#my dad is convinced that Trump just won the election because of this event

[bluefox4]

Hey, figured I'd just mention this. At the time that Trump was shot, I was at work and couldn't check my phone. No information was known about the shooter. But I heard several people say that the Democrats were evil and clearly behind trying to kill Trump.

The Right is going to use this as an opportunity to rally people to Trump's side. After all, someone just tried to kill him. Clearly he is the victim in all of this. Clearly he should win the election because he nearly died.

I don't care about the memes at the moment because the Right is going to use that to say that the Left is violent and were clearly behind it. It won't matter if this was a lone actor. There are many people that are already convinced that this was the work of Democrats with zero information.

So, please remember go vote Blue all the way down. There are going to be a rush of people voting for Trump out of a sympathy for him.

[rev-1832]

please for the love of all fuck explain mcyt to me

Omg I've been waiting for this

So mcyt means minecraft youtube, but usually also includes Twitch streamers. It's like a in general thing, and not pointing to anything specific

But since you sound so confused, I'm gonna explain to you the Dream SMP lore 'cause why not

TL;DR: Chaos and war, basically also like a hamilton, heathers, and les mis crossover (but i mean if you want to understand everything you should read.)

If theres spelling mistakes, sorry

Note: Everyone on the smp has three canon lives, and when you loose all three you're canonically dead (except philza minecraft. he has one canon life bc hes known as the hardcore guy bc he had a minecraft hardcore series for 6 years until he was killed by a spider while trying to fight a baby zombie lmaoooooo)

IMPORTANT: THIS IS ALL RP. IRL THEY’RE ALL FRIENDS. THERES A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PLAYER AND THE CHARACTER. THE RELATIONSHIPS AREN’T ACTUALLY TOGETHER IRL. ITS ALL THEIR CHARACTERS THAT THEY MADE UP. (obviously the best friends stuff are irl)

In the beginning there were 8: The Dream Team (Dream, Georgenotfound [the guy in my pfp btw :)] , Sapnap), Badboyhalo, Awesamdude, Ponk, Callahan, and Alyssa. Around this time, nothing much happened since it was all brand new, uhh yeah (this was around may-july of this year)

Then around late july new members joined: Tommyinnit, Tubbo, Wilbur Soot, Eret, Skeppy, Fundy, Punz, Purpled, and Schlatt. This part is very important to the lore, because the lore kinda started off with the british (so tommy, tubbo, wilbur, eret) Schlatt was banned, cause Sapnap was the one who invited him and Dream didn't know who he was. He'll come up later.

So Wilbur and Tommy decided to create a new nation called "L'Manberg". Also around this time (i think) Nihachu and Jack Manifold joined. They also were part of L'Manberg. There was this huge revolution between Dream Smp and L'Manberg. Very historical period on this smp. In the end, (i think it was?) L'Manberg who won (if memory serves).

After that, L'Manberg had started growing bigger, with a lot more buildings added and stuff, notably Church Prime, which where they created a religion for Twitch Prime, which is how you can sub to your favorite twitch streamer for free if you link your amazon prime account. I'm pretty sure around this time, Quackity, Karl Jacobs (if you watch Mr. Beast; yes, that karl jacobs), HBomb, Technoblade, and Antfrost joined. And then the railway war started. It happened when Tommy accidentally ran over Dream with a Minecart and then took his stuff. This is how the disc war started (once again, if memory serves). The two discs Tommy owns are his prized possesions, and Dream took them. Also around this time the Pet War started, with Sapnap killing someones(i forgot oops) pet. And then more pet killing. Annnnd then even more.

Then there was the L'Manberg eletion. There was POG2020, who was Wilbur and Tommy, SWAG2020, Quackity and George, Coconut2020, Fundy and Nihachu, and Schlatt2020 which was Schlatt. Oh yeah and he got unbanned btw

SWAG2020 and Schlatt2020 decided to combine their votes, thus Shclatt became president and Quackity his vp. Oh and ever since the election Quackity has this grudge against George bc he slept through the election. Schlatt renamed L'Manberg to Manberg, and exiled Tommy and Wilbur from it.

