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not that crazy...it just shows how dystopic he and others of his political persuasion feel life in America would be if trump were elected. Did you see the CNN.com headline about Cheney? Even CNN is giving it full play! Also, many of these republicans endorsing Kamala Harris feel the republican party will control both houses of congress and, along with scotus, this will enable them to keep the new administration on a tight leash. If we could see the names of all of those business CEO's who have endorsed Kamala Harris I would bet many of them have never voted for a Democrat for POTUS before. They know things we don't!! Still waiting to hear from GWB and Laura.
Why Democrats would cheer for having Dick Cheney support their ticket is beyond me. It also shows just how far Democrats have moved towards Dick Cheney on foreign policy.
Disagree! There is a world of difference between endorsing a candidate and condeming the other candidate. Cheney and others have said they will vote for Kamala Harris as a way of doing what they can to condemn and defeat donald trump and in so doing have condemned what trump is and what he stands for and have not given any glowing endorsement to the goals and policies of Kamala Harris. And that is why I welcome anyone who would vote for Kamala Harris as a way of defeating donald trump.
I welcome it because it's such an existential moment, but Cheney is an evil unprosecuted war criminal, and the G.W. Bush-Cheney Administration having gotten away with open, systematic crimes had a lot to do with Trump feeling with considerable justification that he has impunity.
I wouldn't cheer and Dems won't tout this because contrarians would cling to it forever. That aside, evil people can be allowed to seek some modicum of redemption.
Trump wanted to end the war in Afghanistan, but couldn't quite bring himself to do it, because he wanted to end it in a way that made him look good, or at least made him look smarter than the foreign policy establishment. Biden actually ended it, even though it was chaotic and disorderly, in part because of steps that Trump had taken.
I would also add the Biden didn't really get any credit for ending the "forever wars" because Ukraine and Gaza make it feel like we're still at war, even though we don't have troops in those conflicts.
Nor does he deserve it. We’ve been military involved in Syria and in facedowns with Iran and Yemen. And I’m not even talking about the tons of arms we’ve supplied in the region.
There's also special forces in wide swath of Africa, though there's been some drawdown of US forces there because Russia has been pushing their own mercs on people as an alternative.
I agree with your sentiment but as it turns out, during the Bush/Cheney years there was considerably less chaos in Congress.
Debt ceiling increases both pre-2006 midterms and after were routine and not escalated fiascos that the Tea Party and Grover Norquist were pushing. Bipartisanship was more popular. And even Nancy Pelosi when she was House Speaker said the Bush Administration was cooperative compared to the Trump Administration.
It certainly is low bar. However, the GOP did it to themselves by bankrolling the Iraq War with no accountability under the leadership of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert until after the 2006 midterms.
It's during the Bush Administration that the neocons lost their credibility. Too many of their minions such as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and others were being snake oil salesmen for the justification behind the Iraq War.
Yes, but that's pretty damn ironic from people who stole the 2000 election and whose Supreme Court nominees have done a lot to further erode democracy and the power of non-super-rich people in the U.S.
I’d say at this point the Cheney family wants to think they are going to be relevant again.
The worst thing that can happen is that neocons like the Cheney’s are going to recommend foreign policy and war mongering intervention and nation building and that the Democrats are actually going to adopt this.
Remember when Bush said he wasn’t for national building before he ended up being for it with the Iraq War?
Most of the House loses for Democrats back in 2022 were in CA and NY. If Democrats simple reclaim those loses + keep all the rest of the seats they didn't lose back in 2022, then Hakeem Jefferies gets the gavel. I don't see how there's so much heavy lifting that has to done to reclaim back those seats.
We know NY-03 is likely going to be out of reach for the GOP considering George Santos was forced out and Tom Suozzi got his seat back in the primary with relative ease. Then LA-06 is going to be an easy pickup for Democrats thanks to the redistricting rule by the Supreme Court. That's already two wins in the House.
Let's not forget that the Green Party has presence in the UK, where in parliament there's more than just the Conservative and Labour Parties represented.
Unlike in Congress, the Green Party has representation in the UK parliament.
Yes but for the non-Democrat and Republican votes, I'm not concerned about them at this time.
The real concern should be on overturning the Citizens United decision and going to a primarily public-financing and funding system for all political races. Once this is done, it will be much easier to have a conversation on what we want our democracy to look like.
The Cheney endorsement would have been unthinkably mind-blowing 20 years ago or even 10 years ago, but given that a muscular foreign policy was always Cheney's biggest issue, it makes sense that Trump's isolationism scares him to death....enough to endorse a Democrat "until the Republican Party returns to its Cheney-endorsed senses" (spoiler alert: it won't).
Generally agreed, but there's no way to reliably predict the long-term future of the post-Trump Republican Party. If you were talking to someone 100 years ago, could you have predicted that the Democrats would be the party of civil rights and the Republicans would be the party of neo-Confederacy?
Thom Hartmann was interviewed a long time ago and said that Trump Republicans wanted to go back to the days of the Eisenhower times. He might be thinking of the era, not so much the specific policies and agenda Eisenhower as POTUS had.
The fact that the Green Party needs a naive supporter of the Kremlin's propaganda arm as its presidential nominee shows how dire the party is in these days.
Harris hiring a rural outreach director from a progressive group in order to work to cut margins in rural areas. They say they want to "show up and compete everywhere." And have money to do it. They are also looking to leverage Walz in rural areas over the next two months as well.b
I've said this before on DKE, but Dems should have never abandoned Obama's 2008 strategy of campaigning outside of friendly Dem territory to whittle down GOP margins. Even if we can only net 5 more votes in nowhereville, that's 5 less votes we need to find in the suburbs and cities.
the 2008 "50-state strategy" was cooked up by Howard Dean who was then DNC chair. Obama's team then thanked him by appointing a new DNC director and locking him out of the cabinet.
Per the Census, Women make up of 49% of MT residents. If 38% of MT voters casting votes for Tester are women, he’d just need a minimum of 13% of men to vote for him and he wins re-election to the Senate.
Of course, there can be other hypotheticals that can apply.
I'm not sure I agree with your math; and I completely disagree with you on nationalizing that race; clearly Tester knows that state better than any poster here
Nationalizing the MT-Race isn’t exactly what I’m arguing here. I also didn’t exactly explain my reasoning to begin with.
I’m mainly concerned that Tester isn’t getting enough support outside of MT. Financial and grassroots support is more important but the second the DSCC and PAC committees start flooding the airwaves with Washington insider messaging, then Tester’s campaign will get the attacks from the Sheehy camp of being too tied to Washington. Agreed regarding Tester knowing MT better than any pollster.
As for the math, here’s what I’m referring to regarding the Census data:
Unfortunately, the population gender demographics that are cited in the Census are not added together so you can see the total population in each. You have to add each set of data by age date (both for men and women). As it turns out, the 49% women data may not be completely accurate when it comes to voters as there are women aged younger than 18 who are represented. It might be anywhere from 46% to 47% but I’ll take a look when I get home and perhaps put more hypotheticals to consider.
I'm interested in what numbers you come up with; however, all things considered, Tester so far, is running one helluva race, considering what's being thrown at him
I totally disagree with the folks on the daily thread that say that banning plastic straws won't make a difference. It actually makes a huge difference.
I just drove for three weeks through western Canada and the one thing I noticed is that Canada has a lot less trash on the roadways than does the U.S. There are several reasons for this, but one of the main reasons is that Canada is in the process of banning all plastic straws and plastic utensils.
[They also have better garbage cleanup -- trash collection is a utility that is mostly free to all (paid by higher taxes of course) and there are trash cans and recycling cans every few miles along major Canadian roadways.].
The nation is very clean. We are pathetic in comparison.
