2024 Presidential Election -- new thread for the final week

What will be the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election


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Bezos comes out with a reply on why the WaPo did not make an endorsement for President this year.


tl;dr here is Bezos money quote. Not sure I agree with the entirety of the article and the ultra-rich owning media outlets is certainly a hot button issue these days that I'm staying away from given the new thread rules.
The response from Bezos isn't unreasonable, but the timing with the impending election and his Blue Origin folks meeting with Trump around the same time the decision was made, makes it lack in credibility. Or maybe a perception of bias ....
 
The response from Bezos isn't unreasonable, but the timing with the impending election and his Blue Origin folks meeting with Trump around the same time the decision was made, makes it lack in credibility. Or maybe a perception of bias ....
Bezos actually discusses that in the article editorial. He agrees with you (kind of).

Dave Limp, the chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with former president Donald Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision. But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning. There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false.

When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post. Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a “complexifier” for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The Post.
 
just fast forwarding thru ads when I watch sports on my DVR makes me feel for you guys in battleground states....you can't possibly watch live TV, can you?
Nope. It's dreadful. Especially if you're watching a sporting event in a room full of friends and acquaintances. Just horribly awkward silence as everyone in the room is waiting for someone to react to what just came over the screen with something resembling an opinion that some significant portion of the room will take exception to. It didn't used to be this way.
 
Is Pennsylvania the only state that can't start counting mail-in/early votes until election day? I wonder why they're unique in that regard. I fear that the election outcome may be contingent on PA and they're the slowest state by far....It's like the new Florida. Anybody have a link to the "early voting" tabulation process timings by state? I thought maybe Nevada was slow in a prior election as I recall....
 
Is Pennsylvania the only state that can't start counting mail-in/early votes until election day? I wonder why they're unique in that regard. I fear that the election outcome may be contingent on PA and they're the slowest state by far....It's like the new Florida. Anybody have a link to the "early voting" tabulation process timings by state? I thought maybe Nevada was slow in a prior election as I recall....
Georgia changed their law recently to speed up the process.
 
Is Pennsylvania the only state that can't start counting mail-in/early votes until election day? I wonder why they're unique in that regard. I fear that the election outcome may be contingent on PA and they're the slowest state by far....It's like the new Florida. Anybody have a link to the "early voting" tabulation process timings by state? I thought maybe Nevada was slow in a prior election as I recall....
Many of the states don't finish counting their votes on election night. And there are others that don't start counting votes until election night (this includes Alaska, Arizona, North Carolina, and Wisconsin). California takes weeks to finish their vote counts. It's just that, for most states, the margin of victory is such that they can still confidently make a call of the state on election night. It's only when states are REALLY close in a state that things can take longer to call. And unfortunately Pennsylvania is often really close.
 
It seems to me like that's an implicit admission that he shouldn't be involved with editorial decisions like this one. That he is, again, creating the perception of bias.
Good point. The timing is, at best, unfortunate for Bezos's arguments, as well. I assume the world would have been a lot more open to him or the WaPo announcing back in June that it would not be endorsing for this election and going forward. Having this all come to light through spiking an endorsement editorial that apparently was already written and ready for print is hard to read initially as anything other than the owner putting his thumb on the scale less than two weeks from Election Day.

I think the point about endorsements not actually influencing votes, while probably correct, also falls a touch short given the context. Treading very carefully here, but the symbolism of the kajillionaire owner of a newspaper whose motto is "Democracy dies in darkness" choosing now to move off of a decades-long tradition of endorsing one candidate or the other in presidential elections is kinda hard to miss.
 
It’s being reported that the Harris speech at the Ellipse tonight could have more than 40,000 people there. The campaign keep amending their permit. I have even read it could be above 50,000. That will be quite something. That’s a lot of energy.

 
All that being said, I think that endorsements in major races like this don't really accomplish much. They are more relevant for races where voters know less about the candidates.
If the theory of the case is persuading undecideds, then you're right this endorsement/lock of endorsement probably doesn't mean much. If the theory of the case is goosing turnout on your own side, then this is probably more effective than actually making an endorsement.
 
Is Pennsylvania the only state that can't start counting mail-in/early votes until election day? I wonder why they're unique in that regard. I fear that the election outcome may be contingent on PA and they're the slowest state by far....It's like the new Florida. Anybody have a link to the "early voting" tabulation process timings by state? I thought maybe Nevada was slow in a prior election as I recall....
No one should COUNT absentee/early votes until election day.

What they should do is process them in a manner that syncs with in-person voting. It's a bit tricky on the timing because (at least in NC) requesting an absentee ballot does not prevent you from voting in person. There needs to be some cross checking during vote counting that a person doesn't vote twice. Yes, it's a crime and yes it would be easy to discover AFTER the fact, but that person would still get two votes counted.

The way NC used to do it (no idea if they still do) was the each county board of elections would process votes at the end of a week (after polls were closed for the day) and as they got each absentee ballot they (a bipartisan team) would ensure that 1) the person had not voted in person early-voting, 2) They voted with the correct ballot, precinct, address, etc. 3) the absentee ballot was correctly witnessed. If everything was good, they would open the envelope and had the sealed ballot over to another team to feed it into a ballot machine (the same ones used on election day or in-person early voting). This secures the ballot, but does not count/tabulate the votes. The person is then marked as having voted absentee and not allowed to early vote or vote on election day. If there is a problem with the absentee ballot the person that cast the vote is notified and given a chance to fix it and/or vote in person.

