The best case scenario is still Republican state officials, if they control either the governorship or the legislature, can knock three or four points off the actual Democratic vote total.

Drum's commentary on this is mind-boggling. Here he confronts those nervous Nellies who think we are in the midst of a crisis of democracy:

But we're always facing a crisis. The War of 1812 was an existential crisis. The various expansion compromises over the following decades were crises that enabled the inexorable spread of slavery. The Civil War was a crisis that produced a suspension of habeas corpus.

He goes on in this vein, as though the Civil War etc., shows that the US always works these things out. He might as well say, "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed."

Reminds me of George Carlin offering comfort to people who are worried about the planet.

[T]there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine... the people are fucked! Difference! The planet is fine! Compared to the people, THE PLANET IS DOING GREAT: Been here four and a half billion years! ... The planet has been through a lot worse than us.

I'm very depressed about the Supreme Court right now.

There were a couple of good posts at LGM taking issue with Kevin Drum's position. I think they slightly miss what he's trying to say, but still worth reading: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/10/drums-deficient-democratic-theory

(That's the second one, it links to the first).

Kevin Drum is turning into the dog in the "This is fine" meme.

heh

I was actually already pissed at Drum from an earlier non-election post where he couldn't conceive of people who might be willing to walk or bike to a grocery store so any effort to improve alternate modes of transit are stupid because people all drive now so why would they ever do something different?
Anyway, speaking of poorly thought out arguments, Kavanaugh's opinion is already being ripped to shreds for ignoring the facts in the record, misstating the conclusion of an article he cited in support of his position, and contradicting himself within the same paragraph about whether states do or don't want ballots counted quickly. I thought the image of him as a half-wit frat boy who failed upwards was overblown because anyone who can make it through law school and clerkships and judgeships must have some minimal level of competence, but he certainly is doing a good job reinforcing the exact criticisms people made during his hearings.

4- He just did it again in his latest post! "I'm less concerned about court-mandated voting rules being overturned than a lot of people..."

I think whichever Dave it was in the other thread was right about looking to 1850. I'm not saying a civil war is that likely, but you've got an entrenched group that is losing power relative to other sectors of society and they are trying to block that transition by any means necessary. They have no program beyond that, which means they will provide payoffs to whoever can help them without having to worry that they will lose other supporters.

Here's my quick gloss on what I think Drum is trying to say (while still agreeing with most of the criticism).

Remember the thread a while back about the increasing number of republican voters identifying as "single-issue" anti-abortion voters? We talked about how some of those voters were sincere but some were just using that as cover to avoid engaging with counter-arguments ("this is a personal, ethical position. I don't need to explain it to you."). Similarly, many people have noted that there's no logical reason why a position against abortion should lead to extreme positions on a variety of other policies but, in practice it does.

Drum (as I read him) is saying that liberals shouldn't try to use the idea of "Democracy" in the same way -- as an excuse to think that no other explanation is necessary. They should remain convinced that it's necessary to make the case and argue for their preferred goals on a case-by-case basis, and that they won't win all of those arguments.

I get the 1850s analogy, and agree as far as it goes. Which isn't all that far, because of the extent to which the sectionalism is missing. We talk about blue and red states, but if a 'civil war' is coming, it would be red and blue counties: there's nothing here that's going to lead states to hang together against outsiders. The enemy, modernity, is already in the house, everywhere.

That's why I don't think a civil war is likely, though obviously we have a current level of political violence that is high and rising. But, even without increasing violence, we have a minority using every possible gambit to block every reasonable attempt to fix growing problems and presenting no alternative vision that they can articulate publicly. That's destroying America slowly from within.

Wait, why does county-against-county preclude civil war more than state-against-state? And by "civil war" I don't necessarily mean two cohesive armies with a single front, so much as deterioration into two camps and violence.

