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The New Neo Posted on by

(1) I haven’t watched it yet, but here’s Joe Rogan’s interview with J. D. Vance:

(2) I’m extremely nervous about this election. I’ll probably write more about that before Tuesday. But at the moment I’ll just mention that reports of women leading in the early voting increase my worry.

(3) Here’s how the Harris campaign manipulates social media to skew the message. Of course they do.

(4) And speaking of Harris, don’t think she wasn’t very much an agent in getting herself anointed by the party as the candidate [hat tip: commenter “huxley”]. From The New Yorker:

By the time Biden announced his withdrawal, that Sunday afternoon, a scramble was already under way, largely out of public view. Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina state representative who helped Harris secure the nomination, told me that her team saw value in moving swiftly. “We weren’t going to do this bullshit that other people were asking for,” he said. In his view, an open convention was a way to “skip over Kamala.”….

David Axelrod, who was the chief strategist for both of Obama’s Presidential campaigns, told me, “There was an argument that she would be strengthened by a competition, but she showed a mastery of the internal politics, which is one test of a potential candidate. People respond to competence, and that was a very competent operation.” He compared it to a rapid military strike. “She didn’t get handed this nomination,” he said. “She took it.”

(5) A bad jobs report has come out. Will that even matter to people voting next week? The MSM excuses the low number of jobs as being a result of hurricanes and a Boeing strike, but this is a national report and I doubt those reasons accounted for all but a little bit of the shortfall.

(6) More lies about what Trump said about Liz Cheney being a chickenhawk.

Comments

Roundup — 26 Comments

  1. Re 2: I can’t remember if I read it or heard it on the radio, a woman in a swing state was complaining that the voting machine turned her vote for Trump to one for Harris. She got upset and had the poll worker help her to fix it. Once again Trump turned into Harris. It’s going to be nightmare of the worst kind on 11/6. Let’s see if the swing states try to pull a four day delay in reporting their votes once again. Even more does Trump have enough troops in place to stop the steal this time?

  2. Hudson Institute, “What the US Election Means for the Middle East“, (1:03:50), hostess Zineb Riboua interviews Gabriel Scheinmann and Mike Doran on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/live/lh7mNB1HhrE

    There are somehow amazing possibilities drawn out to display, though not fully (exhaustively) delineated. The strategic situation is changing very rapidly, so much so it’s difficult to keep pace. But the potentials are enormous, world changing sort of stuff when we think them through.

  3. I too am very scared about the outcome of the election.
    Harris win – country destroyed by Dems
    Trump win – country destroyed by Dems

  5. One of the most fascinating things JD said was that the Iraq war was the biggest unforced public policy error in US history. I’d say #1 or #2 in foreign policy.

    The biggest unforced error in US history was how the smart people handled Covid. Only Sweden got it right.

  6. I highly recommend the podcast. I have never been able to sit through even a short podcast before, but I made it through this one in two halves and actually wished there was more. Vance’s astonishing intelligence is on full display. He and Rogan enjoy each other’s company, and the topics are varied and mostly interesting. If you get bored by one topic, just hold on and the next one will enthrall you. Or so it went for me.

  7. The biggest unforced error in US history was Buchanan not sending troops to arrest the governor of South Carolina to put down the start of the Rebellion leading to the Civil War.

  8. The Harris only voting machine. Found it, sorry for the long address. From the comments both Trump’s people and Musk are on it, which is good news

    https://x.com/DawnLisArmy/status/1852006263384596878?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1852006263384596878%7Ctwgr%5E5ac4cd5d198843f6d8d6135b3a62c813cf279daa%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwokespy.com%2Fkentucky-county-clerk-confirms-video-where-voter-couldnt-cast-ballot-for-donald-trump-did-occur-after-initial-denial%2F

  9. #4 strikes me as odd, and I realized that’s because it’s never occurred to me that Harris has any agency whatsoever. She’s so fake, so incompetent, so unable to even speak like a human adult that I literally can’t see her capable of being anything but a figurehead.

    That’s why she should have done Rogan, just to show people she’s an actual person. It reminds me of seeing an Obama ad, maybe in 2012, where he spoke like an actual human, instead of that robotic drone that passed for oratory for him. It was such a startling contrast, and made him appear so much more normal and relatable.

