Ralston says a few things there, and I pretty much agree with him on everything. But I think you're mischaracterizing what he says as more negative than it is. Yes, the Clark registration edge needs to get bigger. He's right. I suspect it will.
He also says that if, as he expects, Republicans have a roughly 5% turnout edge, Harris will need to win independents by 5 to take the state. I agree with this completely. And personally I think she will win independents by that margin. As the Democratic registration edge has shrunk, indies have moved left.
I'd also ask you to be kinder to other community members - your comment is unnecessarily vitriolic and dismissive ("delusional", "chirping", etc.).
See my prior comment. I don't think we can compare 2024 to 2020 (or 2022). There will be a more equal both advance and election day voting between the parties. That said, I would love to see more voting in the big metro areas.
If you are able and willing I would definitely recommend canvassing or volunteering with the Harris Camp or MI Dem party since you are in one of the seven states that will determine who wins the EC.
I do not put a lot of stock in predictions from early voting. That said, I am a big fan of Jon Ralston and accept what he says as impartial and well-informed. I do not think what you quote is that bad--yet. Give it some time.
In GA, at this moment, 19.4% of registered voters have voted. In the populous highly Dem counties, the turnout is about the same: Fulton 21.3%; Cobb 19.8%; DeKalb 19.6%; Gwinnett 17.5%. With souls to the polls, I expect they will be keeping up. And I have hopes that some of those older white suburban women who have voted early are voting for Harris. We shall see.
Also some 200k+ mail ballots are still outstanding. Most of the center counties had the ballot came out 10/07, and only saw a trickle 1 week later. The exurbs are getting and returning them fairly quick. That’s you see Cherokee has returned roughly the same number of VBMs as center counties 3 or 4 times its size.
Don’t be surprised that the final margin is just about or even smaller than the margin within these mail votes.
I thought Hochman was an indy now, not a Dem. He ran for AG two years ago as a Republican. Unfortunately Nate is going to win, and it won't even be close. If Gascon gets over 40% he's doing relatively well. I can't see him above 45% of the votes. I voted for George, but many folks that normally vote for Dems are abandoning him. Sad!
Raft’s endorsement of Brown may be because, as a traditional conservative Republican, he’s not exactly enamored by the modern GOP. There could be more Ohio Republicans who like Taft end up going for Brown because he represents sanity vs. Moreno.
Also, current Governor Mike DeWine as a conservative Republican is still pretty old school with how he serves in office. If he’s been able to get elected and re-elected when Trump was in office and after he left office, then that’s a sign OH, like NH, can still elect traditional pre-Trump Republicans.
I would compare and contrast the OH-SEN race in 2022 vs. what Brown is dealing with in his re-election race:
Brown is not in the same position as Tim Ryan. Ryan pretty much never led in a single poll the whole time even while many polls showed he was able to cut down JD Vance’s lead to single digits. Ryan ended up losing by single digits but it wasn’t a close race in the end.
Brown’s situation is different. He’s lead by healthy single digit margins for months with no movement towards Moreno during this time. He’s done considerably better in fundraising than Moreno, who really is making it easier for this to be a winnable race even if it ends up being closer than expected.
Regardless, neither Brown nor Moreno are going to walk away with a win by sizable margins.
The mail vote list is on Clark County website. You can just go there and download it and count the return numbers.
Clark VBM ~ total 67.4k D 30.3k R 17.6k. Add them to the VBM outside Clark, and the in-person votes reported by the state. You get total over143912 votes, D edge at 1742.
Yeah, smaller than we would like. But similar to the overall registration.
I guess T camp wants to push more their people to vote in person. Once these votes counted on the election day, and a lot of D votes are in VBM, it will have a red mirage like 2022. He will then go ahead claim winning Nevada anyway.
So far 9.19% of registered Rs and 9.19% of registered Ds have voted. Some indication that there's a slight lag in Clark County due to mail ballots going out a bit later, so I'd guess Ds have a slight turnout edge. Given that they have a bigger turnout edge historically, but also everyone gets a mail ballot now, which changes voting patterns, it seems pretty even to me.
Somehow I got slightly larger Clark VBM number from there website. Maybe the county included returns waiting to cure.
I got a similar spreadsheet, but don’t want to put it on share yet. Essentially the turnout rate as observed, is on par. Consider mails in the pipe, maybe even slightly D leaning.
