Election 2020: Competing Realities

 

Just fifty-some odd hours before the last of the polls close and the voting stops…well, not even that is clear in these trying times…we have two very different realities at play for people’s attention. Both are current on my news scanning tabs this afternoon.

The first, from that new competitor for the braindead MSNBC audience:

The second via Instapundit:

HMM: Poll: Donald Trump set to win US presidency by electoral college landslide. “Donald Trump is on course to win four more years in the White House with a one point lead in the popular win, the final Democracy Institute poll for the Sunday Express has found. . . . Significantly, the President has, according to the latest findings, maintained a four point lead of 49 percent to 45 percent in the key swing states including Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It means he is on course to easily win the electoral college by 326 to 212 votes against his Democrat rival in a result which would shock the world even more than his astonishing defeat of Hilary Clinton in 2016. The Democracy Institute/Sunday Express poll has throughout the campaign been one of the few to predict a Trump victory since March. This is because unlike other polls it only looks at people identifying as likely voters instead of just registered to vote and it has tried to identify the shy Trump vote.”

[emphasis added]

To be fair, the first is consistent with all the headlines beamed to us for months now. The prediction in the second is consistent with every other indication the rational and discerning consumer of American politics would have sensed over the same time period. However, if true, the highlighted text is likely a surprise to everyone…again, if true, such data has been blacked out from everything I have seen to-date. (“Maintained” seems a very odd choice of words.)

The next two days are going to be rather interesting to say the least…and somebody’s reality is going to be shattered.

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  1. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):

    I think that the Trump Train Thugs swarming the Biden bus in Texas, and the blocking of traffic will swing the last minute undecideds, and will dishearten Republicans who never saw such thuggish behavior from supporters of Romney, McCain, W., Dole, H.W., and Reagan, all of whom I voted for with great enthusiasm. If non-Trump Train Republicans are turned off by this, and they see 100,000 new COVID-19 cases, they may very well decide to sit this election out.

    Please get someone to help with the child proof lids and get back on the meds.

    • #31
  2. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    Bishop Wash (View Comment): I saw something odd at lunch. A Biden supporter was on a pedestrian overpass and waving an American flag. He wasn’t standing on it and it wasn’t on fire.

    By the power vested in me, I declare this the daily winner of my little corner of the internet.  

    • #32
  3. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    Gary Robbins (View Comment): I think that the Texas bus incident is the “October surprise” of this campaign.

    Aside from being mind-numbingly clownish in the context of all the very real violence and destruction that has gone on in recent months, this one really did make me giggle.

     

    • #33
  4. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    From Madam Althouse earlier today:

    BBC headlines “Biden and Trump criss-cross the US” when Biden only went from Delaware to Philadelphia yesterday and Trump flew 3,000 miles and rallied in 5 states.

    Subheadline mostly concedes the embarrassing truth: “President Trump visits five states on Sunday while his rival Joe Biden campaigns in Pennsylvania.” I say “mostly” because the geographical range of Biden’s campaigning is muted by referring to the state, which is rather large, when Biden confines himself to the extreme southeast corner of the place, Philadelphia, which is an easy commute from his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

    More:

    I am abstaining in the 2020 election, so I’m about as distanced and cruelly neutral an observer as you’re going to get. I care about the quality of journalism, and the main thing I do here on this blog is monitor elite media. I’ve found the bias in favor of Joe Biden absolutely disgusting.

    And this from Big Mike in the comments:

    If Biden has to spend a whole day campaigning a Philadelphia this late in the election cycle, he’s lost the rest of the state. There are two places you don’t campaign: places where you are going to win handily, and places where you have no hope (e.g., Hillary in Arizona). What these have in common is that there are few persuadable voters that you can move from “undecided” to your side. That Biden’s advisers have him campaigning hard in a city that hasn’t voted Republican in ages suggests either that they are politically unastute, or else that they think a normally deep blue city is actually in play this year.

    It reminds me of Walter Mondale campaigning hard in Minnesota during the last week of the ‘84 campaign just to hold his home state against Reagan. Biden isn’t anywhere near Mondale blowout territory, but he’s lost Florida and if he loses Pennsylvania, it’s pretty guaranteed that he’ll lose Ohio, too and then the path to 270 gets pretty tight.

    The guys on the overnight radio spoke last night of Trump campaigning like he was 20 points behind…like a winner would. (Did anyone ever note Tom Brady not practicing like he was a 10 point underdog for the Super Bowl? Winners sprint to the end. Or is it desperation like Drudge tells everyone?)

    • #34
  5. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    From RedState:

    Analysis: Trump Campaign Numbers Headed into Election Day

    Among the common thread of all this data is that Democrats have failed to meet their 2016 leads heading into election day. …

    … Democrats have already banked a great deal of their 2016 vote and their push for early and mail voting has fallen flat. According to the data, Democrats have 7.9 million 2016 voters to still turn out in battleground states while Republicans have 9.2 million of higher propensity voters to push to the polls. Enthusiasm rates also show that showing up to vote for Trump is almost 2 to 1 of what it is for Biden.

