Democrats. Republicans only win big, like in 2010, when Democratic turnout sucks. The thing that jumps out at me most is that 25 % of Independents care only a little, or not at all, about who wins. For me, this is very easy when you just think about it in whore think. You can fuck me because you are madly in love with me. Or you can fuck me because I'm just an asshole. In the first case, you'll slip a wedding ring on my finger. In the second case, you'll leave an envelope on the dresser. But either way, I'm fucked. So whether we love Biden, or it's just whoring, winning is still winning. Granted, I'm just a dumb ass whore. But that's how I see it. Related to that, here's another very interesting and disturbing poll result in terms of motivation. To me, there's a difference between being a political whore, and saying any means justifies the end of winning. 50 % of all voters say Joe Biden is a good person. Almost all Democrats see him that way. Only 29 % of voters see President Toxic as a good person. That right there is incredible. He is the President of the United States. And most people don't even see him as a good person. Only 65 % of Republicans think President Toxic is a good person. And this is AFTER several years of bleeding party registrations. Meaning for the first time ever there are more registered Independents than registered Republicans. So the ones like Flake and Kasich that think President Toxic is NOT a good person already abandoned ship. But even 1 in 3 of the rats on the sinking ship still say this guy is not a good person. Is it possible some of that third will decide between now and November that they'd best jump ship? Who knows? But it's possible. Now I'll make a 100 % emotional statement. It's based on years of intimate relationships with lifelong Republicans. But it's reinforced by almost everything these Never Trumpers who know the party deep in their heart are saying Some of these people would gladly elect Satan if it got them power, and got them their agenda. They don't give a shit. Any means, including putting Satan in power, justifies their ends. They want conservative judges, a big fucking Wall, get rid of abortion, get rid of same sex marriage, get rid of Obamacare, cut taxes, as many guns as they want, and can we all just figure out some reasonable way to get these Black people to just dribble their fucking basketballs and SHUT THE FUCK UP and not have these god damn awful Marxist Black women running for Congress AND FUCKING WINNING!!! How could Black Marxists win? Now maybe not every Republican is like the McCloskeys, and they may part company on this or that. But I agreed with Hillary back in 2016 that some of these people were deplorables. It was really, really dumb for someone running for President of all Americans to say it, of course. It was a big nail in her political coffin. But history has kind of redeemed her, I think. So yes, maybe Donald Trump did not 100 % drain the swamp. But it's a tough job for a mere perfect mortal. So that's why we'll just haul Satan's ass up from hell to finish the job. What could possibly go wrong? Sorry. But if I just listen to what lifelong Republicans who fled the rat's nest are saying, that's what they say about how some of these people who stayed behind think. Again, I'm having a moment. But some of what these people say and do suggest I am not far off the mark here. Now, to try to tiptoe back to fact and logic, there's a few other really interesting things here about Independents. I suspect it means that about 80 % of them are cemented in already for either Biden or President Toxic. Again, this poll shows 44 % of Independents for President Toxic, 34 % for Biden. But a few months ago another poll showed Biden with a slight lead with Independents. And either way, Biden is winning among all voters - by 7 points now, by 10 points in early Summer when he was winning the Independent vote. So this poll says 42 % of Independents think Biden does not have the mental ability to do the job. 41 % say he would make America less safe. Again, right now 44 % of independents say they are for President Toxic. So I think it's a good guess that 4 in 10 Independents are a waste of time for Biden. That's not bad. Most Independents lean toward one party. And this is after several years of lots of Republicans rebranding themselves as Independents. So it is no surprise to me that a significant minority of Independents may not like President Toxic, but they still will go with these Republican messages. These are no doubt the Independents who Team Toxic is hoping will hold their nose and walk back into the tent. 47 % of Independents say President Toxic does not have the mental ability to do the job. That's 5 % more than say the same thing about Biden. 43 % say Trump would make America less safe - 2 % more than said the same about Biden. And as I said above, in this poll Biden has only 34 % of the Independent vote right now, although a few months ago it may have been in the 40's. So it seems to me that Biden actually has more room to grow among Independents than President Toxic. There's one other question about chaos that goes toward this same point. The fact that they're now polling on chaos, and whether our President is causing chaos, is itself a measure of just how horrible things are right now. I've never seen a question like this on a poll before. Right now 78 % of all Americans say America is "out of control". A follow up question explores why people think that. Of all Americans, 46 % say "Trump is the source of the chaos", 27 % say "Trump will protect us from the chaos", 10 % say things are in control, and the rest don't know. Because there are more Democrats than Republicans or Independents, and Democrats feel strongly that President Toxic = chaos, they are over-weighting those numbers. When you only ask Independents, President Toxic does slightly better. 39 % say Trump is causing the chaos, and 29 % say Trump will protect us from the chaos. So now that I did a big number dump out of a humongous poll, here's my point. These horse race polls have been very stable. So have President Toxic's approval ratings, for years. So it seems like even among Independents, about 40 % simply will not vote for Biden. My guess is they likely will vote for President Toxic. If they say Biden is not mentally fit, and will make America less safe, he's not an option. Likewise, at least 40 % and probably more will not vote for Trump. Up to 47 % say he is mentally unfit, and just about 40 % say he's the source of the chaos. That's probably disqualifying. So probably both President Toxic and Biden ought to be able to get about 40 % of the Independent vote. There is this other very fluid 20 %. My guess is Biden has a better shot at winning the majority of that slice. Unless Biden somehow fucks things up really badly, anyone who was willing to buy the "Senile Joe" or "Destroyer Joe" tropes has probably already bought them. But this other 20 % or so slice is in play. Like in 2016, they don't particularly like either guy. I'm guessing that these people are also the 25 % who say they care very little, or not at all, who wins. In 2016, this slice of voters broke heavily for Trump, because they wanted change. If they felt worse off than in 2012, they were even more likely to vote for Trump. Lichtman would argue they were basically casting a thumbs down vote on the party in power. So my strong hunch is that this group of Independents, which is a single digit of the electorate, is probably more likely to hold their nose and vote for Biden than President Toxic - if they vote at all. At the end of the day, they will probably agree that things are out of control, and so therefore change is better than more of the same. My other guess is that Team Toxic knows this. Which is why they are making this a choice between 1) a bad person (because they can't make President Toxic look like a good person, even to 1 in 3 Republicans), and 2) Black Armageddon. They are calculating they can get their own people to vote, even if they are surrounded by plague, locusts, and the fires of Satan. And they are probably trying to make it unappealing or just difficult for everyone else to vote. I'm guessing that includes this 20 % or so of Independents, which is maybe 5 % or so of the entire electorate. That cohort is at best a gamble, and at worst a group that would be most likely to break against the party and leader that got us into this mess. At least so far, they have not bought the message that Biden is unfit, or will make America less safe. Again, all of this is happening in a frame where Biden is winning the popular vote by 7 to 10 %, and ahead in almost every swing state - even if by a thin margin. This is why I think it's all about GOTV and mobilization at this point. 80 % of Independents are probably already locked in cement for either Biden or President Toxic. The best thing that President Toxic has going for him is that he's got a rabid base. Most of whom will walk through the fires of hell to vote for President Toxic. So I think the smart Democrats are right to say the incessant chorus for the next two months has to boil down to one four letter word: V-O-T-E! In a situation like this, I think that anyone who votes who does not already know who they are for is more likely than not to break for change and ending the chaos. That's means Biden. Even if it's another "hold your noser" like in 2016. I could throw around more numbers, but to make my closing point I won't bother. Because I think most people who accept that facts are facts will agree. By almost any objective economic standard, we are worse off than in 1980, 1992, 2008, and 2016. Those were all "it's the economy, stupid" elections where these truly on the fence Independents all tipped the election in the final days against an incumbent, or an incumbent party. Some years, like 2008, the outcome was pretty clear already. Other years, like 2016, it really was the last minute "shift happens" that changed the outcome. It could work out better for President Toxic in 2020. But I really can't see why. Outside the rat's nest, pretty much everyone agrees that he's not a good person. And that either he's created the chaos himself, or at least he does not know how to end it.

