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Tuco

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Posts posted by Tuco

  1. Update on NE-2 (Vargas (D) vs. Bacon(R)), but mostly just venting.  

    I can't find the ad that national Republican PAC ran during the Husker game this week, but it was the head of the police officer association talking about how Vargas "blamed the police for a violent riot" and led attacks on the cops.  I did find this one that features Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine saying the same thing, directly from the Bacon campaign.  

    First of all, All Cops Are Bastards. That's the kind of mood this shit puts me in.  

    Secondly, the history on this: during the 2020 George Floyd protests, I went to one of the Black Lives Matters protests.  It was along Dodge Street, the busy street in Omaha.  It was initially along the road, but the cops then put up barricades to close the road to traffic.  Protestors go out onto the carless road.  Cops then get into riot gear to clear the protestors, firing pepper balls at them when the highly predictable resistance to that order happens.  There is absolutely no indication any protestors attacked the cops, despite thousands of hand held cameras and bodycams. .  

    Later that weekend, there is a protest downtown.  Vargas, and some other state senators, go down to observe the major political events happening in the region.  Cops fire pepper balls liberally, including one that catches Tony near the eye.  (I went down to help clean up the next day, and there were pepper ball marks 10 feet up on building walls; this was not selective use of non-lethal deterrent.) 

    At the same downtown protest, a white bar owner shoots and kills a black protestor.  After a brief investigation, Don Kleine announces it is self defense and there will be no charges.  He doesn't even get the victim's name correct during the press conference. After the backlash, Kleine agrees to allow a special prosecutor/grand jury investigation, smugly confident that it will come to the same conclusion.  But, the special prosecutor finds evidence on the shooter's phone (which was never released) and the grand jury indicts the shooter.  Shooter ends up killing himself, thus the public never sees the evidence.  Don Kleine switches from Dem to Republican, and thens wins re-election as a Republican. 

    Thirdly: Unfortunately, the "back the blue" shit in Omaha is effective.  So, I can see it working here.  But they also ran these types of ads last cycle, so hopefully some if it baked into Vargas's polling previously. 

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  2. 52 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

    How confident are we that Osborn will be a somewhat reliable 'D' vote in the Senate and not pull a Munchkin or 'Dangerous Creature'?

    Not confident at all.  If he wants to be re-elected, I'd say he stays indy for at least four years and then make the calculation if he has better odds in a Republican primary as the incumbent or as a Dem/Indy in the general.  My gut is saying he'd tack right and go R, but it's worth noting that while has Fischer held that seat for 12 years, Dems held it for the 24 years prior.  It's easy to forget how quickly things can change.  But, even if he had an R behind his name, he's a huge step up from Fischer who will rubber stamp literally anything the GOP tells her to.  Voting for Party leadership is important, but so are the actual Senators themselves.   

    45 minutes ago, Js1 said:

    We are all skeptical of Harris up 3 in Iowa, but her track record speaks for itself. She knows her state. 

    And she would need to be very wrong for this to be anything short of fantastic for Harris. 

  3. 4 hours ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

    I said back in the beginning, Harris should have at least made one trip to Ohio as part of the Blue Wall barnstorming campaign. 

    I don't think that would help Brown. 

     

    1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

    I continue to wonder why it's any worse to trade a blowjob for a promotion than it is to trade a promotion for a blowjob.

    Because I'd rather have a blowjob.  Is this a trick question? 

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  4. 1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

    No offense, but I can only assume you’re being willfully obtuse here.

    No, he's not.  You are doing what a lot of people do: you see a problem and you attribute the cause as something you see as deficient.  But, if there was really a cause and effect between these problems and that deficiency, if Trump was winning this voting block due to economic policy, nobody would be talking about "white working class" - it would just be "working class."  Full stop.  It's absurd to pretend that this is an economic policy issue.  I would love to see more progressive policies.  But, the House candidate my wife worked for four years ago was a Medicare for All proponent, in a district that went to Biden, and she lost by 5 points.  The people prefer Biden's moderate economic policies.  It's why you don't hear M4A discussed at all this cycle.  It lost.  In part, because the blue collar labor union members were against it.  

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  5. You should go door to door and tell them that. And you do, consider, who signed the repeal of Glass Steagal? Who implemented NAFTA? Who implemented TARP? Who made the decision not to break anybody up or prosecute the leadership of firms that created the financial crisis? Who signed the bill that made the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent? Who declined to sever the connection between healthcare and employment insurance? Hey, who was married to the guy who signed the repeal of Glass Steagal? Oh, right. The 2016 Democratic Nominee. Who authored and co-sponsored the 2005 bankruptcy bill that stripped protections from millions and unleashed a wash of private student loans? The 2020 Democratic Nominee.
    Here's a famous chart - did the trendline change when Democrats were in power?
    image.png.52a9498197544b9c47ebf8bfe958e193.png
     
     
    I'm all in on defeating Trump and Trumpism, but the idea that Democrats have been champions of the American middle class over the last 30 years is utter horseshit.  
     
