Like many people, I’ve been watching the early vote closely to see if I can glean anything predictive about what we’ve seen so far. On balance I’ve seen very little that gives any real indication either way. I want to stress that point because I think it’s the most important point in this entire post: I’ve seen little if anything that gives any real or clear indication who the winner of the election is going to be.
Waiting 40 minutes in line today to vote on the second day of widespread early voting in Cook County (voting began in late September at certain courthouses; it began yesterday at town halls and more convenient locations). I was voter 891. Yesterday they had over 900 voters, and were hitting 900 again today. People in line were getting teary about how excited they were to vote.
Longest I’ve ever waited in line before this was about 20 minutes for Obama 2008. (Although granted in 2020 we voted by mail!)
Took my 8-year-old daughter with me so she could push the button for Kamala. Lots of other little kids there so I think other parents had the same idea!
I stopped by the **** in **** PA to drop off my mail-in ballot this evening, around 5:15PM.
I’ve been voting in this fashion since 2020, dropping each primary and general election ballot at our local library every year.
As I drove into the library’s parking lot, I saw the familiar drop box and three volunteers / County Voter Services Department staff at the drop box.
After I parked, I approached the ballot box and was momentarily startled by a man in his mid-20’s with a bulletproof vest, other tactical gear with the word AGENT written on the back of the vest.
One of the many surprising things in the floppy and shambling political career of Colorado’s Lauren Boebert is that she has always been full freak show, a full Freedom Caucus stalwart, despite being from a GOP-leaning swing district. We expect the crazies to be from lopsided Republican districts where they’re never going to face any real price for their antics. But something’s caught my eye over the last week or so. There are actually three members of the Freedom Caucus who appear to have real races on their hands at the moment.
Each race is different, both in how serious a challenge the individual rep faces and in how much evidence we have to suggest they could be in danger. So let me go through all three.
We’ve spoken a number of times about the Republican ground game, or Get Out The Vote efforts. Just to review again, the Trump campaign made the decision to take GOTV operations away from the RNC and outsource it to a series of pro-Trump super PACs. The question now is: did the gamble pay off? Have the super PACs been able to field a solid ground operation or perhaps create one even better than the one the RNC would have created?
Vice President Kamala Harris said on Wednesday it is “deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous” that former President Donald Trump invoked Adolf Hitler while he was president, reportedly saying at one point that he wanted generals like the ones Hitler had.
Kate and Josh debate whether we’re living in a post-October surprise world, discuss Trump’s former generals using the F-word, and investigate an interestingly timed E. coli outbreak.