Yes. I commented about Florida here on this blog, and you responded.
I fell asleep and woke up at 1AM only to realize what had happened.
For the 2000 and 2016 elections, I had travel to the US from Germany that coincided with the unfortunate announcement of results.
I am definitely not traveling to the US in the crucial period this year.
Otherwise, it's doomscrolling, blog-commenting, and stress eating. Whee!
Working the polls seems like a reprieve. And probably busy enough that time for doom-scrolling will be limited (except in my mind).
We're getting cocktails delivered (this city has so much hustle). At least one of which will have caffeine. I've already taken Wednesday off. It's probably quixotic and bad for my health to stay up late, but whatever.
My 2016 story is like BG's. I went to bed having posted to worried friends "Breathe," i.e., "Relax. She's going to win." In the wee hours I woke up and my wife, who had stayed up, said "He won." I have no real plans for the evening but I'll be a poll worker for 13 straight hours tomorrow and the county person who trained us quipped "take my word for it, at the end of that day you won't even care who won." At least I'll be busy until the polls close, and a bit after.
I was a new-minted college student in 1980 and I still remember at this cafe where the windows were steamed up on the inside someone had written "Noooo!" They were right.
Sure would be nice to have that 2008 feeling again. My memory then is of the next morning, when Frances, the African-american woman who cleaned offices in my building poked her head in the door I said "O-BAM-a" and she flashed a conspiratorial smile, and said she didn't know which white people in the building she could be openly happy around.
If anyone wants to relive the horror of 2016 via the Unfogged election results thread, enjoy.
I think BG in comment 123 is the precise moment when the first splinter appears in our collective reality.
I wonder if the NYT will be doing its needle. They figured out early that there was a big problem.
It's a teacher-conference day, so the kids are home today and I have zoom teacher conferences this morning.
The school district required all the teachers to come into work, and zoom from their classrooms. This is making me so irate.
So Jammies - who has 3 15-minute parent-teacher conferences all day - is spending the day in his classroom. Granted, I probably would have pushed him to go anyway, so that he could be more productive and catch up on work, because he's so overwhelmed. But the principle of the thing pisses me off so much. So little trust in the teachers, so little respect that they may actually care to do their job even when they're not under the panopticon.
Anyway, Ace's teacher just seemed really, really tired and demoralized even as she said nice things about Ace. It made me frustrated on her behalf. Why can't she be at home?!
I saw there was a problem by ~7pm, if memory serves. I basically hypnotized myself to sleep at about 9 deeply afraid, woke up at 1pm to confirm my fears, slept a little around 4. Went to dinner with friends that night all of us totally paralyzed by horror....and it's been worse that I could possibly have imagined.
I don't feel good or even okay about tomorrow. I think Trump is going to win one way or another and then things will be...unsurvivable. They will be unsurvivable for a lot of people. Incompatible with human life.
One of my old high school friends committed suicide in spring 2017, and I'm pretty sure it was the Trump victory that was the tipping point. We had lost touch and she'd been seriously ill with depression since I'd known her, so I can't say for sure, but politics had always been one of her really big depression triggers. She was in the sciences and I'm confident that she knew how to do it so it wouldn't hurt or go wrong, so at least there's that.
My big dream right now is to live through the pandemic long enough to see my family again, that's about where I'm at. If we all survive another year and I can safely travel there and back - that's about all I can hope for right now.
I remember texting my sister in PA around 11pm and she was texting back "Philly will save it. Philly always saves it."
Comment 32 in the aforementioned thread, " Yes. Silver has a quite plausible scenario (sadly) that represents most of his Trump win possibilities: Systematic polling error in Trump's direction not beyond what has been seen (Obama 2012 for instance I think) coupled with the a scenario where Clinton does not make it over the bar in any of her Sun Belt opportunities and and Trump *does* in the Rust Belt--so many of them involving a Trump popular vote loss. ..."
Chalk one up for JP Stormcrow.
6 was rude to throw at us. I went back and watched 2008 election coverage this weekend.
In 2016 we were living in Europe so the times were all messed up. I was up until 3am when things were looking bad then went to sleep and woke up when things were worse.
For Tuesday night I have a few bottles of Dogfish 120 that have been aging for over a year. We're getting Chinese takeout for dinner. I did buy a bottle of bubbly wine even though it felt like I cursed it when I did the same thing in 2016. I think the bottle sat in the fridge a few months until I finally drank it out of despair.
Yeah, I was at a library conference in Sharjah, woke up and checked Unfogged first and was like, wtf is even happening? I felt like Charlton Heston in the Planet of the Apes the first time he sees a gorilla with a rifle on horseback. SP told me to go back to bed.
Here's how YouGov (imo a very good polling company) called 2016:
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2016/10/04/yougov-model-state-2016-election
And here's what they say today:
https://today.yougov.com/2020-presidential-election
Don't know if this will reassure, but I feel compelled to believe in it. An awful lot of things will have to have gone wrong at the same time for the orange one to pull off a shock win.