The general erosion of trust that is inevitable when you know a substantial portion of the population, one that looks, speaks, and dresses almost exactly like I do, will deliberately try to harm me even at significant cost to themselves (which is the only way to interpret 'pwn the libs') is going to make everything not difficult. Multiplied by several tens of millions, the country is going to substantially weaker and less able to do anything useful.

On BvG, I was sure at the time that the plurality thought they'd be greeted as liberators for solving the constitutional crisis. A good lesson in the self-deluding property of righteousness, perfected soon after by GWB and Rumsfeld.

If we get there -- we might, but I hope we don't -- the new plurality that installs Trump for a second term won't even have the delusion. They'll understand what they are doing, and love doing it.

Knowing that keeps me up at night. Probably a lot of other people too.

12: I think your vision, of guerilla warfare and terrorism, is contrasted to the clear battle lines and official succession of our previous civil war. Hopefully an upcoming civil war also won't look like the Syrian civil war earlier this decade, with pockets of resistance, besieged cities, and a national army bombing its own citizens.

Seconding 15 (and Moby's political commentary has generally been spot on).

I mean, I think we'll win eventually, though that's not certain. I just think that is going to take longer than I expected to be active (let's say 2040) and that things will be substantially worse for at least that long than they would have been if HRC had won.

It's difficult for me to read this piece from the NYT on early voter turnout without becoming optimistic. But I have nonetheless managed it.

18.1: The arc of the moral universe bends toward Donald Trump and Amy Coney Barrett.

I still see the involvement of the Supreme Court in this election as extremely unlikely. Bush v Gore was possible only because the election was freakishly close, and Bush was slightly ahead after the first count was completed. Most elections aren't that close. It also probably depended on Florida having a Republican Secretary of State, which is not the case for Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin now.

I also don't see any legislative body trying to overrule its own citizens by appointing Trump people for the electoral college (which would create a Supreme Court case). Most Republican state senators will have done much better in their own districts than Trump did; a few will be representing districts that votes for Biden. Why would they waste political capital on a risky vote that might not even work?

While it's not absolutely impossible that the Supreme Court will rule that it is unconstitutional for a Democrat to win an election, it doesn't seem terribly likely.

Last point: yesterday's Supreme Court ruling was pretty minor. Before 2020, Almost all states (maybe all except for California?) required absentee ballots to arrive before election day. A few changed the rule this year by legislation, but most didn't, and the argument that maintaining the practice that's been in place since forever is a due process violation is weak. It's also not obvious whether late absentee votes are more likely to vote for one party or the other.

21.last: I think it's correct that as far as 2020 is concerned, the Wisconsin decision isn't that big a deal. But isn't it ominous for the future that the Supreme Court is moving away from letting state judges adjudicate state voting law? (Or am I misunderstanding the decision?)

21.last. Agree. On the substance it was minor; it is the implications of the arguments for any significant near-term election cases that is worrying.

Also Kavanaugh whiny sub-hack from hell revealing more of his true colors.

I also don't see any legislative body trying to overrule its own citizens by appointing Trump people for the electoral college (which would create a Supreme Court case). Most Republican state senators will have done much better in their own districts than Trump did; a few will be representing districts that votes for Biden. Why would they waste political capital on a risky vote that might not even work?

How can we interpret the Pennsylvania and Wisconsin GOP as doing anything other than the following plan?
- Spread propaganda to make it seem like mail voting is suspicious
- Make it illegal to count votes before election day
- Make it illegal for mail votes to show up after election day
- On election day create a bunch of legal drama to make it seem like there's no way to know the results
- The legislature decides

This only works if the election depends on those states, but is that not the plan?

That is my fear.

We allow overseas military ballots to count even when received late. I can see the logic for extending this fundamental right due to (a) the coronavirus and (b) the fuckery with the post office. And if Trump wins, you can bet anything you want that there will be enough ballots post-marked but not counted to have tipped it the other way.

