;)
The Commentariat -- November 3, 2020
It's E-Day. The World Is Watching.
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
Maggie Miller of the Hill: "Election results will be delayed almost an hour in the Tar Heel State after the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) voted Tuesday to extend hours at four polling locations due to early delays from technical issues." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: To give you an idea of how little Republicans want Americans to vote, CNN reported that the N.C. state election board's vote was 3-2, with the three Democrats on the board voting yea & the two Republicans voting nay. These extensions were for only a few minutes & were to make sure voters in these precincts had the same access to the ballot as everyone else in the state had. It's a straightforward matter of fairness. The effect on outcomes would be negligible. And that was too much for Republicans.
John Kruzel of the Hill: "A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday ordered the U.S. Postal Service to sweep facilities for remaining mail ballots and rush their delivery, as receipt deadlines close in. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who has presided over several lawsuits aimed at Postal Service election mail delays, gave the Postal Service until 3 p.m. to 'ensure that no ballots have been held up' in regions that have been slow to process mail ballots."
Mike Allen & Margaret Talev of Axios: "If news organizations declare Joe Biden the mathematical president-elect, he plans to address the nation as its new leader, even if President Trump continues to fight in court, advisers tell Axios.... Biden advisers learned the lesson of 2000, when Al Gore hung back while George W. Bush declared victory in that contested election, putting the Democrat on the defensive while Bush acted like the winner. So if Biden is declared the winner, he'll begin forming his government and looking presidential -- and won't yield to doubts Trump might try to sow. Biden's schedule for Tuesday includes a clue to this posture: He 'will address the nation on Election Night in Wilmington, Delaware.'"
The Washington Post's live election updates are here. They are free to non-subscribers.
From the NYT election updates: "Joseph R. Biden Jr. returned to his Pennsylvania birthplace, Scranton, on the morning of Election Day, addressing supporters outside a carpenters' union hall and visiting his childhood home. 'It's good to be home,' the former vice president said at a canvass kickoff, wearing a mask and speaking through a bullhorn with Biden-Harris stickers on it. 'Scranton is where I learned, like you did, all my basic values.'... Mr. Biden also paid a visit to his childhood home, where he signed a message the living room wall: 'From this house to the White House with the grace of God.'... Mr. Biden had started the day attending St. Joseph on the Brandywine Roman Catholic Church in Wilmington, Del., with his wife, Jill, and two of their grandchildren, and then visiting the cemetery where several members of his family are buried, including his son Beau, his first wife, Neilia, and their daughter, Naomi...." ~~~
~~~ Maggie Haberman, et al.: "... President Trump said Tuesday morning in an interview on 'Fox & Friends' that he would declare victory 'when there is victory, if there is victory.... I think the polls are, you know, suppression polls. And I think we will have victory....' At another point in the interview, when one of the hosts tried to get Mr. Trump to respond to criticism from his predecessor, President Obama, about the safety of Mr. Trump's rallies amid a pandemic, the president instead started attacking Fox News. The network 'has changed a lot,' Mr. Trump said, falsely saying they've 'had Democrats on more than Republicans.'... Mr. Trump sounded tired, after spending all day Monday flying from rally to rally. He spent much of his last day on the campaign trail attacking the Supreme Court, accusing it of putting 'our country in danger' by ruling to allow Pennsylvania to continue accepting absentee ballots after Election Day, at least for the time being. In Kenosha, Wis..., Mr. Trump told a crowd, without basis, that the justices had made a 'political' decision that would lead to cheating by ... Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. His comments followed an angry tweet in which he charged -- without providing any evidence -- that the court's decision would 'allow rampant and unchecked cheating' and 'induce violence in the streets.' Twitter quickly flagged the president's assertions as potentially false...."
Erik Ortiz of NBC News: "A federal lawsuit is accusing police in North Carolina of voter intimidation after they deployed pepper spray during a get-out-the vote rally and hauled several participants to jail in a chaotic display of pre-Election Day discord. The complaint, filed late Monday against the police chief of Graham, a rural community west of Durham, and the Alamance County sheriff, says that protesters were not expecting conflict at Saturday's 'I Am Change' march, but that the situation escalated 'when deputies and officers planned and orchestrated the violent dispersal' of a peaceful crowd."
Jonathan Swan of Axios: "Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley held an off-the-record video call with top generals and network anchors this weekend to tamp down speculation about potential military involvement in the presidential election, two people familiar with the call tell Axios.... The nation's top military official set up Saturday's highly unusual call to make clear that the military's role is apolitical, one of the sources said -- and to dispel any notion of a role for the military in adjudicating a disputed election or making any decision around removing a president from the White House."