Rolled into Tucson last night along with my high school friend who I convinced to come along. We go pick up poll observer credentials today at a theoretically secret address ("for the safety of our staff, do not share this address," says the email), then I guess go to bed early so as to station ourselves at our respective churches at 5:30 tomorrow.
A handful of trucks with Trump flags on the freeway. Big stupid VOTE TRUMP + Bible verse billboards in Phoenix. Tucson has a reassuring number of Biden/Harris signs up. The numbing quality of driving all day is useful for keeping the mind from running off. Terrible dream, though, about not having voted and discovering that I had to solve a bunch of Putnam math competition-grade problems for my ballot to be eligible.
12. My memory is that I began to be uneasy around 7pm eastern or so, like Frowner. I don't remember the specifics, except that they weren't calling states that Clinton had to win.
Because of mail-in and dropbox ballot counting this time, and late ballots coming in for days or a week (more?) afterwards, we probably won't know anything on election night, unless it's a Biden landslide (which my innate pessimism discounts).
Wow, 17.1 is awfully prescient.
Sorry, that wasn't the final 2016 YouGov poll. This was:
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2016/11/07/yougov-final-polls-battleground-states
They had Florida as a tie.
If it's not a Biden landslide on election night, they won't count the remaining votes, or at least they won't count them in swing states. There will be some kind of faked-up crooked lawsuit and the Supreme Court will install Trump. Failing that, there will be unfaithful electors in GOP states. If Biden doesn't win incontrovertibly tomorrow, Trump wins. Or "wins".
This time round they have Florida to Biden by four points and Texas as a tie. Certainly am interested in Texas.
My gut is that pollsters are overestimating Texas.
I might regret saying this but I'm fairly confident Biden will win. The differences from the 2016, including the links above but also the consistency of his lead, multiple paths to victory, breadth of coalition, relative strength in core Trump demos make me think it's going to be too big a win to steal.
There will not be meaningful faithless D electors. People chosen as electors are the hardest hardcore party supporters. If someone attempts to threaten or bribe them they're much more likely to report it than take the billion dollar payoff. And that's before you get to laws about whether electors can be faithless.
My current worry is that R will hold the Senate by one. Apparently Collins got a bounce in ME from her meaningless no vote on Barrett.
I'll also admit, despite still preferring Warren, that the electability arguments in support of Biden appear to have been correct. No way of knowing what coalition Bernie or Warren would have built, but the polling pretty closely matches what Biden supporters said was his strength vs Trump.
In 2016 I made tacos and had most of a leftover baked mac and cheese on hand. I went to bed early, uneasy but c'mon: this country couldn't be that stupid or crazy. I woke before dawn to the news and had taco fixings mixed into mac and cheese for breakfast.
I bought a Comfy this past week and it arrived yesterday. It was either that or a Slanket. Maybe both. I might make a mac and cheese tomorrow. I don't have the stuff for tacos and I'm not going to the store. I might just eat Pringles all night. Who can say.
22: I think the whole Covid mess and the many improvised voting methods to get around it are going to make this election a sh*tshow that will be worse than FL in 2000. Very few states have experience with mail-in voting or dropboxes or any other mechanism. Particularly, absentee-type ballots (what we have in MA) require an inner envelope and signature that must match an outer signature. There are already report that (unsurprisingly) people aren't following the instructions and returning only the inner envelope or not signing one of the places that need to be signed, and so on. MA will not be close, of course, but other states with similar systems are going to ripe for all kinds of chicanery, lawyers, and lawsuits.
My recollection from 1996 is that there were two clear moments when things started going wrong. The first was when polls from the panhandle closed and FL very quickly switched from looking like a Clinton win to a Trump win. I think that would have been at 8pm eastern time almost exactly and happened very quickly. At the same time MI polls started closing as well, and I think this was a little more gradual than FL, and the NYTimes model thought that it made MI look very close, and I remember watching that swing on their website. I think both those moments were between 8-9pm Eastern.
The modal result in election models is Biden 413-Trump 125. I'm not sure I believe that. But it doesn't even take a 2016-magnitude error in Biden's favor to give you that result.
I intend to help time pass the same way I do every day: through generous helpings of weed. Accordingly, my anxiety is always low.
2016 I couldn't keep watching the news on TV and went into the basement to do some work with my cider. Kept looking at the damn NYT needle.
Never fell asleep that night, which is a first for a time when I wasn't trying to stay up. Eventually got offered a dose of valium when morning arrived and I was still a wreck.
I don't yet have a plan for tomorrow. During the day, try to work and fail, I suppose.
Anxiety has been off the charts. Haven't yet thrown up but I've felt close to that for about a week. Probably could get this classified as PTSD. And I'm continuing to beat myself up for sudenly feeling this bad - the drumbeat of people saying "For us, it's always been this bad, what the fuck was wrong with you for ever feeling good in America" has really gotten to me.
"For us, it's always been this bad, what the fuck was wrong with you for ever feeling good in America"
I get this, but it's still a little glib. Even for people who have always had it really bad, this is a precarious moment in time when things could go much worse, or we could go back to slowly taking one step forward and one step backwards, like usual.
