Let’s get started on Georgia for the January runoffs!
But first, a tweet from Stacey Abrams, where she shares the credit for Georgia’s flip!
So many deserve credit for 10yrs to new Georgia: @gwlauren @fairfightaction @nseufot @NewGAProject @AAAJ_Atlanta @GALEOorg @BlackVotersMtr Helen Butler @GeorgiaDemocrat @RebeccaDeHart DuBose Porter @DPGChair. Always John Lewis. Charge any omissions to my head. My heart is full.?
— Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) November 6, 2020
In a separate post, I’ll be highlighting some of the people and organizations that Stacey Abrams credited above.
In the meantime, here are some great links if you want to donate or get involved.
Take Action – Get Involved
Fair Fight Georgia Volunteer request form
Warnock Volunteer request form.
GA Runoff Interest Form – fill this out if you want to help with the runoff
Jon Ossoff Campaign – get started here
Ossoff Upcoming Virtual Field Training
Donations
Donate to Fair Fight (hoping DougJ can make us a BJ thermometer, but in the meantime…)
Balloon Juice for Fair Fight
Donate to GASenate.com (donations split evenly between Ossoff, Warnock, and Fair Fight)
Jon Ossoff, Georgia Senate Runoff! (starting at 311,771, hoping DougJ can do a new BJ thermometer for the recount)
Raphael Warnock, Georgia Senate Runoff! (starting at 27,997, hoping DougJ can do a new BJ thermometer for the recount)
General Resources
How to help in Georgia (from Sam Wang)
Register Young People who will be 18 by Jan 5
GA residents can register to vote online.
Postcards!
MazeDancer’s PostCard Patriots will be doing postcards for the runoff.
#PostcardsToVoters hasn’t officially announced that they’re doing Georgia campaigns for the runoffs, but it seems highly likely as they are based in Georgia.
Letter Campaign!
VoteForward will have a letter campaign for the runoffs opening shortly as well.
Is anyone planning to get involved with the Georgia runoffs?
If you have any information to add, please add it in the comments.
raven
So my friend from Alaska wants to come to Georgia to work for the two campaigns. He’s looking for a simple place to crash, any ideas?
Cheryl Rofer
Joe is getting to work on Monday. Just like I’ve been saying.
Baud
You are an unrelenting task master, WG.
WaterGirl
@raven: From my experience going to Iowa for Obama in 2007, the campaign arranged places for us all to crash. Your friend should probably contact the campaign ASAP.
catclub
@raven: Hartsfield Airport?
WaterGirl
@Baud: Ouch!
task master: a person who imposes a harsh or onerous workload on someone.
germy
We have no choice. They’re raising money for the Georgia races, too.
Wanderer
Donated via ActBlue to Ossoff and Warnock. A good way to increase President Biden’s ability to help heal the country.
raven
@WaterGirl: OK
raven
@catclub: :)
Kent
Pelosi and the Dems need to pass a generous Georgia-centric stimulus package for Warnock and Ossoff to run together on.
Vote for us and this is what you get. Economic recovery.
Vote for THEM and you get Mitch McConnell’s coal in your stocking for the next 4 years.
Never in the history of this country has a Senate election been more consequential. Seriously.
topclimber
FWIW, the cliches are all in our favor: the Dems have Big Mo, the air has gone out of the Trump balloon, and the Orange Menace will at best air mail in support for the GOP candidates.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@germy: I wonder how much of that money will wind up in Trump’s pocket
Walker
There are a lot of hispanics in Georgia. We need someone on the ground in Georgia reaching out to that demographic immediately. Not postcards. Not ads. Boots on the ground.
Original Lee
Nothing official from https://www.voteriders.org/ yet, but I’m sure there will be soon. Definitely worth helping people get registered in Georgia!
Yutsano
Steve Kornacki is a precious bean. Don’t even at me about it.
opiejeanne
I just made a contribution to one, and now I can’t remember which one. Dammit.
Alison Rose
@Yutsano: It’s always nice to see a nerd reacting to popularity :)
Royston Vasey
Stacey Adams for President!
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne: You will get a confirmation email message. Then you’ll know.
Mousebumples
Btw, Postcards to Voters confirmed on Facebook this morning that they will be doing a campaign in coordination with the campaigns. They are waiting for an updated voter file from Tuesday to target voters who have already turned out at current addresses. And they also need to work out messaging, of course.
If you’re already a writer with them, you can contact Abby the Address Bot to get a text notification when the campaign is active.
To join, text JOIN to 484-275-2229.
I’ll try to keep an eye on this thread** if there are other questions. I wrote a few hundred postcards over the past few months, so if i can offer info, let me know!
**I’ve got an active 1 year old in the house, so responses may be delayed, depending on what she needs. At least until nap time around 4 eastern.
Steeplejack
Nevada called for Biden!
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: Who called it just now? I think some of them called it earlier.
SiubhanDuinne
@opiejeanne:
There’s probably a receipt in your inbox.