~~~~~~~~~~~
Presidential Race, Etc.
How to give a political speech:
Election Results. Dixville Notch. Lauren Dezenski & Cassie Spodak of CNN: "... Joe Biden took all five of the votes cast for president in Dixville Notch, a tiny New Hampshire township along the US-Canada border that is among the first places in the country to make its presidential preference known. The ballots were cast in the minutes after midnight, becoming some of the first cast and counted on Election Day.... Nearby Millsfield also opened its polls at midnight. Trump won Millsfield 16-5 over Biden."
The New York Times' live election updates Tuesday are here: Michael Cooper: "Nearly 100 million people had already cast their ballots before the day even dawned -- taking advantage of states' efforts to make voting safer during the pandemic.... Battleground states including Michigan and Pennsylvania were making news on the eve of the election not just for 11th-hour campaign stops, but for setting one-day records for new coronavirus cases.... There are now five million more people unemployed now than when Mr. Trump took office in January 2017. And the recent recovery is showing signs of stalling, as hopes begin to fade that many jobs lost to pandemic would return swiftly.... Millions of students are not taking classes in person, as many of the nation's largest school districts are still offering remote instruction or a hybrid that combines some in-person schooling with classes from home. And with the United States still suffering one of the worst outbreaks in the world, travelers have found a U.S. passport is not always welcomed anymore.... As Election Day dawned, the sight of plywood being put up over windows from Washington to New York to Los Angeles sent an ominous sign."
The Guardian's Election Day liveblog is here.
Alicia Parlapiano of the New York Times writes a general explanation of how votes will be counted, and how the early returns may be skewed one way or the other, then helpful state-by-state mini-analyses of when the polls close, the types of ballots that will be reported first, & the likely timing of unofficial reports. The Times will update the page as states release more information. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Michael McDonald of the University of Florida is keeping track of early voting -- both mail-in and in-person -- state-by-state and, where available, by party affiliation. Thanks to Ken W. for the link. As of early Tuesday morning, McDonald's site reports that 99,657,079 people had voted. CNN reported on-air this morning that more than 101 million Americans had voted early.
More Voter Intimidation. Tony Romm & Isaac Stanley-Becker of the Washington Post: "An unidentified robocaller has placed an estimated 10 million calls in the past several weeks warning people to 'stay safe and stay home,' spooking some Americans who said they saw it as an attempt to scare them away from the polls on Election Day. The barrage of calls all feature the same short, recorded message: A computerized female voice says the message is a 'test call' before twice encouraging people to remain inside. The robocalls, which have come from a slew of fake or unknown numbers, began over the summer and intensified in October, and now appear to have affected nearly every Zip code in the United States."
Annals of Journalism, Ctd. Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "The president's reported intention to make a premature -- and potentially false -- victory speech by the end of Tuesday night, with large numbers of mail-in ballots yet to be counted, has provoked intense journalistic debate.... Were Trump to try to stage such a 'victory' stunt it would chime with the relentless doubt that he has sown for months around the election, with repeated false claims that mail-in voting is riddled with fraud. His comments suggest that his aim is to create the illusion that the election is being stolen from him in states such as Pennsylvania where early results from in-person voting might favor Trump in a so-called 'red mirage', only for the balance to swing to Biden as absentee ballots are counted beyond election day."
The New York Times live election updates for Monday are here. The Washington Post's live election updates Monday are here. The Post's updates are free to non-subscribers. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ The Guardian's live election blog for Monday is more fun than the U.S. papers' live election updates.
Trump's Closing Argument: Biden Backers Will Loot & Rob You. Also, I'm Not Going to Pay Mic Guy. Emily Goodin of the Daily Mail: "... Donald Trump invited his family on stage with him during his fourth rally of the day in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Monday, where he warned that Democrats will 'loot and rob' if Joe Biden doesn't win the election.... Trump battled problems with his microphone throughout the course of the Kenosha rally, with the sound dropping so low that the crowd couldn't hear him.... A staffer came on stage and gave the president a handheld microphone. 'I always said I want the perfect mic,' Trump said.... 'We're supposed to pay these people, right?' the president joked of the mishap. 'I won't pay the bill of the company that does this crazy microphone, and they'll do a story, "Trump is a horrible human being, he doesn't pay a bill." No, I don't like to pay bills when people do a bad job.' But he then agrees he will because it's a Kenosha-based company." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump's claim is a little odd since, so far, most election-related violence seems to be coming from his own supporters, and it is he, not Joe Biden, who is encouraging that violence, such as his repeated support for Trumpbots who he said were "protecting" a Biden bus by slowing it down & side-swiping a vehicle accompanying the bus on a Texas highway.
