I think there are many voters who won't vote for Trump, and are deciding between Harris, third party, or just not voting. I think those people are more likely to be the ones not responding to the polls. So I think you are probably right that on Election Day, we will see numbers move in our direction.
I am taking this post down. The data is not from yesterday. It was current when I posted this morning and updated afterwards. Do better next time Steve.
No problem Simon. When you posted the chart this morning it had not yet been updated for today. I saw today’s chart and decided to post my update. This problem happens often because your daily update often precedes the daily WaPo update. No offense meant.
If this is who I think it is - Timothy Miller - his model is heavily influenced by betting markets & even he has acknowledged that poly market is heavily influenced his model despite no external, heavy event. Basically I wouldn't put much stock in it.
Just remember the noise from all the talking heads will get louder over these ETERNAL 13 days. As Simon & others say DMWL, but also remember to Keep Calm & Campaign on & NEVER let the bastards wear you down !!!
A model that predicts a landslide for one side in September just to predict a landslide for the other party one month later should not be taken serious, especially when there was no significant event that caused such a shift. Same goes for Nate Silver’s forecast.
Betting markets are not a useful gauge of actual voting behavior, no matter what may have happened once. Look at it this way. Voting is the territory. Polls are a map of the territory, and they're very unreliable. Betting markets are like a 14th Century map of the world, one done on a notion and a fantasy: Here there be dragons. Or, in this case, here there be a Trump victory.
All you have to do is put your finger to the wind. Do that, and you'll know the real story.
I take those betting markets with a grain of salt. Look how much PredictIt missed the mark for the 2022 Senate majority: Nov 7, 2022 – 74¢ for Repub, ¢31 Dem. Look how well that turned out.
I am removing this comment, and asking 2 things: 1) if you are going to engage significantly here you need to do so under your own name and photo 2) don't waste our time any more with clear intention to instill fear and uncertainty into our community. We do more and worry less here and you are spending a lot of time attempting to instill worry here. If it continues, I will suspend you from posting.
I understand. But just for the record: I wasn't trying to instill fear in the community at all. I was hoping the community could help dispel my fear, as I was having some difficulty doing that on my own this time. I would never want to hurt this community, and if that's what I was inadvertently doing, I sincerely apologize.
Working on postcards for North Carolina now. They will go out October 28th because I live in TN , a neighboring State. I hate they are going out so late and worry they will be "DeJoyed".
Huge veteran and military population in NC, PA. Still can repeat the magic words "not suckers or losers" on comments in social media. According to Facebook, there are 4 million veterans and active duty members on Facebook, as well as 12.5 million family members and 242 million friends with veterans or active duty members. Saturate social media.
Vote vets has already flipped many 2016 and 2020 Trump voters.
My husband is retired from trucking industry. He said to mail it now because postcards are the lowest priority of USPS. Also, the problems with the interstates and traffic between TN and NC is still ongoing.
Post cards are first class mail, and are treated the same as other first class mail. (The exception would be postcards using other postage, like Standard Mail or Marketing Mail.)
Ohhhhh god he is awful. I am listening to Tim Walz on the Smartness podcast. I was happy to hear Jason Bateman say he got rid of his Tesla bc he just couldn't drive it anymore bc of Elon Musk.
Me too Cindy, but it's usually comments deleted because someone was freaking out and ya know what the conductor says, "No freakouts allowed in the DMWL Quiet Car (tm), people are working here!" So it's better we miss those comments anyway.
Speaking of work, doing something every day for the campaign helps us worry far, far less!!! GO Team Hopium, GO Team DMWL!! Run right thru the tape!!!
I was late to the comments and missed the now deleted items. I think of them as chalk outlines on the street where Simon has zapped an anxiety Zombie here to unsettle us. Begone anxiety Zombie!!! We're winning. Go worry some other substack!!!
Reading this I pump my fist, blast Springsteen, and get ready for an afternoon at the local SE PA field office. Gosh darn, thank you, Simon, for being the very antithesis of a dipshit.
