Just a few more days til election day….I added some more candidates to our last go-round of candidates: Cunningham, Kulnarni, Denney, Eastman, Horn. We’ve got ten candidates now. So let’s make it an even 10K. These are all under-the-radar races. I think it’s the best way to spend our last minute money. There are A LOT of races that look like safe R that are shockingly close when they are polled. You can bet there’s a lot that are shockingly close that haven’t been polled at all. These could be in there.
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Hungry Joe
Great news: Mike Levin (D) is more than 12 points up in CA-49 — Darrell Issa’s seat! Consider it flipped.
Meantime we’re plugging away at CA-50, which soon-to-be-convicted slimeball Duncan Hunter Jr. continues to infest. Our guy Ammar Campa-Najjar (D) is still a long shot — he’s about 4 points down — but a huge GOTV could get it done. We have volunteers by the hundreds, campaign HQ is a madhouse … this could happen, folks.
Call. Walk. Whatever. All together, now!
TenguPhule
I would just like to say that the site is going bonkers in chrome because all the goddamn ads are causing the RAM use to spike at 5 GB.
That is all.
MazeDancer
@Hungry Joe:
If you are there at HQ, could you please find out if Ammar is signed up for remote texting anywhere. Or remote phonebanking? If so, please email info to me through PostCardPatriots.com so I can put it on the site.
I check the new BJ Candidates for possible text/remote phonebanking on their sites as they are added. None have it. Because they all bought the terrible off-the-shelf site templates. In 2020, I am going to post “Here is how humans think and act” guidelines for pols so they won’t keep making the same mistakes. Maybe someone will hear it.
Will say this, today’s batch were the best looking bunch. Movie star good looks.
Please consider texting for Claire McCaskill. And Beto. They need our help. And phone bank for Elaine Luria. She has the hardest race of all the OG BJ VA candidates.
Links and info: PostCardPatriots.com
dmsilev
@Hungry Joe: It’d be lovely to make a clean sweep of Issa, Hunter, Nunes (a long shot to be sure), and Rohrabacher. That’s a lot of stupid and evil, even for a state the size of California.
Marcopolo
Thanks for adding Audrey Denney to the list. As a commentator at the Great Orange Satan noted today, the normally conservative Chico Enterprise-Record just endorsed her.
Also too, for folks who haven’t had the time to follow what’s happening with early voting–it is way the hell up virtually everywhere. So far 19 states have already surpassed their 2014 early vote totals–several counties in Texas have even surpassed their total 2014 vote. And there have been marked increases in the number of first time voters and young voters.
Nate Cohn, who is the NYT polling nerd said that they now have enough early voting numbers to know that any polling models using 2014 (which would be more R) as a baseline will be wrong. He thinks the models he’s been using for the NYT/Sienna polling they’ve been using look good so far but that we will have to see how the remaining early vote comes in–typically the early early vote is older & more R, the closer you get to election day the more the early vote should skew younger & Der.
Mary G
Washington state representative who appears to be aligned with the Bundy clan has real-life Handmaids Tale plan leaked before being up for re-election next week:
WaterGirl
@TenguPhule: I am in Chrome and I get 3 moving video ads on the right hand side and one still picture that you can click to see the video.
I also see one horizontal banner ad at the top (static) and one vertical ad (static) on the right near the top.
Can you provide more specifics about what you see? Are you on a desktop or mobile device?
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
Cole advised me to download a mobile browser called Brave because the site was basically unusable on a normal browser using my iPhone. There was a glitch with it for a while where I could not reply to anyone, but it seems to be working now.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: The Taboola static and video ads are gone now from BJ, and I imagine that might be what resolved your glitch.
P.S. Guessing you have an android phone?
evap
Just threw in a small contribution, and that will be my last donation of the season.
I hope Doug or somebody will let us know what happens with all of these candidates.
Which station should I watch on election night?
ruemara
@Mary G: Yeah, the fact that this is their real goal is slooooowwwwwly dawning on people who thought we were being hyperbolic. Anyone feeling scared is paying attention.
