Campaign 2020

[Sabin]

My favorite Biden ad: https://streamable.com/zqko13

[Okri]

Superb profile of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

[Big Magilla]

Sonic's point is quite straightforward: as long as you get your vote in before the end of the voting period, it should be counted, regardless of how late it was cast.

Of course it should, but we know what we're up against so why would anyone want to wait until Election Day to mail their ballot in?

Standing in line to vote in person is itself very risky. Many states and municipalities will extend voting for an hour or two to accommodate people in line at cut-off time but may more will not.

If we can have on-line payment of taxes and the filling out of census forms, there's no reason why we can't have on-line voting and mail-in voting for those who don't have on-line access with in-person voting for the handicapped. This should be a priority for the Democrats to get passed for federal elections, and every state and municipality should follow suit for state and local elections, along with all the other reforms that have to take place sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, we should all watch or re-watch Darby O'Gill and the Little People for inspiration with Broadway's original Finian, Albert Sharpe, in his other famous role opposite leprechauns.

The guys at electoral-vote.com don't think court packing is the most likely end result of the ACB. They think it more likely that the Democrats will change what cases the Supreme Court can hear. The constitution does not specify much about what they can hear and the Dems could make it so that the DC Court of Appeals heals and decides most cases leaving the SC to wallow in its sudden lack of importance. Beyond that, there is something to be said for putting term limits or mandatory retirement ages into force for all federal judges. This could push out Thomas, Alito, and Breyer, giving the Dems two pickups and swinging the court back to a 5-4 liberal majority.

"Court-packing" is something the bad guys just did. "Expanding the court" is what the good guys want to do.

Term limits and mandatory retirement ages are a tough sell, especially the latter considering the ages of a number of Senators and Congressmen and Congresswomen.

[Sonic Youth]

I mean, I'm all for expansion, but the Pubes would just do the same thing once they gain control again.

Not a compelling reason to not do it, at least not for me. In fact, it's an excellent reason to proceed, because it means the Republicans will stop at nothing whether Democrats lie down or fight back. So... we should fight back. A dog will be kicked only so many times before it jumps up to rip the abuser's face off.

[OscarGuy]

Some states prohibit the counting of mail-in ballots until the polls close on election day. Florida and North Carolina are not among them. We should know Tuesday night if those two states have gone for Biden. If they do, the likelihood of a Trump victory will probably be dashed.

The guys at electoral-vote.com don't think court packing is the most likely end result of the ACB. They think it more likely that the Democrats will change what cases the Supreme Court can hear. The constitution does not specify much about what they can hear and the Dems could make it so that the DC Court of Appeals heals and decides most cases leaving the SC to wallow in its sudden lack of importance. Beyond that, there is something to be said for putting term limits or mandatory retirement ages into force for all federal judges. This could push out Thomas, Alito, and Breyer, giving the Dems two pickups and swinging the court back to a 5-4 liberal majority.

Regardless, I also see a situation where certain laws (like abortion and marriage laws) get renewed attention from the federal level. So far, congress has avoided making any laws on these two subjects. The reason Mississippi can challenge the law and get the Supreme Court to permit the law is because there's no federal law dictating what can and cannot be done to restrict abortion access. If the Dems were to finally put those kinds of things into law, that could limit what they can do.

I mean, I'm all for expansion, but the Pubes would just do the same thing once they gain control again. And there's no guarantee that PR becoming a state wouldn't result in two new Republican senators. The politics on the island suggest a decent possibility. That said, DC and PR should most definitely become states. DC has always been mistreated, but after all of the problems PR has faced, that they were dismissed for just being a territory by the Trump administration means they should most definitely gain some rights they didn't have before.

[Mister Tee]

Sonic's point is quite straightforward: as long as you get your vote in before the end of the voting period, it should be counted, regardless of how late it was cast. Late-arriving-but-mailed-in-time ballots have been counted in many previous elections. And, more to the point, ballots simply counted later (as in, say, Sinema's 2018 election in AZ, which flipped between a small McSally lead and a larger Sinema one between election night and a day or two later) certainly shouldn't be excluded. What's alarmed people about Kavanaugh's text is his suggesting states have a duty to declare a winner on Election Night, no matter where they are in the count. And, since GOP legislatures in some key states have passed rules holding off even the start of the mail count until after the polls have closed, this is clearly intended to create false impressions based on Election Day votes -- which we know will lean Republican because Dems are turning out in such vast numbers in both mail-in and early in-person. This is the Trump strategy -- to at worst cause confusion among his easily-deluded core supporters, who already think he's winning a landslide. It's scary to think any Supreme Court justice would support so hackish a position, but here we are.

