Election 2020

[Rommie]

I thought it was interesting how many people's reaction was "he should have let it run longer just so we could tell what would have really happened." As if it wasn't obvious, and if there aren't serious ethical (and I imagine legal) concerns letting a situation like that go forward. But yeah if anyone's surprised about Giuliani being highly susceptible to Russian interference after seeing that, they're just an idiot. And I disagree with those insisting his career is done- like the rest of them, I think these politics are at the point where it all just hinges on who wins the election, because they're obviously all done if Trump doesn't win, but would probably live to see another day if he does.

Incidentally, we enjoyed the movie. First half hour was definitely the most solid, then around coronavirus I imagine their plans went a bit out of the window so they had to figure out how to lead up to the infamous Giuliani scene once they had that footage. But hey in 2020 I won't complain at something new.

Also, saw an interesting thing that Biden is going to Georgia this week. Which would be criminal if you didn't have really solid polling about the swing states...

[code monkey]

Hahahaha NOPE

I have a lot of thoughts on that footage, but the main ones are things about Giuliani I can't put in print on a public forum.

oh go ahead! be daring.

[Rommie]

Damn, this thing just has to be over already. I am way too distracted.

Of course, my supervisor said he expected this was the last week people would be productive as we'd all be paying attention to the election instead (and subsequent states as they play out). And I'm like dude, I hate to break it to you, but...

[lady_*nix]

So yeah we now have fascist militias, composed of veterans and former LEOs, saying they'll turn up at the polls with weapons to intimidate Dem voters.

https://www.mediamatters.org/infowars/m ... ready-kill

IDK how the fuck we're going to survive this honestly. Again, what do the laws matter if nobody is both willing and able to enforce them?

[lady_*nix]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... en-victory

Erik Loomis, a labor historian at the University of Rhode Island and author of A History of America in Ten Strikes, said: “So much of the conversation on the left about general strikes in this country is kind of a romanticized, people are going to rise up.” But Loomis added: “If there is ever any general strike in this country, it’s probably going to come out of the established labor movement. The only group capable of running the thing is the established labor movement.” If there is a general strike, union leaders say, they hope college students, Blacks Lives Matter activists, women’s and environmental groups and many others will join in.

(emphasis mine)

It would be nice if more leftists would acknowledged this! In any case though, it gives me some hope to see established unions putting a general strike on the table.

Edit: I'm still basically expecting Trump to win though. Or for the election to be so mismanaged and fucked up that nobody has any idea what the "real" results look like, with SCOTUS declaring Trump the winner a la the 2000 election. SCOTUS is now incredibly partisan as well as conservative, and I think they could be depended upon to do that; possibly even to declare Trump the winner if asked to in the event of a Biden victory.

[Rommie]

So yeah we now have fascist militias, composed of veterans and former LEOs, saying they'll turn up at the polls with weapons to intimidate Dem voters.

https://www.mediamatters.org/infowars/m ... ready-kill

IDK how the fuck we're going to survive this honestly. Again, what do the laws matter if nobody is both willing and able to enforce them?

I'd just like to point out that freaking out and feeling intimidated by this stuff is exactly what they want you to do when they say these sorts of things, because they know if people turn out and vote they will lose. So while I am concerned about next week, I just refuse to really read this shit or get worked up about it right now- one day at a time.

Re: general strikes, look up what's happening right now at Haverford College (where my sister is an alum). The college president has been tone deaf (at the very least) and the students are organizing a general strike until their grievances are addressed. The entertaining bit to me is they actually require freshmen to take a social justice class at Haverford (as it was founded by Quakers), so seem surprised when the students actually learn something and want to apply it!

It's a really small college, but I wish them well.

[lady_*nix]

Not freaking out is hard when you're looking this level of impending doom in the face TBH. I already voted, and have been asking friends to vote like everyone's lives depend on it, but like... there's a very real possibility that it will not be possible to "vote him out", and that the US will slide the rest of the way into dictatorship. And people need to be prepared for that.

Re: Haverford, I wish them well too.

[Rommie]

My husband just asked me if I'm sure we have trash pickup tomorrow, because isn't Election Day a holiday? Sigh...

Ballot was received and submitted for counting via the good old US postal system (mailed it last week).

Honestly, it's the waiting that sucks right now the most. Who knows what's coming next, but I'm kinda done waiting for it.

[SciFiFisher]

On a very good news front, the early voting numbers are astronomically higher than they were in 2016. I believe as of Friday or Saturday they were saying over 93 million people had already voted. On a good, possibly very good, note the percentage of so-called undecided voters is significantly lower than it was in 2016. And a lot of the support for third party candidates is very low. A significant percentage of the third-party voters in 2016 were considered to be voters who would have voted for the D team if they had not voted for the third party candidates. Third-party candidates in 2020 are not feeling the love. Early voters tend to skew towards the D team.