Kent
I was curious about him so I checked his Wiki page.
He only has a BA in film and television from Boston University (no fancy data analysis graduate degrees from an Ivy League School) and he’s also openly gay and lives in the East Village.
Seems to have completely succeeded on his own merits. No fancy prep school education or Ivy League. No fancy parents like so many other media figures. Just smarts and lots of hard work.
Kent
DNC Chair to open up a badass relentless 50-state strategy.
Unless she wants something bigger like Attorney General.
JPL
Santorum was explaining what voters expect from Biden an at one point he talked about Van’s people. Axelrod immediately said Van’s people, really.
Might be long past time to let Santorum go.
Immanentize
@Baud: She’s just like the Fed. Taking away the punchbowl when the party gets fun.
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: You guys are mean. I thought I was helping!
Plus, I would never take away the punchbowl. Just for the record.
Suzanne
This fucking guy.
MisterForkbeard
This is Off Topic a bit, but: My daughter (minifork, I suppose) was literally born on the night Trump was elected in 2016. I had to hide the fact that Trump was winning from my laboring wife. And our little bundle of kiddo made the weeks after that bearable.
But you know what she got a day early for her 4th birthday present? A world without Donald Trump as president. She’ll probably never appreciate how great that present is, and I’m so incredibly psyched that she won’t have to. She did, however, appreciate the celebratory donuts I took the girls out to this morning. Everyone’s rejoicing in our household :)
JPL
Marjorie Greene Qanon representative and Stop the Steal local face of the white/right wing group that Raven mentioned this morning is going to become the face of the GA republican party. I assume that Loeffler and Perdue will allow it to happen.
Immanentize
@Kent: I really don’t generally like promoting white men for big positions like AG, but given the FBI shit show, I think (soon to be former) Senator Doug Jones would be great. He was a US Attorney. Knows that aspect of the job. He knows the racist Republican underbelly as well as anyone. Plus — super bonus — it would be the biggest straight up middle finger to Jefferson Beauregard Sessions.
But there are so many really good choices (Yates, Bahara, etc.)
Anotherlurker
I kicked in to the 2 Dem runoff candidates. We need the Senate.
Immanentize
@WaterGirl: Yes, but would you swim in it if it were large enough??
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Suzanne: Hey Trump, it’s past Nov 4 and guess what? The virus is still here and we’re still talking about it. It didn’t go away.
And in fact we’re going to have a national plan. You should look up “plan” in the dictionary.
Immanentize
@Suzanne: as he was not re-elected, nothing.
Immanentize
@MisterForkbeard: minifork?
Maybe “spork?”
hells littlest angel
Thanks for the encouragement. I kicked in 25 for Warnock. Winning the Senate would really be the icing on the cake.
Trump having a stroke on live TV would be the sprinkles on the icing.
prostratedragon
@Yutsano: He has been a virtuoso, hasn’t he?
glyph2112
Just a thought, but now that it’s been called and to try to overturn the election through legal means would take an enormous amount of money, I wonder if they stop with the lawsuit nonsense. We know the election defense fund is primarily paying off campaign debts so doesn’t make much sense in running up more debt. I am sure he will still talk a big game but like everything else, little action?
cain
@raven:
YMCA ? ok sorry that was uncalled for (although it could be a good place, otherwise I’d use a couch surfer thingee app)
Immanentize
@MisterForkbeard: My son was born five months before 9/11. Age 15 when Hillary lost. His frame of normal is so different than mine. Your daughter has the chance to have a better youth perspective, knock on wood. I hope my son feels better and less angry about the world going forward.
Suzanne
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: The dude should have had MAGA face masks printed up within moments of hearing of this virus. Imagine how everyone would have been on his side.
cain
@Kent:
This is brilliant strategy – I love it!
Kent
My middle daughter was born on the very day that George W Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. I remember watching the tanks roll across the border on CNN in my wife’s hospital room while she was being prepped for C-section.
She is now a HS senior and we still have troops there. She’s also LGBT and took this election so intensely that she was near catatonic this past week until this morning.
MisterForkbeard
@Immanentize: “Sporkbeard” is in fact the name I use for my Warcraft character. :)
MazeDancer
Yes, PostCard Patriots will be back in the PostCard business!
Runoffs are perfect, strategically, for PostCards.
Waiting on voting info to decide which precinct lists to buy.
Transitioning the site – PostCardPatriots.com – to all Georgia, all the time, right now. (Well, not exactly right now, today I am celebrating.)
Will have new free PostCards for people to download and print.
If you want to be notified when we start to send out addresses, just email from the site how many addresses you want, to start, and they will just show up in your mailbox in a couple weeks.
December will be PostCard Mania Month. Not ideal because there will be so much holiday mail this year, but so what?
We are in it to win it!
Immanentize
@MisterForkbeard: laughing!
Martin
@Baud: “Don’t boo! Vote!”
I feel bad for the folks in GA knowing what is about to come their way.
