It was a coup pulled off by the Supreme Court and aided by the “stop the steal” Brooks Brothers rioters to prevent the accurate counting of ballots and unlike January 6, it was successful.
This notion that America is a rock solid democracy is absurd, we didn’t even really try to become a real democracy until 1965 with the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court is already dismantling. In democracies, the person the most citizens vote for wins the election, that is not true in America.
All the GOP has to do to “win” this election is manipulate enough elections in enough states to get it to the fascist friendly Court.
I don’t watch much TV but yesterday on the freeway (I-95 through Palm Beach County) I saw my first batch of trump flag waving loonies on an overpass. Those were everywhere in 2016 & 2020. They at least have begun their shenanigans. Of course I gave them a sustained 1-finger salute with my whole arm outside the car, so real obvious.
As well, during my ~80 mile round trip I passed many giant-screen video billboards. My drive out was more or less during rush hour. Saw two trump ads. His usual blue flag w big red letters. The tagline / motto along the bottom was different in each case and while I can’t recall the precise words they amounted to “rescue and hope is coming to the beleagured working class.” In 4 or 5 one-syllable words. Whoever writes those slogans is good; darn good.
I saw no ads for Harris.
During my drive home at 9pm I saw ads for neither.
As noted upthread it’s all about forcing it the the House. Where the Rs will win “fair and square” with all the criminal crap that got the decision into the House conveniently fogotten swept under the rug.
Guessing they’re focusing on the battleground states. I’m in Michigan, and I’m seeing a lot of ads now for both sides, in what seems about a 50/50 ratio.
The opposing argument is squishy, but plausible. In sum: Poll responses aren’t votes, and some percentage of eventual November Harris voters in Florida are not being captured in early August.
I doubt Harris ever passes Trump in Florida polling. We’ll see what happens in November.
There are no Trump ads in SE Louisiana at all, but the state is considered safe Republican (alas, I have but one vote).
We don’t watch much broadcast television in our household, but there are locally-directed ads on both YouTube and various commercial-supported streaming services. I saw Biden ads with some frequency and am starting to see Harris ads. Haven’t yet seen a Harris-Walz ad, but I’m sure they’re coming.
I wouldn’t rule out Harris winning FL but it is an uphill climb. The ballot proposals will gin up some progressive turnout but we have to remember they voted for DeSantis.
I think NC is in play for Harris and dare I say OH. DJT is melting down before our eyes, much like the Wicked Witch of the West. If he gets more obviously deranged, it could even put TX in play and even lead to Cruz being defeated.
We’ve gone from despair to enthusiasm in just a few weeks, need to avoid overconficence and just show up to vote.
The problem with making a play for Florida is that the “get out the vote” stuff that’s most likely to boost your vote totals takes time to get in place. Combing voter lists to identify occasional D voters that you need to target, setting up phone banks, sending out mailers, organizing block walkers to knock on doors and car pools to get voters to the polls. There’s no evidence that Harris or Biden before her is organizing any of this in Florida. I’m sure the Florida Democratic Party is doing some GOTV but they seem pretty resource constrained.
It’s not impossible that Harris is competitive in Florida, but every day or dollar spent there is a day or dollar not spent on more clearly competitive states.
Even a well funded energized campaign has finite resources.
Every dollar and every visit spent in Florida is one not spent in Michigan or Pennsylvania or Nevada or Georgia or Arizona or North Carolina … all of which are states more likely to be the ones to deliver the electoral win.
Keeping the question phrased to relevance in this thread - Will Trump’s potential ongoing deflation help Mucarsel-Powell’s chances of upsetting Scott?
There’s been fairly large grassroots efforts to increase Democratic turnout in several battleground states, starting in earnest back in 2021 to lead into the 2022 mid-terms (Florida example, forgive the headline). These efforts have largely taken place outside of the formal campaign framework. Following a few liberal Substacks, I catch a lot of second-hand news about the grassroots activity in places like Florida.
One of the biggest individual cogs is Field Team 6, who have poured considerable resources into Florida this cycle. Here is some dated information (April 2022) about the organization, but it’s a good summary of their activities. And by no means is Field Team 6 operating alone.
EDIT: Keeping this post tied into the thread’s theme, non-campaign efforts such as these make it harder for Trump to count on Florida than it was in the past. Florida might not turn blue, but it won’t be a walk, either.
