I came around somewhat on Allan Lichtman, who was running around on many a media outlet with his “keys to the White House” presidential forecast — because watching his by-weekly streams he did out in the equivocation of “I am not all-knowing, I could be wrong.”. The problems of “the map is not the terrain” And more subjectivity than he wants to admit (what is a “foreign policy failure?”. Republicans were selling the Afghanistan withdraw as such, even though it is mostly just the case that you can see why President Trump scheduled it for the after the election. ) And within this I spotted one aside that I wanted to tack back on it it came to a Trump win, “something may be different and have changed than with every election since 1860.  If it is, I think I know what it may be — and I will get there if it happens.”. The tone goes at odds with this weird pile of YouTube clickbait images I was seeing for ” How Trump destroyed leftist’s career” (Never mind his fame of the moment came from predicting Trump winning in 2016).  (Incidentally, he predicted Gore winning in 2000, and sticks by that as accurate).  And “Lichtman Loses It” — though his election night feed showed nothing much off kilter — but it is where everyone gets “DESTROYED” or “Evisorated!!!!”.  His answer on why his “keys” failed and what “is different” — a broken scattershot news media and this is the first instance where the incumbent party trashed their incumbent president.  I do have an idea that if he were defining his terms from the perspective of after this presidential election and looking back at all the rest as opposed to right after Reagan, he might have a different definition for “Charisma” — understandably, Trump does not qualify ala broadly popular Reagan or Kennedy or Roosevelts — but if examining what it is that propels votes to him absent specifics in policy or politics, the thing they share along with war hero Eisenhower — is that they gobble up all the attention and exhaust the ability for an opponent to get a word in edgewise – – you have to think these things through on the particulars of causes and effects.

I listened to the “pod save America” “exit”/”autopsy” interview with two managers of the Harris campaign, and trying to digest meaning from it I may listen over it again. I have never listened to this one before — am familiar with its existence — only so much “dead center of the Democratic Party talk” I want to bother with. Overall in the weird electioneering a number of moments where I was thinking “I don’t think this is effective but I hope it is” (the “women winking at each other in the voting booth passing off their domineering husbands” “no one needs to know” ads which in terms of personal identities — you are putting people’s marriages on trial here) and things that depress me But no one else (noted the laste election eve campaign event in Philly. Ricky Martin was on stage. Opra came by. Mock Trump and his b-list celebrity has been but we are back in the same boat of micro-targeting no longer a -listers, whoever a-listers are these days.)

Looking over I see the next episode and something bothersome to possibly only me. The descriptor has “the hard questions about where the Democratic Party needs to go from here, the liberal media landscape, what the Harris campaign told us about why they lost, and yes, a jobs program for incels.”. Incel. Do words have any meaning anymore, because I have a feeling this in neither capturing either the narrow definitions first tossed out in a hyper-online subculture, maybe expanded to a still reasonably narrow definition of the literal oxymoron “involuntary celibate”. Here it seems to wash away into “non college educated man” broadly speaking, and taking in all assumptions of a broad sexual frustration. I suppose since the term “woke” had shifted some definition and then collapsed by broad use — and is now useless, the word “incel” might as well go the same route.

The deep breath analysis rejiggers previous stock analysis. When 3 out of a hundred voters walk across the aisle from Biden as against Trump over to Trump as against Harris, it is the sign that everything has gone haywire after all. And indeed, it kind of has. My bottom line is always going to be that — America now … joins… the list of countries… that have… popularly elected a leader… who was part of a failed coup attempt. What else is going to be the outcome beyond …

The humiliation is the point. The Republicans came back from a secret vote to cast their lot for Senate leader with the Senator who will gladly swerve off of Trump if he could happen to come the way at a minimal cost over the one who pledges total fealty. But the first chance of showing something… anything… for a historically mostly easy process of confirmation … no clear sign Thune wants to sidestep Trump’s desired “recess appointments” — the road to the rubber stamp role.

Okay, great, a new thinking goes. The Democrats have the soft power of celebrities and music stars. But. The Republicans have the streamers and podcasters. A batch of sub Joe Rogans along with Joe Rogan hisownself. Trump did that 20 something who sniffs the seats of interviews he considers Alpha-males. The best Harris had was the now more sedate Howard Stern and that show with a sexual euphemism name. In the social media sphere, eight years ago everyone was aghast at Russian incursions Facebook spaces. Today — who owns Twitter?