MisterForkbeard
@Immanentize: @Kent: It’s amazing how these kids get to experience the world and how it shapes them.
I’m sad they live in a world where Trump was elected. I’m happy we live in a world where he won’t be for much longer. We can’t fix everything that the Rs fuck up (Iraq/Afghanistan, ugh), but we can fix a lot and they don’t have to go through their early years with a predator and rapist as the most powerful man in America. That’s formative.
dm
I have a habit of checking up on the ActBlue ticker from time to time. It started the evening Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, when it was about $5.5 billion (so they raised $1.5 billion in the weeks between her death an Election Day — or, just over 1/5 of all the funds they’ve raised since 2004).
Election Day, it was just over $7 billion. They’ve raised maybe $20 million since Tuesday alone.
Woodrow/asim
@Kent: Gang — Abrams deserves a lot of respect.
Yet she is not sui genesis. A lot of other people, especially other Black Women, put hard work into flipping GA. And they were successful in part because they know that state well, and the ground game that needed to be worked.
Let’s strive to support all of them, and not just pick one to push into a higher office she likely isn’t interested in (I’m pretty damn sure Abrams wants a rematch with Kemp, more than anything).
We need to be funding every state’s Abrams (Harrison was one, for example!) so they can seed the ground. And that needs to happen in wins, and in losses — and it’s the latter we Progressives tend to be cynical as hell around, demanding instant success or else we just write it off.
Ironically, the GOP has put literally decades into building up local/state into the current Conservative walls we’re fighting against — on top of selling out to people like Dixiecrat-era Thurmond, and supporting their own media empires. Abrams is a hard worker, but she can’t make all that go away; not without all of us pitching in and building frameworks and processes to fight long-term, and not just when we feel we have a crisis point in our democracy.
Martin
Consider that the last time we’ve seen this kind of spontaneous celebration was when Bin Laden was killed.
Immanentize
Check out the video!!
MisterForkbeard
@Immanentize: Well, okay. I have a “beard” theme going in WoW. “Sporkbeard” is my main character, “Workbeard” is my crafting toon, “Torchbeard” is my fire mage, etc.
Oddly enough, “Forkbeard” was already taken.
Immanentize
@MisterForkbeard: I hope you never meet that guy in WoW — he may try to take all your beards. Then again…
Baud
@Martin:
Apt comparison.
Kent
He would be good. We need an AG who will be laser focused on four different things:
1 .Voting rights
2. Criminal justice and police reform
3. White collar crime by the 1% and the whole wider GOP Trump world including all the billionaire scum families ruining this country
4. Violent white supremacists
And of course, rebuilding the FBI and DOJ back into a professional organization and building better firewalls to protect from future Barrs and Comeys.
There may be an argument that a white man might get further in this project than say a black woman who may be more likely get people’s backs up. Unfortunate but maybe true. Sort of the Nixon goes to China effect. I don’t know.
prostratedragon
@Mousebumples:
Been restocking postcards and stamps just in case anyway. Just texted Abby and chose “Volunteer Support” to get a Turn on Text or something option. They’ll be in touch.
Meanwhile,
“Rejoice,” The Wiz (Luther Vandross)
Martin
@Kent: Yeah, I think the first 100 days agenda will look very appealing to GA voters. Whatever it was going to be is out the window.
Immanentize
@Kent: My thought is that Jones might get the famous “Senate club support” at a confirmation hearing.
Kent
It’s going to be a barn burner. All the GOP can offer is obstruction to Biden and fear. I’m not sure that’s a winning argument. But it is Georgia so all bets are off.
I don’t fucking want to hear a single word about Defunding the Police in this campaign from lefties. You know the GOP ads are going to be ANTIFA and Defunding the Police 24/7 because that’s all they have at this point.
Eyes on the prize.
Immanentize
@Kent: DEFUND THE POLICE!!
Martin
@Kent: I still want Preet. SDNY knows where a lot of bodies are buried. They’ve always been the sharp end of the spear, and notoriously independent, and my all accounts, he’s a great leader and gets a LOT out of his staff.
The head of the CDC, the SOS, and the AG have an impossible amount of work to accomplish in a very short period of time.
I’m pretty sure Susan Rice will be SOS. Joe has been keeping her close at hand. Really need someone who can hit the ground running there.
Kent
Oh, for sure he will. But I’m not really worried about Cabinet confirmations. There are enough institutionalists in the GOP Senate like Murkowski, Collins, Romney, and Sasse who will not obstruct as long as Biden doesn’t appoint controversial lightning-rod types. Because obstruction of cabinet appointees doesn’t really accomplish anything, unlike obstruction of judicial appointees.
The GOP war against Biden will be on budgets and judges and probably Senate Investigations.
Steve in the ATL
@Immanentize:
Yeah, no. That died with McConnell.
Frankensteinbeck
Here is a thought: right now, a number of police departments across the US (I’m looking at you, Portland) are realizing that it’s the DoJ that reins in police abuses, and in two months there will be a new AG who will want to talk to them about 2020’s riots.
randy khan
@Immanentize:
That warms the cockles of my heart. They could be singing Freebird for all I care.
