We are two weeks from election day eve. The headlines are all what they have been — the race is a toss-up. Undecided voters are still deciding. This is like waiting for biopsy results.
The early votes in Georgia and North Carolina are breaking records, I understand, and polls say the early voters are going for Harris, 2-1. That should mean there are more votes for Harris in the bank already, so to speak. Whether the dude bros Trump is courting to vote for him manage to get to the polls remains to be seen. They tend to be an unreliable group.
Josh Marshall has a post up about the effects of “junk” polls that push up numbers for Republicans. In brief: Yes, this is a real thing. But the better reporting organizations have gotten wise to this and factor it into their aggregate results. And the tightening in the polls is showing up everywhere, he says. Fivethirtyeight is saying Trump and Harris have about an even chance to win. So let’s hope the polls are all missing something, and it isn’t that close.
Given Trump’s behavior in recent days, it’s beyond understanding why he would actually be moving up in the polls now. But apparently he is. And yes, I know Elon Musk is doing all manner of underhanded and possibly illegal things to get people to vote for Trump, and maybe that’s what we’re seeing. I honestly believe Harris is doing everything right. She’s run a smart campaign.
See also The Very Real Scenario Where Trump Loses and Takes Power Anyway at Politico. This explains what Trump is doing, and likely to do, to grab the presidency if he loses the votes. Among other things, he’s going to lean on county and state officials to stop them from certifying election results. If he can deny Harris a clear Electoral College majority, all bets are off.
This is all terrifying. And it also points to something, probably a lot of things, deeply wrong with our political culture that needs addressing. I suspect that the dominance of social media has made it way too easy to misinform people who are not tuned in to traditional news sources. But there may be more to it.
If you can find any signs of good news out there, please add them to comments.
Update: Okay, maybe there are things going on that I don’t understand. This weekend Trump pulled one of his signature stupid stunts and handed people fries from a McDonalds take-out window in Pennsylvania somewhere. Trump allegedly also operated the frying machine.
For some reason Trump is obsessed with Kamala Harris’s having worked at a McDonalds during a college summer break. He insists she is lying about this, although why anyone would lie about working at McDonalds is beyond me. It would have been 41 years ago, so there are no records of this employment stored anywhere except possibly at the IRS. It’s not something anyone can prove one way or another. And no, McDonalds did not confirm she didn’t work for them, as Trump has claimed.
Trump is suspicious because Harris has rarely mentioned this summer job over the years and never put her time on the flrying machine on her professional resumes, but nobody puts stuff like that on professional resumes. Trump has never had to apply for a job, so he wouldn’t know you don’t put college summer jobs on your resume unless the job was in your chosen industry.. At least one old friend has confirmed that she remembers Harris working at a McDonalds, though.
So the franchise owner of the Pennsylvania McDonalds closed the store temporarily and let Trump and some of his people take over to play at running a McDonalds. And this inspired Piers Morgan to write Trump’s genius McDonald’s stunt will fry Kamala at the ballot box at the New York Post. And some guy at the Arizona Republic wrote Trump went to McDonald’s and fried Kamala Harris’ campaign to a crisp.
I honestly don’t get the thing with McDonalds. I understand what Trump was trying to pull with the Bible Stunt and mosf ot his other stunts, but this one seems to have no point to it. Is he making fun of working at McDonalds? Some McDonalds employees are taking it that way. The guy who owns the franchise is probably sorry, because now it’s being reported around the world that his store failed its health inspection. And McDonalds executives are going to great lengths to let the world know the company isn’t endorsing Trump. Otherwise I’m not seeing much reaction to the McDonalds stunt, but Trump’s people are strutting about like they just won a prize fight.
Update on the McDonald’s Stunt: I had to laugh. Here’s a photo of Trump and the french fryer:
He didn’t roll up his sleeves. Obviously, he has no experience with what grease does to fabric. But there are no photos of him actually operating the fryer, just scooping up the fries and putting them into the paper containers. That’s probably all he did.