It's absolutely pathetic that we don't completely ban all plastic bags, utensils and straws. There is zero reason why we shouldn't have done so years ago.
I do agree with you we needed to phase out single use plastics yesterday even if the compostable ones are more brittle and paper straws are pretty much useless 1 drink in. There's too much plastic floating around and most of it can't be recycled so it gets incinerated anyway.
At the same time I hope the chemists at UC Berkeley who told the LA Times they managed to melt plastic down into its base compounds for reuse (currently whatever plastic can be recyclable has to be ground down into finite particles for reuse) are onto something.
Currently, recycling isn’t really making much of an impact on the environment. In fact, the recycling system needs to be regulated so that it’s intended purpose is met.
I work for my state DOT, so I drive around a lot. And here, most of the litter I see on the side of the road isn't plastic stuff - it's aluminum cans, probably mostly beer cans.
Unless those are outlawed, there won't be any significant reduction of roadside litter here.
California passed CRV and started redemption in 1987. It worked effectively for years, but currently most of the private recycling center companies have gone BK.
For the first few years people would scavenge for littered CRV containers, but it has become less effective as it's harder to get your deposit back.
I use very little that comes in cans or bottles, so I just dispose of that when I do in curbside recycling.
I also buy as much as I can from bulk containers (WinCo and a spice company in Costa Mesa) and use paper bags to reduce plastic consumption.
When California started curbside composting, I got rid of my compost pile too. I composted for years while in a wheelchair, but it was a pain in the ass, so I liked the alternative.
Personally, I think a deposit on each and every container, such as ten cents, which you get back when you recycle, is better than getting money via weight.
Part of it is altruism and part is squeaking by after becoming disabled out of the blue at 52 and deciding to continue to live in SoCal, one of the most expensive places in the country.
A Missouri judge ruled Friday evening that a reproductive-rights amendment did not comply with state initiative petition requirements, leaving the door open to potentially withhold it from the November ballot.
Right-wing judicial activist Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh issues a disgraceful ruling that Missouri's Amendment 3 is in "blatant violation" of the single-subject rule, but won't remove it off the ballot just yet.
This ruling is a violation of the will of the people who want Missouri's abortion ban overturned at the ballot box.
Hi, sorry I missed the unveiling last week I was traveling and read the post, but didn't have opportunity to post myself. Been a longtime lurker since the SSP days through DKE.
Just wanted to express my appreciation for all the David's and everyone have done, and that both this site and the Discord seem to be working nicely so far. I just continued Founder Status for the year as my free trial was expiring. Keep doing what you are doing.
On a local note Ehasz seems to be running a more active campaign than 2 years ago, but Brian Fitzpatrick's machine is getting in gear, and myself as well as a bunch of other dems/independents I know have started receiving mail from his congressional office about all the wonderful money and projects he has brought home for the community.
Interestingly, Trump seems to be horrible at micro-targeting, as my wife (who moved to this area after 2020, but has voted in PA democratic primaries and is a registered democrat) has started receiving Trump mailers. The angle they seem to be going with is that only Trump will protect medicare/social security and Kamala will slash it.
I tried to see if Trump had actually proposed anything new to fund Social Security, the answer is, of course, 'no'. His only plan is to exempt Social Security benefits from federal taxes, which would give more money to higher income recipients, but only cause the program to bleed money faster.
Harris is supporting the same "donut hole" plan as Biden: Charge Social Security taxes on income over $$400,000, but not income between $168,600 and $400,000. The hole would gradually fade over time, as the lower limit is adjusted for inflation, while the upper one is not.
I have never understood how Democrats have bought into the idea that middle income extends to $400,000. Someone making $300,000 is living pretty damned well even in LA or NY.
Many established professionals, including doctors, lawyers and engineers, can easily see north of $400k, esp later in their careers. They aren't "middle class" exactly, but they're hardly the upper class like millionaire celebs, investors and families that often live in mansions or own summer homes. My parents, both being doctors are among such people. You find many upper middle class folks in the OC and SoCal, including many Asian Americans. We definitely have substantially more income to spend, but we're far from celeb status wealthy. Many including my dad, go screwed with Trump's petty elimination of tax deductions for SALT on property taxes.
It’s inequitable to raise taxes solely on people who are already paying more than those who make more money than they do, just because they don’t have the power to stop us. We need to actually tax the actually wealthy.
In the US, we have developed an anti tax mentality that is quite different from the thought process in Europe, and unfortunately it has taken hold in the Democratic party.
In the long run, to provide public services, we have to require people to pay an adequate amount of taxes to cover those services, and it can't be done by only taxing the ultra wealthy.
The median household income in OC CA is $106k, in Irvine, considered an affluent area, $126k. People earning $400k aren't ultra rich, but they are doing well and should be taxed.
In part our notion of what is middle income has been skewed downward by the past two generations in which capital has stolen most of the increase in national income from the bottom 99%. First, a typical definition of the top of middle income would be double the median household income adjusted for household size. As of last year that was $183k for a 3 person household, so about $106k for 1 person or $236k for a family of 5. If you instead set the top of the middle class at 2x the median household income in 1970, and scale income with GDP per capita instead of inflation (i.e. distribute economic gains through wages as from 1946-1970 instead of allowing them to be concentrated as wealth), the top of the middle class would be at roughly $275k for an individual, $478k for a family of 3. The bottom of the middle class, i.e. the top edge of “poor” if held at the share of the pie for a household with 2/3rds median income in 1970, would be $91k for an individual in 2023. We have collectively been pushed out of the middle class and into lower income brackets by the collective action of the wealthy to concentrate income and assets in only a few hands over the past two generations. When we see folks making $400k as “them” rather than “us” we are mistaking the situation. They are just the luckiest of us, but all of us are and have been being slowly squeezed into serfdom by the folks making $400mil.
I make way less than your bottom of the middle class and always have, and I'd happily pay $1,500 more per year in taxes in exchange for universal no-cost healthcare. It's not about wealthier workers being "them"; it's about people being better able to pay some more for the common good, which is a collective responsibility.
The collective responsibility should include us seeing that you are paid better, not charging you for the failure of the elite to hold up their end of the stick. We need to tax the rich, but not just tax them, stop their theft from us: raise wages, save money on healthcare while making it universal, etc. The time for broad based taxes to meet societal needs is when income and wealth is broadly shared. For now, soak the rich.
If you want to create an economy in which there are full-time tenured positions for everyone with a Doctorate and all music gigs pay at least $100/hr, with benefits, go for it, but I can easily survive on my current income, as long as I have almost no medical expenses, though other expenses can be challenging and who knows what I'll make next year?
benamery21, did I delete your reply by mistake by deleting a double post? If so, sorry. (I now see that that didn't happen.) But my reply to you is that I don't need to have a guaranteed income of $91K and don't think that only the super-rich should be taxed, though I think it should not be possible for Musk to become a trillionaire, and beyond a certain level of assets, there should be 100% taxation.
To be more precise the lower limit, which is currently the cap, is adjusted based on a wage index called the AWI which historically goes up faster than inflation. It’s gone up 42% since 2016.
This is true of Social Security in general. Broadly speaking, this means seniors benefit from productivity gains, rather than being locked into the goods and services from 1933.
Yes, broadly speaking. Initial benefits are also indexed in this fashion. More narrowly speaking the index is skewed upward by uncovered income and employed middle income folks who were just above the cap and aren’t seeing wages go up with productivity have gotten hosed the past few years.
What an incredibly kind comment and what a truly lovely gesture, MK! I'm so delighted you delurked, and I'm extremely humbled that you'd sign on as a Founding Member. Much, much more great stuff to come!
Paper straws and wooden utensils work great. I've used them for years, in Canada, in western Europe and increasingly here in Oregon. The idea that they break before you finish your meal is not at all true. The wooden utensils are often stronger than plastic utensils.
