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naraburns  nihil supernum  16d ago (text post)   26866 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

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It ain't over 'til its over, and I still pretty much expect to wake up tomorrow to Pennsylvania or Georgia explaining how they found half a million Harris votes in a mailbox somewhere and how that's totally normal.

But just this moment I'm getting some real Hillary vibes out of this one. Remember when people were arguing that she was going to flip Utah blue? I've grown pretty accustomed to news coverage about Kamala winning, say, North Carolina--or all seven swing states. But as of right now, dreams of a mandate were clearly just that; if any of Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin do turn red, she's done.

If it does become clear that she's lost, will Harris concede? Or will she recycle Hillary's advice to Biden and instead set lawfare into motion? Would Democrats try to steal the election again, like they did in 2016, with faithless elector schemes or attempts to prevent the certification of the vote? Would the up the ante?

I am still skeptical that we'll get a chance to find out, but people have been speculating about Trump and Republican "sore loser" scenarios for months. What does a Harris loss look like?

What does a Harris loss look like?

Depends a lot on degree.

If it's tight -- one state under 5%, two or three states under 1% -- some amount of delaying is unavoidable. Literally, in some cases, like Pennsylvania where I don't think Harris could stop people from getting a recount if she wanted to. Some of the objections I might even agree with: there's a mess with Nevada signature verification that seems at least plausible. If it's not -- lose the popular vote by most of a percentage point, multiple states with multiple percent differences -- probably not.

I don't think we'll get a complete copy of J6, knock on wood. The Electoral Count Reform Act makes any challenge at Congress specifically to be exceptionally hard, requiring twenty Senators and over eighty Representatives. There's revelations about Trump I could imagine getting that level of cohesion, but I can't imagine any that wouldn't have been released long ago and needing (or wanting) a particularly boisterous riot at all.

There's still some place for ugliness toward the middle, though. I've mentioned the possibility of a blue governor in a state that voted red by a narrow margin and has the NPV Compact on the books doing something Interesting when it came to certifying electors for their state. I don't think it's likely, since neither Shapiro nor Whitmer seem to be Grishams, as bad as I think Whitmer's COVID response was, and that's why I'll describe it at all. There's a hilariously stupid loophole in the Electoral Count Reform Act related to judicial review, and it's one that's very hard to exploit, but there are some specific lines I could see the Baude/Paulsens of the world try to push, to serious destruction, enough that I'm not going to go into more detail.

Neither of these work at 300+ electoral vote splits. There's stuff that might, but it's... very far tail end, and very ugly. I'd be disappointed if the Harris campaign keeps trying to get blue jurisdictions to find ballots that can't close a 50-point EV gap, but that's just be embarrassing rather than destructive. There's gonna be people trying to come up with novel interpretations of everything -- Lawrence Tribe is still alive -- but they don't need conservatives wargaming for them.

((Wouldn't be surprised by some last-minute regulatory or executive branch bird-flipping, though dunno if anyone cares at this point. Probably will set the stage for a lot of legal fights afterward, though, both in terms of APA challenges to Trump and in making it hard for him to undo hits against himself or Musk; a CFPB-like established in the lame duck session is definitely on the table.))

Harris specifically almost certainly turns into one crux of any election post-mortem if she loses, especially by a large amount. A very tight race might be handwaved as racism or sexism, and I still expect to see a lot of ''racist v anti-racist'' tweets about the African-American male vote even as California brings it back closer to historical norms, but a large EV loss against Trump is gonna leave too much blame to go around. I don't think that's entirely fair, with the combination of general economic mess and everything Biden and last-minute swap (and, frankly, weakness from Walz), but the public relations people aren't going to put their own necks on the line. There's already gonna be a ton of outreach folk sharpening their wits for the tell-all books, and Harris being the nominee this year was always a bit about fear of that possibility from 'better' candidates like Whitmer or Newsom (ugh).

I'd like for there to be some more serious considerations among the broader progressive field about how it came to this, especially about emphasizing every tactical option but persuasion, but I... don't think it could happen.

