I’m a wuss when it comes to getting sliced open, so I’m not sure how much I can brain today. However, what I can do is initiate a discussion thread, and there’s plenty to discuss with respect to tomorrow’s election.
Here are some questions that come to mind:
a). Who will win?
b.) Will we have a near-definitive result tomorrow night, or will the result be in abeyance until all the mail-in ballots are counted?
c.) Will Trump begin contesting the results tomorrow, after he loses (assuming he will lose), or after the mail-in votes are counted?
d.) Will Trump supporters (or militant Lefties) begin rioting or protesting immediately? (I don’t expect this will happen until Wednesday.) Will any protests be violent and widespread?
e.) Does anybody think that Trump stands a chance of winning?
f.) Will the election go to the courts if Trump loses? (I have a bet that if he does lose, it will NOT wind up in the Supreme Court like Bush v. Gore did.)
g.) How nervous are you about the outcome? I have to say that I’m not that nervous, but, surprisingly, some of my friends who live overseas—and aren’t Americans—are more nervous than I.
h.) Will the Senate go Democratic?
i.) What surprises do you predict?
I remember the 2016 election when I was in Hong Kong, and was able to see the results in real time as I was many hours ahead. I was so confident that Hillary would win, and had voted for her by mail. But, as the hours progressed and I watched the needle on the New York Times’s election meeter move slowly but inexorably towards Trump, I got more and more depressed. When they finally called it for Trump. I went out for a long walk along the harbor. I was gone for an hour and a half or more, and when I returned to my hotel I had no idea where I’d been. Things have been downhill, government-wise, ever since.
I have learned over the years that my prognostication skills are unreliable. Still, I expect Biden will win, Dems will take the Senate, Trump will contest the results beginning on Tuesday even before the polls close. We will see some kind of violence/chaos featuring gun-toting tRumpsters in Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas, and Florida.
I hope I am wrong about the tRumpsters.
This all sounds quite plausible to me.
Same here.
You nailed it! Agree on all counts, including my prognostication skills!).
Yup. My thoughts as well, including the part about being terrible with prognostication.
I listened to, I think it was PBS, the other day and the discussion was about a group of x-military and police who formed a group under an old soldier type. Their goal is to form a militia to defend against a left wing takeover. They said they had about 25,000 members, all well armed and trained. My guess is these guys won’t make trouble, but who knows?
I am terrified that he is going to pull another win out of his orange behind. I can’t shake the doom and gloom feeling I have. I hope I am wrong and if not, then I at least hope the Senate flips and there will be some constraints.
I think the chances of tRump losing but the Republicans keeping control of the Senate are higher than the other way around.
On paper at least.
I’ll be working the precinct voting spot from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in a rural Texas town (pop. about 1300). It will go for Trump because it votes red. Community makes a difference, which is why there won’t be violence/rioting here, no matter who wins. I do expect violence/rioting in most big cities because the outcome will be contested by weird tribes formed over the internet who have no real sense of community.
a). Biden will clearly win the popular vote. I think he will also win the electoral college
b.) No news organisation will call the election tomorrow. it will be at least 4th or 5th that will have a definitive result. Trump will claim to have one based on in person voting on the 3rd
c.) Will claim vistory on the in person voting which will favour the republicans as most democrats will have voted early
d.) There will be protests no matter what but it will be more localized and unfortunately will target elected officials. Think public shaming or assaults on members of congress
e.) He has a 1 in ten chance, I’d take a punt on those odds. If he holds what he got which is likely it will need a higher turn out to overcome that advantage.
f.) It will but if the turn out is large enough then the arguments become much weaker. The supreme court if they are smart side steps the case.
g.) Very nervous, the strong man tactics that trump employs are a poison on democracy that has spread very far beyond your borders.
h.) 50:50 with vice president doing a lot of heavy lifting. Would love to see Lyndsey graham loose. Such a cowardly little scrote
i.) Texas and Arizona go blue, Pennsylvania goes to the courts. Melania and body double appear at the same time to launch a new tv series on Trump TV
If Trump does lose, I think it would be hilarious if he won the popular vote.
It would certainly be a condign outcome given the 2016 results. But there’s virtually no chance — either of Trump winning 50%+ of the popular vote, or of losing the electoral college if he does. FiveThirtyEight gives Trump a 2% chance of the former and puts the chance of the latter at less than 1%.
As my dad used to observe, it’s differences of opinion that make horse races. The latest Democracy Institute/Daily Express poll has Trump winning the popular vote 48% to 47%, and the Electoral College with 326 votes. Trafalgar Group has them less then 1% apart (Trump ahead), and it looks like winning most of the swing states (their site won’t load fully). It will be interesting to see what happens.
I’m offering 2-to-1 odds that Donald Trump will not win 50%+ of the popular vote and even money that he won’t win a plurality. If you’re interested in either wager, name your price. I’ll cover all bets.
No, bet, Ken. I merely seek to point out that just because one outlet says it, that doesn’t make it so.
Okay, but the two outlets you’ve cited are outliers — the Trafalgar Group (the one with which I’m more familiar) being both low-quality and having a demonstrated Republican bias.
There is no way Trump has a nearly 1/2 chance of winning the popular vote given that he is still more than 8% behind in the national polls. The Democracy Institute poll is bullshit.
DrBrydon:
Here’s a taste of the Trafalgar Group’s leading pollster on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show last night:
https://twitter.com/existentialfish/status/1323087162938720256
It’s interesting how differently people respond to forthcoming surgery. I find that, every time I’ve ever had surgery (including open-heart surgery at eighteen for a congenital defect), I’ve felt relaxed because it’s the only time and situation in which I am able to feel that I have no responsibilities – I will be unconscious, in an oblivion exceeding deep sleep. It’s so refreshing that I actually felt regretful when I woke up from my heart surgery (I was also in a lot of pain, and had 3 chest tubes, two IV lines, and an endotracheal tube in place, so all that might have influenced my attitude).
Anyway, enough of that tangent. I do NOT feel relaxed and at ease about the election, so I weirdly envy you the timing of your surgery, though not the problem that requires it.
I like the “don’t worry” drugs & the anti-inflammatories you get to have. I have bad, systemic inflammation issues so not having them for a day is a real treat. I also seem to have such a good sleep that I don’t like waking up.
I know about the waking up. “You’ve got to wake up now, Ms. Olson.” Me: “5 more minutes.” Snooze alarm.
I once had a surgery (relatively minor) cancelled at the last minute, but they put me in the recovery room for a while before letting me go. There I was, fully conscious, watching the other patients around me slowly come back to life. A very strange sight, but perhaps comparable to a C of E church on any Sunday morning.
Ouch! ^_^
🐾🐾
What do you readers make of this…which was part of Kamala Harris’s twitter feed?
https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1322963321994289154?fbclid=IwAR2ViG_BNR1wy8xVs_UGLBgOMH1o6a6T0dpez2kQCZw7ys1vSXy9Y4eAB6U
And here is tireless Trump-nemesis Andrew Sullivan’s take…..
https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1323010162127478786
I think she’s saying the opposite. But she should be more clear. Maybe she’s leaving it ambiguous and hoping the woke will be happy and the non-woke as well.
Yeah, I think Sullivan is being a bit histrionic there, for reasons others have pointed out.
And I’m certainly no fan of wokism!
Seems like it mostly calls for giving everyone the same chances which is fine with me. It does imply that we should all end up at the same place which seems to be anti-meritocratic but Harris has so obviously benefitted from a meritocratic system so I doubt she is against it. She probably just means that we should all be given the same starting point. Or she retweeted without giving it a lot of thought. Or she was pandering to the Left to get them to vote Biden/Harris. To call her a Marxist on the basis of this is ridiculous, IMHO.
The last line is a bit over the top, but the concept of giving citizens the resources they need vs. everyone the same resources shouldn’t be, IMO, controversial. Every universal health care system functions that way. The vast majority of income tax codes function that way.
The way to assess if a plan for equity is fairer/smarter than equality is to consider whether the proposed system passes the “outsider” test. I.e. if you didn’t know who you would be in the system – rich, poor, white, black, disabled, abled, straight, gay, male, female, etc.. – would you still view the system as reasonable. If the government covers my $12,000 MRI, that doesn’t mean they should give every healthy person $12,000, that would be stupid. It makes much more sense to say the government will just cover MRI costs for those who need them.
I totally agree with this and I think a lot of citizens in countries with a socialist slant (ones with universal health care, etc.) would. I don’t think it’s Marxist. This is basically what a lot of Canadians believe. The typical Canadian doesn’t believe that everyone has the same advantages starting out and that affects our concepts of fairness which differ from say the US concept of fairness. An example is Canada’s courts ruling that a Sikh kid can bring a kirpan worn under his clothes to school in Canada. You’ll see Americans argue “not fair if my kid can’t do it” but you’ll see Canadians argue, “but your kid can do it if he decides to identify as a Sikh and wear the full Sikh dress every day and get all the discrimination that comes with it”. It’s not a 1:1 example but I think it feeds into the attitude of what is considered “fair”.