So the game recycles. Back to soft power. Cultural headspace. A manufactured counter-culture is Cooper than the culture, after all.

I do slide around some commentary by an apolitical podcaster/streamer that I listen to — an affected cynicism with his look see on goofy aggrieved liberals. He betrays his online-ness with his mockings. “Yeah, I know. Harris was ‘brat’, but … She wasn’t very interesting at all.” I forgot she was ever “brat”, and barely knew that in the first place. It was pretty easy to ignore. To him, the only thing Harris came out for was marijuana decriminalization, a last second issue tossed in a last minute campaign with two flaws in this complaint – – one: who cares how she came to it? Two: no, it is not all of her proposal and platform. I suppose there is a piecemeal element to Harris’s proposals, but I am not a fan of revolution. I’m a way, I guess the cynical apolitical podcaster showed the challenges to a run against a hothead, saying “Being ‘Trump is Bad’ is not enough.” Anything you say will end up sounding to an assortment of the 5 per cent needing to make the choice as though that is the message.

I’ve half whimsically slotted Joseph Biden as number seven in that great presidential rankings list. Right between John Quincy Adams and Chester Arthur. Am I serious? I don’t know, but I do want to take a thumping to the perennial — a list of requirements and plans any president needs to follow through over two terms in a pathway to one of the coveted top two tiers. And I may revise it based on recent events — a deep thought on the question of if there was anything he could have done differently to avert the election outcome, with America losing any claim of “exceptionalism” by joining that list of nations that have popularly elected leaders who previously were involved in a failed coup attempt. He does admit, accidentally in the Woodward book, that Merrick Garland was a mistake.

On the eve of the election, Bill Maher was onto one of his regular hobby horse stock. So, “If Kamala loses” it will be because “she failed to have a ‘Sister Souljah’ Moment.”. That case of candidate Bill Clinton making political hay by denouncing inflammatory comments by rap star Sister Souljah when speaking at Jesse Jackson’s event. In the context of messaging in 2024, I do not know what the Bill Mahers of the country wanted Harris to do. Deliver a 30 minute speech on stating that the word “Latinx” sucks? Rush into the prisons holding the two instances that fall somewhere in the vicinity of “sex change operations for illegal immigrants in prison” and not leave until the penis is removed from one and the breasts removed from the other? We demand performative symbolic political measures NOW!

Enter the MSNBC pile of Democratic chatterers, packed with a number of ex-Republicans who can slide back in. Donny Deutsch wants to move to the center. Surely somewhere between the extremes of not insulting the Haitian of small town Ohio and accusing them of eating people’s pets there is a sensible position all sides can agree? Joe Scarborough flips around either 90 degrees or 180 degrees to demand mirror looking.

Chris Matthews is always amazingly vacuous in his observations, and shot his wad (as though he hadn’t already) as a dead ender on Biden’s campaign. Understand, I have not heard one of these commentaries, but I close my eyes and think I can spot the words.

After any lost election, the losing party turns into cultural critics always. Or not always, sometimes they just claim a win anyways. I see Keith Olberman quoting Mencken. To be sure, his elitism is an interesting facet for him — a bit ago I found myself wanting to each across electronic devices and “rube-splain” against some derisive and seemingly not all in fun comments about tourist gee-shucking on tall buildings, like they have never seen tall buildings before. But he can keep his Mencken, I guess. The reality is you can probably keep the cultural criticism moving in winning elections. I myself would want to elect boring uncharismatic robots who fade out of view much of the time, but the public demands otherwise — and one way or the other. Maybe the Republicans will annoy me by succeeding with my strategum in four years — feed the public’s weary respond after a decade and a half of Trump, as the Democrats good by nominating to match a flashy celebrity.

The silver lining for this one, it should be pointed out, that in losing the Republican + 10 states in the Senate, the political identities of every Democrat no longer lies in figuring out how to win over a sizable chunk of Trump voters.

There was one weird note from the “14 Keys” guy, Allan Litchmann, a month ago in his twice weekly streams. He said he does not pretend to be infallible, and should be be wrong despite one hundred years it suggested some new dynamic has entered the picture, and he thinks he knows what it would be. But leave it there and get back to it after the election.

