Thread by @SethAbramson

If Bishop wins in #NC09, let's all laud Trump's game plan!

1) Being a draft-dodger and calling a marine a coward;
2) being America's least successful businessman and calling a successful entrepreneur a socialist; and
3) being a man with no beliefs who calls a moderate a radical.

1/ I was worried the GOP would again commit systemic election fraud in #NC09, but then Democrat Dan McCready's *best* counties starting reporting their votes en masse and Republican Dan Bishop immediately began pulling away, so now I feel much better that perfidy will be punished

2/ I'm sure it makes sense that Bishop would start to pad his lead as his opponent's best counties report the bulk of their votes—in the same way the last election the GOP won in #NC09 made sense until we found it was stolen

Here's to punishing election fraud with election wins!

3/ McCready is behind by 3,821; nearly all the votes left are in Mecklenburg County, where McCready is *winning* by 7,534 votes with 76% reporting. If my #NC09 math is right, that means...

{*does some calculations*}

...the Republicans will win this thing by about *7,500 votes*.

4/ Upshot: Dems keep losing R+10 (and greater) districts by ~1%; each time Trump claims a big victory; each time media lets him do it; each time you have a strange feeling the numbers aren't adding up; then one time (in #NC09) you find the GOP stole the election; and life goes on

5/ Sometimes it's a matter of which precincts are out—I get it. I "get" that McCready gained 7,500+ net votes on his GOP opponent in the first 56% of Mecklenburg Cty reporting, and then gained 900 net votes in the next 40% that reported in the same county, and Bishop won by 3,500

6/ I "get" that early votes favor Democrats and get reported (sometimes) first; but I can never shake the feeling—and history—that every long voting line in a majority-minority district was scripted up by a GOP operative, that every voter suppression law was passed by the GOP, &c

7/ When the GOP wins a district by 15% or more, you're like, okay, I can see that; when they win a *close* one, all you can do—if you've tracked the GOP voter-suppression game plan for 15+ years, as I have—is think about how on a level playing field, a Democrat wins that election

8/ And strangely, that's part of the GOP game plan, too—to be so blatantly (and successfully) against people voting that every close victory for the GOP is a slap in the face for Democrats, not just a loss, which causes us to lose hope and maybe (the GOP hopes) not vote next time

9/ I don't need lectures on the vagaries and finer technical points of elections, as a) I already know much of the lecture, b) more importantly I know polling experts are trained to ignore the "macro-" factors that decide close elections, like disinformation and voter suppression

10/ How many low-information #NC09 voters believed that the marine McCready was a coward, that the entrepreneur McCready was a socialist, that the moderate McCready was a radical, because Trump will *never* be punished for lying to voters' faces about all these things? SMDH. /end