Schlatt is a evil dictator who likes power. He and Quackity started fighting, and so Quackity became part of Tommy and Wilbur's side. Around this time was The Battle of the Lake and The Burning Eiffel Tower, both part of the pet war. (It seems like a innocent war but its actually brutal lmao) Also (irl) Mr. Beast had a $10,000 Taco Bell gift card hunt. Eret won. It was at the cords 6969,420, because haha funny number haha weed number. This has nothing to do with the lore but yeah. Eret also became King of the SMP 

Then there was the Manberg festival. It was to celebrate democracy, but Tubbo puts it as "i decorated my own execution" bc he helped decorate it, but he was murdered there. At the festival was the Manberg Massicare, where Technoblade was forced to shoot tubbo, but he released a firework rocket kiling Tubbo, Schlatt, Quackity, and a few others. Many people lost one of their canon lives. Wilbur went all J.D like and planted 11 stacks of TNT underneath Manberg, and wanted to blow it up.

Pogtopia was formed, which is a ravine which i think is underneath? manberg? Which included basically everybody who wasn't neutral or with schlatt. On November 16 was the Manberg VS Pogtopia war, but the Badlands were also there. The Badlands is a nation of four people: Bbh, Skeppy, Awesamdude, and Antfrost. They faught with the loosing side, so the chaos could continue. Eret disobeyed Dream and got stripped of his royalty, and gave it to George. Oh and during this time, George had no idea there was a war and was building a cottagecore mushroom house with callahan and was very confused with all the death messages in the chat. Schlatt died canonically of a heart attack or stroke (no one knows tbh). Tommy became president, passed it to wilbur bc he still has unfinished buissness with dream (the discs), and wilbur passed it to Tubbo, who made Tommy his vp. Technoblade then argued about how government is bad, and they're just repeating history. Philza Minecraft joined the server, but no one could find him, until Wilbur blew up L'Manberg (they rechanged the name also). Wilbur then made Philza kill him, so Wilbur also became canonically dead. Then Techno, still mad at L'Manberg and governments, summoned two withers and made it attack the others. The Geogre decided to check out what was happening and helped fight. After the chaos, Captain Puffy and ConnorEatsPants joined the smp. About one to two weeks later Vikkstar and LazarBeam joined, then about three months after that Ranboo joined.

They rebuilt L'Manberg on stilts, and there water where the explosion was, but now with coral and stuff to make it all pretty. Tommy and Ranboo decided to go steal from Georges mushroom house, but then also griefed it and burnt it, and Dream, being a George simp, built obsidian walls around L'Manberg. They took Tommy to court, and was put on probation. Then Tommy got exiled (again) but this time by his own best friend. This made Quackity vp and Fundy secutary of state. Dream also took Georges king thing and gave it back to Eret because Eret has a good relationship with everybody, whereas George being King just caused chaos cause hes close to Dream. Quackity and Karl made Mexican L'Manberg, and George and Sapnap joined in also. War against Dream SMP, it was a negotiation and it got renamed into El Rapids (reference to Chilling in Cedar Rapids, which Hilary Clinton once said, and Quackity referenced it, got it trending #1 one twitter (well i mean dsmp gets things trending like everyday but), and got DONALD TRUMP TO SUBTWEET HIM. (This happened irl)

In his exile, Ghostbur (wilbur as ghost) and Tommy made Logstedshire, and Dream was often there to watch him. Dream then blew it up, and now Tommy is living with Techno in his arctic place. Currently, Quackity made a thing called The Butcher Army, so they could execute Techno. Tubbo, Quackity, Fundy, and I also think Ranboo? are trying to get another festival, and yes its a secret execution plan, but for them to kill Dream, who they realized is who they need to kill first. The disc war is still not over. Tommy has one of his discs, but Skeppy is in possesion of the other one.