JPL
@Marcopolo: GA early voting is huge with a large number of newly registered voting. The bad news is turn out in rural areas that Trump won by 80 percent is large, but so is turnout for areas that would vote for Stacey.
There is a large number of newly registered voters who are Hispanic or Asian, which appears to be good news for Stacey.
fingers crossed
KVP
@MazeDancer: The FL Congressional candidates are coordinating GOTV efforts with their county Democratic Executive Committees (DECs). Feel free to contact a county DEC office (all have websites with contact info) to sign up for GOTV efforts for the FL candidates.
Hungry Joe
@dmsilev: Rorabacher is down about 2.5 points and is running a listless campaign. Nunes looks out of reach, though. He’s in the Central Valley, and all they care about there is water and how to make sure the goddam government 1) delivers all the goddam water they want; 2) doesn’t raise their goddam taxes to pay for it; and 3) lets them treat the goddam migrant farm workers however they goddam choose.
dmsilev
@Hungry Joe: Yeah, I know getting rid of Nunes is probably just wishful thinking. Still, nice to dream.
WaterGirl
@Hungry Joe: Guessing “goddam” is your go-to word when you are frustrated. Mine is “fuck”.
ruemara
@Hungry Joe: I’ll keep hope alive. I want Nunes gone and I’m willing to throw mojo into it.
MazeDancer
@KVP:
Thanks. An excellent effort that is already on the site: “Text for FL Dems”. https://www.postcardpatriots.com/texting-nationwide
Hope next cycle more states get it together for centralized Post Card address distribution and texting/phone banking. Big bang for not so much bucks.
@Hungry Joe:
Harley Rouda is running an A+ campaign. Got an ace intern assigned to PostCard addresses and Remote Volunteering. We refilled Rouda addresses 5 times. Did 1500 PostCards for Harley. (One team did 400 on their own.) Got instant response.
I absolutely judge campaigns by their PostCard game. Shows they’re in it to win it, IMHO.
Gremcat
@Hungry Joe: A silver lining with regards to Nunes, is that with a Dem majority in the house the committee chairman can investigate his treasonous ass.
MazeDancer
nvm edit button returned – edited earlier comment
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
Nope, iPhone. And it was a glitch with the Brave browser that wouldn’t let me reply, not with the site.
I’m using Brave right now because I couldn’t get the site to fully load in mobile Safari this morning.
Mary G
@Hungry Joe: @dmsilev: @ruemara: In June 2016 people right here on this very blog told me trying to get rid of Darrell Issa was a fool’s errand, that he had too much money and the area is too Republican, yadda yadda yadda. I got involved with Applegate anyway and he came within 1671 votes and now we are about to elect an environmental issues Democrat two years later. So even if Nunes doesn’t go this year, the race will be closer, and Mueller and the Democrat house will turn up a bunch of dirt before 2020. And I don’t write Janz off. He has a ton of charisma and he knows the water issues inside and out.
Roger Moore
@Hungry Joe:
He’s a long shot, but not a prohibitive long shot. The least favorable of 538’s projections still gives him about a 1 in 5 chance of winning. If I understand their projections right, that’s probably in the case where the polls are systematically wrong and the blue wave is a blue tsunami.
KVP
@MazeDancer: Florida has had an army of volunteers writing postcards using addresses out of the Florida Democratic Party’s Voter Activation Network (VAN). The VAN allows the field organizers & GOTV coordinators for each county DEC to cut canvassing turfs, generate walk lists with addresses & maps, generate phone bank lists with scripts, etc. The canvassers have a native app, MiniVAN, on their smartphones that updates the VAN’s database real time so that phone bankers’ lists are likewise updated real time; if canvassers identify new volunteers, those volunteers are contacted immediately while they’re still warm; etc.
AliceBlue
@JPL: This made me smile:
I take my car to the dealership in LaGrange for service. On the way I pass a large white-columned antebellum house set off the highway a little. Yesterday I drove over and on the lawn of that house, close to the road, were signs for what looked like every Democratic candidate in Georgia, from Stacey Abrams on down.
