Linked List: November 3, 2024

Sunday, 3 November 2024

My thanks to Nomorobo for sponsoring this week at DF. It’s perfect timing, especially if, like me, you live in an election swing state. The one thing all voters (and, now that I think about it, surely non-voters alike) agree on is annoyance at political robocalls and robotexts.

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Iowa Poll From ‘Best Pollster In Politics’: Kamala Harris Ahead 47-44 ★

The Des Moines Register:

Kamala Harris now leads Donald Trump in Iowa — a startling reversal for Democrats and Republicans who have all but written off the state’s presidential contest as a certain Trump victory.

A new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows Vice President Harris leading former President Trump 47% to 44% among likely voters just days before a high-stakes election that appears deadlocked in key battleground states. The results follow a September Iowa Poll that showed Trump with a 4-point lead over Harris and a June Iowa Poll showing him with an 18-point lead over Democratic President Joe Biden, who was the presumed Democratic nominee at the time.

“It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming,” said pollster J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co. “She has clearly leaped into a leading position.” [...]

The poll shows that women — particularly those who are older or who are politically independent — are driving the late shift toward Harris.

No poll guarantees anything, of course, but this one stands out. If it holds up, Harris is on her way to a clear victory. It also explains Harris’s increasingly sunny demeanor down the stretch and Trump’s increasingly erratic and desperate antics, like dressing up as a garbage man last week. Selzer is widely regarded as one of the best pollsters in America, if not the best. Her eve-of-election 2016 Iowa poll was an outlier, predicting Trump would beat Hillary Clinton by 7 points; Trump won Iowa by 9 points that year. In 2020, Selzer’s closing poll had Trump ahead of Biden by 7; he won the state by 8.

The explanation for Harris’s surprise strength in Iowa — that women have had enough of Trump and his shithead revanchist misogynist party — holds water. If this poll is wrong, I still like Harris’s chances. If this poll is right, it’s in the bag for Harris.

Iowa doesn’t get counted as a “swing state”, perhaps because Trump won it by such significant margins in 2016 and 2020, but in recent elections has swung back and forth by large margins:

2020: 🟥 Trump by 8.2
2016: 🟥 Trump by 9.5
2012: 🟦 Obama by 5.8
2008: 🟦 Obama by 9.5
2004: 🟥 W. by 0.7
2000: 🟦 Gore by 0.3
1996: 🟦 Clinton by 10.4
1992: 🟦 Clinton by 6.0

And if you want to go back to what’s effectively now electoral pre-history, Mike Dukakis won Iowa by 10.2 points in 1988.

Keep the faith. Be sure to vote.

Trump, His Remaining Shreds of Both Dignity and Sanity Slipping Away in the Face of Impending Loss, Tells Rally He ‘Shouldn’t Have Left’ White House in 2020 ★

The New York Times:

Reflecting on the state of border security at the end of his tenure, Mr. Trump said he regretted ever leaving office.

“I shouldn’t have left, I mean, honestly,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “we did so well, we had such a great — ” and then cut himself off. He then immediately noted “so now, every polling booth has hundreds of lawyers standing there.”

I wish he wouldn’t have left the White House on his own (which he did like the complete turd that he is, refusing to attend his successor’s inauguration). Biden was prepared for that, and we’d have all gotten to enjoy seeing him marched out by the military after watching Biden take the oath of office.

No Minced Words From Senator John Fetterman ★

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, on CNN today:

My version of being a man is like, hey, I like rib-eyes, I like Motörhead, and I’m never going to pick on trans kids and gay kids. […] It doesn’t make you tough. It doesn’t make you a man to pick on trans or gay kids. It just makes you an asshole.