A Plaintive Cry For Election Reforms Before It’s Too Late

Posted on by David Kurtz

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:

Chaser, from Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN):

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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

Posted on by Nicole Lafond

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” → 

Trump Claims ‘Illegal Alien’ Voting Is Rampant. His Own Party Disagrees.

Posted on by Nicole Lafond

This article was originally published at ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.

In public remarks, former President Donald Trump has repeatedly made unfounded claims about the threat of widespread voting by “illegal aliens” and noncitizens in the 2024 election.

Continue reading “Trump Claims ‘Illegal Alien’ Voting Is Rampant. His Own Party Disagrees.” → 

Political Betting Markets Remain Over-Valued

Posted on by Josh Marshall

If you’ve followed my thinking on this you know I’ve long had a pretty low opinion of political betting markets. Their user base tends to lean right, with the built-in bias you would expect that to cause. They’re also prone to manipulation. But the biggest problem is that, in my view, they’re largely derivative of polls and the press narratives. Garbage in, garbage out. I will simply note that the wild gyrations all of them have been doing over the last three or four days provide, I think, some backing for my argument.

An Interesting Data Point

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I’ve told you a few times about Professor Michael McDonald’s early vote analysis. He has a paywalled final analysis of the early vote in North Carolina. The upshot is that by conventional early vote analysis, Donald Trump appears poised to win North Carolina. That wouldn’t be a surprising result either on the basis of history or the current polls, which show a dead heat race with the slightest advantage to Trump.

But McDonald also notes that it is an unusual cycle with conflicting signals. The polls look more favorable to Harris than the numbers in the early vote. Actual votes matter more than polls of votes, by definition. But this is a reminder of what early vote analysis is based on. We’re largely going on party registration and limited demographic markers as a proxy for voter intention. Those will generally point in the right direction, except when they don’t.

Continue reading “An Interesting Data Point” → 

A Small Coda to Today’s Backchannel

Posted on by Josh Marshall

As I argued in today’s Backchannel, I believe Harris, win or lose, has run an almost flawless campaign. To the extent that is true, we had a preview of it in that cruelest month, July 2024. I do not think there was a single story published discussing murmurs from Harris world about whether Biden should drop out, what kind of race she might run, anything like that. It goes without saying that that kind of chatter would have been poisonous for the Democrats’ eventual chances. Despite some people’s illusions, Harris was always the only plausible replacement candidate. It doesn’t take a genius to know such chatter would be damaging. But as I argued in the last post, it comes down to execution. It’s not enough for the potential candidate not to be talking, or her top advisors. It’s a matter of controlling every random person who might claim to have insight into Harris’ thinking. That requires a total level of discipline that starts at the top. I suspect it’s only really possible if, as we’ve been told by the people in Biden world, Harris remained absolutely loyal to Biden until the moment he decided to step aside. I don’t want to rehearse that whole question again. But that is a very, very tough position to be in. It would be irresponsible not to be ready for the call to come. But even the hint of preparation for it would be disastrous. It was an accurate preview of the kind of campaign Harris would run.

What Kind of Race Did Harris Run?

Posted on by Josh Marshall

The great secret and poverty of campaign reporting is that the majority of it is based on reading the polls or the eventual result and then writing a story of the campaign to match that outcome, predicted or real. Every losing campaign is run by idiots and vice versa. With that reality in mind, I wanted to share some opinions in advance of the results. I think Kamala Harris has run an almost flawless campaign. Many people think a great campaign is made up of a great strategy, or perhaps a great speech. The truth is that campaigns are almost all down to execution. That’s particularly so in an early 21st century American presidential campaign, when the main constituencies and issues are chosen in advance and not by the candidate.

An upstart city council or even House candidate might upset the status quo with an outside-the-box campaign or set of issues. Presidential campaigns don’t work that way. Presidential campaigns are won by energizing and mobilizing key constituencies, shaping the issue agenda in your favor and having more days on offense than defense. On the constituencies front, that means base and reach constituencies. On issues, it’s mostly about raising the salience of issues where a majority agrees with you. Above all, it’s about not making mistakes. It’s also about running a campaign of the quality that you force a lot of mistakes by your opponent. As I said, it’s mainly about execution.

Continue reading “What Kind of Race Did Harris Run?” → 

Trump Spent The Final Weekend Showing Exactly Who He Is

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

As Clear A Referendum As Ever Could Be

Donald Trump slogged through the final weekend of his third presidential campaign as the Republican Party nominee demonstrating in blatant ways nearly every facet of the misbegotten character that makes him unfit for public office at any level.

He mimed stroking and fellating a microphone on a rally stage in Milwaukee. He talked favorably of the press corps in attendance taking bullets intended for him at a rally in Pennsylvania. He said he should have never left the White House after his 2020 election defeat, contemplating a coup by intransigence. He bizarrely claimed that the counting of votes should be over by 9 p.m. on election night, thus stoking anew bogus election fraud conspiracies centered on the time it takes to count votes.

new lows

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.bsky.social) 2024-11-02T07:17:03.480Z

It wasn’t that long ago that the most persistent challenge Republicans in public life presented to reporters, watchdogs, and the sanctity of the English language was disguising their unpopular, often cruel, and elaborately expensive policy preferences under layers of double talk, misdirection, and word play. With Trump it is all undisguised. Perhaps we can count that as small blessing.

On the margins of this campaign, Trump and his surrogates have muddied the waters around health care policy, Medicare, tariffs, and taxation. Political reporters still fall for this gamesmanship. But where it counted most – trying to soften the edges of Republicans’ brutal abortion policies – the political press was largely on point and unfooled.