Why isn’t the campaign/media more focused on the obvious outcome should Trump win? Namely, we will end up with a President JD Vance since Trump is clearly not going to last 4 years. I’d like someone to start talking about this. He’s more dangerous than Trump in my opinion. He’s smooth and smarmy and lies incessantly. I believe Thiel and Musk are banking on Vance to be their puppet.
A lot of people are talking about this. I’ve seen several articles on exactly this in the past few days, Vance as the inevitable President. If you google, you should find them. I’d look but i have to run right now!
Good thought. Word of mouth, by knocking on doors and phone banking, could help. The election is close, so contacting voter by voter will make a difference.
Suggestions about "what the campaign should do" aren't useable at this point in time. As to the media, you can always write letters to newspapers about your concern & I mean that sincerely--that's one way to DMWL! (The issue you cite is in some media out there that I've seen.)
Related, I sent emails to a couple of journalists pointing out that they would do well to amplify the story about "red wave polls," so there's one other DMWL kinda thing in addition to: Donating, phonebank/postcard contacts to voters, being loud and proud on social media, and other DMWL stuff on everybody's list here in the DMWL Quiet Car (tm).
I think everyone here who is doing this work to elect Harris/Walz knows this, Carla, but we choose to focus on solutions instead of worst case scenarios. Much more productive. Too easy to worry and fear and fall into those traps.
One way to get this out is when you phone bank or knock on doors. Talking to voters one by one can spread the word, in addition to what Schmoobly said about writing to news outlets. There’s your DMWL!
Reading the headline coverage of that WaPo poll made it seem like VP Harris was behind in the swing states. I am getting tired of the mainstream media resorting to clickbait headlines.
Last night I put out a call for a small group to gather and write letters to Georgia voters, via Vote Forward-- they still need our help! https://votefwd.org/.
I was expecting 6-8 people (which is what we've had in previous weeks) and I prepared packets for 10-12. We had 19 people show up!! (And this is in Birmingham, AL!) The last day to mail these letters is the 29th (which I think is too late) so our last gathering will be tomorrow. We knocked out 110 letters last night and we will do the same (if not more) tomorrow.
If anyone has extra time, this is a great campaign and you can log on from anywhere and adopt some voters today! It's a very rewarding project.
Tonight, I'm (finally) doing a phone bank training with the Harris campaign. Will be ready to hop on the dialer tomorrow! KEEP IT UP EVERYONE!
I read Simon to get a dose of Hopium. I'm from Michigan and angered by the flood of lies and misinformation in the mail and TV daily. I hope that women, young people, and minorities overwhelm the white mail votes and that quiet white men like me will vote for the intelligent black woman instead of the ignorant, traitorous white man. Sorry to be simplistic but I don't trust men who fall for Trump's BS.
Michigander here, too! The lies are disgusting, but being in the Hopium community and doing something is the best thing you can do to combat the nonsense. Thanks for being here!
Thank you for the encouraging words. I've been pretty confident about a Harris win until a few days ago when I caught a case of the jim-jams. If one more commentator says this election will be "razor thin" or a "coin toss," I'm going to lose it. Your analysis makes sense, and that settles my mind. The many hundreds of postcards we wrote at our house go out this week and next. I'm going to contribute to the senators you listed. Thanks for the links.
Remember Ann, when Steve Kornacki dramatically waves his pen around, or an expert publishes an ominous op-ed is for 🖱️& 💵💵💵. Don't let them live in your head. Keep calm & campaign on & NEVER let the bastards wear you down.
I can never watch Kornacki even when Trump isn't on the ballot. I am always glad ( pretty spiteful, I know) when Kornacki is showing the big board on the Kentucky Derby or some other real horse race utilizing statistics, etc. and he always, always, chooses the wrong horse to win. I have a better track record than he does.
