This is Politico from a few days ago, I’m not linking:
AOC’s “survived” by getting 74% of the vote. Tlaib got 66%. Omar, faced with a challenger who raised $4.1 million, squeaked out a 57% percent win. I hope she will survive the inevitable recount. Congrats to commenter Debit and all her other supporters who worked to mail in votes early. By the way, here’s my take on it a few days ago.
PenAndKey
They have a narrative and they’re sticking to it, reality be damned.
Mike in DC
I assume Ayanna Pressley will also do just fine.
lowtechcyclist
Remember how the DCCC was blackballing vendors who provided services to Democratic primary challengers?
Wonder if that applied to vendors for the challengers to AOC, Tlaib, and Omar.
Also wonder if the DSCC is similarly blackballing those who help out Kennedy’s challenge to Markey.
Actually, I don’t wonder at all.
bbleh
@PenAndKey: Lol took the words right off my keyboard.
A lot of the media are simply lazy. Sticking to an established narrative is easy writing, pretty much guarantees your story good placement, and helps to sell papers.
Actually digging up facts and shaping them into a truthful and coherent story can be difficult work.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Mike in DC:
She’s unopposed, so the squad is now 3 for 3 in primaries.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Do you have some evidence of something?
Sab
So the Marion County sheriff says I can’t wear masks there. I haven’t been to Ocala in 55 years, and I wasn’t anxious to return, so I am cool with his edict.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@lowtechcyclist: The most recent story I could find on the blacklist seemed to indicate that it is still in place. Naturally, it’s a Politico piece from 1/22/20. The leverage that AOC and others have on the DCCC is withholding contributions to them, but apparently that wasn’t effective, since the story states that some of the progressive caucus still donated despite the blacklist
Note that the blacklist was publicly announced by the DCCC, it’s no secret.
JPL
trump has already congratulated Marjorie Taylor Greene for her spectacular win. She is expected to win her seat easily in the fall. She actually lives in my district and wanted to run against Lucy McBath in the fall. The powers to be convinced her to run in a district more suited to her Qanon beliefs. I hope that Lucy wins again, because she’s doing a great job, but her win would have been assured with Greene.
Betty Cracker
@JPL: I think Kay is correct when she says Qanon is the future of the Republican Party. It’s hard to wrap one’s head around because it’s such a bugfuck nuts belief system, but here we are.
leeleeFL
@Sab: WTAF?
germy
b1narys3rf
And when does the now-likely-safe Rep. Omar deliver an apology to the top of ticket nominee and de facto party leader for this way past its expiration date horseshit?
Related – the Berniecrats/Dirtbag Left who don’t get on board I sometimes think have no perspective of how precarious their position is. If they don’t unify now, either they may be punished with Party payback in the event of a big Dem win where they are shown to be less than their worth, or they may get punished even more severely if shown to contribute to a Biden loss a la 2016.
DougJ
Great title
Ken
I’m assuming that “inevitable recount” is a joke, because 57% isn’t anywhere near what would usually trigger one. Or has the challenger deep-pocketed friends who might request one?
MattF
@Betty Cracker: I guess the bugfuck demographic can’t go out to local diners any more.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Ken:
Yep, a joke.
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
@Betty Cracker: Unless anyone crazier comes along.
ThresherK
@b1narys3rf: Tangent: So many BernieBros disappointed with Harris as the pick. Who else, in reality, would Biden pick, which would also make them happy? Is that a null set?
(No snark, genuine question.)
low-tech cyclist
@Baud:
Just the dog that didn’t bark.
You’d think these well-financed challengers would have had a hard time finding operatives and vendors willing to take their money and work for them if the blacklist applied to their candidacies.
That would be an easy go-to explanation for Politico pundits to reach for (and for the candidates themselves to give) if that had even potentially been a factor in their losses. But I’m not hearing anything about that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
When and why was Ed Markey, co-author of the Green New Deal, and endorsed by AOC(!), declared un-good?
Jinchi
It seems like just yesterday that the Tea Partiers were the radical new conservatives on the block. Whatever happened to them, anyway?