28: I wanted to make sure that my ballot was counted, because I care about the ballot questions, and I was a little concerned I would screw it up, so I went in person. They printed out a label, they made sure I signed it properly, and they sealed it with a glue stick in front of me.
And also, your visceral reactions of anxiety aren't for your own personal wellbeing - it's coming from concern for others. So it's a little inapt of a comparison for someone else to say, "I've always had to be very concerned for myself." Were they equally consumed with anxiety for others, from backgrounds that they weren't familiar with? Maybe so, but it's apples and oranges.
In 2016 our roleplaying group was gathered; we decided to enjoy the night and watch the election instead of dividing our attention between the game and election. This year we've decided to gather over discord to watch together... hopefully with a much cheerier outcome! We haven't been able to maintain a game -- the frictions of running games on line derailed our weekly gatherings a couple on months into the pandemic-- so it'll be good to see everyone together at the same time.
24: you mean, it's solidly Republican? Man, because if we got Texas, Florida and Georgia in a landslide, I would be jubilant.
33 last: I really, really object to that line of reasoning because it's incredibly ahistorical and is mostly deployed as a left power move, often by people who are actually not doing so bad.
If in fact a large percentage of Americans have always been unalterably totally immiserated, despite the tremendous changes in American life over time, then the best thing we can do is tend our own gardens because change is impossible.
But it was better for working class people qua working class people when we had welfare, a high unionization rate and public housing than before or since. It's better for the elderly now that we have social security and medicare. It was better when the minimum wage matched inflation. It's way, way better being queer now than in 1970, and that's true across the board - even in places where it's still pretty awful to be gay, it's a hell of a lot better than it was in 1970. Places with good access to abortion and reproductive healthcare are better for women than places without. You're better off as a woman in Minnesota than in Louisiana. New York has its own program for housing people with AIDS, so you're a lot better off as a PWA there than in, eg, Omaha. If you're Black, you're better off in union jobs, especially in public service, than in the private sector. Areas with a high rate of unionization are better for non-unionlized workers than areas with a low rate. States that pursue wage theft are better for workers than, eg, Florida, which does not. These are all concrete, provable ways in which the amount of immiseration differs from time to time and place to place, even for people who are in pretty bad shape.
It is precisely because we can point to times and places where things are better that we know that social change is possible. We know what makes people healthier and happier because we have seen people become healthier and happier. Otherwise, it would just be a pipe dream.
The whole "you don't feel bad enough and it's because you are obscenely privileged even though you actually just have a stable job and may someday be able to buy a house" bit is the equivalent of "oh well those spoiled people in union jobs have HEALTHCARE and PENSIONS, unlike real Americans". If you're not immiserated, that's great. Being immiserated is terrible. Our whole job as people is to try to reduce the immiseration of others and ourselves-if-needed.
There's a big difference between "feel guilty because you have health insurance" and "it's your duty to work to get everyone the situation you enjoy".
I think we all most definitely have some level of PTSD. (I know the non-violence version of it from having grown up as a Cleveland sports fam...). Silver and some others were mocking Dems overreacting to the negative Seltzer poll* of Iowa a couple of days back (he and several others have said it was the best poll for Trump this entire cycle from a well-respected pollster). But I think that is how PTSD (and the fucking stakes even without the PTSD) affect people. And it was this very poll in 2016 (had Trump + 7 , same as this year**), that was a real bellwether for the coming 2016 Midwest collapse.
*There were very few good quality Midwestern state polls late in 2016, so in retrospect it was a harbinger for Wisconsin and Michigan at least. Maybe PA, but on the good news for for 2016, another bad sign for PA was some terrible results in Congressional District polling in PA and upstate NY (similar demos); this year those have been generally even stronger for Biden than state polls.
**Was a bit surprising as their Sept. one had Biden up, so the erosion was significant. "Unskewing" polls is dangerous but several knowledgeable folks pointed out at the CD level it has a very unbelievable result for at least one of the districts. Since he isherrenvolk-curious, Steve Kornacki was really digging into and extrapolating from that one poll last night. Eat the media.
My wife trying to talk about the forecast of nice weather for the weekend and what she should do. I am having none of it; there is no external reality apart from the election.
There is no Dane, there is only Zuul.
My recollection from 1996 is that there were two clear moments when things started going wrong.
1996 always already has been 4 years ago, so that tracks.
WaPo here with the really shocking news:
Dogs have an intense sense of smell -- and love for their owners.
Really, that's the headline.
DANA not Dane you fucking typo machine.
2016 we went to a HS soccer game with my son and his now wife. Meant to distract. Sort of worked but went from OK as we left, to a disaster when we got home. I ran up to bed and tried to sleep. Friend called me about 11 for the saddest phone call of my life*.
*In 2018 I was working the polls and came home right when it was looking like some modest gains but no "Blue Wave." I once again retreated to my bed and refused to pick up a call from another friend in California because of the precedent. Turned out he was calling to celebrate the relatively good results*.
*Except for the fucking Senate.
