Say What?

So - no States' Rights on this one?

Big government in Washington gets to dictate what your local elections will look like?

Donald Trump Announces Plan to Change Elections

President-elect Donald Trump has announced a sweeping plan to change the way U.S. elections are carried out.

"We need to get things straightened out in this country, including elections," he said, after accepting the "Patriot of the Year" award at a Long Island event organized by Fox Nation on Thursday. Trump, 78, accepted the award, designed to resemble the American flag, after a live performance of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA" – the president-elect's go-to entrance song.

"We're gonna do things that have been really needed for a long time," he said. "And we are gonna look at elections. We want to have paper ballots, one day voting, voter ID, and proof of citizenship."

He went on to denounce a recent law passed in California that prohibits local governments from requiring voters to present identification when casting their ballots at the polls. "In California they just passed a law that you're not even allowed to ask a voter for voter ID. Think of that. If you ask a voter for their voter ID, you've committed a crime. We're gonna get the whole country straightened out," he said.

It isn't the first time Trump has proposed changing elections. During a speech in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in August, he proposed getting rid of mail-in ballots in favor of same day voting and voter ID laws.

"We have to get back in and we want to change it all. We want to go to paper ballots. We want to go to same-day voting. We want to go to citizenship papers, and we want to go to voter ID. It's very simple. We want to get rid of mail-in voting," he said.

State senator fails sobriety test in video after alleged hit-and-runRead moreState senator fails sobriety test in video after alleged hit-and-run
According to the Brennan Center, 98 percent of counties in the United States use paper ballots. But since the Covid-19 pandemic, the U.S. has seen major shifts in how elections work, with more people than ever voting early or voting by mail. In 2024, 88,233,886 mail-in and early in-person votes were cast nationally, with 47 states now allowing some form of early voting. Meanwhile, laws requiring voter ID are on the rise, with eight states enacting voter ID laws since 2020.

Trump has previously made an effort to prevent mail-in voting, with his campaign filing several lawsuits in 2020 to stop many of the changes made by states to make it easier to vote by mail. He also called mail-in ballots "dangerous" and "corrupt," claiming that they'd lead to "massive electoral fraud" and a "rigged" 2020 election. He later blamed mail-in ballots for his 2020 election loss.

While there have been some isolated cases of election fraud as a result of postal voting, such as in the 2018 North Carolina primary, which was re-run after a consultant for the Republican candidate tampered with absentee voting papers, the rate of voting fraud overall in the U.S. is less than 0.0009 percent, according to a 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice, external. "There's simply no basis for the conspiracy theory that voting by mail causes fraud," Federal Election Commission head Ellen Weintraub said.

Despite railing against mail-in voting, this year Trump changed his tune, actively encouraging his supporters to vote for him early. "I am telling everyone to vote early," Trump said on a podcast hosted by Dan Bongino.

Meanwhile, in a series of virtual town halls and robocalls, Trump and daughter-in-law Lara Trump, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, actively encouraged voters to take advantage of early voting options, including mail-in ballots.

"Hi, this is Lara Trump calling on behalf of President Trump's campaign, and we're urging you to get out and vote before election day," one robocall said, according to CNN. Earlier this year, Lara Trump voiced a robocall falsely alleging massive fraud in the 2020 election due to mail-in ballots.

The shift came as Trump sought to appeal to voters in the seven battleground states, all of which he won.

But a move back to one-day voting would likely hurt rural voters, particularly in swing states that have high rates of early voters, a large number of whom have thrown their support behind Trump in the past. It would also disproportionately affect disabled voters, whose voter participation was boosted in 2020 thanks to mail-in voting.

Meanwhile, Trump's plan to require "citizenship papers" and voters' ID could disproportionately disenfranchise nonwhite people to whom such paperwork is not easily accessible. This group of voters is disproportionately nonwhite and identifies as independent or Democrat, according to NPR.

A total of 35 states required a government-issued identification to vote in person in the 2024 presidential election. Of these, 24 required a photo identification such as a driver's license or a U.S. passport. That is four more states than required the same in the 2020 election.

Separation

Trumpers who are shocked and hurt that people are cutting them off have some real issues they're being forced to confront now.

"If your politics make you fearful that your loved ones will need to separate from you, now would be a good time to examine your politics."

Today's PG

Harris came up short by less than 2 percentage points.

The 2024 election was not in the running for "the big win" Trump needs us to think he got. He managed the 16th biggest winning margin since WW2 - finishing one behind Jimmy Carter.

There was no landslide, so there's nothing even vaguely approximating a mandate. And people are actually starting to get their heads outa their asses enough to see something other than their own shit for a change.

Donald Trump Has Not Won a Majority of the Votes Cast for President

Donald Trump’s popular vote total has fallen below 50 percent, and his margin over Kamala Harris has narrowed considerably as all the votes are counted.

“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” Donald Trump declared in the early morning hours of November 6, 2024, after all the polls had closed. Indeed, he claimed that he had won “a political victory that our country has never seen before, nothing like this.” Trump was excited by the numbers showing him with well over 50 percent of the popular vote and establishing a wide lead over his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Unfortunately, for the president-elect, the United States takes time to count 155 million votes—give or take a million—and the actual result will rob Trump of his bragging points.

Trump can no longer claim that powerful mandate. By most reasonable measures, the beginning point for such a claim in a system with two major parties is an overwhelming majority vote in favor of your candidacy. Trump no longer has that.

Over the weekend, as California, Oregon, Washington, and other Western states moved closer to completing their counts, Trump’s percentage of the popular vote fell below 50 percent. And his margin of victory looks to be much smaller than initially anticipated. In fact, of all the 59 presidential elections since the nation’s founding, it appears that—after all of the 2024 votes are counted—only five popular vote winners in history will have prevailed by smaller percentage margins than Trump.

Trump’s popular-vote advantage has declined steadily since election night. As of Monday afternoon, Trump was at 49.94 percent, while Harris was at 48.26, according to the authoritative Cook Political Report’s tracking of results from official sources in states across the country. And we can expect that the Republican’s total will only continue to tick downward as heavily Democratic states on the West Coast finalize their vote tallies.