Calouste
@MisterForkbeard: There was a Viking king called Forkbeard.
Steve in the ATL
@Kent: that was prominent on every campaign flyer I received from a republican in the last few weeks
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
It was MSNBC. I hadn’t seen it anywhere else.
debbie
@Immanentize:
My even more ridiculous thought is that the GOP caucus would vote out McConnell for the good of the country.
Kent
and the EPA, NOAA, Interior, Treasury, Education, Homeland Security, etc. There is immense wreckage in every corner of the executive branch.
But yes, State, Justice, HHS, and Treasury are probably the four most consequential appointees. We have a deep bench. I’m sure they know what they are doing. Biden knows more about this than any other 2 Dems combined. No one else in the country has his combination of experience at the top levels of both Congress and the Executive Branch.
debbie
So I’ve seen a couple of houses in my neighborhood where the American flags were turned around (stars in the upper right corner). I’m assuming it means they supported Trump, but are they any indication of violent intent or something like that?
Kent
Never heard of that. Usually it’s the upside down flag that is the symbol of distress.
My daughter is sending out mems reminding everyone not to forget to lower their truck flags to half mast. heh.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: You’ve been slacking off for two whole hours, back to work!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@catclub: I hear SteveintheATL knows the place real well.
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
#KornackiThirst!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Dorothy A. Winsor: All of it Katie.
Quaker in a basement
Already sent my first $25 to Warnock.
Kent
Georgia lead keeps slowly creeping upwards while no one is still watching. Just ticked up to a 7,547 vote difference.
Quaker in a basement
@debbie: It means the winds have changed.
WaterGirl
@MazeDancer: Thanks MazeDancer.
What do you mean by this?
Steve in the ATL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: there’s a Sean John store in terminal B!
raven
@?BillinGlendaleCA: They were having quite a problem with homeless folks crashing there.
raven
@Steve in the ATL: Go Dawgs!
CaseyL
Does anyone know how effective phone banking, textbanking, postcarding actually are?
I’ve done phonebanking, and SFAIK that has never produced any additional votes. I’ve neer had anyone say, “Oh gosh, I wasn’t going to vote before, but now I will,” or “I was going to vote for the other person, but now I’ll vote for your candidate.”
And personally? I don’t bother looking at texts, or answering calls, from people I don’t know. I’ve never taken part in a national poll (a few local ones, yeah).
I have no idea whether any of those things move voters. In-person canvassing, yes, absolutely – but we can’t do that now.
Anyone know?
Steve in the ATL
@raven: damn straight!
Mary G
LuciaMia
So Rudy’s new rant is “Networks don’t decide elections, the courts do.”
No, motherfucker. The people decide!
Immanentize
@Kent: Votes are not automatic. McConnel does not need to schedule any vote — See, Merritt Garland
Kent
So my daughter says that TikToc is absolutely exploding and lit this morning. The young across the planet are in glee.
Immanentize
@Frankensteinbeck: This is very very true. I’m looking at you, NYC FoP
bluehill
So twitter speculating that the big Giuliani press conference at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping office was supposed to be at the Four Seasons Hotel, but someone f’d up and they went through with it anyways.
I think 2020 scriptwriters have finally jumped the shark.
dmsilev
WaPo:
Kent
Cabinet Secretaries are not SCOTUS. The seat doesn’t stay vacant if the confirmation is held up. Biden can appoint the most outrageous young firebrands as interim appointees while they wait for the Senate to do their work. Every executive branch agency will always have a Biden appointee running it from day 1. Blocking cabinet secretaries is performative. It doesn’t actually change any policy. Trump built his wall, rewrote immigration law, separated families, and put children in cages with nothing but interim acting secretaries of HHS.
Yes, it would be a nuisance if the Senate does this. But it wouldn’t change anything long-term except make it even more certain that Biden wages war back on the GOP. His acting DOJ attorneys general can open up partisan investigative war on every single rich McConnell supporter in KY and make their lives miserable. And he can accidentally forget include KY Bourbon on the list of tariff reductions that he negotiates with the EU when they get around to the business of rolling back Trump’s tariffs. There are endless ways he can make McConnell’s life miserable.
It’s just not that high on the top of my list of worries frankly.
dm
@Suzanne: I know it’s Politico but, in light of today’s events, that’s a pretty interesting article.
LeeM
@glyph2112: if the Trumpists want to send donations to the fools errand of challenging the election, the less money they send and focus on the Senate runoffs. Win-win?
Cacti
@Kent: The DOJ also needs to take a hard look at the kickback scheme McTurtle was running with his wife out of the DOT.
And the firing of the IG at that agency.
All Trump appointed IG’s need to be shitcanned on minute one of the Biden Presidency.
Morzer
@Baud: Those
pyramidsgrain silos won’t just build themselves. We are all working for thePharoahWaterGirl now!WaterGirl
@CaseyL: A number of people have asked that question in these political action posts, and I know it’s been answered.