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: As evidence, we have that deplorable sheriff in the Ocala, Florida area who has banned face masks for his deputies, and for visitors to facilities under his control. With some exceptions. Because — who can believe the science?
Asshole. Shall not name him fully, but yes, he is a middle-aged man named “Billy.”
Ken
Funding vanished after Republicans took Congress. There are still some individual cosplayers, but no one is busing large groups of them around.
Mike J
I’m just happy to see Pelosi backed insiders like these winning.
Yutsano
@b1narys3rf: Noted, your concern is.
Baud
@low-tech cyclist:
Sounds QAnon-y.
Frankensteinbeck
@germy:
That is bizarre. Hillary and Biden’s numbers are very different. What kind of model gives that the same odds?
fey
The Kennedy Markey primary is a lot more weird when you deal with the most storied political dynasty in the modern democratic party. It’s not one that can be viewed through the same lens as centrist/progressive dynamics, it seems to be fundamentally more about whether a Kennedy is entitled to a seat in Massachusetts by virtue of their pedigree.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: My nearby county is just as poorly run, and it sucks rocks. Good thing I have otters to comfort me! But I did want to note that there’s nothing wrong with grown men calling themselves “Billy” or “Jimmy,” etc. IMO. :)
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Did he praise Harris yesterday?
b1narys3rf
@ThresherK: short of swivel eyed “Biden is poison” loon Nina Turner they’d not be happy with anyone. I’ve seen them referred to as Cosplay Socialists/Brocialists and they should be lightly romanced by the Dems who understand actual causes, effects and intra personal relations, then cast aside if they continue in their crazy. They’re still pushing Reade and that somehow Biden was “foisted” on the Party. I guess when millions of voters of color voted for a candidate with LESS money and profile than St. Bernard that somehow qualifies as “foisting.” Well, they are the language police so Newspeak away.
Jinchi
@b1narys3rf:
Yeah, sounds like Bernie is really gunning for the Biden/Harris campaign.
This need to trash Sanders and his voters is pathological with some of you guys. A quick Google search shows that the people peddling the Bernie hates Harris meme are Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.
wenchacha
I love Cake’s cover of “I Will Survive.” First heard it play in a doc about a blinded, traumatic brain-injured vet, who was a Ranger. He had spent time in a rehab facility, and then moved in with his aging parents. His dad took him deer hunting, because Pennsylvania!
Gloria Gaynor’s version seemed to play non-stop at the pizza parlor I worked at in college. I was hardcore singer-songwriter, folkie type, and disco disgusted me. Ahh, sweet snobbery of youth. Live and learn.
ThresherK
@b1narys3rf: “Lightly romanced”, for a political sect whose support should only be pursued at very little cost, is a term I may steal.
PS Your list of names was sorta what I thought, but I wanted to hear it from someone first without putting names in your proverbial mouth.
b1narys3rf
@Jinchi: I guess you didn’t get the memo – and they’re hardly all bots – that Bernie’s people have effectively disavowed Bernie. Jesus stood in Vatican City and was asked for his standing permit. It is to laugh.
Gin & Tonic
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He’s not named Kennedy.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jinchi:
I loathe Sanders, but I have not seen him be anything but gracious and supportive since he conceded.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle: And his middle name is Robert?
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
The key difference is that this is a prediction almost 3 months before the election, while the Hillary/Trump prediction he was comparing it to was the final prediction before the election. The Biden/Trump forecast includes uncertainty about what happens between now and the election. If the polling stays where it is, the final prediction will be a lot more favorable to Biden.
JMG
@Frankensteinbeck: Silver’s explanation makes more sense than his tweet. Basically, Clinton’s 71 percent chance was based on poll numbers, while Biden’s 71 percent is based on the 83 days left until the election, which allows Trump time to catch up. Silver also notes that it gives Trump more time for things to get worse, too. He admits that 538 has built A LOT of uncertainty into its model this year.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: She had her QAnon pals attack online an eighteen year old Niles Francis… Local reporters reached out to him, to make sure that they were there for him.
https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1293544074088259585
She’s sick, sick, sic
oh as for Nancy Pelosi, Greene said she’s going to DC to kick the bitch’s ass.
randy khan
@Frankensteinbeck:
Silver thinks it’s a coincidence that the odds are the same, and it seems likely.