Trump’s still ahead of Harris in the popular vote. He also maintains a lead in the decisive, though absurdly antidemocratic, Electoral College— slightly less than Barack Obama’s in 2012, slightly more Joe Biden’s in 2020—based on a pattern of wins in battleground states. So, the failure to win a majority won’t cost Trump the presidency. But he’s lost his ability to suggest that he trounced the Democrat. In fact, she’s now trailing him by just 1.68 percent of the vote.

Let’s put this in perspective: Trump is winning a lower percent of the popular vote this year than Biden did in 2020 (51.3), Obama in 2012 (51.1), Obama in 2008 (52.9), George W. Bush in 2004 (50.7), George H.W. Bush in 1988 (53.2), Ronald Reagan in 1984 (58.8), Reagan in 1980 (50.7), or Jimmy Carter in 1976 (50.1). And, of course, Trump numbers are way below those of the presidents who won what could reasonably be described as “unprecedented and powerful” mandates, such as Richard Nixon’s 60.7 percent in 1972, Lyndon Johnson’s 61.1 percent in 1964, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 60.8 percent. As Trump’s percentage continues to slide, he’ll fall below the thresholds achieved by most presidents in the past century.

Harris, on the other hand, is looking like a much stronger finisher than she did on election night. In fact, the Democrat now has a higher percentage of the popular vote than Presidents Trump in 2016 (46.1), Bush in 2000 (47.9), Clinton in 1992 (43), or Nixon in 1968 (43.4). She has also performed significantly better than recent major-party nominees such as Trump in 2020 (46.8), Trump in 2016 (48.2), Mitt Romney in 2012 (47.2), John McCain in 2008 (45.7), George W. Bush in 2000 (47.9), Bob Dole in 1996 (40.7), George H.W. Bush in 1992 (37.4), Michael Dukakis in 1988 (45.6), Walter Mondale (40.6), Carter in 1980 (41), or Gerald Ford in 1976 (48).

Yes, some of those historic results were influenced by the presence of strong third-party contenders. But most were not. And the bottom line is that the gap between Trump and Harris is narrower than the difference between major-party contenders in the vast majority of American presidential races.

Why make note of all the presidents who ran better than Trump? Why discuss the narrowness of his advantage over Harris? Why consider, in addition, that the Republican majorities in the House and Senate will be among the narrowest in modern American history? Because it puts the 2024 election results in perspective—and, in doing so, gives members of both parties an understanding of how to respond when Trump claims that an unappealing nominee or policy should be accepted out of deference to his “powerful” mandate.

Trump’s victory was not of “epic” or “historic” proportions. There was no “landslide” for the once and future president, as Fox News suggested repeatedly in postelection headlines. The election did not produce the “decisive victory” for Trump that the Associated Press referred to in the immediate aftermath of the voting. Nor did it yield the “resounding defeat” for Harris that AP reported at the same time.

That won’t matter to Trump, who claimed a mandate even when he lost the 2016 popular vote by almost 3 million ballots. Four years later, Trump refused to accept his defeat by more than 7 million votes, and denied that majority support for Biden in the 2020 election amounted to anything akin to a mandate.

These numbers are better for the Democrats than what was recorded on election night, and that many pundits continue to suggest. That does not mean, however, that a clearer picture of the results should dissuade the Democrats from looking for ways to reform their party. Even if the margins are narrower than initially imagined, it is still the case that the party failed to beat Trump and a Republican Party that embraces the destructive politics not just of its presidential candidate but of the billionaire class. This is a time for serious reflection on mistakes that were made, and on challenges going forward, as part of a needed examination of how to build a multiracial, multiethnic working-class coalition that can win decisively, and not just at the presidential level but also in the struggle to regain control of the House and Senate in 2026.

What the numbers do provide Democrats and progressives, however, is an argument against despair and surrender, especially as the debate opens over Trump’s cabinet picks, judicial nominees, and legislative priorities.

“Research suggests that mandate claims, despite their tenuous connection to reality, can be effective in affecting legislative behavior,” notes Julia Azari, the associate professor of political science at Marquette University who authored Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate. “Political science studies show that legislators will change their behavior in response to the perception of a mandate election—but only for so long.”

The first months of Trump’s presidency will go a long way toward defining the character of his second term. Democrats and a handful of thoughtful Republicans have the potential to temper Trump’s worst excesses, and to assure that the constitutionally mandated system of checks and balances is maintained. When Trump pushes back against congressional oversight by claiming that his appointments and policies reflect the will of the electorate, members of the House and Senate can counter that specious claim by explaining that the majority of the American people did not vote for him.

Today's Belle

What's to stop him?

If he does what he says he intends to do (admittedly, always a big if), and it stands to trigger the kinda of global shit storm they say it will, who's there to stop him this time?

And if it gets to be as bad as they say it's bound to get, how fast can the Republicans move to finish totally fucking up the elections process so 'we the people' can't do anything about it either?

The explainers from Impartial Points:

Today's Jen

The politics of disgust.

"They just won - why are they still mad?"

Because we haven't been wiped out. And that may be the key.

MAGA hired this guy to annihilate us. So as long as we're still here, he's failing.

Unfortunately, since their side owns the power right now, they'll likely expect some pretty nasty things be visited upon us to get us to knuckle under.

Jen Rubin and Robert P Jones

What White Christians Have Wrought

Like other social scientists and scholars, I’ll spend the next weeks and months scouring pre-election data, the exit polls, and the first wave of post-election surveys trying to understand how a majority of American voters chose to return Donald Trump—a twice-impeached convicted felon and adjudicated sexual abuser who incited a violent insurrection when he lost the last election—to power.

Because elections are won and lost at the margins in a deeply divided nation such as ours, most of that analysis will rightly focus on which subgroups (like Latinos and young men) shifted most significantly away from the Democratic Party’s winning 2020 coalition. But that focus, while strategically important, will obscure the deeper peril facing our nation. Authoritarianism, when it blossoms, emerges from the deeper soil at the center.

With the Republican presidential candidate regularly spewing racist, misogynistic, and even Nazi ideology (such as claims that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country), the most remarkable thing about this election is not which groups shifted marginally in his direction, but which groups continued to provide him with supermajority support. Namely, we must talk about how thoroughly Christian nationalism has infected mainstream white Christianity.