I'm not going to say this at great length til we're past next Tuesday -- purely from superstition -- but I doubt any of this will matter. Everything anyone knows about presidential politics says Biden will win by a wide enough margin that such games will be impossible to pull off. But it's one last Trump degradation of the system, and a worrying sign about judicial battles ahead.

As for the disgrace that culminated last night (with Barrett showing up at a partisan rally)...I'm going to invoke a movie of my childhood, one many of you have probably never heard of: a Disney film called Darby O'Gill and the Little People. It was an Irish folk-tale, about a neer-do-well old Irish guy who happens upon a leprechaun. The leprechaun is duty-bound to grant three wishes to anyone who asks, and O'Gill abuses this privilege. But the leprechaun has an out: if he tricks the person into asking a fourth wish, the previous three are wiped out. The phrase is "Three wishes I'll grant you, great wishes or small, but make a fourth wish and you'll lose them all".

Thanks to Garland being blocked, Trump being elected, and Kennedy retiring in favor of Kavanaugh, the GOP had its three wishes and a still-young Supreme Court majority. They've got most of what they've wanted from the Court over the past decade -- many pro-business rulings; fie on voting rights. But this wasn't enough for them. Roberts was too "squishy"; he didn't undo Obamacare like they wanted. He had too much respect for (some) traditions; he wouldn't sign on to the slash-and-burn, Sherman's march to the sea tactics of the Federalist Society. So, offered this opportunity to truly lock in right-wing zealotry (just before an election in which they're likely to get blasted), they couldn't resist. They went for the fourth wish.

And, though the headline this morning is that they won, I think it's as Pyrrhic a victory as can be imagined. In the near-term, it's energized Dems even further -- that booming youth turnout early voting is showing is to a significant degree powered by anger over this. More to the point, it's moving the needle among Dems normally considered centrist/wishy-washy. Activists have long been pushing expanding the Court as retaliation for Garland, but I question whether, sans the RGB/Barrett exchange, the party as a whole would have found the move palatable. Now, though, with this blatant, super-norm-violating power grab, you have Chris Coons/Chuck Schumer/Angus King (Angus King!) screaming from the rafters that something has to be done. The chances that Dems will take what till a few months ago were thought radical steps -- expanding the Court, nuking the filibuster, adding DC & PR as states -- have increased substantially. To really push the metaphor: the Barrett confirmation was the firing on Fort Sumter...turning what was already a cold war into a shooting one, with the side whose only pure goal was to preserve the Union forced to engage at a level it had hoped desperately to avoid. I think history will look back on the Barrett putsch as a major tactical blunder.

One week, everybody. All hands on deck.

[Big Magilla]

Yes, it's all terrible but unless I'm missing something I don't understand these extensions for extra time needed to mail absentee ballots in. Why would anyone want to wait until the last minute to mail in their ballot, especially with the conditions we're living under now?

If the polls closed at 8pm, and someone voted at 7:59pm, should the vote be discarded because they waited until the last minute?

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean in connection to what I said.

[Sonic Youth]

Yes, it's all terrible but unless I'm missing something I don't understand these extensions for extra time needed to mail absentee ballots in. Why would anyone want to wait until the last minute to mail in their ballot, especially with the conditions we're living under now?

If the polls closed at 8pm, and someone voted at 7:59pm, should the vote be discarded because they waited until the last minute?

[Big Magilla]

Big Magilla wrote
Yes, it's all terrible but unless I'm missing something I don't understand these extensions for extra time needed to mail absentee ballots in. Why would anyone want to wait until the last minute to mail in their ballot, especially with the conditions we're living under now?

1) There are dozens of reasons I can think of off-hand.
2) But that's not what I posted about.