Raoul
?Keep on
with the force don’t stop
Don’t stop till you get enough
Keep on
with the force don’t stop
Don’t stop till you get enough
Keep on?
Hey, Doug!, I just read Josh Marshall’s piece about the nutso MI-11 candidate, JC tweeted it out. Is Haley Stevens doing OK for money? (eta: of course any candidate can use more, I mean Beto hasn’t slacked off askin’. But if we have ltd giving, is MI-11 a decent ‘bet’)
oatler.
@AliceBlue: La Grange? they gotta lotta nice girls out there you know what I’m talkin about!
Haroldo
I posted this in the previous thread – it seems more appropriate here:
We are making a difference (and it sounds as tho’ he could use the money, too). https://cortforcongress.com/
Martin
@Hungry Joe: CA-45 is looking a little tighter than a few weeks ago. Porter still up but not as much. I’ll be canvassing again this weekend.
The key to flipping Nunes is getting the latino vote to turn out. That’s a flippable district if we get equal turnout to whites. CA-10 has the same dynamic.
@Roger Moore: Exactly. 4 points is in it. If the turnout model they are using to determine the electorate is off, then the stated margins get pretty rapidly wiped out. That’s really what a wave election is – it’s not a lot of voters changing their affiliations from what they told the pollsters, it’s a lot of voters voting (or not voting) that the pollsters didn’t see coming.
dm
@Roger Moore: 538 is only as good as the polling. They’ve been complaining a lot about how no one is polling a lot of these house races.
The recent Steve King chatter is an example — there hadn’t been a poll in the district in months, so their assessment had nothing recent to go on. Then someone came along and poked the district and: surprise! It looks much closer than it did last summer.
TenguPhule
@WaterGirl: Desktop. Can’t use an adblocker.
oatler.
but then I might be mistaken
JPL
@AliceBlue: The local news just showed Cobb, DeKalb, Gwinnett and Fulton early voting compared to 4 years ago and it’s about twice the numbers. All except Gwinnett should go for Stacey according to the political professor they had on.
I only have two signs for Stacey in my area, but signs don’t vote.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MazeDancer: There are still quite a few folk that have do not have unlimited texting(that included Madame and myself until a few years ago) and are charged for incoming texts. When we didn’t have unlimited texting, NOTHING pissed us off more than folk sending us unsolicited text. I would really suggest not using texting as an outreach.
ETA: We would still not have paid extra for unlimited texting except that Madame needed it for her job at the time(they would communicate job stuff via text).
TenguPhule
Startling new research finds large buildup of heat in the oceans, suggesting a faster rate of global warming
?BillinGlendaleCA
@dmsilev: …also Steve Knight and Mimi Walters(CA-25 and CA-45).
debbie
I registered as a Democrat so I could vote in primaries. Why the hell did Laura Trump leave a message inviting me to a rally in Huntington WV — almost 3 hours away???
Hungry Joe
@WaterGirl: Depends on my level of fury. Controlled, slow burn generates “goddam”; an outburst of rage opens the “fuck” floodgates. And then there’s “Land o’ Goshen!”, but it takes a lot to pull that out of me.
jl
@ruemara: Trump was giving interviews during the campaign dishonestly assuring gullible people that his act was a stunt, gimmick, to get the GOP nomination. People didn’t have to worry, he’d be much more ‘presidential’ after he got elected.
I maybe thought maybe there was a 10% or 20% chance that might be true. But some people bought it. I don’t know why a known pathological liar assuring anyone that he won’t lie anymore if he gets what he wants would assure anyone of anything. But, as Jefferson said, I read in some history book someplace, in a democracy, even fools have a right to vote.
dmsilev
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Mimi Waters floundering around trying to pretend that she’s never heard the name ‘Trump’ before has been one of the great joys to see this season.
AliceBlue
@JPL: The transformation of Cobb County amazes me. That county was deep, deep red not so long ago.