How to Shore Up the Latino Vote. Emma Nolan of Newsweek: "One of the big superstars of the world; Little Pimp!" is how Donald Trump introduced [Latino] rapper Lil Pump on stage at a final pre-election rally Tuesday morning."... The president then appears to have recognized his mistake and adds: 'There he is. You wanna come up here and say something? Lil Pump? Does everyone know who he is? You know how big he is? Come up here, that's a nice hat.'... This week, Lil Pump threatened to leave the U.S. if Trump is not reelected. 'Yo, no cap... If Trump does not get elected, I'm moving the f*** out of here n****,' he said in a recent post on his Instagram Story, per Complex. 'I'm going to Colombia, f*** it.'" Thanks to Akhilleus for the lead. ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Lil Pimp seems like a nice guy ... for someone Trump would call an anchor baby from a shithole country (Colombia). Since I am so out of it, I never heard of one of the biggest superstars in the world, so I looked him up on the Wikis: "... he is often portrayed taking drugs such as marijuana, lean, and xanax.... [He was] expelled from multiple district schools. [Lil Pimp], thereafter, enrolled in an opportunity high school but was expelled in the tenth grade for fighting and inciting a riot.... On December 16, 2018, [Lil Pimp] was accused of being racist towards Asians after previewing a snippet of his new song 'Butterfly Doors'; the lyrics contained Asian stereotypes and slurs including 'Ching chong' and 'they call me Yao Ming cause my eyes real low' the lyric at which, [Lil Pimp] mockingly pulls his eyes back." Meanwhile, Lady Gaga performed & spoke at a Biden rally, & John Legend at a Harris rally.
David Brennan of Newsweek: "On Monday, while campaigning in the Pennsylvanian city of Scranton, where [Joe] Biden lived until he was 10 years old, the president appeared to threaten Democratic Governor Tom Wolf, as the crowd chanted: 'Tom Wolf sucks.' 'Make sure your governor doesn't cheat, because they are known for very bad things here,' Trump said, without elaborating. 'But we have a lot of eyes watching, a lot of very powerful eyes here. They don't want that to happen.... Open up your state and please don't cheat, governor, please don't cheat,' the president said to cheers from the crowd. 'We're all watching you.... We have a lot of eyes on the governor and his friends,' Trump added. 'Couple of other governors out there too.'" Wolf said Trump's threats would not intimidate local officials. ~~~
~~~ Trump Predicts, Encourages Election-Related Violence. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Speaking to supporters in Opa-locka, Fla., on Sunday night into Monday, the president ... began sizing up his opponent Joe Biden's physical attributes and describing how he might beat him up. 'So those legs -- those legs, they've gotten very thin,' Trump said.... He continued, drawing his words out carefully and slowly. 'You wouldn't have to close,' he said, holding up a clenched fist and then releasing it, 'you wouldn't have to close the fi-.' In a similar riff the day before, Trump's sentiment was even clearer, though he again suggestively trailed off at the end: 'A slight slap. You don't have to close -- even close your fist.'... A president who has repeatedly spoken in subtle -- and often far-less-subtle -- ways about violent acts by supporters and suggestively alluded to politically fueled post-election turmoil has made both a fixture of his final campaign pitch.... Trump this weekend also re-upped his long-running allusions to unrest after the election, saying there would be 'bedlam' if the result is drawn out as states count mail ballots in the days after the election.... 'November 3 is going to come and go, and we're not gonna know, and you're gonna have bedlam in our country, and you're gonna have this period of nine days, or seven days, or whatever it is, and many bad things. Ballots are gonna be, "Oh, we just found 10,000 ballots." Oh, that's good. "We just found another 10,000." This is a horrible thing that the United States Supreme Court has done to our country.'... At one point last week, he referred to the idea of Kamala D. Harris taking over, saying, 'Three weeks in, Joe's shot. Let's go, Kamala, you ready?'" ~~~
~~~ Ryan Lizza & Daniel Lippman of Politico: "At rallies across the Midwest and Sun Belt swing states..., Donald Trump has been openly discussing murky schemes to prevent legitimate ballots from being counted, escalating threats to disenfranchise millions of American as the weeks-long voting season ends tonight and his pathway to reelection becomes increasingly narrow. 'The Election should end on Nov. 3, not weeks later!' the president said on Friday. He repeated the claim at an event in Dubuque, Iowa on Sunday, adding falsely, 'That's the way it's been, and that's the way it should be.'... Trump has been abetted ... by top surrogates, including his sons, Eric and Don, and his daughter-in-law, Lara.... 'President Trump will be ahead on election night, probably getting 280 electoral [votes] -- somewhere in that range, and then they're going to try to steal it back after the election,' [senior advisor Jason] Miller said [Sunday], suggesting that fully counting ballots is a Democratic plot.... Most Republicans ... have remained publicly silent. It's not new for Trump's party brethren to duck and cover when he says something troubling. But after five years of perfecting the art of explaining how they 'didn't see the tweet,' ... it is shocking but not surprising that they aren't speaking up now, even when the integrity of America's electoral system is under attack by their party's leader." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Not all Republicans are "troubled" by Trump's anti-democratic antics. Consider the case of a Florida man: Aaron Blake of WashPo reports in the story linked above, "Speaking at [a] Florida rally, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said [of the Texas 'Trump Train' that threatened to run a Biden bus off the freeway]: 'We love what they did. But here's the thing they don't know: We do that in Florida every day.'"