Trump’s Electoral College victory in 2016 was made possible because, as noted by the Pew Research Center’s validated voter study, 77% of white evangelical Protestant Christians, along with 57% of white non-evangelical Protestants and 64% of white Catholics, lent him moral legitimacy and gave him their votes. Even after watching Trump implement cruel policies such as separating migrant children from their parents and putting them in cages, even after witnessing his impeachment for abusing the power of the presidency to try to get a foreign leader to interfere in the 2020 election, white Christians continued to support him. White evangelical Protestant support for Trump in the 2020 election ticked up to 84%, while non-evangelical Protestants and white Catholics generally held steady (57% each).

As Trump staged his political comeback in 2023 and 2024, white Christians had the benefit of witnessing a second Trump impeachment for inciting a violent insurrection in an attempt to remain in office after losing that election, four criminal indictments and a felony conviction, and the most overtly racist presidential campaign since George Wallace (who also held a fascist-style rally in Madison Square Garden in 1968).

Despite all of this, in stark contrast to 2016, there were virtually no major dissenting voices among the leaders of Trump’s most stalwart supporters. Just two weeks before the 2024 election, American evangelical Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, explicitly petitioned God for Trump’s election at a Trump rally in Concord, NC. “There’s a spiritual element that’s at work here. There are dark forces that are arrayed against this man. They’ve tried to put him in prison; they’ve tried to assassinate him twice; he’s attacked every day in the media,” he lamented. “We pray for our nation and, Father, if it be thy will, that President Trump will win this election. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

According to the 2024 National Election Pool exit polls, 8 in 10 (81%) white evangelicals once again declared their allegiance to Trump, as did 60% of white Catholics and similar numbers of white non-evangelical Protestants. (Note: While there are no publicly available exit poll numbers for white non-evangelical Protestants, pre-election polling from PRRI suggests 6 in 10 once again supported Trump).

If we put white Christians’ strong support for Trump into context, we can clearly see their singular contribution to his power. Overall, more than two thirds (68%) of white Christians favored Trump over Harris—a mirror image of the rest of the country, including Christians of color (33%), followers of non-Christian religions (30%), and the religiously unaffiliated (28%). While the proportion of white Christians in the country has been declining over the last three decades, they remain 41% of the population and an even higher percentage of voters. Even a modest decline in the overwhelming level of support for Trump among white Christians would have denied him the Republican nomination or the presidency.

Most disturbingly, this time, white Christians, who once proudly called themselves “values voters,” knew exactly who and what they were voting for. With Trump abandoning the Republican Party’s longstanding support of a national ban on abortion and no Supreme Court justices left to appoint, the fig leaf of abortion fell away, exposing the uglier elements that have always tied white Christians to Trump.

PRRI’s surveys have consistently found strong support among white Christians for the racial grievance and xenophobia that is the deeper DNA of the MAGA movement. Majorities of white Christians agree that “today discrimination against white Americans has become as big a problem as discrimination against Black Americans and other minorities.” And three quarters of white evangelical Protestants, along with 6 in 10 white non-evangelical Protestants and white Catholics, say they favor even the most extreme parts of Trump’s mass deportation scheme, described in the survey as “rounding up and deporting immigrants who are in the country illegally, even if it takes setting up encampments guarded by the U.S. military.”

But numerical support for Trump is only one facet of what white Christians have wrought in our nation. Historically, we know that all authoritarian leaders need a mechanism for projecting moral legitimacy, particularly as they accelerate efforts to consolidate power and undermine democratic norms and individual freedoms.

Nearly a century ago, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi movement coopted the German Evangelical Church. Today we are seeing similar uses of the Orthodox Christian churches in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Catholic Church in Viktor Orbán’s so-called “illiberal democracy” in Hungary—contemporary models both Trump and white evangelical leaders have praised.

Over the last decade, many white Christians have not just selfishly supported a dangerous, narcissistic man who promised to restore their waning influence; they have now willingly blessed the advent of a new American fascism that threatens our democratic future. They are principally responsible for Trump’s rise and return to power—and for everything that is coming for all of us in its wake.

A Rant

I don't know this guy - he's new to me. Good rant tho.

Off_JaWaggon

Understandable

You get tired of the fight. And sometimes, you have to stop and rest. Sometimes, you have to stop and walk away altogether.

I'm tired of the fight. But I don't know what else to do.

I will not lay me down - I have to stay and fight until there's nothing left of me.

Goodbye I love you all pic.twitter.com/39ADbx0JGf

— Bob south florida water man 🇺🇸 (@WaterDean) November 6, 2024

I make this promise - paraphrasing Gandhi:

They can harass me.

They can steal from me.

They can arrest me.

They can imprison me.

They can torture me.

They can beat me to death.

They can have my dead broken body.

But they will never have my obedience.

Ever.

Well That Sucks 2 - The Sequel

All things Russian = Trump. And Elon Musk. 

76 days from today, the American dictator takes power.

Because that's how we do things here:

The worst possible outcome flowing from the best possible system of government.

It's premature to say it's all over, but I'm holding out scant hope for anything better.

I can see a slow (at first), but then accelerating slide into autocracy and the implementation of Trump's vengeance-driven personal agenda, followed by "a time of adjustment" that will look like - and will be sold to us as - "a sensible solution to the terrible problems wrought by that poor unfortunate sick man, who BTW just suddenly went a little nutty - nobody could've seen it coming".

And then we'll be onto whatever the plan is for the removal of the dastardly Trump and the installation of kindly President Vance, who will continue to dismantle the federal government, and sell off the pieces to the friends of his billionaire benefactors, and eventually rewrite the US Constitution according to Project 2025.

And what're we betting that they'll enlist the willing help of Democrats in the House and Senate to impeach and remove? That should give them all the leverage they need against Trump, but more importantly, it gives them some nice political cover because they can say that whatever horrible thing they've turned the US into, they had help from the Dems.

Welcome to the plutocracy

Yeehaw And Away We Go

This is where we are because of one small stupid insecure little man, and a host of barely-invisible moneyed interests supporting him thru dis-information and straight up gaslighting - all of whom hate our tradition of democratic self governance, and are working to tear it all down in order to replace it with a good old-fashioned top-down corporate-style plutocracy.

I think we continue to come out of this MAGA nonsense today, by electing Kamala Harris.

But don't start thinking we're anywhere near the beginning of the end. We may not even be at the end of the beginning.

This democracy thing is pretty hard. Because it's a constant struggle for balance between honor and belligerence. Between humans' natural impulse for violence and a more enlightened sense of the greater good.