Still and all, I think we've got the upper hand on this, and that's what the huge early turn-out is showing. I see that Texas already has something like 86% of the total votes cast in 2016 in. We're at 75%. Lots of those are red, to be sure, and maybe majority even red. But maybe not. Anyone who hasn't gotten the message that you need to get your ballot in now if you don't eel like you should vote in person on election day is operating at a low enough information level that you can think of them as non-voters.

I had my ballot chase training yesterday, and will be making calls for that the rest of the week.

23 last -- surely nothing about Kavanaugh's colors is hidden from anyone.

24 Right but the idea that you must know the results on election night really just has no legal sanction, Kavanaugh aside. Counties have deadlines for reporting vote totals, and states have deadlines for completing the count and all challenges. The state deadline is mandated by federal law.

This seems (mostly) right: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/10/the-state-of-the-race-with-one-week-to-go

Then why was Clinton's loss so stunning? Part of the reason is that confirmation and optimism bias tend to make most people overconfident in their predictions, but the bigger reason was that, at some level, many people -- I include myself in this category, even though I was predicting that Trump could win both the nomination and the election at a time when this view was considered absurd -- didn't want to believe that this country had sunk so low that it would actually elect Donald Trump president.

I mean you can talk all you want, and you should, about the absurdity of the Electoral College, the outrageous behavior of James Comey, the ubiquity of Republican voter suppression, and so on. All that is true and yet: the political culture of this country is degenerate enough that it allowed the election to be close enough for New York Times editors and Daddy Republicans to throw it to Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Four years later, I still don't really believe it.

Are we falling victim to similar biases this year, as we contemplate the even more horrifying possibility that the election might be close enough for a combination of the Wisdom of the Framers and the open bias of Republican judges to steal it again?

Here's the argument that we're not:

...

22: The Wisconsin case overruled a federal court, not a state court. The Pennsylvania 4-4 tie was a request to overrule the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and maybe would have happened with Justice Covid Barrett, who knows.

24: (1) Spreading propaganda isn't overruling the voters, it's persuading them. (2) and (3) weren't actions of the current legislatures, they are laws that have been in place for a while. (4) will happen to some extent, it does every election. (5) won't (I don't think), even if someone has made a plan it will require near unanimity of the Republican caucuses and they won't be able to get that.

26: Sure, it's logical to extend the right to count late-arriving ballots beyond the military, but it's still a stretch to say it's a constitutional obligation.

The thing that literally kept me up last night is the pessimistic belief that the Supreme Court will make some ruling, at least as hackish as BvG and likely worse, that changes the results, and that will somehow be accepted by the polity. "Can't count votes once the clock strikes midnight on Election Day, because we said so, neener neener".

"Supreme Court Rules that Supreme Court RULES!"

Ruling this out requires belief that some kind of procedural legitimacy will be observed, and I'm finding that in short supply.

29: When I read the Constitution, I can't help but conclude that counting citizens' votes for anything beyond the election of federal senators doesn't appear to be an actual obligation.

Your semi-regular 2016 flashback link. I miss Clytie, who announced the peripeteia in that thread...

Doesn't it seem weird to you that here we are, blogging the end of the world? I mean, it makes sense - what else is anyone going to do, given that it's a long process? But it does still make you realize what gets left out of science fiction novels.

We're still going to be here commenting away when, eg, one of us gets dragged off to political prison, or someone's marriage is invalidated, or my union is flatly ruled illegal, etc etc. We're going to keep on commenting through all the terrible things that are coming as things get harder and our numbers fall off. (And, I assume, we'll muster some aid for each other.) It's not that this is wrong - in fact it's good, right and salutary, as the fellow says - but it sure feels weird. This is not what I joined Unfogged for, all those years ago. (It was the "Fuck You, Clown" thread.)

At least PA and WI have Democratic Secretaries of State. (Not Florida: that's one Laurel Lee, DeSantis-appointed.)

30: I mean, I think that that was an issue here in MA. Glavin had to go to court to get permission to keep counting in the 4th Congressional district primary. Nobody challenged it, and the court readily granted it, but the law said all the votes had on be counted that night. I think they had to set up a process to make the after Election Day counting process transparent. Those ballots all got back before the deadline; they just needed to be counted.

