rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

How many states don't provide drop boxes for mail-in ballots? And is there a means by which those mail-in voters are able to see if their votes have been counted? I've always voted in person so this is all-new territory for me.

no measured optimism please this is the doomer thread

https://civiqs.com/results/black_lives_matter?annotations=true&uncertainty=true&zoomIn=true&choice=Oppose

Apologies it this has already been referenced here. According t this, opposition to BLM is the highest its been in over 2 years, and has closed the gap on support by 14 points in just under 3 months. This does not look like a positive indicator.

Trump must win the Midwest. But out here his breezy reelection gambit falls flat

Trump simply must win Iowa and Wisconsin. So he cast a convention against this backdrop of anxiety and fear – godless looters are coming for yours – and roped in our governor, former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa to play in the tragedy. Few were inclined to listen. When the corn calls, you are too busy removing fallen trees from your machine shed. Trump dropped into the Cedar Rapids airport for an hour shortly before the convention to promise assistance after the derecho pulverized our Second City. After he left, he approved homeowner and business relief for just one of the 27 counties the governor had requested.

For that, Governor Reynolds told the TV convention that Trump “had our back.” Senator Ernst, trailing Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield in fundraising and polling, landed a prime-time cameo to praise her fearless leader. The one who knocked down soybean prices. The one who helped the corn-fueled ethanol industry implode. The one who ordered children in cages to be separated from their mothers.

Farmers are anxious. Latinos are afraid. Unemployed machinists are frustrated. That prized demographic, suburban women in Urbandale next to Des Moines, are encouraging the school board to sue the governor over her in-person school orders.

A few Latino organizers gathered in the park on the sweltering evening when Trump would commandeer the Rose Garden for his reality show.

“Our people came here to be free of the corruption and violence,” said Storm Lake City Councilman José Ibarra. “Now it has come back to find us. Where can we go? What can we do but vote?”

They said their older folks who never saw a reason before have finally found one.

Even some of those farmers are wondering about Trump as they dig into a harvest so meager that wraps up as they vote. An ill wind blows for incumbents.

About the author:

Art Cullen is editor of The Storm Lake Times in Northwest Iowa, where he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing on agriculture.

god November is gonna be such a nightmare

pretty obvious prediction but yes Trump will probably be ahead election night but will wind up losing as the mail in ballots are counted and all hell will break loose

Never fear, America was inoculated against tyranny by the Founding Fathers™.

Wait, wrong thread.

As with 2016, I feel like it's just 50/50 at this point.

Would feel better if Biden wasn’t a complete void.

Many want nothing more than to embrace the void.

Those are Trump voters tho

and here I thought they want to embrace Chaos and Old Night.

Anvil, that study you posted is interesting, but I'm not so sure that it says anything except that this country is a racist shithole.

Its a fairly significant shift since 6th June (though most can be explained by the large decline in 'neither support nor oppose'). The direction has changed course since early June and thats a bad sign

Biden's primary victory came at the hands of older suburban whites and they've been the backbone of the polls showing him cruising to victory - if they're responding to continued protests and unrest with a shift back to their authoritarian daddies in the GOP...

The margin of support for Black Lives Matter is roughly the same (+10) as it was at the beginning of the year. Both support *and* opposition have increased, and the number of people who are don't have an opinion has decreased. The aberration is the period in May and June, when support went up before opposition did. This seems like a case of positive media coverage of the George Floyd protests quickly followed by right-wing backlash, leading to broader awareness overall.

I'd be concerned if the gap narrowed significantly, but I don't think it's worrisome yet.

The direction has changed course since early June and thats a bad sign

The conservative media and Republican Party know how deep and abiding the fear of Black Anger is among middle class whites, however mildly it is expressed aloud by the more polite elements of that demographic, so they've been pumping it out so violently they may break the pump handle. They did the same with Gay Panic in 2004. They have no shame.

My local 'daily' paper, The Oregonian, just trotted out that editorial shibboleth, that Black leaders in Portland must denounce the violent protestors, which implies that they've remained silent regarding it. They haven't. The Oregonian has reported their statements all along. This echoes the endless calls for Islamic leaders to denounce 9/11, even though they did so as soon as it was established al-Q was responsible and continued to do so repeatedly. It never made a dent in the public mind.

It's almost as if the media in this country are in on all this white supremacy stuff!

Right, I agree with the last 4 posts. That chart, to me, says that Conservatives have regained control over the wider view of BLM, so much to the point, that even as something as big as the events of this summer are not only fairly quickly negated, but then with the trajectory also pointing in the wrong direction

And its a similar scenario with Covid, as Biden's lead is gradually chipped away. Can come up with all sorts of reasons why this might be, but numbers like this seem to say we're at a point where its almost as though civil unrest and covid haven't really happened, but with the lines pointing the wrong way around

Might have something to do with Biden offering nothing on COVID and Democrats weakening in their public support for BLM - more tut-tutting about riots (as always) cuts them both ways, eroding support for BLM but they're still the party tied to it in the imagination of the people who are turning to oppose it.