I've never been to a place that had disposable wooden utensils, but I have used the paper straws. Honestly, they're terrible and don't last for meal, at all. The technology is advancing though, and eventually the nonplastic straws' technology will advance to the point to make them financially viable and functional. They're not there yet though, unfortunately.
Paper straws are OK for drinks that you consume fast, but not always if it's larger or going to take a while. And for a frozen Slurpee/Slush Puppy type drink, forget it.
The difference between experiences regarding paper straws is probably “time used to finish drink” and “what drink I used the paper straw in”. We don’t have plastic straws anywhere, so I’ve used paper straws for years now on almost any drink (except hot ones, so again go back to point two if that’s the case”). I can honestly say you’re both right.
If you drink the drink quickly, there’s never any problems with a paper straw. However, if you want to save some for later or forget about it and come back to it, the straw has likely disintegrated or unwound and is completely unusable. I don’t drink hot drinks and every time I’ve seen one, I’ve never seen any straw for it, so if you did that, maybe it could have disintegrated in the drink? Because I doubt any business would do so.
By now though everyone around me is used to the change and doesn’t think much of it. I will say though, that there’s a very big debate right now over whether it’s actually environmentally better or not. More research is needed for sure.
Plastic bag replacement on the other hand with paper though was a much more successful action in limiting waste.
I think it's also that I have a tendency to chew on the straw a little bit. I mean sure I could try not to do that, but I'd rather just not use a straw.
Rep Tony Gonzales of TX predicts Republicans will lose the House. But several anonymous House Republicans say it's "not what we're seeing on the ground."
of course "anonymous house republicans" are saying that. the last thing in the world they would admit is that they are going to lose control of the house.
All I need to know is Republican groups are spending in Trump-won seats that weren’t in play for 2022 and Democrats are spending in seats that weren’t in play for 2022. Pretty clear which way both parties see the wind blowing. That said, not a done deal, 2 months of hard work ahead!
Considering Liz Cheney is more of an old school neoconservative Republican, I’m pretty sure that there are conservatives not exactly enamored with Ted Cruz. Perhaps her endorsement might send signals to them.
Beto O’Rourke didn’t really have much if any crossover support that I can remember in his Senate run back in 2018.
Image won’t embed, but Republicans are using this money to oppose Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, not support Rick Scott. Never thought I’d actually say this, but Florida Senate might actually be in play this year. We’ll see if they put in more cash to the race in the coming weeks or not.
We will know Scott is nervous when he starts dumping piles of his own money into the race. That's really what I'm waiting for. Just sent DMP $100.00 too.
I may have not paid attention to the 2022 FL-SEN Race between Marco Rubio and Val Demings as far as polling companies were concerned. However, I don't recall a single poll (including Emerson) that showed Val Demings 1% point behind Rubio.
Could be several factors that Emerson is taking into account:
1) Mucarsell-Powell is in fact running a credible Senate race.
2) There is strong enthusiasm among the Democratic Party base + any crossover appeal (primarily Independents).
I do know FL Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried and the Democratic Party statewide has made progressive improvements throughout the state this year. That said, this is certainly no reason at all to be complacent.
According to the EWTN News/Real Clear Opinion poll conducted between 08.28 and 08.30.2024, Kamala Harris leads all American Catholics 50%-43%. Harris also leads 82%-18% among Black Catholics, 60%-30% among Latine Catholics, and 58%-35% among Asian-American Catholics. Donald Trump leads White Catholics 52%-42%. Female Catholics back Harris 56%-37%, while male Catholics back Trump 49%-43%.
Both EWTN and RealClear Opinion have well-known right-wing biases. The former entity was founded by the late Mother Angelica.
I suspect they don't indicate much, but even if they did, they'd be just about exactly what I would expect the racial and gender breakdowns to be if you had omitted any mention of religion at all.
I honestly don't think religion is the big political driver many of my fellow atheists believe it to be - rather, religion is a cultural marker that already highly-conservative people are likely to cling to as a part of their identity, to justify political opinions they would hold regardless.
"That 12 weeks, exceptions for rape and incest … I’m not going to say it’s reasonable."
And that he would prefer a "zero week" ban. But that they "have to start somewhere."
Should be one of the final nails in his coffin. What an idiot. Oh and he said this last week. In light of everything else it's almost astonishing.
What I'm really not understanding though are the NC people who say, "Robinson is too extreme but Trump the civilly liable and admitted serial sexual assaulter who has been solely responsible for Roe being overturned, this is a guy who I can give a pass to."
Who the f- are the ones not abiding Robinson but claim to stomach Trump? Good grief with the hypocrisy.
It doesn’t go much further than “I felt the economy was better with Trump so I’m going to brush aside or stomach the other insanity to get me back to it”.
For example, if Robinson were Governor (heaven help us) for the last 4 years and was running for re-election, these same voters would do exactly what they’re doing with Trump, with Robinson’s statements. It boils down to “I experienced their government and liked how much better the economy was” so everything else doesn’t matter to them. They’ll still vote for him, even with all the things they hate about the character of that man.
So it’s way easier to turn people off based from their terrible character for someone as a potential leader than it is for someone who’s already done the job. That’s why, as Harris team has smartly researched: Trump attacks don’t move the needle, everyone knows his character flaws, but positive agenda for her potential presidency does.
A candidate being unknown to them, makes them more susceptible to arguments of having terrible character flaws and makes them reconsider their party preference or person preference if there’s an attractive moderate democratic alternative. Most voters don’t want to rock the boat if things are going ok regardless of the party in charge.
Those are the Trump/Stein (AG) voters, which there will be plenty of in NC. They’re supporting Stein because they like how he did as Attorney General and feel he won’t be too far left, more moderate, in the vein of Cooper. Who they also like and would vote for again, if they could.
The media’s constant puffing up of the Trump economy as better than it was during his chaotic presidency has permanently etched this version of Trump’s presidency that never actually happened in a lot of people’s minds. They still have learned zippo since 2016 and are making the same predictable mistakes in 2024 by sanewashing a clearly insane man to the masses who is by far the worst version of himself in this election. He was bad before, but my god is he so, so much worse now.
That's exactly the issue. The one thing keeping Orange Slob alive is the fact that the majority of Americans pretend that COVID and the shutdown that came with it didn't happen. That and the fact as an anti tax country, people buy into the lie that in all cases "tax cuts stimulate the economy." Thus advantage, Republicans.
When you dig into the cross-tabs it only shows Harris getting 71% of the black while trump gets 14%. When was the last time a Dem presidential candidate got under 85% of the black vote? I can tell you canvassing here in GA black voters are fired up and ready to vote for Harris.
1. The New York Times writeup reports, "Democrats do have a slight edge when it comes to enthusiasm for voting: 91 percent of Democrats said they were enthusiastic, compared with 85 percent of Republicans." That's a good sign.
2. Buried in the cross-tabs, among voters who are self-reportedly "Almost Certain" to vote, Kamala Harris leads 49-47.
I personally think this is just a poll with a slightly more conservative samples than others we've seen. However, its crosstabs seem to indicate Kamala still has an enthusiasm edge over Trump. That gives me hope (although, as must always be said, Trump still can win).
It's also worth noting that the poll has Kamala winning Independents by a sizeable margin: 48% to 44% in the head to head.
However, Kamala is still losing in the poll overall because 1. the sample contains slightly more Republicans than Democrats and 2. A slightly larger percentage of self-identified Democrats are planning to vote for non-Kamala candidates than Republicans are for non-Trump candidates. I'm a bit skeptical that either of these data points will be reflective of the final electorate.
They got a sample with a fraction of a percent more Rs than Ds in the raw data. They then did a bunch of weighting, which seems to involve things like past nonresponse bias, and end up weighting to an R+2 electorate.
