27 Days to Go | The Mahablog

This might cheer you up — here is the “chance of winning” chart from FiveThirtyEight’s presidential forecast today (blue is Biden, red is Trump).

FiveThirtyEight.com, showing presidential election chances from June 1 to October 7. Biden is blue, Trump is red. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/

The nerds also are forecasting that Biden will get 342 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 196. Works for me. Of course, that all depends on votes being counted.

The Hill reported yesterday that the Trump campaign canceled planned television ads in Ohio and Iowa “to instead focus funding in states where polls show the president trailing Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.” However, both the nerds (Biden 52%, Trump 48%) and the RCP average (Biden up by 0.6) are calling Ohio a tossup. The nerds have Trump slightly favored to win Iowa, but the RCP average has Biden up by 1.4. The Trump internal polls must be showing something very different, or else Trump is still running out of money. “Meanwhile, the Biden campaign will spend $1 million on ads in Ohio and $565,000 in Iowa over the next week while the president’s ads will not air,” says The Hill.

Democrats are slightly favored to win the Senate. Fingers crossed. The trajectory is encouraging.

October 7, 2020, https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/senate/

See also the Cook Political Report, The South Carolina Senate Race Moves to Toss Up.

Dems are clearly favored to keep the House and might increase their majority. The House odds have changed very little over the past several weeks.

Republicans have expressed concern. The Hill:

Republicans are growing increasingly concerned about poll numbers that show a rising Democratic wave just four weeks before Election Day as President Trump suffers one of the most brutal two-week stretches of his first term at precisely the wrong moment.

For months, Republicans and Democrats alike have confidently predicted that former Vice President Joe Biden’s lead in national and battleground state polls would tighten.

But after a new string of jarring numbers, some Republicans are beginning to fear that voters hesitant to say they will back Trump are not coming home and that the few remaining undecided voters are breaking decidedly against him — and the Republican Party as a whole.

Aw, poor babies. Yes, everyone had expected the race to tighten after labor day. But then the New York Times got the tax returns. And then we passed 200,000 dead from the pandemic. And then Trump refused to say he would cede power if he lost the election. And then there was the debate, which increasingly is looking like a worse bomb than the time Gerald Ford misplaced Poland. And then Trump turned into a virus superspreader.

Plus, the Hill continues, “There are growing signs that Trump’s dismal polling is beginning to impact down-ballot Republican contests.” Heh. See also Sam Stein and Lachlan Markay, Republicans: Ditch Trump, Save the Senate at Daily Beast.

Trump’s move yesterday to cancel relief/stimulus negotiations was labeled “the single greatest political blunder in the history of presidential elections” by Jonathan Chait. More soberly, Nate Silver writes,

But it’s still a hard move to comprehend, especially at a time when the president’s numbers were already declining — mildly in some polls, and sharply so in others. And the way Trump went about it makes matters worse for him, politically. Up until this point, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi had faced at least a little bit of a risk: Though the stimulus might have helped Trump, she could have been partly blamed if talks collapsed. But now, Trump’s tweets make it clear that he was the one who pulled out of the talks.

This move was stupid even by Trump standards, and with Nancy Pelosi I do wonder what the dexamethasone is doing to him. For whatever reason, a slight majority of the electorate still preferred Trump over Biden to run the economy. Nate Silver says he might have blown that one advantage yesterday.

Within hours, Trump had partly shifted, calling for a deal to rescue the airline industry. He also tweeted yesterday about another paycheck protection program and a stand-alone bill to hand out another $1,200. The chances of any of this happening before the election seem low to me. See also Trump Just Killed the Stimulus Talks. Is He Out of His Mind? by Jim Newell and Jordaon Weissmann at Slate.

Tonight is the Veep debate. Should be more watchable than that mess last week.

9 thoughts on “27 Days to Go”

The only thing that will cheer me up before January 20, 2021 is if Florida's election results are called for Biden on the November 3rd late night. That would mean that the election was not stolen in Florida and that would mean that there is no way possible for The Donald to 'win' legitimately.

Do NOT succumb to hubris. Keep fighting and working to defeat tRump until he is driven from the White House.

Pet theory: McConnell conned Trump into cancelling the relief negotiations; this serves McConnell two ways: 1) no relief means economic chaos/pain that McConnell can blame on Biden and the Democrats come 2021, with luck (for McConnell) leading to Republicans retaking Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024; 2) Trump as the face of austerity/go fck yourself improves the chances that McConnell can get a fascist with a working brain as the 2024 nominee.

Whatever the polls show, rural white people here in north central NC have yards full of Trump/Pence signs.

Swami on October 7, 2020 at 11:12 pm said:

In my neighborhood on the Suncoast of Florida I was seeing quite a few Trump/ Pence lawn signs early on, but just recently, post presidential debate, Biden /Harris signs are popping up like dandelions. It could be just my perception but the amount of signs popping up gives me a sense that Trump is going to get his ass whipped. It's kinda like an "I'm Spartacus" experience. A defiance of the shit that Trump has put this country through with his criminal antics.

A thought that occurs to me frequently is the idea that Trump entered the presidential race in 2016 with no intentions of winning. He was only trying to boost his brand of name recognition. So he intentionally made a spectacle of the contest saying the most bigoted and outrageous things just to draw attention to himself. So, seeing how he won the presidency by pissing all over the process and fucking up with abandon he might be trying to repeat that process in the belief it is a winning formula.

Like Gulag point out way back when.. The Producers. He looking for a replay of the Producers.

1

Have started popcorn for tonight. Looking forward to watching the 1st Officer of the Titanic explain how USS-45 is unsinkable.

Trump has wanted to guarantee aid to red states while withholding help for "Democrat-run" cities. Where the population is more concentrated the early spread was worse. These cities (generally) can't borrow or run at a deficit. They will have to fire essential workers and shut down everything but water and trash pickup if there's no help. Which is exactly the kind of punishment Trump wants to inflict on areas who will not vote for him.

As far as I can tell, that's the entire logjam and, yes, Trump (today) wants to slice it up into smaller bills including the one for cities Trump would gleefully veto. Nancy is saying you can't cut needed aid out of the areas most in need of help, so she's gonna keep aid to any groups bundled. It helps that the House passed aid months ago. The Senate has passed nothing and Trump quit negotiations. The blame game is harder for them to win.

Ultimately, it may be that the telling statistic after votes are counted is a decline in turnout from Republicans and conservative-leaning Independents who are unwilling to vote for Biden but have no stomach for four more years of Trumpian slapstick. If it happens, it creates negative coattails in Senate races. Trump may nor break 200 votes in the electoral college and Democrats might sweep every close Senate race. Naturally, Republicans will accept defeat gracefully – NOT! The lame-duck session will be as vulgar a political middle-finger as we've ever seen – I hope. Because Democrats are going to have to decide on ending the filibuster and packing the USSC. I want Dems as angry as a jar of bees that the Republicans shake for two months so when they emerge with power, they use it. The public may be so disgusted by the GOP, they will support the changes.