As escapism I really don't want to read how the SC is going to appoint our new president, so I'm going to work instead. I'm sure I'll check back in later, though.

I think Moby is too optimistic about the HRC case. The Crazification of the Republicans proceeds apace. Civil war would still be getting closer had she won.

Nick S.- I think people are in denial. An ethnic minority "whites" is generally in power in this country. As their hold on power weakens they are going to get more and more desperate to hold on, generally, in most cases, present company excepted, of course. Trumpism is just a preview at best for the rest of the life of this country. If Biden wins, he and not Trump will be the exception.

I'm curious: among you relative optimists, when do you think is the earliest point that Trump/the GOP would possibly concede? How do you think it's likely to go? Theoretically, the best-case scenario is that November 3 goes like Election Day 2008, with the whole thing more or less resolved by midnight PST. But I doubt that most of you are envisioning that.

38: If FL clearly goes for Biden it's easy to imagine it being mostly settled on election day. Beyond that, I'm not sure -- I'm optimistic enough to think I'll go to bed on the 3rd with a clear sense of Biden winning, but I don't know how long it will take to finalize that, and I don't want to underestimate the risks of it going badly (I remember too clearly feeling good about FL in 2016).

An ethnic minority "whites" is generally in power in this country. As their hold on power weakens they are going to get more and more desperate to hold on

I don't agree this is the main likely dynamic. Right now, yes, most racist white people probably see whiteness as more or less a binary and are desperate to keep the power of being a 1 rather than a 0. But in practice, many non-white Americans see whiteness as a continuum and support the white-centered power structure so they can move up the ladder - either personally or generationally. I see this especially in the persistent one-third Trump support among Hispanics. And I see the potential bad-equilibrium we could reach in South American countries that are mostly non-white but where networks still get ritzier and more powerful the whiter they are - whiteness is still the ideal around which society organizes.

This culture already exists on the ground in much of the US, so the question is does our national political culture start to recognize it or not. (Most likely if Trump leaves cleanly, I guess, as those reflections come in the wilderness.)

38: My most optimistic scenario involves all media besides Fox News treating it as laughably obvious that it was a blowout. I can't imagine that Fox News won't invent some smoke and mirrors and portray an ambiguous result. But particularly important - what's the rightwing group that controls the local news and the one that controls all the local newspapers? If Sinclair and the other one cop that Biden won, then I think that becomes public opinion, and then the GOP concedes defeat (although I have no idea if Trump himself concedes defeat.) If public opinion thinks it is a blowout, then I don't think the lawsuits to the SC gain any traction.

40- What you are talking about is definitely real. I'm not convinced joiners prevent the dynamic I'm talking about, but I hope you are right.

I agree with 40 although I'm not sure it's a "continuum" in which people can become more and more white, so much as just ganging up on black people. The Proud Boys are not "white supremacist", they are a team of whites, Asians, Latinos, all hating blacks. I've heard that a ton of the right wing Spanish-language-only (so it isn't noticed by mainstream media) messaging is simply fearmongering about blacks. Either old-fashioned stereotypes or the same message as Fox News, that we have a battle in the streets and it's Police vs. Blacks so which side are you on? Very depressing sometimes.

31: Article IV, Sec. 4: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government ." Amendment XV: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State . . ." Amendment XVII. "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State . . ." Amendment XXIV is the best one: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State . . ." Amendment XVI: "The right of citizens of the United States, . . . to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State."

Does the right to vote encompasses the right to have one's vote counted fairly? Obviously. "The recount process, in its features here described, is inconsistent with the minimum procedures necessary to protect the fundamental right of each voter . . ." Bush v. Gore, 532 U.S. 98, 109 (2000) (per curiam)

the persistent one-third Trump support among Hispanics

Seems like gender is pretty salient here, and I bet that's going to continue.