    The last time the Democrats nominated a candidate that was actually as good or better than the previous one was Bill Clinton. I can’t be the only one who thinks this.

  11. Rick Gutleber:

    I understand what you’re getting at, but I see it differently. I’ve done a lot of research about Harris’ days in San Francisco when she was coming up in the political world. Her greatest strength was enlisting the help and support – financial and otherwise – of powerful people in the Democrat machine there. And I don’t just mean Willie Brown and through sex, I mean in more conventional ways for politicians. That’s how she got where she was even before she became VP. So I have no problem imagining her using pull and influence to get what she wanted regarding the presidential nomination. She’s not good at interviews and the like, but she’s good at working the room behind the scenes.

  12. I think the political outlook of white suburban woman are going to be the death of this country.

  13. After the debacles of the ’20 and ’22 elections, it’s impossible not to be nervous about this election. But Trump is in a much stronger position now than he was in his past two elections.

    Overall, the early voting data is very encouraging. It doesn’t look like Arizona, Nevada, or Georgia will be that close and a New York Times poll shows Trump has a 19 percentage point lead among those early voters who are voting for the first time. These people will not show up in most polls of likely voters.

    I’m not worried about the dominance of women in the early voting data in Pennsylvania. That result was expected and the lead Dems have in early voting is much smaller than they’ve had in past elections. If Republicans show up in expected numbers on election day, they will take Pennsylvania going away.

    I think Trump will end up winning rather easily. But I’ve been wrong before.

  14. I largely agree with you, Gregory. I think it’s pretty clear Trump is going to win Arizona and Georgia. North Carolina is slightly questionable because of the hurricane and Mark Robinson’s utterly disastrous campaign. Ultimately, though, I think Trump will prevail. Nevada is perpetually a riddle. GOP candidates (like Laxalt) always seem to *look* strong, only to have the rug pulled out at the 11th hour.

    But in any case, I think it comes down to the rust belt. Trump just needs one of the three swing states; Harris needs all three. In the end I think the worst case scenario: Trump only wins one and eeks out a narrow victory (which will be fought by legal and extra legal means). Best case scenario: he takes all the swing states and at least one surprise (probably New Hampshire), by margins to big to rig

    I’m cautiously optimistic. I think in a fair contest, Trump certainly would win. Of course, this not a fair contest. It’s about how unfair will it be?

  15. (3) neo’s link talks about “astroturfing.” That’s well funded and manufactured activities that are intended to fake grass roots actions.

    Some years ago, I was really pissed off when Nancy Pelosi had the audacity to dismiss genuine conservative activities as “astroturf.” Astroturfing is almost exclusively the domain of Democrats.

    My first exposure to it was the documentary film entitled The Lottery (2010) by Madeline Rotzler. Madeline was doing some filming and happened across this large street demonstration. Unionized teachers protesting charter schools in NYC, IIRC. Except the protesters were paid to be there and handed the signs they carried. Many didn’t even know what they were protesting when interviewed.

    Rotzler’s birth name was Sackler, the family involved in the Purdue pharma drug scandal.

  16. I too am a bit skeptical of Harris’ alleged competence in getting the nomination. David Axelrod wouldn’t lie to us, would he?
    ————————————
    There was a time when at least one politician cared more about his country, than his personal ambition (Richard Nixon, who conceded in 1960 rather than challenge apparent fraud). That was then; this is now.

    Sundance writes that Democrats use money to get power, and Republicans use power to get money. I think there’s something to that.

  17. (3) was scary — the degree of organization and control by the Redditor frauds is amazing. This harks back to the Obama elections, where the Democrat machine really did run rings around the Republicans, who are only now really getting into the digital age — and that is MAGA doing, not GOP or RNC work.