The Last Harumph. Maggie Haberman, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump arrives at Election Day on Tuesday toggling between confidence and exasperation, bravado and grievance, and marinating in frustration that he is trailing Joseph R. Biden Jr., whom he considers an unworthy opponent.... Trailing in most polls, Mr. Trump has careened through a marathon series of rallies in the last week, trying to tear down Mr. Biden and energize his supporters, but also fixated on crowd size and targeting perceived enemies like the news media and Dr. Anthony Fauci.... At every turn, the president has railed that the voting system is rigged against him and has threatened to sue when the election is over, in an obvious bid to undermine an electoral process strained by the coronavirus pandemic.... His mad dash to the finish is a distillation of his four tumultuous years in office, a mix of resentment, combativeness and a penchant for viewing events through a prism all his own.... But by enclosing himself in the thin bubble of his own worldview, Mr. Trump may have further severed himself from the political realities of a country in crisis. And that, in turn, has helped enable Mr. Trump to wage a campaign offering no central message, no clear agenda for a second term and no answer to the woes of the pandemic.... On a trip to Florida last week, several aides told the president that winning the Electoral College was a certainty, a prognosis not supported by Republican or Democratic polling, according to people familiar with the conversation." ~~~
~~~ Jim Acosta of CNN, who has been following Trump around the country, called Trump's the "ugliest" closing argument he had ever heard.
Hunkered in the Bunker? Paul LeBlanc of CNN: "Federal authorities are expected to put back into place a 'non-scalable' fence around the entire perimeter of the White House on Monday as law enforcement and other agencies prepare for possible protests surrounding the election.... Washington, DC, Metro Police Chief Peter Newsham warned the District's City Council last month there was wide expectation of some type of civil unrest following the election. And many businesses in the downtown DC area in the proximity of the White House have boarded up doors and windows in the last couple of days in anticipation of possible protests. During this past summer, some businesses saw their windows smashed and other property damaged by protesters." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: So maybe the reason Trump cancelled his plans to party at the Trump Hotel on Election Night was not that he needed to hole up with his aides at the White House to scheme to steal the election or that he planned to use the People's House as a party venue. Instead, maybe he just wanted to be sure he could get to his hidey-hole in the basement bunker toot sweet.