Unluckily for Tommy (reguarding the discs), something happened in the Badlands. Bbh was digging out his underground statue room (he plans to make a statue of everyone of the server) and found this crimson egg. He, Antfrost, and Captain Puffy kinda got possesed. Also since Skeppy didn't really hang out on the server at night, but bbh does (OF FUCK I FORGOT TO MENTION HE AND BBH ARE BEST FRIENDS) Captain Puffy created Discount Skeppy, which is her in a Skeppy skin. Skeppy found out, had a little conflict with her during her stream, but it was resolved, and at one point in the stream, he asked bbh to choose between him and the egg, and when bbh didn't answer, he went to the egg, put himself inside it, and logged off. Couple days later, bbh and puffy got him out, hes now possed by the crimson, called Technoblade his "best friend" infront of bbh, and is now living in a grass hut. Bad is convinced theres still some skeppt left, but yeah. Skeppy also wanted to burn the disc.

End of lore for now, bc its like if you miss ONE STREAM YOU MISS LIKE A REALLY IMPORTANT EVENT AND ITS STRESSFUL

Not much part of lore but Nihachu and Captain Puffy once went on a date. They’re both bi irl and Puffy was on Nihachu’s Love or Host (twitch dating show. its really entertaining) Captain Puffy was a contestant, and chose love. (LoH is also how Nihachu and Wilbur met.) 

Funfact: Theres 5 irl lgbtq+ ppl on the server (people who came out, anyways cause you never know, ya know?) Antfrost is gay, Eret, Nihachu, Captain Puffy are all bi, and Karl Jacobs is ace spec 

Family stuff: Philza Minecraft (he'll come up later) had two twins with a Samsung Smart Refrigerator in the 70's. The two twins being Wilbur and Technoblade (he'll come up later also) and also had another son, Tommy. They also adopted Tubbo, who they found in a box on the side of the road. When he grew up, Wilbur met Sally the Salmon, and they had a fox together (dont ask just go with it), which was Fundy. (The character) Fundy is trans, and yeah . Bbh is a dad to sapnap and yeah

Oh and a new member is coming on today on Quackity’s stream (twitch.tv/quackityhq at 5pm CST if you want to watch) 

I left out some parts, sorry, but theres always the wiki...

Wilbur Soot is also a musician! He wrote I’m In Love With an Egirl, The Internet Ruined Me, and Your New Boyfriend. (did you know the last one beat taylor swift for #1 trending on youtube? idk why but im really proud of him for that) They’re all catJam’s. Go listen!

[bananaofswifts]

