Let’s hope the fat bastard gorges on Big Macs before it starts.
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NYT/Sienna have frequently had odd results in this cycle and it seems to be coming from two related things - not adjusting for likely voters (likely voter models tend to be considered “better”) while also somehow finding samples with an unrealistically large number of people who didn’t vote in 2020, the highest turnout election ever, who no one else would consider in a LV model. This has produced a good number of unusual results from them in this cycle, results that often go against the recent trajectory of the rest of the polling and give you crosstabs that no one finds believable (Trump winning > 20% of the black vote when he won only 8% in 2020 AFTER having made gains in that group)
This is not to say they are bad polls, and there are arguments that these sorts of methodological differences are important in making sure the averages include a reasonable measure of the estimate error. But they need to be read in context when looking at them in isolation.
With that said, the polls have never reflected the sense of inevitability that some people have picked up from good roll out of the Harris campaign and the enthusiasm it has generated. They have always represented a very tight race. Thankfully, no one on the campaign is viewing it as anything other than a very tight race.
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You have to praise what you can praise, and Liz Cheney has been a consistent voice in warning against Trump. She is more traditionally Republican than Trump will ever be, and a more consistently conservative voter over her career. She would be massively at odds with the Harris-Walz platform … and yet, she is voting for them in an effort to stop Trump.
It is praiseworthy. The fact that she won’t spoil her ballot, and has also gone public, is something.
Her dad is yesterday’s news, but adding his name to this is also praiseworthy. There’s a long list of things to criticize Dick Cheney over. By all means, pile in on the old duffer - just be careful if you go to the woods on a hunting trip with him.
But you have to give credit where you can find it. These are not normal times. Trump is so wholly unfit for office that even a stalwart Republican family is going public to try to stop him. Is right.
Ideally a little coalition of them would come together - the ones with the highest profile and the ‘name’ to warn the public. It might, just might, take a little off the Republican vote, and that could be huge in the end.
In the meantime, I don’t trust the polls as they don’t seem to be able to deal with Trump very accurately. Harris is going to have to continue to work hard, and get a better message out on the economy.
Hopefully the debate tomorrow will show a stark contrast between a bitter old man who is losing it, and a much younger woman with energy and ideas for the country. It could be the start of an insurmountable gap for Trump.
Here’s hoping.
Can anyone explain why Liz Cheney never got to stand herself as a third candidate ? Not in the expectation of winning obviously , but in the hope of damaging Trump as much as she could , which has always been her stated aim.
It would have been her choice not to. She seemingly felt with her stature she had better platforms to say what needed to be said from just being Liz Cheney than spending time fighting a losing battle to win a house seat in WY
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This is what Tim Miller, former Jeb strategist, calls the “Cheeseburger from Heaven”
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I understand this, and it probably is good for the Dems right now but still, Cheney is a war criminal and profiteer, a blatant lyer, and someone who should have been brought to justice for all he did between 2000 and 2008.
I refuse to cheer him on now that he endorses someone else than Trump. The fucker can go to hell as far as I’m concerned. Another one who should be spending the rest of his days in jail as we speak, instead of profiting from the billions he made from wars he helped to instigate.
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No disagreement from me. I think it is interesting though that in some spaces we’re starting to see positive reevaluation of Bush’s presidency (which is fucking wild to me) and so not only is Bush continuing to stay quiet, he recently did a Harlan Crowe backed fundraiser event with a proper Maga candidate
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Because she’s absolutely useless outside of her state, and couldn’t even hold that when the republican establishment stopped supporting her. Trump would not have lost Wyoming with her on the ticket as an independent. She would have tipped the popular vote more towards Harris (which she is most likely to win anyway).
RFK had the name recognition of Kennedy, and she has the name recognition of …
That’s pretty much exactly the opposite of reality.
WY is a backwater small enough to not even qualify for second representative in the House. Despite representing such an irrelevant state she had a national profile and leadership role in the party before it turned on her for rejecting their up is down narrative. And since leaving office she has continued to have a voice far more important than the person who replaced her on the GOP ticket. Does anyone even know the name of the person who now has that seat without googling?
Standing as an independent in a race she couldnt win once MAGA had turned on her just had no value to anyone, especially as she was in a position that she didnt need a role in elected office to have a voice that people listened to when she chose to use it.
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A more simplified look at the polls here for those who get lost in it all. And for all the talk of how Trump’s numbers were underestimated in 2020 , there is a startling comparison with how the Republican’s share was over-estimated in the mid-terms and how that would translate were it to be replicated this time around.
Free to read.
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No one’s asking you to cheer him on, nor even appreciate this contribution. All my original comment was that people would have reactions like you that would put them off voting for Harris.
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Maybe I should have clarified the useless, so I meant useless as in the ability to take votes away from Trump so that it would affect the election. She’s a household name for 3 reasons, negative press from republicans (jan 6), positive press from democrats (jan 6), and her father. I doubt anyone really knows who she was pre jan 6th, unless you a avid follower of politics, or from Wyoming.
She was chair of the House Republican Conference, so not quite a nobody - certainly not in comparison to the Republican who took her out in the primary. Quite right that no one knows that name without looking. But that sort of points out how limited her base of support was despite a fairly significant profile.
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She was one of the highest ranked leaders of the party. Everyone knows Cheney isnt really from WY and only represents them in a technical sense, which is why she lost her first run for office in the state. She is a national figure who just happened to have an office in an irrelevant western backwater state, but that neither created her profile nor is it required to sustain it.
As for her impact on the Trump vote, she lost reelection in the 2022 midterms after losing in the GOP primary, and so even had she attempted to run in that race as an independent there was no Trump vote in that cycle to impact. If her goal was to speak out against Trump and try to exorcise MAGA from the party, she didnt need an election she was always going to lose in a pointless state to help her with that.
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It reflects that the party she represented ate itself. On the national level prior to losing her primary she had already been subjected to 3 votes I think to remove her from party leadership by the new MAGA core before finally getting ousted, making her primary a non-winnable situation.
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It probably is just me, but reading the following made me think of Germany, 1933.
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Sometimes covering him is really this simple.
Although if I were to quibble I would prefer promises rather than threatens
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But both sides!
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Been wondering for a while which bandwagon I am going to hitch myself too. Alan Lichtman and Nate Silver have been duelling for a while, and have thankfully for me, ended on opposite sides so there is no sitting on the fence. I think this is the year that Lichtman gets his second loss. I don’t really think this election as it stands, will be close, and Trump will take most of the swing states. I think he will take them all, but 1.
As for the debate, I don’t think it really will make much of a difference, unless Harris knocks it out of the park by a distance AND Trump implodes.
I don’t think she is a good debater at all, so have very low expectations from her. I think Trump is an excellent debater (You have to ignore the content) when compared to her.
The debate rules already have her at a disadvantage.
Harris is coming down from the boost at the worst possible time.