((And, conversely, I'd hope that Trump et all does some actual giving on matters like abortion, like an 8-week safe harbor in exchange for requiring in-person consultations for oral abortificents, if only for tactical considerations like not getting absolutely crushed next election, but I'm not very optimistic. Even if it ends up a split House/Senate, there's gonna be too much temptation to take everything they can get.))

That said, I spent a lot of November 2020 sure that the Red Tribe Didn't Riot, so discount all this analysis as appropriate.

Concession within a day unless there's a Gore-level "too close to call". And I would like to think such would have been apparent by now.

What does a Harris loss look like?

She doesn't have the constitution, the character, or (going by reports) the personal charisma necessary to sustain a defiant stand. Blues do not have enough gas left in the tank to sustain a pivot to election denial at this late date. If Trump takes this, I think the reckoning might arrive in Blue-Land.

But is she retarded enough? Look at Stacy Abrams and all her hagiography denying not one, but two election losses! To this day she's a hero, has raised (embezzled?) millions of dollars for "election fortification", and even had all sorts of cringey cameos in Orange Man Bad shows like Star Trek.

Show me a time when she's dug in, bared her teeth, and defied the odds to fight for something, even once, anywhere. It's possible she has and I'm simply unaware, but from what I've seen of her, I rather doubt it.

Trouble is that 'sways like the willow' sways to every wind. I think it'd need to be close to a big progressive push to carry her along, but there's a variety of avenues that would let her be easily pushed, even to her own detriment.

In public, no, in private, she took the inside track didn't she? Sucked up to the winner, then launched a coup against him.

Hillary publicly admitted defeat, and in private effectively nullified Trump's entire presidency with the fake Steel Dossier and the fake Russia investigation. Who knows what Harris has up her sleeve.

I don't think it's accurate to say Harris launched the candidate coup against Biden. She clearly knew about it to some degree, given how prepared she was to start advertisements mid-weekend, but the names in most political scuttlebut have very much been party elders.

yeah many people still remember that 2020 surge

It ain't over 'til its over, and I still pretty much expect to wake up tomorrow to Pennsylvania or Georgia explaining how they found half a million Harris votes in a mailbox somewhere and how that's totally normal.

I do wonder what their cover for action will be this time around. Last time it was the fact that Trump told people not to vote by mail. This year their organization was all about turnout no matter how you vote. Early in person, mail in, day of, they don't care, just vote. What possibly plausible explanation can there be for those 3 am 90% Harris vote dumps?

Whenever I see the guys on TV doing the county-by-county comparisons in Pennsylvania, it looks pretty grim for Trump. Why are the PA markets at 80%? What am I missing?

What am I missing?

Whatever you're missing, I'm missing it, too.

But if Kamala's team also missed it...

We had fewer mail in ballots and the split between Republicans and Democrats was smaller than in 2020 for those ballots. Because they take longer to count (and PA can't start preparing them before the election), those are the ballots that come in late to the count. In 2020 that meant it was always going to get better for Biden as the night went on. Harris does not have that same split to rely on. If she is not up on "on the day" voters there are not enough mail in ballots to save her (unless a lot of registered Republicans got mail in ballots then switched to her from Trump, which seems..unlikely). Down over 600,000 compared to 2020 and the split was less than 2-1 in favor of registered Democrats, compared to more than 3-1 in 2020.

It may be that Trump shifting gears in his PA rallies and telling his supporters to vote however they can including mail in ballots might have been enough. Of course if he had said that in 2020, the split might not have been as big as it was in the first place. Potentially exonerating those PA Republicans who opened up mail-in voting in 2019 just prior to Covid. Without Trump encouraging his supporters not to use the mail-in ballots, it might be their plan to boost rural elderly turn out is finally successful, just 4 years down the line.

Also while Harris is running ahead in some counties, she is running below Biden in 2020. Unless Philly has huge turnout (and it didn't seem THAT busy to me), you'd rather be in Trump's shoes than hers right now.

I, too am not understanding county turn out.

Trump's ahead in WI (and PA for a few seconds at around 43% counted) right now. Less opportunities to rig things now covid's over. Polymarket spiking past 85%. This is looking like a solid win.

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