Statistics based on prior track records or what happened in prior election years do not preordain what will happen this year. We have an awesome candidate who has only been in the race three months and is winning. What a ground game we have! And I just saw that a town near me has a bus that is going to PA to door-knock. I have never seen enthusiasm like this before! And that is what wins races, winning and a can-do spirit!
Ooh, I like that name for it, jim-jams. I was thinking of it as the Yips, like from Ted Lasso!! And yeah, it struck hard. Last night I could NOT sleep. Thanks so much, anxious brain!!
So happy to see my home state, Georgia, listed among the states with encouraging signs in the early vote, almost as happy as I am to read that GOP internal tracking polls show the race trending towards Harris!
Family, I witnessed yesterday what Simon has said about having confidence in the Harris/Walz team. I was lucky enough to be invited to help with Doug Emhoff and Maya Harris's trip yesterday here in NC. When I was asked I was already exhausted from working four 12 hour days in a row but thought this was a special opportunity I couldn't pass up. It was exhausting but exhilarating as it gave me the chance to see up close the precision required, how hard every single staffer works and how good and kind they are. I am left with even more determination to make sure Kamala and Tim win NC. Thank you, Simon and Hopium family, for all you are doing for our important battleground!
Thank you Simon and everyone who comments -- I find myself coming here for encouragement and inspiration every single day. And this line from Simon's piece today is such perfection: "At this critical time our campaign is soaring. And theirs is Trumping along with their broken down band of Star Wars bar allies." Ha!!
As an OG Star Wars fan, I do take issue with the phrase "Star Wars bar." It's the "cantina." (But either way it's an apt characterization. It's as true of today's GOP as it was when Obi Wan said it of Mos Eisley: "You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.")
First time commenting here and that line stood out for me too "Trumping along with their broken down band of Star Wars bar allies. " Made me laugh. Thanks for everything you are doing Simon!!!! !!!!! !!!!!! Like others I come here for my dose of Hopium and your work helps me feel confident of what is true, factual and accurate from the big context you hold and gives me more clarity about the "misses" of the legacy media that can leave me so frustrated that I've greatly decreased reading them. A huge appreciation for everyone here !
"I did a private briefing yesterday where my Republican counterpart said internal GOP tracking polls are finding the race moving towards Harris because Trump’s buffoonery and lunacy is breaking through to voters now."
This quote from Simon's dispatch today aligns with what Never-Trumper Stuart Stevens has been saying for months: The election will be close until the last two weeks at which point it will break for Harris.
We have both hard evidence and 'energetic indicators' that this is the case. An Emerson poll from a few days ago had late-breaking deciders going for Harris 60-36. The massive size of the early vote is probably good for us regardless of the specific state-by-state mix, and the state-by-state mix is on the upswing. Today, Simon add GA to the list of battleground states we should be encouraged by, which gives us four (ME, WI, NE-2, GA) out of eight. And finally, these closing days with Obama/Springsteen/Eminem et al on the one side and Demented Don and his Famous Stable of Shartz on the other (geez, sounds like a line from The Aristocrats!) will pull the 'superficiality-driven' cohort, a huge one in our sorry spectacle-based culture, toward us as well.
My emotional meter is sliding from nervously optimistic to genuinely confident.
Same here. Especially with the belief that the blue wall is cracking. It's the R's dumping polls favoring Trump, creating red wave 2024. I'm still on edge but feeling hopeful.
That’s an interesting comment from Stuart Stevens. Someone on another thread (maybe it was on substack?) talked about the 1980 race being close until the last few weeks (I was in preschool then so my memory of that is a bit hazy) and this reminded them of that scenario but favoring Harris.
As Simon reminds us, each election is unique and has its own contexts. So, the quote from Stevens and Simon’s reference to gqp internal trackers going towards Harris does help to explain why trump is getting more off the wall and unhinged and his rhetoric and their campaign’s rhetoric keeps getting nastier and more divisive. It also explains the narrative polling and really trying to create that mirage of momentum.
