Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/01/trumps-dwindling-chances-of-winning-election-highlight-scope-for-keeping-power-by-other-means.html
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Vote!
Vote like your life depends on it.
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I’ll reserve estimation on Trump’s “dwindling chances” until the post-debate polls start coming out next week.
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This is absolutely the key to the whole damn thing. If the vote is close, his fuckery at the margins can affect the results. If it is a true blow out, he is helpless short of armed insurrection. Make that the only option and he will vanish. It’ll be like a miracle!
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FiveThirtyEight still puts Trump’s odds of winning the electoral college at greater than one-in-five so it’s not like Nate Silver has written him off.
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This Atlantic article from today goes hand in glove with this:
If Trump declares the results of the election invalid and calls it a coup, there are a lot of people with guns who are standing by.
ETA: It’s both reassuring and disturbing that Silver is finally coming around to the notion that not everything can be quantified using historic data.
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If it comes down to Pennsylvania’s being the deciding state, we know that Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled legislature is willing to overrule its electorate, declare that the vote result is tainted by fraud and not reflective of the will of the people, and appoint the electors itself. That options is already on the table.
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I don’t know how much of this is accounted for in their model, but we should also remember that, given the ages of the candidates, all kinds of crazy unpredictable shit can happen to upend the status of the race like Biden suffering from a stroke or falling and hitting his head when showing. Given that voting is already underway, I don’t even know (or want to think about) what would happen if Biden died or otherwise became unable to assume the role between now and when the voting is concluded.
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That is fucking terrifying. Not surprising, but shit…
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Their model is a purely Monte Carlo affair based on different probable outcomes in each state, as based on the states’ most current polling, if my understanding is correct. I don’t think forces majeures are taken into account.
Honestly, I’m feeling a lot better about things after the debate. The media actually seems to give a damn now that he is directly undermining the election, directly calling on white supremacists for violent voter intimidation and setting the stage for a stolen election. He’s been doing this for years and everyone was all like “nah, he’ll understand the gravity/learn his lesson/observe constitutional mandates any day now”.
He was the exact same person in that debate that he has been for the 40+ years of his public life. Maybe, just maybe, people will start paying attention now.
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Virtually everyone in the country, especially those working for the media, knows what he’s about.
Nearly half approve of it.
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Well, a lot it it rides on the mail in votes. While trumps hand-picked postmaster has been screwing around with sorting machines.
However, since the machines are out-of-commission (really it’s the democrat’s fault), the postmaster has been forced to hire some people to hand sort the mail-in ballots manually (and the ballot applications manually). The new process is quite simple: 1st, check the “from” address of the mail-in ballot (or ballot application) to see if it is on address list RR, or address list RD, or RI. if its on list RR, it goes into bin 1. if it’s on list RD, it goes into bin 2. most RI will also go into bin 2. For Ballots or applications being mailed to the voter, it goes in bin 3, or bin 4, depending on the To address. That will greatly speed up the processing.
Bin 1 and 3 will be quickly rushed onto the mail trucks for speedy delivery.
Ooops, bin 2 has been misplaced. we will find it eventually. oops bin 4 has also been misplaced. Well if they don’t show up in time to get counted, them’s the breaks. We warned you we would have trouble handling the volume of mail the ballots would entail (after we destroyed the machines to handle that volume of mail)
oh, the addresses on lists? No you cannot see those. Proprietary. And we destroyed the lists for voter privacy and security. Not relevant.
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We all know that “certain” districts have the most voter fraud (especially urban ones in swing states, such as Philly, Columbus, Detroit). So, that is where the buggering boys will “stand up” at to “protect” the vote. There will be some chaos, complaints of voter intimidation, maybe a shooting or fire or two. Because of all that Antifa violence, suppressing the republicans, all those districts will be taken to court, quickly escalated to either the district courts (if the Judge appointed by Trump is deemed sufficiently loyal ^H^H^H^H^H impartial) or to the Supreme court, and their ballot counts will have to be thrown out, and not counted for the election, because they are “tainted” by the violence that prevented a free-and-fail election. Other districts, out in the rural locations, will not have those problems, so those tallies will not be contested and can be used for the ballot counts. Other cities in non-swing states, such as NYC, LA, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco will see similar “antifa” resistance to the Buggering Boys patriotic attempts to “protect” the vote. Although, as non-swing states, perhaps not as much.
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I think it does include forces majeures. The article says that Trump has a 9% chance of winning the electoral college if the election was held today vs 21% chance on November 3. The main reason for the difference is that “stuff” will happen between now and then. Some will help Biden, some will help Trump. But being random, they cause regression to the mean.
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Given that there are also Senate races, and Governor races on these ballots, what’s the argument going to be from donny smallhands? All of those races are ALSO invalid?
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I’m feeling worse. I just read that the debate has caused people to expect the results of the election to be contested. That’s not good - it’s effectively normalizing the coming power-grab.
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only a little less than 25% approved. About 50% couldn’t be bothered to give an opinion. And 3 million more disapproved than approved. Not that this changes anything, of course.
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Donny Mushroom Crotch does not give a rats ass about the Governor or Senate races. They can all find their own Bus to get thrown under.
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I like Rushkoff’s take:
"No, to understand our president’s great vulnerability — as well as the way it played out last night — you have to understand the magical tradition that informs his actions and beliefs. As a child, Donald Trump went to Marble Collegiate Church in New York City, where every Sunday he listened to the sermons of Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking . Trump came to believe that the world is manifest through our thoughts. Thinking makes it so. We create our own realities, and those of others, with our thoughts and with our words. It’s all based on the hypnosis of oneself and others.
That’s why Trump doesn’t talk about Covid deaths or losing the election. Admitting the possibility, focusing on the negative, speaking those words, could make it happen. Instead, he tries to manifest a cure by saying that the disease will simply “disappear.”"
“Last night, Donald Trump may have made it look like democracy was done for. But that was just an illusion. Democracy is, at its core, still working fine, thank you very much. Why trust him on the futility of voting when he’s lied about everything else? Trump hasn’t hacked democracy with these antics. He’s simply hacked television. He is conducting a form of mass media attack on the American public because he can no longer win an election. All he can do is demoralize us to the point where we believe an election is no longer possible — that he will suppress the vote, or simply refuse to leave.”
"So no, last night was not a debate. It was more of a competition over our perception of reality. Trump showed that the only way he can win a debate or an election is to convince us that there’s nothing we can do to stop him. That resistance is futile.
But according to Trump’s own logic, all we need to do to defeat him is to believe otherwise and vote. It’s that easy."
The rest of it:
Get off your asses. Vote early. Remind others to vote. Have your protest signs ready.
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