But in practice, many non-white Americans see whiteness as a continuum and support the white-centered power structure so they can move up the ladder - either personally or generationally. I see this especially in the persistent one-third Trump support among Hispanics.

This is not my impression of Hispanic men who support Trump necessarily. Obviously some of them are just straight up Republicans who want the tax breaks and some of them watch Fox News, but I think the other major factor is the appeal of the bluster and machismo and the fuck-you,-I-do-what-I-want-because-I'm-a-man attitude.

That doesn't exactly conflict with preserving white supremacy, but I think it's gender roles and sexism far more than preserving white supremacy.

Or what 45 said.

38: Best case is similar to the 2019 Kentucky governor election: The sitting Trump-esque governor lost narrowly, argued about recounts and fraud for a few days, sulked for a few more, and then gave up after about 10 days when it was clear he had no support within his own party. For Trump, the minimum sulking period will probably be two to three weeks.

If it's a blow-out he might go the other way and refuse to serve out the term. Not even resign and make Pence America's briefest president, just abandon ship and go home.

There's no chance of that. He's going to seek profit and issue pardons, minimum.

He's barely serving as is. He's mostly just being served.

It's a very hard job for somebody who just had a stroke and suffers from piles.

I suppose should things really go south after election day it will be up to us older white guys to infiltrate the other camp. I remember in 2016 I was in a parking lot in my 20 year old F-150 pickup when this young fella walked up and started his political pitch with - I know you are probably a republican but... I felt pretty offended at the time.

That doesn't exactly conflict with preserving white supremacy, but I think it's gender roles and sexism far more than preserving white supremacy.

Can you even talk about these as separate impulses? Gender and sexism has enjoyed some prominence within the primary Trump message as well, surely.

All the Trump ads attack Biden and all of them (except the new ones about Hunter) do so by linking him to women (Clinton and Harris mostly, but also Pelosi and AOC). There's nothing else there.

It doesn't seem to me that we can possibly know the result in Pennsylvania by the wee hours of Nov 4. First, because the Penn Supreme Court has allowed postmarks, but second because even if they hadn't, the prohibition on counting mail ballots until the polls close mean that there will be a shit-ton of paper ballots that have to be run through machines.

The VotePro folks had me observe counting here in a small election here a few weeks ago. Terrific process, amazing machines. Which nonetheless had a technical issue every 100 ballots of so. Nothing that couldn't be resolved very quickly, but a 1 mm tear on the side of a ballot, at the fold, derails the machine.

This is the red mirage that precedes the blue wave.

The good news is that this is now very well known, and even the Fox News people are going to be clued in to it. I think premature declaration of victory by Trump and OAN will be roundly discredited. Even the NYT will probably resist.

38: Not sure I'm actually optimistic. But, hypothetically, here's an optimistic and more-or-less realistic scenario:

November 3 goes like Election Day 2008. Trump bloviates and never concedes defeat, but no one backs him up. Nothing that would swing the election actually makes it to the Supreme Court. Trump spends the lame duck period venting his spleen by screwing things up as much as possible, but in the end he leaves office in January as expected. (Why would Republicans in Congress or state government who currently support Trump allow this? If they decide they're more loyal to fascism as a cause rather than Trump as a person. They've already got ACB, they may decide Trump has done his job. And if the election is overwhelming enough, they may not have a choice.)

Long-term optimism is harder to put details on. Anything could happen depending on the economy, the coronavirus, the exact makeup of the Congress and state governments, specific Supreme Court decisions, etc. It's hard to imagine a return to the world order of the second half of the 20th century, but I don't think we'd actually want that anyway. It's not too hard to imagine fascism receding.

Your lips to God's ear.

Um, 59 to 57.last.

The only Trump ads I've seen at all are on YouTube and the message is "Grandpa forgot his meds!" Being in Maryland I mostly see ads for Abigail Spanberger, Abigail Spanberger's opponent, or Virginia state legislature candidates.