@oatler.: I think ZZ Top was referring to LaGrange Texas but we Georgia girls at LaGrange College loved to claim it!
dmsilev
@jl:
It only 2 or so years for the brilliant minds in political media to accept this. Or at least somewhat accept this; a lot of them still seem convinced that the Presidential Pivot(tm) is right around the corner.
Mnemosyne
@debbie:
Here in CA, it took a good 3-5 years of being a registered Democrat (rather than “decline to state”) for me to stop getting Republican election materials. Republicans really spam unaffiliated voters with their materials.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: I see a lot of ads for Mimi on the TV machine when I watch the 11pm news, “Katie Porter will take us backwards…”(hmm, doesn’t sound all that bad), with pictures of Pelosi and Schummer(they only mention Pelosi).
ruemara
@jl: The best conman knows that you have to get the mark to buy in. Trump comes from a long line of conmen and he’s the top of the sump heap.
JPL
@AliceBlue: Same. My area is still conservative, but younger folks are moving in and voting blue. That’s why I have a Stacey sign across the street.
Hungry Joe
@debbie: Maybe she needs a ride.
MazeDancer
BJ in Action.
Ammar phone bank is up on the site because Ammar Campa-Najjar @Hungry Joe came through instantly.
Phone Bank for Ammar Campa-Najjar. Remove Nunes.
https://www.postcardpatriots.com/join-a-campaign Scroll down for Ammar.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: I’ve been a registered Democrat for 40 years.
hueyplong
Just got a robo call from Newt Gingrich, who creepily noted that I hadn’t voted yet.
But I have, as has the entire household. And we didn’t vote for any of his a-holes, either.
Here’s hoping that GOP calls here in NC all go out to people who have already voted Democratic.
jl
@ruemara: ‘sump heap’? Not sure what that is, but sounds bad. Probably a good term to use, whatever it is.
dmsilev
@hueyplong: “Newt Gingrich is watching you” is very appropriate for Halloween Evening. It’s possible to get creepier than that, but it takes work.
Tom Levenson
Kicked in a bit…
Almost talismanic contributions at this point.
J R in WV
@Haroldo:
I have done this guy, just now a couple of hours ago — ActBlue makes it Way TOO easy, for which I’m thankful~!!!!
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
I downloaded opera mini on Monday and while it isn’t as unobtrusive as I’d like, it’s working OK . My other choices were opera or brave.
So how is brave working?
cintibud
Crap crap crap
https://local12.com/news/local/pureval-fires-campaign-manager-for-inappropriate-actions
This election is too close and Chabot is such a creep. Hope this doesn’t tip the scales
Lapassionara
@Haroldo: I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Also donating.
Our landline got called by the NRCC today. I did not answer, but now I wish I had, so I could hear the garbage spiel.
ellie
@debbie: I have been a democrat my entire life (I am 53). I have been receiving phone calls and mailers for Walker Stapleton, the repuke candidate for governor here in Colorado. Hey, if the repukes want to waste money on this commie liberal and my even-more liberal husband, they can go right ahead! I dropped off our ballots yesterday so the phone calls will probably stop. But who knows they are pretty stupid.
J R in WV
@Tom Levenson:
Yeah, a wonderful way to describe how I feel about it. This close, another $25-50-100 can’t make that much difference in voting in that district… but it can make us feel a little better about the big picture race.
We are getting bombarded with commercials on two races, Manchin V Morrissey for Senate and Ojeda V Brown for 3rd District Congress, the district that wraps from Huntington at the westernmost point in the state, south across to Raleigh county and up to Webster and north along the VA border, capturing a lot of the coal counties and the timber and national forest eastern counties along the Allegheny Front.
Ojeda grew up in the coal fields, and left when he graduated from high school, joining the Army. He worked he way up from recruit to Major in the Airborne in a 24 year career, and it really shows. He has been taught leadership the Airborne Way and he learned it well enough to work from E1 up through E-7 and on from O-1 up to what, isn’t O-4 a Major?