Of course Democratic Socialism has a long history in Canada. The movement came to prominence in Western Canada with Tommy Douglas and the CCF in Saskatchewan in 1944. Fast forward, and Western Canada has recently given rise to The United Conservative party – a sort of pseudo-Republican right-wing amalgam of social conservatives that are now arguing for Alberta separating from Canada.
More interesting is Tommy Douglas’s party (NDP) in Saskatchewan has been consistently locked out & an unholy coalition of Liberals & PCs have joined forces to form the Saskatchewan Party. Though unholy isn’t all that fair seeing as the two parties are close on some issues.
Say, I’m one Yank wouldn’t mind living like a Canuck for a while — as long as it doesn’t involving eating poutaine or having to go at it strictly doggy-style so husband and wife can both watch the hockey game at the same time on the tv, eh? 🙂
Nah, you’ll just have to eat at Swiss Chalet sometimes & get a PC Insiders account for curb-side grocery pick up during covid.
Nah, you’ll just have to eat at Swiss Chalet sometimes & get a PC Insiders account for curb-side grocery pick up during covid.
Ken, if you’re really opposed to the real thing (cheese curds that squeak against your teeth; serious beef gravy), you could always go for a Canada-US mashup like this. Just don’t let Diana catch you eating it, this is not considered, um, Canadian kosher.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thekitchenmagpie.com%2Fhow-to-make-poutine-hot-dogs%2F&psig=AOvVaw2rxBMzS2xcbXOGYyPI24y6&ust=1604439080756000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCOjd3r3n5OwCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD
Just eat butter tarts. I eat at least one per week.
I didn’t realize that Harris was running for the Handicapper General spot. The only way for everyone to end up in the same spot is to pull Harrison Bergeron down.
I know this is going to be about the election, but The Boss gave us the freedom to prognosticate about whatever we’d like. here’s mine;
Primoz Roglic will win tomorrow’s time trial in the Vuelta a Espana and reclaim the Maillot Rosa (for his third stage victory and maybe not his last) from Carapaz. He has a score to settle. I also predict that he will hold off all the rest in the remaining stages to go on to win in Madrid, revenge for his heartbreaking loss at the Tour de France.
Agreed. I’m a fan of Michael Woods, the *only* human to have run a sub 4 minute mile, and to have finished a complete Tour de France. If that man learns to swim, triathlon records will fall.
Also, Trump will contest the results, but not until he finishes contesting the 2016 results.
Yes. In his addled mind, they are all one.
I don’t know if a sub-4-minute mile says much about a marathon performance; but a TdF completion might.
Of course, he’s one helluva athelete!
I hope you are right. I was sorry he missed out in the TdF a few weeks ago. Not that Pogacar didn’t deserve his win. Slovenian 1-2 in the TdF. Doubt we’ll ever see that again!
And how about Tao Geoghegan Hart winning the Giro?! The young bucks are really taking over.
Sepp Kuss too! This new generation of riders is so very strong. It’s going to be a really competitive peloton in coming years. I’m excited to see all this new talent.
Me too. Great to have strong young kids coming on.
I am a Froome fan; but I’m sort of tired of Sky/Ineos/Grenadiers by now. (But Geoghegan Hart’s win was nice. I was happy to see Geraint Thomas win the Tour in 2018. And Bernal (first Colombian!) in 2019.)
Froome’s 2019 crash was a career-ender (at least for podium finished in grand tours).
So nice to be distracted by the Tour de France🤓
You nailed it Edward!
On the latest 538 forecast simulation, Biden wins 90 out of 100 times.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/
Does Trump still have a chance? Yes, but I would be shocked if he won again.
Also, if you drill into the forecasts for the states that tipped the election for Trump in 2016 (Michigan, Penn, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana), Biden is clearly ahead in several of those…
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/michigan/
Yes, he has one chance in ten according to FiveThirtyEight. If you had a revolver with ten chambers, would you play Russian Roulette with it? I wouldn’t.
Well put.
Is Trump getting elected the same as getting shot though?
@blitz442: “Is Trump getting elected the same as getting shot though?”
Obviously *far* worse since it affects the entire US, and even most of the world.
So you’d take a bullet over Trump getting elected?
Not so sure I’d take it that far, but you’re a better human than me (or at least more self-sacrificing).
I do not make lots of speculation. After all, where is the evidence? The polls say that Biden/Harris will win and I suspect they will. All of the blow from Trump will come and go. But he needs to go.
This election is closer to the 2007/8 election when Obama won and more so to 1932 when FDR won. The republicans had driven us into economic ruin and the democrats had plans to get us out. Notice it was always the republicans that got us here and the democrats who got us out. The same is true now only this time it is more to save the democracy, the rule of law and that is just as important. Even in the worst of the depression FDR did not consider anything like Trump has done as president. Mainly because he was much smarter and a competent president moving forward with plans. The one we have now moves with only his mouth.
I find the whole “Republicans are better at managing the economy” myth REALLY annoying.
Just looking at the recent past, the facts do not support that myth.
Compare the economy under GHW Bus that was handed to Bill Clinton with the economy that Clinton handed GW Bus. Compare the economy that GW Bush handed Obama to the economy that Obama handed Trump. Now compare the economy that Trump inherited to the state of the economy now.
Yeah, Republicans are so much better at managing the economy.
L
In the UK, we get the same thing about the economy, but with the Conservatives. Equally irritating, and measured from a very London-centric perspective. Boris Johnson’s victory in Labour’s so-called “red wall” constituencies in our December 2019 general was (here, blue is the colour of the right and red that of the left – which intuitively makes more sense if you think of Communism and the red flag etc.) represents the first time that many places in the North have elected Conservative MPs. For good reason, I suspect – and it is likely to be the last, too. (Last year’s election was heavily influenced by Brexit, which was an issue that cut across the usual party political divide.)
Oops, not sure where the stray “was” before the opening bracket came from!
The big problem of the last two general elections has been the utter uselessness of the Labour leader. With the Conservative record since 2015, a reasonable Labour leader would have destroyed them. Corbyn bears a big portion of the blame for us being where we are now.
Agreed – I can finally vote Labour again.
Bullseye.
I also have little confidence in GOP Presidents tackling the deficit. This plot is somewhat out of date:
http://www.berettaconsulting.com/barbarossa/M/stuff/inc/Ec/deficit_2016.jpg
I am one of those nervous people overseas. But then I live in the UK, where the government is building massive parking lots with capacity for tens of thousands of trucks in the south of England, in the expectation of a “reasonable worst-case scenario” of delays of several days in transporting goods between the UK and the continent of Europe. In other words, the British government and a significant proportion of the population seem perfectly relaxed about the likelihood of an overnight trade collapse several months shortages of what we have come to take for granted as basic goods… Which is to say that we human beings are capable of astonishing stupidity. Certainly sufficient stupidity to re-elect to the highest office a man with the cognitive capacity and emotional maturity of a five-year-old and the moral integrity of a mid-level crime boss (and that is possibly an insult to 5-year-olds and crime bosses).
Only “possibly an insult”?
I’m also a nervous Brit, and grew up in what was once “The Garden of England” but is soon to become “The Lorry Park of France”. When Johnson promised us this time last year there would be “no border down the Irish Sea” little did the voting public imagine that that would be because there would be one in the home counties…!
a) Biden looks to be ahead.
b) Of course news stations will call the election. Reckless sensationalism is what they do. But the count won’t be official until probably Nov 10th, since people can mail in ballots on election day.
c) Of course he will
d) I don’t think right-wing protests will be widespread. There is a huge amount of bombast on the right.
e) Yes, I do. He might have only a 20-30% chance of winning, but 20-30% likelihood events happen all the time.
f) I don’t think any major state result will go to court. Maybe some individual district results will. Having said that, if a major state result did go to court, I would strongly predict that SCOTUS would take the case and rule in favor of Trump, no matter what the specific issue. With Barrett’s appointment, Roberts has lost any control he may have had over the (farther) right wing.
g) Not nervous. While I really don’t want Trump to win, I’m kinda zen about the whole election at this point. I’ve cast my vote, and there’s nothing more I can do about it.
h) Doubtful.
i) Would love to see Doug Jones eke out a surprise win in Alabama. Ditto for Mark Kelly in Arizona (though that one won’t be as much of a “surprise” as that race is running pretty close).
I don’t want to be wrong, and it seems like there is a lot of excitement for Trump in rural America, but I there is a lot of antipathy in suburban America, and there are more people in suburbs than in rural areas now.
If Trump loses (as I suspect he will), there will likely be a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth, but civil unrest is unlikely.
Biden’s problem will be that he will immediately sell out any inkling of any progressive leanings in his administration except for a couple of inconsequential culture war symbols, and I suspect that the riots will continue. Anyway, that will be the challenge of his administration, how to control the extremes while governing from the Center.
I recently drove through rural Minnesota and I expected wall-to-wall Trump signs.
– Not that many Trump signs, surprisingly
– Biden/Harris signs were pretty close in number (though there were fewer of them)
This gives me hope for MN, WI, etc.