In 2016 I woke up at 2 or 3am (so 8 or 9pm EST), not sure if it was on purpose or not, to see that things were bad. IIRC I stayed up doomscrolling as things got worse. When Iberian Fury woke up (still in the middle of the night), I apparently told her to just go back to bed, that she didn't want to know, and it was the angriest she'd ever seen me.
Tomorrow I'm doing a ballot-curing shift in my early-afternoon. I'll try hard to go to bed at our normal--laughably early--time and stay asleep, because I really don't want a repeat of last time. There's a decent chance Biden takes Florida, and it's decisive enough that they call in around 8:30 or 9 EST, but any other outcome -- even the ultimately good ones, and I do still think those are more likely than not -- will mean days if not weeks of crazy-making stress. It's hard to think of any outcome that *doesn't* have Trump declaring victory, and only a clear Florida win & clear EV majority by Wednesday morning, IMHO, keep the rest of the Republicans from joining him.
The reason for the modal outcome in 32 (Biden 413-Trump 125) is that there's a very large gap between OH/IA/TX which are within less than 2 points, and anything else (MT at 7 and SC at 8). So if Biden outperforms the polls at all he has a good chance at that map, and if the error is in the 3-6 point range he is very very likely to get exactly that map.
38 is a good idea. We tried out the Alien RPG yesterday and it was a huge success. The rules for panic are particularly interesting - people repeatedly achieving improbable feats and then collapsing in a heap of stress in the aftermath. Three survivors, two seriously injured, out of six.
I went to a bar in SF where grad school alums had organized a watch party titled, ill-advisedly in retrospect, "Champagne or Cyanide?" I went home early as I didn't want the bad results continually shoved in via multiple TVs, and watched a lot of Hercule Poirot into the night in hopes of escape.
This time I have a local online comedy event 6:30-8, then a friendzoom for either celebration or mutual support 8-9.
re: 49
I never went, but years ago (1992), they had a live action "Alien" installation event at the Arches in Glasgow, in which you got stalked by Aliens (in genuine costumes) under the railway arches by Central Station.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_War
Although the Glasgow run didn't officially have weapons, one of the guys at the Arches told me (on a different club night)* that they'd staged a mash up event using the guns and sensors from the near by laser quest venue. Which sounded ... fun.
* the world "legendary" gets overused, but on a good night, the Arches was a pretty special club.
49: Were you playing a specific scenario? We played Chariot of Gods and enjoyed it -- it felt well written as a player, and meshed well with the rules. I played the Corporate Rep, and successfully slid along the "Sure, I work for management, but you're my team" continuum to avoid getting spaced.
I went to bed early, uneasy but c'mon: this country couldn't be that stupid or crazy.
I have learned to distrust my sense of personal incredulity.
I liked the look of Chariot of the Gods but it looked a bit long and convoluted - one of the party was dialling in from Narnia so time was limited. Plus none of us had ever played before, explaining stuff is always trickier over Zoom, and one of the party had never played an RPG before at all. So I wrote one of my own instead. We may give CofG a go next time, though the Selkie had the inspired idea that basically every character from The Wire can be transposed to the Alien setting without too much alteration. So the next party may consist of Snoop Pearson, Omar Little, Lester Freamon, Kima Greggs, Jay Landsman and Beadie Russell.
The hack federal judge hearing the drive thru voting case seems to be willing to say "C'mon guys I'm not that big a hack." So LB in the other thread was right.
The hack federal judge hearing the drive thru voting case seems to be willing to say "C'mon guys I'm not that big a hack." So LB in the other thread was right.
Well fml, should I do it?
||
Unfortunately, you have not been selected for position. We had many excellent candidates apply for this position, however we could only select one person to fill the role and had to make a difficult decision between our top candidates.
I would be happy to answer any of your questions if you are interested in specific feedback about your interview or application over the phone or via a video chat. Let me know, and we can arrange a time.
|>
Well fml, should I do it?
||
Unfortunately, you have not been selected for position. We had many excellent candidates apply for this position, however we could only select one person to fill the role and had to make a difficult decision between our top candidates.
I would be happy to answer any of your questions if you are interested in specific feedback about your interview or application over the phone or via a video chat. Let me know, and we can arrange a time.
|>
I don't have anything planned for tomorrow night, which is unusual because I'm generally pretty assertive about identifying a future mood or risk and figuring out how to buffer it. Before COVID I had planned to hire a brass band to play in the streets all night on the grounds that if we won, we'd want it and if we didn't win, eating the cost was the least of my problems. But now I can't do that and I didn't make a back-up plan. (I guess my style is brass band or nothing.) So I'll likely doomscroll, like everyone.
Sorry Barry. That sucks.
I'd do it. And I'd approach it as job interview, just in case something goes wrong with the successful candidate. Lots of stuff is going wrong these days.
This would be Joe Biden's America
"Demolition of Washington Monument Underway"
https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1323320005941972994
Oh, no! Not the national penis!
60 sounds like good advice, Barry. My sympathy.
Oh, gosh, Barry, that sucks.