At the outset of the first screening of the documentary “Miss Americana” Thursday night at the Sundance Film Festival, it was clear at the outset that it was not necessarily Taylor Swift’s core audience filling the Eccles Theater for the premiere. The opening scene has Swift trying to write a song at the piano while one of her cats walks across the keys. When that occurs as the film hits theaters next Friday, it’ll draw appreciative screams from the Olivia Benson- and Meredith Grey-loving faithful. Here? Not so much, except for a few younger fans who got into the balcony’s back rows via the standby line. But when the doc starts the take a more political turn about two-thirds of the way through, documenting Swift finding her voice as an outspoken advocate and activist, that’s when the Sundance audience started to sound a little more like her core demo, at least in short, loud bursts of appreciative whoops and hollers. The most critical scene in the film has Swift trying to convince the men in her camp that it’s important that she step up and make an endorsement for the Democrats in Tennessee’s gubernatorial and senatorial elections. When one of them warns that the president could come after her, and she emotionally declares that she’s fine with that, it was if she’d just launched into a surprise version of “All Too Well” in concert. (Donald Trump does eventually respond by saying he likes Swift’s music 25% less since she laid into the White House for working against passage of the Equality Act.) Afterward, Swift and director Lana Wilson came out for a 15-minute Q&A, discussing how they first met through Netflix — which will release the film for streaming day-and-date with its theatrical run Jan. 31 — and how their rapport developed. “We started the process not really knowing if we were going to end up with a documentary — it was just sort of like: Let’s film, let’s see what you see,” Swift said. “And this was completely in her hands. And I really appreciate all the hours we talked. Those interviews — there were a lot of hours that she had to hear me talk about my feelings.” Added the singer, “I think one of the things about you is that for so much of my life in the public eye, when I get sad or upset or humiliated or angry or go through a really horrible time, I feel people lean in with like this hunger. And you never did that to me. And that was what made me feel okay about feeling sadness, anger, humiliation around you, because I felt like when I got sad, you did too. And so it made all of that all right. It didn’t make me feel like, ‘Oh, she feels like she’s got a good part for a movie now.’ And I really want to thank you for that.” Wilson extolled the scene in which Swift explains her imminent political coming-out to her worried family and members of her team. Said the filmmaker, “The scene where you discussed with your team and family that political endorsement, it’s so powerful because of the politics, but also because it’s watching you with the people who love you the most in the world, saying, ‘You know, I love you. You’re looking out for my best interests, but I have to disagree and do things my own way.’ That’s a moment that’s so many of us have experienced in our lives at one point or another, and I thought it was so powerful as this coming of age event, and the profound ending of this multilayered process you went through to lead you into that decision.” Swift explained the dynamics that went into that tense and emotional meeting. “My dad has always just been so terrified about my safety since I was a kid,” she said. “The fact that my job entails standing on a stage and, you know, there’s so many threats we get on a daily basis, but nobody ever knows about. And we try to keep that stuff under wraps as much as possible, but my dad is the one who has to see it. And so for him it was all about, ‘What could happen to you if you say this? Is my daughter in danger? And is this the moment when I should have stopped it from happening?’ “I had been speaking to my mom so much about it, and she went through the trial with me in Denver, which was a really horrible experience to have.” [Swift prevailed in a lawsuit in which she alleged sexual assault, having been groped by a radio DJ at a meet-and-greet.] And I had all the privilege in the world and financial support and the ability to pay for a brilliant lawyer. And I won that trial, but without all that, I don’t know what would have happened. So it taught me so much and, and it was the women in my life who were there every single day going into court. You know,, our political opinions are defined by what happens to us in our life. So that was one of the things that happened to me in my life, and seeing what’s happening in my home state, and then it all culminating and having to have a conversation with people who have been so wonderfully supportive of me through my entire career, feeling so afraid for my safety. And it’s a really real moment for me to watch that back.” Things got lighter with the last question, as the moderator asked: “I want to know where Meredith, Olivia, and Benjamin are at this very moment while the world premiere of your film has been happening.” “Well, they’re right in the back row. Just right up there,” she said, looking to the balcony as the crowd turned its collective necks. This was deadpan. “No, they’re not here. I wish they were, but unfortunately they don’t care about anything that I do. But I love them so much. Detective Olivia Benson and Dr Meredith Gray and Benjamin Button — the loves of my life. Thank you for asking about them. I will tell them. They will not care, but I do.”

[ppdoddy]

Michael Moore

AN OPEN LETTER TO JOE BIDEN Dear President-Elect Biden:

First of all, congratulations! YOU did it. WE did it! You stopped the madness. A grateful nation - and myself - are in a state of joy, hope and relief. Thank you for that! We are all eager to join with you to repair the damage done to our country — and to eliminate that about our society and our politics which gave us Donald Trump in the first place.