There's a kind of weird Twilight Zone quality to it - it's somewhere between the lofty summit of our knowledge and the dark pit of our fears.

Fake lord help us find that balance.

Drones and snipers on standby to protect Arizona vote-counters

Razor wire. Thick black iron fencing. Metal detectors. Armed security guards. Bomb sweeps.

The security at this centre where workers count ballots mirrors what you might see at an airport - or even a prison. And, if needed, plans are in place to further bolster security to include drones, officers on horseback and police snipers on rooftops.

Maricopa County became the centre of election conspiracy theories during the 2020 presidential contest, after Donald Trump spread unfounded claims of voter fraud when he lost the state to Joe Biden by fewer than 11,000 votes.

Falsehoods went viral, armed protesters flooded the building where ballots were being tallied and a flurry of lawsuits and audits aimed to challenge the results.

The election’s aftermath transformed how officials here handle the typically mundane procedure of counting ballots and ushered in a new era of high security.

“We do treat this like a major event, like the Super Bowl,” Maricopa County Sheriff Russ Skinner told the BBC.

Razor wire sits atop one of the fences guarding the county's election tabulation centre
The county, the fourth most populous in the US and home to about 60% of Arizona's voters, has been planning for the election for more than a year, according to Skinner.

The sheriff's department handles security at polling stations and the centre where ballots are counted. The deputies have now been trained in election laws, something most law enforcement wouldn’t be well-versed in.

“Our hope is that it doesn't arise to a level of need for that,” he said when asked about beefed-up security measures like drones and snipers. “But we will be prepared to ensure that we meet the level of need, to ensure the safety and security of that building” and its employees.

The election process here in many ways echoes that in counties across the country. Ballots are cast in voting locations across the county and then taken to a central area in Phoenix where they're tabulated. If they’re mailed in, the ballots are inspected and signatures are verified. They’re counted in a meticulous process that includes two workers - from differing political parties - sorting them and examining for any errors.

The process is livestreamed 24 hours a day.

While much of this process remains the same, a lot else has shifted. Since the 2020 election, a new law passed making it easier to call a recount in the state. Previously, if a race was decided by the slim margin of 0.1% of votes cast, a recount would take place. That’s now been raised to 0.5%.

The tabulation centre is now bristling with security cameras, armed security and a double layer of fencing.

Thick canvas blankets cover parts of a parking lot fencing to keep prying eyes out. Officials say the canvas was an added measure to protect employees from being harassed and threatened outside the building.

“I think it is sad that we’re having to do these things,” said Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates.

Gates, a Republican who says he was diagnosed with PTSD after the election threats he received in the 2020 election, doesn't plan to run for office again once this election is over because of the tensions.

“I do want people to understand that when they go to vote centres, these are not militarised zones,” he told the BBC. “You can feel safe to go there with your family, with your kids and participate in democracy.”

Yellow and black rope forms a line where visitors to the tabulation centre must queue to go through a metal detector. Three armed security guards stand near the detector. A black folding table sits nearby with a metal detector wand.

The county has invested millions since 2020. It’s not just security, either. They now have a 30-member communications team.

A big focus has been transparency - livestreaming hours of tests for tabulation machines, offering dozens of public tours of their buildings and enlisting staff to dispute online rumours and election conspiracies.

“We kind of flipped a switch,” assistant county manager Zach Schira told the BBC, explaining that after 2020 they decided, “OK, we’re going to communicate about every single part of this process, we’re going to debunk every single theory that is out there.”

It’s all led up to Tuesday's election.

“We may be over prepared,” Sheriff Skinner said, “but I'd rather prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”

Some Maricopa Republicans told the BBC they’ve tracked recent changes and felt there would be fewer problems this election cycle.

“They’ve made steps that I think will help,” said Garrett Ludwick, a 25-year-old attending a recent Scottsdale rally for Trump’s vice-presidential running mate JD Vance.

“More people are also aware of things now and I think there are going to be a lot of people watching everything like a hawk," he said, wearing a Trump cap that read, “Make liberals cry”.

One Republican voter, Edward, told the BBC the 2020 cycle caused him to get more involved. He’s now signed up for two shifts at polling locations in Maricopa County on Tuesday.

“Going to a rally or being upset isn’t going to fix things,” he said. “I wanted to be part of the solution.”

Not all are convinced.

“I still think it was rigged,” said Maleesa Meyers, 55, who like some Republican voters said her distrust in the process is too deep-rooted to believe the election could be fair. “It’s very hard to trust anyone today.”

Results in Arizona often hinge on Maricopa County, giving the county an outsized role in the outcome. Officials here estimate it could take as long as 13 days to count all ballots - meaning the expected tight race in this swing state might not be called on election night.

“There’s a chance that in 2024, the whole world will be watching for what the result is in Maricopa County," said Schira, the assistant county manager.

"Truly the world’s confidence in democracy could come down to this.”

Today's Today

This is it.

Good luck, America.

Our Next President

I'm putting this up as a prayer. Just as every vote is a prayer. Every time we get up and go to work, it's a prayer. Every time we look at a kid or a teenager or anyone younger that we are, and wonder about their future - it's a prayer.

We live on the promise of love and the bonds of honor.

🤞🏻😎🤞🏻

Today's Belle

In 2008 they told McCain that if he was more than 5 points underwater with women, he was gonna lose. He was, and he did.

And I'll say it again:

Women will save us. All we have to do is stay the fuck outa their way and let 'em do it.

Go get 'em, ladies.

I'll hold your stuff

while you fuck 'em up.

I'm right behind you,

and I'll be here when you're done.

Going For The Close

"... now the rallies are the shit-posting."

In past cycles, Trump's handlers managed to get him under control for the last few weeks before the election so people would see him as "more normal" than he really is.

That's not the case this time. I think he figures he's going to lose so, "What the hell - I went normal last time and just missed, but then the crazy bit got me close with Jan6, so let's just go for it. I'm going to amp it up to 12 and see if I can get my vigilantes to carry me across the line..."

IDK, but I'm not going to simply dismiss his weird shit and call him nutty when I know there's always been a method to his madness.

The Coming Weirdness

... is already here.

A Reminder

Trump is bent on vengeance as a means to cover up his crimes.

But Don't Let Up

For just another 23 days, it's gotta be all gas and no brakes.