Anne Gearan, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump is signaling that Election Day could be followed by a stretch of uncertainty and chaos as a purge of top officials, legal challenges to election results and potential resistance to a normal transition cloud the prospects for an orderly post-election period no matter who wins.... Trump, speaking at a rally in Ohio recently, openly suggested that he might throw a wrench in the transition process if [Joe] Biden prevails, making unfounded claims that his own transition was undermined. 'They ask me, "If you lose, will there be a friendly transition?" Well, when I won, did they give me a friendly transition?' Trump said. 'They spied on my campaign. They did all this stuff. That was not a friendly transition.' Trump has also complained about mail-in voting, erroneously casting much of it as fraudulent and falsely claiming that it is unusual or dangerous to continue counting ballots after Election Day. Biden's team is preparing for the possibility that Trump, should he lose, would block hundreds of Biden officials from gaining access to government resources as required by law. Top Biden transition members have discussed potential legal responses and are eyeing other ways, should Biden win the election, to begin what could be one of the most volatile transfers of power in American history...." ~~~
~~~ Jim Rutenberg, et al., of the New York Times: "With the election coming to a close, the Trump and Biden campaigns, voting rights organizations and conservative groups are raising money and dispatching armies of lawyers for what could become a state-by-state, county-by-county legal battle over which ballots will ultimately be counted. The deployments -- involving hundreds of lawyers on both sides -- go well beyond what has become normal since the disputed outcome in 2000, and are the result of the open efforts of President Trump and the Republicans to disqualify votes on technicalities and baseless charges of fraud at the end of a campaign in which the voting system has been severely tested by the coronavirus pandemic. In the most aggressive moves to knock out registered votes in modern memory, Republicans have already sought to nullify ballots before they are counted in several states that could tip the balance of the Electoral College.... In his last days of campaigning, Mr. Trump has essentially admitted that he does not expect to win without going to court. 'As soon as that election is over,' he told reporters over the weekend, 'we're going in with our lawyers.'" ~~~
~~~ Former Attorneys General Eric Holder & Michael Mukasey, in a Washington Post op-ed: "The most devastating event in our history came from a refusal to accept the election results in 1860. Abraham Lincoln's plaintive plea in his inaugural speech-- 'We are not enemies.... We must not be enemies.' -- went unheeded; 11 states refused to accept Lincoln's election and formed the Confederacy. The result was the Civil War.... History and contemporary events demonstrate that ... a resolution of policy disputes by means outside accepted governing frameworks does long-term harm to societies and ultimately puts individual freedom at risk.... This should not require saying, but we feel compelled to say it: ...our political leaders [should not] stoke or condone violence.... There is the insidious danger posed by charges that have nothing to support them other than an accuser's invitation to us to hallucinate evil.... If you can't imagine anything worse right now than the other side prevailing in this election, try this: Imagine a country where elections don't matter because those who do not prevail will not accept the result." ~~~
Giovanni Russonello & Sarah Lyall of the New York Times: "If President Trump pieces together an Electoral College win on Tuesday, at least one pollster -- and perhaps only one -- will be able to say, 'I told you so.' That person is Robert Cahaly, whose Trafalgar Group this year has released a consistent stream of battleground-state polls showing the president highly competitive against Joseph R. Biden Jr., and often out ahead, in states where most other pollsters have shown a steady Biden lead. Trafalgar does not disclose its methods, and is considered far too shadowy by other pollsters to be taken seriously. Mostly, they dismiss it as an outlier. But for Mr. Cahaly, 'I told you so' is already a calling card. In 2016, its first time publicly releasing polls, Trafalgar was the firm whose state surveys most effectively presaged Mr. Trump's upset win. A veteran Republican strategist, Mr. Cahaly even called the exact number of Electoral College votes that Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton would receive -- 306 to 227 -- although his prediction of which states would get them there was just slightly off."
Trump's Army Is AWOL. Jessica Huseman of ProPublica: "Donald Trump Jr. looked straight into a camera at the end of September as triumphant music rose in a crescendo. 'The radical left are laying the groundwork to steal this election from my father,' he said. 'We cannot let that happen. We need every able-bodied man and woman to join the army for Trump's election security operation.' It was an echo of what his father ... has said in both of his presidential campaigns. At a September campaign rally in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the president encouraged his audience to be poll watchers. 'Watch all the thieving and stealing and robbing they do,' he said.... But the poll-watching army that the Trumps have tried to rally hasn't materialized. Although there's no official data, election officials across the country say that they have seen relatively few Republican poll watchers during early voting, and that at times Democratic poll watchers have outnumbered the GOP's.... Despite the small number of official poll watchers, unauthorized Trump supporters at times have shown up and behaved aggressively at polling places and drop boxes, according to tips received by Electionland."
California. Travis Gettys of the Raw Story: "A caravan of ... Donald Trump's supporters blocked access to a voting station in southern California. The caravan paraded for 60 miles through Riverside County before arriving at a Temecula sports park, where throngs of Trump supporters snarled traffic and prevented some voters from reaching the polling station, reported the Los Angeles Times. 'Law enforcement was contacted to ensure that access to the parking lot and voter assistance center were clear,' said Brooke Federico, a spokeswoman for Riverside County. 'The Sheriff's Department responded and cleared access to the parking lot and voter assistance center.'"
