I've been working on a piece charting the worst indiscretions of Trump's presidency and I'd completely forgotten about the speech he gave to the Boy Scouts Jamboree in which he talked about a friend who had orgies on a boat nymag.com/intelligencer/…
Or the time he pushed the Prime Minister of Montenegro out of his way for a photo op
Over the weekend, I wrote on why the doomsday scenarios about Trump trying to steal the election are largely misplaced. THREAD bostonglobe.com/2020/09/27/opi…
One point, in particular, featured in the recent piece by @bartongellman in the Atlantic, overstates the likelihood that Trump will be ahead on election night because of delays in counting mail-in ballots.
Since mail-in ballots are often reported first it's more likely that Biden Is ahead. There are only two battleground states - Wisconsin and Pennsylvania - where mail-in votes are not processed before Election Day.
I get that a lot of people on this website don't like Brad Parscale but police misconduct is police misconduct and no American should be subject to violence by the police ... that certainly appears to be the case in this video
If you’re response to this video is to rationalize police misconduct because Parscale:
- is white
- is tall
- was accused of DV
- worked for Trump
- wasn’t treated worse
You’re being a hypocrite
So this is not really a critique of @bartongellman's piece but an observation on mail-in balloting. THREAD
There's a general assumption that Democrats will overwhelmingly vote by mail and Republicans will vote in person. Recent polling by Change Research confirms that view "
"Democrats are more likely to vote by mail (44% nationally, 54% in the battleground), compared to Republicans (8% nationally, 10% in the battleground)."
However, the numbers are shrinking: 28% say they will vote by mail. That's down from 33% in the summer.
So I've been giving @bartongellman's long piece on how Trump could steal the election a close read and there's a major problem with his argument that needs to be pointed out. THREAD theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
Gellman says, "Many states forbid the processing of early-arriving mail ballots before Election Day; some allow late-arriving ballots to be counted."
This is eliding important Information: FL, NC (and I believe AZ) process early arriving votes beforehand.
They will likely dump their mail in votes when the polls close, so in both states there's a good chance we'll know the winner on Election Night. If, for example, Biden is winning in Florida and/or NC we will know that night.
For anyone who has dealt with an extreme narcissist this is such familiar behavior.
Create an alternate reality based on alleged grievance. Use that alternate reality to justify bad behavior. Take no responsibility for acting badly
This column from @DouthatNYT is yet another example of this phenomenon: create grievance structure around Court decisions - and Court members appointed by Republicans - that you don’t like to justify pushing though a new conservative judge ...