This will be a stressful two weeks but we know what we need to do. Work to turnout every Harris/Dem voter we can and avoid the noise and distractions from the other side and horse race corporate media. DMWL!
That’s the bottom line: Work to turn out every Dem voter we can. It’s hard to not be distracted by the noise but that is all we can do. Keep working hard and we will win this.
I think there are many voters who won't vote for Trump, and are deciding between Harris, third party, or just not voting. I think those people are more likely to be the ones not responding to the polls. So I think you are probably right that on Election Day, we will see numbers move in our direction.
Steady race.
Forecasts are fragile and problematic — I commit to ignoring them for the next 2 weeks.
I am taking this post down. The data is not from yesterday. It was current when I posted this morning and updated afterwards. Do better next time Steve.
No problem Simon. When you posted the chart this morning it had not yet been updated for today. I saw today’s chart and decided to post my update. This problem happens often because your daily update often precedes the daily WaPo update. No offense meant.
If this is who I think it is - Timothy Miller - his model is heavily influenced by betting markets & even he has acknowledged that poly market is heavily influenced his model despite no external, heavy event. Basically I wouldn't put much stock in it.
Just DMWL Venetus. No freakouts in the Quiet Car please
Just remember the noise from all the talking heads will get louder over these ETERNAL 13 days. As Simon & others say DMWL, but also remember to Keep Calm & Campaign on & NEVER let the bastards wear you down !!!
A model that predicts a landslide for one side in September just to predict a landslide for the other party one month later should not be taken serious, especially when there was no significant event that caused such a shift. Same goes for Nate Silver’s forecast.
Facepalm
Betting markets are not a useful gauge of actual voting behavior, no matter what may have happened once. Look at it this way. Voting is the territory. Polls are a map of the territory, and they're very unreliable. Betting markets are like a 14th Century map of the world, one done on a notion and a fantasy: Here there be dragons. Or, in this case, here there be a Trump victory.
All you have to do is put your finger to the wind. Do that, and you'll know the real story.
I take those betting markets with a grain of salt. Look how much PredictIt missed the mark for the 2022 Senate majority: Nov 7, 2022 – 74¢ for Repub, ¢31 Dem. Look how well that turned out.
On Simon's birthday? Seriously?? We don't care about that link.
I am removing this comment, and asking 2 things: 1) if you are going to engage significantly here you need to do so under your own name and photo 2) don't waste our time any more with clear intention to instill fear and uncertainty into our community. We do more and worry less here and you are spending a lot of time attempting to instill worry here. If it continues, I will suspend you from posting.
I understand. But just for the record: I wasn't trying to instill fear in the community at all. I was hoping the community could help dispel my fear, as I was having some difficulty doing that on my own this time. I would never want to hurt this community, and if that's what I was inadvertently doing, I sincerely apologize.
Working on postcards for North Carolina now. They will go out October 28th because I live in TN , a neighboring State. I hate they are going out so late and worry they will be "DeJoyed".
I sent my postcards to North Carolina this morning.
Thank you! We are doing EV so I am grateful yours will get here ASAP!
Thank you. Tempted to do the same.
My NC cards go out tomorrow.
Still can register new Democrats in NC. WI. MT. FT 6.
Uncle Sam needs us. https://www.mobilize.us/
Huge veteran and military population in NC, PA. Still can repeat the magic words "not suckers or losers" on comments in social media. According to Facebook, there are 4 million veterans and active duty members on Facebook, as well as 12.5 million family members and 242 million friends with veterans or active duty members. Saturate social media.
Vote vets has already flipped many 2016 and 2020 Trump voters.
Dan, thanks for your efforts.
Feels good, doesn't it?
My husband is retired from trucking industry. He said to mail it now because postcards are the lowest priority of USPS. Also, the problems with the interstates and traffic between TN and NC is still ongoing.
Post cards are first class mail, and are treated the same as other first class mail. (The exception would be postcards using other postage, like Standard Mail or Marketing Mail.)
