The only clear trend we’re seeing tonight, early but seems widespread, is Trump outperforming his numbers in rural counties compared to 2020. What Dems will need is a counter-trend in suburban counties. We would expect that counter-trend. But we haven’t seen it yet or haven’t seen it clearly yet because we have very few suburban counties that are done counting. A lot of these rural counties just count much faster. It seems like we’re likely to see red areas getting redder, blue areas bluer, etc.
Trump Waits ‘Til Election Day To Finally Say What He Means On Abortion
It’s a theme TPM has tackled repeatedly this campaign cycle — elevating all the ways in which Donald Trump, his campaign, his MAGA allies in Congress and the Republican Party as a whole have repeatedly flailed in their attempts to appear as though they’re softening their stance on abortion — due to how electorally unpopular red-state bans have been — without alienating their staunchly anti-abortion religious right base.
Continue reading “Trump Waits ‘Til Election Day To Finally Say What He Means On Abortion”Turnout
We already seem to have pretty good evidence this is a high turnout election. We knew it would be high by recent historical standards. The question was whether it might top 2020 or whether it would be between 2016 and 2020. My sense is that it might end up being higher than 2020, which was the highest turnout in over a century. As to whom that helps, that’s less clear. My gut tells me that’s good for Harris. But that’s no certainty. Remember that Trump’s strategy is relying on low propensity voters. By definition, the higher the turnout the higher the percentage of occasional (low-propensity) voters. So there’s definitely a very reasonable theory that it might help him. We don’t know. For now I think we can just say there are lots of signs of high turnout. So we could have another presidential election that is the highest in modern history. Who it helps I don’t think we can say yet.
Send Me Your Reports
Today I’m very interested in your reports from the field: turnout, slices of life, anything and everyone. I want to see and hear about what you’re seeing.
‘Spiritual Warfare,’ QAnon, And A Sitting Senator: Inside The Wild World Of Mike Flynn’s Political Action Committee
Bishop Leon Benjamin had an ominous warning for his flock.
“We are at war and the war is very real,” Benjamin said during the meeting that his organization dubbed a “training.”
Continue reading “‘Spiritual Warfare,’ QAnon, And A Sitting Senator: Inside The Wild World Of Mike Flynn’s Political Action Committee”Election Miscellany #6
We’re already starting to see from the states releasing good real-time data that Election Day isn’t going to be as red as you’d expect based on 2020 or 2022. That’s not so much good for Democrats as simply what we should expect based on seeing more Republican and less Democratic early voting. As we’ve discussed, the relationship between early and Election Day voting tends to be largely osmotic: more Republicans voting early means fewer available on Election Day. Not complicated. The differences that determine election outcomes are going to be very marginal ones. One of the weird things about early vote counting mania this year is that people somehow get the idea that whole chunks of the electorate somehow just aren’t going to show up at all. That never made any sense.
A Prep for Watching Election Results
We are going to be here a while today. And when I thought about writing today’s Backchannel, a standard post didn’t make sense to me since anything you receive in the late afternoon will be immediately dated. So I thought I’d write a simple cheat sheet of ways to watch election results tonight — if you’re into that sort of thing — and how to get as much signal and as little noise as possible. You’ll know many of these things. But I’m just putting them here in one place.
Continue reading “A Prep for Watching Election Results”A Plaintive Cry For Election Reforms Before It’s Too Late
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way
As voting wraps up across the country today, let me take a quick step back to offer not so much a curmudgeon’s take as a plea not to lose sight of how badly in need of fundamental reform U.S. elections are.
No other Western democracy has anything remotely like the America election system. U.S. election campaigns are too expensive, last too long, divert valuable time and attention away from governing, and compromise everyone involved in them.
If the kinds of foundational election reforms we need are a mountain to climb, then we aren’t even to base camp. A few years back, thanks largely to the post-Watergate reforms, we’d managed to ascend partway up the mountain. The system was still a mess and we weren’t close to the summit, but over the past 15 years or so, we have lost all of the ground gained and are basically back at the trailhead.
Thanks to adverse Supreme Court decisions, it will take a strategic long game to retool elections to make them fairer, more democratic, and less of a colossal waste of money, time, and resources. It will also take overcoming the vested interests that have turned U.S. elections into a cash bonanza free-for-all. It is a defining feature of this neo-Gilded Age. Monied interests weaken campaign finance rules, which helps them acquire more political power that they use to fend off reforms. It’s vicious cycle spiraling towards oligarchy.
I won’t run down the full list of needed reforms, but they include things like making voting mandatory, declaring Election Day a national holiday, shortening campaigns into a defined period, limiting the toxic intrusion of campaign contributions, including dark money and other surreptitious funding sources. The hallmark of the Watergate-era reforms was greater transparency, but that’s not enough. Public financing of campaigns and other reforms need to dramatically reduce the role of campaign contributions.
This sounds like pie in the sky stuff, but our politics is crippled by the way we elect public officeholders. The billion-dollar-boon to broadcasters, the endless campaign cycles that bleed together, the conversion of politics into a mass-market advertising campaign that serves no one – these are public policy choices. They’re not written in stone, though the Supreme Court has certainly tried.