My guess is that 538 has tweaked its model from 2016 to weight the possibility of an EC win and popular vote loss by a Republican more heavily. This isn’t crazy. Also, without digging too deep – the 538 page on the projection is, uh, ill-conceived and it hurts my eyes to look at it too long – the model may be including a level of uncertainty about the polls that is higher now than it will be in October, since we’re much further away from the election. But I don’t really know.
Matt McIrvin
@germy: Silver’s ~30% seems like a fair accounting of the likelihood of “stuff we don’t know yet inducing massive correlated errors”, as in the 2016 endgame. It’s still early.
Still, I’m not sure it’s “scientific” so much as an adequate numerical codification of gut feelings.
Amir Khalid
I thought this was going to be a DougJ post, and looked in vain for the ACTblue thermometer.
dmsilev
@Frankensteinbeck: Two different situations. In 2016, that was reflecting the chances of several states swinging a bit towards Trump at the last minute, which indeed happened (thanks, Comey!). Now, it’s saying “there are still three months to go, a lot can change, so nothing is set in stone”. If today were November 1st and the polls were as they are now, the model would be tilted much more towards Biden.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
The problem is not Sanders, it’s with the more extreme members of Rose Twitter who have refused to accept Biden as the nominee. They get more attention than they deserve given their numbers and real-world influence, but they are out there and very annoying.
Matt McIrvin
@randy khan: Silver has *always* hedged more than the other players trying to do this. In past cycles I thought he was over-hedging, but 2016 was, I think, a vindication of his caution. The poll-aggregating forecasters just had a string of good luck in the previous couple of presidential election cycles, where aggregated state polling matched the election results almost precisely, but it was seemingly just a small-data chance effect.
germy
@Jinchi:
They can trash all they want. I just don’t like when they make shit up. Like “The squad booed Obama!”
Everyone’s entitled to their opinions, but not their own facts, as the saying goes.
Soprano2
Funny, isn’t is, how once Trump was elected the Tea Party and all their concern about the debt/deficit and an out-of-control executive just *poof* disappeared! Almost as if it wasn’t really about fiscal concerns, but instead was just anger over a black man being president. /s/s/s/ (The internet desperately needs an official sarcasm font!)
ThresherK
@Roger Moore:I’m sure this is something I lifted from elsewhere, but:
If Bernie Sanders didn’t exist, Rose Twitter would have to invent him to disown him.
cope
@Jinchi: Thank you for saving me the typing time.
Baud
@Jinchi:
To be fair, he said “Berniecrats/Dirtbag Left” which is a smaller subset.
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: Sanders has a history of encouraging these people though. e.g. Nina Turner had a major campaign position and is now leveraging that to make people take her mishegas seriously.
Ken
@Soprano2: Balloon Juice sometimes uses
monospace
for sarcasm. (I introduced this back before the blog migration, but have nobly waived any fees for its use.)To use it, switch to the “text” editor tab and put <code>…</code> around the text to be monospaced.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Jinchi: I think it is more that we all looked at our social media feeds yesterday and noticed that the only non-Republicans who were trashing Harris were all Bernie supporters.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
Agree. Aside from being ready to respond to propaganda from them, they are as irrelevant to us as Patriot Farmers.
p.a.
@fey: That’s how I read it from next door: legacy admission. Not saying he’s not good on policy, but just because you’re a Kennedy… Not the anti-vaxxer Kennedy, correct?
MattF
@Matt McIrvin:
Pretty much a definition of ‘prior’.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Bernie’s legacy is awful, but he has been fine since he dropped out.
Calouste
@Betty Cracker:
More of a bugfuck nuts belief system than a belief system that believes there are bushes that can talk and that water can be turned into wine? People who have the mindset that take the Bible literally can be made to believe anything, there’s 2000 years of documented evidence of that
Brachiator
@bbleh:
It’s worse than that. The Politico article is pretty long, fairly meaty with selective facts, and clearly disapproves of Omar. And it’s all about the horse race. But this ultimately reflects the decisions of an editor. Reporters are not free agents.