Another update: Yesterday I wrote about the Republican “ground game,” the GOTV effort that puts canvassers and other activists into communities to get people to the polls for their candidates. Josh Marshall has an update that’s worth reading. I remember reading that the whole idea to outsource GOTV, and not use the RNC’s own organization, came from Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA. But lately I’ve just read about Elon Musk’s people doing GOTV, not Kirk’s. Josh Marshall explains this. Kirk got $100 million to put his GOTV organization together, and he failed. He and his organization simply lacked the experience/ability to do the job. So Musk got called in to take over. Kirk’s Turning Point is now only doing GOTV in Arizona, where they are headquartered. And as I wrote yesterday, according to several sources Musk’s canvassing efforts are a mess.
"I honestly don’t get the thing with McDonalds"
Your writing about, lots of people are writing about it. It's on tee-vee, it was on my local nightly news last night. It's got him some headlines, that's all he wants, he puts out the most ridiculous shit and people write about it it gets him publicity, the other day he was talking about Arnold Palmers schwanse? When he said Harris never worked at McDonalds people said so what move on, Stump can't stand that, now people are talking about it again so in his fragile child like ego driven mind he has convinced the country that she indeed didn't work at Micky D's, in his mind he has won. It seems ridiculously stupid and doesn't really make sense but that is how diaper don is, your being too logical. It doesn’t really make sense but this has been going on for 10 years now.
I'm sure you're right.
He's just doing it to distract, and run down KH in the eyes of his infantile followers. It's petty and stupid but it's what he and the right have been doing forever.
What I saw was a senior citizen in the perfect role for him – running the french fryer, since he's too brain addled to do anything else. Next time, don't forget the uniform.
"perfect role for him – running the french fryer, since he's too brain addled to do anything else"
I was a cook back in my high school and college days running a fryer isn't complicated but it does take some skills, you need to be organized. I'm sure the new fryers are automated making it easier but you still have to be organized, and it's still hot dangerous work. Stump can barely wipe his own ass (sometimes I wonder if he does) much less work at a fast food restaurant. He's an imbecile. It's hard work, that fat fuck never worked a day in his useless life, he wouldn't last 15 minutes! The whole thing was a stunt, one thing Stump understands is what our tabloid centered news industry likes, they played his little stunt over and over, two days of not talking about real issues. Real which is the last thing diaper don wants to talk about, it worked!
"Elon Musk is doing all manner of underhanded and possibly illegal things to get people to vote for Trump"
I just saw some FEC lawyer type on msnbc, he seemed to think what Musk is doing is illegal, someone needs to file a lawsuit and get a judge to shit can that stunt asap. These fucking white trash billionaires, we need to tax them at 95%!
Dude is serious about fries I guess. Failed health inspection? That would be no problem if Repugs could have their way with deregulation! Would it be tacky of me to LOL if an outbreak of food poisoning resulted from tRumpy's half-hour side gig?
Walz nailed it when he called these people weird.
Trump has a weird fixation with Harris' early work history. It's just weird. Possibly not explainable at all beyond that.
The McDonald's franchise owner who staged this event for Trump, Derek Giacomantonio, has been the target of protests for refusing to pay his workers more than the scandalously low minimum wage of $7.25
-Robert Mackey
My first job was at McDonalds in HS (That would have been '69) When I started, the store did not have A/C. In the summer in California, it got well into the 90's. Fries were made then from these brown things called potatoes. I got into restaurant management at the same McDonalds (#776) after I got out of the Navy. One of the highest compliments I ever got was that some part-time employees changed their availability to work the nights I was running things.
A fifteen-minute staged photo-op is NOT work. No customers makes it a bad joke. I worked the fry station in high-volume lunches, keeping six baskets of fries down (cooking) at one time and scooping cooked fries into bags and the large red cartons. Cooking at that pace requires some serious hustle. Trump is enough of an idiot to think he accomplished something.
It's like somebody firing a .22 rifle at the range for the first time and then claiming it's the same as combat. Nobody who ever worked in restaurants was likely impressed.