Mine go out tomorrow.
Mine are going as soon as I can get to the post office!
The mail is moving just fine.
Disheartening to hear this.
Oligarchs gonna be oligarchs.
Maybe I'm glad I missed this comment ? Whatever it was....
I seem to always miss comments that have been deleted. 🤷🏻♀️
I'm guessing it had to do with Elon
Ohhhhh god he is awful. I am listening to Tim Walz on the Smartness podcast. I was happy to hear Jason Bateman say he got rid of his Tesla bc he just couldn't drive it anymore bc of Elon Musk.
Me too Cindy, but it's usually comments deleted because someone was freaking out and ya know what the conductor says, "No freakouts allowed in the DMWL Quiet Car (tm), people are working here!" So it's better we miss those comments anyway.
Speaking of work, doing something every day for the campaign helps us worry far, far less!!! GO Team Hopium, GO Team DMWL!! Run right thru the tape!!!
Yes, I need to stay in the quiet car and not be so nosey! 😂💙💙💙💙
I was late to the comments and missed the now deleted items. I think of them as chalk outlines on the street where Simon has zapped an anxiety Zombie here to unsettle us. Begone anxiety Zombie!!! We're winning. Go worry some other substack!!!
little chalk outlines - I like it
Reading this I pump my fist, blast Springsteen, and get ready for an afternoon at the local SE PA field office. Gosh darn, thank you, Simon, for being the very antithesis of a dipshit.
Atlanta rally October 24: VP Harris with President Obama and Bruce Springsteen!
Would. Give. Anything. To be there.
Ditto! I hope Bruce performs "The Rising ". One of the greatest songs ever.
I love that entire album, but yes, The Rising is a great & hopeful song.
Simon Rosenberg, Dipshit Antithesis!
Bruce is amazing.
Why isn’t the campaign/media more focused on the obvious outcome should Trump win? Namely, we will end up with a President JD Vance since Trump is clearly not going to last 4 years. I’d like someone to start talking about this. He’s more dangerous than Trump in my opinion. He’s smooth and smarmy and lies incessantly. I believe Thiel and Musk are banking on Vance to be their puppet.
Point taken, but what we need is for all those who prefer Harris to vote, then Vance becomes irrelevant.
I think we can do more than one thing.
A lot of people are talking about this. I’ve seen several articles on exactly this in the past few days, Vance as the inevitable President. If you google, you should find them. I’d look but i have to run right now!
That's great. But on the whole, persuadable voters tend not to be the ones reading articles about the election.
Good thought. Word of mouth, by knocking on doors and phone banking, could help. The election is close, so contacting voter by voter will make a difference.
Respectfully Carla, DMWL and all will be fine.
Suggestions about "what the campaign should do" aren't useable at this point in time. As to the media, you can always write letters to newspapers about your concern & I mean that sincerely--that's one way to DMWL! (The issue you cite is in some media out there that I've seen.)
Related, I sent emails to a couple of journalists pointing out that they would do well to amplify the story about "red wave polls," so there's one other DMWL kinda thing in addition to: Donating, phonebank/postcard contacts to voters, being loud and proud on social media, and other DMWL stuff on everybody's list here in the DMWL Quiet Car (tm).
Go Team Hopium!
I think everyone here who is doing this work to elect Harris/Walz knows this, Carla, but we choose to focus on solutions instead of worst case scenarios. Much more productive. Too easy to worry and fear and fall into those traps.
One way to get this out is when you phone bank or knock on doors. Talking to voters one by one can spread the word, in addition to what Schmoobly said about writing to news outlets. There’s your DMWL!
Reading the headline coverage of that WaPo poll made it seem like VP Harris was behind in the swing states. I am getting tired of the mainstream media resorting to clickbait headlines.
Thank you Simon!
Last night I put out a call for a small group to gather and write letters to Georgia voters, via Vote Forward-- they still need our help! https://votefwd.org/.