1. Biden/Harris win handily.
2. Trump grumbles about “voter fraud” but accepts defeat in the days following the election.
3. During his lame duck period Trump will pardon himself of any and all crimes he may be “falsely accused of” by future Democrats.
4. Civil unrest will be bi-partisan and mostly over down-ballot issues/candidates.
Your #3 is interesting. The President can only pardon federal crimes, and it’s likely SDNY is gunning for him for state crimes. However I wouldn’t put it past him to try some sort of complicated pardon scheme to try and get out of even state charges. If SDNY is smart (and Trump loses), they’ll stay tight-lipped about all future legal actions until Thursday, January 21st.
Right on.
Technically, the SDNY has jurisdiction only over federal crimes. Jurisdiction to prosecute Trump for New York state crimes lies with Cyrus Vance, Jr.’s Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (or with Letitia James’s New York attorney general’s office).
There’s no scheme by which Trump can pardon himself for state crimes — though I suppose it’s not beyond the pale that he could try to cut some kind of non-prosecution deal in exchange for going quietly and urging his cultists to desist from violence.
Trump will almost certainly issue federal pardons for his immediate family (and try to pardon himself) before relinquishing office. (He could try to resign early and get VP Pence to ratify his pardon, but that might be a bridge too far even for a simpering sycophant like Pence. It would certainly foreclose any hopes Pence may be harboring for a future in national electoral politics, with no benefit to Pence other than going down in the history books as the 46th POTUS.)
“… he could try to cut some kind of non-prosecution deal in exchange for going quietly and urging his cultists to desist from violence.”
That would really be interesting. Would Trump be able to keep his big mouth shut? I doubt it. Many people would try to goad him into breaking his vow of silence. I can see Trump being dragged away screaming, “No, I didn’t mean it.”
I expect he’ll run more towards the blackmail scheme than the clemency for good behavior scheme. He’ll pressure every politico he has dirt on to stop any such prosecution, on the threat that if he goes down, he’ll take them with him.
That ploy would work on Trump’s fellow Republicans, but Vance and James are both Democrats, and I doubt the Donald’s got anything on them.
Cyrus Vance, Jr.’s biggest sin to date as Manhattan DA was his failure to indict Ivanka and DJT, Jr., in 2012 for their blatant fraud w/r/t the failed Trump Soho project (which, in typical Trump fashion, wasn’t actually even in NY’s Soho district in the first place).
Pardons only apply to criminal charges. I recently saw the figure for the number of lawsuits awaiting private citizen Trump and it was in the high thousands. Possible scenario is that he spends his lame duck term planning and possibly executing a quick escape from the country to more friendly, non-extraditing, climes.
It’s unclear whether a president can pardon himself for Federal crimes. I suspect it might go to the courts for a decision and it will be interesting to see if the newly packed Supreme Court will throw Trump under the bus or not. I suspect they will.
I agree. No way the Supremes go the extra mile for Trump. What’s in it for them? It’s not like Trump inspires allegiance and honor. He’d turn on them in a heartbeat. And, of course, they’re smart people. They know that if they decide against Trump in the election, they won’t ever have to worry about an angry tweet from him as he’ll be a loser. If they decide unfairly for Trump, they’ll be forever known as a judge whose allegiance was bought.
I don’t think the polsters have learnt from their mistakes of 2016. Many Trump voters are not being honest with polling companies (or anybody else), fearing retaliation if they make their voting preference public. I heard some interesting information recently where a polling company asked voters who they think their friends will vote for rather than who they will vote for. They’ve done this before and found the results far more reliable. They’re predicting a Trump victory.
Biden may win the popular vote but that’s a consolation prize that counts for little. My prediction is Trump will win the electoral college comfortably. If I’m wrong I’ll eat humble pie but I really don’t think I’ll have to. Look at the crowds turning up for Trump rallies, while Biden couldn’t fill a minibus.
I wonder if folks here are stating what they hope the result will be rather than what they really think it will be.
I’m British so I “don’t have a dog in the fight”, just an interested bystander with many friends and work colleagues in the USA.
The polls were actually pretty accurate in 2016, it’s just that people interpreted them in a biased manner. In the last few days before the election, they had Clinton ahead by 1-3% with a margin of error of 3%. And guess what? She won the popular vote by a margin of about 3%.
Where people’s biases sent them in the wrong direction was (a) thinking a 10% lead for months beforehand was relevant data. When everyone votes on election day, it really isn’t; only the most recent poll matters*. And (b) not paying enough attention to the electoral college foibles.
On (a); Biden’s lead in the past few weeks will be much more relevant this year, since a lot more of the voting is “spread out” over time rather than being on one day. On (b); I don’t think many of us are likely to make that mistake again.
Nate Silver sez there is no evidence for “shy Trump supporters” lying to pollsters:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-supporters-arent-shy-but-polls-could-still-be-missing-some-of-them/
There does seem to be a big enthusiasm gap. Many Trump voters actually want the guy, but it seems like most Biden voters just oppose Trump. So I think Biden has a “silent majority” of his own, in a way – people who’d never bother showing up at a Biden rally but who’ll nonetheless be glad to check the box next to his name.
There are also a lot of Lincoln Project Republicans as well. They have been driven from the party by the monster they helped create. They voters that a Democratic candidate in a “normal” cycle would not have access to.
Doesn’t seem like Trump is making much headway in getting those “Suburban Housewives” (as he’s wont to call them) back in the GOP fold, despite his magnanimous promises to save their neighborhoods from the dusky races and to bring back “jobs for their husbands.”
Chrissake, Donald, the 1950s called; they want their white-male prerogative back.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Biden voters are generally less likely to throw their choice in everyone else’s face with signs and truck/boat parades like Trump voters. Clearly the behavior of the voters parallels those they vote for. Add to that the fact that Trump and his voters have threatened the other side with physical violence. Antifa notwithstanding, it seems that Trump voters don’t have as much to fear. Some carrying guns may in fact may wish the battle become violent.
Let’s be prepared for the worst scenario and hope it never comes. This is not a prediction but a fear.
1. By Thursday, all media outlets declare Biden is the winner, although some states are close.
2. Trump says the vote was rigged and riddled with fraud. He says he is going to the courts. He will not concede.
3. Republican leaders back Trump by saying that the courts must decide.
4. Armed right-wing militias patrol the streets of many cities for the purpose, so they say, to keep Antifa from creating violence. The police stand by and do nothing.
5. Trump drags out the court proceedings to January 20, 2021. He refuses to leave office because the courts haven’t decided.
6. The Supreme Court finally rules that Biden won. Trump says the Court was “bought.” He still refuses to leave. Republicans say nothing.
7. Tens of millions demonstrate in the streets against Trump. In several states, the police and the militias fire on the protestors, hundreds are killed.
8. Hundreds of thousands of government workers walk off the job in protest against Trump. Economic activity in the country collapses as the virus rages.
9. Starving people do engage in violence by raiding grocery stores, giving the police and militias another excuse to fire on them.
10. Finally (and this is being optimistic) enough Republicans become bold enough to denounce Trump. The military intervenes to depose Trump (although thousands of the military desert to join the militias) and Biden is sworn in on March 1, 2021 after the military puts down the militias. There are heavy casualties on both sides.
11. Trump flees to a country without an extradition treaty to avoid prosecution. Biden faces a country in ruins. Starvation, joblessness, homelessness, and deaths from the virus bring despair to tens of millions. The military patrols the streets to keep order. Each half of the nation hates the other with a burning passion. The religious claim this is all God’s punishment on a wicked nation. Others fear their children and grandchildren have no future. Right-wing militias plot guerrilla warfare.
Now, there’s a plot line for a horror/thriller film!
Yup, one called “Trump 2: Aftermath” 😷
Sounds like a good plot for a movie! In reality, my hope is that Trump sees that he’s going to lose way before this and cuts his losses.
Haven’t all media outlets been declaring Biden the winner for months now? 😉
I expect the Secret Service would physically escort him out at that point. Likewise, if Biden wins and is inaugurated, and says he wants to take up residence in the WH immediately, they’re likely to forcefully remove any remaining ‘squatters’ as a matter of presidential protection. The head of the USSS is a career agent, not an air-dropped-in political appointee, so he’s very unlikely to do a Barr and just go along with anything Trump says.
DT will go quietly then, and complain latter. He’s not big on confrontation without an audience to play to.
“DT will go quietly then, and complain latter. He’s not big on confrontation without an audience to play to.”
Can one reasonably assume that he will contemplate the effect of his post-election reaction on his commercial brand?
And Biden sends in a Seal Team and liquidates tRump, wherever he hides! 🙂
I almost don’t care if T buggers off, as long as he GOES AWAY😖
It is rumored that Putin has offered Trump asylum, but he will have to share an apartment with Edward Snowden.😊
Now THERE is your new sitcom!
Ha! Tony Randall (or Jack Lemmon) as Snowden and Jack Klugman (or Walter Matthau) as DJT.
Oh and the sitcom will have this theme song.
Ha! Did you hear that Snowden is applying for Russian citizenship?
I would like to see his whole crime family living in one of the places Trump termed a “shithole country”.
Me, too, if by “shithole country” you mean “prison”.