Mr. President-Elect, I first met you at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004. It was clear to me from our talk that day that you were not the politician I remembered from the 1990s. On that day in Boston, we were by then over a year into the Iraq War, a war you voted for. My “Fahrenheit 9/11“ had just come out and you wanted to let me know that you were aware of the folly you had been sucked into. It seemed to me that you were doing a lot of soul searching and you wanted to hear my thoughts. To be honest, I was distracted by how perfect your teeth were, and I wondered, could you really be from the working class? By the end of our talk I was convinced there was something that was quite real and very good about you, though perhaps somewhat buried inside. Would it ever come out so the public could see it? As I reflect today on it - and you - I am sincerely hoping that you will indeed govern as a president who’s from the working class. You - one of us - in the White House. That’s how it should feel. Your actions, if bold, and brave, will make that true.

You are also our second Catholic president. I believe you are a person of faith. You and I were taught the same lessons in Catholic school: to love our neighbor, even our enemy; to create a world where everyone regardless of status or station has a seat at the table, and everyone gets a slice of the pie; a world where “the rich man will have a harder time getting into heaven than a camel will have getting through the eye of the needle.” We were taught that we will be judged by how we treat the least amongst us. Do I have that right? Are these not the moral, foundational principles of the coming Biden presidency?

I was so moved by your victory speech Saturday night when you told the immigrants and the children of immigrants that the Dreamers no longer had to live in fear. That Muslims were once again welcomed into our country. That the world could breathe a sigh of relief because we were going to let the planet Earth itself breathe and have some relief. And you told the teachers of America that starting January 20th, “one of your own will be living in the White House.” That just felt instantly good.

So if I may, I’d like to suggest a few things that might make your presidency one of the best this country has ever had. You and I may have our political differences (you like Amtrak trains, I’d like to ride a bullet train from New York to LA in 10 hours!😎), but I know that you and I - and tens of millions of others - all want and believe in the same basic things: • Health Care is a human right and every American must be covered; • Everyone must be paid a living wage and all of us must work to eliminate poverty and rebuild our broken middle class; • The massive and growing gulf between the ultra rich and everyone else must be narrowed — and the wealthy must go back to paying the taxes they should pay; • Women must be paid the same as men, and no man or government has the right to tell them what they can do or not do with their bodies.

So here’s my two cents:

1. You are right to make containing Covid-19 Job #1. Had Trump won, I’m guessing up to a million people in the next year or so would have died from him ignoring this virus. Yesterday you named your Covid task force of doctors and scientists and you are putting them to work. We don’t have a second to lose. Thank you for this.

2. As soon as you can, please provide much more unemployment relief for the jobless, stimulus checks for all, help for small businesses, and the creation of jobs we desperately need.

3. Millions have lost their health insurance because our system ties one’s health coverage to their employer. What happens when the employer, like now, is suddenly gone, or the boss wakes up one morning and decides these employees’ health benefits are too costly and must be cut? BOOM! Millions of families suddenly have no health insurance. This is nuts.

You MUST create a health system like every other industrial democracy — one backed by the government, not by the whims of the boss where you work or the pandemic that has shut him or her down. This is just plain common sense.

4. I see various people trying to take credit for your victory — and using their personal agendas to push you away from the progressive Left and toward the cowardly center which believes that the best way to beat Republicans is to just be a more easily-digestible version of Republicans. They think because Trump got 70 million votes the Democrats should reject Black Lives Matter, AOC, and anything that vaguely sounds like socialism — at a time when the majority of our citizens under the age of 35, according to most polls, prefer the idea of democratic socialism over the greed of modern-day capitalism. Why risk losing them? We need to listen to and understand why they feel this way. They’ve been saddled with crushing student debt and we’ve handed them a planet In the middle of its 6th extinction event as their future. You and Barack introduced them to the benefits of democratic socialism by letting them stay on their parents health insurance until they’re 26! The result: They just set a record by coming out and voting for you in the largest youth numbers ever.