I've loved you since we were separated at birth. And while I was woke dreaming on Gillum, you did sniff him out as phony. (Thankfully, I don't mean that sniffing part literally.) But data isn't your strong suit. Then again, I guess you have Czaba or his buddies, so that counts for something. I'm not wild about Ossoff. Then again, I sent money today to Hickenlooper, Bullock, Cunnigham, TJ Cox (toss up House seat in CA). The final last name notwithstanding, I ain't popping a chub - political or otherwise - for any of these guys. I really like and admire Doug Jones. So I changed my plans today and decided instead of $100 to Ossoff like the other ones I'd send $50 to both Ossoff and Jones. I'm mostly just going by the data, Charlie Cook, Larry Sabato, anyone who thinks they know anything. Jones is a very long shot. Ossoff is unlikely, but possible. To me, Kelly, Hickenlooper, Cunnigham, and Gideon are the ones who are all ahead in the polls, and the must haves - assuming Jones loses. That's a 50/50 Senate, plus VP Kamala. Which is about what I'd guess if it's really a razor thin Presidential race. If you get into what Lichtman or that other model based on the economy and President Toxic's approval rating says, Michael Steele is right. In a wave, we could win seven Senate seats. Problem solved. Then again, we could also lose. I'll actually get to that in the next post. On the House side, my big thing is I'm just a girl from Kansas. So like Dorothy, I'm focusing on my very own back yard. The CA House races that are toss ups are Rouda and Cox and Christy Smith, who is going for the seat Katie Hill resigned from and the Republicans took. I just want to hold on to what we've got in the House. If things go well I'll add Ammar who is a House long shot. He's the only one on my list I could actually pop a chub for. And don't say it. I'm obviously a threat to the suburbs and civilization. Because I get hard ons for hot terrorists. To be brutally honest, it's a very good thing I have porn of Czaba/Kris Evans on my computer. Because if the goal is an orgasm, no offense to Ammar or Jon, but porn is probably the most efficient way to do it. I am hoping for a political orgasm in November. That's the best way to solve your worry, which I think is everyone's worry. Which is that this will drag on forever, and we won't know until January. And President Toxic's position is either he won or it's a fake election. We need to keep saying this every day. Hopefully it gets the idea in the mind of everybody that would you please just go fucking vote so that we can get this over with quickly. Lucy McBath is the only House candidate outside CA I'm donating to because like you I think she's a great candidate. I do have a hard on for her on the gun issue, and also on her personal courage and resilience. Also my guess is that this is the cycle we can flip Arizona and Georgia and North Carolina, while holding those three blue Wall Rust Belt states. I just saw somebody smart - I think Jeff Flake, but maybe not - who said in an interview about why he's standing up for Biden that as a conservative he realizes that Trumpism is unsustainable. He said on the current track they'll lose Texas in the 2024 cycle. There's actually a very, very, very consistent analysis among all these Never Trump conservatives, I think. But it's like getting puzzle pieces in that article or this interview that you then have to piece together. As Flake implied, probably their biggest driver is to kill the cancer and then try to rebuild their party. More on that in a future post. But in terms of 2020 I think it's realistic that we can have the Blue Wall and add Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina up and down the ticket. I'm not sending money to Rev. Warnock in Georgia or Jamie Harrison in SC, at least not yet. Even Fox News is saying The Divine Miss Graham may be in trouble. I think we'll know a lot more, good or bad, in a month. I do pop chub when I start thinking about two Black Democratic Senators from the South. I think you're making a lot of assumptions about Kamala. The really interesting question is if Biden/Harris wins, and for some reason Biden is not running in 2024, does that make Harris the 2024 nominee? Or is it a battle royal between her and the progressive wing? That's a fight for another day. For now, I think she at the very least satisfied the "do no harm" rule, and as Rep. Clyburn says probably helps at the margin with both Blacks and suburban women. But there's no way to objectively prove I'm right or you're right. And let's not remember. Feinstein lost state races before she won. She said she regretted endorsing Harris when she found out about some liberal position Harris took. So if the debate in 2020 among Democrats is whether Harris s too conservative, that's not a bad place to be. Remember, to Republican true believers she is a socialist radical who will pillage suburbs with all those other Blacks, I guess. Unless it turns out she's not Black, or American, maybe. Who the fuck knows anymore. The only other thing I'd say about Ossoff is the same. We don't know. The thing I most disliked in that special election is that he didn't live in the district. That alone could be seen as disqualifying. If I donated with my heart, I'd be sending money to Rev. Warnock instead. But it's quite possible that what Ossoff did helped pave the way for McBath to win in 2018. And even if Ossoff and Warnock both lose, it's possible that paves the way for Stacey Abrams to be Governor. We don't know. This is a long slog. And yeah, we agree that Biden is not good for popping chub either. There is a trend here. On top of everything else, 2020 is all about sexual frustration, I guess. Gotta say it again. Good thing i got plenty of porn on my computer, cause this politics stuff is all pretty much limp dick territory. There's a few interesting tidbits about Biden ED (it stands for electoral dysfunction) in this new 5000 page Morning Consult poll, which makes me look terse. To your point, when asked why they support their candidate, 87 % of Republicans say they are voting FOR President Toxic, and 13 % say they are voting AGAINST Biden. With Democrats, 60 % say they are voting for Biden, and 40 % say they are voting against President Toxic. So, yes, almost all Republicans have the true religion thing going for them. The Democrats are just being political whores. There's no real love there, for many of us. Then there's a question about whether voters care who wins. 90 % of both Democrats and Republicans care "a lot" or "somewhat". 10 % of both Democrats and Republicans say they care little, or not at all. So my read of that is that there is no difference in motivation. Both parties are on fire, and turnout will likely be really high. If that happens, Democrats win. Because there are more registered Democrats. Republicans only win big, like in 2010, when Democratic turnout sucks. The thing that jumps out at me most is that 25 % of Indepedents care only a little or not at all who wins.

