A curious thing. There’s a new rush of press stories reporting that Mar-a-Lago is suddenly a bundle of nerves as they see evidence they’re falling short in Pennsylvania. This is certainly why Trump is suddenly going berserk on social media, making freakshow claims that the race is being stolen in PA. We knew that. Meanwhile Trump is suddenly losing ground in betting markets, which for a couple of weeks have shown him to be a prohibitive favorite to return to the White House. This is all very nice to see. But I wouldn’t necessarily see it as some sign of momentum in Harris’s favor.
Continue reading “Election Miscellany #5”Trump Again Reiterates That When He Says ‘Enemy From Within’ He Means Specific People
I’ve written a few times in recent weeks about the pretzels into which Donald Trump’s Republican allies are twisting his words as they try to defend and explain away his sinister remarks about deploying the military domestically to go after his “enemy.” The rhetoric has been a throughline of Trump’s campaign, as he and alumni of his first administration threaten to use the military as a goon squad to crack down on Americans if elected.
Continue reading “Trump Again Reiterates That When He Says ‘Enemy From Within’ He Means Specific People”Battleground State Election Officials Are Preemptively Shutting Down Rogue Clerks
Election officials in battleground states across the country — both Republican and Democrat alike — are getting ahead of election misinformation, debunking baseless claims of fraud and issuing strong warnings against any attempts to delay election certification from rogue, election denying county and precinct-level officials. In some cases, they’re removing them before they have a chance to interfere.
Continue reading “Battleground State Election Officials Are Preemptively Shutting Down Rogue Clerks”Listen To This: Taking Out The Garbage
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss both campaigns’ closing arguments and the mess at the Washington Post.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Photos Of The Aftermath Of Devastating Flooding In Valencia, Spain
Earlier this week Spain’s Valencia region was hit hard by heavy rains and subsequent flooding, the latest manifestation of climate change as the atmosphere and oceans warm. Some areas in the region received a year’s worth of rain in hours.
The deluge caused flash-flooding that took residents by surprise. With no warning about the severity of the storm, locals had little time to seek safety, leading to a mounting death toll that is already near 100. Electricity and transportation remain affected, and search efforts have been slow. The extent of the damage is still being assessed.
Residents try to clean up after the flood
Cars and debris are piled in the streets
A man walks through the debris
A man makes a phone call next to a flooded street
Vehicles carried by flood waters are stacked on top of each other
Mud-covered streets after the flash-flood
Train tracks covered with debris
Cars suspended on guardrails after the flooding
Emergency workers clear debris
Residents walk devastated streets
A man and his dog are rescued after flash floods hit the region
Flood waters receded leaving piles of cars and debris
Streets covered in mud and debris, and a displaced boat
Street piled with wrecked cars
Police Say Suspect Behind The Ballot Drop Box Fires May Be Planning More Attacks
The man suspected of setting fires to the ballot boxes in Oregon and Washington earlier this week may be planning additional attacks, authorities said Wednesday.
Continue reading “Police Say Suspect Behind The Ballot Drop Box Fires May Be Planning More Attacks”Major News Media Fall For Fake GOP Outrage Yet Again
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
It’s An Editorial Choice
In the final week of the presidential campaign, the country’s two most prominent newspapers extended into a second day their credulous coverage of Republicans’ fake outrage over President Biden’s “garbage” comment.
The NYT and WaPo each made it a front-page story in Thursday’s editions, with above-the-fold, prime-real-estate treatment:
Compare that to where the NYT ran its own exclusive interview with Trump White House Chief of Staff John Kelly calling Trump a “fascist.” The original “island of garbage” comment, which kicked off this whole thing, didn’t get as prominent a placement either.
It wasn’t as if the Trump campaign was subtle about the performative umbrage. On the campaign trail in Wisconsin, Trump donned a orange safety vest (see photo above) and climbed into the cab of a garbage truck bedecked in Trump-Vance livery. It’s in Trump’s political interest to ignore the fact that the “garbage” theme started at his Madison Square Garden rally Sunday as a reference to Puerto Rico, but it shouldn’t be so easy for major newspapers to set aside that fact, too.