The political game we see on the field is heavily influenced by the field itself: where the lines are drawn, what the ground rules are, how level the surface is. When you obsess over politics like most Morning Memo readers do, you can begin to forget how much of what you see is a manmade political landscape, not a natural feature of politics.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Election Threats Watch
- Proud Boys claim they’ll be at polling places as Trump ups violent rhetoric and election fraud claims–NBC News
- Right-wing activists and G.O.P. state lawmakers have filed some 4,000 “bad-faith” ballot challenges in Pennsylvania–NYT
- The U.S. intelligence community continues to issue real-time warnings about election interference from foreign adversaries, particularly Russia and Iran:
Since our statement on Friday, the IC has been observing foreign adversaries, particularly Russia, conducting additional influence operations intended to undermine public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and stoke divisions among Americans. The IC expects these activities will intensify through election day and in the coming weeks, and that foreign influence narratives will focus on swing states.
Trump Campaign Fires White Nationalist In Its Midst
Reporter Amanda Moore discovered that the real-life version of a white nationalist online persona was the Trump campaign’s regional field director in western Pennsylvania. Luke Meyer, 24, admitted he went by “Alberto Barbarossa” online and was fired by the Trump campaign Friday after Moore presented her findings.
Meyer went out with a line for the ages, sending an email to Moore that said, “I am glad you pieced these little clues together like an antifa Nancy Drew.”
If I’m Moore, “Like An Antifa Nancy Drew” goes on my business card, is the title of my memoir, and is etched on my gravestone. People go entire careers without a plaudit as rich as that.
Where Are The Candidates Today?
- Harris’ election night watch party is scheduled to be at her alma mater, Howard University in D.C.
- Trump is back at Mar-a-Lago, with an election night watch party scheduled to be at Palm Beach County Convention Center.
2024 Ephemera
- Musk Wins In Pennsylvania: “A Philadelphia judge on Monday rejected District Attorney Larry Krasner’s bid to classify Elon Musk daily $1 million giveaway to voters in battleground states as an illegal lottery that violates Pennsylvania consumer protection laws.”–Philadelphia Inquirer
- Why It Will Be Harder For Trump To Subvert This Election: “[W]hile postelection chaos is quite possible, 2024 is unlikely to be an exact replay of 2020. In important ways, the system has been strengthened.”–Cameron Joseph
- Crazy Scenario Alert: What happens if Republicans win the House but don’t elect a speaker in time to certify the Electoral College results on Jan. 6?–Politico
Good Read
Brian Beutler: Why Everyone In Politics Panders To Republicans
Policy Porn
David Dayen has a great piece on the Biden administration’s “whole-of-government’ approach to governing. This hits all my buttons for orderliness, fairness, level playing fields, getting shit done, avoiding waste, and steering clear of ridiculous outcomes. In my ideal world, it’s how everything should be run.
Alleged Accelerationist Busted In FBI Sting
A 24-year-old Tennessee white supremacist who thought he was about to use a drone packed with explosives to a destroy an electrical substation in Nashville on Saturday had actually been under FBI surveillance since June and was arrested without incident, according to authorities.
For context, via TPM: Aspiring Right-Wing Terrorists Are Targeting The Power Grid Amid Rise In Accelerationist Extremism
EXCLUSIVE
WSJ:
Western security officials say they believe that two incendiary devices, shipped via DHL, were part of a covert Russian operation that ultimately aimed to start fires aboard cargo or passenger aircraft flying to the U.S. and Canada, as Moscow steps up a sabotage campaign against Washington and its allies.
Women Don’t Forget
Shot:
JD Vance: "The trash's name is Kamala Harris." pic.twitter.com/8QMtRoSoiV
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 4, 2024
Chaser, from Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN):
Dear JD Vance: Have you found that calling a woman trash has worked for you?
— Tina Smith (@TinaSmithMN) November 5, 2024
Because we generally don’t forget that shit.
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Harris Pushes To Make Strong Closing Vibes A Reality In Last Day Of Campaign
The last week or the two of the campaigns couldn’t have gone much better for the Harris side: While the VP played huge rallies studded with A-list talent and made a surprise appearance on SNL, the Trump team stepped on rake after rake. From the Puerto Rico garbage comment (and accidental prolonging of the news cycle with attempts to shift anger to Democrats) to Trump’s pronouncement that he will protect women “whether they like it or not” to musing about his comfort with journalists being shot, his extremist inclinations have dominated the coverage.
Democrats’ “nauseous optimism,” as the internet has christened it, crescendoed with the famous Ann Selzer Iowa poll showing Harris a shocking three points up in the deep red state on Saturday.
But while Democrats have rejoiced in the late-campaign vibes, the forecasting models still show a virtual tie. A slight polling error in either direction would be the ballgame. Whether Harris’ strong close will manifest in electoral reality will be unveiled Tuesday.
In the meantime, follow along with our coverage here:
The Diet Mountain Dew Race For Most Blue-Collar Politician Is Derailed By RFK Jr’s Extreme Beliefs
On the eve of the 2024 election, there’s little I can use this platform to say that will relieve the collective bubbling, ulcer-forming acid in all of our stomachs, so here’s a more digestible tale — though RFK Jr. would not refer to it as such.
Continue reading “The Diet Mountain Dew Race For Most Blue-Collar Politician Is Derailed By RFK Jr’s Extreme Beliefs”