I'm perfectly willing to believe that if the electorate is R+2, basically 2014 redux, then we lose. I doubt that's what the electorate will be.
And to be clear, I think they're overfitting. If you get more Rs than Ds, I'm not sure why you'd assume that the nonresponse bias is similar to past polls in which you had trouble reaching Rs.
If Democrats are just as or more excited than Republicans about voting (see also CBS/YouGov battleground state polls) then we probably don't get an R+2 electorate. And if Harris wins independents, even by four points, then she likely wins.
I'm actually enthusiastic about polls like this; this poll shows a dead heat race, with what I suspect are hugely rosy numbers for Republicans(imo no way in hell is the current electorate R+2)
This concern was what led me to post the other day about the disparity between Biden numbers in solid blue states such as Maryland and California and Harris' current poll numbers.
Many people are saying Democrats are hemorrhaging AA support and different polls are showing this across different states. I know no one wants to acknowledge it here but I see a clear trend in different polls all showing weaker support for Harris than Biden had with certain groups.
Just because there is enthusiasm like we haven't had in years doesn't mean it's all from the same place and the short time table of the race may be masking the loss of support for Harris among AA voters anecdotally. I really believe that her numbers are not as strong with AAs as we are trying to believe.
Do I think she will end up with less than 75% of the AA vote? No. But anything less than Biden 2020 could be significant enough to swing the election under the right circumstances.
Entirely possible the 2024 electorate looks different from the midterms and specials but nothing in them suggests the massive swings in the crosstabs with race and age. I won't predict much but I think the freakout over Gen Z men white or non-white leaping to the right from 2020 will be a dud and turnout will remain the bigger issue but we'll see.
I agree. I don't think young white men have suddenly become more racist, sexist and anti-LGBT, and I'd be really shocked if a smaller percentage of Black voters vote for Kamala Harris than voted for Joe Biden. We'll really suddenly get slews of Black voters opposing a mainstream Black Democrat in a general election? Maybe, but it doesn't pass the smell test.
A few weeks ago we were tripping over Republicans over-examining crosstabs, and now we have a quality pollster telling us there is weakness in the electorate for Harris and.... we over examine one crosstab to justify what we THINK will be reality on election day. It seems many of us don't believe polls that give us warning signs. This is a quality poll. We should not assume it's off base. There is a reason that with all of this enthusiasm we are seeing the race is essentially tied. Harris is weaker somewhere. My guess is it's a little of the white men issue and also black men but she is making up for it with overall youth and probably Hispanic voters. That is why she has almost never been ahead by more despite the enthusiasm.
Perhaps this "enthusiasm" is just where we should be anyway and we are perceiving it as "overenthusiasm" because everyone had been "meh" about Clinton and Biden. (In 2020 we didn't vote FOR Biden so much as we we got a real taste of Trump.)
Democrats organizing on the ground and GOTV in swing states is going to have to be the hardest work ever done in the history of hard work. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES can Trump ever be allowed to return to power!! 💙🇺🇲
So, regarding the NYT poll that is attracting so much attention today (not jut on the downballot), do we throw it on the pile or in the trash (my choice FWIW)
If you're averaging polls, you should include those with higher than expected percentages of Republicans if you include others taken by the same polling company.
I am throwing it in the trash; but, I am currently skeptical of all polling; I am focusing on following the money, and all signs are indicating that the Republicans are losing
Don't fall into the Mitt Romney "unskewing" trap. Not liking a data point doesn't mean we ignore the data point, especially from a valid source (which NYT/Siena unequivocally is).
Green Party struck from NV ballot: https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/green-party-will-not-appear-on-nevada-presidential-ballot-state-supreme-court-rules
Also, how crazy is this that Dick Cheney has had an end of life slight face-turn.
not that crazy...it just shows how dystopic he and others of his political persuasion feel life in America would be if trump were elected. Did you see the CNN.com headline about Cheney? Even CNN is giving it full play! Also, many of these republicans endorsing Kamala Harris feel the republican party will control both houses of congress and, along with scotus, this will enable them to keep the new administration on a tight leash. If we could see the names of all of those business CEO's who have endorsed Kamala Harris I would bet many of them have never voted for a Democrat for POTUS before. They know things we don't!! Still waiting to hear from GWB and Laura.
Why Democrats would cheer for having Dick Cheney support their ticket is beyond me. It also shows just how far Democrats have moved towards Dick Cheney on foreign policy.
OTOH, this is encouraging, and certainly not surprising. And might make for a fair trade.
https://x.com/JewsAreTheGOAT/status/1832129365037273154
dershowitz became trash years ago!
He probably is mad from grief from losing Jeff Epstein.
Plus the likes of Tulsi Gabbard, etc.
Disagree! There is a world of difference between endorsing a candidate and condeming the other candidate. Cheney and others have said they will vote for Kamala Harris as a way of doing what they can to condemn and defeat donald trump and in so doing have condemned what trump is and what he stands for and have not given any glowing endorsement to the goals and policies of Kamala Harris. And that is why I welcome anyone who would vote for Kamala Harris as a way of defeating donald trump.
I welcome it because it's such an existential moment, but Cheney is an evil unprosecuted war criminal, and the G.W. Bush-Cheney Administration having gotten away with open, systematic crimes had a lot to do with Trump feeling with considerable justification that he has impunity.
I don’t agree with his policies, but Cheney endorsing Harris may get some soft Republicans to vote for her.
Policies. You mean crimes?
I wouldn't cheer and Dems won't tout this because contrarians would cling to it forever. That aside, evil people can be allowed to seek some modicum of redemption.
Nah, just shows that the Cheneys hate Trump.
The last two Dem Presidents ended the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, hard to get much further from Cheney’s foreign policy.
Trump wanted to end the war in Afghanistan, but couldn't quite bring himself to do it, because he wanted to end it in a way that made him look good, or at least made him look smarter than the foreign policy establishment. Biden actually ended it, even though it was chaotic and disorderly, in part because of steps that Trump had taken.
I would also add the Biden didn't really get any credit for ending the "forever wars" because Ukraine and Gaza make it feel like we're still at war, even though we don't have troops in those conflicts.
Nor does he deserve it. We’ve been military involved in Syria and in facedowns with Iran and Yemen. And I’m not even talking about the tons of arms we’ve supplied in the region.
There's also special forces in wide swath of Africa, though there's been some drawdown of US forces there because Russia has been pushing their own mercs on people as an alternative.
At this point, none of those are as bad for the U.S. Military as remaining sitting ducks in Afghanistan.
I agree with your sentiment but as it turns out, during the Bush/Cheney years there was considerably less chaos in Congress.
Debt ceiling increases both pre-2006 midterms and after were routine and not escalated fiascos that the Tea Party and Grover Norquist were pushing. Bipartisanship was more popular. And even Nancy Pelosi when she was House Speaker said the Bush Administration was cooperative compared to the Trump Administration.
What a terribly low bar!
It certainly is low bar. However, the GOP did it to themselves by bankrolling the Iraq War with no accountability under the leadership of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert until after the 2006 midterms.
It's during the Bush Administration that the neocons lost their credibility. Too many of their minions such as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and others were being snake oil salesmen for the justification behind the Iraq War.
Dick Cheney is not a person I'd affiliate with. But if his ilk promote our ticket because we are the party of democracy, I agree!
Yes, but that's pretty damn ironic from people who stole the 2000 election and whose Supreme Court nominees have done a lot to further erode democracy and the power of non-super-rich people in the U.S.
I’d say at this point the Cheney family wants to think they are going to be relevant again.
The worst thing that can happen is that neocons like the Cheney’s are going to recommend foreign policy and war mongering intervention and nation building and that the Democrats are actually going to adopt this.