As a corrective, CNN ran a mashup of Trump calling Harris supporters things like “scum” and “absolute garbage”:
CNN plays a collection of Trump calling people scum pic.twitter.com/0HFdthD8Pp
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 31, 2024
The satirical New York Times Pitchbot came through in the moment:
Biden calling Trump supporters “garbage” in a webcam interview is a moral outrage. Here’s why Trump calling Harris supporters “garbage” at a rally is not.
— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) October 31, 2024
MUST READ
TPM’s Josh Kovensky: Some Trump Electors In Swing States Are Primed To ‘Stop The Steal’ Again In 2024
Election Threat Watch
- WaPo: GOP leaders in some states move to block Justice Dept. election monitors:
“The Justice Department’s ability to monitor local jurisdictions for voting rights irregularities on Election Day, already curtailed by the Supreme Court, is facing a new hurdle: opposition from Republicans who are seeking to block federal authorities from polling sites.” - Politico: “As Election Day nears, police chiefs and sheriffs around the country are bracing themselves for violent threats against election workers, turmoil at voting sites and intimidation of voters.”
- AP: According to authorities, the suspect in the Portland Metro ballot box fires (i) is a balding or short-haired white man age 30 to 40; (ii) was driving a black or dark-colored 2001 to 2004 Volvo S-60; and (iii) is an experienced metalworker.
- NBC News: “Police arrested an 18-year-old wielding a machete with an 18-inch blade outside a polling station in Florida on Tuesday, saying he was part of a group of teenagers accused of intimidating Democratic supporters.”
Pennsylvania: Ground Zero For Stop The Steal II
- WaPo: “Former president Donald Trump on Wednesday lodged claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania, a state critical to his election prospects. But Democratic officials and voting rights advocates said that Trump’s allegations are wildly exaggerated and that the problems he and Republicans are focused on are not only common, but also proof that election safeguards are working as intended.”
- WSJ: “Across Pennsylvania, local and state officials are warning that efforts by Trump and his supporters to call into question the integrity of the presidential election in the crucial swing state are ramping up—before a single ballot has been counted.”
Supreme Court Is At It Again
Without explanation, the Roberts Supreme Court reversed two lower courts and allowed Virginia’s purge of purported non-citizen voters to proceed despite a federal law banning such last-minute election changes and its own (shaky) doctrine against late-in-the-game federal court intervention. The risk is that actual citizens will be caught up in the purge and disenfranchised without enough time to rectify the mistake:
The Disinformation Environment
- The Bulwark: Breaking: Sources Say the Story You’re Reading Isn’t Real
- NYT: Why the Right Thinks Trump Is Running Away With the Race
- WaPo: Elon Musk says X users fight falsehoods. The falsehoods are winning.
- CNN reporter spent 24 hours consuming MAGA media:
Tea-Leaf Reading
I trust Morning Memo readers can gather data points without drawing conclusions yet:
- Politico: “Across battlegrounds, there is a 10-point gender gap in early voting so far: Women account for roughly 55 percent of the early vote, while men are around 45 percent, according to a POLITICO analysis of early vote data in several key states. The implications for next week’s election results are unclear; among registered Republicans, women are voting early more than men, too. But the high female turnout is encouraging to Democratic strategists, who expected that a surge in Republican turnout would result in more gender parity among early voters.”
- NBC News: “[Swing] state polls are showing not just an astonishingly tight race, but also an improbably tight race. Even in a truly tied election, the randomness inherent in polling would generate more varied and less clustered results — unless the state polls and the polling averages are artificially close because of decisions pollsters are making.”
- Politico: “As of Wednesday, Black voters make up 18 percent of the electorate in [North Carolina] early voting, and some Democratic operatives said they must bump that up to about 20 percent for Harris to be competitive statewide. In 2020, Black voters were 19 percent of the electorate, when Donald Trump narrowly won the state. And Democrats acknowledge that without a swing in their favor in the last days of early voting or on Election Day, it may not be good enough.”