NY AG serves notice to Trump on MSNBC she’s coming after him and his family after the election
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/10/ny-ag-serves-notice-to-trump-on-msnbc-shes-coming-after-him-and-his-family-after-the-election/
I would like to see his whole crime family living in one of the places Trump termed a “shithole country”.
If he wins tomorrow, they very likely will be living in one, but their privilege and wealth will protect them from the consequences.
Yes!
I think civil unrest from the trumpsters is fairly likely, assuming he loses (my fervent hope!). I have been considering this for some time and have prepared for it.
A regular Pollyanna, ain’tcha?
I think Trump will appear to be ahead on Tuesday night and will declare victory, and even if Biden later wins the election, it will go to the Supreme Court.
The Republicans have been much more aggressive this year in their voter-supression efforts, though this might backfire. Also, the voters who might choose to stay home because of fear of covid are largely Democrats (Republicans don’t believe the virus is serious). So I am worried. And I am surprised (as I was in 2016) by the confidence of many Democrats.
I’m more surprised…. no that’s not right… I’m more impressed at how Democrats are generally so shellshocked still by 2016 that they refuse to remember that 2020 is very different from 2016. I’ve received thousands of campaign email messages. Not one suggests that this election is “in the bag”.
If you believe the meme that Dems are more likely to vote by mail and GOPers are more likely to vote in person, then it would make sense for Trump to be ahead on election day and then slowly lose that lead as the mail-in votes are tallied. Exit polls will also be skewed towards the subset of the population that votes in person. However I’m not really sure I believe that particular meme.
In any event, I think Hilary was right when she said that Biden should absolutely not concede on election day, no matter what the count. The impact of the mail-in vote is just too difficult to predict. I guess in terms of smart politics, that same advice would go for Trump too, but I really won’t mind if he concedes before the final count is in.
“Meme”?
Democrats have systematically been encouraging early voting since the pandemic began. Republicans are lead by a man who tells his followers that early voting is terrible and they need to go to the polls. It’s not just a “meme”.
Yes, meme. Because there is no evidence voting by mail favors one party over the other.
Irrelevant. The article was published in May. It describes historical patterns which, while interesting, don’t pertain to the current environment. Since May, as I pointed out before and you seem to have missed, Democrats have been pushing ever since for early voting while Republicans are led by someone who says early voting is bad and shouldn’t happen. These messages affect the pattern in ways that previous cycles simply don’t predict.
I did see your post. But what the parties publicly say they want to happen is not necessarily what happens. Just because the Dems push mail-in voting doesn’t mean more mail-in voters will be Dems. Likewise the GOP saying ‘early voting is bad’ is no indication individual GOP voters won’t do it. After all, Mitch said nominating a supreme court justice in an election year was bad too, right? I would not count on such hypocrites standing by their ideals on an issue so directly linked to reelection of their candidate.
The other part of the argument is that Dems take COVID seriously and fear Trump’s “poll watchers” and, therefore, want to avoid voting in person. Trump’s mishandling of COVID also has driven older voters to the Dems and they are more likely to vote by mail than in person.
Don’t be silly.
This is one of the few things the US Constitution is completely clear on: the president serves for a term of four years. If the incumbent president has not been ratified by the Electoral College, he automatically ceases to be president on January 20th at midday. This is why he didn’t try to postpone the election: it doesn’t do him any good.
So if the EC has not been settled by 20th January, Trump stops being president. The same would apply to Mike Pence, so the interim presidency passes to the leader of the House of Representatives (assuming that the congressional elections are not in contest too).
If Trump contests this and drags it out to 20th January, he’ll be dealing with President Pelosi. I almost wish it would happen.
“This is why he didn’t try to postpone the election: it doesn’t do him any good.”
I remember at the time it was thought that he would want to delay it to give more time to the post-COVID recovery. Turns out that wouldn’t have achieved the expected result anyway. COVID will likely be worse a month or two from now. Perhaps he was thinking he could delay it for, say, four years.
“4. Armed right-wing militias patrol the streets of many cities for the purpose, so they say, to keep Antifa from creating violence. The police stand by and do nothing.”
Will the militias also loot and burn?
This morning I was doing a lot of ‘doom scrolling’ about all this. Now I just want to play with my d*g and putter around the house.
Biden will win. There will be some attempts at voter suppression at polling places but very few violent incidents. The Trump caravans will continue but nothing much will happen with them due to fear that they might sway the outcome away from Trump. I think the anger they incur in voters outweighs their intimidation. Voters most likely to be intimidated have already voted. There will be a lot of GOP attempts to suppress votes but, for the most part, judges will hold the line. The media will report Biden way ahead in the vote so any judges who might lean Trump will be too afraid to soil their legacy by making unfair decisions.
We’ll have an all-but-definitive outcome tomorrow night if Biden scores a first-round TKO by being declared the winner in Florida, which counts its mail-in ballots as they come in (and where Biden is a better than 2-1 favorite), or in North Carolina (where Biden is also 2-1), or in Georgia (where Biden is a slight favorite), or in Ohio (which is currently even money), or if Biden wins a little later in the night in Arizona (where he’s 7-3). All of those states are must-wins for Trump. Without them, he has essentially no path to victory.
If, despite the polling, Trump sweeps those states, then we’re likely in for a long slog in Pennsylvania (where Biden has an 87% likelihood of victory), which has had a record number of mail-in ballots cast, but doesn’t start counting them until Tuesday (and which will continue to accept ballots received in the mail after that so long as they’re postmarked by 11/3). Since Democrats have cast nearly double the amount of mail-in ballots as Republicans in PA, Trump will probably have a lead there in the election-day voting, and will doubtless go to court to try to keep the mail-in ballots from being counted.
The Republicans have already demonstrated that they’re all about suppressing ballots. The Texas GOP went to court in an effort to invalidate 127,000 ballots legally cast at a drive-thru drop-off polling place in Houston (set up as an accommodation to the COVID pandemic). That effort has been rejected by the nine justices of the Texas Supreme Court, all of whom were appointed by Republicans (but, based on their votes in this case, are clearly closet neo-Marxists). The Texas GOP has now taken its efforts to a Texas federal district court, which has set a hearing in the matter for today.
No one expects Trump to accept defeat gracefully. But the extent of the mischief he causes (and the extent of the potential violence brought on by his cultists) will probably be proportionate to how close the election turns out to be.
Thanks Ken, the first part of our posting is heartening.
We still have rule of law in this country, at least in Texas. Tears of joy!
UPDATE: Houston federal district court judge Andrew Hanen (a Republican appointed to the bench by George W. Bush) has just ruled that the Republican plaintiffs lack “standing” to challenge the Harris County drive-thru ballots, which will, consequently, BE COUNTED.
Color me cautiously optimistic (as the saying goes) that, regardless of party affiliation, our state and federal judiciary will not engage in the wholesale invalidation of otherwise lawfully cast ballots on specious technical grounds.
Won’t that get appealed? Or is it immune from that? I expect Trump and the GOP to take every case as far as they can in order to throw it into their supposedly bought-and-paid-for Supreme Court.
It might get appealed, but I seriously doubt the district court’s order will get stayed pending appeal — meaning those votes WILL GET COUNTED (subject, perhaps, to an appellate court revisiting the issue at some point well after the election, though I think even that unlikely).
Good point.
The activists that brought the suit are trying to appeal the decision in the 5th Circuit court in New Orleans. I really doubt that after two state court rejections and rejection based on standing from the Houston Federal District court that the Circuit court will even take the case.
Keep in mind that the 120,000+ early vote totals from drive thru early voting will be reported within minutes after the polls close. I doubt that any court will want to touch that.
So yeah, there will be no stay from the Circuit.
Damn, I need to get another bottle of Scotch.
a). Don’t know who will win
b.) Probably be a few days before we know complete results, since some states don’t start counting mail-in ballots until election day
c.) Challenges will depend on how hinky the results are. And why are we assuming that it will only be Trump contesting results? Biden has said repeatedly that the only way Trump can win is if he cheats, so the Dems are just as likely, if not more so, to be crying foul.
d.) I think the Usual Suspects will begin to riot tomorrow. They want to keep up the pressure. Remember, they aren’t interested in the success of the election, but in the failure of the institutions.
e.) Yes, even CNN is saying today that both Trump and Biden have a path to victory.
f.) Whether the election goes to the courts depends on if there is a case to be made that a state has accepted invalid ballots.
g.) Yes, nervous.
h.) No, the Senate will remain Republican.
i.) Surprises? Biden being impeached by his own party over the family business in an attempt to make Harris president, or being removed in the first year under the 25th Amendment.
Also eager to see whether Peter Boghossian wins his write-in campaign for mayor of Portland.
You can’t be impeached for something you (allegedly) did years ago.
Huh? Of course you can. Impeachment is a political process. Imagine that it was found that a president had fifteen years earlier committed a series of murders. The House could impeach, and likely would unless it was held by Republicans and the president was tRump.
I believe Lady Atheist has raised an unresolved issue of constitutional law regarding the impeachment of a president for conduct that occurred before he or she launched his or her campaign for the presidency.