Don't forget: A big part of Trump's plan is to set the expectation that he's ahead - so when Harris wins (if she wins - fuck me, she's gotta win), he can kick it up a few notches and hit the usual bullshit about "It was rigged! They cheated! The brown people knifed us in the back!"

Harris vs. Trump analyst tells panicky Dems: GOP is creating fake polls

‘Desperate, unhinged, Trumpian’

As polls seem to indicate that former president Donald Trump has momentum in some swing states with 24 days remaining until the Nov. 5 presidential election, Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg says: Don’t buy it.


About a month ago, Rosenberg predicted that a slew of polls by Republican organizations would flood the zone, showing Trump leading — and, like clockwork, it has happened.

The purpose is two-fold, Rosenberg said: To excite Trump’s base and discourage Vice President Kamala Harris’ supporters, while also providing Trump with ammunition to say the election was rigged if he loses.

In a tweet thread, Rosenberg explained:

“Of last 15 general election polls released in PA, 12 have right/GOP affiliations. Their campaign to game the polling averages and make it appear like Trump is winning — when he isn’t — escalated in last few days.

“I urge journalists and researchers to dive into FiveThirtyEight and see how the red wave pollsters have flooded the zone again. MT, PA, NC were initial targets but now it’s all 7 battleground states.

“This 2024 red wave op is much larger and involves many more actors and polls than the red wave campaign in 2022. It also involves new players — Polymarket, Elon — and feels far more desperate, frenetic, unhinged. Trumpian.”

Rosenberg pointed to a New York Times autopsy on the 2022 midterm elections: “The ‘Red Wave’ Washout: How Skewed Polls Fed a False Election Narrative.”

Rosenberg also referred to a recent New York Times report — “Elon Musk is going all-in to elect Trump” — that shows coordination between Twitter/X owner Elon Musk and the Trump campaign.

Musk shut down a Twitter/X account that published hacked materials from the Trump campaign. And according to the New York Times, Musk and his team have set up a war room in Pittsburgh to strategize with a team of lawyers and public-relations professionals to help Trump win.

On Thursday, American Muckrakers posted about emails it received detailing how the conservative-leaning Rasmussen Reports, which claims to be nonpartisan, shared polling results with Trump advisers and campaign officials like Dan Scavino, Susie Wiles, and John McLaughlin.

“More than 25 organizations are now involved in red wave 2024,” Rosenberg tweeted. “Last week, they dropped 27 polls. This week it’s more. Ferocity of effort to make it look like Trump is winning clearly means they don’t think he is.”

Oh Those Pesky Undecideds

At the risk of repeating myself:

You call them undecided - I call them fuckin' idiots.

Puh-tay-ta / Puh-tah-toh

Dear Undecideds,

Let's review - again. Cuz some of you seem unable or (more likely) unwilling to grok the situation.

Let's say this election is like looking at a breakfast menu.

Option 1: A big steaming bowl of lumpy, greasy, tequila hangover squirts. 

Option 2: A short stack, some crispy bacon, 2 eggs (any way you like 'em), fresh-squeezed OJ, and some coffee.

But you're telling me you can't decide because you're just not sure about the fucking syrup?

WaPo pretty much misses the point - again - because WaPo needs to fill space and sell ads for dick pills and panty liners.

And yes, WaPo - we are a "nation divided" - it's the shit-eaters versus the normal people.

But, hey - do your dumbass thing, Press Poodles.

The elusive ‘policy-driven’ undecided voter

It’s useful to the media to suggest that undecided voters are seeking out more information about Harris and Trump. But, often, the reverse is true.

There is a canonical presentation of voters in a democracy. Attuned to the central issues of the election — be they national, state or local — these voters carefully consider the positions of the candidates and perform an elaborate mental calculus. Candidate A aligns with the voter on a few things, but Candidate B aligns on more, and more important ones. Candidate B it is. On to the next contest on the ballot.

Written out like that, the idea is obviously ridiculous. Most voters scan their ballots for the candidates indicated as Democrats or Republicans and vote for those candidates. There’s nothing wrong with that, as such; the point of political parties, in part, is to provide a mnemonic for Americans to quickly identify candidates who broadly share their values. Why spend all that time reading about issues when the D and the R serve as accurate summaries?

That has become particularly true as partisan polarization has sharpened in the United States. Fewer legislators and candidates hold heterodox positions, meaning that the D and the R are more effective presentations of their views than they used to be. If you are moderately well informed, those two letters can tell you most of what you want to know about the candidates on most issues, even at the state or local level. At the presidential level, the letters are almost completely descriptive, given that the parties’ presidential candidates help define where the parties stand.

And yet there are still numerous voters who say they haven’t been able to decide between the two major-party presidential candidates in 2024. But there are different strains of “undecided.” For many, the question is probably less whether they prefer Vice President Kamala Harris or former president Donald Trump than whether they plan to vote at all. For a handful, their calculus of how the candidates’ positions comport with their own personal values is complex. And for many — perhaps, if we allow ourselves to be cynical, most — they simply haven’t been, and are not now, paying much attention to politics.

This isn’t new. There’s always been a clutch of Americans who are loosely attached to politics and whose opinions on political issues are therefore idiosyncratic. It’s been 20 years since Chris Hayes (well before his MSNBC days) described talking to undecided voters in Wisconsin during the 2004 election. He found fewer of the theoretical cautious/conscientious voters than people whose politics appeared to have been picked at random from piles of newspaper clippings.

One thing we’ve heard a lot this year is that undecided voters are still making up their minds in part because they want to learn more about Harris’s positions. This makes sense in theory; Harris’s presence as a candidate has been relatively short-lived, given the transition the Democratic Party made at the end of July.

But that’s just short-lived in the American sense. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced parliamentary elections on May 22; they were held on July 4. That’s a 43-day election cycle. Harris has been a candidate for 78 days. There was a Democratic Party convention that dominated the airwaves for four days. There was a debate. Harris released policy platforms. If voters want to know what she’s running on, it’s there for them to consume.

In fact, the New York Times released polling last week delineating why voters who still described themselves as “undecided” were refraining from settling on a candidate. Conducted by Siena College, the poll asked those voters what their concerns about the candidates were. A plurality of those voters said Trump’s personality was their biggest point of hesitation. For Harris, a smaller percentage said they were concerned about her honesty and judgment.

Only a handful of people indicated that they wanted to know more about her candidacy.