61: No mocking of penises until after the polls close. We wouldn't want to trigger upset any easily-triggered conservatives.
58: Really sorry, Barry. Does anybody have advice about whether a feedback ZOOM is useful.
Also no mock penises. Don't give them any reason to allege voter freud.
So, my boss just explicitly said that we should do whatever we needed to to take care of ourselves tomorrow and Wednesday morning, like if we drank a lot on Tuesday night.
Sorry, Barry. Hang in there.
I am now signed up to call Keystoners whose mail ballots were rejected tomorrow morning.
Barry, that's rotten. I'd give it a few days for my upset to calm a little but I think I'd do the feedback session. It does sound like a net positive as in 60.2. Building bridges, etc.
Our plan for the election is champagne if things go well and vodka if they don't. (In all probability to be opened later in the week rather than Tuesday night, but anyways.)
I'd really be tempted to smoke weed too. Unfortunately my kid is younger than apo's and I'll have to parent if anything more than usual on Tuesday and Wednesday, and it's hard to use moderation at times like this.
Sorry to hear that , Barry. All sympathy.
Election Day 2016 was my wedding anniversary. We had blithely planned on a fancy dinner across town. Around 6 p.m. the results were a lot closer than we expected, so we called to push back our reservation. Around 7 we cancelled the reservation. At around 9 we sat in a dark, nearly empty French restaurant down the street and cried.
This year I took the day off on Wednesday because I assume that either way, I won't have slept tomorrow night. I bought a bottle of bubbly in the spirit of optimism/repeating stupid mistakes. The French restaurant has been closed since March.
So sorry, Barry. I think I would always want feedback in that situation, assuming I didn't have a chip on my shoulder or something that made it a bad idea. So if they're offering, I would probably take them up but ymmv.
Barry, that sucks. I'm so sorry.
Sorry Barry. I'd go with the interview as others said. I don't know how likely they are to have similar positions in the future but useful to have good connections at potential employers. There have been a couple times I've gone back and hired people who I didn't hire the first time around. In one case they turned out to be better than the first person I hired. Another time they were a crazy stalker.
Federal judge tosses drive-thru case as plaintiffs lack standing. However he said he expects it to be appealed and suggests people don't vote drive-thru tomorrow in case votes are thrown out later.
The NYT says they can't do The Needle this year because of mail-in voting, but they can do three needles, one each for Georgia, North Carolina and Florida. With luck, that will be good enough to let us know by the end of the night that Biden won.
Judge also said that even if plaintiffs had standing he would not have granted their case on the merits.
81: But victory is possible without those three states, just to gird people.
For an election-related diversion, the NYT examined polling responses for the 102 most common given names. I noticed that within that, Stephens went 52-36 for Biden, whereas Stevens went 46-44 for Trump. Surprising as both names seem to have experienced the same popularity curve over time, so there's not much of an age gap. Is Stephen more hoity-toity?
Is Stephen more hoity-toity?
It's the spelling that matches the Greek origin of the name rather than its English pronunciation, so yes.
538 will calculate conditional probabilities. If you grant Trump those three states it is 52% chance of Biden win. Some people pointed out that seems low because AZ is stronger for Biden than those states and all he needs is MI WI AZ to reach 269 so his model may be making weird assumptions about polling errors to call other states if FL GA NC are given to Trump.
Exchange from the Texas ballots case that I thought would amuse you all here:
https://twitter.com/rmfifthcircuit/status/1323331881027424258?s=21
We've been invited to an outdoor election-watch gathering at the home of an Important Person, so we'll go to that for a while but may not stay long. They'll have heaters, but it'll still be pretty cold for hanging around outside.
83: Right. I suspect that it would still remain better than 50/50 for Biden if all three are close wins for Trump. That's basically the scenario where the 2016 error is replicated in 2020, and Biden still probably wins in that case.
Interestingly (and I'm confused as to whether this actually means anything), in Silver's 100 scenarios, of which Trump currently wins 10 and ties one, Biden wins the other 89 if he gets one of those states.
86: I wasn't aware that Silver was facilitating that calculation, but my guess is that it accounts for the possibility of Trump blowouts in those states, which would tend to suggest an overall tilt in his favor.
87 is great and can only be improved if the defendant lawyer said "NMM to your lawsuit."
THOSE TWELVEELEVEN RED MAPS, GENTLEMEN!
I was sitting in an airport lounge in Seattle in 2016 as the early results came in, thinking "hmm, this is not as clear-cut as it ought to be," then on a plane home as everything went to shit. Switched my phone back on a few seconds after touchdown and got the whole horrifying experience all at once. I won't be traveling on Election Day again. Fortunately it's a state holiday here, so I plan to go to the beach and go kayaking for a while in the morning to postpone the doomscrolling as long as I can. In a best-case scenario, I could be drinking the good stuff by dinnertime. Worst case, I can just chug the half-full bottle of Jack Daniels that my son and his friends left around when they decided they preferred pot.
Barry, I'm so sorry. That's rotten.