If there is anything to ignore, it's those odds tables. Look at how wrong they've been. Like the horse race polls, they are a lagging indicator. But at least the horse race polls more or less accurately describe where things were actually at a few day ago. The odds tables may be a good way to understand popular sentiment. But it has nothing to do with prediction. At one point, Warren was certain to win. Then Bernie was. Biden was certain not to win. it proves nobody knows. Lichtman thinks he knows, pretty much. I'd call him a leading indicator, who so far has been about 100 % accurate. Trafalgar just came out with a poll that shows President Toxic and James winning in Michigan. Albeit by only a point of two, which is in the margin of error. To the degree that this induces panic and gets Democrats to volunteer or donate, that's good news. Trafalgar was the canary in the coal mine in 2016. I'll be the angry crank who keeps lecturing on polling. In an environment where maybe 1 in 10 voters will decide at the last minute, a poll taken on November 1 can't and won't predict what people will actually do on November 8th. On the face of it, a poll on November 6th may be closer, just because it is closer to November 8th. So, on November 6, 2016 Trafalgar put out a poll saying Trump would win Michigan by 2 %. They were off by 1.7 %, within the margin of error. They also had the last poll out in Pennsylvania in 2016, which predicted a 1 % Trump victory - only 0.3 % off the final result. Anyone who says the 2016 polls were wrong is wrong - both in their understanding of polls, and in terms of what the polls actually said. Here's the similar Trafalgar polls a few days before the election from 2018, and the actual results: Arizona: McSally (R) will win by 2.0 %. (Sinema won by 2.4 %) Florida: Scott (R) will win by 2.0 % (Scott won by 0.1 %) As an aside, go ahead and rub it in. You were right. I was wrong. Trafalgar brags about calling the Guv race for DeSantis, which everyone - including me - thought the pretty boy would win. At least I wasn't the one who ended up in the hotel room with Gillum. So don't be too mad at me. Michigan: Stabenow (D) will win by 9.0 %. (She won by 6.5 %) Missouri: Hawley (R) will win by 4.0 % (He won by 5.8 %) Montana: Tester (D) will win by 1.0 % (He won by 3.5 %) Nevada: Heller (R) will win by 3.0 % (Rosen won by 5 %. This is the one where they weren't even close.) North Dakota: Cramer (R) will win by 9.0 %. (He won by 10.8 %) Texas: Cruz (R) will win by 9.0 % (He won by by 2.6 %.) In early August, Trafalgar said Donnelly (D) would win in Indiana by 12.0 %. Had the election been in August, they might have been right. In November, Braun (R) won by 6 %. Shift happened. "Color intensifier" was a great phrase Charlie Cook used to describe part of what happened. He was specifically referring to the Justice Rapist hearings. He said that in blue states it intensified the blue, and in red states it intensified the red. You can see that above, which is partly why I posted each state. I also wanted to do my own reality check and make sure I remembered what I think know correctly. I was sending money to North Dakota, Missouri, and Arizona in 2018, so I tracked them pretty close. I may have sent to Nevada as well, because at some point I decided that Heitkamp was a lost cause. I'd argue even Trafalgar underestimated the power of the red wave in the states with lots of cows, and White men with testicles that felt like they were on the chopping block. It probably cost Claire McCaskill her job. Men who has been okay with moderate women like them especially on health care, abandoned them in droves in Fall 2018 when President Toxic was bleating about how no male testicle in America was safe any longer. Meanwhile, sorry to say, with women all roads lead to the suburbs. Sinema won, and Beto did way better than expected, because of the suburbs - more women than men, but some of both. If we flip House seats in Texas in 2020 like we did in California in 2018, that's mostly about suburbs, too. There were other factors, of course. I always assumed Harry Reid's machine would pull through for Rosen in the end, and I was right. The 30,000 foot point is that Trafalgar hit the nail on the head in 2016. In 2018, they didn't do anywhere near as well. It was respectable. I think it boiled down to which electorate voted. In 2016, President Toxic got the electorate he wanted, or needed. Blacks stayed home, for whatever reason. Those mythical White working class people came out in droves. In 2018, not so much. Although whether it was rural/small town White men or suburban women made a huge difference. McCaskill did worse than expected. Sinema did better than expected. This poll stuff is fun to talk about, mostly because it's intellectual masturbation. And masturbation is always fun. That said, at this point it's really about money and GOTV. And how voting works out with COVID-19 is anyone's guess. It is possible Trafalgar could be right again, and that President Toxic will win Michigan. But he'd have to get the best case scenario electorate for the second time in a row. If there's anything Lichtman leaves out that really matters, it's the ground game. Axelrod has said that can be worth 2 to 3 % in just about any election. I'm not making an argument that we should take anything for granted. The opposite. Democrats should donate, volunteer, and be scared shitless. Just like President Toxic's followers are.

Thanks, but you can be honest. You're mostly glad, like me, that Trump can still get a mini-chub. I commend your patriotism.

I agree with you about Kenosha. I started the thread explicitly about race and cops and looting because I think Democrats have to get their shit together on that. Biden and Harris have their shit together. They are both on message. But the "we're not racists" Toxic Republicans are arguing that Biden/Harris means Black Armageddon. (Remember, though. They're not racists.) So images of burning police stations or cars actually does paint the picture. Biden said it. In that sense, Trump is rooting for violence. And, no, this was not happening in Barack Obama's America. Rinse, spin, and repeat. That's what we'll be saying now through Election Day. While policy may count for zero right now, I think Harris was the perfect choice for this moment on this issue on policy. She is a Black woman, so she can express empathy and say this just has to stop. If Blacks have a problem with her, it's that she threw too many Black men in jail. So this is where President Toxic goes off the rails, I think. So the Black woman who threw too many Black men in jail is going to tee off Black Armageddon with rampaging Black men and innocent White suburban women? Hey! We're back to 1915 and The Birth Of A Nation. How cool is that? It makes no fucking sense whatsoever. But that's nothing new. And this is EXACTLY what women in the suburbs DO NOT want. Don't take my word for it. Call up Rep. Lucy McBath, who I sent $50 to today. She'll explain why the Atlanta suburbs - one of the most highly-educated Congressional districts in the US - elected a Black woman who wants gun control. If you don't believe Lucy, here's a great Politico article focusing on Anna Greenberg, one of the Democratic gurus on suburban women. It reinforces everything I've been saying about suburban woman, and also suggests that Harris is pretty much what Central Casting would send in to win their votes. Most Americans agree we need major policing reforms. Democrats and Independents certainly do. They get that this is a complicated reality and there is no quick fix. So if they stay on message, what Biden and Harris are saying trumps Black Armageddon hands down. Poll: Voters approve Harris VP pick, Biden gets image bounce Biden also got a fundraising bounce. He may or may not get a turnout bounce. Trevor Noah asked Rep. Clyburn whether picking Harris will help with Black turnout. He said it was a big step in the right direction. We'll see. At the very least, I think she satisfied the "do no harm rule". If the polls are closing a little, we don't know why. I'd offer these suggestions: 1) we're recovering from the economic free fall, at least right now; 2) Kenosha/looting/violence. This is the Lichtman thread, so I'll be broken record. What turned him from "leaning to Trump" six months ago to "Biden will win" today is that it's the economy, stupid. Nothing President Toxic can do now will reverse his gross incompetence and denial of COVID-19 from January, February, March, April. Now he's trying a different form of denial, and it's working about as well.