But you know all this. And you also know how you won these razor-thin victories in the final five states as we nervously watched the final ballots come in from Black Philly, Black Detroit, Black Atlanta, Black Flint. Out west, it was Latinx and Navajo voters who delivered Nevada and Arizona to you. In your speech on Saturday you acknowledged it. And never in our history have I heard a President-elect single out the Black community and thank them “for having my back. And I promise you, I will have your back!” Black and brown and indigenous peoples, plus a landslide of women and young adult voters made this happen. Wow. I absolutely know you’ll keep that promise.

5. Please do not make the same mistake an otherwise well-meaning President Obama made in his first two years. He wanted everyone to get along. He was willing to compromise on anything. Kumbaya. The Republicans had already decided they were going to block EVERYTHING Obama proposed and that’s exactly what they did for eight long years with a discipline and a ruthlessness we should probably envy.

Don’t let this happen to you. Charge in on January 20th like FDR on steroids. You have no choice. People are dying! You need to sign executive orders and cajole, demand and shame Congress into action. And GO BIG! Eliminate the Electoral College through the National Popular Vote Act! DONE! Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment for women! Just one more state needed! DONE! Send in the Army Corps of Engineers to Flint to replace the poisoned water pipes! DONE!!

And none of the above needs a single vote of the United States Senate! In fact, this past summer, your “Biden-Bernie” unity joint task force identified a whopping 277 policies and decisions of Trump’s that you have the legal authority to immediately reverse by executive order or presidential policy decision https://prospect.org/…/277-policies-biden-need-not-ask-per…/. Find that big fat black marker of his and do it!

But, yes, we also desperately need those two Georgia Senate seats to get the Biden/Harris years off to a blazing start. So let’s make that happen! All hands on deck between now and January 5th!! We will all do whatever is needed.

Friends of mine on the Left who are more cynical than I am are probably wondering why I’m sending you this letter. Haha! Well, because I saw you kiss the head of that young grieving man at the Parkland, Florida memorial for the shooting victims of Stoneman Douglas High School. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyMa96yOel0

And because I saw you in New Hampshire this year while we were there working for Bernie, and you were doing a campaign stop and there was a restless five-year boy in the front row. His parents were trying to get him to settle down. You stopped and spoke to the boy. “Hey buddy,” you said in a kind but parental way, “if you can hang on and be a good boy for just a little bit, I’ll buy ya an ice cream!” The boy quieted down, you wrapped up and afterward you went over to the boy and his parents and you gave the kid five bucks so his mom and dad could go get him an ice cream cone. And I thought to myself, this is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen — and then I started to cry because I wanted so much for that piece of America to come back — goofy, kind, and focusing on what’s truly important: a goddamned ice cream cone!

I think that’s why you won. People saw what I saw with you there in New Hampshire and back in Boston on that day 16 years ago — they knew that maybe, just maybe, their lives might just get a bit better - hopefully a LOT better - with you in the White House. Maybe less of them will die from the virus, this preventable horror. Trump, of whom we knew many despicable things and thought we’d already seen how low the bar could possibly go for one human being — but we never considered him under the moniker of mass killer, terrorist or superspreader. Then you, Joe, came along and offered us a respite, a break from the insanity — “Mr. Biden, we’ll be happy if you just give us four years of ‘Not Trump!’”

But I think you can give us much more than that. What could our lives be like in four years or eight years (with a Democratic Senate to boot)? How ‘bout no one ever goes bankrupt again because they got sick? How ‘bout no one is sitting in a prison cell for possessing marijuana or actual drugs? How ‘bout every child gets to go to a great school and every neighborhood has an expanded free library open seven days a week? How ‘bout paid family medical leave so you can take care of your elderly parents and not lose your job? How ‘bout my bullet train! You and we can make all this happen. It’s not rocket science. 30+ other countries already do it. (https://www.amazon.com/Where-Invade-Next-Micha…/…/B01EGW9EOU) They’re happier. Why not us? Our founders promised it to us in their second sentence: “the pursuit of Happiness.“ They said that’s what America would be — and it’s been a rare day when we’ve actually had a glimpse of it.