Abigail Spanberger's district isn't even one of the five Virginia districts located in or near the Beltway. I guess VA-01, VA-05, VA-08, VA-10 and VA-11 aren't swing districts.

According to Wikipedia, VA-10 is D +1; that must be out of date, because 538 predicts that the Democratic incumbent will win 60-40.

[shouldn't get too excited about pre-election rumors, speculation, and early voting but . . . https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/10/requiem-for-a-grifter ]

VA-10 was D +1 before Trump.

2008 Obama 51%-48%
2012 Romney 51%-49%
2016 Clinton 52%-42%

2014 Barbara Comstock (R) wins 56%-40%
2016 she wins 53%-47%
2018 she loses 44%-56%

58 was me, sorry. Is anyone else having trouble commenting?

Well, that obviously worked. But it was like my fifth attempt.

Everything I think to say seems insipid, and I'm professionally frustrated. But no technical obstacle with osx and chrome

Obviously it's not my culture and I'm no expert, but a lot of things started clicking for me once I learned many Americans still get urged by their parents to marry someone lighter-skinned.

And here I was thinking that the girls parents liked me because I drank less than the other boys in the class and got better grades.

69: And voted Most Likely to Escape This Place?

On topic, I do think 1850s thinking is fundamental to today's Rs, but I think serious civil unrest is unlikely. Republican elites are going to be just fine in a majority non-white America, and most of them know it on some level. Bad Yertle's preferred outcome is probably that Trump loses and he gets to run his anti-Obama playbook again on Biden, and a lot of professional Rs are probably in about the same place. There's a lot of burn it all down sentiment on the fringes, but R elites stop caring about those people the moment they plus cheating are no longer enough to make a viable electoral coalition. The question is how many elections do Republicans have to lose before they change fundamentally, and how ugly do they make it in the meantime.

There's only one left in the same town, though I'm the only one who moved away further than an adjacent state.

69: Sure, if you're going to school sober, getting good grades is easy.

My friend running for state auditor is playing the game of thrones: https://twitter.com/shanemorigeau/status/1321202860843962368/photo/1

Best of luck. For some reason, I answered very extensive questions by someone polling about our primary for State auditor. I can't remember if I supported the eventual winner or not.

Here's a legislative candidate I've been happy to support: https://twitter.com/bessette4mt/status/1321244958712418306/photo/1

I'm disappointed at the quality of the NYT's tax-return-stories drip. The story of how he strong-armed lenders into forgiving his big Chicago failure is interesting, but not very damning.

The question is how many elections do Republicans have to lose before they change fundamentally,

If we count from 2012, Jerry Brown's first victory and Dem supermajority in the CA legislature, the answer is: still unknown but more than two! (That doesn't count the midterms, in which CA Republicans are also losing.) They're still moving rightward and losing (with a couple moderate and interesting mayors) eight years after being cast out of any power in CA.

78: But California Republicans have an out of state reservoir from which to replenish the crazy. That doesn't necessarily mean they're ok becoming a regional party that can't compete at the presidential level.

They're only interested in signalling anti-virtue.

78: Either the country or the Republican Party is caught in a feedback loop. Failure leads to a doubling down on the things that caused the failure. I am hopeful that the United States is finally breaking free of this.

Trump owns the national party, and failure is going to do little to change his reputation within the party. Republican officeholders will be unable to cross him, but he will be as nasty as he pleases to them, regardless. Trump (one of 'em, at least) has got to be considered the favorite for the 2024 nomination.

But California Republicans have an out of state reservoir from which to replenish the crazy.

ExCUSE me, we are completely self-sufficient in crazy and indeed a net exporter. Orange County, the nation's fruitbasket.

Republican voters will reward Republican politicians for thwarting Biden. The demographics keep tipping our way, but a repeat of the Bill Clinton and Obama pattern is pretty forseeable. Our team seems to be showing up now. If they'll show up in 2022, then maybe we can really get somewhere.

I can't imagine the GOP not being a whole lot Trumpier is 2022. Great if we beat them. Sucks bigly if the get the Senate back.