Michigan. Joseph Choi of the Hill: "The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of Michigan said on Monday that several tombstones in the Ahavas Israel Cemetery in Grand Rapids had been desecrated with 'Trump' and 'MAGA' in red spray paint.... David J.B. Krishef, the congregation's rabbi, said in a statement to The Hill that it was unclear if the vandalism was an attack on the Jewish community."
Nevada. Stephanie Becker of CNN: "A Nevada judge rejected a GOP lawsuit seeking to halt early vote counting in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, over stringency of signature-matching computer software and how closely observers can watch votes being counted. With less than 24 hours before Election Day, District Court Judge James Wilson denied the Nevada Republican Party and the Trump campaign their request challenging procedures for poll observation and mail-in ballot processing in heavily Democratic Clark County.... Donald Trump has consistently criticized Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, for the decision to send ballots to all active voters because of the pandemic, and the battleground state is one of several where Republicans have tried to limit mail-in voting activity." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Texas. Neena Satija, et al., of the Washington Post: "A federal judge on Monday rejected Republicans' attempt to invalidate more than 100,000 ballots cast via drive-through voting in Harris County, Tex., home to Houston. But he also cautioned those who have not yet voted to avoid using those centers on Election Day.... U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, an [Mrs. McC: ultra-conservative] appointee of President George W. Bush, noting that an appellate court could overrule him. The plaintiffs in the case -- Houston conservative activist Steve Hotze and a handful of Republican candidates -- have appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, in hopes of a ruling Monday evening. Hotze and the candidates had sued the county last week over its drive-through voting stations, in which voters use a machine to vote from inside their cars. The new voting method was instituted for voters fearful of exposing themselves to the coronavirus at polling places. The plaintiffs argued that the Texas legislature never explicitly allowed for it. In his ruling issued from the bench Monday, Hanen said the plaintiffs did not have standing to challenge the validity of the ballots. If they did have standing, he said, he might have halted drive-through voting on Election Day." ~~~
~~~ An item on the ruling from the WashPo's live election updates Monday is free to non-subscribers & was linked yesterday afternoon.
Matt Scuffham, et al., of Reuters: "Deutsche Bank AG is looking for ways to end its relationship with ... Donald Trump after the U.S. elections, as it tires of the negative publicity stemming from the ties, according to three senior bank officials with direct knowledge of the matter.... In meetings in recent months, a Deutsche Bank management committee that oversees reputational and other risks for the lender in the Americas region has discussed ways in which it could rid the bank of these last vestiges of the relationship, two of the three bank officials said. The bank has over the years lent Trump more than $2 billion, one of the officials said."
The Trumpidemic, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Monday are here.
Antonia Farzan, et al., of the Washington Post have a sort of round-up of world news, centering on the U.S., on the status of the coronavirus. This is a bit different from their usual updates, in that it is not broken into several discrete items. The article is free to non-subscribers. (Also linked yesterday.)
Debbie Gets Her Dander Up. Lena Sun & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force..., sounded alarms Monday about a new and deadly phase in the health crisis, pleading with top administration officials for 'much more aggressive action,' even as President Trump continues to assure rallygoers the nation is 'rounding the turn' on the pandemic. 'We are entering the most concerning and most deadly phase of this pandemic ... leading to increasing mortality,' said the Nov. 2 report from ... Birx.... 'This is not about lockdowns -- It hasn't been about lockdowns since March or April. It's about an aggressive balanced approach that is not being implemented.' Birx's internal report, shared with top White House and agency officials, contradicts Trump on numerous points: While the president holds large campaign events with hundreds of attendees, most without masks, she explicitly warns against them. While the president blames rising cases on more testing, she says testing is 'flat or declining' in many areas where cases are rising. And while Trump says the country is 'rounding the turn,' Birx notes the country is entering its most dangerous period yet and will see more than 100,000 new cases a day this week."
>Way Beyond the Beltway
Philip Oltermann of the Guardian: "Police in Vienna are hunting at least one gunman after a string of shootings described by the Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, as a 'repulsive terror attack' left at least three people dead. Two civilians were killed by gunmen, while one attacker was killed by police in the centre of the Austrian capital. At least one gunman remains on the run, but authorities have not ruled out there being more still at large. The initial shootings took place at six different locations in the city centre and authorities warned of a group of 'heavily armed and dangerous' gunmen. Fifteen other people -- including at least one police officer -- were seriously injured in exchanges of gunfire. Seven victims were reported to be in critical condition.... Speaking to the Austrian broadcaster ORF, [Kurz] said the attackers 'were very well equipped with automatic weapons' and had 'prepared professionally'.... One attacker was shot dead by police. According to government sources, the slain terrorist was carrying an explosive belt and a bag filled with ammunition, ORF reported." ~~~
~~~ The Guardian's liveblog for today is here. A fourth victim has died.