Anyway, his opponent is a Republican from a wealthy Huntington family who has never really worked a day in her life for anyone who wasn’t either a relative or a close family friend, like a R congressman. Currently a state house Delegate republican.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
I’ve been registered Dem for decades and I still get republican email every so often. I fire up the Navy English to swearing translator and respond. Once I had to crank it up to level 6 for the second round because the idiot didn’t understand level 2.
Doug!
@Raoul:
MI-11 is top tier. Dems favored to win
dnfree
You are very persuasive. Thanks for your efforts!
Doug!
@Raoul:
So I assume the Dem there is awash in money
Haroldo
@Tom Levenson: Nicely, nicely put. Are you a writer or sumpthin’?
Now, if you will excuse me, I’m off to do my talismanic duty……
Ruckus
@ellie:
I don’t answer calls from unknown numbers so I don’t talk to them but I have in the past and I will let them talk as long as they want, because they won’t be taking to anyone who votes rethug. Wasting their time used to be fun. Now it’s infuriating.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
When I first downloaded Brave, the script blocker also blocked my ability to reply to people, so I stopped using it. That problem seems to be fixed now, so I’ve been using it all day today.
I went back to it in desperation this morning because I couldn’t get the site to finish loading on mobile Safari, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that the “reply” problem had magically fixed itself.
schrodingers_cat
I voted! First time in a national election.
Ohio Mom
@cintibud: The Enquirer really has it out for Aftab. I heard a rumor that the Koch Brothers were pouring money into District 1 to support Chabot. Which all goes to show what a threat the other side sees Pureval as.
I’m in the Second District so my vote went for Schiller. Not too optimistic about her chances but still have fingers crossed for Aftab.
schrodingers_cat
@Ohio Mom: Aftab is a nice name. It means the sun in Urdu. I hope he wins.
JPL
@schrodingers_cat: How exciting.
I. Cube
don’t stop, hit it hit it
that’s real
Haroldo
@schrodingers_cat: That is stunningly wonderful. Congratulations! It seems as tho here in Eastern MA, the big generator of discussion and controversy is Ballot Question #1. How’re things on the other side of the state?
Roger Moore
@dm:
I think 538 would say they’re better than polls alone. They try hard to do some other stuff to fill in gaps in the polling- they use national generic ballots and try to factor in some other “fundamental” factors, including things like scandals- which should make them at least a bit better than the polls in poorly polled districts. How much that stuff works when there are strong factors affecting that particular district (e.g. I don’t know if their generic “scandal” factor properly accounts for Hunter being indicted) is unclear.
That said, it looks like CA-50 has at least semi-regular polling, including a quite recent one from Survey USA, so you’d hope even the polls only model would do OK there.
Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: Then his name fits him — he is tall, good-looking, lots of poise and smarts, well-spoken, and when he smiles, it’s a great big grin.
He’s been the first Democratic Clerk of Courts in Hamilton County since probably forever — the county offices are almost always held by Republicans — and he cleaned house. Modernized and updated everything. If Republicans had any shame, they’d realized how he’s shown up their shoddy, patronage-heavy administration of the county offices.
Anyway, congrats on voting!
cintibud
@Ohio Mom: It seems that it shouldn’t even be a contest but then I remember how heavily gerrymandered district one is. A lot of deplorables included
H.E.Wolf
@schrodingers_cat:
!!! Congratulations !!! May your vote be the one that takes your candidates to victory!
J R in WV
As a child who grew up in a newspaper newsroom, literally, I have strong opinions about freedom of the press. My father spent a huge amount of money to defend his editorial page against a libel suit pressed by a crooked politician, and won in the US Supreme Court many years ago. Details to those who want them, it’s in textbooks about news media libel law.
But the press needs to spend its effort on being accurate, truthful, and objective. Not on making timely but false accusations against political opponents of the owner’s captive politicians. Once a press organ begins promulgating lies, spinning falsehoods, distorting events, they begin to shed the freedom of the press and start to be a propaganda arm of a politically corrupt movement.
