“Judging from earlier scandals, revelations about President Donald Trump's deceit about coronavirus and derogation of fallen soldiers won't repel many of his supporters.
“But that doesn't mean the revelations don't hurt him. The furor they touched off has kept the President from tackling a re-election challenge much harder than preserving his loyal ‘base.’ cnn.com/2020/09/13/pol…
“With support hovering around 43% nationally, Trump needs a chunk of new supporters to overcome Democratic nominee Joe Biden's lead. He has just more than seven weeks to lure them. And he faces a significant obstacle that he didn't in 2016: a smaller pool of available prospects.
“The circumstances of 2020 limit his opportunities for several overlapping reasons:
“Fewer voters remain undecided.
“Fewer voters have parked their preferences with third-party candidates.
“Fewer voters face the cross-pressures of antipathy toward their choices.
“Result: in CNN's post-convention poll, just 7% reported disliking both candidates. Most favored Biden. Compare that to 18% in 2016, where most broke for trump.”
“The vagaries of the Electoral College mean Biden could lose even while capturing 51% support nationally. Drawing within 3-4 points in the popular vote, election modelers say, would give Trump a reasonable chance.
“But in individual swing states, anything over 50% wins. And Biden already reaches or approaches that level in enough battlegrounds to win.”
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@politicalwire recommends waiting until after Labor Day before paying too much attention to the polls. Here’s his advice on what to make of the polls now. politicalwire.com/2024/09/03/now…
“Don’t make too much of individual polls and follow the polling averages instead. The best polling aggregators are Nate Silver … natesilver.net/p/nate-silver-…
“The political world is buzzing, not only over Harris’s momentum but the coming announcement of her choice of running mate.
“Undecided voters are learning about impressive, capable, and normal Democrats all over the country—from Gov. Andy Beshear to Gov. Josh Shapiro to Gov. Tim Walz.
“They’re also seeing clips of the inimitable Pete Buttigieg pop up in their feeds, destroying Trump and Vance on television every few hours.
“The unclassified version of the intelligence report concluded that Putin had ‘ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election,’ had ‘developed a clear preference for [Trump],’ and ‘aspired to help [Trump’s] election chances when possible.’
“The report found broad agreement within the intelligence community except for one point: Had Putin ordered Russia’s spy services to meddle in the election merely to cause bipartisan chaos, or had he wanted Trump to win?
Thanks to @NastyOldWomyn for flagging this article.
“Superficial analyses of why certain tech billionaires are aligning with Trump tend to fixate on issues like taxes & regulations, but that’s only part of the story.
“Tech plutocrats like Thiel & Elon Musk already have money. Now they want power—as much as money can buy.” newrepublic.com/article/183971…
“ … Vance is a Thiel creation. And like his billionaire benefactor—who once wrote, ‘I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible’—Vance embraces a radical ideology hell-bent on destroying government as we know it.
“It’s all in caps, like they’re shouting at us. The content and the form are high-schoolish. It reads as though someone who lacks substance tried to write bumper stickers or poster slogans that sound good but are empty—
“no one, Republican or Democrat, is going to ‘seal’ the border or ‘stop’ inflation. It’s that emptiness, ending with ‘Unite our country by bringing it to new and record levels of success,’ that captures the hollow spirit of this new Republican platform.