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Michael Tracey Profile picture
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14 Nov, 6 tweets, 2 min read
The good news about the 2020 election is that it provided more than enough material to make pretty much everyone feel stupid: mtracey.medium.com/why-everyone-s…
I like how Twitter asks me if I’d like to read my own article first before retweeting it
TLDR: Anyone who confidently proclaims that all their prior assumptions about the nature of the electorate were unambiguously vindicated by this election outcome is full of shit
Also, the longer the Right obsesses with "fraud," the longer they're going to inhibit themselves from learning useful things about this election -- many of which are potentially advantageous in the long-run to right-wing interests. But I understand the need to blow off steam
And if you insist on continuing to blow off steam, I suggest at least not giving your money to scam artists like the Stop the Steal operatives who peddle fairy tales about how just *one more* contribution into their pockets will enable Trump to win Wisconsin or something
For the record -- and I'll write something separately on this -- I think I had overestimated the extent to which COVID was a negative on Trump. Trump may have ultimately benefitted more from lockdown/virus fatigue than Biden benefitted from disaffection with the federal response

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More from @mtracey

Michael Tracey Profile picture
15 Nov
Issuing declarative statements that are later proven decisively, embarrassingly wrong is certainly no impediment to ascending up the ranks of the media industry -- whether it's traditional corporate media or "progressive" media ImageImageImageImage
Lots of people are upset I've pointed out the uncomfortable fact that many Progressive Media stars, just like Corporate Media stars, are extremely lacking in analytical foresight. COVID is a poor excuse for making chronically wrong bullshit predictions

spectator.us/joe-biden-2020…
If I declaratively and definitively said "Biden will lose" in March -- COVID or no COVID -- I would deserve to have people owning me nine months later if it turned out Biden did in fact win. Having a lucrative media platform comes with certain responsibilities -- sorry
Read 5 tweets
Michael Tracey Profile picture
2 Nov
I came to tonight’s Trump rally in Rome, GA over four hours early and only barely made it in because the lines were so long. The contrast with Biden events is just comical
Although to quote one attendee I overheard waiting on line: “I tell ya, we are superspreaders right now [laughs]”

More people than I thought were wearing masks but it was still probably less than half overall, even though the Trump campaign officially encourages mask-wearing
Also there were people melting down left and right due to the logistical shitshow of leaving the event. Screaming matches between people over who gets to board returning busses, etc. I heard variations of “this is the biggest nightmare...” shouted in frustration several times
Read 5 tweets
Michael Tracey Profile picture
1 Nov
Just visited a Dem field office in suburban Atlanta. People working there had no idea how to get into the Kamala event nearby. “It’s the same people going over and over” to these semi-private Biden/Harris events, one said, such as State Reps. Meanwhile, volunteers are excluded
“I wish they wouldn’t keep it so close to the vest,” another said regarding Biden/Harris campaign secrecy about event details. Clear frustration and recognition that this goes well beyond what would be necessary for COVID protocols
I found the event. Staff says Secret Service will throw you out if you’re not authorized to attend by the Georgia Democratic Party. Speculation that it’s based on donor lists. If you were so lucky as to be invited you’d of course have to submit to a full vehicular search
Read 6 tweets
Michael Tracey Profile picture
30 Oct
My observations from Pennsylvania. In sum, no one really bothers to make an affirmative case for Biden because everybody is so monomaniacally obsessed with Trump unherd.com/2020/10/can-be…
If Biden can win despite such meager displays of in-person enthusiasm at his own rallies -- at which Trump supporters show up in far greater numbers to jeer him -- then “enthusiasm” has pretty much been negated as a meaningful factor in determining election outcomes
Of course it was widely assumed that this election would be a "referendum on Trump" (to use a pundit cliche) but the extent to which Biden is just a non-entity in the conversations I've had with normie voters so far is pretty amazing, especially if he does manage to win
Read 5 tweets
Michael Tracey Profile picture
19 Oct
Remember when the US punditocracy was briefly enraptured by wild prophesies of “Civil War”? Is that a subject you’d just casually move on from after a few news-cycles? The profession is filled with babbling loons who don’t even believe their own rhetoric

unherd.com/2020/10/how-hy…
Just keep in mind over the next few weeks that whatever other hysterical prophesies you hear will almost invariably be projections of the pundits’ own emotional insecurity and angst, rather than anything that bears resemblance to actually-existing political or social conditions!
US cultural and media elites so deeply crave a dramatic, psychologically gratifying conclusion to the Trump saga that they’ll continue projecting insane post-election scenarios (Civil War, violent militia insurgency, etc) that are just figments of their very troubled imaginations
Read 5 tweets
Michael Tracey Profile picture
7 Oct
The 2018 election in North Carolina's 9th congressional district, initially won by a Republican, was subsequently voided as a result of widespread illegal ballot harvesting: so it's totally false that there's "no evidence" of fraud related to the practice

In 2018, the LA Times editorialized that a ballot collection law enacted in CA two years before "does open the door to coercion and fraud and should be fixed or repealed," but feel free to have an angry meltdown over this issue for whatever bizarre reason

latimes.com/opinion/editor…
The issue with "ballot harvesting" is not so much fraud (although that's documented to have happened across party lines) but that it introduces the potential for coercion -- by anyone from unions to church groups -- and erodes the protections/privacy afforded by the secret ballot
Read 5 tweets

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