Or get clicks. I don’t know that Politico exists as a physical paper or magazine.
Also, if you dig into the article, you come away with more questions. The story goes into details about the Super PAC money going to her opponent, and attempts by these groups to energize Republican voters in Omar’s district. There are even hints that the Democratic Party leadership was not doing much to support her.
But there was only a single sentence that seemed to indicate that Omar had solid support from voters in her district.
The Politico story also buried the lead. This was a round-up of a number of candidates running for office, and while Omar is supposedly “controversial,” the real problem child profiled was Marjorie Taylor Greene, a noxious conspiracy theory believing bigot running for a House seat in Georgia. I do believe that she won her primary. The key point her is that neither the GOP nor any PAC did much to try to defeat her.
Matt McIrvin
@Jinchi: Sanders himself tends to play ball in the end, and most 2016 Sanders supporters were not Bernie-or-Bust types. But Sanders’ willingness to tolerate Bernie-or-Bust stuff in his primary campaigns still causes no end of trouble–it effectively legitimizes people who should never be taken seriously. It seems like there’s an inability on his part to grasp the cause-and-effect here.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
I think the big difference between Nate Silver’s forecasts and, to pick an example, Sam Wang’s is that he saw the state level uncertainty as correlated. Basically, most of the predictions assumed the polling data was fundamentally accurate but lacked precision because of sampling error, so aggregating lots of polls would give you a result that was both accurate and precise. Silver accepted there was likely to be some systematic error in the polling, so aggregating gave a more precise estimate but not necessarily a perfectly accurate one. His model accounted for that systematic error, and very specifically it assumed that the error in state level polling was likely to be correlated. That meant he was a lot less confident in his predictions and gave Trump a much better chance than people who thought the polls were basically accurate.
Ken
Assuming she has any energy to do so, after the thirty-minute hike from her office in the sub-sub-basement of Congressional Office Annex D.
Matt McIrvin
@MattF: Yeah, though one complaint I do have about Nate Silver’s model is that it seems to do this with far more complexity than it could. If what you’re doing is just attaching a number to a hunch, is it doing any good to break it down into a dozen equally nebulous sub-hunches and run them through an elaborate formula? Or is that just attaching an unwarranted aura of science and math to what you’re doing?
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: Wang’s probability estimate did have an allowance for correlated error explicitly in it.
It was just way, way too small. By a factor of several. Basically because he was pulling it out of his butt and guessed wrong. I think Wang should have avoided trying to forecast Election Day probabilities entirely (as he had in all previous cycles).
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
There are almost certainly some hunches built into any model, but there is real data you can use to get a handle on the size of uncertainty. For example, you can look at historic polls equally far from election day and see how well they predicted the final outcome. That would give you some idea of how good a prediction the current polls are likely to make and how much uncertainty there is. You could even look to see if there’s a systematic tightening of the election and model that in if it’s statistically significant.
Gin & Tonic
@p.a.: Correct. The anti-vaxxer is RFK Jr. The one who believes he’s entitled to a Senate seat is Joe Kennedy III, grandson of RFK and nephew of the anti-vaxxer.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Matt McIrvin:
he doesn’t just tolerate it. The shit-flingers occupied the top ranks of his campaign, served as his top surrogates. Look at the people he sent to meetings that were supposed to establish common goals against a common enemy.
I will say, I haven’t seen that ridiculous oaf Michael Moore on MSNBC in a while, where his biggest fans were, oddly enough, the Moynihan and Russert fanboy Lawrence O’Donnell and CNBC alum Ali Velshi.
syphonblue
@ThresherK:
The Bernie Bros. would not have been happy with any pick unless it was Bernie, and then Biden immediately stepped down and handed the nom to Bernie instead.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: Agree. Long ago, I attended a lecture by Freeman Dyson where he did an accurate calculation of nuclear energy levels by assuming that it was so complicated one could replace the Hamiltonian by a random matrix.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I haven’t figure out the Markey / Kennedy thing, either.