Remember when Bush said he wasn’t for national building before he ended up being for it with the Iraq War?
They are not relevant in today's Republican Party and will no votes for Harris with them
They're misguided if they think it's likely for the Republicans to retain the House while Harris wins the Presidency.
Most of the House loses for Democrats back in 2022 were in CA and NY. If Democrats simple reclaim those loses + keep all the rest of the seats they didn't lose back in 2022, then Hakeem Jefferies gets the gavel. I don't see how there's so much heavy lifting that has to done to reclaim back those seats.
We know NY-03 is likely going to be out of reach for the GOP considering George Santos was forced out and Tom Suozzi got his seat back in the primary with relative ease. Then LA-06 is going to be an easy pickup for Democrats thanks to the redistricting rule by the Supreme Court. That's already two wins in the House.
If I had my way, I’d tighten up ballot access laws to make it impossible for the Green Party to qualify.
How could that be possible in a democracy?
Let's not forget that the Green Party has presence in the UK, where in parliament there's more than just the Conservative and Labour Parties represented.
Unlike in Congress, the Green Party has representation in the UK parliament.
But we don’t have a parliamentary system, so every vote for a non-Democrat & Republican is thrown away.
Yes but for the non-Democrat and Republican votes, I'm not concerned about them at this time.
The real concern should be on overturning the Citizens United decision and going to a primarily public-financing and funding system for all political races. Once this is done, it will be much easier to have a conversation on what we want our democracy to look like.
The Cheney endorsement would have been unthinkably mind-blowing 20 years ago or even 10 years ago, but given that a muscular foreign policy was always Cheney's biggest issue, it makes sense that Trump's isolationism scares him to death....enough to endorse a Democrat "until the Republican Party returns to its Cheney-endorsed senses" (spoiler alert: it won't).
Generally agreed, but there's no way to reliably predict the long-term future of the post-Trump Republican Party. If you were talking to someone 100 years ago, could you have predicted that the Democrats would be the party of civil rights and the Republicans would be the party of neo-Confederacy?
Thom Hartmann was interviewed a long time ago and said that Trump Republicans wanted to go back to the days of the Eisenhower times. He might be thinking of the era, not so much the specific policies and agenda Eisenhower as POTUS had.
The reason that the Green Party was kicked off is hilarious - they filed the petition to include the words "Jill Stein" as a referendum question instead of as a candidate for president. https://www.8newsnow.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/59/2024/09/green-party-ruling.pdf
Lmao; absolute clowns
The fact that the Green Party needs a naive supporter of the Kremlin's propaganda arm as its presidential nominee shows how dire the party is in these days.
NC Board of Elections appeals decision to let Junior take his name off the ballot.
https://x.com/gercohen/status/1832169478001717348
Hi, sorry, new to the group. How do these comments correlate with the Discord? Are they completely independent and I should follow both?
Completely independent but many people are on both.
Welcome
Thanks both! I'll try to follow both.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/06/harris-trump-rural-battleground-states-00177745
Harris hiring a rural outreach director from a progressive group in order to work to cut margins in rural areas. They say they want to "show up and compete everywhere." And have money to do it. They are also looking to leverage Walz in rural areas over the next two months as well.b
Send Walz to meet and gets at football games if that is feasible with security.
I've said this before on DKE, but Dems should have never abandoned Obama's 2008 strategy of campaigning outside of friendly Dem territory to whittle down GOP margins. Even if we can only net 5 more votes in nowhereville, that's 5 less votes we need to find in the suburbs and cities.
Agreed 100%. Losing by 60-40 is a whole lot better than 80-20, and winning 55-45 is better than losing 55-45.
Obama is the one who abandoned it.
In 2012?
Elaborate on that please. What instances are you referring to?
the 2008 "50-state strategy" was cooked up by Howard Dean who was then DNC chair. Obama's team then thanked him by appointing a new DNC director and locking him out of the cabinet.
Have Tester and Walz do televised skeet shooting competitions.
I’m guessing Tester wants to distance himself from the national ticket to get the crossover support he needs.
I’m not sure why he would do this.
Per the Census, Women make up of 49% of MT residents. If 38% of MT voters casting votes for Tester are women, he’d just need a minimum of 13% of men to vote for him and he wins re-election to the Senate.
Of course, there can be other hypotheticals that can apply.
What does that have to do with anything? He is doing it because he will lose unless he gets substantial support from Trump voters.
I'm not sure I agree with your math; and I completely disagree with you on nationalizing that race; clearly Tester knows that state better than any poster here
Hold on for a second here.
Nationalizing the MT-Race isn’t exactly what I’m arguing here. I also didn’t exactly explain my reasoning to begin with.
I’m mainly concerned that Tester isn’t getting enough support outside of MT. Financial and grassroots support is more important but the second the DSCC and PAC committees start flooding the airwaves with Washington insider messaging, then Tester’s campaign will get the attacks from the Sheehy camp of being too tied to Washington. Agreed regarding Tester knowing MT better than any pollster.
As for the math, here’s what I’m referring to regarding the Census data:
https://data.census.gov/profile/Montana?g=040XX00US30
Unfortunately, the population gender demographics that are cited in the Census are not added together so you can see the total population in each. You have to add each set of data by age date (both for men and women). As it turns out, the 49% women data may not be completely accurate when it comes to voters as there are women aged younger than 18 who are represented. It might be anywhere from 46% to 47% but I’ll take a look when I get home and perhaps put more hypotheticals to consider.
I'm interested in what numbers you come up with; however, all things considered, Tester so far, is running one helluva race, considering what's being thrown at him
I totally disagree with the folks on the daily thread that say that banning plastic straws won't make a difference. It actually makes a huge difference.
I just drove for three weeks through western Canada and the one thing I noticed is that Canada has a lot less trash on the roadways than does the U.S. There are several reasons for this, but one of the main reasons is that Canada is in the process of banning all plastic straws and plastic utensils.
[They also have better garbage cleanup -- trash collection is a utility that is mostly free to all (paid by higher taxes of course) and there are trash cans and recycling cans every few miles along major Canadian roadways.].
The nation is very clean. We are pathetic in comparison.
It's absolutely pathetic that we don't completely ban all plastic bags, utensils and straws. There is zero reason why we shouldn't have done so years ago.
I do agree with you we needed to phase out single use plastics yesterday even if the compostable ones are more brittle and paper straws are pretty much useless 1 drink in. There's too much plastic floating around and most of it can't be recycled so it gets incinerated anyway.
At the same time I hope the chemists at UC Berkeley who told the LA Times they managed to melt plastic down into its base compounds for reuse (currently whatever plastic can be recyclable has to be ground down into finite particles for reuse) are onto something.
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-09-03/has-a-uc-berkeley-lab-found-a-solution-to-plastic-recycling
Give them all the grant money.
Currently, recycling isn’t really making much of an impact on the environment. In fact, the recycling system needs to be regulated so that it’s intended purpose is met.
India and China have both banned single use plastic bags. (A while ago at this point)
I work for my state DOT, so I drive around a lot. And here, most of the litter I see on the side of the road isn't plastic stuff - it's aluminum cans, probably mostly beer cans.
Unless those are outlawed, there won't be any significant reduction of roadside litter here.
Well that's pathetic. Here in Oregon there are no aluminum cans strewn about because every can is worth ten cents at a recycling center.
Easy problem to fix.
California passed CRV and started redemption in 1987. It worked effectively for years, but currently most of the private recycling center companies have gone BK.
For the first few years people would scavenge for littered CRV containers, but it has become less effective as it's harder to get your deposit back.
I use very little that comes in cans or bottles, so I just dispose of that when I do in curbside recycling.
I also buy as much as I can from bulk containers (WinCo and a spice company in Costa Mesa) and use paper bags to reduce plastic consumption.