CCM won in an electorate 20k more registered Rs, and Gov Sisolak lost by less than 20k. So Ig the NPAs turn out in 2022 were at least slightly D leaning. Not sure in a Presidential turnout, but I would bet even tilting D more.
With numbers like these, you sort of see why Harris' campaign is targeting disaffected Rs. Turnout looked awful for Trump/Republicans in 2016, but they peeled off disaffected Ds and overcame it. Harris may hope to do the same.
Well, when I first saw NV SOS posted that number, almost fell off my chair. Thought they might have flipped the Clark D/R columns.
So went to Clark County to download the returned mail vote list. Guess what, over 67k received. D 30.3k R 17.6k. Since every registered voter in NV got a ballot in mail, who are the ones going out to vote early in person? Everything adding up. NV already logged 144k votes, with a tiny D edge of 1742. Small than comfy.
Ralston is going to act over dramatic. Just calm down. The vast majority of D votes in NV will come from VBM.
BTW, Asheville is NOT barely voting. It and its immediate surrounding counties are voting below their fair share for the obvious reason, but not by much. Something like should be 6.4% of the state registered voter pool, but voted like 5.8. So 10% lower than par.
However they are voting much bluer. Most other regions of the state are voting on par or slightly redder than registration, ie registered Republicans turn out relatively earlier. The only places Democrats turning out faster as of now are Triangle and Asheville surroundings.
This just makes the statewide already voted pool looks redder. Is that just the reverse of the blue mirage in the super blue early votes in previous cycles? We don’t know yet. But rural voters end up having 5-10% higher final turnout rate than Triangle? I am not so sure as of now.
NC’s early turnout, in person + VBM reached 952389. Saturday’s voting was very Triangle heavy, pushing it above registration share. With voted list 1.3% more Ds in registration than Rs, I would say the voted population has a real blue tilt now.
BTW, complains about no voting in Asheville area? I mentioned their voter pool is about 6.4% of the state. Now with catching up in person voting and mail returns, they reached 6% of the already voted pool. I bet in the end they would get a turnout higher than state avg. I.e > 6.4% of the final electorate.
Michelle Steel (CA-45) is in trouble even outside of the Do connection. A rabid McCarthyite who accused her previous opponent of being in league with Communist China, she is opposed this time by Derrick Tran, who is an excellent, self-assertive candidate. He has a 50-50 chance of taking Steel down, depending on how things go for Democrats in California. This is one of four or even five Republican House seats in California that could switch if there's a Democratic landslide here.
A sleeper race is in CA-16, where the progressive Democrat Evan Low has a chance of taking down the non-ideological front-running Democrat, Sam Liccardo. It's an all-Democratic general election in a very blue district.
Steel’s China accusations were Rovian, she and her husband sold political influence in the US to CCP officials and mainland Chinese business interests.
At least at some point today, CNN was talking about betting markets and whether they were a good election predictor - I have no idea what was actually said, as all I could see was a TV screen with no audio or captioning.
I also have no idea how people can watch cable news at all. I've spent two days staring at BBC News and CNN (with no choice but to have them right in front of me for hours), and it's the same stories and features over and over again, with the same footage. It's honestly nauseating, and I can't even hear what they're saying!
Aaron, what is the estimated value of the media coverage that these Polymarket bets have generated? I ask, because that the primary intention here seems to be to influence the media narrative. If the value of that coverage exceeds $30 million, then those four bet-placers have made a very good investment – not least politically!
Just filled my tank for my weekend trip; I paid $2.74\gal(the same price as my last fill up on 10\7);I'm in New Smyrna Beach, Florida for reference; what are the gas prices where you are? Thanks for the responses
Average price in the state of CA right now is about $4.60, about $1.40 higher than the national average. Lowest price in greater L.A. is $3.79, Costco’s are generally very close to the bottom of price range, several of them in the area are at $3.85.
I am not there now, but for a long time the price of gas in Norway has been between $8 and $9 per gallon. So it’s always seemed odd to me when Americans complain about the price of their dirt-cheap gasoline.