OTOH, if independent counsel Ken Starr had gotten the goods on Bill Clinton for the failed, inscrutable 1979 land deal known as “Whitewater,” I’ve no doubt congressional Republicans would’ve brought impeachment proceedings for it against him, even though it occurred more than a decade before he took office.
That would have created a case of first impression for SCOTUS to decide.
I would think the Constitution would need to specifically exclude such an impeachment. What it specifies is “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”. No mention of when the offenses occurred.
For a price, one could argue that issue either way. 🙂
I have trouble with the idea that any rational person would find “except for crimes committed before taking office” in the Constitution. But then I don’t understand how anybody concludes that a well regulated militia includes my idiot neighbor either.
“For a price, one could argue that issue either way” – indeed, the lawyers always win.
What was the bottom line on Whitewater?
A great big double-decker nothingburger.
Nobody made any money on the deal, and no fraud on either of the Clintons’ part was ever established.
Plus, (rumored former B. Clinton paramour) Susan McDougal refused to testify before
Inspector JavertKen Starr’s grand jury, instead doing down time on a civil contempt charge.Thanks.
That may depend on what the meaning of “be” be.
You can’t be pardoned for something you have not yet been indicted for. And I do not think you can pardon yourself. Only a really corrupt court would swallow that one.
Yes you can (be pardoned). Nixon was pardoned for any and all crimes he may have committed in office. He hadn’t been charged. Pardoning yourself is something else and I suspect we are going to see how that one plays out.
I would argue that you cannot logically pardon yourself, otherwise that would put the Executive above the law, which was clearly not the intent of the Founders (assuming you are an Originalist).
I agree with your logic. I disagree that this is a settled matter, if that’s your implication.
No, definitely not settled.
Yes, there are two great unresolved issues of federal constitutional law in this regard — whether a sitting US president can be indicted and whether a president can pardon himself.
The nation has been fortunate in that, of its first 44 presidents, only Richard Nixon came close to causing either issue to be raised issue, but didn’t. (NB: On his last day in office, Bill Clinton cut a deal to avoid the possibility of a post-presidency indictment on contempt-of-court or perjury charges, but never raised the possibility — at least overtly — of pardoning himself.)
Self-pardoning is absurd.
But I fully expect Trump to issue blanket pardons for himself and his family.
But they’re guilty of nothing, you know! Just want that pardon in there. 😉
Self pardoning brings to mind the ouroboros.
At least American voters get the chance to end their national nightmare on November 3rd. Here in Britain, we’re stuck with Boris “Trump Lite” Johnson and his bunch of incompetent minions for another four years.
What could drive an early election (if anything)?
Johnson’s Tory party has a majority of 80 in Parliament, so it is safe from a vote of no confidence which could trigger a general election.
Johnson’s own position isn’t nearly as secure. The Tories are ruthless at removing a prime minister whom they consider to be a liability. They even ousted Margaret Thatcher in 1990, remember. Johnson’s handling of the COVID crisis has been utterly shambolic, and it’s entirely possible that the new lockdown could still be in place at Christmas. That kind of ineptitude is likely to spur the Tory party to remove Johnson.
Yup, BBC political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg laughed off talk about an early election as a result of Tory backbenchers’ anger about Lockdown 2.0 on the Newscast podcast on Saturday, but a leadership challenge could well be in the offing – though doubtless no one will want to take on the mantle of leadership until after the manure has stopped hitting the fan.
Is Boris as much of a clown as he appears from over here in the USA? Is it all an act?
Thanks.
a). Who will win?
Biden, a bunch of Democratic candidates for House & Senate, and hopefully, Democrats running for positions where they will be able to change the way voting happens.
b.) Will we have a near-definitive result tomorrow night, or will the result be in abeyance until all the mail-in ballots are counted?
Near-definitive!
c.) Will Trump begin contesting the results tomorrow, after he loses (assuming he will lose), or after the mail-in votes are counted?
He will contest even if he wins, if history is a guide.
d.)Will any protests be violent and widespread?
There will be no violent protests.
e.) Does anybody think that Trump stands a chance of winning?
Eh, like 20%
f.) Will the election go to the courts if Trump loses?
Oh yes. They probably have a variety of briefs drawn up.
g.) How nervous are you about the outcome?
Somewhat.
h.) Will the Senate go Democratic?
YES!
i.) What surprises do you predict?
Georgia turning blue.
It’s looking as if Texas might go blue this election too.
I think too many Texans are unreachable by pollsters to get too excited by the numbers, but it would be a great thumb in DJT’s eye (and Miller’s) if the Hispanic vote flipped the state.
Texas turning blue might be the only thing that would make the GOP abandon their ‘cater to old whites’ strategy.
And it’s likely to happen eventually. What with the sun-belt, bring in the high tech businesses effort in TX. Guys, bringing in those high-tech businesses also brings in those blue voters …
a. Biden
b. Near-definitive Tuesday night.
c. No well organized challenge to results, just random pot shots, like the pathetic suit filed in Texas re 100,000 votes in Harris County, a very poorly written complaint from two state reps and an MD, or something.
d. There will be protests, but little if any violence. The right groups are all hat no cattle. The lefties like flash-bangs for the effect, would rather avoid blood.
e. The chance is there, if all the right state polls are wrong by the right amounts.
f. Some Trump minions will file suits, which will appear in court but get dismissed.
g. Not nervous. Even if Trump stays another 4 years, the government will be less GOP, and many states will be less GOP, and the trend is clearly away from the GOP disaster.
h. Senate will likely go Dem. The question is how much margin.
i. Texas
I think if DJT is re-elected but the Senate flips, he’ll be impeached.
… and then we’ll have a theocratic president, which is… better?
Impeach Pence too.
From north of the border, I wish you all the best of luck regardless of the outcome.
To quote Robert N. Thompson, leader of the Social Democratic Party of Canada (1961 – 1967): The Americans are our best friends, whether we like it or not.
Or whether they reciprocate the sentiment or not. Remember how everyone in Canada got pissed off when George W Bush said the UK was America’s best friend?
Yeah, well, Bush also said he could see into Vladimir Putin’s soul.
Mister Insightful, Dubya wasn’t — though compared to what’s in the Oval Office now, he seems like a statesman on par with Cicero. 🙂
That’s how bad it has become. We used to laugh at awkward speeches “fool me once… ugh fool me… I won’t get fooled again” and now we look back at fondness.
Fondness might be going too far…but certainly more statesmanlike than this morooon. (Remember when Dubya asked for a quickie when he wanted a quiche??) yeah, maybe fondness…
I like that he called Putin “pooty poot”. I actually even liked that when he was doing it and now I look back in fondness at a President that even when he looked into his eyes and saw his soul, still said things that must’ve annoyed Putin and didn’t let him interfere with elections.
We still call him Pooty Poot in our house.
Yeah, I’ve posted on FB many times since 20-Jan-2017: “I never thought anything would make W look presidential. I was wrong, dead wrong.”
If the orange idiot wins, can we all come stay at your house? 😉
a – Unless there is massive counting fraud in swing states (much larger than in 2016), Mr Biden will win the EC. Probably in a landslide.
b – Yes, we will have a near certain result tomorrow (with the provision mentioned under a).
c – He is already more or less contesting the results today, so yes, he will contest the results tomorrow.
d – No, maybe violent here or there, but not widespread.
e – A very small chance to eke out an EC victory, but highly unlikely (cf a).
f – I suspect (and certainly hope) that his defeat will be so crushing that it will not go to the courts. I guess that lower courts will throw most cases out. Agreed about the SC.
g – Pretty nervous: I fear the counting fraud in swing states mentioned under a.
h – Yes, but not with a 60 seat majority.
i – Yes, Mr Trump simply conceding gracefully would really surprise me.
I’m encouraged by the consistent polling info that Biden will win handily and hopeful that an EC victory will be known by late Tuesday night. But simply have no faith in Trump or his cultists to do anything honorably. The Republican party is a clear and present danger to our country. They will dredge up and deploy every dirty trick imaginable to cling to power. I’m very anxious about the days and weeks ahead.
It might be interesting to be a “fly on the wall” while tRumps lawyers and accountants scramble to juggle all those ” balance” sheets of his “terrific successes” overseas.SDNY, Scotland, Ireland, Deutschebank, (not to mention Rusher and Gyna–oh well might as well throw some rubles and yuan in the mix of this shell game) all have questions about discrepancies in the ways tRump’s businesses deal with taxes.
Or a fly on Pence (sorry, I couldn’t resist).
C’mon, Diana, that’s insulting … to walls, some of which are structurally load-bearing, unlike our feckless Veep.
Let’s just hope that if it goes butterfly ballots and hanging chads again that the Dems put up a better fight this time.
They all got rid of the chads, hanging or not, after 2000, Florida included. The “controversy” has moved elsewhere.
I’m no prognosticator either, but it needs to be a blow-out win for Biden to save us from disaster, plus a Democratic Senate and keeping the house. I agree that a Trump win can’t be ruled out, and is worrisome (but there’s no way Trump can win “big”). If we in the USA re-elect Trump, after the past 4 years, then we deserve what we’ll get, which is very, very bad.