It's related to Kavanaugh's endorsement of Rehnquist's concurrence in Gore v Bush which he cited in voting to deny Wisconsin's six-day extension to receive mail-in ballots.

We've known all along which way the Republican Supreme Court will go in settling disputes over close elections so nothing election related should surprise us anymore. The only way to beat them at their games is to win decisively at the ballot box and with mail-in votes sent in as early as possible.

[Sabin]

Big Magilla wrote
Yes, it's all terrible but unless I'm missing something I don't understand these extensions for extra time needed to mail absentee ballots in. Why would anyone want to wait until the last minute to mail in their ballot, especially with the conditions we're living under now?

1) There are dozens of reasons I can think of off-hand.
2) But that's not what I posted about.

[Big Magilla]

Yes, it's all terrible but unless I'm missing something I don't understand these extensions for extra time needed to mail absentee ballots in. Why would anyone want to wait until the last minute to mail in their ballot, especially with the conditions we're living under now?

[Sabin]

Jesus Christ, this is all happening fast.

Amy Coney Barrett gets confirmed...

Mississippi asks Supreme Court again to review its 15-week abortion ban

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/misissippi ... ng-review/

And apparently Brett Kavanaugh just endorsed Rehnquist's concurrence in Bush v. Gore, which was too extreme for Kennedy or O'Connor.

https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1320873994032205824

It's feeling dark.

[Sabin]

Okri wrote
Obviously, the early voting numbers are insanely strong. One tweet thread points out that early youth vote (18-29 year olds) is up. Curious how much of this is a shift from election day voting vs genuine growth. Hopeful, though.

It's probably somewhere in the middle. America is a partisan country now. High voter turnout might be one of the benefits.

But something is definitely happening. Here's something that might not make a lot of sense to some people on this board. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez played Among Us on Twitch this past week and 439,000 people watched! It became the third-most views ever for a single Twitch stream. Obviously, this election doesn't hang on young people showing up to vote. It's the over-65+ that switched to Biden. But as Rachel Bitecofer says (who Mister Tee turned me on to) there are no swing voters, there are only two types of voters: activated and unactivated. People are activated.

[Okri]

Obviously, the early voting numbers are insanely strong. One tweet thread points out that early youth vote (18-29 year olds) is up. Curious how much of this is a shift from election day voting vs genuine growth. Hopeful, though.

[Sabin]

A star is born. Kristen Welker. Thank you.

I think a neutral debate is a win for Biden. Debates are about moments. There were no moments. Last debate was a 90 minute moment that traumatized enough Americans for the rest of their lives. At worst, it was a tie. More likely, it was a win for Biden, who was sharp, fiery, and make Americans comfortable with the idea of him as President, which admittedly was never going to be a far bridge.

But Trump said a lot of goofy things ("It will kill all the birds." "CHINA IS FILTHY!") and a lot of cruel things. I saw an excellent tweet from Bill Maher saying "They should at least reunite the children with their coyotes." He seemed heartless. Worst of all, we just don't know what he was talking about. For somebody who campaigns as an outsider, Trump repeats a lot of inside-the-beltway talking points (and Fox News soundbites) that he don't always amount to a coherent form of attack. It's a very limited skillset but in 2016 it came across as more least interesting because he was up against twenty embarrassing Republicans and Hillary Clinton and he could use his one successful line of attack: "Why haven't you done anything?" He tried that again tonight and it constituted his strongest moments but he just kept pummeling himself in the face with nonsense statements like saying "I'm the least racist person in the room" TO A BLACK WOMAN. I think his attacks were just more focused in 2016 and he's just not talented enough a politician to attack AND defend. He did a bad job of both.

At worst for Trump, these two debates are big "The emperor has no clothes" moments. Biden is such a quiet presence that it's hard to really focus on more than Trump. In debate number one, he seemed like a monster. In this one, he just seemed like a goofy con man. I don't see how even his most ardent supporters are going to feel good about this one. Trump has based his entire political career on not being a politician, and in the end he didn't give anyone a single reason why they should vote for him for four more years. Foolish.

I don't think this debate can stop Trump's bleeding. I think all Trump did was remind people why they should want him gone and get audiences more comfortable with the idea that Joe Biden might already be President.