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The decline and fall of the GOP – politicalbetting.com
The decline and fall of the GOP – politicalbetting.com
It's come to this: A neighbor reports that AG William Barr's house in McLean is being picketed by Trump supporters who believe he's not doing enough to lock up Joe Biden pic.twitter.com/Ko6Mbyfi97
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Does his Judgement over-rule the Texas Supreme Court?
And if it does, can his Judgement be appealed to a Federal Appeals Court?
And after that would it ultimately go to the US Supreme Court?
"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals."
The experiment:
Trump et al
The ABC/Washington Post Florida poll at Trump +2 will have given a big boost to Trump's hopes but at the moment it's a relative outlier. Gravis and Fox News both had Biden ahead +6 and +7 respectively and their sampling was also more recent. I remain confident about Florida.
I've been waiting to get on the Spreadex Electoral College market having missed the earlier good prices for Biden in the 280 to 290 range. He is now at 317 to buy and I don't find that particularly attractive.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/01/world/trump-us-global-leadership-election-analysis-intl/index.html
I see the Mail on Sunday are trying to rock the boat by resurrecting the Hunter Biden story. Whatever is or is not behind the story I have come to have a visceral loathing of the Mail.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/us/politics/rudy-giuliani-biden.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
1) Yes, it can go to a Federal Appeals Court
2) After that either side could appeal it to SCOTUS, but it's up to SCOTUS whether or not to take it
It I was a ratfucking partisan judge I think what I'd do would be to just tell them to make sure they had a separate count for the ballots cast in the disputed way, then tell everybody to come back in a week. In all probability it will turn out not to be important in which case you can make some reasonable-sounding judge-like ruling, but if an important race turns out to turn on these ballots you can turn the ratfucking up to 11, and also start the clock ticking later, reducing the time for appeals.
As you say though it is a bit of an outlier but is also perfectly reasonable.
Two very conflicting polls just out from ABC/Wash Post:
FL - Trump +2
PA - Biden +7
Apparently Biden is spending all of Monday in PA - ultimately I think it all boils down to PA - whoever wins PA will win.
Trump loses, judges who were appointed for their hackishness at that precise moment get more into the whole judge thing and less into the hack thing, others retire and get replaced, Dems add some new states, EC-related demographic trends come and go. Populism seems to be in decline everywhere, its appeal is mostly proportional to the length of time since it was last tried.
Currently Trumpism appears nasty and dangerous but also *powerful*. If Trump loses comprehensively it will look increasingly *ridiculous*, as Brexit already does. The GOP will still have a Trumpist element but for all its faults the US system can correct very quickly; You're only a single primary from a quite different GOP - or rather, the same GOP, but with different strains in the ascendant.
The Atlantic thinks it as dangerous as the 1850s.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/10/biden-2020-trump-election/616912/
By the time Pennsylvania finish their count Biden will be over 300 EV's.
https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1322704582875717632?s=20
Betting markets know sweet FA
When I’m told that the US and the UK share a common set of values, it scares the life out of me. But there is no doubt that people such as Johnson, Patel, Gove and Cummings look at how the GOP’s highly effective hollowing out of American democracy has been largely facilitated by partisan judges and like what they see. Hence the Tory plans to hobble the independent judiciary here.
Decontaminating US politics will be the work of multiple electoral cycles, and in large parts of the US, there is no recognition of the state of moral, political and financial corruption that Trump has brought into the system. In fact its rather the reverse: Tump projects his own crimes onto his competition. The more that he shouts for the arrest of his opponents, the more we realise the depravity of his own crimes.
I have felt for some time that the US will need the catharsis of a Trump trial in order to show that not even a President is above the law, but the risk to the social fabric will give pause to anyone who supports the idea. Yet in order to establish what went wrong a due process of some kind will be needed.
Graham might cling on in SC, though it will be very close, and McConnell in Kentucky, although it seems he is seriously ill, but these chief accomplices also need to be held to account.
Whatever the result on Tuesday, the US is facing some very grim times ahead. At least with a Biden victory we can gain a little confidence that the constitution and the American political system can restore balance. With a Trump victory America will be headed towards an inevitable eclipse.
Whether in some kind of new relationship with the EU, or a restored CANZUK alliance- or both- Britain is going to need to address the decline of the special relationship in pretty quick order. Unlikely to be Johnson doing it though.
Betting PostF1: backed Perez at 4.6 to be top 6 and Albon not to be classified at 5.25.
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2020/11/imola-pre-race-2020.html
Perez's Q2 time was within a tenth of beating half of those ahead of him, and he has choice of tyres.
Albon's been moaning all weekend and has a couple of DNFs this year, plus plenty of contact with other drivers.
