This is a totally empirical tale, but it’s one by which I’ve put a bit of store.
You remember Gabriel Sterling? He’s the Georgia elections official who was so angry in 2021 after the ugly MAGA backlash against Ruby Freeman, Shaye Moss and other innocent elections workers that he stood on the steps at his office with a deaf sign interpreter and excoriated Trump and his minions to just stop. That it had all gone way too far. He was so pissed!
So a few weeks ago, I caught a documentary on HBO made up of all Republicans who warned again how dangerous Trump is. There was Gabriel Sterling, still pissed as hell about what Trump had done to the election workers in Georgia. He hates Donald Trump. He wants Donald Trump to lose this election in 2024.
All this as background to say, last week (or was it the week before?) when early voting began in Georgia, Gabriel Sterling was again speaking in his capacity as an elections official. He shared with mighty giddiness that early voting in the State of Georgia has smashed all prior records. Crushed them like an old Pabst Blue Ribbon can on a MAGA’s forehead. As in, the best previous record was 136,000, and already in 2024, it was over 340,000. First day.
And it occurred to me, just these numbers don’t indicate to most of us how people are voting. We, the general public, don’t know that yet.
But Gabriel Sterling does. And he is so happy!
I think the inner MAGA circle know they’re done. At least in 2024.
But I’m still going to be drinking heavily until the night of Nov 5, at which time I will increase the intake to record levels! And then if/when Harris wins, alcoholic celebration will of course be necessary!
I’m in Canada, as you probably know, but my son has friends in the US, including some in the LGBTQ community who, having read up on Project 2025, are very worried about their future. Whether the MSG resemblance to a Nazi rally was coincidental or not, MAGAs have really turned up the hate and are now just so horrendously evil that it does literally evoke the Nazis of the 1930s.
I think that you’re totally wrong about this… and I don’t think I’m just a sunnily optimistic left-winger who views everything as good news. A week ago I was nearly catatonic with depression, for no particular reason absolutely convinced that Harris was toast, Trump was a shoo-in, etc. But despite how horrific it is to see proud boys openly marching, etc, the number of actual while supremacists in America is still reasonably small… and as others have pointed out, they’re already factored into Trump’s seemingly hard ceiling of 47% or so. There’s no way that Trump has 47% of devoted followers, PLUS a non-trivial number of white supremacists who are absolutely going to be motivated by nazi imagery and straight up racism, but who just weren’t previously motivated to go to the polls, until they saw this rally. It just doesn’t make sense.
Plenty of things that have happened in recent election cycles and this one have filled me with worry, from Hilary’s “deplorables” comment to the Biden-Trump debate this cycle. This rally, and the reactions to it, are the exactly opposite. I’m not as optimistic as some who are saying “I was already pretty sure he was toast, this is the nail in the coffin” (although I sure as heck hope they’re right). But I’m as sure as I can be sure of anything that the rally did more bad than good to his electoral chances.
I couple of weeks ago, my wife and I saw a play, which was set in a small-town city council meeting. So, political (but nothing to do with current affairs). After the play, there was a Q&A session with the director, and a Hispanic Phoenx city council member. After it was over, we were walking to the car, and I started to chat with the council-member. I was asking him about how much “horse-trading” they had to do to pass a particular piece of legislation he mentioned (that took 16 years to finally get approved). His comment was - when you have the votes on the “other side,” the thing to do is to shut up!
On the upside, his opportunities may be limited because he has a face that looks like it was designed to scare small children. He looks – appropriately enough – like a somewhat younger version of Joseph Goebbels. It just exudes evil.
As for being a Jewish Nazi, the hypocrisy of the MAGAs is boundless. They have no principles whatsoever.
I was skimming through Xitter earlier today and came across a post about the MSG rally. In the comments there were the usual MAGAts asserting no biggie, it was just a joke, and we’re PR and not offended, but there were a LOT of people claiming PR/Latino heritage who were outraged, stating their friends and family were likewise pissed, and that rally clips were being widely shared.