I listened to Lovett or Leave It, where he interviewed both of them on the same night. Well, I tried, I fell asleep part way through the interview with Markey – I will try again tonight when I go to bed.
He interviewed Kennedy first, and Kennedy went at Markey with a steel bat. This particular Kennedy doesn’t seem to have inherited much except the entitlement that comes with the name.
I was not impressed. “Oh, sure, he wrote the Green New Deal, but he didn’t get it passed so it doesn’t count!”
“While I was campaigning for 100 different people running for office, which, sure, I can do in part because of my name, Markey was doing nothing for anyone else.”
I haven’t done the research on Kennedy, but based on style? He came off as a total dick and entitled. We already have enough of those in politics.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jinchi: Like the Jacobins during the French Revolution, they got out flanked by extremist, denounced as RINOs and purged.
Gin & Tonic
@Gin & Tonic: Too late to edit. Joe Kennedy III is currently a US Rep from what I’m almost certain is Barney Frank’s old district.
b1narys3rf
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: this.
And it’s related to why I and others knew way in advance Bernie was doomed this year. He did no meaningful bridge building from 17-20, and his staffing was a rogue’s gallery of fail and crazy. All the Rose Twitter remnants and Dirtbag Lefties are their source and their progeny, and one way or another like the German Communists of the 1930s they may very well be denied a seat at the table while convinced their time is perpetually just around the corner and all the proles will “wake up.”
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: So JPK III was elected to Barney Frank’s seat after Barney retired, at the ripe old age of 32. Having served for eight years, and approaching his 40th birthday, he now believes it’s his turn to take Ed Markey’s Senate seat.
So, yeah, a dick.
fey
@WaterGirl: That’s been my take as well. He’s not terrible on voting record, but Markey is actively good as a senator and put in the years in the house. There’s valid criticism of the dem leadership being too old and not developing enough young blood, but this feels like nothing more than Kennedy feeling he is owed the seat.
If Kennedy wants to be a fundraiser for the party he has plenty of room to do that in his current position.
taumaturgo
@Jinchi: Unity is a one-way street.
Jinchi
@Frankensteinbeck: Silver is comparing Clinton’s final numbers (right before the election) with Biden’s current numbers (with months to go). The models allow for more movement over time (Biden could slowly lose support, Trump could cure coronavirus). If Biden is still polling 8 points above Trump at the end of October, the predictions will shift dramatically in his favor.
snoey
@fey: Wish Markey had announced his retirement in time to allow for Healey, Pressley, etc. to organize a run rather than have the Kennedy bigfoot as the only alternative.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@snoey: why, exactly, should Ed Markey retire?
Roger Moore
@b1narys3rf:
My feeling was that Bernie didn’t try to build bridges because it would be going off brand. His whole shtick was that he was a man of ironclad principle who couldn’t be swayed by petty political concerns, and you can’t do that and still try to build bridges with people with different policy opinions and goals. I think that also led him to hire the people he did, since they reinforced the basic message that he would stick to his principles, and there weren’t enough convincing, high-profile lefties to man his campaign without dipping into the pro-Bernie internet trolls.
His deeper problem was that his strategy was always suspect. Winning the left wing of the party was never going to give him an outright majority, so he either needed to pitch to centrists, which he couldn’t do for the reasons stated above, or try to win a plurality by locking up the left wing and hoping the centrists couldn’t consolidate around a single candidate. It wasn’t a crazy strategy given the constraints he was under, but it meant a key part of his success was out of his control. When the centrist wing of the party consolidated around Biden, he was sunk.
fey
@snoey: It seems like Markey could well survive this challenge and continue on as a senator so that’s a positive. It’s not like Kennedy is going to be hurting for opportunities in the party. Hell the governor race is in 2022 and MA is weirdly in love with electing GOP govs, that wouldn’t be a bad move for him.
snoey
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m voting for him, but a 60+ hour a week job is a lot to ask of an 80 year old. Mostly I just want Healey to get the job.
Jinchi
Probably should call them something else then.