If we sketch out a more realistic picture of an undecided voter, we can see why this isn’t a surprise. For the most part, they are not carefully sitting down and considering the information at hand, finding that their stack of information about Harris is still missing elements. They are, instead, not paying much attention at all and, perhaps, sometimes tacitly admitting they aren’t paying much attention by saying they need to learn more.

Some in the media nonetheless seized upon this idea with alacrity. Consider how Politico described the Harris campaign’s flurry of media appearances this week: “Most of these are not the types of interviews that are going to press her on issues she may not want to talk about, even as voters want more specifics from Harris. Instead, expect most of these sit-downs to be a continuation of the ‘vibes’ campaign Harris has perfected.”

There’s been frustration from some reporters that Harris hasn’t centered her campaign on conversations with traditional media outlets but, instead, on a more limited schedule with podcast and online personalities. That seeps out of the Politico description: What voters want is policy information, which a Harris-Howard Stern conversation isn’t going to provide! The error in this argument should be immediately apparent — as should the reason that traditional outlets would elevate it.

Several things are true about the current media landscape. One is that the traditional media (including The Washington Post, obviously) has a more limited influence than it used to. Another is that some podcasts and influencers have much broader audiences — particularly among the constituencies the candidates hope to spur to the polls — than newspapers or cable news programs. A third is that this is useful for the campaigns, since they can more easily avoid tricky or challenging questions that traditional reporters might pose.

The solution is not to suggest that undecided voters are uniformly desperate for probing questions that will inform their votes. This is true of some undecided voters, sure. But everything else we know about those voters (including the Times poll above) indicates that those voters are anomalous. It’s safe to assume that the campaigns understand that, with four weeks remaining, the key to victory will almost certainly depend less on presenting undecided voters with complex policy proposals and extended, wonky conversations with editorial boards than on ensuring that those voters casting a ballot based on the D and the R are excited to go out and do so.

By Design

One of the little maneuvers that Trump is using is tried-n-true.

1. Fuck something up
2. Wait
3. Point at it and say, "Oh look - it's fucked up - lemme fix that for ya."

Among my favorite examples is when Manuel Noriega needed to do an election, and he knew it wouldn't go well for him, and he knew one of the consequences was that he'd be in prison for a good long time.

So he sent his goons out on election day to steal &/or stuff ballot boxes, and harass voters, etc. When all this was reported, he claimed the election was bad and the outcome couldn't be trusted, and that he, being all patriotic and very interested in justice and blah blah blah - he would stay on as president to get the whole thing straightened out, and maybe we can do another election sometime down the road.

 With Trump, I think I see the same kind of game being played in his Election Interference (Jan6) case before Tanya Chutkan in DC.

He petitions the court for various things in order to delay the trial. Now that certain issues have been resolved, and Smith has filed a superseding indictment, and the thing seems to be back on track, Trump is beefing about how it's too close to election day, and going forward with it would be - say it with me now - Election Interference.

I truly hope all of that is as obvious - and as boring - to everybody as it seems to me.

Further, on a slightly different note, there are at least 77 witnesses referenced in Smith's new filing, along with 6 co-conspirators.

That's a whole big bunch of witnesses.

Read the full filing here

A question: If Trump claims to have been acting in his official capacity, and he was working on his campaign stuff from the oval office, then maybe he can smarm his way out of the main charges because of immunity, but wouldn't he be smarming his way into a shitload of Taft Act violations?

Read Jack Smith’s unsealed court filing that says Trump ‘resorted to crimes’ after 2020 election

Donald Trump laid the groundwork to try to overturn the 2020 election even before he lost, knowingly pushed false claims of voter fraud and “resorted to crimes” in his failed bid to cling to power, according to a newly unsealed court filing from prosecutors that offers new evidence from the landmark criminal case against the former president.

The filing from special counsel Jack Smith’s team offers the most comprehensive view to date of what prosecutors intend to prove if the case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the election reaches trial.

Though a months-long congressional investigation and the indictment itself have chronicled in stark detail Trump’s efforts to undo the election, the filing cites previously unknown accounts offered by Trump’s closest aides to paint a portrait of an “increasingly desperate” president who while losing his grip on the White House “used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process.”

“So what?” the filing quotes Trump as telling an aide after being advised that his vice president, Mike Pence, had been rushed to a secure location after a crowd of violent Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 to try to prevent the counting of electoral votes.

“The details don’t matter,” Trump said, when told by an adviser that a lawyer who was mounting his legal challenges wouldn’t be able to prove the false allegations in court, the filing states.

The brief was made public over the Trump legal team’s objections in the final month of a closely contested presidential race in which Democrats have sought to make Trump’s refusal to accept the election results four years ago central to their claims that he is unfit for office.

The issue surfaced as recently as Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, lamented the violence at the Capitol while a Republican opponent, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, refused to directly answer when asked whether Trump had lost the 2020 race.

The filing was submitted, initially under seal, following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts they take in office, a decision that narrowed the scope of the prosecution and eliminated the possibility of a trial before next month’s election.

The purpose of the brief is to persuade U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that the offenses charged in the indictment were undertaken in Trump’s private, rather than presidential capacity, and can therefore remain part of the case as it moves forward. Chutkan permitted a redacted version to be made public even though Trump’s lawyers argued that it was unfair to unseal it so close to the election.

Though the prospects of a trial are uncertain, particularly in the event that Trump wins the presidency and a new attorney general seeks the dismissal of the case, the brief nonetheless functions as a roadmap for the testimony and evidence prosecutors would elicit before a jury.

“Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one,” Smith’s team wrote, adding, “When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office.”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the brief “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional” and repeated oft-stated allegations that Smith and Democrats were “hell-bent on weaponizing the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power.” Trump, in a separate post on his Truth Social platform, said the case would end with his “complete victory.”

The filing alleges that Trump “laid the groundwork” for rejecting the election results before the contest was over, telling advisers that in the event he held an early lead he would “declare victory before the ballots were counted and any winner was projected.”

Immediately after the election, prosecutors say, his advisers sought to sow chaos in the counting of votes. In one instance, a campaign employee, who is also described as a Trump co-conspirator, was told that results favoring Democrat Joe Biden at a Michigan polling center appeared accurate. The person is alleged to have replied: “find a reason it isnt” and “give me options to file litigation.”