Social media? The collapse of a news media into disparate narrative lines removed from any perspective or need for truth? I listened to some European observers make a comment on just how little foreign policy figures in American political elections, a spot where I am kind of stuck because in consideration of the new Republican Party, it slopes into and merges in with “democracy” in a manner that Abortion does for the vast liberal assortment. The next statement from the European was the dagger — “or domestic policy, for that matter.” Not wholly accurate –Trump did have an economic proposal, panned by All economists everywhere, of 19th century tariffs. Kamala Harris had some modest price controls, more performative than anything, for

Observing a shot in the dark from the Russian government — Hoax bomb threats, many of which appeared to originate from Russian email domains, were directed on Tuesday at polling locations in five battleground states – Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – as Election Day voting was underway, the FBI said. The Georgia locations temporarily closed. Tried to extend the hours, but Republicans got the court injunction to stop it. “Jim Crow on Steroids”, I guess. The Comey letter, your long anticipated October Surprise. Or that stray comment from Biden against the backdrop of a constant insult stream from a doddering Trump.

Watch the county returns. Florida skiddaddles to the right. Unimportant except in as much as you try to figure any bleedover into Georgia. It gets hilariously dark when noting the Venezuela ex-pats on Miami-Dade, voting an masse for the clearest American copy of Hugo Chavez. A couple hours later I sit unsure how the NY Times was casting Pennsylvania to the Republicans against a county percentages that held up against 2020. Skipped over to Wisconsin. Shuddered. Razors edge of tens and thousands, needing a bank-shot across the 3 rust belt states and the percentages were not holding here. Go to bed now, knowing the Russians won the race and half the country wants to inflict the rest of us with a senile bad insult comic in our constant face.

I know nothing, but my prediction is Harris sweeps the 3 rust belt states and wins North Carolina and Georgia, and loses Nevada and Arizona. All of which is a meaningless prognostication I stand behind not at all unless by some fluke I am correct. For what it is worth, that great political guru of Nevada has chimed in with his sage declaration — Kamala will win the state. By .3 percent of the vote. He has crunched the numbers and has seen the results coming into clear view. Point three percent separation. Yes, it is that asinine.

Bopping about, I find a Douglas MacKinnon, opinion contributor for The Hill chime in with this opening to a piece

Not a single Democrat I speak with believes that Vice President Kamala Harris will win on Tuesday.

I see no evidence of anything of the sort, but matching forward.

All hoped for an open convention in August to identify and select the best candidate possible, but they were denied. To that point, this past Thursday, The Hill featured a piece headlined, “Democrats start to point fingers even as they hope for Harris win.”

He then proceeds harp on the decision to pluck in Walz as running mate, which all strikes me as if we enter an alternate universe where things went down as he argues they ought have — an open convention and a vice president Shapiro, he would be taking the “Democrats in panic” line arguing they ought have tapped the vice President and gone with a different vice president. Curious on this guy, I look about to see what else he has opined, and see this:

When honest historians once again venture upon our shores, they will record Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as a true Statesman, a Patriot, and one who has continually given voice to the voiceless. My latest column for THE HILL on this “Man of the People” is below.

Tells you what you need to know.

This is the woman who ruined a ‘Wrinkle in Time’ movie project by stripping it of its Christian subtext and making it with a broadly defined “spirituality”. To get credit, she did guide a Disney ‘Frog and the Princess’ movie with its black princess character to something good, but I am always stick on the problem — I am supposed to like the celebrity entres for the political figure? Yeah, sure — you look over to Trump and see… Hulk Hogan say even less and even more.

This is the moment that Trump responds favorably to someone in the crowd offering that Kamala Harris is a prostitute. I can’t decide what to do with such a thing — calling politicians prostitutes is a well trodden insult, in this century especially with the caveat “apologies to sex workers”, and we do enter the terrain of — what is the caricature or insult of a prominent public woman that will be viewed as sexist? — and in Kamala Harris in particular we enter a terrain where the person in the audience has in their mind an obnoxious back-story making hay of her relations with Willie Brown — so you can toss it aside immediately anyways.