13 participants in the office election pool. Of the thirteen, I am the most optimistic. I have Biden getting 369 electoral votes. I've got him basically running the table on swing states, except Texas. I surrendered in to my tendency in 53. The US can't be that fucking stupid.
pf, I have a superstitious dread of that sort of optimism. But I sure hope you win your office pool!
Yeah, I was very optimistic in 2016. I knew, intellectually, that there was a real chance Trump could win -- I read and believed 538 -- but I hadn't wrestled with it emotionally.
I am still optimistic this year, but I've done much more emotional wresting with the possibility of failure.
The US can't be that fucking stupid.
2004 and 2016 would like a word.
97 is me, too, except I genuinely didn't even know intellectually in 2016 that he could win. I would have said, logically there's no way.
I've spent the day today observing counting in a red county nearby. Will spend the day tomorrow here as well. My guess is it'll go past midnight MST. I'll take breaks an get on the phone from time to time, but an evening of doomscrolling is not on the menu.
except I genuinely didn't even know intellectually in 2016 that he could win.
Yeah, that was me in 2016. It was just too crazy an idea to contemplate, and c'mon, the US couldn't be that effing stupid. In retrospect, I ignored too many of the warning signs.
Darn, the online comedy show is tonight, not tomorrow night. Maybe I'll go jogging.
Ugh, Barry, that sucks. I'm so sorry.
97 was me, too. By this time last time around, as clearly documented in the thread heebie linked in 61, I had decided that worry could do me no good and my priority was acceptance. Serenity prayer and all that.
Once again I now find myself optimistic but worried. I think I have better reasons to be optimistic this time around about the actual vote results. I'm very worried about an attempt to steal the election. I feel like we're on the edge of a precipice, about to fall in, and we have no idea what it's going to be like beyond that it'll be all-consuming.
6 is exactly how I remembered it!
Gotta say my favorite late development of this election is Judge Sullivan commandeering the USPS. He just ordered that all remaining first class ballots must be delivered using the express mail system.
In 2016 I think I generally erred on the side of pessimism. When people discussed the odds, I went with Nate Silver, who gave Clinton a roughly 70 percent chance of winning, and pointed out that 30 percent chances happen more than twice a week and that's not really that rare. Now, on the other hand, I can't say I'm optimistic, but... I feel it's reasonable to try to be optimistic? I feel like I should be optimistic?
I will say I'm optimistic Trump won't win fairly. In 2016 the polls said that was unlikely, but as I've said unlikely things happen sometimes, and there were systematic errors in polling. Now the pollsters have done their best to correct those errors and Trump's odds are worse, not better.
Will it be stolen? Eh, that's harder to be optimistic about.
24: yeah. not that I live there anymore, but.
I feel cautiously optimistic that Biden will succeed to become the deeply mediocre president all know he can aspire to.
Otoh, if the current asshat manages to win or cheat his way to a 2nd term, i am done.
Further to 100, may not have a final count where I'm observing until 2 am. If the machines work right.
What was the observing like hour to hour, Charley? Anything untoward happen, or was it all placid and routine? I've never done this before and have no real idea what to expect for my shift tomorrow.
The headliner went for like 90 seconds talking with no sound before we realized her muting was in fact unintentional - we thought she was committing to an elaborate bit making fun of Zoom mishaps. (It sure looked like she was just animatedly pretending to talk, as there was no mute icon visible.)
I'll be doing a fifteen-person-or-so drop-in Zoom with my old high school set. (All Canadians, but it hardly makes any difference this year.) So, mediated collective doomscrolling with lots of drink, teasing, and eighties nostalgia -- am quite looking forward to it, or to the distraction element anyway.
Alton Brown appears to be blowing off some pre-election stress: https://mobile.twitter.com/altonbrown/status/1323446848875646978
They had a lot of trouble with the machines at first -- the middle aged woman who usually runs the machine was out on account of covid. They finally got the hang of it, though -- the key was figuring out exactly how to roll the ballots so the folds from being mailed didn't mess everything up. They had to start over and zero test a couple of times, over a couple of hours, first.
Tomorrow should be smooth. I don't expect drama.
It is amazing just how involved the whole thing is. And people, for the love of God, don't do write-ins, unless something serious (eg Murkowski) is happening. Your momentary joke means that someone has to hand count your ballot, along with the 1000 or however many other ballots with dumb jokes.
Sending good thoughts toward X, IF, and princess. I hope that your day is calm and that your beautiful city heals quickly from this terrorism.
Just because you are all so unreasonably cheerful, I have another thought. If Biden wins (and I expect him to do so) it seems to me absolutely certain that there will be a serious attempt on his life within the next year. That's where all this militia craziness is leading.
The comforting reflection is that this must be in the calculations of everyone involved in his safety. The uncomforting one is to ask how deeply the fascist craziness has penetrated the police/security system.
116.1: on the other hand, Obama managed eight years without anyone making a really serious attempt on his life. The Secret Service is getting really good these days.
Everyone thought that about Obama too, though. Was it John Rogers who wrote the "If you kill Obama we will burn shit down" line?
Seconding 117, they are very good.