Another factor is the polling results. Apparently, being able to randomly survey a large enough number of people is a losing battle these days. So, they use forecasting models. The models in 2016 failed to account for some of the variables such as college-educated morons willing to vote for Trump. Supposedly, the forecasters are saying they have improved the models this time so it is less likely that Trump will magically pull off a surprise win.

Of course, after my total failure in predicting the winner of the 2016 election, I am not planning to make any broad claims until at least November 5th.

[lady_*nix]

Meanwhile the violence is already building. I'm sure y'all have already seen the thing about Trump supporters trying to run a bus full of Biden voters off the road (and getting lauded for it by Trump!), and also in North Caroline police pepper-sprayed people who were marching to the polls:

https://www.theroot.com/police-pepper-s ... 1845543542

This is a hugely understated problem IMO - police as a whole adore Trump, and they're unafraid to be bigoted, or to be partisan. I'm worried about voter intimidation from police tomorrow as much as from militia goons.

[Rommie]

Yeah I'm happy I don't live in, say, Portland Oregon right now. But I hope we do get good results from the early states tonight so the win is decisive enough that it's clear the majority of people do not support those fascists. It can make a world of difference.

Also, may I say that while I was skeptical of and hard on Biden earlier in this process, I was in fact happy to vote for him (even though obviously I would have voted for a rock if it had the D next to it this time around). Mainly because I did spend a good amount of time listening to him these past few months, and the world has changed so much since the beginning of the year in ways we couldn't anticipate, but I do think his genuine kindness and understanding of loss is just the sort of candidate needed right now. I mean, I don't know if it's also just the complete lack of that from the other side talking, but I think it makes sense that some qualities can matter more as something like a pandemic progresses.

Also, TBH I think this would be a tough reelection even if Hillary had won four years ago. If you scale up the Canadian death rate to that in the USA (realistically, unfortunately, probably the best we would have done, as anti-maskers etc still would have been around) that still would have meant ~100k dead and a bad economy. Of course we never will know, but something on my mind a lot today- I guess we'll see if reality still matters.

[lady_*nix]

Yeah, and I think assuming Canada's death rate for the US if Clinton were in office is optimistic - the US has swung in the direction of amoral capitalism for a long time, in practice mainstream Democrats are still putting The Economy and Normalcy and Work Ethic over people's lives. The French govt is literally paying the salaries for people whose jobs are on hold due to COVID, and they still are having trouble controlling this pandemic; the US's response has been uniquely bad under Trump (and he and his cronies need to pay for that), but we were already in a bad place as far as pandemic readiness.

Getting Trump out of office is the first step, but one of the next ones has to be a referendum on the unfettered capitalist bullshit that got us here. Otherwise we're just going to get 4 years of stagnation and fear, and then someone as bad as Trump (or worse).

[lady_*nix]

Gods, I really hope the Dems keep the House and take the Senate. And if they do, they'd better develop the spine to use those majorities, and fast.

[pumpkinpi]

Some fun signs in our neighborhood.
It's a beautiful 70 degrees and we took a walk around the neighborhood. We counted 20:1 ratio of Biden/Harris to Trump/Pence signs, covering about 2/3 of the houses.

[pumpkinpi]

And my election day t-shirt.

[Rommie]

Our best in the neighborhood:

Person
Man
Woman
Vote
Biden

Biden 2020: He won't tear gas your mom

[lady_*nix]

Hate to be a buzzkill Rommie, but that last is probably not accurate. Especially for people whose moms are Black.

[lady_*nix]

Ugh, the Unfair Death Turtle won his reelection campaign. *sigh* Still hoping Dems can take the Senate.

[lady_*nix]

"USPS disregards court order to conduct sweeps in 12 postal districts after more than 300,000 ballots can’t be traced"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... lays-usps/

Laws don't matter if nobody is both willing and able to enforce them.

[Swift]

I'm very depressed at the moment. I don't think things are looking good.

[code monkey]

I have 1 very simple question. what the heck is wrong with my fellow citizens?

[pumpkinpi]

I don't know. This time around I don't know what's worse. Trump, or the almost 50% of voters that cast a ballot for him. I have a bit of understanding about 4 years ago, they didn't know what they were getting into. But now, after 4 years of seeing what he is, they still support him.

[lady_*nix]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/wh ... te-voters/

Racism and misogyny, that's what's wrong with them. This country has never fully confronted its racist past, and for white people the racism has gotten to be literally like a drug - a lot of us them to snort more and more of it just to feel normal.

Edit: I originally put "a lot of us" but let's face it, Jews white or not are also scapegoats here. I grew up with plenty of antisemitic bullying, but I don't think I understood how much goyim literally hate us, even when they claim to be allies, until 2015.

[lady_*nix]

A possibility I want y'all to consider for a minute: Biden squeaks through with exactly 270 electoral votes, Trump takes it to SCOTUS, and the Supremes side with Trump and override both the popular and electoral vote.

[pumpkinpi]

The one bright spot about the election today: Buster loves statistics, and he's having fun looking at the results and projecting how Biden could win.