I was expecting 6-8 people (which is what we've had in previous weeks) and I prepared packets for 10-12. We had 19 people show up!! (And this is in Birmingham, AL!) The last day to mail these letters is the 29th (which I think is too late) so our last gathering will be tomorrow. We knocked out 110 letters last night and we will do the same (if not more) tomorrow.
If anyone has extra time, this is a great campaign and you can log on from anywhere and adopt some voters today! It's a very rewarding project.
Tonight, I'm (finally) doing a phone bank training with the Harris campaign. Will be ready to hop on the dialer tomorrow! KEEP IT UP EVERYONE!
Thanks for this link! I did this in 2020 and it is a great way to stay active from a non-battleground state.
I read Simon to get a dose of Hopium. I'm from Michigan and angered by the flood of lies and misinformation in the mail and TV daily. I hope that women, young people, and minorities overwhelm the white mail votes and that quiet white men like me will vote for the intelligent black woman instead of the ignorant, traitorous white man. Sorry to be simplistic but I don't trust men who fall for Trump's BS.
Michigander here, too. The R ads are horrible and incessant!!! We've stopped watching evening network news. 🤯
We've postcarded, emailed, canvassed and will be phone-banking starting Saturday.
GO BLUE FULL BALLOT 🩵
I canvassed too in my home town. My cousin from LA flew into Detroit for 2 weeks to call and canvass. We need to do anything we can to help.
Everything I'm hearing about early voting and door knocking stories from our fellow Hopium peeps is pretty positive
Michigander here, too! The lies are disgusting, but being in the Hopium community and doing something is the best thing you can do to combat the nonsense. Thanks for being here!
Thank you for the encouraging words. I've been pretty confident about a Harris win until a few days ago when I caught a case of the jim-jams. If one more commentator says this election will be "razor thin" or a "coin toss," I'm going to lose it. Your analysis makes sense, and that settles my mind. The many hundreds of postcards we wrote at our house go out this week and next. I'm going to contribute to the senators you listed. Thanks for the links.
Remember Ann, when Steve Kornacki dramatically waves his pen around, or an expert publishes an ominous op-ed is for 🖱️& 💵💵💵. Don't let them live in your head. Keep calm & campaign on & NEVER let the bastards wear you down.
I can never watch Kornacki even when Trump isn't on the ballot. I am always glad ( pretty spiteful, I know) when Kornacki is showing the big board on the Kentucky Derby or some other real horse race utilizing statistics, etc. and he always, always, chooses the wrong horse to win. I have a better track record than he does.
Statistics based on prior track records or what happened in prior election years do not preordain what will happen this year. We have an awesome candidate who has only been in the race three months and is winning. What a ground game we have! And I just saw that a town near me has a bus that is going to PA to door-knock. I have never seen enthusiasm like this before! And that is what wins races, winning and a can-do spirit!
Agree. He drives me nuts.
Love your reference to Offred. I loved that line from the show.
Ooh, I like that name for it, jim-jams. I was thinking of it as the Yips, like from Ted Lasso!! And yeah, it struck hard. Last night I could NOT sleep. Thanks so much, anxious brain!!
Strangely, I've had more calm in the last two days than I've had in a long time.
I envy you!
So happy to see my home state, Georgia, listed among the states with encouraging signs in the early vote, almost as happy as I am to read that GOP internal tracking polls show the race trending towards Harris!
Source ? Are you specifically referring to Georgia when you reference internal polling moving to Harris?
Just referencing what Simon wrote above.
Per Simon:
"I did a private briefing yesterday where my Republican counterpart said internal GOP tracking polls are finding the race moving towards Harris"
and
"My own assessment is that we should be encouraged by what we are seeing in GA, MI, NE and WI"
Oops I missed that
Family, I witnessed yesterday what Simon has said about having confidence in the Harris/Walz team. I was lucky enough to be invited to help with Doug Emhoff and Maya Harris's trip yesterday here in NC. When I was asked I was already exhausted from working four 12 hour days in a row but thought this was a special opportunity I couldn't pass up. It was exhausting but exhilarating as it gave me the chance to see up close the precision required, how hard every single staffer works and how good and kind they are. I am left with even more determination to make sure Kamala and Tim win NC. Thank you, Simon and Hopium family, for all you are doing for our important battleground!