I don’t recall specifics, but if you click on some of the earlier threads, you will likely find the question answered there. I was convinced by the answers that it does indeed make a difference. Otherwise I doubt that campaigns would be doing these things campaign after campaign.
Plus, what works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for the next person. I will NEVER answer the phone for stuff like that, but if I lived in Georgia and sent me a postcard saying that since I’m turning 18 before Jan 5, that i can vote in the runoff, and here’s a link where I can go to register online, that would be effective for me.
Or a postcard or text telling me that regardless of age, I can register to vote online at this URL.
Remember, particularly in Georgia, the big issue is that people have felt that their vote didn’t matter. Well, it sure as hell mattered this time, so even if someone didn’t vote in the Nov 3 election, they sure as hell might decide that their vote does matter, and that they want to vote in the runoff.
Or a postcard or text might tell someone who doesn’t pay a lot of attention that these runoffs REALLY MATTER, and tell them why, that the whole agenda of the Dem party could be at stake. etc.
If you click on What We Can Do / Playing to Win in the list of topics/categories up top, then you will be taken to all the posts that are n that category, from newest to oldest. If you click on the highest page number at the bottom, you will find the earliest posts. I think your the answers will likely be on one of those two pages.
Kent
Exactly. In a petty personal political war between Biden and McConnell, Biden holds a bazooka and McConnell holds a pea shooter. McConnell is anything but stupid. They will fuck with a Biden administration in meaningful ways like the budget and courts. Not so much the performative stuff unless it injures Biden directly, like Senate Investigations.
WaterGirl
@CaseyL: They also say that if you write a letter / call / text/ send a postcard – to 100 people, and you can make a difference with even 2 or 3 of those people…
that if you multiply that 3 times hundreds or thousands of people who also contact 100 people, that that can be enough to change the outcome of an election.
We have the possibility of winning the senate, what have we got to lose by writing postcards or sending texts or sending money? Absolutely nothing! It’s victory if we win, and a little bit (or a lot) of time spent if we lose.
CaseyL
@WaterGirl: Thank you; I’ll check them out.
Mousebumples
@WaterGirl: the other thing I think may be effective about postcards is that they look and feel different than the glossy Vote For/Against mailers that go out. Plus, if you’re inclined to vote (and just forgetful) it can be the push you need to make a plan to vote – rather than forgetting.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Morzer: She will send you email if you don’t.
WaterGirl
@bluehill: This tweet is too perfect not to share here.
Morzer
Too good not to share:
https://twitter.com/SachaBaronCohen/status/1325127878695137281
debbie
@Quaker in a basement:
Sounds ominous.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Wow, they just updated PA, Biden got 125% of the added votes!
WaterGirl
@Mousebumples: Yep. A postcard can be taped to a door or put up on the fridge with a magnet. And you don’t have to be pissed that some campaign is spending it’s money on glossy 4-color publications.
You can see that someone who cares used pretty markers or colors and hand-wrote something to you because it matters to them, a real person. I believe it makes a difference.
MazeDancer
@WaterGirl: On the site is a “Contact” page. Where there is a form to fill out with your email and how many PostCards you would like. Click “send”, it emails to me.
Easy to use.
And you don’t have to remember anything, just click on my nym, go to site.
People can also just email – PostCardPatriots @ Google email place.
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Hey! (trying to sound mean)
Where’s your OTR for Wednesday? :-)
WaterGirl
@WaterGirl: The press conference was next to a dildo store!!!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: You’ll have it tonight, The Huntington in IR.
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Hmm, interesting math. How is that possible?
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I was just being silly. I haven’t even thought about OTR for next week. I’ve been distracted by recent events!
bluehill
@WaterGirl: I’m laughing and crying.
UncleEbeneezer
Just posted all this in my Indivisible, as well as our local UDH (Pasadena) info for people who want to write postcards. This effort is going to be massive. Much as we are all exhausted, Biden winning has given everyone a huge spurt of adrenaline for another big fight.
Baud
@bluehill:
T minus how many days until “The Aristocrats!”
catclub
@Immanentize: Missyfork, for a while, anyway.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: Yeah, there’s been something else going on for all of us.
Redshift
Somewhat OT: I’m really enjoying how Hair Furor and his minions are shouting threats and filling dubious legal motions, and other than a brief mention, the news media and everyone else are just ignoring them, and covering Biden and the celebrations instead. It’s what should happen, but there was no guarantee it would happen so quickly.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: I looked at the increase in vote margin and then the number of votes, thought that’s a good block for the Pres.-elect, then saw 125% for Biden and -25% for Trump. Not sure what happened there.
Morzer
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Apparently she will send you more than email.
Morzer
@WaterGirl: It’s the blue shift in action!
WaterGirl
@Redshift: Hopefully, if there’s little oxygen for his lawsuits, the whole thing will die out like a fire deprived of oxygen.