But that’s not how it works. Congress does not get to decide who won a state’s electoral votes. Furthermore, the House only votes if no candidate has a majority of the votes of the electors appointed. Normally that’s 270, but if a state doesn’t appoint any electors then the number goes down. And regardless with only two candidates there would have to be an electoral tie.
But the coup was only possible because of how fucked up the ballots were and because the number of fucked up ballots mattered. This wasn’t an issue of counted votes not being counted. This was votes not being counted because the Supreme Court decided time was up.
To get back to the topic of this thread, what is the Trump campaign trying to do to win? Are they buying tv spots and billboards? Are Republicans doing anything to get out their own vote; some actual organization instead of just boosting enthusiasm? Will he stump in any battleground states?
Like I said earlier, Trump has a path to victory, but what is he doing to achieve it?
Yes, that is the coup that I am referencing, the conservative members of the Supreme Court arbitrarily ordering the count to be stopped when their preferred candidate was ahead.
Getting back to the OP, Trump can win in two ways:
By winning more electoral votes (that is currently a toss up, but Harris is trending), one catastrophic event could easily tip things Trump’s way; or
by getting close and then mobilizing his base who are overtly hostile to democracy, relying on friendly GOP governors and courts to block enough black voters from access to the ballot box to sway the election either on election day, or through GOP controlled courts in the days after election.
The GOP has been steadily dismantling America’s democratic institutions for decades. Let’s not forget that Karl Rove’s strategy was to lose, but not by too much and then claim they won. He did it for Bush and he has done it in state elections before that. America’s democratic institutions are very weak and weaker after Trump’s time on the American stage.
It’s fairly obvious to me (and maybe others—I’ve only skimmed the thread so far) that the single sharpest arrow in Trump’s quiver is the Supreme Court. I may have blown this horn too hard for some people’s taste (see here: A terrifying thought about the Supreme Court (long) for my anticipation of their crazy ruling on Trump’s claim to absolute immunity). Still, developments subsequent to that thread have shown that Supreme Court is far more dangerous and evil-minded than many gave them credit for. They may well prove the extent of their powers again in the inevitable case of Trump’s election claims.
At least two Justices, Alito and Thomas, are in his pocket and will support his claims whether they be to the Presidency, or to ownership of the planet Neptune. Alito and Thomas are the definition of MAGAnuts, corrupt and eager to validate any reading of the law that Trump needs, and Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Roberts are at the very least willing to consider Alito’s and Thomas’s MAGA-uber-alles positions as more valid than Sotomayor’s, Jackson’s, and Kagan’s opinions. And only three of those four Justices are needed for a 5-4 decision affirming Trump’s claims of election fraud.
In this scenario, a little less loopy than my previous one which was derided as “unrealistic,” “paranoid,” and a “faux Gish gallop of nonsense,” Trump picks off enough states where he lost that he finds fraud in, the state courts uphold his claim (or not—it doesn’t matter, because he can appeal any adverse rulings) and the issues are decided by the Supreme Court. They needn’t even rule that he won in the states he lost in—all that is needed is the Supremes rule that the fraud claims are murky enough to have the election decided, as the Constitution says, in the House of Representatives, where the crazy rules say that each state (not each Rep.) gets one vote. Since there are more states (26, I think) with GOP majorities, the House will then rule 26-24 that Trump is the winner.
All legal, all by the book, all very dangerous.
I hope I’m wrong, but let me ask you this: do you doubt that Alito and Thomas view electing Trump by any means necessary as preferable to Harris-Walz? And do you doubt that three other Justices could be persuadable that sending the election to the House would be the best way to settle fraud claims?
Back in June, there were some news pieces criticizing Trump’s campaign for almost completely outsourcing their ground game to the Christian nationalist organization Turning Point.
I haven’t seen a lot of follow-up since then, but there’s this stand-alone snippet from this morning’s The Guardian – unfortunately, the writer does not return to this point with more detail:
Donald Trump’s campaign recognizes that it could lose in November if the election is decided on “vibes” and “energy”, according to people close to the former president, as Kamala Harris continues to ride waves of momentum with her newly announced running mate Tim Walz.
The concern has also started to open fractures inside Trumpworld, with some MAGA allies criticizing Trump’s political advisers for running a campaign that may be too structurally deficient to stand up a ground game in swing states.
