6 thoughts on “Labor Day Weekend Open Thread”

1. Sending Postcards questions

   My wife volunteered to send postcards and got her first batch (Ohio voters). Two questions about them:

   1. They come with the specific text you are supposed to write. Do they give you that text because it has been found to be the most effective? Or do they give that text for legal reasons and it's more effective to write something from the heart?
   2. They come with mailing labels. Are the post cards more effective if they are hand addressed?

   thanks – dave

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   1. I signed up for 500, destined for Florida. I’ve modified my message slightly. I’m half-finished and keep reminding myself that Gore won only lost by 500 votes and some change. 

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   2. My spouse and friends are writing postcards, too.

      Research says ANY approach to voter contact is good.  Postcards, texting, phone calls, and letters all have some research showing higher turnout from those contacted.   Details are hard to pin down, since there likely are multiple things happening in a political campaign. I've not seen anyone say "people change their minds" — but what most appear to be doing is motivating those most likely to vote in the "right way." — asking people to check their registrations, develop a plan to vote, and actually getting to the polls.

      There is a guy running a group Hope Springs from Field that takes volunteers into swing districts and precincts.  His group is trying to get 5 contacts of some sort to all the marginal voters on their turf. 

      My hope … all those who are writing postcards etc. are also taking time to write to all those on their contact lists — even the Christmas card / once a year catch-up letter list — with reasons to support Harris/Walz, Democratic Senators and Representatives who can create majorities, and all the down ballot candidates who are in favor of democracy.

       

       

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2. It's really too bad he doesn't have Michael Cohen to fix these problems to kick around any more. 
    

   Hot-Button Trump Flick ‘The Apprentice’ Acquired by Briarcliff for Pre-Election Release, Awards Campaign 

   The Trump “origin story” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20, and quickly proved to be a bit of a hot potato. Dan Snyder, the pro-Trump billionaire whose Kinematics company put up equity for the film against domestic rights, reportedly was displeased with the film’s depiction of Trump and sought to block its release; and the Trump campaign issued legal threats to potential distributors.

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3. Great Interview with David Niewert on Right Wing Talk of Violence. 

   Rick Perlstein: What are the basic outlines of this story no one wants to talk about?

   David Neiwert: We’re once again faced with a situation where a substantial bloc of American politics is talking about committing acts of violence and bringing down the government. We saw this before, in 2020, in the run-up to that election and the aftermath. A lot of us held back; obviously, these guys have a long history of blowing off a lot of steam, talking, and wildly exaggerating their actual ability to carry out a threat. But I think we saw on January 6th, that was probably not the wisest view to take. We should have been paying more attention to what these guys were saying amongst themselves online. And what they’re saying amongst themselves right now is probably disturbing. Because they’re talking about shooting their neighbors.

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   1. So let’s talk scenarios. What if Trump wins?

      There are two components. One is the immigrant front, the whole Minutemen ethos is going to come into play here, where these guys armed with AR-15s will claim we’re just supplementing the government; we’re just rounding people up and serving them up to the Border Patrol. Which is what they did in Arizona for quite a few years. But this will spread to the national scale.

      The second component, it’s pretty obvious that Trump and his minions basically hope that they can work the electoral count to a point where they can force the outcome of the election to either go through the Republican Congress or the Republican Supreme Court. But either way, it will be a de facto installment of a dictator. Then there will be massive protests—I think quite deservedly so. And the Three Percenters, militias, the Proud Boys, who have all been gearing up for this, are going to come out to play, not just defending the Trump administration but attacking the protesters. And doing so with reckless abandon. They’ll just call them “antifa”—[they] have a ready-made excuse.

      If we’re talking about the kind of rhetoric we’re seeing in right-wing Telegram spaces, they’re basically talking about how it will be “decided by the bullet box, not the ballot box.”

      What happens if the Democrats win?

      Even a Joe Biden–sized victory, I think, could lead to instability. There will be contested states, like we saw in Arizona as well as Georgia. These actors will show up at ballot-counting centers, as well as at any other sort of body involved in counting and certifying the votes. We certainly saw in the spring of 2020, these armed bodies of men entering state legislatures. I think that this is their hope: that they can create a lot of chaos in places like Arizona and Georgia so that they can’t actually carry out their votes, can’t actually certify the votes. Then they will say, “Well, we’ll now throw it to the state legislatures.”

      Do you see any coordination on that between officeholders and paramilitary actors?

      I don’t know that there is any communication. A lot of it is just that they’re all swimming in the same soup.

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