Sunday morning Nate Silver:
Without Pennsylvania, Biden Becomes an Underdog’
Yet his forecast is Biden has a 90 percent chance of winning.
FiveThirtyEight gives Biden an 87% chance of winning Pennsylvania — and Biden has other, albeit dicier, paths to an electoral-college victory even if he loses PA.
Yes, he has other paths without PA.
Steve Kornacki showed some realistically possible scenarios for Biden to win without PA.
My general felling is that voter turn-out is stronger when people want change, and this time turn-out is huge – so I think Biden wins.
Yes, this does look like a huge turnout election. I am just hoping the Dems have and will turn out.
Apparently early voting is already at 70% of the total vote in 2016.
Dems have demographics on their side, so a big turnout should favor Biden.
a). Who will win? Trump
b.) Will we have a near-definitive result tomorrow night, or will the result be in abeyance until all the mail-in ballots are counted? near-definitive election night
c.) Will Trump begin contesting the results tomorrow, after he loses (assuming he will lose), or after the mail-in votes are counted? see a&b
d.) Will Trump supporters (or militant Lefties) begin rioting or protesting immediately? (I don’t expect this will happen until Wednesday.) Will any protests be violent and widespread? there will be widespread rioting by lefties before all polls are closed
e.) Does anybody think that Trump stands a chance of winning? yes
f.) Will the election go to the courts if Trump loses? (I have a bet that if he does lose, it will NOT wind up in the Supreme Court like Bush v. Gore did.) Trump wins so if it goes to court it won’t be him doing it
g.) How nervous are you about the outcome? I have to say that I’m not that nervous, but, surprisingly, some of my friends who live overseas—and aren’t Americans—are more nervous than I. I don’t like it but I’m not nervous
h.) Will the Senate go Democratic? No
i.) What surprises do you predict? Things are going to go horribly wrong for the left across the board with black men and latinos being the demographics that give Trump his edge. not that those groups go overwhelmingly right but enough to to swing the results
Which states do you think that Trump will win?
Curious about what you think his path to victory is.
Not dismissing you out of hand, but Trump seems to have such a narrow path to victory compared to Biden….
Trump’s only plausible path to victory appears to be to win all the same states he won in 2016 (minus Michigan and Wisconsin, in both of which he trails badly), giving him 278 electoral votes.
I’d love to get a bet down with WDB or anyone else who thinks Trump will top that number.
As Ken pointed out above, Trump absolutely needs Florida and Pennsylvania. He is currently trailing in both.
Even if he gets those, he still needs Texas, Georgia, Arizona, and North Carolina, all of besides Texas show Biden ahead.
He also still needs Ohio, which is in toss-up land.
So almost all of the states he needs to win are either favoring Biden or are too close to call.
Of course, if he pulls Michigan and Wisconsin, then he might have a lifeline. But Trump is polling way behind in those states too…
So the polls would have to be off by A LOT this time around for Trump to win.
FYI, almost all of this data I got from FiveThirtyEight, which of course gave Trump only about a 25% chance of winning in 2016. But now, the chances are only 1 in 10, making it very unlikely that lightening strikes twice…
Have you played around with 270towin at all? They have consensus map which shows Biden winning even without the toss-ups going his way.
Biden can get to 270 without winning any of the toss ups. All he need do is carry the states in which he’s currently “favored.”
For Trump to win, he needs to sweep all the states in which he’s merely “slightly favored,” any toss-up state(s), all the states in which Biden is only “slightly favored,” and to pick off one of the states in which Biden is currently “favored,” his best shot being Pennsylvania.
Any way you cut it, it’s a tough row to hoe for Trump to win reelection. Hence, his chances ranked at just 10%.
I do have to wonder how you form those opinions, WDB.
That is indeed the key to the entire political situation in the US in the Trump era. To me it looks like delusion.
WDB opened up his trolling handbook …
Glad nobody is reacting very much to (him) …
“Does anybody think Trump has a chance of winning?”
Yes: Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight. Their model produces a 10% chance of Trump winning.
“Will the election go to the courts if Trump loses?”
I’m pretty sure it will go to the courts either way.
Anyone speaking confidently when asked about “…chance of winning?” is saying far more about their own particular meaning they give to that phrase, than to anything else.
Strictly speaking all it is asking is whether some probability is not zero–“a chance”.
If someone asked a knowledgeable physicist whether a brick released down in my basement mightn’t drop through the floor, but rather has a chance fly sideways, go intact through the wall and the earth, and surface in Madrid, then the physicist would have to say YES. A quantum calculation is un-doably hard, but the answer might be something like probability of 1/n, where ‘n’ is an integer with a trillion to the power billion worth of digits.
But not zero, AKA ‘1/infinity’.
Sorry to divert; the question still leads to entertaining answers.
But why not say Trump has say 1 chance in 12, i.e. probability 1/12; i.e. run it 120 times with exactly these same conditions, Trump wins 10 times.
That’s about what I’d say, for what little it’s worth, based on knowledge which is pretty poor, especially about the trustworthy-ness of polls from the point of view of competence, not honesty.
“But why not say Trump has say 1 chance in 12, i.e. probability 1/12; i.e. run it 120 times with exactly these same conditions, Trump wins 10 times.”
I thought that’s what the pros were doing with their mathematical models.
The question is not here being answered by the pros is it? But more than 1 or 2 are venturing numbers, I’d admit.
James Carville predicts a blowout: ‘We’re going to know the winner of this election by 10pm tomorrow night’
Carville is basing that assumption on Biden winning Florida. And since Fl counts votes as they come in, we may know by 10pm tomorrow night who takes the state. I hope Carville’s right…he’s pretty good at this stuff.
I remember acutely the excitement in seeing Florida blue on the map the night of the 2016 election and then the horror as it turned red. I just cannot be hopeful like that again.
Don’t watch. Wake up & hear what they say the next morning.
That’s what we did; and I can still remember the feeling of nausea I had when the radio announcer mentioned, “President-elect Trump” …
“Don’t watch. Wake up & hear what they say the next morning.”
Concur. Plus, try to do a Vulcan mind meld on oneself prior to getting up so as to steel oneself to the result.
Relieved that apparently others are not as frightened as I am about how many mailed ballots the Republicans will succeed in not counting. Seeing this is helping my mounting anxiety.
I’m expecting a Democratic landslide taking the Senate and Presidency. The result, though incomplete, will be clear late Tuesday night. Will Trump accept the result? Hell no! Will there be right-wing violence? Hell yes a lot! According to surveys, 60% of the officer corps in the military support Biden, so hopefully, they won’t support a coup if Trump wont leave.
There isn’t going to be a coup.
Hard to see large numbers of the military committing treason over a guy who used bunions or whatever as an excuse not to serve when he was called upon by his country.
Not to mention reallocating $billions of military spending to his wall, interfering in military court cases, and having no consistent foreign policy with regards to our troops overseas.
Not to mention calling our service members suckers and losers and running down a national hero: Sen. McCain.
“According to surveys, 60% of the officer corps in the military support Biden, so hopefully, they won’t support a coup if Trump wont leave.”
Any surveys of enlisted personnel? I suspect the pct. who support Biden is less.
In any event, former Navy myself, I think military personnel should not participate in such surveys. I don’t as a civilian. I rather like the idea of no one participating; I’d like to see the media and politicos have a calf over that. And it might force more voters to vote since there would be no or insufficient data to rationalize a decision not to trouble oneself to vote. But, to each his own.
a). Biden, please Ceiling Cat, let it be Biden
b.) no result tomorrow night; multiple days of fingernail-gnawing anxiety ensue
c.) of course Trump will contest the results
d.) I expect at least some protests
e.) sadly, yes, Trump does have a chance to win
f.) if Trump loses, the election will probably go to the courts
g.) I am horribly nervous. So many things can go wrong
h.) I think and hope the Senate will go Democratic: they have multiple pickup opportunities and only one near-certain loss (Alabama)
i.) if I predict it, it won’t be a surprise 🙂
I’m usually a “glass half full” type guy, but I’ve honestly never felt so negative about the nature of humanity as I have this year: both from the response of so many ignorant, selfish and irresponsible people in regards to the pandemic, and to the whole “Trump” thing coming to a head during the lead up to the election. It’s simply astonishing how Trump maintains a limitless ability to shock the system.
But then I realize that much of this despondency comes from the fact I’m imbibing so much news from the USA! It comes from watching and engaging in interactions with Americans on various forums, and getting first hand looks at the deep acrimony between both sides. And the fact that American news is just so prominent, even for those of us in other countries, especially Canada. It’s just nothing but doom and gloom bleeding out of the USA right now.
But if I pull back and simply contemplate the state of where I live, and also the fact that virtually all my interactions with friends and neighbors are “normal” and it feels “sane” to be here, that helps mollify things a bit.
But, I’m biting my nails as hard as some of my American friends right now about the election. Aside from the fact another 4 years has world-wide consequences, I don’t want to have Trump forced in to my consciousness every damned day for another four years.
And watching Trump, leaning with his snake-like grin on his podium, riffing off the top of his head to his crowds, and just drinking in their adoration like a vampire in a state of bloodlust sating his thirst….it’s just hideous.