Wow. I'm psychic. Or we were separated at birth. Third time this week I was typing something responding to what you were typing as you were typing it. Harry Enten, who Chris Cuomo calls the "Wizard Of Odds", actually just said this week that in recent cycles the challengers tend to get no bump, and the incumbents get a bump of a few points off conventions. So I don't know that we know yet. It's one poll. But if it's a two point bump, that's less than what President Toxic needs. And a "bump" does mean that what goes up will come down. Frankly, I'm happy for him if President Toxic is still able to pop a mini-chub. If you look at the 2016 Clinton/Trump horse race chart, you'll notice that at about half a dozen points along the way, it was a tied race in the polls. Trump did get a bump at the RNC. And it was the only time he was one point ahead of Clinton. That didn't last long. I never understood why people were saying Clinton had the race in the bag, when it was obvious from polls during most of the race that she didn't. The thing no one quite saw coming (except maybe Putin) is that even if the polls were right, and she won the popular vote by a few points, she could lose the election anyway. Compare that to the 2020 Biden/Trump horse race chart. Can you tell me when President Toxic has been close to tied with Biden? Because I don't see it. At the best of times for him, Biden is still 4 points behind. This has been true since last year. To me, Lichtman looks right. Biden has the advantage, because it's the economy, stupid. The best reason to think President Toxic will win is that Team Toxic is very good at suppressing the vote. Or Putin somehow figures it out for him. (Putin's strategic goal has nothing to do with Trump. I think his goal, like Xi's, is to undermine democracy.) Enten also pointed out something else I didn't know. Time if of the essence, he said. I forget the exact numbers. But where incumbents have been able to turn it around and win, it had to happen to by September. The 2004 Bush/Kerry horse race would be a perfect example of Enten's point. It was very much a toss up until right around now in 2004. Late August is when W. "Swift-boated" Kerry and took a wide lead. If "Destroyer Joe" just got "Swifted-boated" by Team Toxic this week, it isn't showing up in the polls. Finally, Enten also pointed out that time is running out because in some states people start voting in September. Rep. Clyburn told Trevor Noah this week that his goal is to make October "Election Month", so that everybody who can votes BEFORE November. I think he is exactly right. Again, I think sending money now is critical. Because all these candidate-drive GOTV efforts to make sure people vote, and have ballots, and have their ballots counted is more important than ever. Trump Approval Index History I've made this final point a few times already. But it's worth repeating and updating now that the RNC is done. There's no evidence it has helped President Toxic. At least according to Rasmussen. Every time I have to point out that Rasmussen is a pro-Trump outlier in all these polls, by like about 10 points perhaps. But because it models a more favorable electorate for President Toxic, it's a good place to look for a reasonable worst case scenario for Democrats. And this is approval ratings, not horse race polls. Again, I think that's probably better to look at, since it's a lot "stickier". So on Friday, August 14th, right before the DNC stated, President Toxic had net - 5 % disapproval on Rasmussen (47 approve/52 disapprove). By Friday, August 21st, right after the DNC, it flipped. It had flipped to + 4 % net approval for President Toxic (51/47). I actually said here last week that once President Toxic opens his mouth, it will probably shift back. In fact, it did. By yesterday, Friday, August 28th, Trump was at - 6 % net disapproval (46/52). So if anything, he's just a little bit worse off after both conventions than he was right before. At least according to Rasmussen, which always portrays what is the best case scenario for Team Toxic. I actually pay the most attention to the people who feel strongly. So President Toxic can't get anywhere near having 40 % of Americans who strongly support him. Meanwhile, it's pretty stick that about 45 % of Americans disapprove of them. So, again, there's this small group in the middle. And this parallel issue of which group of strong supporters is actually going to vote? This is just further reinforcing some of the main themes I keep reading again and again. The Republican message is toxic, and out of touch. Their track record is not viewed well by a majority of voters. They are trying to put pearls on a pig, and create an alternate America. And it's not working. If they could make this a choice between capitalism and socialism, they would. It isn't working. So they're left with "Destroyer Joe". And a few good Blacks who play football (but not basketball). But mostly Blacks who riot and loot and will destroy the suburbs if given a chance. But no, they are not racist. You and I are the real racists. And, o course, Barack and Michelle Obama. That GIF is from the good old days, when Michael Steele ran the RNC and they were going to bring in Blacks and youthful energy and ideas. Oh well. This is what they are left with. Desperate people do desperate things.

Yahoo! News Presidential Election - August 28, 2020 August 27-28, 2020 - 1,001 U.S. Adults I think there's an interesting election preview embedded in that poll. It's good news and bad news for both Democrats and democrats. The bad news is that what 90 % + of America thinks is irrelevant to the outcome. As a Californian, I'm used to that. And the 10 % left don't know what they think, other than they mostly like "none of the above". The good news for Democrats is that in a situation like that, it looks more likely than not that Biden will win. If we keep our eye on the ball and send money to Democrats. Mostly I'll refer to the favorability polls from the first 20 pages of that massive trove of data above. The horse race number in this poll is Biden 47/Trump 41/Undecided 8/Other 4. Biden is doing 1 point worse in this poll than in the current polling average, which has him up 6.9 %. So I'm assuming this poll's numbers are all in the ballpark. I'm also assuming that most political scientists are correct. The horse race polls have little or no predictive value. The favorability ratings are much stickier, and have better predictive value. That President Toxic has never come close to cracking 50 % approval has always been a bad omen for his re-election prospects. I'm also assuming that, like in most elections, how Independents break will have a lot to do with the outcome. So here's the percentage of Independents that have a "somewhat" or "very" unfavorable opinion of the candidates: 54 % view Biden unfavorably, 55 % view Trump unfavorably, 52 % view Harris unfavorably, and 48 % view Pence unfavorably. I was surprised that President Toxic is leading right now among the 30 % of voters who call themselves Independent. Right now 44 % are for Trump, 34 % for Biden, and 20 % are undecided or want to vote for someone else. Obviously, neither candidate is loved by the majority of Independents. The current results are in the ballpark of where things where in May, according to this YouGov poll of Independents. The YouGov numbers all match with the poll averages. YouGov says by June Biden was leading among Independents, after the George Floyd killing and when the economic data was still all crashing down. At that point, he had about a 10 point lead on President Toxic in the RCP polling averages. So part of Biden's slide since June is Independents who are very fluid. It's good news to me that in theory Biden could lose the Independent vote and still win the election - if Democrats turn out. That's what this poll says. I'm not sure that feelings about Biden have a whole lot to do with that. It's easy to say that it's too bad that Biden isn't as exciting as Barack Obama. One of the worst years for Democrats was 2010. We got "shellacked", to use Obama's word, because Democrats stayed home. Meanwhile, the Tea Party was on a crusade. My sense is that they are still on a crusade, as we saw this past week. But when Black NBA sports and cultural icons are walking out and talking about using sports arenas as polling places, I get a political chub. This is unprecedented. The Black community and the progressive community are both on fire, as far as I can tell. This all reinforces my feelings that the best thing Biden can do is wear his mask and mostly keep his mouth shut. That said, I'm glad he is disagreeing with Nancy about the debates. With Biden, a little bit goes a long way. He will have to lacerate President Toxic about trade and NAFTA and jobs at the debates in a way Hillary just didn't. I'm pretty confident he can do that. The good news about Trump is that he'll open his mouth every day, and tweet every night. Unless his campaign handlers figure out how to control him in a way no one else has, so far. If there is a monumental blue wave on the way, it's already game over. The value of Lichtman to me is that he is essentially saying the fundamentals call for a blue wave - even if it is not quite a tidal wave. But even if Lichtman is wrong this time, and this is more like 2016, it likely helps Biden. And the data in this poll explains why, I think. In 2016, as Karl Rove pointed out on Election Night, about 