When California started curbside composting, I got rid of my compost pile too. I composted for years while in a wheelchair, but it was a pain in the ass, so I liked the alternative.
Thank you for doing all you do.
What is BK?
Personally, I think a deposit on each and every container, such as ten cents, which you get back when you recycle, is better than getting money via weight.
BK = bankrupt.
Part of it is altruism and part is squeaking by after becoming disabled out of the blue at 52 and deciding to continue to live in SoCal, one of the most expensive places in the country.
And in Canada, movie theater patrons pick up after themselves and aren’t slobs.
Love Canada.
A Missouri judge ruled Friday evening that a reproductive-rights amendment did not comply with state initiative petition requirements, leaving the door open to potentially withhold it from the November ballot.
Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh
https://missouriindependent.com/2024/09/06/missouri-judge-rules-abortion-amendment-vioalates-state-requirements/
Yes, he’s related to Rush.
Right-wing judicial activist Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh issues a disgraceful ruling that Missouri's Amendment 3 is in "blatant violation" of the single-subject rule, but won't remove it off the ballot just yet.
This ruling is a violation of the will of the people who want Missouri's abortion ban overturned at the ballot box.
Hi, sorry I missed the unveiling last week I was traveling and read the post, but didn't have opportunity to post myself. Been a longtime lurker since the SSP days through DKE.
Just wanted to express my appreciation for all the David's and everyone have done, and that both this site and the Discord seem to be working nicely so far. I just continued Founder Status for the year as my free trial was expiring. Keep doing what you are doing.
On a local note Ehasz seems to be running a more active campaign than 2 years ago, but Brian Fitzpatrick's machine is getting in gear, and myself as well as a bunch of other dems/independents I know have started receiving mail from his congressional office about all the wonderful money and projects he has brought home for the community.
Interestingly, Trump seems to be horrible at micro-targeting, as my wife (who moved to this area after 2020, but has voted in PA democratic primaries and is a registered democrat) has started receiving Trump mailers. The angle they seem to be going with is that only Trump will protect medicare/social security and Kamala will slash it.
I tried to see if Trump had actually proposed anything new to fund Social Security, the answer is, of course, 'no'. His only plan is to exempt Social Security benefits from federal taxes, which would give more money to higher income recipients, but only cause the program to bleed money faster.
Harris is supporting the same "donut hole" plan as Biden: Charge Social Security taxes on income over $$400,000, but not income between $168,600 and $400,000. The hole would gradually fade over time, as the lower limit is adjusted for inflation, while the upper one is not.
I have never understood how Democrats have bought into the idea that middle income extends to $400,000. Someone making $300,000 is living pretty damned well even in LA or NY.
I think it has less to do with protecting their voters, and more to do with the interests of the class of people who write $3300 checks.
Many established professionals, including doctors, lawyers and engineers, can easily see north of $400k, esp later in their careers. They aren't "middle class" exactly, but they're hardly the upper class like millionaire celebs, investors and families that often live in mansions or own summer homes. My parents, both being doctors are among such people. You find many upper middle class folks in the OC and SoCal, including many Asian Americans. We definitely have substantially more income to spend, but we're far from celeb status wealthy. Many including my dad, go screwed with Trump's petty elimination of tax deductions for SALT on property taxes.
To follow up, such people are generally already paying higher effective tax rates than the actually wealthy.
True, but that doesn't make them overtaxed.
It’s inequitable to raise taxes solely on people who are already paying more than those who make more money than they do, just because they don’t have the power to stop us. We need to actually tax the actually wealthy.
In the US, we have developed an anti tax mentality that is quite different from the thought process in Europe, and unfortunately it has taken hold in the Democratic party.
In the long run, to provide public services, we have to require people to pay an adequate amount of taxes to cover those services, and it can't be done by only taxing the ultra wealthy.
The median household income in OC CA is $106k, in Irvine, considered an affluent area, $126k. People earning $400k aren't ultra rich, but they are doing well and should be taxed.
They're not super-rich, but they can surely afford to pay a bit more in taxes, right?
In part our notion of what is middle income has been skewed downward by the past two generations in which capital has stolen most of the increase in national income from the bottom 99%. First, a typical definition of the top of middle income would be double the median household income adjusted for household size. As of last year that was $183k for a 3 person household, so about $106k for 1 person or $236k for a family of 5. If you instead set the top of the middle class at 2x the median household income in 1970, and scale income with GDP per capita instead of inflation (i.e. distribute economic gains through wages as from 1946-1970 instead of allowing them to be concentrated as wealth), the top of the middle class would be at roughly $275k for an individual, $478k for a family of 3. The bottom of the middle class, i.e. the top edge of “poor” if held at the share of the pie for a household with 2/3rds median income in 1970, would be $91k for an individual in 2023. We have collectively been pushed out of the middle class and into lower income brackets by the collective action of the wealthy to concentrate income and assets in only a few hands over the past two generations. When we see folks making $400k as “them” rather than “us” we are mistaking the situation. They are just the luckiest of us, but all of us are and have been being slowly squeezed into serfdom by the folks making $400mil.
I make way less than your bottom of the middle class and always have, and I'd happily pay $1,500 more per year in taxes in exchange for universal no-cost healthcare. It's not about wealthier workers being "them"; it's about people being better able to pay some more for the common good, which is a collective responsibility.
The collective responsibility should include us seeing that you are paid better, not charging you for the failure of the elite to hold up their end of the stick. We need to tax the rich, but not just tax them, stop their theft from us: raise wages, save money on healthcare while making it universal, etc. The time for broad based taxes to meet societal needs is when income and wealth is broadly shared. For now, soak the rich.
If you want to create an economy in which there are full-time tenured positions for everyone with a Doctorate and all music gigs pay at least $100/hr, with benefits, go for it, but I can easily survive on my current income, as long as I have almost no medical expenses, though other expenses can be challenging and who knows what I'll make next year?
benamery21, did I delete your reply by mistake by deleting a double post? If so, sorry. (I now see that that didn't happen.) But my reply to you is that I don't need to have a guaranteed income of $91K and don't think that only the super-rich should be taxed, though I think it should not be possible for Musk to become a trillionaire, and beyond a certain level of assets, there should be 100% taxation.
Agreed. It's stupid. People making that much money should have tax increases, except in unusual circumstances.
To be more precise the lower limit, which is currently the cap, is adjusted based on a wage index called the AWI which historically goes up faster than inflation. It’s gone up 42% since 2016.
This is true of Social Security in general. Broadly speaking, this means seniors benefit from productivity gains, rather than being locked into the goods and services from 1933.
Yes, broadly speaking. Initial benefits are also indexed in this fashion. More narrowly speaking the index is skewed upward by uncovered income and employed middle income folks who were just above the cap and aren’t seeing wages go up with productivity have gotten hosed the past few years.
Glad to have you here!
I noticed on discord you mentioned working in local New Orleans politics during college. Tulane?
I did indeed go to Tulane 2008-2012! My paid work in NOLA politics was small, but active with, and for one year led, our College Democrats.
Nice!😊 fellow Tulane alum here. Class of 2000. Poli econ major. Tulane is a special place in a great city.
It is! I visit NOLA about twice a year these days!
Thank you so much for your support! Comments like yours (and your subscription) mean everything to us.
What an incredibly kind comment and what a truly lovely gesture, MK! I'm so delighted you delurked, and I'm extremely humbled that you'd sign on as a Founding Member. Much, much more great stuff to come!
Paper straws and wooden utensils work great. I've used them for years, in Canada, in western Europe and increasingly here in Oregon. The idea that they break before you finish your meal is not at all true. The wooden utensils are often stronger than plastic utensils.