Sister Golden Bear
@WaterGirl: Better yet, the dildo store is named “Fantasy Island.”
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Interesting! I feel certain that the dumpster fire will file a lawsuit over it.
bemused senior
OT…can someone please share the link to the zoom call recording of the pa hearing on letting republican observers stop ballot counting via the hearsay affidavit? Eta was in an earlier thread.
WaterGirl
@Sister Golden Bear: For real? I didn’t actually watch the press conference.
ewrunning
I can always count on NPR to harsh my mellow. Made the mistake of turning on their continuing coverage while doing the lunch dishes, and right on cue heard Michelle Martin introducing Alberto Gonzalez (whom she obviously has on speed dial) as an expert to talk about election law and fraud allegations. Off the radio went. Anyone care to guess whether she’ll mention that he lost his job as AG for firing US Attorneys who refused to gin up fake election fraud charges against Democrats? Buehler . . . Buehler . . . Buehler. Is this thing on? So, we can clearly count on totebag radio continuing its strenuous efforts at both-siderism in the upcoming Biden-Harris administration. I look forward to turning it off whenever they trot out otherwise unemployable Trump White House alums as expert commentators.
WaterGirl
@bemused senior: I watched that. I am not an attorney, so I was not as delighted with it as some of the attorneys were. I’m sure some of the slapping down went right over my head.
I can maybe find the link in my browser history.
different-church-lady
@Cheryl Rofer: Gonna be the most awesome shadow presidency ever.
Immanentize
I’m getting a little pissed — Netanyahu? Gantz? Beuhler?
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: What does that mean?
Also, did I see something go by this week that Putin was resigning? Or did I imagine that?
different-church-lady
@ewrunning: Y’know, as recently as last night I was saying it’s a five step process and we need to worry about this and that and the other thing and be ready for setbacks and and and…
And today I’m just… nope, too much for Trump to overcome, too many people not interested in helping him, won’t even get to the supremos, everyone with any access to levers of power is just ready to move on from the asshole. They know this despot is being deposed and they all want to pretend they never enabled him in the first place.
Kent
Probably a correction to some previous numbers and the math algorithm generated the 125% figure. All of this stuff is second-hand data mining and anytime you have changes to the underlying data you can get those sorts of weird results. The PA elections site isn’t reporting percentages, just raw numbers. The percentages are being applied by 3rd party web sites.
Baud
@WaterGirl: There was speculating that he had Parkinson’s and would retire next year. The Krelmin denied it, so who knows?
bluehill
@Baud: Every time I see someone wearing a MAGA hat is like the nightmare version.
raven
@Aleta: He who?
Kent
It really is amazing how fast power vanishes when the fear is gone. All Trump really has left around him is Javanka, Rudy, and a few dead enders.
People were talking about how Trump might try to block and undermine the transition. I don’t even see that happening frankly. He’s a figurehead and has little to nothing to do with any actual transition. That’s all lower staff. They will coddle him but mostly still do their jobs, meet with Biden’s people and all that. They don’t want to burn up their futures by being total assholes.
Matt McIrvin
@WaterGirl:
You are, you are!
Aleta
@raven: Biden. I was looking at the vote totals at the Post and it increased before my eyes, so I thought Nevada just happened. But looks like it was called earlier.
Immanentize
@WaterGirl: They seem to not want to congratulate Biden yet….
bluehill
@Sister Golden Bear: Looking forward to seeing what SNL can do with that.
Matt McIrvin
@Kent: I’ve been seeing people complaining that we give all this power to media calls and do all this celebrating when the situation isn’t materially different today than it was yesterday. But they miss how politics works–power, real power that you can wield for material good, is really all about how people feel. Who is afraid, who is unafraid, whether people are happy or sad when you do what you do. That’s why all this is important.
glyph2112
Can someone explain the whole faithless elector thing. I get it’s where they vote against the popular vote of the state. But I just saw on Twitter something about Trump trying to get the electors to vote for him. I guess my question is, is there one set of electors that vote based on the results or are there 2 sets, picked by the parties and whoever wins sends their electors to vote?
bemused senior
@WaterGirl: thanks…I listened but my very blue lapd officer daughter wants ammo when her trumpet co-workers blab about vote stealing. I’m proud of her already multiple citizen commendations which is why I say “not all …”.
different-church-lady
i am…
a) Drunk
b) Just goddamned DRINKING IN how Trump’s shrunken, malformed soul is going to be tortured the rest of his hopefully abbreviated life knowing that he will never again be able to recapture the dragon he caught by accident. It’s gonna be the most pathetic opening to Citizen Kane imaginable x1000.
Calouste
@WaterGirl: Can’t find a picture of the neighboring store, but here’s Rudy in front of the Four Seasons that is definitely not a high end hotel:
Four Seasons landscaping
bluehill
Oh, and a belated Happy Birthday to Hillary Clinton!
Matt McIrvin
@glyph2112: It’s the second. The parties designate their own slates of electors, and those are who you’re really voting for when you vote for President and Vice-President.