I think if you encounter one QAnon believer on your FB it can skew your whole perspective. I have seen it on all of 3 of the people on my FB page but if I look through at least 2 of their posts, fellow Canadians are telling them they are batshit crazy.
I have indeed encountered a couple QAnon believers in some forums. It is…unsettling.
And yes most of the other commentators think it’s BSC, but then some of them go on to casting some form of paranoid conspiracy-like complaints about the other political side.
I thought that around here “BSC” meant “biological species concept”? 🙂
I always seem to miss these open posts until at least 12hrs later. At least this one’s only a few hrs in.
Regardless of the outcome, one thing is certain – there will be a lot of screaming. I fear there will be more than that, but screaming gets to what I’ve wanted to post on open threads before, and so just take this as a sidebar:
Little girls at play seem to run around screaming or shrieking if you will. This seems universal. Is this something primordial? Some sort of evolutionary advantage? Someone must’ve studied it.
(Prompted by having a school next door.)
I do not have the luxury of saying: “no skin off my nose” although I am following developments from thousand of miles away in Athens Greece.
Having just seen a story on CNN about boarding up of stores in California ahead of tomorrow, I think Jerry’s first question should be: WTF quality of Democracy do we have?
“WTF quality of Democracy do we have?”
I think prior to that one should ask what is the general quality of the human primate species presuming to impose itself on the planet (if not also eventually beyond).
Trump won four states by 1.2% or less: Florida (29 EVs), Pennsylvania (20 EVs), Wisconsin (10 EVs) and Michigan (16 EVs). Had these states been won by Clinton, she would have won the Electoral College by a 307-231 margin.
It’s unlikely that Trump will win all four of those again and win states that Hillary won.
But if Drumpf lost only Michigan and Wisconsin, not the other two, he’d still win the college by about 20 votes. Let’s hope not–and there’s lots of other possibilities for Biden, as well as likely not losing Pennsylvania.
Fourth closest EC win in 100 years (so much for his, “landslide”!)
http://www.berettaconsulting.com/barbarossa/M/stuff/inc/2020-02-21/Electoral_College_1.PNG
http://www.berettaconsulting.com/barbarossa/M/stuff/inc/2020-02-21/MI-WI-PA.PNG
A non-scalable fence is apparently being erected around the White House at present. I’m OK with that as long as it’s non-scalable from the inside as well.
I see Trump ending up in a specially built Führerbunker in the West Wing basement below the Situation Room, his two trusted Sturmbannführers, Stephen Miller and Corey Lewandowski, armed with Lugers at his side. 🙂
And poison? And Melania?
It probably is non-scalable from the inside since, apparently, they haven’t learned about ladders yet.
I expect that:
* Biden will win.
* There will be no rioting from Trump supporters.
* If Biden loses, there will definitely be rioting from BLM / Antifa.
Hmmm, so not “very fine people, on both sides”, then?
I think there will be violence by the trumpsters. I hope not. But I think there will be.
“I think there will be violence by the trumpsters. I hope not. But I think there will be.”
If they are violent, I assume that will, at least a bit, include burning and looting. But, from the logic(?) of the statements of their counter-protester opposition, I gather that the looting and burning will not constitute violence. Should they not be violent, or even not protest and remain silent, I gather by that same logic that that silence will be violence.
No. It will involved armed militia types “liberating” State capitals, sending bombs to elected officials, and other such acts of patriotism. Good old Kyle Rittenhouse stuff.
Yep.
Expect a lot of surprises. The voting in this election is quite different from previous elections (mail in ballots, early votes, etc.) and the pollsters cannot accurately use past elections as a guide. Instead of polls being accurate plus or minus 3 percents there are likely to be some that are off by 7 or 8. Because each state is using different methods of voting, I do not expect all the polling errors to swing one way.
The most likely scenario is that things continuing to turn in Trump’s direction with Pennsylvania being the decisive state. It will be a few days to a week before the count is decided there. Left wing rioting will occur during this time.
I expect Biden to be projected the winner 279-259 on November 9th. I expect Trump to claim voting fraud and China using coronavirus to sabotage him but from him to leave office peacefully. I expect his supporters to follow suit with lots of kvetching and armed but mostly peaceful protests. There will be more antifa riots (e.g. in Portland and a few other cities) than riot wing violence.
If Trump wins (also 279 to 259), most of the left will make claims about electoral college, voting suppression, fraud, etc. but will accept the result. However, the rioting will be severe going to severe and it will get very ugly in many cities.
If Pennsylvania is the deciding state, Trump could got to the Supreme Court but I do not expect it. If it goes to the court, I expect Biden’s win to stand.
I’ve no idea who will win – I can vividly remember cautioning my sister, who lives in Oregon, on election day 2016 not to count her chickens. But as has been often pointed out, it’s easier to suppress / disqualify Dem votes than to find sufficient numbers of old white dudes who didn’t vote for Trump first time around. So I’m not anticipating a pretty outcome, sadly.
Has anybody wondered what would happen if the Democrats flipped the Senate but not the president?
It won’t happen but if it did you would see a new impeachment followed almost certainly by conviction by the Senate.
And I think tRump would refuse to leave the WH. That would be quite a spectacle.
I’ve blathered on about this before but there are salient questions that don’t get asked about this election.
– How secure are the electronic voting machines? Answer: not very. This is my #1 fear and isn’t even touched upon by the MSM. If you follow the work of @jennycohn1 on twitter or read Code Red by Jonathan Simon, or watched the film Kill Chain, or read any interviews with world-renowned election security expert Harri Hursti, you would have a very uneasy feeling about this and every election that uses our current technology. And that is why the MSM won’t cover it, for fear that it will result in voter apathy.
This isn’t conspiracy theory. We have plenty of evidence that machines have been hacked and is highly likely that they will be in this election. And not necessarily by only foreign actors. The Trump campaign has hired on notorious election “fixer” Karl Rove.
– Who are the voting machine vendors?
80% of all voting machines are produced by only two companies. Both of these companies are owned by Republican operatives and donors. From Cohn: “ES&S, which accounts for 44% of America’s voting systems, was initially funded with money from the families of two Religious Right billionaires who belonged to the Council of National Policy, a secretive group of wealthy right-wing Republicans including the Cambridge Analytica gang, the Mercers, Bannon, the Conways as well as Mike Pence, the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre and a billionaire embezzler turned Evangelical Christian, Bill Dallas.”
The hardware and software are proprietary and the vendors do not allow inspection of the devices. No memory card in any U.S. election has ever been subject to inspection for hacking or malicious programming.
– Are the machines federally certified?
Depends on the state. Some are, some aren’t. These machines are purchased and accepted as “secure” on faith alone. The vendors are untouchable. Once your vote has been entered it disappears into the system and there’s no allowable forensic process to track it. It’s simply: “trust us”.
– What happens if there is a hack?
Probably nothing. Again, we can’t look into the machines and even if we were allowed to it is up to the state. And in 2016 in states where there were anomalies, no audits were allowed to be performed.
– What about legislation?
The House passed three election security bills which would have circumvented some security issues but you know where those ended up: under the stack of hundreds of other bills on McConnell’s desk.
If this were truly a “free and fair” election, Biden would win in a historic landslide. But our election systems are overly complex and secretive by design which results in many points of vulnerability. So in any state where there is a close race you can be certain that efforts are going to be made to rig it.
Sorry for the lengthy rant. Please read some of the supplied resources above for more info. Oh, and Dominion voting machines (about half of all machines) are programmed in Serbia.
You need to be like Canada and vote in school gymnasiums with little pencils.
Exactly. Hand-marked paper ballots are the most secure method of voting. Technology and voting are a bad mix, at least the tech we currently are using.
Biden will probably win. For the next week or so, there will be a catharsis as the country thinks it finally can move on from Trump.
But reality will set in, as we are knee deep in a pandemic with no short term solution and with a diminished man as POTUS…
Trump may not go gently into that good night. If he can stay out of jail, he may continue to do damage from whatever media or entertainment perch he’ll occupy.
The ousted Republicans will not get their shoulder behind the wheel in helping the party in power deal with our national problems.
Instead, they’ll spend the next 4 years in the slime pits, dredging up what they can on the Bidens, and looking to start impeachment proceedings as revenge for what was done to Trump and the attacks on their Party.
And Joe’s senescence will accelerate and become increasingly hard to ignore.
Hopefully, the Dems have been reading the 25th Amendment already and are prepared for this scenario…nay, this eventuality. At some point in 2022 or thereabouts, there will be serious discussions of Kamala taking over.
I predict a Democratic sweep of WH, Sen. and House. Landslide.
We will know the results by 10pm Tuesday night.
There will be no left wing protests of any significance.
Trump people will be overwhelmed by the size of the Biden/Dem. vote.
Cf. 1964 for a comparable Democratic victory.
I hope you’re recovering nicely, PCC(E).
Even though I don’t comment much on politics these days, it’s been anxious times too for your friends north of the border. I wish your country’s democracy well and hope decency wins in the end. I think Biden will win bigly.
hooray!