Prosecutors also alleged that Trump advanced claims of fraud despite knowing they were false, describing how he told others that allegations of election regularity made by attorney Sidney Powell were “crazy” and referenced the science fiction series “Star Trek.” Even so, days later, he promoted on the platform then known as Twitter a lawsuit she was about to file.

In demonstrating his apparent indifference to the accuracy of the election fraud claims, prosecutors also cite an account of a White House staffer who after the election overheard Trump telling his wife, daughter and son-in-law on Marine One: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”

The filing also includes details of conversations between Trump and Pence, including a private lunch the two had on Nov. 12, 2020, in which Pence “reiterated a face-saving option” for Trump, telling him, “Don’t concede but recognize the process is over.”

In another private lunch days later, Pence urged Trump to accept the results of the election and run again in 2024.

“I don’t know, 2024 is so far off,” Trump told him, the filing states.

Prosecutors say that by Dec. 5, the defendant was starting to think about Congress’ role in the process.

“For the first time, he mentioned to Pence the possibility of challenging the election results in the House of Representatives,” it says, citing a phone call.

But Trump “disregarded” Pence “in the same way he disregarded dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected his and his allies’ legal claims, and that he disregarded officials in the targeted states — including those in his own party — who stated publicly that he had lost and that his specific fraud allegations were false,” prosecutors wrote.

Pence chronicled some of his interactions with Trump, and his eventual split with him, in a 2022 book he wrote called “So Help Me God.” He also was ordered to appear before the grand jury investigating Trump after courts rejected claims of executive privilege.

Prosecutors also argue Trump used his Twitter account to further his illegal scheme by spreading false claims of election fraud, attacking “those speaking the truth” about his election loss and exhorting his supporters to travel to Washington for the Jan. 6, 2021, certification.

They intend to use “forensic evidence” from Trump’s iPhone to provide insight into Trump’s actions after the attack at the Capitol.

Of the more than 1,200 Tweets Trump sent during the weeks detailed in the indictment, prosecutors say, the vast majority were about the 2020 election, including those falsely claiming Pence could reject electors even though the vice president had told Trump that he had no such power.

That “steady stream of disinformation” in the weeks after the election culminated in his speech at the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, in which Trump “used these lies to inflame and motivate the large and angry crowd of his supporters to march to the Capitol and disrupt the certification proceeding,” prosecutors wrote.

His “personal desperation was at its zenith” that morning as he was “only hours from the certification proceeding that spelled the end,” prosecutors wrote.

At some point, Trump will be gone - but once he's gone, this shit ain't over.

Vance was picked for a reason. Stay sharp.

Dads

Overheard:

Tim Walz is the dad so many of us lost to Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and Donald Trump.

Rudy Giuliani’s Daughter: Trump Took My Dad From Me. Please Don’t Let Him Take Our Country Too

“Nothing I have experienced prepared me for the very public and relentless implosion of my father’s life,” writes Caroline Giuliani, announcing her support for Kamala Harris.

Iam constantly asking myself how America is back here, even considering the possibility of electing Donald Trump again, after all of the damage he has caused, both in office and since. While Kamala Harris has gained extraordinary momentum by infusing this election with vitality and hope, I worry that too many Americans remain disconnected from the visceral, psychologically draining memory of Trump’s deeply destabilizing presidency. If enough people truly remembered what that chaos felt like, another Trump term wouldn’t even be on the table. But for those open to seeing the bare and unvarnished truth, there are unmistakable reminders of Trump’s destructive trail all around us, and it has broken my heart to watch my dad become one of them.

As Rudy Giuliani’s daughter, I’m unfortunately well-suited to remind Americans of just how calamitous being associated with Trump can be, even for those who are convinced he’s on their side. Watching my dad’s life crumble since he joined forces with Trump has been extraordinarily painful, both on a personal level and because his demise feels linked to a dark force that threatens to once again consume America. Not to disregard individual accountability in the slightest, but it would be naive for us to ignore the fact that many of those closest to Trump have descended into catastrophic downward spirals. If we let Trump back into the driver’s seat this fall, our country will be no exception.

My dad and I have a cartoonishly complicated relationship. But he is still my father, and despite his faults, I love him. I’ve seen him experience surreal heights, and, now, unfathomable lows. The last thing I want to do is hurt him, especially when he’s already down. Plus we never know how much time we have left with our parents. The totality of that makes this the most difficult piece I’ve ever written. Yet this moment and this election are so much bigger than any of us.

From reproductive rights and the economy, to foreign and environmental policy, we need experienced, sane, and fundamentally decent leaders who will fight for us instead of against us—who will safeguard our democracy rather than dismantle it. And as a recently engaged-to-be-married, 35-year-old who hopes to feel more joyous than fearful about the potential of becoming a parent myself, I need to advocate for a future worth bringing children into, which is why I am voicing my adamant support for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

I’ll never forget the night my dad told me he was considering becoming Trump’s lawyer. I was with him at the Grand Havana Room, a cigar bar at the top of 666 Fifth Avenue, an address too fitting given the unholy alliance my father was about to enter into.

Surrounded by thick smoke and powerful men, I ugly-cried for a few minutes, then spent the next three hours making my vehement case to my father that he not go down this morally perilous path.

It was extremely rare for my dad to tell me he was going to do anything before actually doing it, so this moment of connection with him also felt like a cosmic opportunity to do my part to limit the spread of Trump’s sinister shadow. I held nothing back. I voiced all of my concerns about Trump’s open racism, rampant misogyny, and total lack of empathy. I even told my dad that I already felt ashamed of my last name whenever I saw headlines connecting him with Trump, and that this escalation would only deepen that feeling. For the rest of that night, I held onto hope that a daughter’s emotional entreaty might actually sway a father.

That fantasy was dispelled the next morning when a news story popped onto my feed: Rudy Giuliani was going to work for Donald Trump. The pit I felt in my stomach then was a warning, but I had no idea how much destruction my father would come to face due to his one-sided fealty to a con-man. Growing up in Gracie Mansion, I always knew I had a privileged life. But a particular set of challenges came along with being Rudy Giuliani’s daughter, and by that point in my life, I had mostly learned how to navigate them.

But nothing I have experienced prepared me for the very public and relentless implosion of my father’s life.