They’re supposed to be chosen to be loyal, though obviously that doesn’t always work and there are some real breakdowns that happen like in 2016 (the fact that Clinton lost may have made her electors feel freer to pull stunts though).
Trivia fact, Hillary Clinton actually is a Democratic elector this year.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: Looks like it was a data glitch, it’s been corrected.
different-church-lady
@glyph2112: Electors are supposed to vote based on who they are sent to vote for. Some states even have punishments for faithless electors. Nonetheless, occasionally one or two electors go rouge and cast oddball votes.
We’ve never had a case where it affected the outcome. That’s why it’s important to gain a good, solid electoral college victory. One or two electors might go crazy, but twenty or thirty never will.
Baud
different-church-lady
@Calouste: Zip up your pants, Rudy.
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: Yeah, by the time I got back with my bowl of cereal, I had figured that out. Am I the only one who feels really tired? Like I just spent a 12-hour day working on stuff that required a lot of concentration? My brain is tired, too.
Quinerly
ewrunning
@glyph2112: IANAL, but coming from Washington, where we had three faithless Hillary electors in 2016, my understanding is that SCOTUS recently upheld State laws barring faithless electors (i.e., immediately removing and replacing them if they vote contrary to the State’s election result). Surprisingly, I believe Alito wrote the majority opinion. I’m not clear whether all states have the necessary legislation in place to prevent this, however.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@different-church-lady: Pres-elect Biden’s legal team is ready and unconcerned.
Matt McIrvin
@different-church-lady: Usually, the number of faithless electors in modern elections is either zero or one. 2016 was a really weird case–there were a few obvious protest votes on both sides, and on top of that, there was an utterly cockamamie scheme by some Democratic electors in Washington state to vote for Colin Powell on the doomed theory that some of the Trump electors might defect and join in. That’s the part that really made me mad–protest votes are one thing, but the idea that the actual electors obviously didn’t have a sense of how any of this works.
WaterGirl
@bemused senior: I did not find it in my first go-round. I’m sure it was posted by an attorney, so maybe check with Imm or Omnes?
guachi
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That’s not what I get.
I get 6141 more votes counted with Biden getting 4598 of them and Trump getting 1543 of them. It’s the same 75% that Biden has been getting since Tuesday night.
bemused senior
@WaterGirl: thanks anyway.
scav
I’m enjoying this photo, the orange bravado is wearing a little thin (at 13:12 if the link is to the general stream).
ETA. also chuffed to be in a county that (to date) kept DJT to 27.7%.
glyph2112
Thanks everyone for the response. I thought that was the case but the Twitter was making it sound like Trump could actually convince them to vote for him. I didn’t think there was a chance in hell any Democratic elector would switch.
Another question. Can Trump issue pardons pre-emptively? I would think you would need to be convicted of a crime before you could be pardoned. Most everyone in Trumps administration needs to be investigated by Biden’s DOJ.
Kent
It’s the latter. The parties in each state selects their own slates of electors. If there were faithless Biden electors this year it would be hand-picked long-time Democratic party officials in some state deciding to defy their party and vote for Trump.
Not something I’m particularly worried about. If it were to actually happen, that person would have to spend the rest of their life in hiding in some foreign country. There would literally be armies of vengeful hackers searching them out to dox them for the rest of their life and sic unstable assassins after them. And every year that passes the world gets smaller and harder to hide in. Anyone with half a sense would know that. You could never again live a normal life in the US. You will spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder.
Baud
Matt McIrvin
@guachi: Was looking at that scraper site and I see two blocks: one from an hour ago that was 1938 votes, about 89/11 Biden, and then another one 19 minutes ago that was 2425 votes, about 53/47 Biden (obviously they were from quite different places). The effect is to stay pretty much on the same track we’ve been seeing all along. The ratio of remaining ballots Trump would need to flip it goes up to 73%, more impossible than ever.
WaterGirl
@Calouste: Wow. Rudy said the courts get to decide the election. I had no idea!
Kent
The faithless Clinton electors in 2016 were not actually trying to help Trump. They were trying to heighten the problems with the electoral college and disrupt the eventual election of Trump. It was misguided and they were Bernie-types so inherently disloyal to begin with. But they weren’t in a million years switching from Clinton to Trump. They were concocting a futile scheme to bring Trumps numbers under 270.
But if they heightened the issues with the electoral college I suppose it wasn’t completely bad.
Catatonia
Just walked down to Georgetown (DC) and back, about a 6.5 mile round trip. Most of the time holding a crude sign on a piece of 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper, saying WE WON! Everyone blowing their horns, only one guy gave me grief about “not in the courts,” to which I replied, borrowing from that person much wittier than me, “Your court filings are nothing but a filing fee and a Twitter.” Got a few laughs and I said, “that’s not mine.” Exhilarating. Only problem was my wife and daughter were getting the latter’s drivers’ license and couldn’t be with me. Most fun I’ve had this year.
bluehill
@Quinerly: A crematorium too?!?! Oh jeez. I will feel badly if the owner didn’t approve this.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@guachi: It was an update about a hour ago, it’s no longer there. The numbers are still funky, though. I’m looking at the nyt 2020 election scraper.