18 % of voters viewed both Clinton or Trump unfavorably. They broke heavily to Trump, according to CNN. 47 % said they voted for President Toxic, 30 % voted for Clinton, and 23 % didn't say. Which probably meant they voted for Trump. Of course it's possible they could do the same thing again. But those same polls said the driver was that people who voted for Trump wanted change. I think this is why President Toxic is trying to argue he is both the best President ever, and not really President at all. Because you just can't be the President and the change candidate. He's also trying to equate change to Black Armageddon. Good luck with that, President Toxic. One other figure from the 2016 CNN poll probably matters a lot. 72 % of voters in 2016 said their own financial situation was the same or better as it was four years ago. They favored Clinton. That's not a bad reflection on the Obama/Biden track record. But the 27 % of voters who said they were worse off in 2016 voted over 3 to 1 for President Toxic. Unfortunately, I doubt that only 27 % of voters in America will say they are worse off in 2020 than they were four years ago. Either way, Biden wins. If you were better off under Obama/Biden in 2016, he's got a good argument that if you let me I will do it again. If you were worse off under Obama/Biden in 2016, Biden can say correctly say that President Toxic just made everything worse. The positive and hopeful reality TV myth that Donald Trump is this amazing business man who gets things done has been severely tarnished, if not destroyed. Just don't tell that to the McCloskeys. Here's one other fun fact that speaks to how up for grabs these Independents are. In the Morning Consult poll, 93 % of Independents say they have made up their mind, and they will "definitely" vote for the candidate they favor. Then when asked the horse race question, 13 % of Independents said they were "undecided" whether they'd vote for Biden or Trump. One way to read that is that they know who they will vote for, but they just don't really want to say. Another way to read it is that they haven't even made up their mind about whether they have made up their mind. If there's not a blue wave, this is all going to come down to campaign-based GOTV and who actually votes. Especially given COVID-19 and the challenges it poses to voting. Today is my day to send off $1000 to Democrats in swing states, like Kelly and Gideon and Ossoff and Cunnigham. They are the ones whose campaigns will be building a lot of the turnout infrastructure at the grassroots level. Happily, they are also the ones preaching the choir of moderation and compromise. Because, as Sen. Sinema proved in the 2018 cycle, that's how you win in Arizona or Georgia or North Carolina or Maine. Michael Steele said this week we could win 4 to 7 Senate seats. It will all come down to GOTV and finicky Independents. And perhaps even who the last person they spoke with was. My feeling is that the best way to nail the coffin of Toxic Trump's America shut is to send as much money as I can as soon as I can to Democrats like that.

Another interesting point/counterpoint about race in America in 2020. You can have a very lively and diverse debate on these matters if all you do is listen to Black voices. That right there is good news for an increasingly multi-racial America. As a Democrat, I'm glad that some Blacks are voting for President Toxic. First, Blacks of course have every right to be a conservative, as do I to be a liberal. Second, as a lifelong Democrat it's easy to see the virtue of Black Republicans. President Toxic is President because of Blacks who did or more likely did not vote in a handful of cities. There is no question that he has tried to do some things that were politically calculated to win Black votes. Or to win White votes from moderates who don't want to feel like they're on Team Racism. He's clearly playing for Black male votes. That's why the Black speakers profiled this past week were almost all men, I think. All of that disproves the insulting thesis that somehow most Blacks are so stupid that they mindlessly allow themselves to remain shackled on the Democratic plantation. Speaking of mindless, since I posted Brewer I feel like I have to fact check him. BLM is not calling for the destruction of the nuclear family. Nor are they Marxist, or socialist, or anti-Semitic, as Politifact says here. This is another case of a Republican conservative, in this case a Black one, throwing around inflammatory tropes. We know from the polls most Blacks disagree with him. He's entitled to his opinion. I won't post Herschel Walker's speech at the RNC, but it helped me to understand where Black support for President Toxic is coming from. Both men are from the South. Both said they know racism when they see it. Brewer referenced the KKK. So if you define racism as lynching or things like that, Trump's not for that, of course. I think this is also where most White Republicans are coming from, based on years of conversations. I'm not KKK. I don't own slaves. I think John Lewis was a good man. I may not agree with anything he says about how Republicans target, oppress, or suppress Black voters. But that doesn't make me a racist. Most of the ones I know who think this way are old White men. And they will die feeling this way, I think. It's also worth noting that Brewer and Walker are former professional athletes who seem to have done almost everything right. Thanks to the 1950's and 1960's, we now live in a country where if you are those men, or Barack Obama or Michael Steele, you can be a Black man AND an extremely powerful Democrat or Republican. The only problem is that we're not all perfect, and we don't always do everything right. Enter Charlemagne. He's actually a perfect example of what Brewer is talking about. A Black man who went to jail for nonviolent crimes - in this case drug possession. Charlemagne is hardly a fan of Biden and his past votes on criminal justice. But there's no question that he'll be voting for Biden and Harris. I can see how this "big tent" discussion is sustainable for decades on the Democratic side. Biden can say, correctly, that the majority of the Black Caucus, including Rep. Clyburn, voted for those criminal justice bills in the 90's when they were passed. Black leaders calling for them and voting for them is WHY they passed when a Democrat was President. The huge spike in Black incarceration based on Reagan/Bush laws was a done deal by the time Clinton was elected. Harris and Charlemagne seem to have warmer feelings for each other. It was clear from the interview I watched that Harris is a way better cook than Charlemagne. So whether it's about being in jail or being in the kitchen, they can all be in the tent together and get along fine for a long time. I'll be interested to see what happens on the GOP side. It would be good for America, and Blacks, if there was enough of a conservative Black Republican base that the party felt they had to reach out and listen to them. Like they obviously did when they made Michael Steele their Chairman. It's not clear how they do that moving forward. Steele is no longer on the team. And the McCloskeys and the Brewers just have very, very different messages. Do you invite Blacks to speak at your convention, or wave guns at them when they peacefully march past your home? I wouldn't mind being in a tent with Brewer. Even as a White man, I just can't see how it would be pleasant to be in a tent with the McCloskeys. If the smartest Never Trumper Republicans who've already left the "big tent" are right, that tent is going to get smaller and Whiter after President Toxic. Some of them are guessing that Donald Trump will remain around as a sort of cult leader and spearhead of the rebellion. That would explain why the ones who might want to run for President in 2024, like Nikki Haley or Mike Pompeo, have been such excellent shills for Team Toxic. It also reinforces my fear that in terms of future Republican interest in bipartisanship and compromise, it's going to go from bad to worse. A diminishing old White male tent that reinforces the narrative of losing a cultural crusade and losing America will not be a welcoming home for most Blacks, I suspect. Or for compromise. We'll see. Mitt Romney clearly has some other ideas. As does John Kasich. It may be a small semantic thing, but it's worth noting that BLM said they want to "disrupt" the nuclear family, as in "it wants people to support one another broadly beyond the nuclear family" according to Poliifact. "Disrupt" is boilerplate organizing/progressive change/civil rights language to me. You can't say you admire John Lewis without saying he was all about causing "good trouble". The fact that Brewer and most Republicans hear this as "destruction" is a perfect metaphor for the difference between Republicans and Democrats today. I'm not optimistic that there's much room to unify with people who seem to genuinely believe that attempts to peacefully and intelligently disrupt in the face of racial and economic injustice - mostly by marching and voting - is the same thing as wanting to destroy America. So my take is that MLK, and all the John Lewises of America who stood up and gotten beaten down, got their wish. The truth is marching on. Even if this is a season of nonstop lies and distortions. We are still heading up the mountaintop. Even if in 2020 we are in the "one step back" phase of our progress as a nation.