Norway famously being a large exporter of oil and gas for the past 50 years, with a huge sovereign wealth fund built on the proceeds, has kept the price of petrol high via tax policy, maximizing exports, in an intelligent departure from the actions of most producer countries. The government provides far more to citizens using oil revenues than the value to the typical individual if cheaper petrol. Norway produces 2-3 percent of global O&G, about 30-40 times their share of global population. Government revenues from oil are about half of total revenues, though the government continues to run a surplus and increase the size of its sovereign wealth fund.
Meanwhile, the USA continues with massive subsidies for its oil and gas companies, although these are largely camouflaged. Much of the massively costly war efforts in the Middle East have benefited oil companies – with none of the costs placed on them. Then again, the American economic model has, with a few exceptions, been to "socialize costs, privatize profits".
During the banking crisis of 2007–2008 the government gave massive bailouts. What I found peculiar is that the federal government did not demand equity in return. Had it done so, demanding equity in the form of shares that then had low value, the government could have later sold these as the banks and their shares recovered, making a sizeable profit on behalf of tax payers.
Another quirk of the American oil and gas industry is subsidizing agribusiness to grow corn that is used to produce ethanol, which bizarrely enough is added to the gasoline, actually degrading it! Moreover, massive energy is required to produce the ethanol, meaning the net energy extracted when it is burned in our internal-combustion car engines is not that impressive.
Well said all around. One minor correction: the government did take an equity share of AIG and later sold it for a profit. Should have done it all around as you say.
dont sleep on Wisconsin. The Democratic party chair is probably the best in the country and the new legislative maps will open up a lot of competitive seats that Democrats haven’t been able to be competitive in
years due to gerrymandering. I think the opportunity to vote for Harris and also new representatives in the state will drive more Democrats to the polls. Many Republicans chose to retire instead of run so their turnout machines are not in effect. GOTV and Harris will win.
Strength/health of state parties in WI, MI, and PA is what is keeping me sane(ish) over the home stretch. Feeling better about NV, too - which would get us beyond media-fueled "faithless elector" dramatics.
I would add North Carolina to that list. Anderson Clayton (age 26) has been an incredible leader for the state’s Democratic Party! She has done so much to rejuvenate Team Blue in NC!
How tempted do you think the Harris campaign is to go after Trump's age and "exhaustion'? Sort of a "Let's turn the page on the boomers running things". I'm sure it would be awkward with Biden but i'm not sure he would care much if it helps.
Obama hit it pretty hard tonight in Tucson. "You'd be concerned if your grandpa was acting like this. We don't need to see what an older, crazier Donald Trump looks like with no guardrails."
But that said - if you want to hit it, I think you have to go pretty much all in on it. Every second ad should reinforce the theme. Anything less and it simply won't get into the vibes in time.
Update from Saturday: it seems like the campaign gets the potency of the attack line. Per BBC live coverage: "[Harris] said she wants to spend the next two weeks highlighting that Trump is "increasingly unstable and unfit" to be president - a common attack line she takes against her Republican opponent."
And Walz with the nice zinger, per NYT live coverage: "It’s pretty clear the tired, divisive and old rhetoric of Donald Trump matches the tired, divisive and old Donald Trump."
Though the Provincial parties are unaffiliated with the national ones in Canada and often quite different. The now defunct BC Liberals were the main right-wing party there for some decades.
I wonder if there's some equivalent to Getting Republicans Elected Every November for the Canadian Greens?
Though in general they have much less of a two-party system in Canada, so the notion that the Greens could have a breakthrough election is much more plausible.
The NDP has been the governing party in all of the Western provinces at some point. (As well as a disastrous stint in Ontario in the early 90s.) This gave them credibility well before 2011.
Random trivia, but still fun.
On a similar absurd random sports trivia note - the last 3 times Spain won the European Championship (1964, 2008 and 2012) Democrats won the WH
Wow
Ralston says a few things there, and I pretty much agree with him on everything. But I think you're mischaracterizing what he says as more negative than it is. Yes, the Clark registration edge needs to get bigger. He's right. I suspect it will.
He also says that if, as he expects, Republicans have a roughly 5% turnout edge, Harris will need to win independents by 5 to take the state. I agree with this completely. And personally I think she will win independents by that margin. As the Democratic registration edge has shrunk, indies have moved left.
I'd also ask you to be kinder to other community members - your comment is unnecessarily vitriolic and dismissive ("delusional", "chirping", etc.).