Would the First Amendment have allowed the German Nazi party movement to take over America in the 1930s? After years of observation of reality my answer is NO, IT WOULD NOT!
Truth is an absolute defense against accusations of libel and slander. I now believe that presenting blatant falsehoods repeatedly destroys a news organization’s “freedom of the press” and allows them to be shut down to protect the nation from the certain damage to come from a wild propaganda outlet spewing lies as if they were true, over and over.
I’m going to post this comment in several threads, I think it is important.
MazeDancer
@schrodingers_cat:
Yay!!
Congratulations!
Nice that your first time was so important.
H.E.Wolf
@evap:
The Balloon Juice station!
ruemara
@schrodingers_cat: Congrats! Hopefully, next year for me.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
Whoo-hoo! ? ??
Matt McIrvin
@dmsilev: Megan Amram mocks them by tweeting every day “Today was the day Trump finally became President”.
Kathleen
@cintibud: I’m so effing pissed. I happened to be down at his Queensgate HQ last evening during the debate (I was calling Dems about supporting judges). Evidently a staffer (?) passed himself off as a Chabot staffer and got access to Rethug data base. Major violation of campaign law (obviously). That vile greasy weasel Chabot needs to be voted out, damn it.
Kathleen
@Ohio Mom: The Enquirer would have it out for Jesus Christ if he ran as a Democrat. It’s been a steaming pile of vomited rat bile since I moved here in 1971. I refuse to subscribe but I want to have access to online local media. Am considering a Business Courier subscription.
Kathleen
@Ohio Mom: A coworker’s brother works in Clerk of Courts office and loves Aftab.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: Congratulations!!!!
schrodingers_cat
@Haroldo: I have been getting elebenty flyers about Question One.
rikyrah
Thank you,Doug.
You have done a great job with this.????
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Yes!!!????
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Thanks! It was pretty cool. They even had reading glasses so that we could read the minute font for the ballot questions.
Raoul
@Doug!: I had time just now to check open secrets (I didn’t have bandwith earlier)
Candidate . Raised . Spent . Cash on Hand . Last Report
Haley Stevens (D) $3,556,174 $3,086,490 $469,684 10/17/2018
Lena Epstein (R) . $2,253,426 $2,189,710 . $63,716 10/17/2018
schrodingers_cat
@Kathleen: @Mnemosyne: @ruemara: Thanks
schrodingers_cat
@MazeDancer: @H.E.Wolf: @Ohio Mom: Thanks! I knew I had to share the news with my jackals!
schrodingers_cat
@Haroldo: @JPL: It was exciting! Thanks.
Raoul
@H.E.Wolf: It’s a little less than the easiest layout, but @Taniel on twitter has set up a big spreadsheet webpage (see below). He’s a detail wonk with a small following, but he focuses on criminal justice reform and is definitely a liberal, so I follow him. HE’s pulled together key congressional races, ballot measures, and compositions of state houses + governors. He’s going to be very busy next Tuesday night.
whatsontheballot.com
KVP
@Tom Levenson: Working for Dana Cottrell in FL-11 has given me surprising insight into how crucial money is right up to the end. For example, she was finally able to air TV & radio ads on Sunday & Monday, thanks to funds that have been raised in just the last few weeks. A few more dollars could buy a few more of those time slots.
Doug!
@rikyrah:
Thanks!
cmorenc
Donating via Act Blue as resulted in a blizzard of emails the depth of the Greenland Ice Sheet – someone PLEASE tell candidates how counter-productive it is to repeatedly spam contributing supporters’ emails several times per day x N(umerous) candidates who’ve gotten an email off the list of AB donors.
Marcopolo
@schrodingers_cat: Big Congrats! May we have good results Tuesday and may you have many many more voting opportunities.
Just made my final contribution pre-election (though I could see donating money to folks who have recount issues & stuff) to this list. And my well-thought-out 2018 midterm campaign contribution budget/plan is totally blown wide open–though that’s pretty much been the case since the beginning of the month.