It's clear that there's a growing consensus that the road to victory for President Toxic goes right through the growing public reaction against violence, looting, and rioting. Support for Black Lives Matter may have returned to where it was before George Floyd was killed. There's no evidence yet that how people feel about BLM and the protests, or about the rioting and looting, is impacting how they feel about the underlying police reform and racial justice issues involved. 538 says there's no evidence - yet - that the growing backlash is changing how voters view Biden and Harris. Most of this "backlash" is expressed by Republicans. This cohort of Republicans was never for Biden or Harris, anyway. They're busy arguing over whether Harris is really Black, or American. The "thoughtful" conservative argument which was kind of articulated by Ghouliani this week goes like this, I think: "We opened our minds to BLM for a week or a month. But we didn't like how they behaved. We don't like that when we tried to talk, they said we said something racist. So you lost your chance." To me, that seems like an odd argument to make to people who endured centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, and legal discrimination. And who argue that the legacy of all that is still very much with us. You can take that shit for centuries. But we can't deal with your pain and anger for more than a few weeks. We can talk about racism, as long as you don't use the worst "racist". We're now into the "but prove it" game with the right wing. In 2016, the same people (like Fox News) who never condemned Candidate Toxic for goading people to be violent argued that it wasn't sufficient for Hillary to clearly and repeatedly condemn violence or threats of violence among her supporters. So now they are doing the same thing with Biden. It's not enough for him to condemn violence and looting. We've seen that Republicans will applaud rich White people who point guns at unarmed Blacks. Meanwhile, they'll argue Biden's words mean nothing. I don't think they will believe Biden until he acts like that vigilante - who is now a hero to some on the alt-right. Biden would need to kill\ a few Black looters with an AK-47 to show he's serious. Of course, after he does that, they'll call him a hypocrite and a murderer. I'm going to keep saying this. Team Toxic is going to get stupider, meaner, and more racist. They have nowhere else to go. So the burden is on Democrats and Independents to figure out what "going high" means in this context. With that in mind, I thought these two videos offer an interesting point/counterpoint. I'll - duh! - comment extensively below. But the comments will make more sense if you watch the 20 minutes or so of video first. The first video is Kamala Harris. The second is Brandon Tatum, a former Phoenix police officer and Black conservative who's been on Fox & Friends and shows like that. So my comments. I've mostly been trying to just listen to Black voices on this. It is completely clear that embedded in these protests are a whole bunch of policing issues and social issues that impact Whites, too. Unarmed Whites get killed by aggressive (I'd actually call them murderous) cops, as I'll return to below. As a political matter, there also could be advantages in emphasizing this point: it effects everyone. But that's stating the obvious. So I'm trying to go with Black Lives Matter. Which is not saying Only Black Lives Matter. Or White Lives Don't Matter. As a practical matter, I think you can have 100 % of this debate if all you do is listen to Black people. And since that's kind of the point of the exercise, that's what I'm trying to do. That's why I posted Harris and Tatum. Donna Brazile just wrote this article in USA Today which makes one key point: "The Talk" is now irrelevant. Because even when Black Moms and Dads tell their kids how to deal with cops to prevent getting injured or killed, they'll end up dead anyway. Brazile's article is a good read, because it helped me to further understand the anguish and pain Blacks overwhelmingly feel. That said, it's a weak argument in this case. It gives conservatives ammunition - literally -to say what Tatum does. The whole point is that this "thug" (his word, which is why I'm using it in quotations) would be alive today if he listened to cops like me. That's a good argument. So is the argument that 99.9 % of killers wouldn't be convicted of murder if they didn't kill. I don't find perfection very helpful in the real world we actually live in. Especially in the real world of cops, some of whom are racist, and criminals who are in fact not the most noble people on the planet. Tatum also refers to Blake as "the lowest of the low ... the criminal of the criminals". Harris says this was a young man with children, who he was actually shot right in front of. For me, in thinking about this, it's helpful to start with the idea that the list of Black dead we are grieving is not Barack Obama, Tim Scott, Cory Booker, Michael Steele, and LeBron James. We grieved Kobe Bryant, but because of a tragedy, not a police shooting. So Tatum is right that when you go down the current list of Blacks whose names are recited and remembered and honored, you can make an argument that they are the bad apples. If a White guy like me called the victims "thugs" in front of a room full of Blacks, I would expect to be called a racist. I would deserve to be called a racist, I think. It's a loaded word, which I think devalues human life. Especially when the context is you are describing a Black man or woman who was actually killed. It also gets to the whole issue of Black Lives Matter. Which Black Lives Matter? Is it okay for a cop to kill a Black man because he is or was a criminal? Or because has a warrant out for his arrest? Unless and until we deal with that, we can't move forward. Certainly, waving guns and saying "those people" will trash the suburbs doesn't move us forward. The Republicans' only hope is that they are the lesser evil. Which in this case means that waving guns at Blacks and race-baiting is the least worst option most people can think of. When you get past the rhetoric Tatum uses that can easily be called inflammatory, the core of his argument is that these shootings/killings were all justified based on the actions of the "thugs", who did not listen to cops. I posted the video in part because it shows how easy it is to play Whack A Black, once you start with that assumption. See! He had an arrest warrant. See! She had felonies. See! They did not listen to the cop and resisted arrest. It's a detail, but a significant one to me. Most of the criminal records Tatum refers to to defend a shooting in 2020 go back to 2015 and 2016. So after the shooting or murder, part of the Whack A Black game is you then go back in time and find what they did to justify why they are dead. In Jacob Blake's case, it's easy. When the worst you can find is some Black kid wore a hoodie, that's a bit different. But the reality we're dealing with is that there's always a way to say this Black basically deserved to die, anyway. To be clear, Tatum isn't saying that. He's saying, verbatim, that the use of deadly force was justified. I think it's fair enough for me to hear his words as this: If they don't listen to cops like me, they basically deserve to die. Add this to the list of cancel culture excesses. Because part of the way this works out in practice is that if you ever committed a crime, it justifies the actions of any cop who decides in the moment that the most reasonable outcome of the situation is to cancel your life. Jacob Blake just learned that. Whether or not he had kids or was loved was not relevant. It was perfectly justified to at least try to cancel him. Many people, including other Blacks, would agree with Tatum, I'm sure. I find the idea repugnant. It gives all the power to the cops, regardless of the circumstances. Your life is in my hand. And if I kill you for any reason, it's justified. Here's the perfect example of the problem with that, if it isn't obvious already: When you learn the context, it gets worse. The dead guy in this video exterminated birds and other pests. He was in a hotel room with invited friends, showing them the pellet gun he uses to kill birds. Some other hotel guests outside saw this through a window and called 911 and said there was a guy in a hotel room with a gun. The best description I heard of this was that it's a kind of Murderous "Simon Says". A weapon of war is pointed at you. And if you don't follow every instruction perfectly, you die. This guy, who died instantly, is White. Again, the policing issues involved here concern us all. What I personally find most repulsive about this is that Tatum