I can't believe I got pwned at four in the fucking morning.
Four in the morning for you, but I'm in the UK, remember. Time difference. We're a bit ahead of you. We re-elected our incompetent xenophobic racist economically illiterate buffoon way back in December last year.
118: Yes, it's in the same immortal post (from 2005!) as Crazification Factor.
Sorry about the job news, Barry, and seconding everyone else on the interview being a good idea. Also, try this: "krakowskie przedmieĊcie."
KRAKOWSKIE PRZEDMIESCIE
WHAT A WONDERFUL PHRASE
KRAKOWSKIE PRZEDMIESCIE
AIN'T NO PASSING PHASE
IT MEANS NO WORRIES FOR THE REST OF YOUR DAYS
IT'S OUR POLONOCENTRIC PHILOSOPHY
Seconding both parts of Doug's advice, after a quick detour through G--gle Translate.
114: I did write ins for the primary. We have something called the Governor's council which makes recommendations in judges. It's very part time and pays like 15k. The incumbent had made a huge show of being full time and grilling judicial candidates by making them drive hours to meet with her. A couple of times there were candidates running against her but Captain endorsed her. I knew one of them and voted for him after watching all of the public access tv. The next time I voted for a candidate who had run in that election and chose to run the previous time. Through the course of those elections, I decided that she was completely unfit for office, so I write in the name of the lawyer I know in the primary. I leave it blank at the general. I also left auditor blank, because I know nothing about the person.
I didn't actually google it before 124 and so was working on the assumption that it was the Polish version of the Lambeth Walk.
Here, for contrast, is the German version of the Lambeth Walk.
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/lambeth-walk-nazi-style-1942
I'm wrong about the salary. It's 36k and they are supposed to meet at noon on Wednesdays to give advice on judicial nominations, commutations snd pardons. My rep got in in 1999 and had no other job. In 2008 my councilor was alleged to have hit a clerk. Another falsified the governor's endorsement and was fined but was nonetheless re-elected.
Interestingly, at one point the council succeeded Lt Governor as the executive of both the Governorand Lt governor's offices were vacant, according to wikipedia. This happened 3 times during the Colonial period and once following statehood. The line of succession was amended in 1918.
129: Just looked that up. She threw a curling iron at a store clerk in 2008. She did not admit to the felony assault but did agree to write a letter of apology and submit to 15 months probation while protesting that she was innocent and unfairly treated. Meh.
115: Thanks, we're fine, we were already in bed. Depressing to think how the conservatives will use this.
I just noticed the kicker at the end of Heebie's post, about what to wear for Brexit.
I'm thinking a shit-smeared loincloth made from the Union Jack
In 2016 I was so obliviously confident I went to the state Democratic reception, only to walk into a ballroom of hushed small groups looking upset. As reality set in for me, I headed home to drink by myself. Tonight my online D&D group will get me from 7-10, at which point I will either start drinking more or start drinking way more, depending on how it's going.
My gut is that pollsters are overestimating Texas.
Mine, too. Thanks, Beto. (Seriously, if he had closed his ears to the sirens' song and spent two more years building his organization, he could've probably beat Cornyn and provided all kinds of help up and down the ballot. Now he's just an obscure punchline.)
Working through my second virtual phone banking list. The first went really fast, because nobody picked up -- ok, one guy did, told me he'd already voted, and hung up before I could ask him to commit to getting 3 friends to vote. Actually, as I was typing this, someone else who'd already voted picked up, they'd also already voted, and now I feel bad for bothering them. I'm guessing that everyone in Pennsylvania is getting a phone call every few minutes, and I don't blame them if they've all turned off their phones.
All of which is to say that it feels pretty pointless, but it's something to do I guess.
You know what the business community really likes, predictability: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/11/02/flaw-in-dol-rule-sets-h-1b-visa-salaries-at-208000-a-year/?sh=3035b014187c
In a rule filled with devastating impacts for employers, high-skilled foreign nationals and employment-based immigrants, one feature of the Department of Labor's (DOL) H-1B wage rule stands out. In many instances, when an employer searches for the required salary for an H-1B visa holder, the DOL website reports a mandated minimum annual salary of $208,000 ($100 an hour). That is because the Department of Labor boosted the percentiles (and, therefore, salaries) so high under its new system it is unable to provide salaries for many occupations and metropolitan areas.
Ok, calling it a night. Good luck, everyone.
I don't live in PA and haven't voted there since 2012, but I get around one call or text every day this week asking me to vote in PA.
It's such an infuriating reminder that my vote doesn't count.
I had voted in Texas maybe once in my youth (at least 16 years ago?) before I moved away, and never updated my registration. This was the first year I started to get many texts about Texas races, probably some of the calls I got too based on the area code, so I finally took the effort to send in the form to cancel my registration. To their credit, the county website made it very easy to retrieve the voter ID I needed to fill out the form.
Also, sign up here for "Count Every Vote" events tomorrow near you.