I've never been to a place that had disposable wooden utensils, but I have used the paper straws. Honestly, they're terrible and don't last for meal, at all. The technology is advancing though, and eventually the nonplastic straws' technology will advance to the point to make them financially viable and functional. They're not there yet though, unfortunately.
Yeah, any paper straw I've encountered disintegrated in the drink, in my mouth, or both. Would rather go without.
Paper straws are OK for drinks that you consume fast, but not always if it's larger or going to take a while. And for a frozen Slurpee/Slush Puppy type drink, forget it.
I've used paper straws for years and I've never had that experience. I have no idea what you are talking about.
The difference between experiences regarding paper straws is probably “time used to finish drink” and “what drink I used the paper straw in”. We don’t have plastic straws anywhere, so I’ve used paper straws for years now on almost any drink (except hot ones, so again go back to point two if that’s the case”). I can honestly say you’re both right.
If you drink the drink quickly, there’s never any problems with a paper straw. However, if you want to save some for later or forget about it and come back to it, the straw has likely disintegrated or unwound and is completely unusable. I don’t drink hot drinks and every time I’ve seen one, I’ve never seen any straw for it, so if you did that, maybe it could have disintegrated in the drink? Because I doubt any business would do so.
By now though everyone around me is used to the change and doesn’t think much of it. I will say though, that there’s a very big debate right now over whether it’s actually environmentally better or not. More research is needed for sure.
Plastic bag replacement on the other hand with paper though was a much more successful action in limiting waste.
I think it's also that I have a tendency to chew on the straw a little bit. I mean sure I could try not to do that, but I'd rather just not use a straw.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4866671-republicans-frustration-tony-gonzales-house-prediction/
Rep Tony Gonzales of TX predicts Republicans will lose the House. But several anonymous House Republicans say it's "not what we're seeing on the ground."
of course "anonymous house republicans" are saying that. the last thing in the world they would admit is that they are going to lose control of the house.
I would think if they are anonymous they would be more open to admitting it so perhaps they are being genuine in voicing their surprise. Who knows
maybe, but I think they would have one helluva time admitting likely defeat under any circumstances
All I need to know is Republican groups are spending in Trump-won seats that weren’t in play for 2022 and Democrats are spending in seats that weren’t in play for 2022. Pretty clear which way both parties see the wind blowing. That said, not a done deal, 2 months of hard work ahead!
“Not what we’re seeing on the ground.”
Then why is it the GOP is crying uncle about being behind in fundraising vs. Team Blue?
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4866581-liz-cheney-backing-allred-texas-senate-race/
Not sure if this was reported or not. But Liz Cheney endorsed Allred in Texas as well.
This could be interesting.
Considering Liz Cheney is more of an old school neoconservative Republican, I’m pretty sure that there are conservatives not exactly enamored with Ted Cruz. Perhaps her endorsement might send signals to them.
Beto O’Rourke didn’t really have much if any crossover support that I can remember in his Senate run back in 2018.
Won't be surprised if she endorsed against Hawley as well.
I'd be stunned if she didn't given how much the 9/11 commission went out of its way to humiliate Hawley.
This feels significant.
Image won’t embed, but Republicans are using this money to oppose Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, not support Rick Scott. Never thought I’d actually say this, but Florida Senate might actually be in play this year. We’ll see if they put in more cash to the race in the coming weeks or not.
@CATargetBot0001
NEW FEC F24
PROJECT RESCUE AMERICA
$1,030,140-> #FLSEN
http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/C00837427/1814369
ActBlue donation page to Debbie Mucarsell-Powell’s Senate campaign here:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dmp_website?refcode=main-donate-link
FL-SEN Race:
It’s a dead heat.
Debbie Mucarsell-Powell trails Skeletor by 1% points.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/09/06/florida-senate-scott/75099632007/
Donate and Share the ActBlue page if you haven’t already done so:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dmp_website?refcode=main-donate-link
We will know Scott is nervous when he starts dumping piles of his own money into the race. That's really what I'm waiting for. Just sent DMP $100.00 too.
Hill/Emerson College poll. Emerson is not that reliable. But let's hope they're onto something.
I may have not paid attention to the 2022 FL-SEN Race between Marco Rubio and Val Demings as far as polling companies were concerned. However, I don't recall a single poll (including Emerson) that showed Val Demings 1% point behind Rubio.
Could be several factors that Emerson is taking into account:
1) Mucarsell-Powell is in fact running a credible Senate race.
2) There is strong enthusiasm among the Democratic Party base + any crossover appeal (primarily Independents).
I do know FL Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried and the Democratic Party statewide has made progressive improvements throughout the state this year. That said, this is certainly no reason at all to be complacent.
CA-St. Sen: Former Dem who switched abruptly since she represents a fairly red district is caught in a workplace sexual harassment case: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article292072085.html
According to the EWTN News/Real Clear Opinion poll conducted between 08.28 and 08.30.2024, Kamala Harris leads all American Catholics 50%-43%. Harris also leads 82%-18% among Black Catholics, 60%-30% among Latine Catholics, and 58%-35% among Asian-American Catholics. Donald Trump leads White Catholics 52%-42%. Female Catholics back Harris 56%-37%, while male Catholics back Trump 49%-43%.
Both EWTN and RealClear Opinion have well-known right-wing biases. The former entity was founded by the late Mother Angelica.
The poll was analyzed on EWTN's EWTN News In Depth on Friday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Bndh6RAdB8
https://www.ncregister.com/cna/realclear-opinion-research-poll-harris-trump-elections-2024
Overall sample of 1,000. I suppose some of the crosstabs might be too small to clearly indicate much, but still interesting.
I suspect they don't indicate much, but even if they did, they'd be just about exactly what I would expect the racial and gender breakdowns to be if you had omitted any mention of religion at all.
I honestly don't think religion is the big political driver many of my fellow atheists believe it to be - rather, religion is a cultural marker that already highly-conservative people are likely to cling to as a part of their identity, to justify political opinions they would hold regardless.
I remember watching Mother Angelica Live.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/north-carolina-lt-gov-mark-002843612.html
Mark Robinson on audio saying:
"That 12 weeks, exceptions for rape and incest … I’m not going to say it’s reasonable."
And that he would prefer a "zero week" ban. But that they "have to start somewhere."
Should be one of the final nails in his coffin. What an idiot. Oh and he said this last week. In light of everything else it's almost astonishing.
What I'm really not understanding though are the NC people who say, "Robinson is too extreme but Trump the civilly liable and admitted serial sexual assaulter who has been solely responsible for Roe being overturned, this is a guy who I can give a pass to."
Who the f- are the ones not abiding Robinson but claim to stomach Trump? Good grief with the hypocrisy.
It doesn’t go much further than “I felt the economy was better with Trump so I’m going to brush aside or stomach the other insanity to get me back to it”.
For example, if Robinson were Governor (heaven help us) for the last 4 years and was running for re-election, these same voters would do exactly what they’re doing with Trump, with Robinson’s statements. It boils down to “I experienced their government and liked how much better the economy was” so everything else doesn’t matter to them. They’ll still vote for him, even with all the things they hate about the character of that man.
So it’s way easier to turn people off based from their terrible character for someone as a potential leader than it is for someone who’s already done the job. That’s why, as Harris team has smartly researched: Trump attacks don’t move the needle, everyone knows his character flaws, but positive agenda for her potential presidency does.
A candidate being unknown to them, makes them more susceptible to arguments of having terrible character flaws and makes them reconsider their party preference or person preference if there’s an attractive moderate democratic alternative. Most voters don’t want to rock the boat if things are going ok regardless of the party in charge.
Those are the Trump/Stein (AG) voters, which there will be plenty of in NC. They’re supporting Stein because they like how he did as Attorney General and feel he won’t be too far left, more moderate, in the vein of Cooper. Who they also like and would vote for again, if they could.
