Again, here is the website developer who has done such a great job on my site! @johnson_brad
I'm still very under the weather, fighting hard to get better. I had to really push hard to get this out! I am also pushing out the final TX episode of @ElectionWsphr today- which highlights 3 of the TX races from my House forecast.
Yes, I've left @NiskanenCenter to pursue some independent work that I couldn't do while working there & to launch The Cycle, but remain very friendly w them & supportive of their pro-democracy work.
1. The WH/Trump/ many congressional Republicans like @mattgaetz have FLOUNTED health & safety guidelines for covid19 - no masks, quarantines, they congregate in large groups.
They hold rallies for god's sake. Almost as soon as that started- they fell in & created a super spread
2. cluster that they are now refusing to let the CDC trace bc they know it will reveal that they tried to avoid testing, hide positive tests, failed to notify people who were positive, and sent the WH Chief of Staff, @MarkMeadows, down to Congress to infect Congress. In addition,
3. their reckless behavior has forced thousands of staffers and support staff in federal buildings as well as journalists to choose between earning a paycheck and risk exposure to a deadly virus. Follow CDC guidelines as I do, as my family does, and I have barely seen my parents
1. Update: we know for sure that 1st time mail voters are much more likely to have their ballots flagged for issues.
We also have a distinct pattern in mail data this cycle. Rs "invented" use of absentee ballots to ⬆️R turnout. Its how they dominated FL elections. Ds got wise
2. to this system over the past couple of cycles & started to up their focus on absentee voting. Where they could, they changed voting laws to allow more mail voting (CA, CO, more recently VA) & once the GOP figured out they'd no longer hold the advantage on this technique THEN
3. they started to try to frame it as risky to fraud. Still, this attack on mail/absentee voting is/was controversial in the party bc the operatives understand how much a role its played to their dominance (bc again, they've been winning by focusing on partisan turnout). When
1. Yes- there has been a crime in plain sight since day 1 of early vote returns in NC. My sense is that bc the GOP knows democratic accountability is broken. The Rep & R-leaning Ind portion of the electorate will support even blatant disenfranchisement of black & other
2. voters bc the right-wing media, Trump, and GOP pols have so effectively gaslit that side of the electorate into thinking that their side is the party protecting voter integrity that they would equate these measures w being more democratic and ethical- not less (again, we have
3. really slipped so much into similar territory of other nation's who, via propaganda, found their populations accept transitions into authoritarianism. Oh, and if you are a skeptical R who thinks, no YOU are the baddies! Do me a favor, go spend some time reading international
1. That's bc nothing matters but partisanship + national conditions. Pure Is have are about 60/40 pro-Dem split. R Leaners, like actual Rs are STILL voting Trump at close to a 90% prob.
This hasn't moved even: Ukraine, pandemic, economic collapse, or Trump COVID.
2. Our forecast will go back up tomorrow with the House ratings included. The 40 seats that flipped (actually, 39 now bc Ds gave up 1 for no reason in a special, CA 25, simply by failing to invest equally in ballot return operation) are pretty much universally safe,@BenMcAdams'
3. seat included. At the end of the day- his SLC-centric, suburban surge district is not "breaking bad" while that shit-show is sitting in the Oval Office. After that, assuming Ds don't change their electioneering strategies to run like the GOP's all bets are off. McAdams'
Trump flaunted CDC guidelines for COVID- led thousands, if not millions of his supporters to cavlier behaviors spreading infection- some died. Then when their recklessness at the WH causes an inevitable cluster- got state of the art treatment the regular public can't access.
2. The coddling of Trump, the Trump family, Republican politicians at both the fed and state level- all of that- must stop after this.
It can't continue w/o enablers like the presidential debate commission.
No masks/social distancing- no service
And people who are high risks
3. who are attending large rallies and in congregating and not masking, etc- these people are high risk. They should not be allowed to come into spaces with other people until they have quarantined after their last risky behavior. Stop making it easy for them to endanger innocent
1. That's bc that "debate" performance from Trump was literally the worst thing ever seen in American politics- & that's after 5 yrs of seeing Donald Trump do his thing.
He was advised against the "strategy" & spent the whole next day convinced he'd killed it 🙄
2. I didn't do what so many others did in their books and suddenly apply magic filters to the two 2016 campaigns. In my chapter, A Tale of Two Campaigns, in the '16 cycle as in now, I recounted how shitty Trump's 2016 campaign was, from beginning to end and on every single metric
3. Especially contrasted w HRC's campaign. It wasn't until Trump's freak accident win that all the Clinton hit books had to be quickly revised to recount what a shitty campaign she ran- they were all set to be print about how much better the Clinton campaign was than the Trump