I like this tone from Biden, and it's a good reminder that neither Obama or Clinton would have been able to be that directly angry without getting lots of backlash: https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1323450190532169729
It's such an infuriating reminder that my vote doesn't count.
Nobody's vote counts, by that standard. No single voter in Pennsylvania, for instance, is going to decide the election.
But I have to say, if somebody asked me to vote in Pennsylvania, I'd be tempted to take them up on it.
I just finished my shift, but I'll try.
140: As near as I can tell, you cannot get off the list the PA Democrats use. Trump is probably still on it from when he bought his way into Penn.
People were telling me "thank you for doing this" when I asked them if they had a plan to vote instead of "why the fuck are you people calling me and visiting my house every day?" (which is what I said to people in 2016 after one too many contacts).
Yeah, I've been nice to all the people who called, just frustrated on the inside. I even got to tell the PA-10 house campaign that I'd donated to their candidate.
Charlie Cook is basically calling it for Biden. He raises a point that I've been wondering about: Even Nate Silver seems to use crap polls like Trafalgar and the somewhat less crappy Rasmussen. I know there are polls that lean Democratic, but are there Democratic hacks on the Rasmussen/Trafalgar level?
I feel pretty good about it. Maybe even better than I did about Clinton in 2016, and almost as good as I felt after the early returns on election day in 2004 showed that Kerry had it pretty much locked up.
Presumably, the hack market is demand driven.
152 last is a key point. I feel good, but don't want to jinx it. Apparently the Republicans are not doing well in the Texas suburbs but they are doing well in South Texas near the border.
That link is five days old! How can you expect us to believe something from a lifetime ago?
I've been up since 2:30, couldn't sleep but can't fall asleep for a nap. I found a few things to burn through in anger for work but all the lingering tasks I was going to knock off today are of course untouched.
Anyway, I'm going to go back to avoiding this thread because of anxiety.
136: Yeah, why didn't he do that?
157: Maybe his presidential run interfered with what would have been the needed preparations? Which doesn't let him off the hook. (Also I see he dropped out Nov. 1, 2019, which seems early enough, but who knows.)
Because Obama was telling Beto that Beto could win it all.
159: Seriously? Beto is smart and has charisma but he needed to be an elected office holder to make that work. Maybe Beto can take down Ted in 2024.
158: Hickenlooper decided to go ahead and run for Senate after running for president.
161: True, but he was on much firmer ground, having been elected twice as governor already.
I think the Silver view is that the variation in crap polls still contains information. They're probably crap because of the way they weigh the voters by demographics.
Looking forward to Discord with friends tonight after dinner, hanging out, discussing the election and life. Had a good start to the day, so hopefully as I go, so will the nation.
Things are pretty calm at the church in south Tucson. It's really nice to see all these actual humans turning up to vote, and it turns out I'm one of like five people from various organizations keeping an eye on this polling place. Our big win so far is with one guy who had never voted before in his life but said he was excited to vote for Mark Kelly; problem was, he was registered at his old address across the county and was being told, falsely, that he'd have to drive across the county to govote, which he was too tired from dialysis to do. He went home despondent, the polling inspector got super mad at us and made us move our signs, but meanwhile the question was escalated to the county recorder's office, who called the inspector to set him straight and managed to call the voter at home and get him to come back. They brought his provisional ballot out to his car. Smiles and selfies all round.
I don't think Beto could have necessarily beaten Cornyn either. Cruz is the right one to pick off. Now, maybe Beto should have waited 6 years, or run for governor or something, but I don't think waiting for Cornyn would have been wise, and Beto's coattails did wonders in 2018.
166: but did running for president accomplish anything?
The plan for tonight is comfort food (non-fancy mac & cheese), GBBO, and at 10 pm I will leave the room to peek at my phone. If FL has been called, we will celebrate.
I don't think my neighborhood will erupt in honking or whatever if it's such a landslide that people know earlier than that.
I don't think Beto could have necessarily beaten Cornyn either.
Well, I guess we'll have a better idea when we see what margin Cornyn wins by.
We had an early Chinese takeout dinner and I'm already regretting it. I haven't had a drink yet because I'm worried about how that will interact with the hot and sour soup.
I put up a results thread. I was trying to wait until 7 pm EST, but I got too antsy.
166: I don't mean Beto shouldn't have run against Cruz; I mean he shouldn't have run for president. He should have kept his ass in Texas and then run for Senate again this year.
Meanwhile, I collected surplus Halloween candy from my neighbors -- 25 pounds of it!! -- to give to voters in line but there aren't any lines.
I still need to find a way to get rid of the Almond Joy's, tho.
peep - any chance Ohio will go blue? Is it true that until 2000 they alternated which party was red and which blue. I was looking at old maps in Wikipedia but they were all following the Red/Republican Blue/ Democrat distinction.
No one would have wanted to call either party "red" permanently during the Cold War, I figure.
183: I was trying to figure it out by looking at Wikipedia, and it looks like they've gone back and updated it to what we use now, so I couldn't fine a map showing Republican states in blue.
181: Sorry, BG, I just noticed this now. I guess the answer is no, but I probably would have said yes yesterday.