    A companion piece on manipulation, depending on some of the details about which parts of the country seem to be having problems. If it’s evenly spread, it’s just incompetence. Inconvenient and inexcusable, given their money and mandates, but still just fools.
    If not — we’re in knave country.
    https://thefederalist.com/2024/11/01/usps-failing-to-deliver-ballots-is-the-new-normal-under-democrats-mail-voting-regim/

  19. @ Someone+Else > “This is interesting. And depressing”
    “The Democrats’ Insanity Defense: Republican activists say they have to water down the reality of their opponents’ agenda in focus groups. ‘They just don’t believe it’s true. It can’t be.‘”

    It was certainly disturbing.
    I had never seen the Democrat’s propaganda success framed in quite that way, but I found it a persuasive argument.

    Park’s conclusion at the end is an optimistic counter to the depressive quality of the information he shares. I think it can be connected to Hewitt’s final break with the Washington Post that Neo looked at today.

    Joe Biden, whatever his faults and infirmities, played an important role as a symbolic figurehead for what functioned in practice as a radical bureaucratic regime. Even as his administration pursued policies far outside the Overton window of American politics, it was difficult for anyone, let alone moderately engaged voters, to believe that “Scranton Joe,” the avuncular centrist and Irish bullshitter, believed in any of the things that his party was said to be doing. Noting the sudden success of the campaign’s transgender ads, one Trump campaign staffer told me, “We were making this attack on Biden, but it was through some sort of convoluted process because of, like, some sort of Department of Education regulation. But everyone perceived Biden as what he was—an establishment moderate. Maybe he’s had to take up some radical positions for political reasons, but no one thinks Joe Biden sincerely cares about trans rights.”

    That seems to have changed when Biden was overthrown in favor of Kamala, whose 2020 primary campaign—pitched at party activists and powerbrokers—led her to make the mistake that both Biden and Obama for the most part managed to avoid: openly pandering to the party’s activist base, often on camera. Defund the police. Decriminalize illegal border crossings. Ban fracking. Confiscate guns. Transgender surgeries for illegals.

    Harris has since tried to walk many of these positions back, which only creates the new problem of appearing inauthentic and weak—a bad combination when the opponent is Donald Trump, especially when he’s also trouncing you on every issue of substance. It is of course too early to say whether Trump really will return for a second term, though his campaign couldn’t have hoped for better odds back at the DNC in August, when it looked as if Obama and the rest of the party’s messaging machine might successfully reinvent Kamala as a patriotic moderate and champion of the middle class. That machine is slick and sophisticated, to be sure, but eventually, the laws of political gravity do reassert themselves. You can piss on the shoes of the American people for one term or maybe two, but eventually, they’re going to figure out it isn’t raining.

    Or as Lincoln said, “You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
    Hopefully, they aren’t fooling enough of the people enough of the time anymore.
    We’ll see next week — maybe.

  20. (6) Connections across blogs: a commenter on LI’s Cheney post said much the same thing as Park MacDougald at The Tablet:

    ThePrimordialOrderedPair | November 1, 2024 at 2:42 pm
    This is one of the most pathetic of lies. You would not think that any adult would even try to get away with saying obviously ridiculous stuff like this in public … but we are going on YEARS of hearing leftists constantly say these sorts of idiocies and people in power actually pretending that they aren’t the dumbest and craziest people who have walked the Earth

    This post at Not The Bee show some Democrats claiming that Trump’s call to have Cheney face the same risks as the soldiers fighting her wars was actually a demand to have her shot by a firing squad.

    https://notthebee.com/article/lets-check-out-the-medias-latest-pants-on-fire-lies-about-donald-trump-shall-we

    First the full Trump quote:

    His daughter (Liz Cheney) is a very dumb individual. Very dumb. She’s a radical war-hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it when the guns are trained on her face. You know they’re all war-hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building, when they’re saying ‘let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.’ … she always wanted to go to war with people.

    Then the responses.

    Here’s a Politico post with the approved narrative:
    https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/01/cheney-trump-firing-squad-threats-are-how-dictators-destroy-free-nations-00186707

    In a statement defending his remarks, campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump was “clearly explaining that warmongers like Liz Cheney are very quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight them, rather than go into combat themselves.” Trump’s language evoked the image of a critic of the former president being threatened with execution — the latest instance of the GOP nominee suggesting violence against a political foe.

    Notice there is NO break between the reporting of Leavitt’s remarks and the editorializing about what Trump ackshually meant, although as NTBee said, that image was only “evoked” for Democrats.