I’m sure there are real people unhappy with Harris and Biden, but all the major players on the left seem on board to me.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Roger Moore: I’d offer one quibble and one disagreement. Bernie’s righteousness isn’t a brand, it’s sincerely who he is, and at some point, early in 2016, the applause and incense and the little birdie went to his head, and what had been quirks and eccentricities became an alternate reality in which (that’s the quibble, here’s the disagreement) not only could he win the primary with the support of a third of the party, he could somehow ride that 12-15% of the electorate to the White House, whence he would pass his agenda by telling Mitch McConnell to look out the window. ETA: It was, in fact, a crazy strategy. Bernie and his most feverish supporters seem/ed to think that they were going to pass “M4A” by winning the Dem nomination.
What’s left of the rational , reality-connected part of his brain recognizes that he lost and Biden is the best/only chance to stop trump. The emo/ego part of him is still sending Nina Turner to unity meetings.
Calouste
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He’s 74, going for another 6 year term?
jonas
@germy: Silver’s model suggests that Trump has a shot IFF Covid is well under control by this fall (e.g. a vaccine becomes available), the economy shows signs of a strong rebound, and jobless rate dives, etc.
The chances of that happening are, um,…slim, imho.
Gin & Tonic
@snoey: Ed Markey is 74.
Ken
Yesterday’s tweets from the major players indicate that. I expect some of them got a heads-up in advance of the official release. I’d certainly expect Biden to tell the ones who’d been interviewed for VP, instead of letting them find out from the press.
snoey
@Gin & Tonic: and he wants to be Senator 6 years from now.
Jinchi
I like Markey and hope he wins, but I don’t object to primarying incumbents. Still Kennedy’s “time for new blood” pitch falls flat considering he’s a member of a multi-generation political dynasty.
Gin & Tonic
@snoey: Patrick Leahy is 80 and seems to be doing the work just fine.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Matt McIrvin: I think one thing that threw off the polling was no sane politician would have attempted the lose the popular vote but win by EC like Trump did.
fey
@Jinchi: For sure, I don’t think primarying is bad by any means, just that this one is not really a substantive policy disagreement based primary like Bowman or Bush. It’s quite literally “fuck you I’m a Kennedy, I deserve this”
download my app in the app store mistermix
One thing to consider on the DCCC blacklist is that the consultants hired by Omar’s opponent were mostly Republican, according to what I read. So they’re probably effectively blacklisted already.
Jinchi
@Gin & Tonic: I thought Feinstein was taking it to an extreme, running at 85, but even with another Democrat as her opponent most California voters seemed fine with it.
glc
@Matt McIrvin:
He over-hedges because he knows people don’t understand probabilities, and if you say something has a 90% chance of happening and it doesn’t happen, people will think you are “wrong.”
If you make 50 predictions at 90% and they all come true then you were probably wrong – since normally that would give you roughly 5 going the other way.
So he hedges as a concession to innumeracy. People never check whether your probabilities match your overall success rate.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Chill out, any serious politician has both a massive ego and a burning desire to fix things. The whole reason Trump is scum is he just ran office so he could have more ice cream at a fancy dinner than anyone else Even Darth Cheny thinks he was making a better America with his stupidity. If Brenie slid into hurbis that doesn’t mean his heart wasn’t in the right place.
Yutsano
@Jinchi: To be fair, she really should retire. The party is moving past her now and she’ll be 92 at the end of her term. She can be the Jewish great-grandmother of the Senate in retirement.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
I basically agree with your points here. Oddly enough, in some ways, the (totally artificial) Tea Party and other right wing niche groups succeeded in taking over the Republican Party. One key difference here, I guess, is that a critical mass of the Republican base could be persuaded (or tricked) into supporting GOP radicals, while Bernie has never been able to capture enough Democratic voters to get over the top.
And historically, I guess that the Prohibition proponents were able to steamroll both political parties and get their way, for a while.
Just One More Canuck
@Jinchi: Tea Partiers are not crazy enough – they’re RINOS
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I’m as chill as can be, thanks, just talking on a blog, not advocating that Bernie should be taken to the lamppost. Though I wouldn’t mind if he went back to that commune he got kicked out of cause he would never shut up and do any work.