Trump: ‘I’m Gonna Do It Whether The Women Like It Or Not’
Trump: "I want to protect the women of our country … I'm gonna do it whether the women like it or not" pic.twitter.com/mfMEpaWEAX
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 31, 2024
2024 Ephemera
- Ratfuckery: “A Republican-aligned super PAC is sending texts in Georgia telling voters to “Join The Movement For Equality” and vote for Jill Stein — a sign some Republicans believe her candidacy could harm Kamala Harris’ chances in the battleground.”–Politico
- Trickery: “In Michigan, canvassers and paid door knockers for the former president, contracted by a firm associated with America PAC, have been subjected to poor working conditions: A number of them have been driven around in the back of a seatless U-Haul van, according to video obtained by WIRED, and threatened that their lodging at a local motel wouldn’t be paid for if they didn’t meet canvassing quotas.”–Wired
- Monkey business: “After Donald Trump refused to concede the 2020 election, Congress moved to fend off a repeat of the 20 days of chaos that had obstructed the executive branch handover to Joe Biden. But the first test of one little-known change to the presidential transition process is now causing anxiety among government officials as Trump is potentially poised to return to power.”–WaPo
Important
Grist surveys the latest scholarship on whether man-made climate change and the rise of authoritarianism are connected.
Hello!
I sat down recently with Joe Ragazzo for an installment of his Inside TPM series. We talked about Morning Memo, my role at TPM, the current political environment, and a bunch of other stuff. I hope it feels transparent and brings you a little closer to what we do here:
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Election Miscellany #4
If you’re watching the latest polls, make a note of something called “herding.” It could be relevant for discussions of polling after the election. The concept is straightforward. In the final days of an election, poll results tend to trend toward consensus. One possibility is that everyone is finally making up their mind and the picture and reality is coming into focus. But that’s not the only possibility. For a mix of good faith and maybe less than good faith reasons, pollsters can become increasingly leery of publishing an outlier poll. There’s a tendency to “herd” together for extra-statistical reasons.
Let’s say you’re five days out from the election and the polling averages say candidate Jones is up 2 points and you’ve got a poll which says candidate Smith is up 3 points. (Pardon may defaulting to anglo surnames.) Everyone has an outlier result sometimes. But do you really want your final poll to be a weird outlier? In the modern era with aggregators, pollsters are often graded on the predictive accuracy of their final polls. So it kind of matters. If you’re a bit shady maybe you just tweak your numbers and get them closer to the average. If you’re more on the level maybe you take a closer look at the data and find something that really looks like it needs adjusting. Maybe you just decide that you’re going to hold this one poll back.
Continue reading “Election Miscellany #4”Pods
As I mentioned in this week’s podcast, out today, Kate Riga and I are going to be heavying-up on podcasts next week. In addition to the regularly scheduled Wednesday podcast, we are planning to do “instapods” (quick hits lasting 15-20 minutes) through the week. We’re planning on doing the first late on election night. We don’t know precisely when, but sometime late in the evening when we have at least some broad sense of what the results are looking like. And no, we’re not expecting to know a winner at that point. We’re then going to have the regular episode the following afternoon. Then we plan to record late afternoonish instapods on Thursday and Friday afternoons to hit the big developments of the day. If the winner of the election is clear by the following morning, we’re confident there’s still going to be a lot to discuss on Thursday and Friday.
Of course, it’s possible that there will be additional breaking news at any point over the course of the week that might prompt us to do an additional instapod in addition to this schedule.
Judge Extends Block On DeSantis Admin Anti-Abortion Pressure Campaign As State GOPers Turn On Gov
A federal judge extended the temporary restraining order he issued earlier this month, blocking the head of the Florida Health Department from lobbing any more threats at local TV stations that air advertisements in support of Amendment 4, the proposal on the ballot in Florida next week that would codify abortion rights in the state constitution.
Continue reading “Judge Extends Block On DeSantis Admin Anti-Abortion Pressure Campaign As State GOPers Turn On Gov”