For the most part though, what you see with Trump is what you get. It is why his defeat will be so cathartic and represent a genuine repudiation of the man and his movement. It is also why a Trump victory would be so devastating. As unfathomable as a Trump win would be after the last decade of Trumpism and especially the past three weeks of his careening, unhinged campaign, it remains a real possibility.

History will show that we knew everything we needed to know. Ignorance will be no excuse.

Obama On Trump

Former President Barack Obama quickly wove into his stump speech some of Trump’s weekend insanity:

Final Swing State Numbers

The final polling of likely voters in the seven swing states by the NYT/Siena College:

  • Nevada: Harris 49%, Trump 46%
  • North Carolina: Harris 48%, Trump 46%
  • Wisconsin: Harris 49%, Trump 47%
  • Georgia: Harris 48%, Trump 47%
  • Pennsylvania: Harris 48%, Trump 48%
  • Michigan: Harris 47%, Trump 47%
  • Arizona: Trump 49%, Harris 45%

By The Numbers

  • ABC News poll: Harris leads Trump nationally among likely voters 49%-46%. “Harris was +2 in early October, +4 (a slight edge) last week and is +3 in this poll,” according to ABC News.
  • WaPo poll: Harris leads Trump 48%-47% nationwide among both likely and registered voters.
  • Shock poll in Iowa: Harris leads Trump 47%-44% among likely voters, according to the Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll by highly respected pollster J. Ann Selzer.

Election Threats Watch

  • WSJ: The Proud Boys Have Regrouped and Are Signaling Election Plans
  • NYT: On Telegram, a Violent Preview of What May Unfold on Election Day and After
  • Politico: Republicans bring back fake electors in battlegrounds
  • Bloomberg: ‘What Worries Me? Everything’: Officials Brace for US Election Day

Thread Of The Day

Former Trump DHS General Counsel John Mitnick posted a compelling thread to fellow Republicans about why he’s voting for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump:

He is not a conservative; rather, he is a would-be autocrat and fascist motivated exclusively by his personal self-interest. … You won’t escape the disastrous effects of his policies (e.g., tariffs) on the economy, global instability and damage to national security resulting from his admiration for foreign dictators, or the chaos, lawlessness, and persecution that he promises. No one will.

Disinformation Watch

  • WaPo: Trump escalates false claims of fraud, setting stage to cry foul if he loses
  • NBC News: Why Pennsylvania’s unusual voting laws make it ripe for rigged election claims
  • The U.S. intelligence community issued a rapid assessment that a fake video portraying Haitians voting in Georgia was part of the Russian disinformation campaign.

Quote Of The Day

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA): “It doesn’t make you a man to pick on trans or gay kids. It just makes you an asshole.” 

Kamala On SNL-ala

On The Trail

Where the candidates will be today on the final day of the campaign:

Harris will spend the whole day in Pennsylvania, ending with a late-night rally in Philadelphia:

  • Scranton
  • Allentown
  • Reading
  • Pittsburgh
  • Philadelphia

Trump will hit three states today:

  • Raleigh, NC
  • Reading, PA
  • Pittsburgh, PA
  • Final rally in Grand Rapids, MI

Elon Musk Watch

  • WaPo: Election deniers were aimless. Now, with Musk’s help, they’re an army.
  • NBC News: ‘All hell has broken loose’: Inside Elon Musk’s high-stakes pro-Trump door-knocking effort
  • The Guardian: Elon Musk’s America Pac was warned about Trump ground game fraud months ago

What To Look Forward To In Trump II

  • More nastiness:

Trump on his second term: "It'll be nasty a little bit at times, and maybe at the beginning in particular"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.bsky.social) 2024-11-04T02:33:35.015Z
  • More purges: Conservative group’s ‘watch list’ targets federal employees for firing, the WaPo reports.

The Epstein Tapes

In the final days before the election, author Michael Wolff is dribbling out excerpts of his hours of taped interviews with now-deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein that pertain to Donald Trump.

Good Read

Trump biographer Timothy O’Brien on “The Peculiarly American Roots of Trumpism“:

However shocked Americans may be by Trump’s ascent, his arrival and ongoing influence shouldn’t have caught them entirely by surprise. Trumpian characters have floated across the political and social landscape for much of the country’s history. Trump and his fellow travelers have become fixations because they’re more than mere carny acts, attuned to the public’s needs and paranoia. They’ve secured their place because they’re also a reflection of the people they court.

2024 Ephemera

  • WSJ: Who Will Win the U.S. House? Watch These Tight Races
  • WaPo: GOP’s closing election message on health baffles strategists, worries experts
  • The Hill: “New security fencing went up around the White House, U.S. Capitol and Vice President Harris’s residence in Washington, D.C. as authorities prepare for Election Day in the event there may be political unrest in the coming days.”

Quincy Jones, 1933-2024

In memory of the coolest cat who ever was:

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Was It Iowa’s Abortion Ban?

Posted on by Josh Marshall

We’re still pretty much where we were last night on that Selzer poll. It’s hard to know what it means or whether it matters. It’s just one poll. The most interesting day-after analysis I’ve seen centers on the fact that an abortion ban went into effect in the state just in July. And it went into effect pretty clearly against a big majority of the state’s residents. An earlier Selzer poll already showed Iowa much closer than people anticipated. It’s also a state with a lot of white people with college degrees. So there’s some argument that it might be more Harris friendly than people expect. It’s even occurred that picking up some of the ad spend out of Nebraska could be having an impact in Iowa. So maybe those are parts of an explanation. But it seems like folks working in the inside DC publications have fixed on the abortion ban blowback theory of the case. But that in itself is pretty disquieting news for the Trump campaign, to put it mildly. Note too that a lot of these polls we’re seeing now show abortion moving straight to the top of the issue matrix for voters.