    Frankly, it looks like Democrats bet it all on mail voting and lost. With the nature of a virtual campaign that Biden has waged, he is probably lacking the … staff in these states they need to win.

    [emphasis added]

    “2 to 1” seems a bit low…but we’ll see tomorrow.

    • #35
  6. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    philo (View Comment):

    Another note on Sunday evening from Instapundit…a rather (potentially) ominous sentence referencing Biden’s collapse – or “fading” in the polls – in Minnesota to only 41%:

    I’ve been covering American politics for a long time and I can’t remember a number that so dramatically altered the political community’s perception of a presidential campaign as that number did, last night, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

    Is Sundown Joe sundowning?

    • #36
  7. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    philo (View Comment):

    Bishop Wash (View Comment): I saw something odd at lunch. A Biden supporter was on a pedestrian overpass and waving an American flag. He wasn’t standing on it and it wasn’t on fire.

    By the power vested in me, I declare this the daily winner of my little corner of the internet.

    I’ll take it. Thanks 

    • #37
  8. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    As of 5:45 PM CST this evening, this is a pretty fair representation of the way I have observed the race…or “my reality”:

    The Democrat Party Endgame of a Failed Campaign Strategy — Delegitimize a Trump Win and Seek to Force a Resignation

    Joe Biden has always been a bad candidate. …

    Given all his flaws, the Democrat Party leaders knew Biden could not “win” the election – their game plan all along has been to “hope” Pres. Trump would “lose” his re-election, and the only real campaign issue would be “COVID, …” with the mainstream press communicating the campaign’s message while Biden stayed mostly out of public view.

    This strategy played itself out over the past 90 days seemingly according to the game plan that was settled on out of necessity. Complicit media pollsters and pundits did their part, projecting their wishes and preferred outcomes onto the public in order to drive the campaign’s narrative – “Orange Man Bad” and millions of GOP voters will correct the error they made four years ago. …

    Their effort was aided by the late-September diagnosis of Pres. Trump … as having contracted COVID. The pollsters jumped on the development, and before you know it Pres. Trump was down 10 points and falling in all the public “polls” …

    But then he got better … and hit the campaign trail in a manner NEVER before seen for a president in his mid-70s. …

    But the hand the Democrat Party was bluffing with was exposed in the last presidential debate and the 72 hours that followed. …

    And Biden gave up the key “video moment” when he said he was planning to “transition away from oil.” …

    …the Biden camp announced a “lid” on the remaining nine days before the election …

    But Biden was never ahead by 10+ points – that has been a media-driven myth  …

    If Joe Biden was leading the race by anything resembling the public “polls” the media kept pumping out, the DNC would have kept him in the basement as had been the plan all along. But they chose to risk sending him out on the campaign trail – now exposed to the toxicity of the contents of Hunter’s laptop as well as his Green New Deal boasting.

    How is THAT a winning strategy??

    It’s not. It’s a strategy for a campaign that knows it is behind and time is running out. …

    If Joe Biden loses this election, the Democrat Party … will begin an effort to contest the vote-counting in a dozen or more states … They will look for every opportunity to drag the controversy up to and past January 21, 2021.

    The gambit will be to force Donald Trump to resign on a manufactured claim that he “stole” the election through vote manipulation. … while Biden and his press surrogates create the next narrative that Donald Trump’s re-election was invalid.

    [emphasis added] (Much more detail at the link. Go read it all.) 

    We’ll see if “my reality” survives the night.

    • #38
  9. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    The morning after (my 6:30 AM “report”): The voting for Trump stopped when the polls closed last night so now Team Biden knows how many stockpiled mail in “votes” they need to pull out of which store rooms. (Joe had the same look in his eye last night the Obama always had when he knew the fix was in.) They already flipped WI overnight and are now working on PA, NC, MI, and GA. I’m not sure they have enough in storage to get PA but never underestimate Philadelphia’s capacity for additional “voters” when needed. Expect one of the others to flip today…followed by a quick declaration of victory and call to move (i.e. start the healing).

    Final thoughts from Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit late last night:

    OKAY, I’M SICK AND TIRED OF THIS AND I WANT TO CALL IT OUT RIGHT NOW:

    I don’t want to hear a word about Trump’s tone. I don’t want to hear a word about how he crossed a line.
    I DON’T WANT TO HEAR A WORD.

    Listen to me: On one side we have the left, who is running a barely alive candidate, and a woman with all the appeal of week-old fish and no accomplishments she can point to.

    Add to this they almost didn’t run a campaign, AND went to the point of not having offices in most cities.
    For months now, I’ve been looking at this and going “They have a coup planned. The fix is in.” And everyone told me oh, no, I was seeing things.

    Tonight we watched states called for Biden before votes were counted, while states that Trump has a solid lead in, stop counting.

    And if you need help seeing what’s before your eyes, the left has for weeks now claimed Trump was going to attempt a coup. How many years have you known they accuse you of what they’re doing? What are you? Stupid?

