Roundup
(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.
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?
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.
I too am very scared about the outcome of the election.
Harris win – country destroyed by Dems
Trump win – country destroyed by Dems
Potatoe potato
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.
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.
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.
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
#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.
This is interesting. And depressing…
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/democrats-insanity-defense
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.
I think the political outlook of white suburban woman are going to be the death of this country.