How exciting. Once in a lifetime opportunity for you.
Thank you Simon and everyone who comments -- I find myself coming here for encouragement and inspiration every single day. And this line from Simon's piece today is such perfection: "At this critical time our campaign is soaring. And theirs is Trumping along with their broken down band of Star Wars bar allies." Ha!!
As an OG Star Wars fan, I do take issue with the phrase "Star Wars bar." It's the "cantina." (But either way it's an apt characterization. It's as true of today's GOP as it was when Obi Wan said it of Mos Eisley: "You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.")
First time commenting here and that line stood out for me too "Trumping along with their broken down band of Star Wars bar allies. " Made me laugh. Thanks for everything you are doing Simon!!!! !!!!! !!!!!! Like others I come here for my dose of Hopium and your work helps me feel confident of what is true, factual and accurate from the big context you hold and gives me more clarity about the "misses" of the legacy media that can leave me so frustrated that I've greatly decreased reading them. A huge appreciation for everyone here !
Welcome to comments section Veronique!👋
Glad you’ve joined us on it 🙌🏻🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Welcome aboard!
Laughter is pure good medicine!
so much!!! :-)
"I did a private briefing yesterday where my Republican counterpart said internal GOP tracking polls are finding the race moving towards Harris because Trump’s buffoonery and lunacy is breaking through to voters now."
This quote from Simon's dispatch today aligns with what Never-Trumper Stuart Stevens has been saying for months: The election will be close until the last two weeks at which point it will break for Harris.
We have both hard evidence and 'energetic indicators' that this is the case. An Emerson poll from a few days ago had late-breaking deciders going for Harris 60-36. The massive size of the early vote is probably good for us regardless of the specific state-by-state mix, and the state-by-state mix is on the upswing. Today, Simon add GA to the list of battleground states we should be encouraged by, which gives us four (ME, WI, NE-2, GA) out of eight. And finally, these closing days with Obama/Springsteen/Eminem et al on the one side and Demented Don and his Famous Stable of Shartz on the other (geez, sounds like a line from The Aristocrats!) will pull the 'superficiality-driven' cohort, a huge one in our sorry spectacle-based culture, toward us as well.
My emotional meter is sliding from nervously optimistic to genuinely confident.
Same here. Especially with the belief that the blue wall is cracking. It's the R's dumping polls favoring Trump, creating red wave 2024. I'm still on edge but feeling hopeful.
Polls are the map, voting is the territory. And polls have been a very flawed map for two years now.
That’s an interesting comment from Stuart Stevens. Someone on another thread (maybe it was on substack?) talked about the 1980 race being close until the last few weeks (I was in preschool then so my memory of that is a bit hazy) and this reminded them of that scenario but favoring Harris.
As Simon reminds us, each election is unique and has its own contexts. So, the quote from Stevens and Simon’s reference to gqp internal trackers going towards Harris does help to explain why trump is getting more off the wall and unhinged and his rhetoric and their campaign’s rhetoric keeps getting nastier and more divisive. It also explains the narrative polling and really trying to create that mirage of momentum.
This will be a stressful two weeks but we know what we need to do. Work to turnout every Harris/Dem voter we can and avoid the noise and distractions from the other side and horse race corporate media. DMWL!
That’s the bottom line: Work to turn out every Dem voter we can. It’s hard to not be distracted by the noise but that is all we can do. Keep working hard and we will win this.
20 more vote forward letters outbound to NC voters this AM. Keep going team!
Sending 20 to AZ today...and 20 postcards for Will Rollins (CA-41) and Adam Gray (CA-13). Will do more later this week.