16 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

1. WOTD: “We want to put them in trauma.” Russ Vought h/t TPM

   ProPublica and Documented have obtained videos of two private speeches by former Trump OMB Director Russ Vought at events for his pro-Trump think tank Center for Renewing America that build on work TPM has done to reveal the ambitions for a Trump II presidency.

   Among the most alarming of Vought’s comments was the threat to federal government workers:

   “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.

   “We want to put them in trauma.”

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2. Saw an anti-Amendment 80 ad on YouTube this morning featuring some JeffCo public school teachers, one of whom was rocking a pair of cat ears. I choose to believe she was mocking the "furries in public schools!!!!111one!!" hysteria of 2022.

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3. "Fellow Americans Welcome Home." h/t John Oliver & Will Farrell.

   "Holy shit I just remembered the coup"

   (Not linking to Xitter.)

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4. Steve Bannon just released from his 4 months for contempt.

    

   A nice vacation…. next month, he will likely be busy again…

   Bannon faces additional criminal charges in New York state court, alleging he duped donors who gave money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Bannon has pleaded not guilty to money laundering, conspiracy, fraud and other charges. A trial in that case is scheduled to begin in December.

    

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5. Looks like the bribe solicitation pitch is finally coming through for Trump. I'll bet both Musk and Bezos are in for a few million shares each and think it's a bargain at twice the price!

   Trump Media & Technology Group Corp

   DJT

   53.82

   +6.46 (+13.64%)

   147.04 M

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   1. Along with Josh Marshall at TPM, I'm going to mildly defend Jeff Bezos.

      He is not at all a fascist like Elon Musk, who is all-in on Trump and putting 100s of millions of his money where his mouth is. 

       As has been pointed out, Jeff Bezos knows that a Harris win will not have recriminations against his companies (Democrats don't roll that way), whereas a win by Trump means a revenge against all enemies. So Bezos is merely being strategic (and chicken-shit), making the Over/Under risk decision.

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      1. Appeasement never works, for bullies or dictators.  They only want subservience.  You have to stand up to them. Trump discarded Pence and dozens of others despite their loyalty, simply because they disobeyed him once.

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6. Another reason to vote no on 131 (Kent Thiry's so-called RCV amendment).  Billionaire oligarchs will just be emboldened to run for office as they tend to do in autocratic "democracies".  This from the news department of the Washington Post:

   A 2023 study by Northwestern University political scientist Daniel Krcmaric and two colleagues found that 11 percent of those on the international Forbes billionaire list have held or sought a formal political office, including by appointment. The rate was far higher in authoritarian countries than the United States, where less than 4 percent had sought direct political involvement and the very wealthy prefer a lower profile. (Jeff Bezos, the second richest person in the world who also has substantial business interests before the federal government, owns The Washington Post. He directs The Post’s editorial board and recently decided against running an endorsement of Harris. But he does not exercise direct control over the newsroom that produced this article.)

    

    

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   1. But how does 131 help them? I've read all the articles about this including Mike Litwin's and none explain how 131 will make it easier to buy an election. They just state it will. And I don't see it – I think it'll make it harder.

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      1. One point from CPR's coverage

         all-candidate primaries will be more expensive, with more candidates trying to reach a bigger electorate — giving self-financed candidates even more of an advantage. In the current system, primary candidates may be able to rely more on the “grassroots” of the parties for a boost.

         “I think when you throw more people into the primary, you just need more money to break through the craziness,” said Ellen Dumm, who is working for Voter Rights Colorado. 

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         1. I voted no. If it was a straight bill for RCV then I would have supported, and that made voting no hard. But the open primaries coupled with the overwhelming support by gross billionaires made me say no.

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            1. How do you have RCV in the general without an open primary?

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               1. My understanding is that RCV in the general would make space for more parties because people would not be cowed into voting against the other party in the duopoly. So you could vote Green, or Workers Party, or Libertarian, or whatever, but then put your safe "not that guy" vote as your second choice. Opening up to a jungle primary just lets the loudest voices get to the general, and in this day and age of unchecked campaign spending, the loudest voice is typically the wealthiest. 

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         2. I don't follow the logic in that. In an open primary you only need 20% worst case, and likely 12 – 15% to get to the general election. That's a lot easier than getting 50% in a party primary.

            And more people in the primary – how is that a bad thing? That's the advantage of 131 – it opens the race up to more people. That's more choices for us voters.

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            1. In a sane world the Jungle Primary that would be created would work well. We don't live in that world. We live in the world of Citizenss United where money is speech. Rich people and those supported by rich people will have a leg up and until citizens united is overturned that will not change.

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7. Really Interesting Discussion of Pollster Assumptions.

   Poll results depend on pollster choices as much as voters’ decisions

   Simple changes in how to weight a single poll can move the Harris-Trump margin 8 points.

   Josh Clinton – October 28, 2024

   There is no end of scrutiny of the 2024 election polls – who is ahead, who is behind, how much the polls will miss the election outcome, etc., etc. These questions have become even more pressing because the presidential race seems to be a toss-up. Every percentage point for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump matters.

   But here’s the big problem that no one talks about very much: Simple and defensible decisions by pollsters can drastically change the reported margin between Harris and Trump. I’ll show that the margin can change by as much as eight points. Reasonable decisions produce a margin that ranges from Harris +0.9% to Harris +8%.

   This reality highlights that we ask far too much of polls. Ultimately, it’s hard to know how much poll numbers reflect the decisions of voters – or the decisions of pollsters.

   The 4 key questions for pollsters

   After poll data are collected, pollsters must assess whether they need to adjust or “weight” the data to address the very real possibility that the people who took the poll differ from those who did not. This involves answering four questions:

   1.   Do respondents match the electorate demographically in terms of sex, age, education, race, etc.? (This was a problem in 2016.)

   2.   Do respondents match the electorate politically after the sample is adjusted by demographic factors? (This was the problem in 2020.)

   3.   Which respondents will vote?

   4.   Should the pollster trust the data?

   To show how the answers to these questions can affect poll results, I use a national survey conducted from October 7 – 14, 2024. The sample included 1,924 self-reported registered voters drawn from an online, high-quality panel commonly used in academic and commercial work.

   After dropping the respondents who said they were not sure who they would vote for (3.2%) and those with missing demographics, the unweighted data give Harris a 6 percentage point lead – 51.6 % to 45.5% – among the remaining 1,718 respondents. 

   Adjusting for demographic factors

   Naturally, the unweighted sample may not match what we think the 2024 electorate will be. One way to address this is by using voters in past elections as a benchmark. But which election? The 2022 midterm election was most recent, but midterm voters differ from presidential voters. The 2020 election could be a better choice, but perhaps the pandemic made it atypical. Maybe 2016 is better.

   Here’s what happens if I make these 1,718 respondents match the demographics of the 2016, 2020, and 2022 electorates in terms of sex, age, race, education, and region. (My estimates of the demographics of those electorates come from the Voter Supplement to the Current Population Survey).

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