uses the same language to rationalize Blake's killing that was used in the Arizona hotel murder (my word, not the jury who acquitted). These people died because they were a potential threat to the police, and the public. It's hard for me to see how this guy above was a threat to the cop who killed him. But they can, and did, argue he was reaching for a gun. What I find most absurd is that you're in a hotel room with friends showing them a pellet gun, and you have to be killed to protect the friends you are with. It's of course easier to make this argument with Blake. It's not 100 % clear yet. But I'm going with the worst assumptions. Which is that Blake was sexually assaulting a woman who called 911, and the cops showed up knowing at least that there was an arrest warrant out for him. He put his kids in the car and was probably trying to leave, I'd guess. No member of "the public" at the scene - his family, his children, even the woman who called 911 because he may have been sexually assaulting her - actually wanted him to be shot. After he was shot 7 times, everybody who knows him or has talked with his family - including a Black prosecutor and Vice Presidential candidate - has stressed the fact that this was a young man with a family who feels there was absolutely no justification for this. I think we can say for a fact that this does not help the image of the police, period. It does not result in more law and order, period. It reduces public safety and leads to protests, at least, and possibly riots or looting. Biden keeps using the word "de-escalate". It's exactly the right word. Easier said than done, of course. A Gallup poll last month showed that most Americans agree that we need "major changes" in policing. It is good news that 9 in 10 Blacks feel that way, and 51 % of Whites. Technically, that's a majority of both races. When you break it down further, that's 89 % of Democrats and 60 % of Independents. Only 20 % of Republicans believe we need "major change" is policing. This is yet another reason why the more I learn, the more I'm continuing to harden around the idea that the concept of conversation and compromise with most Republicans is pretty much a waste of time. As a political proposition, there is every reason to think President Biden and a Democratic Congress can figure out reforms that a majority of Blacks, Whites, Democrats, and Independents will support. There is a minority (14 %) of self-identified Republicans open to the conversation about major change, based on that poll. I'm just going to assume that most Republicans are more inclined to think Blacks should have guns waved at them, and need to be feared because they want to abolish suburbs. If that's an incorrect assumption, I'm going to assume Republicans have mouths as well as guns. So they can explain what it is they really think. There's a reason for this which I think makes sense, politically. I watched a fascinating conversation on CNN last night that involved Cuomo, Lemon, a White conservative, and a Black BLM activist. Everybody played what I would call their "stereotyped role" almost perfectly, in my view. Which is to say, within the first few minutes the Black BLM activist called the White conservative a racist. His response was that this proves his point. No matter what you say, you're wrong. Not just wrong, but a racist. So why even have the conversation? Cuomo was the one who said he could see how if it goes this way, and polarizes around race, it could lead to another term of President Toxic. Even if the majority of Americans again vote for somebody else. What needs to be added is that the White conservative's first few moments of talking was loaded with buzzwords, about the "woke" DNC and how he can support the idea that Black lives matter, but not the organization Black Lives Matter. Because they are "socialist". The activist's response included the statement that she is friends with the women who founded BLM. And none of them are "socialists". Her use of the word "racist" may or may not have been the best way to react. But when I heard the guy speaking it was almost immediately like nails on the chalkboard to me. My own guess, given that he was willing to appear on TV and the fact that he expressed sympathy for the basic idea that Blacks have a real issue here, is that this conservative is probably in that 14 % minority who are open to a conversation about major reforms. Which to me speaks to exactly how challenging it will be to have conversations. As a White liberal, I've found that to be true based on years of trying. I now feel like when President Toxic came along, pretty much all Republican conservatives I knew fell in line behind him. That was easier than talking with me. He expressed what they really felt. What used to surprise me, and now I just accept, is that even the so-called "reasonable" Republicans who want dialogue can't talk without using loaded and annoying language in every other sentence. An example that has nothing to do with race: former Indiana Guv Mitch Daniels went on Jon Stewart years ago. He started out great talking about the need to get out of our partisan ditches. Then he started to talk about Obama's "confiscatory" tax policies and "socialist" ideas, among other tropes. Stewart went after him. How can you say you want a dialogue, and then just roll out all the inaccurate tropes used against Obama? To me it was a poster child example of how in the era of the Tea Party even the Republicans who say they want compromise and unity are very difficult to have conversations with. To be fair, I'm sure Republicans feel the same way. It's not a game of "You had me at ...." It's a game of, "You lost me at." For me, it often feels like, "You lost me when you opened your mouth." As a counter, John Kasich did exactly the opposite when Trevor Noah became host. Noah has said repeatedly he doesn't trust most people. And when he's had conservatives on you can tell he is, appropriately, a skeptic. What I found interesting, and reinforced my feelings about Kasich, is that Noah exuded respect for him. Noah is clearly informed with South Africa's experience of apartheid. Which ends more happily than not in the importance of dialogue and reconciliation. That is what I think both him and Kasich deeply believe. Kasich, for his part, clearly knew he was speaking to a liberal live audience. He played to them. He didn't use loaded buzz words. He got them to applaud conservative ideas - like that these young people in your audience don't want to be paying off a huge national debt when they are my age. If you're curious enough to watch the whole 16 minute interview, which is very interesting, click the hyperlink. Noah and Kasich made crossing the racial and partisan divides look easy. It actually isn't as easy as they made it look. That's how most people feel, I think. I think the project for the next few months for Democrats, Independents, and Republicans who don't like what they saw at the RNC is to be thinking and talking about this. Everything I heard from Biden and Harris this week makes me feel like they are equipped to lead a national conversation both before and after Election Day. President Toxic simply is not. He'll change the subject to abolishing suburbs. Or invite us to aspire to live in his alternative nation of White fat cats who can afford as many guns as they want.

My reaction to the first picture was ............. WTF? It's odd to see Heston in this context. In terms of his political activism, I always saw him as Mr. NRA. So this actually makes me feel a little bit better about Chuck. Rustin was a hero. He got lots of the shit, and (despite the intro in the video), little of the credit. It was a known fact (by Hoover, of all people) that he was Gay. So he had the grace to stay out of the way and organize from behind the scenes. He is a national hero. As history is rewritten to honor Black and Gay heroes that were always there, but that we never saw as the people they actually were, he will be remembered and honored.

And sorry, Randy. I have no discipline. I'm going to drag you into this again. You say it better and funnier than me. Besides, you're cute. I'll offer Randy as a rebuttal to last night. I think President Toxic is branded, too. I'd argue last night proves it. They had to put on a huge spectacle in an alternative galaxy that didn't get within a million light years of concepts like "180,000 dead" or "22 millions jobs lost" or "unprecedented -9.5 % GDP loss in second quarter". I'm taking Randy's advice. For the next two months, President Toxic will keep offering up lies and alternatives realities in a desperate attempt to make things what they are not. Like Randy, I'm going to try to see it all as comedy, not tragedy.