     

    I feel like you are reposting this from a couple hundred pages ago. On how many of those issues did the Democrats compromise the final position, but were coming at it from the direction you are advocating? Are you arguing against Democratic policy, or the inevitable consequence of not being able to magically implement it? And there is no NAFTA; Trump negotiated its replacement. (I wish Dems were better at messaging that.)
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  6. His surrogates were doing a rough—and I mean rough—job of cleaning this up this morning because you can’t defend it
     
    image.thumb.png.78ab040d02efaaf1df71ae8a7d52fd93.png

    I’ll give it a B+ for pivoting to Cheney’s Mideast policy. Getting Liz’s and Dick’s endorsements may help with some Republicans, but it’s a bit dicey for progressives, isolationists, and Muslims. I’m sure his handlers would rather be having that discussion rather than the one about whether Trump is calling for Cheney’s execution.
  7. Queen Ann basically nails the race in Iowa. Her last poll was Trump +4. If he is still hovering around 4-5 point lead, it’s going to be a good night for Harris in the Midwest. If he’s up near 8-10 points, he’s probably winning. Anything less than 4 is a Harris blowout. 

    To put it a different way, it’s seen as an accurate poll of Midwestern middle class whites. If he’s losing ground there he is fucked in Wisconsin and probably Michigan. Similar to NE-2, although NE-2 is tainted by the last minute attempt to disenfranchise the voters.
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  8. 14 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    When we bought our previous house in Allandale (construction in 1954, I think), the deed (cuz it's the original deed, that's how chains of title work) still had the "This property cannot be sold to a negro" language.  When I pointed that out to my wife, she flipped the fuck out.  I then had to explain how such clauses were void as a matter of law.

    I haven't explained to her how the modern GQP would like to change that, allowing similar clauses to have the force of law.  She's pissed enough already.

    Yeah, my covenant in Golden Valley MN had a bunch weird stuff about the total number of different animals you could have on the property and shit like that, but also one about one about no interracial couples.  All then had an expiration date of like 20 years out from the original, except the racist one. 

  9. 2 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

    Off topic, but I like DST. If they get rid of it, my hope is that we fall back permanently rather than stop when we are sprung forward. Morning sunshine=high T. Later sunrises are beta shit. 

     

    Same here.  Of course the fucked up thing is that this preference reflects how I decided to set up my life.  I could just change the time I go to work, go to sleep, and wake up. 

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  10. Just now, wildcat09 said:

    Those anti vaxxers voted Trump in 2020. They were fully radicalized during covid and virtually none of them sat that one out (the ones that did aren’t functional enough to know when the election even is).

    Some of them did. But Trump was touting how he invented the various vaccines and his CDC was pushing folks to get them. He was still part of the industrial medical conspiracy.  Promising RFKjr control is a major shift. 

  11. Just now, Js1 said:

    I mean, we have talked at length about where he finds new voters - 

    newly registered young women? not a chance
    newly registered young men? maybe, but there was a poll showing Gen Z men are supporting Harris almost at the same levels of Gen Z women, so unless he's tapped into a pool of Tate-pilled alpha bros....
    newly registered black women? LOL

    I said it yesterday - unless he has absolutely found this giant source of untapped voters who barely ever or have never shown up to vote, *and turns them out,* he's going to have to win a lot more Dems than she is winning Republicans (unlikely), stem the bleeding of suburban college educated whites (not a chance), pick off minority voters at a substantial rate (not based on polling, he's not) and win independents.  But the vast majority of newly registered independents are young voters and voters of color and the swingier, established indies are suburban women.

    He also cannot bleed any support in WWC men/women.  I mean, he won them 67-32.  If he only wins them 65-34, he's in trouble in the blue wall. 

    Or hope that turnout craters, but we are likely on pace for 2008/2020 turnout and not 2016 turnout. 

    I would add:

    - Anti-vaxxers, anti-establishment left leaners who will come over with RFKjr

    - Racists who aren't inclined for a black woman. (I think Trump already captured a big chunk of these, but actually running against a black person will help get more, particularly from anti-black Latinos) 

    - Variety of sexists who won't vote for a woman

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  12. 8 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

    This is not about polls and it's not at all what Clinton was going-  Trump barnstorming everywhere is yet another successful effort to make his own "weather." It's a marketing technique to control the national vibes as seen in the media environment. Trump is good at this. 

    With 6 days until the finish, I don't know how important the "national vibes" are.  This is get out-the-vote time.  So far, that NBC article is the only one I've found, and it makes him sound like a nutter, because he is.  

    I could see it as an attempt to energize his base - projecting confidence and momentum.  I can see it as a distraction from other narratives.  But, mostly I see it as a deluded, crazy old man. 

  13. Well, one of us wrong on the polls (from NBCNews ). 

    Quote

    Trump is campaigning outside of battleground states. Is that confidence or hubris?