Yes, this is just anecdata, but it bolsters my hope that the rally backfired among populations in the swing states where it could make a difference.
Evidence of the backlash was immediate on Monday: A nonpartisan Puerto Rican group drafted a letter urging its members to oppose Trump on election day.
“This was just like a gift from the gods,” said Victor Martinez, an Allentown resident who owns the Spanish language radio station La Mega, noting some Puerto Rican voters in the area have been on the fence about voting at all. “If we weren’t engaged before, we’re all paying attention now,” Martinez said. He added the morning radio show he hosts was chock-full of callers Monday sounding off on the Trump rally comments, including a Puerto Rican Trump supporter who is now telling people not to vote for the former president.
Trump allies, and his running mate JD Vance, have downplayed the rhetoric as just jokes. During a rally in Wisconsin Monday, Vance said that he had not heard the joke and that “maybe it’s a stupid racist joke” or “maybe it’s not” but Harris saying people should get offended by a comedian’s jokes is “not the message of a winning campaign. Our country was built by frontiersmen who conquered the wilderness,” Vance said. “We’re not going to restore the greatness of American civilization if we get offended at every little thing. Let’s have a sense of humor and let’s have a little fun.”
Bolding mine to highlight the douchebaggery of JD Vance. Holy shit, I didn’t think that guy could be any more of a fucking knob, but that response takes the cake. Talk about tone deaf
My hypothesis: Trump went for a six hour show hoping that crude warm up acts would draw a lot of negative attention, swamping out coverage of Harris’s closing.
It seems hard to believe that Trump, so racist himself, could be hurt by warm up acts that are only a smidgen more bigoted than he is. But so much about this campaign is hard to believe and yet true.
I’d just like to take this opportunity to formally nominate JD Vance to be the next to follow in Rudy Giuliani’s (alcohol-induced, Brownian motion-like) footsteps.
Disclaimer: I haven’t seen any of the Nuremburg MSG rally*, but what I’ve read is enough to boggle my mind. Which, after 77 years, is not easily boggled.
I’ve never given much credence to the idea that Trump is trying to throw the election, mainly because getting elected is his best chance at a get-out-of-jail-free card. But I have to reconsider, at least a bit: losing would mean that he wouldn’t have the responsibility (not that he shouldered very much of it), but could keep the grift mill running full blast (“Stop the Steal! Send me money!!!”). And I’m not sure whether he’s capable of imagining himself facing any kind of real consequences for his actions, since he’s never really had to in the past.
One other possibility is that he’s so sure of winning that he felt a need to reassure his base (an entirely appropriate term) that any perceived backtracking was just a feint, and he’s still The Donald they know and love.
Or @Aspenglow may be exactly right: one last chance to bask in the adulation of His People.
* The Orange Peril’s voice sounds exactly like mine to my ears, and I can’t stand the sound of my voice when I have to listen to it on a recording. To me, I sound as if I have terminal adenoids.
You know, this move never ceases to amaze me. I mean, if a guy lies when most people think he’s lying — fine, he’s still gunning for something, and I’m cynical enough to manage a shrug in response. But this? What’s the point of this? Does anyone take that claim seriously?
In King County, Washington (Seattle and environs), nobody knows ahead of time. Ballots arent tabulated until polls close. (I was an Elections worker in the Obama 2008 election.)
We’ll see if there are efforts at voter suppression on election day, and how local officials respond. But if Trump loses, he’s in a lot weaker position to challenge the results than he was as sitting president. And I have an extremely low opinion of the fortitude of the vast majority of his cowardly supporters. Sure, there may well be isolated incidents. But no serious threat to overturn a Harris victory.
And much of the judiciary are craven and unethical. Maybe I’ll be surprised, but absent a VERY CLOSE CALL - a la Bush v. Gore - I do not anticipate conservative judges will overturn an election.