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Reader Comments (22)
The day is upon us! Here’s to the forces of good, of decency, of rationality, humanity, and democracy. And here’s to a big swirlie down the hole for Fatty and the weevils of evil, of ignorance, hatred, and chaos.
May we all survive the day.
And whether we shall meet again I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take.
Forever and forever farewell...
If we do meet again, why, we shall smile.
If not, why then this parting was well made.
Saying what he really thinks...
In his final message to America before the election stealing starts in earnest, the Racist-in-Chief, at a Michigan Bund rally, called upon Latino rapper Li’l Pump, whom he referred to as “one of the big superstars of the world” (who most Americans had never heard of before), but who he introduced as “Little Pimp”. Quiet part out loud again, donnie.
Okay today’s The Day. I’m off to go be election chief. Hopefully should be calmish. We have 3700 voters, 2000 of whom have already voted. Expect about 1300 or so to show up. We normally are 2:1 Dem but I would not be surprised if our in-person results tonite are more 3:2 Repub. But I’m in VA which has gone blue in past years - the only real race is in a congressional district near Charlottesville, where a Black doctor might just beat a Bible guy. Fingers crossed.
Polls opened about 10 minutes ago in my little town and there's been a steady stream of cars. Probably people hitting in before work.
There's also the usual forest of campaign signs, including at least two Biden/Harris. Hope we've got a bunch of "Shy Biden" votes down here in this blood red county.
THE SENSE OF AN ENDING...
When Nixon knew the jig was up, when the final hour had come for him to leave the White House in disgrace he fell to his knees and prayed out loud, sobbing as he smashed his fist into the carpet.
So begins Jane Mayer's "Why Trump Can't Afford to lose." Fatty faces dire consequences once he isn't King anymore and there's no one like Jane to put them all on the table. It' a great read:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/why-trump-cant-afford-to-lose
I agree, Marie, that I am surprised that Mukasey, "a hard nosed winger," agreed to join Eric Holder in that Wash-Po op-ed. Things gotta be really bad when that guy shows a wee bit of solidarity with the left.
@Jeanne: (from yesterday) I so appreciated your sympathy–-we womens knows headaches and butt aches are a burden to our movements that generate that frisson that always makes life interesting.
@Rocky: Kudos to you for working the polls–-did that myself but at my age can't take the chance. Be safe!!!
@Rockygirl: I echo PD Pepe's thanks for your service to democracy.
@AK: At first I thought–-a Browning–-but the mister already had the answer–-twas Cassius' reply to Brutus. Perfect.
A Miltonesque encomium:
"They also serve who only stand and wait"... for hours in long lines to vote.
Morning grouch:
Don't want to see the unusual detente between Holder and Mukasey repeated too often.
This one resulted in some real clunky prose.
PD,
Your mister knows whereof he speaks. I thought it fitting to reference this exchange between Cassius (whose name I deleted from the third line so as to make the sentiment more general) and Brutus, heading off to battle in the ensuing civil war after ridding Rome of the tyrant Caesar.
B and C didn’t have a happy ending, as you may recall. Still, Antony recognizes Brutus’s fealty to the city and the very ideal of Rome, noting that he was, in fact, “the noblest Roman of them all”. Should the tyrant Trump fall today, or tomorrow, or next week, I have little hope that his fearful minions will refrain from violence. Very likely our own civil war is coming as well.
If he succeeds in stealing the throne once again, he will declare himself a god, no doubt believing that already. Falling on our swords, as Cassius and Brutus did, may seem a preferable choice to living under a vicious dictator and his blood mad mob.
Still, should we survive the day, win the White House and the Senate, it’s a start, for us. And an ending to our present source of hatred and ignorance, at least for the nonce.
Up democracy!
And up those who, like our own Rockygirl, head off to the battlements of American democracy.
Reading about Deutsche Bank’s efforts to try to rid themselves of the bloody stain of doing business with Trump (and who knows how many other scurrilous money laundering crooks), I find it difficult not to think of another Shakespearean character, as they walk their gold inlaid floors at night shouting “Out, damn Trump! Out!”
My response, not very Shakespearean, I’ll admit, is “Fuck them too”.
Just got back from casting our ballots. (Had to finish our latest jigsaw puzzle first.)
The total time from driveway to driveway was 14:05.14 minutes according to the stopwatch on my phone.