I actually find the psychology of Bernie Sanders and his cultists fascinating. And I have no quarrels with his “heart”, but I do think the fact that he’s, among other things, kind of dumb is under-discussed.
Ken
@Just One More Canuck: Exactly. Why, they all want to keep Social Security and Medicare. Bunch of socialists.
cain
Still there blocking progress on everything.
Add the Qanon people, and you’ll have a majority party taken over by batshit crazy people with no sense of anything.
We just need to survive this year, and we absolutely going to need to flip the Senate because we will be absolutely fucked. Once we do – there should be no dithering – national vote by mail, protection of the voting box, and punishing all those who took russian money and russia herself.
cain
I look forward to a thread titled “Billy, why don’t you lose my number” by Mistermix.
Yutsano
@cain:
To wit: one of the more prominent members of the Tea Party is Chief of Staff at the White House. And per Pelosi is the major stumbling block against getting the next tranche of Covid money out.
James E Powell
@Jinchi:
Back in 2016, when Silver was telling people that Trump had a better chance than many people were giving him, Silver kept pointing to an historically high percentage of undecideds. I don’t think we have that this year. I don’t think that we will see that large shift to one or the other candidate in the closing weeks. Except for this: If Biden is still polling +8 at the end of October, and maybe even earlier than that, Trump’s support will collapse toward his hardline ~42%. Once it’s clear he is a loser, many will just not vote.
Bob
I read this and thought you were saying Omar lost. I started getting really mad. Love her or hate her, the racist campaign against her has been one of the lowlights of the Trump years (and that’s saying a lot!). Glad to find out I misread it.
Geminid
@Yutsano: I never saw the Tea Party disappear. They’ve been working to take over the republican party since 2010. In Virginia they’ve formed a coalition with evangelical dominionists and have got the mainline republicans on the run. You might say trump turbocharged the tea party movement, under his own brand.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Wow, Trump called Harris “Dangerous” today. I mean… it’s moments like this I realize Trump isn’t leading his base, he is merely one of them. Trump’s head must be in and endless loop of 70s blackplotation movie trailer flashback; “Dirty Harris, she is in town to clean it up and she an’t afraid of The Man! And look out Dirty Harris is DANGEROUS!” (insert a scene of Pamila Geer in her prime, dressed as Harris, karate kicking some orange haired guy in a badly fitting suit) ROFL
Soprano2
As for polls, when people say all the polling was wrong in 2016 I always correct them by saying “No, the polling was within the margin of error; it was all the pundits saying Hillary had it in the bag who were wrong”. It drives me crazy that people get this wrong, and use it as a way to discount the polls.!!
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: He has become the kind of pundit that he used to make fun of.
schrodingers_cat
BJ Hive Mind, Should I correct the host of misinformed and down right obnoxious takes about Kamala Harris on Indian leftie Twitter or ignore it because the Indian devotees of the Struggle Hair Saint can’t vote here.
Kent
People really don’t understand probabilities. You only have a 17% percent chance of rolling a 7 with two dice in craps. Yet people do it all the time. And that’s a lower percentage than was assigned to Trump in 2016.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Oooh! I’d post that meme!
Death Panel Truck
@Jinchi: Teddy was the only Kennedy in the Senate for 41 years. Other Kennedys who served in the House have been pretty much inconsequential. This “dynasty” you speak of ended in a hail of bullets in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel 52 years ago.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Soprano2: Not to mention any sane politician would have gone for an popular vote victory because as Trump found out, no one else feels obligated to cooperate with someone who cheesed their way into office threw the Electoral Collage.
b1narys3rf
@James E Powell: they won’t vote to keep him, or they won’t vote to get rid of him?
If ever there were a year where we can’t have complacency…
Gravenstone
@JPL:
So she’s looking forward to her official office being in the sub-sub-basement, eh?
Ian
@Matt McIrvin:
Or is that just attaching an unwarranted aura of science and math to what you’re doing?
Thats been Silver’s MO for years