As someone who overcame a deeply ingrained eating disorder and has worked through various other manifestations of anxiety and depression, I’m no stranger to processing complicated feelings. But this new albatross left me floored by a potent mix of fear, anger, confusion, and sadness that often had me crying over my dad, and for him, at the same time. I always saw flaws in my dad that people blinded by his celebrity couldn’t see, but on some level, the absurd scale of his success and notoriety also made it hard to believe that anything could actually take him down. I spent a lot of my life wishing my father had less power. But I never wanted it to happen like this. And selfishly, the deeper my dad gets stuck in the quicksand of his problems, the more fleeting our opportunities to connect as father and daughter become. After months of feeling the type of sorrow that comes from the death of a loved one, it dawned on me that I’ve been grieving the loss of my dad to Trump. I cannot bear to lose our country to him too.

I know that some people may question whether I truly care about my father, since another Trump presidency could theoretically mitigate some of the problems he’s facing. It distresses me to think that my dad might even wonder this. But if you zoom out, Trump being the president was the worst thing that ever happened to my dad, to my family, and to our nation’s modern history. The consequences will only be more severe—and irreversible— a second time around. Thanks to the extremist Supreme Court he stacked, Trump would take office with full immunity: no checks on his power whatsoever. If the president isn’t going to be subject to the law like every other citizen, which remains incomprehensible to me, then our president had better have a moral compass. A 34-time convicted felon who’s been found liable for sexual abuse, tries to steal elections, and demeans people based on their race, sexuality, disability status, and gender falls remarkably short of the bar we must set for ourselves as a country. Fortunately, we have another choice in this election: a life-long public servant who has spent her career upholding justice and fighting for those who cannot fight for themselves.

The Supreme Court’s immunity ruling was a huge blow to the structure of our democracy, and Trump has made it clear that he intends to continue ravaging our noble experiment until there is nothing left of it. The aspiring autocrat has told his supporters that this is the last time they’ll ever have to vote because “it’ll be fixed after that.” There’s no good way to spin that. Whether he means that elections will be fixed, elections will be eradicated, or that the country will be permanently “fixed” due to the demolition of institutions and policies that ensure checks and balances on power, it’s clear that he’s a narcissist in pursuit of authoritarian rule. A democracy by definition cannot be fixed or calcified. It must have the flexibility to change according to the wishes of its people, not the despotic dreams of one. Listening to those wishes, even when it seemed inconceivably late for President Joe Biden to pull out, is exactly what led to Kamala Harris being on the top of the ticket. Her rapid rise is a literal manifestation of citizens’ voices being heard, which is exactly the type of consideration and respect all Americans will get if she is elected.

Beyond the existential importance of this election, I am also voting for Harris because she is the only candidate who cares about my rights as a woman. The reversal of Roe v Wade was a shocking and horrifying “accomplishment” of Trump’s that has already resulted in the unforgivable and unnecessary deaths of innocent women like Amber Nicole Thurman. Seeing Republican state officials enact draconian abortion bans and threaten fertility care is incredibly personal for me. As a woman in my 30s struggling with long-covid-related health issues, there’s a possibility that my soon-to-be husband and I will need to rely on surrogacy or fertility treatments if we want to have children of our own. Having the means to even consider surrogacy is a tremendous privilege that I do not take lightly, but it also stirs up many complex and challenging emotions. So I’ve spent the last couple of years talking to countless women about their fertility journeys. Witnessing their strength has been inspiring, and it has also made it clear that fertility struggles necessitate tremendous courage and grace. So the fact the Roe reversal has given states the leeway to make the IVF process even more uncertain is a disgrace. And hearing Trump flip-flop on the issues of abortion and IVF only makes me trust him less – if that’s even possible – because his lies are so clearly politically motivated. He’s already caused irreparable damage, and I don’t believe for a second that he won’t cause more.

Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, which would “explicitly reject the notion that abortion is health care” and require the Department of Health and Human Services Department to preclude doctors and nurses from being trained to perform abortions, but his insincere denial so clearly stems from his growing political insecurity. Project 2025’s contributors include several high-ranking officials from Trump’s first administration, and one of Project 2025’s authors, Russell Vought, was secretly recorded acknowledging that Trump is in fact “very supportive” of what they do. I believe it, because everything in Project 2025, from eradicating the Department of Education and FEMA, to decimating unions and reinstating schedule F so that the administration can hire and fire government employees for political reasons, is woefully in line with the malfeasance and backsliding that Trump has already proven he stands for. It is a dictator’s playbook—one he didn’t have before. Trump will be much more effective a second time around, and I don’t see how our world can survive it.

We live at a crossroads in history, where the future of not only our democracy but our planet is at stake. Trump’s first-term position on the Climate Crisis was to call it a hoax while stripping away climate regulations and giving the fossil fuel industry everything they wanted and more. His second-term agenda, which we can foresee through his grotesque Project 2025 playbook, will only accelerate the damage he’s already done. My dream of becoming a mom, coupled with the difficult health journey I’ve been on over the last few years, has me constantly grappling with our increasingly toxic and dangerous environment. But I do feel hope. Because Kamala Harris understands the grave danger of climate change. As only the second presidential candidate in history to be endorsed by Scientific American, she’ll be a champion for our children’s futures by reinstating the United States as a member of the Paris Agreement and continuing to fight for renewable energy policy. We’ve seen remarkable progress on this issue under the Biden/Harris Inflation Reduction Act. Trump would roll it all back. Kamala Harris is our only chance for a better future.

Even though the last few years have been some of the most difficult of my life on a personal level, I’m grateful to live in a country that came together once before to fire a burgeoning tyrant. Watching Harris reignite the torch that Biden selflessly passed to her has filled me with optimism and pride. She has the experience, intelligence, and fortitude to lead us to a brighter future, and seeing her hold Trump accountable in the debate only further confirms her ability to defend us from our most dangerous enemies, domestic and foreign. But even with all the incredible momentum the Harris/Walz ticket has generated, we still have to work hard to ensure a victory for our future. We live in a two-party system, and no candidate will appeal to every voter on every issue.

If for whatever reason you choose to sit this election out or lodge a protest-vote for a third-party candidate, make no mistake: you are voting for Donald Trump.

Take it from me, Trump destroys everything he touches. I saw it happen to my family. Don’t let it happen to yours, or to our country. Kamala Harris will guide us into a brighter future, but only if we unite behind her. On November 5th, I’ll be voting for that future. For justice, stability, and democracy. And I sincerely hope you’ll cast your ballot for Kamala Harris, too.