That chart, to me, says that Conservatives have regained control over the wider view of BLM

"regained control" -- not so fast. Jeremy Peters of the NYT, whom I consider a bellwether of journalistic centrism, just filed a story in which he admits his paper is "unclear" about the consequence of Kenosha.

btw the right seems pretty united in trying to turn the Kenosha shooter into a hero, I'm not convinced this stuff only cuts one way

shit like this is all over the news. I don't think the state of civil unrest is gonna help Trump as much as people here think it is

Driving through crowds and macing out of vehicles at SW 4th and Washington. pic.twitter.com/dCNJxYlkYn

— Cory Elia (@TheRealCoryElia) August 30, 2020

I'm not saying I think its necessarily going to help him, I just don't like the trajectory in recent weeks in that chart. With this and covid he should be doing a lot worse than he is (and he was doing a lot worse....8-10 weeks ago?)

Well 1000+ deaths per day from covid is sorta baked into our way of life now

well think of all the people that don't die every day from covid, and give 2scoops some credit

sunday morning checklist accomplished: i just ran across the "it's 6%" trending topic on twitter, which is all about how the evil CDC revealed that only 6 of Covid19 deaths are attributed to "just" Covid19 (the rest are attributed to comorbidities) and then called some anti-twitter karen with many thousands of followers a "MOTHERFUCKER" before even realizing what i was doing, then deleted it

good mourning, FUCK

imagine the gall of having tens of thousands of followers, and then making yr main twitter schtick the promotion of anti-science (and you just know it's going to involve anti-vaccination). you're supposed to just shake your head and just be like "well twitter is hell, it's terrible, haha!", but no, FUCK these people

i'm not even like a big "pro-science" guy - there's all sorts of reasons to be skeptical about studies and statistics and probability and charts and all sorts of shit. but goddamn, the anti-science "position" is just always, always sooooooo fucking dumb, and inevitably ends in some sort of unbending faith in the supposed writings of moses as the end point

The comorbidity thing drives me nuts. People often die of secondary infections when they have a disease affecting their immune system, nobody questions that.

Then there's the question of the excess deaths this year, which nobody ever has an answer for.

and twitter itself, i mean, i'm sympathetic to the difficulty of trying to moderate many millions of people at the same time. it's hard enough here on ilx, from what i understand. but can't there just be some person who wrote a book about ethics, or something, who occasionally skims the list of Trending topics that twitter itself is promoting, and then sees the words "it's 6%" and addresses the disinformation campaign?

they could hire me to do it, but a bunch of twitter idiots would get a "YR BANNED YA MOTHERFUCKER PIECE OF SHIT!" messages, might be kind of jarring

I literally have spent the last two weeks trying to get one specific person banned for hate speech.

In a month, they've taken down 4 posts but no permanent suspension despite repeat offenses

I do think certain phrases are flagged for auto-ban

shit like this is all over the news

idk my in-laws religiously watch msnbc and they didn’t see that video til i showed it to them

The comorbidity thing drives me nuts.

Its better known counterpart is "it's just a theory" when speaking of matters like evolution. People are good at wishing and at jumping to quick conclusions, but bad at comprehension or thinking things through.

Betting markets have just pulled even, which is...strange. There’s not really any significant movement in the polls. I guess the assumption is this Kenosha thing helps him??

not too unusual for a correction after the RNC

could possibly revert to the mean in a week or two

trump's got this. no way would people vote for biden

I suspect Trump will get 100% of the vote this time.

but lose the electoral!

learning to match the beat of the Trumpworld man

dont wanna get gloomy about it until the polls actually tighten in a significant way but watching all these Trump signs go up and seeing friends & family who I didn't know were total chuds start defending the guy is starting to get me a little anxious

like who the fuck is looking around at what's been happening and thinks, "yes, 4 more years of this please"

I had the same reassuring chat w/a friend today. Don't conflate your anxiety and the presence of yard signs for a sudden surge of popularity, man. This shit happened in 2012. I need to find the story published at the time proving how Romney yard signs outnumbered Obama by 3:1 or something. Dems think they're, I dunno, vulgar or something when they raise spirits -- that's the point.

There are also articles out there looking at total actuarial numbers of deaths and that is up like 18-20% over a usual year, which indicates to some that there are more perhaps deaths tied to Covid than what is being caught in the numbers usually referencing a recent Yale study.

also lots of yard signs died

goddamn, the anti-science "position" is just always, always sooooooo fucking dumb

The good thing is, if you want an appropriately skeptical position that doesn't assume everything published in a paper is gospel BECAUSE SCIENCE you can usually get it from... following scientists

We live in a hopelessly racist country. Trump can easily win again.