    Look, they are tainted by the previous failed coups, tainted by (most if not all of them) accepting money from Xi, and FYI China ALWAYS arranges for extra compromise for security, honeypots being their favorite, tainted even by association with Epstein. A second Trump term means a good chance that they go down hard and don’t get up again.
    ALL OF THEM from the left politicians to the so called “tech lords” are fighting for their lives.

    They’re cornered rats. There’s nothing they won’t do.

    And all we have against them is Trump.

    Stop calling Trump names. Put on your big boy or girl pants.

    They’re fighting for their lives. And we are too. Because — look at Venezuela — socialism kills.

    • #39
  10. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    Seen on Instapundit this morning:

    KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: RIP America—The Mail-In Voter Fraud Fix Is In. “Progressives are all about tearing down institutions in the United States, and introducing the potential for fraud into presidential elections is the cornerstone of their plan to render asunder the fabric of the Republic. When every election can be called into question and thrown to the courts, a power-hungry party doesn’t have to develop a sound strategy or run a viable candidate to win.”

    • #40
  11. CarolJoy, Thread Hijacker Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Thread Hijacker
    @CarolJoy

    cirby (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):

    cirby (View Comment):

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):
    Who does this?

    I renounce and denounce anyone who blocks highways, be they Antifa, BLM, Bernie Bros., or Trump Train Thugs.

    Yet you can’t manage to denounce all of the other things the Democrats are doing, because Orange Man Bad. A Democrat could take money from China and Russia, support burning down cities for political reasons, and be in the final stages of dementia, but you’re going to speak out against Trump because, er… one group of Trump people did what dozens of Democrat supporters have done. After you accuse some other Trump supporters of doing something they did not do.

    Not to mention that you keep calling the one group that isn’t committing violence “thugs.”

    Some troll on my twitter feed yesterday typed out her indignation and anger that a dozen Republicans were stationed 100 yards from the polling place, carrying flags. She thought that was the most nervy thing that had ever happened in America. She was really losing it over that encounter.

    My reply was that since she supported the Party that had encouraged the BLM to beat store owners to death with baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire, she should not be all that concerned about American flags.

    • #41
  12. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    Powerline tonight:

    …one of two things is true. The first is that Wisconsin experienced a voter turnout that neither it nor any other state has ever come close to in the modern era, on behalf of the worst candidate nominated in the modern era. The second is that the Democrats used voter fraud on a massive scale to stake a claim to Wisconsin’s electoral votes.

    Plus this unverified chart:

    No matter how the presidential election comes out, one thing is clear: One of the two major parties making up our system is so wholly corrupt that this little experiment in self government cannot NOT drop into the abyss very soon. 

    • #42
  13. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    There is no sense or logic about any of this. They are not even trying to hide it…with the media organs all-in on their side, there will be no real push back. 

    666:

    I have a liberal friend who is very bright and funny. I really like him a lot. Naturally we banter about politics. He texted this today: “What’s so strange to me is how could Trump win Ohio by that margin and not win Wisconsin and Michigan? There is no logical way to explain it.” – James Woods

    • #43
  14. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    This will be important for historical purposes (i.e. memory holing is already underway):

    Trumpsters — This is No Time to Go Wobbly

    … Election day came and went. News networks, with Fox News leading the pro-Democrat charge, were quick to declare Biden the winner of states with only a few votes counted, such as Arizona, while refusing to call states like Florida for Trump, despite a commanding lead with almost all votes counted. California was called for Trump at the moment the polls closed.

    Prognostications were all over the map, depending on who you watched or listened to. Things were trending in Trump’s direction as evidenced by the betting odds suddenly favoring Trump and the Chinese yuan dropping precipitously as their benefactor, Joe Biden, appearing to be headed back to his basement. A red wave was building.

    Time for a coordinated kill switch to be pulled on Trump, orchestrated between the Democrat Party and Big Media.

    Around midnight, several battleground states with Democrat governors stopped counting votes, all at the same time, with nary a word of dissent or concern from the media, who likely knew of the evening’s plans ahead of time. What a brilliant way to stop Trump’s momentum, just like a losing basketball team calling a time out when the other team is on a tear.

    Several hours later when most Americans were asleep, tranches of a hundred thousand plus votes suddenly appeared in crucial swing states. How remarkable that these votes were all for Biden, and none for Trump. What are the odds of that? All of a sudden, these red-leaning states were toss-ups and then solidly blue.

    Republican poll watchers were chased away by local election officials, unable to verify the credibility of these magically appearing votes. Were they legitimate? Were they signed by actual voters? Or where they filled out by Democrat operatives in the weeks before the election ready to be delivered on election night as planned?

    Voila, states initially won by Trump are being called for Biden, pushing Sleepy Joe closer to the magic 270 number. Trump and his team are suddenly on defense, demanding recounts and looking to the courts for justice and fairness. Rather than voters choosing the next president, it is being decided by election officials, vote counters, lawyers, and judges. …

     

    • #44
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