See my prior comment. I don't think we can compare 2024 to 2020 (or 2022). There will be a more equal both advance and election day voting between the parties. That said, I would love to see more voting in the big metro areas.
If you are able and willing I would definitely recommend canvassing or volunteering with the Harris Camp or MI Dem party since you are in one of the seven states that will determine who wins the EC.
Agreed with you entirely. Ralston’s Day 1 observation here is entirely valid and reasonable
I do not put a lot of stock in predictions from early voting. That said, I am a big fan of Jon Ralston and accept what he says as impartial and well-informed. I do not think what you quote is that bad--yet. Give it some time.
In GA, at this moment, 19.4% of registered voters have voted. In the populous highly Dem counties, the turnout is about the same: Fulton 21.3%; Cobb 19.8%; DeKalb 19.6%; Gwinnett 17.5%. With souls to the polls, I expect they will be keeping up. And I have hopes that some of those older white suburban women who have voted early are voting for Harris. We shall see.
Also some 200k+ mail ballots are still outstanding. Most of the center counties had the ballot came out 10/07, and only saw a trickle 1 week later. The exurbs are getting and returning them fairly quick. That’s you see Cherokee has returned roughly the same number of VBMs as center counties 3 or 4 times its size.
Don’t be surprised that the final margin is just about or even smaller than the margin within these mail votes.
What’s wrong with Adam Schiff?
I support Proposition 36 and don’t like Gascon either.
We know. But you're not a Democratic politician.
Hochman is a Democrat now too. My wife and I voted for Gascon. I predict Hochman will win.
I thought Hochman was an indy now, not a Dem. He ran for AG two years ago as a Republican. Unfortunately Nate is going to win, and it won't even be close. If Gascon gets over 40% he's doing relatively well. I can't see him above 45% of the votes. I voted for George, but many folks that normally vote for Dems are abandoning him. Sad!
You are correct. I was misremembering. Hochman is a registered Independent now. Thanks for the correction!
I agree that Gascon will most likely lose, and probably badly. Some of it is due to his lack of people skills. Too bad.
He’s perfect if you think the problem with the Senate is that it’s too left wing.
I begrudgingly voted for him. Hate that he's gonna be our Senator for 30+ years.
He's not that young(but I get your point)
How are you sure the undecided voters are breaking for Moreno? He is offering them nothing.
Yeah, I was surprised by that endorsement. Here's his Op Ed: https://www.daytondailynews.com/ideas-voices/voices-one-vote-for-sherrod-brown/FCBQW3SBFVCFXBRJK5LWTMN4SA/
It's fascinating that his endorsement discusses only Brown's record of effective service to all Buckeyes and does not mention Moreno at all.
Raft’s endorsement of Brown may be because, as a traditional conservative Republican, he’s not exactly enamored by the modern GOP. There could be more Ohio Republicans who like Taft end up going for Brown because he represents sanity vs. Moreno.
Also, current Governor Mike DeWine as a conservative Republican is still pretty old school with how he serves in office. If he’s been able to get elected and re-elected when Trump was in office and after he left office, then that’s a sign OH, like NH, can still elect traditional pre-Trump Republicans.
Didn’t Taft leave office with like a 5% approval rating?
Yeah it's definitely not a great endorsement... but enough time has passed that it at least isn't toxic endorsement though.
I would compare and contrast the OH-SEN race in 2022 vs. what Brown is dealing with in his re-election race:
Brown is not in the same position as Tim Ryan. Ryan pretty much never led in a single poll the whole time even while many polls showed he was able to cut down JD Vance’s lead to single digits. Ryan ended up losing by single digits but it wasn’t a close race in the end.
Brown’s situation is different. He’s lead by healthy single digit margins for months with no movement towards Moreno during this time. He’s done considerably better in fundraising than Moreno, who really is making it easier for this to be a winnable race even if it ends up being closer than expected.
Regardless, neither Brown nor Moreno are going to walk away with a win by sizable margins.
The mail vote list is on Clark County website. You can just go there and download it and count the return numbers.
Clark VBM ~ total 67.4k D 30.3k R 17.6k. Add them to the VBM outside Clark, and the in-person votes reported by the state. You get total over143912 votes, D edge at 1742.
Yeah, smaller than we would like. But similar to the overall registration.