    (A helpful hint – You don’t usually give the person facing a firing squad a gun to fight back.)
    Well, if you somehow didn’t get that out of Trump’s statement, congrats. You aren’t a Trump-deranged lunatic.

    Other examples:
    https://media.notthebee.com/articles/article-672503b9bfd76.jpg
    Sorry I can’t cut and paste the texts on the image, they are headlines from Reuters and Rolling Stone with the “firing squad” that somehow was revealed by their secret magic decoder rings.

    Here’s another example showing the same kind of headlines:
    https://x.com/CWBOCA/status/1852363112789242226

    Charles Weber @CWBOCA
    When they say election interference, this is what they mean.

    Imagine being an ill-informed voter who heard something about “Trump, Cheney, firing squad”… you head on over to google, type on those words and get these results:

    That is what the “journalists” said out right, ignoring the second part of Trump’s statement completely, and Not the Bee had questions:

    Did you see anything in there [Trump’s statement] about Trump wanting to execute Liz Cheney with a firing squad?
    …
    Did I miss it? Did Trump say anything about a firing squad? Or was he describing the horrors of war and how Cheney is unwilling to face down the barrel of a gun herself?

    Cheney herself repeated the lie that Trump directly called for her death.
    https://x.com/Liz_Cheney/status/1852292100844621974

    Liz Cheney @Liz_Cheney
    This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.

    One more response from the Left’s favorite former conservative.
    https://x.com/JimHansonDC/status/1852385335386292275

    Jim Hanson @JimHansonDC
    Trump tells Liz Cheney to pick up a rifle & face the enemies she wants other people’s kids to die fighting

    Jonah Goldberg (Dem, CNN): Trump wants Liz Cheney to face a firing squad

    That’s shamefully dishonest

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that a staple of the anti-war protests of the seventies’ prominently featured calls by liberals & leftists to the have the politicians who advocated war serve on the front lines, which is exactly what Trump said.

    They lie. All the time. About everything.

  21. The recent jobs report, the last one before the election, shows that the 12,000 jobs gained were in the public sector. The for-profit sector actually lost jobs. NBC news says it’s because of hurricanes and other temporary causes. In 2020 the last jobs report showed a gain of “only” 661,000 new jobs according to NBC news. That’s the meme. The coverage may have been a little more nuanced than that, but the meme has much truth in it.

    Organizing a national primary in July would have been nigh-on impossible. An open convention would have been chaotic. Harris was going to be the nominee, and she didn’t have to do any heavy lifting to get the job. Axelrod is looking for achievements and accomplishments he can ascribe to Harris and he has to make do with what little he can scrounge up — or invent.

  22. “She didn’t get handed this nomination,” he said. “She took it.”
    _______
    Maybe. It’s certainly possible. But it’s also possible that it was taken for her.

    We don’t know, and maybe we never will.

  23. Vance is really smart. I mean, Trump is smart, and really knows how to lead and how to handle people, but Vance is smarter. I can’t speak for his executive experience, but every time I see him in an interview, I like him more. He handles a hostile media as effectively as his boss, and that’s a very important skill in a country whose media would make the Soviets jealous.

  25. Rick Gutleber:

    Agreed. In fact, it seems to me that Vance is as smart as DeSantis, who is very smart indeed, and Vance has more pizazz. In fact, Vance and DeSantis have some things in common in their resumes – both went to Yale (DeSantis undergrad and Vance law school), both are lawyers, and both were in the military.

    Being on the right and going to Yale may be very good training for dealing with the left.

  26. It isn’t just that Vance is smart. His young turbulent life was in some ways equivalent to running the gauntlet. His character was forged by that. I don’t see an ounce of cowardice, rather a fierce independence supported by very high intelligence. Getting his college education after spending time in war torn Irag as a Marine must have been a kind of lark for him. He flew through undergrad majors philosophy, theology, and poli sci in two years! One off hand remark in Hillbilly Elegy was interesting. He’d read Ayn Rand apparently and said something to the effect that no matter how good the ideas her characters were “unbelievable”. He lives in the here and now with a great positive outlook on life. And yeah, I’m a super fan of the guy.

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