I've never seen so many cars at Town Hall as I did today. The process went exceptionally well. We entered a side door that led down a hallway that provided the greatest number of people to wait inside, a good thing for a cold, windy day after it snowed early. There was yellow tape on the floor every 6 feet to observe social distancing.
The wait was minimal with only two couples ahead of us. People were metered in as space allowed at the check-in tables. Another table off to the side, yet still in full view, had two people opening and accumulating mail-in ballots. They had quite a stack already.
After picking up my ballot, and given a pen to keep, it was off to a open privacy desk to fill in the 4 little ovals. Then to the scanner which told me I was #586. That seemed to me a good clip at ~2 voters per minute for only the first 5 hours of voting.
All in all, very painless. I just hope the result this year will be a lot less traumatic than it was 4 years ago.
@Akhilleus: Alas, poor Trvmpvs, it's not likely he'd make the cut as a Shakespearean character. He's too one-dimensional to be the model for a major character, and too prominent to be a one-dimensional minor character. As much as he thinks he is, he is just not dramatic material.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/03/whatever-happens-remember-this-trump-has-never-once-had-majority-support/
My comment (to while away the time....)
.
Early predictions of an emerging Democratic majority were mostly borne out in the popular vote but ran into the "red wall" of the Electoral College.
That said, this discussion reminds me of Ehrlich's "Population Bomb" whose predictions did not come to pass as quickly as he forecast.
Other factors intervened, like the "green revolution,” which followed the book’ publication and which Ehrlich did not take into account.
Nonetheless, the consequences of an exploding world population didn't magically disappear. We have seen resource wars erupt in the Middle East and water wars are already occurring in Africa and the Asian sub-continent. Prevalent immigration issues are also obvious consequences of population growth.
Often demographic predictions like Teixeira's and Ehrlich's are absolutely correct in substance. It's their timeline that's off a bit, and it's that weakness (like predictions about the dire consequences of climate change) that provides space for the deniers who for their own economic and political benefit rush in to sell the fantasy that the obvious is not really so.
Marie,
Even the clowns and bumpkins in Shakespeare are more compelling than Trump (the Fool in Lear is the smartest person in the play). He’d probably be okay as a fourth rate TV movie heavy (accent on heavy). But as someone who is not very smart and not a reader, he’s never learned that classical heroes all have a weakness and none of them get out unscathed.
Fatty’s belief that he is a genius without fault, who never fails is more mental disability than Achilles Heel, but it’s most certainly both. Except, in this story, it is those Americans who stand steadfast against his vanity, corruption, and criminality who are the true heroes. Trump, at best is a cardboard bad guy. But a cardboard bad guy who lives in the White House. Hopefully, today, that verb can begin its transition to past tense.
Prophetic? I hope so. I just noticed that the Trump folks over at the precinct have raised a 'Trump 2020" flag. Only thing is, it's flying at half mast.
Still whiling away the hours...
Another half-assed Pretender measure (temporarily?) bites the dust.
https://apnews.com/article/us-judge-blocks-immigation-rule-455a43be3393915bc14ec7919bf187d0
Colbert's got a clip of the Trump vs Biden fight that Donald's been fantasizing about, 'A slight slap. You don’t have to close — even close your fist.'
Good luck everyone-- I know the tension and stress are high-- Husband ended up in the ER late yesterday and for "observation" overnight-- just another fun night on the way to the election. He is fine, home, and now daughter and I must commence the consuming of alcohol in order to get through the next hours. Biden appears to be doing well, but... fool me once... afraid to hope. It's a beautiful day for a landslide!!
@Jeanne: Now it's my turn to give you some succor –-with all your stress you dealt with your husband being taken to the ER for observation? Good grief! But now that he is home and obviously ok, hunker down with that sparkling white and think like Norman Vincent Peale, the third person whom Fatty took inside his battled brain beside his papa and Roy Cohn. Norman stressed positive thinking–-( a rather inverted screw those that get in your way). So get out those red shoes, click three times and say:
WE HAVE GOT TO WIN!!! Who knows–-sometimes it works.
Thanks, PD! You are a pal. I will try to turn on the optimism, becuz basically, NO ONE KNOWS what is going to happen. (But Steve Kornaki gives me fits...I can't deal with charts--) Yes, husband did NOT have a heart event, for which we are grateful.
We can't figure out how they are talking of closing polls when it is 6:43pm, Eastern...I think everyone is twiddling thumbs becuz no real news yet. Hi ho! Take heart, everyone. Borrowing PD's optimism!