I guess T camp wants to push more their people to vote in person. Once these votes counted on the election day, and a lot of D votes are in VBM, it will have a red mirage like 2022. He will then go ahead claim winning Nevada anyway.
Michael Pruser at DDHQ has a nice spreadsheet for the NV vote:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uPZIgl4G2qFEjuKCVjE3MBkiPz1d3DvJ/edit?gid=1078533895#gid=1078533895
So far 9.19% of registered Rs and 9.19% of registered Ds have voted. Some indication that there's a slight lag in Clark County due to mail ballots going out a bit later, so I'd guess Ds have a slight turnout edge. Given that they have a bigger turnout edge historically, but also everyone gets a mail ballot now, which changes voting patterns, it seems pretty even to me.
Exactly.
Somehow I got slightly larger Clark VBM number from there website. Maybe the county included returns waiting to cure.
I got a similar spreadsheet, but don’t want to put it on share yet. Essentially the turnout rate as observed, is on par. Consider mails in the pipe, maybe even slightly D leaning.
CCM won in an electorate 20k more registered Rs, and Gov Sisolak lost by less than 20k. So Ig the NPAs turn out in 2022 were at least slightly D leaning. Not sure in a Presidential turnout, but I would bet even tilting D more.
With numbers like these, you sort of see why Harris' campaign is targeting disaffected Rs. Turnout looked awful for Trump/Republicans in 2016, but they peeled off disaffected Ds and overcame it. Harris may hope to do the same.
1600 votes is unambiguously bad for us. Hopefully things turn around there over the next 2 weeks.
*Sigh Can we avoid having a PANIC every time there is a minor EV update?
1) Asheville had a major hurricane.
2) The AA vote in Georgia is at 27% exit polls put the 2020 vote in the high 20s.
3) It's 30k in Clark, Clark isn't a universally blue county it's quite possible it's just a red batch of Clark ballots.
4) If you are worried put it into something productive like calls or canvassing for Harris.
Freak.
Obviously red voters are fronting their votes in Georgia. There is no point to compare with 2020 early votes, where blue voters were front loading.
If anything, the turnout as of now looking more like a miniature of the total electorate, instead of the past super blue early votes.
You are becoming more annoying with every 'the sky is falling' chicken little post(not my place to ask you to stop, so I won't)
Well, when I first saw NV SOS posted that number, almost fell off my chair. Thought they might have flipped the Clark D/R columns.
So went to Clark County to download the returned mail vote list. Guess what, over 67k received. D 30.3k R 17.6k. Since every registered voter in NV got a ballot in mail, who are the ones going out to vote early in person? Everything adding up. NV already logged 144k votes, with a tiny D edge of 1742. Small than comfy.
Ralston is going to act over dramatic. Just calm down. The vast majority of D votes in NV will come from VBM.
And Clark mail is behind relative to the rest of the state. Went out later, coming back later. No reason for panic in these numbers.
The total turnout rate. Cow counties over 8%. Washoe at around 8, Clark is still below 7.
67k returned in Clark with most marked as sent on 10/10. Seems indeed later than the rest of the state.
I'd think Clark's population skews far younger than the rest of the state.
This is just folks vote in person! Every voter got a mail ballot. And the ones going out vote in person, are on the exception side.
Large volume of received mail ballot, with 12k+ D edge in Clark County.
I don’t want to use derogatives. But we shouldn’t expect pearl clutching like DK front pagers.
BTW, Asheville is NOT barely voting. It and its immediate surrounding counties are voting below their fair share for the obvious reason, but not by much. Something like should be 6.4% of the state registered voter pool, but voted like 5.8. So 10% lower than par.
However they are voting much bluer. Most other regions of the state are voting on par or slightly redder than registration, ie registered Republicans turn out relatively earlier. The only places Democrats turning out faster as of now are Triangle and Asheville surroundings.
This just makes the statewide already voted pool looks redder. Is that just the reverse of the blue mirage in the super blue early votes in previous cycles? We don’t know yet. But rural voters end up having 5-10% higher final turnout rate than Triangle? I am not so sure as of now.
NC’s early turnout, in person + VBM reached 952389. Saturday’s voting was very Triangle heavy, pushing it above registration share. With voted list 1.3% more Ds in registration than Rs, I would say the voted population has a real blue tilt now.