I suspect a fracturing into an echo chamber on some political as campaign, the cross-tabs sweep hard against the objective. The one, or two actually (or is it three?) with a couple women walking into the voting place with their ‘Merica loving neckbeard menfolk. “Is she voting the right way?” asks one of the men. ” She doesn’t like him, but yeah.”. “Mine too.”. The women then wink at each other and nod to each other and cast it for Kamala, and we tell the “No one has to know” line. Sure. To their credit, the likes of David Plouffe and the Kamala Harris campaign assert that they have not been proceeding with the hopes of a shy female vote lurking in the internal polling, and from that point of view I am more favorable to the outside group ad than the one with “I’m Kamala Harris and I approve this message” tagged at the end. Leave no stone unturned, I suppose. But I can’t help sense a dread in assumptions about people’s self identity in this. It is a rather harsh statement and criticism on people’s marriages, the meek women not able to cross the man on anything and everything, and really how dare you thump this at my loving marriage? The real problem is that if Kamala Harris wins, this as message will declared to have been effective, and it will be deployed again. At which point it will not work — a less threatening “I am your protector” will win out in the cross currents of demographic interests. At which point, the table pounding on a “But!” will get shrill, and the messages will not be able to fathom how this steps on people’s goes, it’s frame of reference moving in and out of people’s lives even if they think it is solid.

Speaking of an organization lost in its own echo chamber. Funny, I thought Rasmussen presented itself as credible, even as it crammed Republican friendly numbers. But its imagery here is lost in a sea of Internet memes that make sense only if you bother to stay in those Internet spaces. Yes, everyone is excited by the Iowa poll by that great Iowa polling guru who has predicted everything Iowa in the past two decades, and yes, it is worthwhile for Republicans to mock this. But I would expect Rasmussen to do so in a more sedate or sober manner. But I guess we are making a leap from the aesthetics of the Fox News news program (as opposed to commentary) to Newsmax.

Or tune into… “Valiant Renegade”. On the eve of the 2006 midterms, Karl Rove disputed some news magazine’s states assumption that the numbers pointed to a Democratic House with “you have those numbers, but I have the numbers”, and held firm on the Republicans retaining the House with reference to “the numbers”, secret to only him.

This gets a little unreal in that “what. is. this” campaign season. A twenty-something hit youtuber popped into my algorithm — based on what, I do not know — that definitely disputed this is what happened.

Watching that video on question, I don’t see anything except the footage. No alternate theory or explanation on what is going down — just the same footage everyone else is showing with the gas-lighting assertion that this is not what you are watching. And we can down the list of “Seattleite Jack”‘s story attention.

Hm. Did not know about Walz.

It appears that the entire Libertarian Party Mises Caucus hierarchy, the folks who walked in and took the apparatus over on behalf of good Internet trolling, are sidestepping their nominee — Chase Oliver — and supporting Donald Trump. It was a little hard to figure how Oliver emerged in the nomination process given everything else appeared to go the Mises’s way. But then, maybe it was ordained as a way for the Trumpists to shove him aside and support Trump.

I half suspect the Trump itinerary — which has him holding campaign events in not those seven states that determine the balance of 270 electoral votes — moves him to the backup plan. Gotta keep the House. Gotta keep the Speaker Mike Johnson. They are now the deciders of the electoral slates. And the House flows through seats in New York, California, Colorado, Virginia, New Mexico. Probably three or four dimensional conspiracy chess, but we do start off on the baseline that Trump will declare victory in election night, a night the tallied vote is almost certainly hold Trump in the lead in Pennsylvania, waiting the mail in votes to get tallied.

Hey! Did you know Randall Terry is on the ballot? He doesn’t care for you vote for him, he just wants the legal cheap rate to put up some anti-Abortion ads. Still, the best choice for the Constitution Party to get its vote share, even if some states split to a different candidate — look the name up to your due interest.

The wannabe Don Rickles, “Kill Tony”, nukes or doesn’t nuke the either already nuked or unnukable Donald Trump campaign. Trying to digest this big Madison Square Garden absurdism, (Wait. This and only this is what is going to turn Power Ricans and Hispanics and Latinos off against Trump?) I see three figures of some influence on the “no Trump” side defending him himself. They all liked his roast of Tom Brady.I Jon Stewart most prominent in this group. Keith Olbermann I see responds negatively on Jon Stewart’s guarded indifference to “Kill Tony” — or placing him as not the man we care about. It is for Olbermann something of a continuation an ego and personality grudge. Jon Stewart’s disagreed framing of the issue — “who’s idea was it to invite an insult comedian” has possibly been answered — out in his pile of speaking, How Rogan once proferred a “Trump oughta” unsolicited campaign advice, to hire someone from a list of one line spewing figures. This opening act for the Madison Garden RNC convention was amongst them.