Making fun of her, same as they treat AOC as a barmaid. It's part of the subjection, at least in their minds, regardless their practical and academic accolades they're just some french fry girl or bartender that got lucky, that they're not really anything special
Don't get me started on that bimbo from Colorado …
This is how Musk is helping: https://www.404media.co/this-is-exactly-how-an-elon-musk-funded-pac-is-microtargeting-muslims-and-jews-with-opposing-messages/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
What is the bright star? (No silly, that's a planet). Note who is the enemy. It is not the star, the bright star. The one that is so bright that Trump will not even mention her name. The leader of the Red-dog republicans who stands up for democracy and maintain the current Russia as an enemy of democracy. Sure, China just has one political party, but they know they are the only party to blame too. When their people speak in the right way the government listens. We here are in the same situation. We only have one political party also, as the republican one has been hijacked. If we make the wrong choices we too will be like Russia. One party that does not listen to their people no matter what they do. Liz Cheney, the shining star, thinks and speaks for at least a two-party America. Trump used to bad mouth her. Not now. When he argues with the Faux news talking heads about who is the enemy within, her name is not mentioned.
Pay attention. Sometimes what is not said is more important that what is said. Now if Trump had mentioned that Arnold Palmer could hit a one-iron off the deck, few men would understand today, but the ones that did would realize what a man's man he was. Instead, we got Trump's perverted and perverse elitism. Arnold Palmer deserves the real thing. Some of us do too or at least like to think we do. Not me though. I could rarely hit any long iron.
CNN interviewed some schmuck in Michigan what said Biden's support of EV is causing him to vote for Stump
I saw that a couple days ago now they are running stories that there is a "Crack in the blue wall" specifically michigan. If Harris loses MI it has nothing to do with EV's or trouble with unions and everything to do with the genocide in Gaza. Our corporate media won't talk about that. It's pretty obvious to me they want Stump to win, he gives them four more years of chaos content, Harris gives them four years of boring old functional government.
Going OT: I read an interesting article (Emptywheel) that suggested Trump is basically doing cosplay and has been for much of his life. It seemed to define a lot of Trump's motivations. However, what wasn't explored in the article was that Trump is playing to an audience that is totally engaged in the game.
This symbiotic relationship grew when Trump started "playing" the NY media, then on to "The Apprentice." It's weird because… for example, the producer and director of "Jurassic Park" are the LEAST likely to believe the dinosaur story because they were up to their necks in creating the illusion. Trump is also producing the illusion that he's competent and sane but I think he actually believes he's brilliant. He's the cosplayer in a superman uniform when thinks he can and does fly despite the fact he sees the wires. But Trump's followers re just as invested in the fiction, refusing to acknowledge objective fact every time it would puncture the fantasy.
I don't know that I'm right but it starts to explain the behavior f Trump and the cult.
I agree with the comments on TFG and McDs and who he's pandering to and that it got him news coverage, BUT I thought this particular photo op was brilliant.
Why?
They finally got a stylist out, they planned this, down to the ironed apron. Everyone else's uniforms were pristine, the photography and soft focus was excellent, the color combinations beautiful. He served fries out the window without his signature, cheesy grin or thumbs up. He looked good.
Gosh darn it, he looked presidential- and humble.
And I hate the guy – but it was the best thing they did this campaign, if you disconnect it from his braggadocio about how he worked where Ms Harris never worked, which a lot of people missed because they are visual info gatherers.
You may disagree, but it was a smart move.
He seemed stiff and awkward to me. He’s never had a job in his life, and it’s possible he’s never cooked anything in his life. It shows.
Yeah I want a framed copy to hang next to my 1988 Mike Dukakis in a tank helmet photo.
It was not easy, but I managed to not vote for any nazi or fascist on the ballot, I hope. I did get to vote for four candidates who I am fairly sure are not. That's all. It gave me a case of red state blues.
Republicans are gonna republican. A tale older than time:
We're less than two weeks away to election day and now we're learning there's video of Republican candidate for New York State Assembly Joe Mastroianni appearing to steal political mail from a voter's mailbox, which is a federal offense.
Ring video provided by the law office of Frank Salamone, who's also the Schenectady County Democratic Committee Chairman, shows Mastroianni appears to be stealing an election mailer sent by incumbent Assemblymember Angelo Santabarbara. A voter in Scotia retrieved the video after noticing she did not receive the item that appeared in her U.S. postal service informed delivery.
"Whether the dude bros Trump is courting to vote for him manage to get to the polls remains to be seen."
What about setting up a table (outside the 150-foot zone around the polling place) handing out free IPAs to dude bros who haven't voted or gotten into line?