BTW, complains about no voting in Asheville area? I mentioned their voter pool is about 6.4% of the state. Now with catching up in person voting and mail returns, they reached 6% of the already voted pool. I bet in the end they would get a turnout higher than state avg. I.e > 6.4% of the final electorate.
Remember, in NV/Ralston speak, "early voting" is in-person only. It does not include mail.
NV is predominantly a mail state.
The Dem edge in what most people call EV is almost entirely due to the mail vote.
Wait, Dr Oz has a PAC?
Probably only enough money in Oz’s PAC to pay for the crudités at the condolence party after Rick Scott loses his re-election..
Here's hoping!
Sheehy's getting worse press than even Greg Gianforte!
I hope so, since Gianforte won.
Gianforte also originally won the then-House At Large District in an open race. That said, we shall see how Sheehy’s controversies play out.
Indeed, he did.
Michelle Steel (CA-45) is in trouble even outside of the Do connection. A rabid McCarthyite who accused her previous opponent of being in league with Communist China, she is opposed this time by Derrick Tran, who is an excellent, self-assertive candidate. He has a 50-50 chance of taking Steel down, depending on how things go for Democrats in California. This is one of four or even five Republican House seats in California that could switch if there's a Democratic landslide here.
A sleeper race is in CA-16, where the progressive Democrat Evan Low has a chance of taking down the non-ideological front-running Democrat, Sam Liccardo. It's an all-Democratic general election in a very blue district.
Steel’s China accusations were Rovian, she and her husband sold political influence in the US to CCP officials and mainland Chinese business interests.
Link to DCCC write up of the Steel’s CCP connection reported in the WSJ: https://dccc.org/breaking-wall-street-journal-michelle-steels-shady-husband-found-selling-access-trump-chinese-foreign-nationals-donations-trump-campaign/
At least at some point today, CNN was talking about betting markets and whether they were a good election predictor - I have no idea what was actually said, as all I could see was a TV screen with no audio or captioning.
I also have no idea how people can watch cable news at all. I've spent two days staring at BBC News and CNN (with no choice but to have them right in front of me for hours), and it's the same stories and features over and over again, with the same footage. It's honestly nauseating, and I can't even hear what they're saying!
I find BBC World Service pretty good. BBC TV in the UK was not nearly as good when I watched it in 2010, very sensational and lots of "light news."
Aaron, what is the estimated value of the media coverage that these Polymarket bets have generated? I ask, because that the primary intention here seems to be to influence the media narrative. If the value of that coverage exceeds $30 million, then those four bet-placers have made a very good investment – not least politically!
He sure paints a vivid picture of a typical Trump supporter, doesn't he?
"Get your fat husband off the couch. Get that fat pig off the couch."
You sure this wasn’t something someone said to Melania Trump`
I thought maybe he was quoting her book
Just filled my tank for my weekend trip; I paid $2.74\gal(the same price as my last fill up on 10\7);I'm in New Smyrna Beach, Florida for reference; what are the gas prices where you are? Thanks for the responses
Great question; I'm not so sure but it's something to consider; plus, I think it can marginally help Harris(and any marginal positive is terrific)
That's interesting; thanks for this update
Average price in the state of CA right now is about $4.60, about $1.40 higher than the national average. Lowest price in greater L.A. is $3.79, Costco’s are generally very close to the bottom of price range, several of them in the area are at $3.85.
Drove up to my parents' place in Minnesota. Prices ranged from $2.83 to $2.99. It was as low as $2.61 last weekend.
3.13 tonight, 50 minutes north of NYC. It feels like a multi year low.
I am not there now, but for a long time the price of gas in Norway has been between $8 and $9 per gallon. So it’s always seemed odd to me when Americans complain about the price of their dirt-cheap gasoline.
Norway famously being a large exporter of oil and gas for the past 50 years, with a huge sovereign wealth fund built on the proceeds, has kept the price of petrol high via tax policy, maximizing exports, in an intelligent departure from the actions of most producer countries. The government provides far more to citizens using oil revenues than the value to the typical individual if cheaper petrol. Norway produces 2-3 percent of global O&G, about 30-40 times their share of global population. Government revenues from oil are about half of total revenues, though the government continues to run a surplus and increase the size of its sovereign wealth fund.
Yes, indeed – and well summarized.