I haven’t listened to it but this looks like an interesting podcast with James Carville about the Nov 3 outcomes and the potential for unrest, covid, etc.
The attempt by Trump and the Republican Party to suppress the vote, including Trump’s thuggish actions to subvert the post office, may go down as the worst, most humiliating own goal in modern political history. It motivated people who fucking hate Trump to vote early and securely.
I found Trump to be pretty hilarious for a few years but was also amazed by his complete inversion of politics, where gaffes and scandals became the day-to-day normal. I still think Trump probably didn’t really want to actually become president, still has no idea how to do it, and has no meaningful political thoughts at all, beyond enriching himself and pleasing those who enable him. Other American politicians do exactly the same thing, but are not as blatant about it and hide it better. Trump is a notorious liar, yet his transparent narcissistic personality and egoism makes it strangely honest. Many actually believe in Biden sincerity.
I suspect many Democrats and Republicans dislike Trump more because he is thwarting, and making a mockery of their prideful image of America and the American Dream. It’s a more nationalistic, jingoistic urge. Especially the Woke, fabled “leftists” (so-called) are upset about Trump that they must virtue signal all day how much morally superior they are.
By some criteria, Trump is the worst, most criminal and most dangerous president of all time. He is a highly sketchy property shark sued a thousand times and yet faced next to no consequences, but could also become President. He’s also ultimately responsible for galloping into the abyss through deregulations he signed, climate change denial, and withdrawal from agreements that are at least an attempt to steer things around in a critical moment when our time is about to run out. In many other ways he’s not worse than usual US Presidents, the long procession of feet-draggers, stallers who equally whipped the country onwards through sixth extinction and climate change in the interest of profits — at least in the last twenty years.
I have no idea what will happen. This year is unusually unpredictable. Biden will probably win, some formerly red state may turn blue. Republicans will ask Clarence Thomas to retire and nominate yet another arch-conservative. Trump will make a show when he loses, probably float conspiracy theories how the victory was stolen, but will be relieved, provided he has the get-free-out-of-jail cards prepared. He’ll sell out on TV, claiming record sums for his story and will continue feeding his base with conspiracy theories and collect admiration from them.
It’s certain that he will milk his years as a president, or maybe his past catches up and he‘ll go to jail. Maybe US intelligence is motivated now to further the latter, to prevent the former — who knows. Maybe he spontaneously moves to Russia and becomes a major personality in Russian high society and TV. Biden will be pretty entertaining, too. He’s clearly not at his peak, and I don’t know what effect this will have.
I only know for sure that we’ll continue to see gaffes and hear puzzling things from an US president. Military will gets its lion share, as usual, and so on. Democrats will find reasons, too, why Americans can‘t have what an overwhelming majority want, despite that it works in other (including poorer) countries, and despite that they control all the levers for a while.
g.) Very concerned about the outcome not being big enough, or coming in fast enough, to prevent Trump from ginning-up his base to create even more chaos.
i.) Nothing that Trump or his fawning followers might do or say will surprise me. They are all bat-shit crazy, and nothing they do has to make any sense at all.
j.) My hope is that results will be so devastating to Trump that he will do something over-the-top stupid and clearly illegal, that Mitch McConnell will actually do something to put a leash on him, for once and for all.
Mitch McConnell as savior? I don’t think so. He’s been committed to Trump this far. Why would he change now? After all, if Trump’s shenanigans work to give him the election, they probably also help preserve the GOP in the Senate and McConnell as its leader. In other words, McConnell benefits by doing nothing himself.
“i.) Nothing that Trump or his fawning followers might do or say will surprise me. They are all bat-shit crazy, and nothing they do has to make any sense at all.”
If Trump loses, do you think his followers will ad burning and looting to their behavioral repertoire?
No, militias are too organized for such boring things as burning and looting. They’ll do things like attack officials like they tried in Michigan when they attempted a kidnapping and murder of the governor. Or they will simply shoot those they say are bad like Kyle in Kenosha.
Another surprise, which would also be a very happy thing: Mitch McConnell being defeated!
And Lindsey Graham!
I predict a Trump landslide in the electoral college with a few more states added to the ones of 2016; Senate stays R, House will be close, could move R could stay D but much lower majority
Just so I can embarrass myself, or accidentally try to brag if it’s nearly correct (but that’ll be just luck), here’s the final Electoral College estimate
Biden 370 ——— Trump 170
I know that doesn’t quite add right, should be 539 or 538 if 270 wins and 269 doesn’t, but this way I cannot be expected to be exact! See you in December sometime when it becomes official.
My right-hand middle finger is aching from its automatic response whenever the Orange Shitgibbon defiles my TV with its obnoxious idiocy. (A bit like Dr Strangelove’s right arm, except I don’t try to restrain it…)
Hopefully, it will find some relief after tomorrow.
cr
I can’t refrain from saying IDIOT! Every time I see or hear hum
I say f*cking idiot!!!!!!!! 🙂
So do I, or effing moron😖
a) Trump.
b) There will be a definite result.
c) Democrats will contest the results.
d) Anti-Trump protestors will take to the streets, again.
e) He will win.
f) No need.
g) I dislike the scenario but remain calm about it all.
i) The biggest surprise awaits the pollsters and people who rely on them. The game has changed. An election involving Trump is not “business as usual.” Too many people underestimate the man and his supporters.
Same question for others who think Trump will win:
– Which states does Trump carry?
I’m prepared to be wrong (again), but not seeing it this time.
I do agree that if Trump wins again, we will have to go back to the drawing board on polling in the new era…
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\cocoartf2512
\cocoatextscaling1\cocoaplatform1{\fonttbl\f0\fnil\fcharset0 .SFUI-Regular;}
{\colortbl;\red255\green255\blue255;\red0\green0\blue0;}
{\*\expandedcolortbl;;\cssrgb\c0\c0\c0;}
\deftab720
\pard\pardeftab720\partightenfactor0
\f0\fs42 \cf0 \expnd0\expndtw0\kerning0
\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 }
That’s an empty RTF document. Why?
Perhaps someone has earlier noticed and commented on the following: out and about driving this a.m., I stopped at a red light and noticed a campaign sign saying, “BIDEN/HARRIS for a SOCIALIST AMERIKA.” Obviously not a Biden/Harris supporter.
There were several such signs interspersed among Trump/Pence and local Republican signs. An interesting tactic (or strategy?).
I won’t presume to try to objectively evaluate the average American driver’s attention to detail noticing objects along the side of the road (though way too many of us are all too easily-distracted). Evaluating myself, I strive to pay attention to what’s going on around me but, not willing to compromise my safety or that of others, I would be hard-pressed to notice the difference while driving while watching out for other cars. “BIDEN/HARRIS” is in maximally large white font against a dark blue background (like the Biden camp’s signs), but “SOCIALIST AMERIKA” is significantly smaller, in a darker red against the blue and therefore nowhere near as noticeable.
Perhaps the Biden camp should have posted TRUMP/PENCE signs saying one or another of the following: “Truth-Teller,” “Science Advocate,” “Rational Thinker,” “Golden Rule Supporter,” “(Reciprocal) Altruist”, “Apotheosis of Beneficence.” (Of course, any success of that would crucially depend on Americans’ ability to detect and appreciate satire.)
It’s always the GOPs red flag. Socialist!
Trumpsters are impermeable to data and have no sense of humor, from all the evidence I’ve seen.
The 5th Avenue Effect is real.
The question to ask is: What could Trump do that would move you to no longer support him? I’m guessing there’s nothing for most Trump supporters.
Zeynep Tufekci’s NYT op-ed this Sunday sobered me up about election forecasts, and so I really have no clue which way this thing is gonna go. It’s effectively 50-50. All I know is I voted against the vile slug in office, and I eagerly await news of his loss. If it goes the other way, I plan to regularly attend nonviolent protests calling for his ouster for the next four years. Sometimes the voting booth is just not enough, and citizens need to shake up society to limit disaster. Nothing can justify rule by a callous vulgarian intent on dividing the nation, gutting environmental standards, and possibly driving us past climate tipping points.
I think she writes well, and has sensible well-evidenced views. But I don’t think she really said the polls are useless, despite pointing out how they are misinterpreted. An example of that is people thinking the overall vote prediction has anything much directly to do with which candidate will win. So her headline sounded pessimistic, but after reading the article I was not less confident that Biden will win. That’s not totally confident, but pretty much.
I voted, but internally, and for not watching the TV till after about 10 PM, not being a USian myself.
Interpretation is a problem, but only one of the problems with these forecasts that she discussed. A big one is that as the sense of certainty increases (e.g. 80% chance of winning for a candidate), the voter turnout may decrease. Her conclusion:
“And given all the uncertainty, misunderstanding and fragility of electoral forecasts, I’m not sure there is a meaningful difference between, say, a 20 percent and a 40 percent chance of winning. That’s another way of saying these forecasts aren’t that useful, and may even be harmful if people take them too seriously.
“Instead of refreshing the page to update predictions, people should do the only thing that actually affects the outcome: vote, donate and organize. Everything else is within the margin of error.”