So, it looks like the US Supreme Court might end up throwing out Pennsylvania ballots that arrive after election day, but if so, they'll decide to do so later. It might not make a difference in the presidential race, and I hope it doesn't. You can be sure, though, that it will make a difference in some other races, but that's kind of a different legal framework, so maybe there won't be 5 votes for standing?

Has everyone here who votes in PA already do so?

The cleanest split to steal the election is throwing out early or mail ballots and keeping Election Day in person ballots. CNN says the former are 2/3 Biden and the latter 60/40 Trump. Texas is trying, proposing to throw out 100k curbside in person early votes for no apparent reason other than saying people should have been forced to go inside.

All the PA voters in my family have voted. We all dropped our ballots off in person at one of the various Official Locations. I checked the website yesterday or the day before and everybody's ballot is listed as "recorded" except for one of my brothers-in-law. I still have to check with him to see if he has a weird name glitch. (The state system must pull from county voting records, because it handles things like apostrophes and hyphens differently depending on where the person is registered. Just some added fun!)

85 -- Drive through voting and curbside voting are different. Texas has strict limits on curbside voting, and on absentee. It's such bullshit, but until we get a national vote by mail mandate, and national registration mandate, we'll keep having this shit. Actually, it's now clear that there's a SC majority for preventing national mandates on either front, and for enacting some new VRA. (Since, as we all know, racism is way in the past. Except against white people: that's a goddam epidemic.)

86: per other thread I voted "by mail" (actually dropped it off). As did the other PA folks in my family. All are "recorded" but set to be counted starting on Election Day at the earliest. One of the stupidities of that is it is the single day when they absolutely do not have spare people. My understanding from folks I know was that even Rs in PA were onboard with agreeing to some kind of early canvassing/counting but then fell in line with the President (and probably Alito/Kavanaugh) to block counting.
Not matter whether it is determinative or not, on election night Trump will be certainly claiming to have won PA (and a good chance he will be ahead* even if there is decent overall Biden margin). Unless the big counties somehow get a fair number of mail-ins counted that evening. Not holding my breath.

*The best way to think of it is like Ohio which has a U-shape* (Dems better early then % goes down as most e-day's come in and then Dems up at end when big urban vounties (especially Cuyahoga comes in) except the left part of the "U" (mail/early) votes) is counted last in PA rather than first.

**For instance in 2012 Romney briefly took the lead late in the evening before getting swamped by Cuyahoga/Cleveland. Ohio has gone deep into hell since then, of course.

It's been getting worse since I left. Sorry.

I hadn't been paying attention to New Jersey federal elections, but they have some interesting twists and turns.

The Democrat who flipped the 2nd district in 2018 then switched parties and declared "undying loyalty" to Trump, supposedly over the issue of impeachment. He's in a close race and may lose his seat to an actual Democrat in turn.

The 3rd district, which previously ousted the longtime incumbent MacArthur who had played a prominent role in the ACA repeal attempt, seems set to remain safely Democratic this year, which was not a given. (I think someone here did some work with that district in 2018? Kudos.)

If these both go the right way, NJ will have exactly one Republican in its delegation, Chris Smith from the 4th.

BTW, has anyone seen or heard anything about Bill Barr in recent weeks? Seems to have dropped off the map after the 1st WH COVID stuff. Even if it is not that he got it, he sure seems to be keeping a low profile when he did not earlier (for instance briefing Trump on the extremely minor PA hiccup with overseas ballots). Speaking of Barr, this on him pressuring SDNY on Halkbank is exactly what you knew was happening. Truly a massive "October Surprise" against any other administration, but shows the relative effectiveness of the bed of nails aspect of this administration.

81 - I'm still not sure if Trump will own the party or if they'll all suddenly decide that he wasn't a true conservative--though if he is ousted it will probably be by someone even more qan/on-ish.

25 gets it exactly right.

The drama is there, but the election wasn't particularly close. I think that was necessary.