Meanwhile, the USA continues with massive subsidies for its oil and gas companies, although these are largely camouflaged. Much of the massively costly war efforts in the Middle East have benefited oil companies – with none of the costs placed on them. Then again, the American economic model has, with a few exceptions, been to "socialize costs, privatize profits".
During the banking crisis of 2007–2008 the government gave massive bailouts. What I found peculiar is that the federal government did not demand equity in return. Had it done so, demanding equity in the form of shares that then had low value, the government could have later sold these as the banks and their shares recovered, making a sizeable profit on behalf of tax payers.
Another quirk of the American oil and gas industry is subsidizing agribusiness to grow corn that is used to produce ethanol, which bizarrely enough is added to the gasoline, actually degrading it! Moreover, massive energy is required to produce the ethanol, meaning the net energy extracted when it is burned in our internal-combustion car engines is not that impressive.
Well said all around. One minor correction: the government did take an equity share of AIG and later sold it for a profit. Should have done it all around as you say.
2.72 South Carolina lowcountry
dont sleep on Wisconsin. The Democratic party chair is probably the best in the country and the new legislative maps will open up a lot of competitive seats that Democrats haven’t been able to be competitive in
years due to gerrymandering. I think the opportunity to vote for Harris and also new representatives in the state will drive more Democrats to the polls. Many Republicans chose to retire instead of run so their turnout machines are not in effect. GOTV and Harris will win.
Plus our side is flush with dough $$$$$$$$$$
Strength/health of state parties in WI, MI, and PA is what is keeping me sane(ish) over the home stretch. Feeling better about NV, too - which would get us beyond media-fueled "faithless elector" dramatics.
I would add North Carolina to that list. Anderson Clayton (age 26) has been an incredible leader for the state’s Democratic Party! She has done so much to rejuvenate Team Blue in NC!
It’s Anderson Clayton, but yes, I agree.
Thanks! Sloppy of me. Corrected.
How tempted do you think the Harris campaign is to go after Trump's age and "exhaustion'? Sort of a "Let's turn the page on the boomers running things". I'm sure it would be awkward with Biden but i'm not sure he would care much if it helps.
Clinton did that yesterday with Walz in NC
Obama hit it pretty hard tonight in Tucson. "You'd be concerned if your grandpa was acting like this. We don't need to see what an older, crazier Donald Trump looks like with no guardrails."
But that said - if you want to hit it, I think you have to go pretty much all in on it. Every second ad should reinforce the theme. Anything less and it simply won't get into the vibes in time.
Update from Saturday: it seems like the campaign gets the potency of the attack line. Per BBC live coverage: "[Harris] said she wants to spend the next two weeks highlighting that Trump is "increasingly unstable and unfit" to be president - a common attack line she takes against her Republican opponent."
And Walz with the nice zinger, per NYT live coverage: "It’s pretty clear the tired, divisive and old rhetoric of Donald Trump matches the tired, divisive and old Donald Trump."
Harris is running a new ad using the line 'unstable, unhinged, unchecked'.
I heard that; do you know how widely it's running?
It’s national as it was on during the Georgia Texas college football game.
It will be election day in British Columbia, Canada's third most populous province tomorrow! https://globalnews.ca/news/10818467/bc-ndp-favoured-close-race-final-bc-election-poll/
It’ll be an interesting test to see what the modern CPC can actually accomplish with its trend towards being GOP Lite
Though the Provincial parties are unaffiliated with the national ones in Canada and often quite different. The now defunct BC Liberals were the main right-wing party there for some decades.
It's interesting that the poll had the NDP up +17 with the 55+ demographic. That's definitely different than our politics.
I wonder if there's some equivalent to Getting Republicans Elected Every November for the Canadian Greens?
Though in general they have much less of a two-party system in Canada, so the notion that the Greens could have a breakthrough election is much more plausible.
Only if the Liberals and NDP completely collapse. The NDP broke through nationally in 2011 because the Liberals completely collapsed.
The NDP has been the governing party in all of the Western provinces at some point. (As well as a disastrous stint in Ontario in the early 90s.) This gave them credibility well before 2011.
The Greens are also a pretty viable force in Vancouver Island and usually pick up several Victoria area ridings. It’s not a perfect comp
I just found out a new word: simp
Was it in a discussion of Lindsey Graham?