The media’s constant puffing up of the Trump economy as better than it was during his chaotic presidency has permanently etched this version of Trump’s presidency that never actually happened in a lot of people’s minds. They still have learned zippo since 2016 and are making the same predictable mistakes in 2024 by sanewashing a clearly insane man to the masses who is by far the worst version of himself in this election. He was bad before, but my god is he so, so much worse now.
That's exactly the issue. The one thing keeping Orange Slob alive is the fact that the majority of Americans pretend that COVID and the shutdown that came with it didn't happen. That and the fact as an anti tax country, people buy into the lie that in all cases "tax cuts stimulate the economy." Thus advantage, Republicans.
He’s going to make it easier for Josh Stein to win the NC-GOV race at the rate he’s going with his batshit crazy antics.
I’m having a hard time processing who is crazier:
Hershel Walker or Mark Robinson
Imo it's no contest; Robinson
#New General Election poll
🔴 Trump 48% (+1)
🔵 Harris 47%
Siena #A+ - 1695 LV - 9/6
https://x.com/ppollingnumbers/status/1832748813322191344?s=61&t=_oLmDamLuLVUMclqY2xEGw
When you dig into the cross-tabs it only shows Harris getting 71% of the black while trump gets 14%. When was the last time a Dem presidential candidate got under 85% of the black vote? I can tell you canvassing here in GA black voters are fired up and ready to vote for Harris.
The crosstabs in other demos seem plausible but the black vote seems way off. Am i missing something?
The age crosstabs are off as usual, too. If only 50% of voters 18-29 end up voting for Kamala Harris, I will eat my hat.
Two comments that I find noteworthy:
1. The New York Times writeup reports, "Democrats do have a slight edge when it comes to enthusiasm for voting: 91 percent of Democrats said they were enthusiastic, compared with 85 percent of Republicans." That's a good sign.
2. Buried in the cross-tabs, among voters who are self-reportedly "Almost Certain" to vote, Kamala Harris leads 49-47.
I personally think this is just a poll with a slightly more conservative samples than others we've seen. However, its crosstabs seem to indicate Kamala still has an enthusiasm edge over Trump. That gives me hope (although, as must always be said, Trump still can win).
It's also worth noting that the poll has Kamala winning Independents by a sizeable margin: 48% to 44% in the head to head.
However, Kamala is still losing in the poll overall because 1. the sample contains slightly more Republicans than Democrats and 2. A slightly larger percentage of self-identified Democrats are planning to vote for non-Kamala candidates than Republicans are for non-Trump candidates. I'm a bit skeptical that either of these data points will be reflective of the final electorate.
They got a sample with a fraction of a percent more Rs than Ds in the raw data. They then did a bunch of weighting, which seems to involve things like past nonresponse bias, and end up weighting to an R+2 electorate.
I'm perfectly willing to believe that if the electorate is R+2, basically 2014 redux, then we lose. I doubt that's what the electorate will be.
And to be clear, I think they're overfitting. If you get more Rs than Ds, I'm not sure why you'd assume that the nonresponse bias is similar to past polls in which you had trouble reaching Rs.
If Democrats are just as or more excited than Republicans about voting (see also CBS/YouGov battleground state polls) then we probably don't get an R+2 electorate. And if Harris wins independents, even by four points, then she likely wins.
I'm actually enthusiastic about polls like this; this poll shows a dead heat race, with what I suspect are hugely rosy numbers for Republicans(imo no way in hell is the current electorate R+2)
This concern was what led me to post the other day about the disparity between Biden numbers in solid blue states such as Maryland and California and Harris' current poll numbers.
Many people are saying Democrats are hemorrhaging AA support and different polls are showing this across different states. I know no one wants to acknowledge it here but I see a clear trend in different polls all showing weaker support for Harris than Biden had with certain groups.
Just because there is enthusiasm like we haven't had in years doesn't mean it's all from the same place and the short time table of the race may be masking the loss of support for Harris among AA voters anecdotally. I really believe that her numbers are not as strong with AAs as we are trying to believe.
Do I think she will end up with less than 75% of the AA vote? No. But anything less than Biden 2020 could be significant enough to swing the election under the right circumstances.
I won't believe that AA number until I see real election results with that data; I haven't seen any actual election yet that would give me pause
Entirely possible the 2024 electorate looks different from the midterms and specials but nothing in them suggests the massive swings in the crosstabs with race and age. I won't predict much but I think the freakout over Gen Z men white or non-white leaping to the right from 2020 will be a dud and turnout will remain the bigger issue but we'll see.
You made my point; but better
I agree. I don't think young white men have suddenly become more racist, sexist and anti-LGBT, and I'd be really shocked if a smaller percentage of Black voters vote for Kamala Harris than voted for Joe Biden. We'll really suddenly get slews of Black voters opposing a mainstream Black Democrat in a general election? Maybe, but it doesn't pass the smell test.
They're polls. Polls are garbage today. They certainly are not accurate enough to reality to read into any changes within a 10% margin.
A few weeks ago we were tripping over Republicans over-examining crosstabs, and now we have a quality pollster telling us there is weakness in the electorate for Harris and.... we over examine one crosstab to justify what we THINK will be reality on election day. It seems many of us don't believe polls that give us warning signs. This is a quality poll. We should not assume it's off base. There is a reason that with all of this enthusiasm we are seeing the race is essentially tied. Harris is weaker somewhere. My guess is it's a little of the white men issue and also black men but she is making up for it with overall youth and probably Hispanic voters. That is why she has almost never been ahead by more despite the enthusiasm.
Perhaps this "enthusiasm" is just where we should be anyway and we are perceiving it as "overenthusiasm" because everyone had been "meh" about Clinton and Biden. (In 2020 we didn't vote FOR Biden so much as we we got a real taste of Trump.)
Actually I am doubtful of all polls currently; including this one
How do we *know* that this is a quality poll? How do we know that *any* poll is a quality poll?
Democrats organizing on the ground and GOTV in swing states is going to have to be the hardest work ever done in the history of hard work. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES can Trump ever be allowed to return to power!! 💙🇺🇲
So, regarding the NYT poll that is attracting so much attention today (not jut on the downballot), do we throw it on the pile or in the trash (my choice FWIW)
If you're averaging polls, you should include those with higher than expected percentages of Republicans if you include others taken by the same polling company.
I am throwing it in the trash; but, I am currently skeptical of all polling; I am focusing on following the money, and all signs are indicating that the Republicans are losing
Always the pile.
Don't fall into the Mitt Romney "unskewing" trap. Not liking a data point doesn't mean we ignore the data point, especially from a valid source (which NYT/Siena unequivocally is).
Yougov has tied race in PA, Harris up a bit in MI and WI: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/harris-trump-poll-pennsylvania-michigan-wisconsin-debate/
Here's a primer on the math.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/6/2268225/-The-Path-to-Victory-The-Math
Beat me to it!
New Yougov poll
Lv from 9/6
Michigan
50/49 Harris
Pennsylvania
Tie
Wisconsin
51/49 Harris
Also the pollster Tipp (A rated) has Arizona at a tie. 1,015 RVs 9/5
My view on the 2024 elections, as of tonight.
Presidential [Biden v. Trump]: 226 Biden, 283 Trump, 29 Tossup; 183 ECVs in play
Presidential [Harris v. Trump]: 241 Harris 219 Trump, 78 Tossup; 192 ECVs in play
US Senate: 49 Dems, 50 GOP, 1 Tossup; 11 seats in play
Gubernatorial: Dems keep NC; NH Tossup
US House: 207 Dems, 206 GOP, 22 Tossups; 79 seats in play
https://jgibsondem.substack.com/p/my-2024-election-projections-09082024