Last I heard from Rickles, he was on Letterman making awkward racially loaded jabs at President Obama. So the territory here is pretty darned fraught. It is a kind of funny thing where I simply don’t get a joke here. The other offensive lines at least have a thing to them. The thing about lots of babies is something I remember somewhat awkwardly by at a breakfast at Catholic church by a man who grew up in Mexico. The key thing is he was making fun of Hispanics, and us fellow Catholics. I don’t necessarily believe in a rigid “only funny when you punch up, never down” rule — fraught in multiple directions (the Rich and powerful not allowed any humor? And the “punching up” turns into a convenient safety valve substitution for any reform or critical action) — maybe punching horizontally is the best? — But the line … Just sits there. Power Rico. Garbage. Okay? No agency, no personalities, no foibles, nothing in descriptor of people. And at a comedy club, it is at least drink people sitting there in a mood to take on anything. At a political rally, we are moving to a “call to action”. Joe Rogan’s premise in wanting Trump to hire him in tells us what is wrong when you can’t compartmentalize this, and proceed with politics as entertainment.

The man who keynoted the RNC Convention. It is this freakish thing where Eminem comes into the stage at a Kamala event in Michigan, and gives a pablum speech urging a vote. Beyonce takes the stage in Texas. Does not beer anywhere except a plea to vote. They do not sing. They do not dance. The celebrities for Trump? It is this crap.

Hey! Man who tried his best to screw over the beloved Packers at the end of his Hall of Fame career, and went on to commit charity fraud in his post football years. Here urging Wisconsin to cast their lot with Trump!

Invariably something pops up. Biden, out of sight, a couple union hall appearances in Scranton. And slip a half aware line when asked about calling Puerto Rico garbage — and it allows Tulsi Gabbard to… Wait, who the Hell is Tulsi Gabbard? And is the center of the Republican Party Tulsi, RFK jr, and So on Musk? What the Heck universe did we stumble into?

Joseph Biden takes the stage against a sharp red backdrop to make a case against an “Ultra Maga” for the 2022 midterms. It is always hard to assess whether this worked. Something worked, though — and you can ask Zelensky about this — not exactly or not fully or not up to the level of winning a presidential election. The Democrats, if you remember, against the backdrop of commentary on how “the red wave did not materialize” — did move from a slim House majority to a slim House minority.

It has come right back to this. Somewhat. No blood red backdrop, no, but a discombulated staticy voice. A closing message on 2024, a confluence of events and late declaring military figures. Trump talked about the appeal of Adolf Hitler. As he has done so in the past. “Fascist to the core” — fascism, which I think the pure definition is Italy’s with everything (including Germany’s) a modification — but that is academic. The crap has been thrown at us pretty quickly over the years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes. Yesterday Ticket Carlson — one of the spotlighted speakers of the RNC convention and a friendly interviewer of a man detailing how Winston Churchill enemy of World War 2 — was at a campaign event, preceding Donald Trump — and how did he present Trump? As the daddy who is going to spank the two year old who smeared crap on the wall and the teenage daughter who gave daddy lip. And he is not going to lie — the spanking will hurt you and not me. The crowd are it up. Trump are it up. And we edge one step further into the abyss we stood at when Trump complimented Arnold Palmer’s penis for no discernable reason.

Interesting exercise in pointlessness. The polls have been stable for quite some time. Nothing in and themselves to hang a hat on — just keep grinding through those seven states, you two! Except for an on-rush of Republican polls which allow the Fox News and talk radio contingent to proceed as with a “Kamala stalls, as predicted, Trump climbs, as predicted.” Surely they are joking. Funny thing on watching clips of Hannity — a go to line of some theoretic partisan effectiveness when confronted by a Stephen A Smith on the bumbling Trump — “the liberals said the thing about George W Bush!” – – is a no go.

Wait. They walked into a diner at breakfast. To get the voice of the people, the forgotten hoity toity poor hard scrambled older whiter that Beltians who will decide it all. How novel!