    The former president is traveling to New Mexico and Virginia in the final week of a race that most analysts think will be decided by other states.

    Former President Donald Trump is swerving off the battleground map this week to host rallies in New Mexico and Virginia — states that haven't voted for the GOP presidential nominee in two decades and where he lost by double digits in 2020 — and he is flirting with a trip to New Hampshire.

    Trump heads to Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Thursday, with his campaign newly confident that he is in such good shape to beat Vice President Kamala Harris that he can afford to divert his focus from the seven main battlegrounds the two sides have focused on for the entirety of the race.

    A Trump campaign official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategy freely said the barnstorming of the final week is part of a strategy to expand the map and capitalize on what the campaign says are Trump’s diverse coalition and favorable positioning on the map and the broader momentum it claims it is seeing with the electorate.

    "Trump has created a broad and diverse coalition by unifying the GOP, attracting independents and appealing to disaffected Democrats with his message," the official said.

    "The momentum includes states that have recently trended for a Democrat," the source added. "All Americans understand that Kamala has broken our border, economy and ability to lead in the world.”

    Follow live updates on the 2024 election

    The question, with Trump speaking in a city a mile above sea level Thursday, is whether his campaign is high on its own supply or grounded in a reality that public polls have missed. In the vast majority of independent surveys in New Mexico, Virginia and New Hampshire in recent weeks, Trump has trailed by more than 5 points.

    New Hampshire has been the closest, with one outlier poll in the New Hampshire Journal showing the race tied. But Trump and his team are seeing indicators that suggest he could break into unexpected territory with a wind at his back over the closing week of the election.

    Trump is focused on driving turnout in the countdown to Election Day, the Trump campaign official said, and part of the strategy includes hammering his closing message to draw a contrast with Harris over the pillars of his closing argument: immigration, inflation and foreign wars.

    A second Trump campaign official who was granted anonymity to speak freely said that if it is going to a state, it’s because the campaign sees movement there.

    The Harris campaign didn’t comment.

    There is no indication that Trump has all or any of the big seven swing states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina — in the bag already. Trump lost in 2020 by less than 44,000 votes spread across Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. He will need to flip several of the battlegrounds to reach the 270-vote threshold in the Electoral College and win back the White House.

    The decision to campaign outside of those venues — including a Madison Square Garden rally in deep-blue New York and a news conference in GOP-tilting Florida on Wednesday — has led some Republicans to infer that Trump is overruling the political pros on his team.

    "There's no chance that somebody who is focused on 270 electoral votes is going to Virginia and New Mexico," said a senior official who served on Trump's 2020 campaign team. "So Donald Trump is running his own campaign at this point. Period. Full stop."

    But current campaign officials say that Trump and his team understand the relative value of each visit to each state and that they wouldn't be scheduling rallies in Albuquerque and Salem, Virginia, if they didn't believe he had a chance to win those states.

    In an appearance on Fox News on Tuesday, Trump political director James Blair said that polls have undercounted Trump’s support historically and that there are indicators that that could be the case again. Since 2020, states like Arizona have shown rightward movement that potentially bodes well for Trump, Blair said. He said Trump had also brought new people into the Republican Party, which polls may not be picking up.

    Trump doesn't have time to waste at this stage of the race, the second campaign official said. The races in those states can narrow quickly at the end, and they will be in play if there's a polling error in Trump's favor, this official said, adding that his campaigning in adjacent states — pairs such as Arizona and New Mexico and Virginia and North Carolina — can bleed over in both directions.

    If Trump ends up in New Hampshire, this person said, it's because his campaign sees him increasing his numbers in the Northeast at a time when New Hampshire is the most competitive of the New England states.

    In another show of confidence, the Trump campaign recently dispatched former Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard to Omaha, Nebraska, and the ruby-red state's “blue dot,” which Joe Biden carried by more than 6 percentage points in 2020 and where recent public polls show Harris with an even more significant lead. Both spoke at Trump's New York rally, and Gabbard joined Trump days earlier in North Carolina, a swing state.

    The campaign is sounding a resolutely optimistic note.

    “I won’t feel comfortable until the race is called; you always run like you’re 10 points down,” Blair told Fox News. “But by everything that’s measurable right now, it looks very, very good for President Trump.”

     

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  14. 8 minutes ago, Js1 said:

    They do.  But they rarely, if ever, show up to vote in federal elections. 

     

    This article says maybe 3k in the Lancaster area plus a few hundred throughout Pennsylvania.  

    Quote

    But in a community with many children, less than half the Amish are of voting age, Nolt said. In 2020, he estimated that about 3,000 Amish voted in the Lancaster area, and several hundred elsewhere, he said.

    “Even if we would imagine, for example, that here in Lancaster, there would be a tremendous percentage in percentage terms … we’re looking at several hundred to maybe a thousand additional voters,” he said.

     

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