2915 change in Binden’s lead and only a 1938 change in the number of votes remaining. These can be tricky since they could have ballots coming in adding to the total. Last night Georgia had negative votes remaining.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@glyph2112: Jerry Ford pardoned Nixon for crimes he hadn’t be charged with, so yes. But the Presidential pardon power only applies to Federal crimes.
Wapiti
@WaterGirl: My sister did a huge chunk of postcards. Because they recently moved and are still downsizing, she had her spouse go through their years’ worth of stamps to mix and match the postage. I imagine a postcard with 4 or 5 postage stamps says “yes, this came from a person”.
Ken
I know it won’t happen because Biden’s team are professionals and Cleek’s Law doesn’t work in reverse. But, I’m hoping that if the Republicans open a Senate investigation, everyone they call refuses to answer on the grounds of a non-disclosure agreement. Or executive privilege. Or just not even show up.
With the above caveats in mind: I would like to see every nomination sent to the Senate with a letter saying “In the absence of a vote on this nomination within 30 days, the Senate’s silence will be construed as consent and the nominee will begin serving at once.”
Barbara
@dm: Agreed. Worth reading as much for analysis of the Biden campaign as Trump’s. My takeaway is that lack of in-person canvassing and events in the last few weeks of the campaign probably hurt.
Lapassionara
@Kent: my understanding is that the Supremes ruled recently that electors are bound to vote for the candidate they pledged to support. There is an UNLESS in there, but the exception has to be in place before the election, IIRC.
Matt McIrvin
@Lapassionara: They ruled that states are allowed to make that rule.
Punchy
@Redshift: I got the impression this was because nobody, including Trump’s team, has ANY IDEA what these legal filings are or will say. Just an empty threat of “yeah, we’ll….uh….do some judgy courty stuff, ya know” and the media doesnt even know what to respond to.
Calouste
@Ken:
I hope there will be a Republican Senate investigation, and by that I mean a task force headed by former prosecutor Madame Vice-President investigating the Republicans in the Senate. I’m sure there are some interesting dossiers.
MisterForkbeard
@Calouste: I took the name from a kids book called “Erik the Viking”, with a character named Ragnar Forkbeard.
Eljai
I’m listening to street interviews with Biden supporters on MSNBC right now and may I say just how refreshing it is to hear from people who are thoughtful and well-spoken? I don’t want to hear any more from mediocre white male pundits about how we have to listen to trump voters. No, mutherphuckers, they need to listen to US!
Quinerly
@WaterGirl: it’s gone so far that the RWNJ talking point is “the Supreme Court always certifies the vote count for the election.” Someone put that out. A concerted effort to get that mainstream/in the dialogue. Newspaper comment sections have been swarmed with that phrase. (Yes, I never learn. Got out of the boat and looked at local, small town newspapers on line.)
Ruckus
@dm:
ActBlue is over 7 billion, 733 million right now and about to go over to 734 million. That’s almost 3/4 of a billion dollars raised, although it was since early Oct.
Ken
And I’m kind of hoping Trump accidentally leaves them in the Resolute desk. “Hello, Lindsay? It’s Joe. You’ll never believe what I just found while clearing out the office…”
Doug R
@Immanentize: Doug Jones managed to get convictions on basically a cold case, he’d be great as AG.
Ruckus
@CaseyL:
I did phone banking in 2008 for President Obama. There were 3 responses. No answer, and enthusiastic answer and an unenthusiastic answer. But I got the impression that a lot of us around the country were calling people many times. It was a waste at the time because everyone had voted or wasn’t voting for him.
So I can’t really help you but hey if it turned one voter or got one to the polls then in my mind it was worth it. But for me….
Morzer
https://twitter.com/ChatfieldKate/status/1325174922176466944
jonas
@ewrunning: Lol! I had the same reaction: “Really? Gonzales?” Dollars to donuts, Mara Liasson is checking in with Giuliani in a few years for his “seasoned elder statesman” perspective on some issue.
HumboldtBlue
@different-church-lady:
But we always find a way to make up for it.
Geminid
@Quinerly: Luckily for the garden center owners, planting season is almost over. Although they may lose some Christmas trade. But that dildo store may well get a lot of business out of the free publicity. They probably do a lot of Christmas business too. Stocking stuffers, etc.
Quinerly
@Geminid: ?
Moses2317
What organization are you signing up with if you fill out the GA Runoff Interest Form that is linked in this post?
Ivan X
I just donated a fat chunk to Ossoff/Warnock/FF, and also some other GOTV org someone posted a link to. No one, including most importantly me, will be able to say that I did not try to make a difference. Well, I’m sure someone could, because I could always do more, but this is what I felt I could do. Who knows? Maybe we’ll win both races. It could happen.