Off topic, the government says I can finish my holiday!
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-announces-new-national-restrictions
https://eu.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/iowa-poll/2020/10/31/election-2020-iowa-poll-president-donald-trump-leads-joe-biden/6061937002/
Just nine years late and €3 billion over budget.
And in the middle of a global pandemic that’s cut passenger numbers by 70%.
And after the airline that was to use it as its main hub has gone bust.
But apart from that, it’s been a great success.
But Biden could do with the poll being wrong. It’s 1976 since a Dem has won the White House without Iowa.
Does anyone know why Belgium is doing so badly? Heck, they’re even doing worse than we are and that must take some effort.
https://twitter.com/giantpoppywatch/status/1319230904267608064
For the second wave I have no clue.
Whether Federal Courts can set aside the judgment of state courts in matters governing state electoral processes like that is deeply controversial. The constitution would suggest not, and John Roberts kinda sorta agrees. The four other conservative justices don’t, and Barrett has yet to issue any opinion on the matter, but will quite likely side with them - if it makes a difference to the election outcome.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/30/trumps-maga-roadshow-ballots-tallied-433720
‘There Are No Boundaries’: Experts Imagine Trump’s Post-Presidential Life if He Loses
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/30/imagining-post-president-trump-433704
Obviously a poll for those expecting it going for a Trump win to shout about, but the above makes me feel it's an outlier.
https://www.nasuwt.org.uk/article-listing/nasuwt-comments-on-england-lockdown-announcment.html
TLDR version:
1) Government strategy has failed
2) This is because promises made about health and safety have not been kept
3) There needs to be a more ruthless approach to isolating staff/students if the explosion in cases is to be suppressed
4) If they want social distancing in classrooms (how I hate that cliché) then we need smaller classes.
BidenKamala would likely side with Trudeau, not Macron.They seem to have to come to terms with the folklore now, though. The story was that an ape swam a shore from a wrecked ship which had been carrying a circus and the locals thought it was Frenchman, never having seen either an ape or a Frenchman before.
It would be as clear a demonstration as you could hope for that facts and honesty really matter. You might hope that at least 60% of the voters would develop a better bullshit detector as a result.
I was surprised though that Reagan found his way into the goodies column. He was leader when I first realised that US politics stank. Mainly South America where democracy always took a back seat to US interests but the dirty dealing was also domestic. The Oliver North affair for starters and for those who thought Thatcher gave too much love to Pinochet- Reagan didn't even bother with dinner and flowers.
‘A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.‘
https://twitter.com/Brand_Allen/status/1322772429698174978
IA-1 redder than IA-4 looks a bit odd though
https://twitter.com/BBCLBicker/status/1322817248025747456?s=20
Read the whole article, but this gives a flavour.
In Pennsylvania, Republicans Might Only Need to Stall to Win
A political analyst warned, “Harrisburg in 2020 could be Tallahassee in 2000.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/campaign-chronicles/in-pennsylvania-republicans-might-only-need-to-stall-to-win
... Republicans in Pennsylvania had refused to allow ballots to be counted, or even sorted and opened—a process known as pre-canvassing—before 7 a.m. on Election Day. This will likely cause significant delays. The count in Pennsylvania will be further delayed by the secrecy envelopes. Bob Harvie, a Democratic county commissioner in Bucks County, recently told me, of this summer’s primaries, “What took us the longest was to open the envelope, then open the secrecy envelope, then flatten the ballot as much as we could before it was counted. It was an endless process.” In the primary, his district counted seventy-two thousand votes. For the general election, he is expecting to count roughly a hundred and sixty thousand, and he estimates that it will take his team an hour to open every four thousand envelopes. “We’re going to have a hundred people working twenty-four hours a day to count these ballots,” Harvie said. Gene DiGirolamo, a Republican minority commissioner in the district, expressed frustration: “We’re stuck with the way the law is written.” He feared that it would be days after the election before Bucks would be able to come up with a preliminary vote count. “This isn’t just about Trump and Biden,” he told me. “We’ve got one shot of doing this, and if the country is waiting on Pennsylvania, we’re going to look terrible.”...
French joke: Why do Wallonians not eat pretzels? Because they can’t untie the knots.
Flemish joke: Dear Mr President, Greenland is not for sale but for €1 you can have Wallonia.
I think this is a legitimately pro-Trump data point, but the fact that we're talking about a poll in a state Biden doesn't need shows how few pro-Trump data points there are right now.
I think it's important to remember that Trump is merely the culmination of a long-term project from the GOP. It's one reason why humiliating Trump with a landslide defeat wouldn't be enough. The GOP as a whole, as it currently exists, would need to be routed, and routed again and again.