27 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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      1. scenari is the plural

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4. Looking forward to updates from the Republican Revolution, seeing the August 31 Republicans counterattacking the August 24 Republicans.  Fighting will continue on at least three fronts: two courts and, of course, the meeting in Colorado Springs today. From the un-elided Colorado Politics:

   One of the two Colorado Republicans who lay claim to the title of state GOP chairman sued the other on Wednesday, escalating a battle for control of the party just weeks before ballots start going out to voters.

   In the days since a group of the party's central committee members met to oust Dave Williams, the incumbent chairman, and elect Eli Bremer as his replacement, both men have insisted that they are the Colorado GOP's rightful leader while comparing the other to an illegal squatter.

   Both have also filed court documents in different jurisdictions this week, each purportedly on behalf of the Colorado Republican Party, asking judges to order that his rival lacks legitimacy.

    

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   1. Here is an idea.
      The two judges have a conversation and agree to issue identical rulings: "Since there is complete disagreement about who is in control, the Colorado Republican party has cesed to exist. This means that no ballot will show 'Republican' next to a candidate's name."

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5. When Ron Hanks starts squawking about "the Deep State" you know just how silly this has gotten. I must say, I'm enjoying "Republicans in disarray" for a change.

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   1. They're not just in disarray.  They're revolting.

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6. I go on twitter once in a while so you don't have to.

   One of the worst parts of twitter since Elon Musk bought it is that he tweets all the time. That's his right and probably his perk for losing billions of dollars over the whole deal. But he's using the still-pretty-big platform in part as a right-wing propagandist, and his latest push is to say free speech is in danger if Kamala wins – straight from the horse's ass' mouth:

   The attacks this year on free speech are unprecedented in the 21st century. It will happen in America too if Kamala/Walz gain power.

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   1. I think the flaw in Elon and Cadet Bone Spurs  is they think they're in warfare with another rich, white, moron with a Y chromosome. . Kamala ain't playin'… she's running to win. I don't see a thing from Elon or CBS that's creating an expanding base of voters for the MAGA cult. They've hit their own version of the glsss ceiling. Keep talking, boys. 

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7. Yet another band tells Yammie-pie “Stop playing our music at your stupid fascist rallies!”
   https://apnews.com/article/abba-trump-campaign-1965f788ab05e835b7facc1cddae8ed2

   The full list of bands (and it’s long) that have stiff-armed him can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musicians_who_oppose_Donald_Trump's_use_of_their_music

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   1. Well, when you've lost Nickelback…

       

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   2. Can Tom Petty's estate get a cease and desist against Lara Trump to keep her from covering "I Won't Back Down"?  There is so much wrong with that it isn't funny.

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8. As expected, the Colorado Sun reports

   In the Colorado Republican Party’s second disputed meeting in as many weeks, supporters of Dave Williams on Saturday reaffirmed the far-right former lawmaker as party chair and attempted to invalidate a vote held last weekend to oust him.

   Few opponents of Williams attended the meeting, leaving the party with two landslide votes in either direction on consecutive Saturdays — one to keep him as chair, and one to end his tumultuous tenure.

   I’m baffled why the August 24 Republicans didn’t have proxy forms filled out and ready to go, sending a small delegation to cast those proxies.

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9. Marijuana is on the ballot next door in the Cornhusker State. 

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   1. Well, maybe that is part of the reason behind the Nebraska polling …

      https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2024/08/20/harris-leads-trump-in-new-nebraska-2nd-district-poll/

      that article has some House polling, too.

      Saw a reference to the Nebraska Senate race between Sen. Fischer and Dan Osborn.  One poll shows a blowout … two others make the race look pretty tight.  https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/senate/2024/nebraska/

       

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      1. Nebraska also has action in regard to abortion. There is an abortion rights amendment hopefully headed to the ballot. Two apparent “pro-lifers,” one an M.D., have filed separate lawsuits against the rights amendment. Since ballots have to be finalized for printing by Sept. 13, the NE Supreme Court is hearing arguments on the 9th. There is coverage on Yahoo News.

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   2. Any day now he's going to jump onstage and endorse Kamala! At this point they're just venturing deep into elder abuse territory.  Can't someone ring up the DEI (Don, Jr, Eric, Ivanka)  cabal and get them to do something?  
       

      

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10. CPR’s coverage of the August 31 Republican meeting has a photo of an AMAZING vehicle

     

    

    Dan Boyce / CPR News

    Colorado GOP District Captain Dana Bonham spoke with CPR as she was leaving a Dave Williams-led party meeting in Castle Rock on August 31, 2024. Attendees voted to reaffirm Williams as the head of the party after another faction voted to remove him last week.

    My spouse looked at the picture and wondered why there was a yellow duck’s head on the side of the car.

    Once I saw it that way, it is hard to snap back to see an eagle.

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    1. That is not an American car brand

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       1. I'm not certain what counts as an "American car brand" anymore. 

          BMWs come out of plants in 5 countries, including the US.  I'm not enough of a car guy to know which BMW we are looking at and the identification is a major step to figuring out if the vehicle was built in the BMW Spartanburg plant. 

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11. "No Backsies on Dobbs" Marcy Wheeler at EmptyWheel.

    Great article on all the ways reproductive freedom is making a huge impact on the presidential race. MSM has been stuck in the horse-race and not paying attention to the policies that intenselly matter to women.

    Since the day after the debate in June, I have conceived of the shift from a Joe Biden to a Kamala Harris campaign in three ways: The Vice President would more vigorously explain the wildly successful policies of the Biden-Harris Administration. She might (and indeed, has started to) chip away at the Double Hater logjam that has embodied presidential elections since 2016. And she would speak about choice far better than Biden ever could.

    At the time, I maintained that Gretchen Whitmer was the only Democrat nationally who speaks better to choice than Harris does. In assuming the presidential ticket, Kamala’s team has made abortion something far more. They have made reproductive rights a cornerstone of a revamped democracy agenda.

    That has happened in a curious way. Dobbs only happened because the Supreme Court has become a supercharged, wildly undemocratic wing of right wing policy. The fight to get abortion referenda on state ballots has repeatedly, perhaps most notably in Ohio, had to first defeat anti-democratic efforts to disempower referenda generally.

    …

    Thus far in this campaign, a focus on abortion has also provided a way to make visible the patriarchy presumed in most threads of the right wing coalition backing Trump, especially but by no means exclusively Christian nationalism. Lest voters ever forget, Kamala’s campaign keeps rolling out one after another video in which JD Vance demands women get back to the role his Church dictates for them: breeding children.

    A number of things — the successful convention, a surge in registration among those women of child-bearing age, polls showing that abortion is the most important issue for a larger number of voters — have led horserace journalists to finally cop on.

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12. General Strike in Israel: Call for Cease Fire. 

    Thousands in the streets. 
     

    But critics have accused the prime minister of putting his personal interests over those of the hostages. The war's end likely will lead to an investigation into his government's failures in the Oct. 7 attacks, the government's collapse and early elections.

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13. From Al Jazeera: 

    

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