ChiGoose

It’s certainly going to be interesting. There are only a handful of days in a session with full attendance. I do not envy the GOP Speaker trying to whip votes in that environment.

My god, I would love it if they did that. That would be fantastic. Going up against McConnell with Schumer as your leader is like going up against Belichick with Doug Marrone as your coach. Please kick McConnell out of leadership. Every Dem in the country will applaud you.

Looks like we are trending to a GOP majority of fewer than 5 seats

PPP understand election administration 101 challenge

You know that this is how it's been in the US for decades, right? Even what I consider to probably be the gold standard for election administration, Florida, is still counting votes: There are problems with some state's election laws, but the fact that we are still counting is actually the norm. What is different is that there is a large swath of Americans who are apparently gullible as hell and react emotionally to headlines and random posts instead of looking up the facts. Prior to 2020, that didn't happen as much.

Sure thing! There are two key differences between Hillary and Trump when it comes to possession of government documents. 1. At the time, Hillary was a government employee with the appropriate security clearance to view the information. Trump was a private citizen with no security clearance. 2. The confidential information on Hillary’s server appeared to reach there unintentionally. The classification markings were generally way down on the email chains and it would be hard to overcome a defense of her not knowing they were there. Trump was told by NARA that he had no right to the documents and his lawyers signed documents saying he had returned all of the documents when he really hadn’t. Intent is very easy to infer there. The DoJ found that while Hillary lacked intent, she was recklessly careless. However, there have only been a handful of cases in history in which the DoJ secured a guilty verdict in a case like this on gross negligence. All of those cases are essentially things like throwing documents in a dumpster instead of shredding them or accidentally taking documents and leaving them in your buddy’s office desk drawer while you go out partying. As a government employee with appropriate clearance, Hillary had the right to access the information but how she did it was improper. As a private citizen with no government clearance (presidents don’t actually get security clearance), Trump had no possessory right to the documents. It would be near impossible for the DoJ to win a guilty verdict against Hillary given the facts. It should be a slam dunk to get one against Trump.

How is this even possible? I was assured that the Dems have rigged the elections!

I am so flattered that you can't stop thinking about me, but I keep telling you that I'm happily married. Also, this has a very simple explanation that eludes you because you're too much in your feelings to look at facts.

It doesn't matter for what purpose he took them, mere possession of them post-presidency is a crime.

Looks like the IRA is supposed to create an average of 900,000 jobs per year in its first 10 years. Of course, to your point, it doesn't start full throttle on day one. It's going to take time to ramp up. One of the things I was worried about if there was a red wave midterm was that the GOP would be able to take credit for the benefits of the IRA when they start to come into effect. Looks like we dodged that particular bullet.

Here's the historical trends. We recently just got back to the pre-pandemic trendline: (Source) We're also back on track for unemployment: . (Source) Part of the problem of assessing job creation by president is that over the last several elections, Dems have come in during a recession so there is more opportunity for job creation.

My reaction to reading this rambling nonsense:

“In late January 2000, Mihdhar and Hazmi both traveled to Los Angeles and then moved to San Diego, where they associated with a former subject of an FBI investigation and also lived with a long-time FBI asset.” Two of the terrorists were working with someone known to the FBI and actually lived with an FBI asset.

I'm still not sure it was the optimal strategy given that she lagged Mark Kelly by a bit, but I suppose if your opponent is spending the closing days of the election trashing John McCain in freaking Arizona, the best move might be to just keep the spotlight on them and the mic in their hand.

I’d be ok with him as Speaker since it doesn’t look like the Dems will hold the House at this point.

You have a serious case of Very Online Brain. I suggest you log off for a bit and go touch some snow.

Just trying to explain reality. Facts don’t care about your feelings.

Hobbs did run a pretty bad campaign but it seems her strategy was to just let Lake do all of the talking because she’s a nutjob who just hurts herself anytime she opens her mouth. If you are talking politics on a sports forum, you are far, far, more tuned in than ~90% of voters. I’d suggest you look into how the normies felt about things before going with terminal-very-online-brain theories.

Where have voting machines malfunctioned? (Just know that if you say Maricopa County, you’re wrong. That was a false story that has been debunked). Every election has some issues. Here in Chicago, there was an issue with sharpies bleeding through the ballot. My wife had to redo her ballot because of this. Inconvenient, but it wasn’t some grand strategy to affect the outcome of the vote. What is truly happening here is that we are having a fairly normal election but some races are razor close so they aren’t being called until more votes are counted. But even in states where the races have been called, they are still counting. It’s just that the margin was so big they could call the races before all of the vote was in. In Illinois, they could call the governor’s race within minutes because it was clearly a blowout. The real problem is that there are a lot of people who don’t understand how it all works who are being mislead by bad faith actors to believe that a fairly normal process is actually something suspicious.

That’s not how this works. It’s not how any of this works. The absolute dearth of civics education on this board is staggering.

Shhhh… you can’t let your facts get in the way of their feelings. It’ll make them very upset!

Oh no! The FBI infiltrated terrorist organizations! How dare they!

Some states tried to make changes before this election. Given their expected importance in this election, PA tried to pass a law to allow for counting of mail in ballots before Election Day but it failed to pass. Election officials are not all powerful, they have to follow the law. So even if they wanted to process the PA ballots when they came in, they were barred from doing so by law. Mail in ballots have never been considered a problem before 2020. Many states have traditionally used mail in ballots. I think Oregon is basically entirely mail in. And they don’t experience widespread fraud. In fact, many GOP campaign experts were angry at Trump for taking aim at mail in ballots because they considered them crucial for their success. If I recall correctly, the Florida GOP traditionally used mail in ballots extensively because it allowed them to bank votes early and reallocate the extra election resources to GOTV for Election Day. If I could wave a magic wand and “fix” the laws so that mail in ballots could be counted earlier, and there were paper copies of every ballot, and every election had at least a risk-limiting audit, if not a full recount before certification, I would. But even then, all of the ballots still wouldn’t be counted on Election Day and extremely close races would still take days to resolve. And the lies and misinformation would continue.

It is a cause for concern but the problem is education. 29% of Americans are either unsure if we landed on the moon or believe that we didn’t. 28% of Americans are either unsure if vaccinations implant microchips or believe that they do. 25% of Americans are either unsure if the Earth is billions of years old or believe that it isn’t. 19% of Americans are either unsure if the Earth is flat or believe that it is. (Source) Is the problem that we aren’t transparent enough about the moon landing?

One of the things I’ve learned taking to campaign people is that campaign staff on big elections hate yard signs because they are a waste of money. They can benefit for name recognition in down ballot races, but are not worth the investment in top races. Yet many people still base their expectations on elections on the prevalence of yard signs for a particular candidate. Which is even worse of a predictor due to our geographic polarization. In any case, now Lake and Trump are both free to run together since they don’t have to worry about doing the responsibilities of elected officials right now.