I agree. If corruption is what we wanted to focus on, we should have nominated Elizabeth Warren. I think she had the lock on the anti-corruption thing. It was nowhere near the # 1 reason I favored her. But it was in the Top 5. The fact that it didn't put her on top may or may not say something about the relative importance of this issue to Democrats. It's certainly not the driver. And whatever Democrats think about corruption, it didn't stop them from voting for Biden. Much like it didn't stop Republicans from voting for President Toxic. The proof that some people can be fooled, or probably more correctly are invested in fooling themselves, is that Trump convinced them he would "drain the swamp". And some of them will double down and vote for him because they think he's doing it. Given where we are, I completely disagree with you about a Biden anti-corruption initiative. First, why draw attention to something I see as a Biden weakness? Why give Republicans a chance to say, "Really? Is this a joke?" Second, the time to do that would be after the election. Frankly, though, I'm not sure that would be a good idea. If you start with the idea that, best case scenario, Democrats can move ........... what? 2? 3? 4 major bills? Like on ............ what? economic recovery? health care? racial justice? corruption? Warren said (before COVID-19) the first thing she would do is pass an anti-corruption bill. Again, it didn't get her the nomination. And in the context of the multiple crises we are in, that feels to me like it is perhaps a luxury we can't afford. I'll go back to what I said above. If Biden appoints Geithner or Summers as Treasury Secretary rather than Warren or someone like her, that's the time to break the glass and rant about, "Same shit, different Presidency" I think. As you know, the devil is in the details on this one. Thousands of decisions will be made about who gets Cabinet posts and top jobs. Personnel is policy. That is why Warren wanted to make it Priority # 1, of course. And I was serious. While very unlikely, I would not eliminate the idea that Hunter will just do the same shit again once his Dad is President. So this will be one of the constant sources of tension and disappointment between the Left and Biden Democratworld - just like it was with Obama Democratworld. Biden is a product of DC political culture, no doubt. So one thing this will not do is transform the swamp. Then again, we're coming off a President Toxic who promised to drain the swamp, and instead deepened it. As the whole nation saw last night. Fuck the Hatch Act! So just getting it back to "normal" is actually a sort of victory, I think. As part of my daily intellectual masturbation exercises, I stumbled on this YouTube video of an interview of Jon Stewart by Chris Wallace back in 2011 this morning. I think both of them are very thoughtful guys. So I thought it would be interesting to watch, which it was. There's a few things Stewart said that are relevant here. Although if you have time, watch the whole 25 minute interview. Jon Stewart vs Chris Wallace, uncut - 2011.06.19 At 18:10 Stewart answers Wallace's question about whether he is disappointed by Obama (this is 2011) by saying yes. He says his fundamental gripe is that he thought Obama understood that if you keep doing the same bad things, you'll get the same bad result. And yet Obama put Geithner and Summers in charge, who he said are "the guys who got us into this mess in the first place". I of course agree. I thought, Wow! I just typed that yesterday. I think at least some of us learned a lesson from that. If you want to talk about what could have happened different in 2009 and 2010 and 2011 under Obama when all those Black (and Brown and White) working class families were losing their homes, read what Warren says about how Geithner cared a whole lot more about the banks than about the little people who were suffering and losing everything they had. That said, letting the banking system collapse would not have made things better. And Team Obama got plenty of push back from Fox News for bailing out undeserving home owners. So I'd agree with Stewart. And you can also blame that shit on Fox News for setting a tone. I'm pretty sure a lot of Fox viewers lost their homes, too. Meaning I don't think Fox News gives a shit about whether their viewers lose homes - unless it means they can't watch Fox News in their living room anymore. There's one other thing Stewart said which tangents on this issue. Take a guess who the last Republican Presidential candidate Stewart voted for was? This surprised me. I would have guessed Stewart is a liberal so the answer would be, "None of the above." He voted for H.W. Bush against Dukakis. He made a joke that implied he wasn't that impressed with Dukakis. But he also cited H.W.'s "integrity" as a reason to vote for him. While he didn't say it, I'd suggest Stewart was also saying that H.W. was enough of a moderate unifier that he was acceptable. I think all of that is the reverse of where we are at right now, if you think about what all these Lincoln Project folks are saying. They haven't become liberals, or even moderates. They are still conservatives. And they don't apologize for that. Although they do express regret and shame and ignorance for some of the things they did as conservatives. Biden is tolerable to them and the segment of ex-Republicans they speak for in part because they see him as a unifier, and moderate enough. Never Trumper Rick Wilson was warning Democrats all this Spring that if you want to lose an election you should win, nominate Bernie. I voted for Bernie, so I obviously am not a Rick Wilson fanatic. That said, I worried when I voted for Bernie that he could be right. By that point, the California primary, I knew Bernie was not going to win, anyway. The other reason I include this is that I think Biden has done what you're talking about on the issue of "Gropey Joe". He found a way to turn the issue around. You've posted lots of pictures of "Gropey Joe" engaging in really gross gropey behavior with women who said it was, in fact, gropey and awful. It was on my Top 5 reasons to think nominating Biden would be a big mistake. Which brings us to this: If you freeze frame 0:50 in that 1:16 video you will get the perfect picture, out of context, of "Gropey Joe" being "Gropey Joe." And this is AFTER he promised that he wouldn't be "Gropey Joe" any more last year. And yet, there he is, doing it again. This time with a young boy, right next to the boy's father. Gross! I tried to find a picture I could post of that exact image at 0:50 in that video. I couldn't. The image below is the closest I could get. And it doesn't have the same feeling of "gropiness", where Biden has his forehead on the kid's forehead, and his hand on the back of his neck. So I think my point is obvious, but I'll spell it out this way. To put the most cynical interpretation I can on this, Biden is the kind of calculating politician who cultivates relationships with a mind toward payback. So I'd bet money he personally asked Brayden to speak on TV on his behalf. His staff may or may not have helped the kid edit what he said. Did Joe Biden only do this because he thought it would be to his political advantage? I don't think so. These Lincoln Project people are wicked smart. Wherever they got the video in that ad, it feels authentic. And they want you to know that Biden still has a few dozen stutterers he helps to manage their stuttering. So Biden is the kind of people person and decent guy who just does this. But at some point down the line, he very well may ask some of them for a favor. Like I'm sure he did with Brayden. My point is that I think he''s changed "Gropey Joe" into "Decent Joe". That Lincoln Project ad moved me. No one would look at that ad and see "Gropey Joe". And it works because I think it's authentic. Just like President Toxic is such a mean and unethical and corrupt person that they really can't clean him up. All they can do is try "Sleepy Joe" and "Crooked Joe" and now "Destroyer Joe". All of which are more nails in President Toxic's coffin. Because people are not stupid. My guess is that every time President Toxic tries that shit, he loses more votes from the parts of his base that are abandoning his shitty, stinking, awful and evil ship. My main point to bring it back to corruption is that the thing that bugs you a lot bugs me a lot, too. The corruption problem is real, and deep. I would never argue Joe Biden is the best person to fix it. And I don't think it makes any sense for him to try to turn it around during the campaign. The good news is that if President Toxic or Jared or any member of The Cabinet Of Billionaires try to make corruption an issue, people will just laugh. The decency issue works because I think it is real. Perception is reality. I think the majority of America has bought the idea that Joe Biden is a decent guy. As a campaign issue, as opposed to an issue for governance after he wins, I think being "Decent Joe" is as close as he can get to mitigating the corruption issue. If you think someone is decent, you're probably not going to buy the message that they are corrupt. it sets up Republicans to do what Jon Stewart, who is no dummy, did with H.W. Right or wrong, he voted for Poppy in part because he thought he had integrity. The same thing is going to happen with Joe in 2020, for the same reason, I think. That right there is one of the reasons Biden is probably going to win. Had the 2016 election been two weeks earlier, or had Comey kept his mouth shut, I think Hillary would have won, too. Comey basically plastered a massive "Crooked Hillary?" sticker on her forehead right before the election. But given how perceptions are cast right now, I'm not sure some last minute revelation about Joe in late October would even work. We'll see. Because if Team Toxic has some dirt they are holding on to, they will of course use it when they think it's the right moment.