At the end of the process, all the votes end up in the secure ballot boxes which are then taken somewhere for counting.

At least, that's my understanding of the process. I know a change was being considered to not process absentee ballots until after polls close on election day but I do not know if that went through.

Knowing more of how NC works, makes me feel like we have people that actually thought about the system and try and make it the best possible system they can.
 
I've said all along that abortion is going to be the tipping point issue for this election (and all to come until Roe is enshrined in federal law). This is the type of especially compelling ad that will break through the noise to the soft or undecided voters.


And for all the talk of Barack Obama's rhetorical genius, I don't think he's the best one in the family.

"To the men who love us, let me just try to paint a picture of what it will feel like if America, the wealthiest nation on Earth, keeps revoking basic care from its women, and how it will affect every single woman in your life.

Your girlfriend could be the one in legal jeopardy if she needs a pill from out-of-state or overseas, or if she has to travel across state lines because the local clinic closed up.

Your wife and mother could be the ones at higher risk of dying from undiagnosed cervical cancer because they have no access to regular gynecological care.

Your daughter could be the one too terrified to call the doctor if she’s bleeding during an unexpected pregnancy.

Your niece could be the one miscarrying in her bathtub after the hospital turned her away.

This will not just affect women. It will affect you and your sons."
For those who haven't heard, that was Michelle in Kalamazoo (zoo-zoo) on Saturday.
 
It’s being reported that the Harris speech at the Ellipse tonight could have more than 40,000 people there. The campaign keep amending their permit. I have even read it could be above 50,000. That will be quite something. That’s a lot of energy.

It's not as big as the millions there when Trump gave his speech!
 
Many of the states don't finish counting their votes on election night. And there are others that don't start counting votes until election night (this includes Alaska, Arizona, North Carolina, and Wisconsin). California takes weeks to finish their vote counts. It's just that, for most states, the margin of victory is such that they can still confidently make a call of the state on election night. It's only when states are REALLY close in a state that things can take longer to call. And unfortunately Pennsylvania is often really close.
Good points. The order in which some of the swing states are called can matter, too. In 2020, even though it took days to finish up in Pennsylvania, at 3:00 A.M. after Election Day when Arizona was called (everywhere other than Fox, if memory serves, where there was a whole kerfuffle), the writing was on the wall, since Trump had won there by around 100k votes in 2016. By the end of the following night, Wisconsin and Michigan were also called and the counting trends in PA were in line with those results enough that I think most neutral observers were pretty confident Biden had won. That North Carolina and Georgia were still too close to call buttressed that impression.

In other words, it was no substitute for the final vote count in Pennsylvania, but we knew enough about the results in other states to draw some inferences about how that was going to go, and they proved correct. Obviously no saying whether something similar plays out this time.
 
It’s being reported that the Harris speech at the Ellipse tonight could have more than 40,000 people there. The campaign keep amending their permit. I have even read it could be above 50,000. That will be quite something. That’s a lot of energy.

And a home Caps game. And the Dupont Annual High Heel Race. Looks like my kid is going to be late to soccer practice tonight as we will be snarled in traffic.
 
Bezos comes out with a reply on why the WaPo did not make an endorsement for President this year.


tl;dr here is Bezos money quote. Not sure I agree with the entirety of the article and the ultra-rich owning media outlets is certainly a hot button issue these days that I'm staying away from given the new thread rules.
No mention that execs from his rocket company, Blue Origins, meet with Trump on the same day. Specifically odd.
 
I've said all along that abortion is going to be the tipping point issue for this election (and all to come until Roe is enshrined in federal law). This is the type of especially compelling ad that will break through the noise to the soft or undecided voters.
I do believe that one of two issues will decide the election.

At this point everyone is in agreement that this election will be about turnout. Dems are looking to get a lot of folk voting on the issue of abortion. The GOP is, at this late hour, focusing in on immigration. One of those two issues will be the tipping point. Here's an interesting look at how folk feel about immigration (plenty of comparison charts).


Anecdotal story: Was talking with an acquaintance in Texas over the weekend. He's very conservative (there's a surprise, right?), but he did not vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020. He's a college grad who's my age and quite wealthy. But he shocked me in our phone call by saying he had cast a ballot for Trump the day before. Why? He's gone ballistic over the "illegal invasion" in our country. I'll spare you all the shocking/disgusting things he said about migrants, but suffice it to say that I had to hang up on him. I pray he is not a bellwether in terms of how many are animated to vote for Trump on this singular issue, but I fear it could be a tipping point in many of the swing states. We'll find out soon enough.
 
For those who haven't heard, that was Michelle in Kalamazoo (zoo-zoo) on Saturday.
The speech gave me chills, I highly recommend watching the video.

I don't think the impact on men of reproductive rights restrictions has been sufficiently communicated by Harris. This speech nails it, but maybe too little too late.
 
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