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.