Joe, you’re the guy to fulfill the promise. I’ll help. So will my neighbors on the floor where I live. As will the woman who delivers my mail, the workers who stock the shelves of my neighborhood market, the nurse who just wrote me in tears because yesterday she watched her 22nd patient die, alone, no family allowed, from Covid. Not to mention the millions upon millions of Americans who are ready to be foot soldiers in your army of justice, equality and love. We’re all in! We don’t want to go back to the old “normal.” We want a new normal!

We want ice cream.

All my best, Michael Moore

P.S. You know why I think you can and will do this? You picked Kamala Harris to run with you! Ranked as the most liberal senator in the U.S. Senate. A woman. A Black woman! I saw the first debate, the one where she challenged you and threw shade on your younger self. Most people (including me), if that had happened to us, we probably wouldn’t have gotten over it. You did. I’m guessing your conscience whispered to you, “well, dang, maybe she has a point.” You hold no grudges. You are a forgiving soul. But then you didn’t just forgive her — you put her on the Big Ticket! Who would do that? You did! That’s why my cautious, hopeful bet is on the good hands we’re now in — both your hands, Kamala’s hands, and the hands of the mass millions who voted for you and will continue to rise up and fight for this new, better, post-Trump, post-pandemic America.

[expatimes]

Trump aims for Michigan victory over Biden, seeking another upset

Terri Loffreda-Weston recently wore her red “Make America Great Again” hat to a boat club in Macomb County, Michigan, where Kid Rock was singing country ballads in front of a giant American flag for a predominantly older white crowd of Donald Trump supporters.

Few wore masks at the outdoor event, although Loffreda-Weston said sanitiser was available and there were temperature checks. She was excited she got to shake Donald Trump Jr's hand. She said it was "uplifting" to see so many people supporting the president.

In 2016, 12 counties in the historically Democratic state flipped from blue to red, handing Trump a victory. The Detroit suburb of Macomb County was one of them.

Loffreda-Weston voted for Barack Obama before switching to Trump in 2016 because she thought Obama was not cracking down on immigration. The retired veteran thinks Trump is doing a great job - she blames Democratic governors for the high unemployment rate because they closed businesses to prevent the spread of COVID-19. She believes the disease is not that deadly and does not trust the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) tally of more than 200,000 COVID-19 deaths.

People take part in a classic car cruise in support of US President Donald Trump and law enforcement in Frankenmuth, Michigan, US [Emily Elconin/Reuters]

Asked about the reports by The New York Times that Trump's tax returns show his properties are struggling, that he used vast write-offs to pay little or no taxes, is in an IRS audit fight and is hundreds of millions in debt - Loffreda-Weston did not believe it.

“I would have to see his [tax] returns for myself. ”

Trump won Michigan by only 10,704 votes in 2016 - the slimmest margin of any state, and the first time it had gone Republican since 1988. This November, Michigan is among a small number of states that will decide the presidency. Trump's path to victory in 2020 will be made more difficult if he cannot hang on to Michigan and its 16 electoral votes. Polls show Joe Biden ahead in the state, but given the fact that Hillary Clinton led in all of the pre-election Michigan polls in 2016, not everybody is convinced the race is over there.

While running a mostly virtual campaign, Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris have only made a handful of in-person campaign stops in Michigan. In addition, Democrats have been worried at the Biden campaign's lack of a visible ground game there.

In contrast, Trump is holding theatrical rallies in the state, but polling indicates his handling of the pandemic, his response to the police shootings of Black people and the sagging economy may have taken a toll.

There are fewer und voters than in 2016 and no strong third party candidates, meaning this election is all about turnout. But the twist is, in a pandemic, how many will vote in person versus by mail, and what will that mean for turnout?

Key battlegrounds

Wayne County, home to Detroit, is crucial for Democrats. “They are definitely going to win it because it is dominated by [Black people], ”University of Michigan Political Science Professor Vincent Hutchings told Al Jazeera. His question is: "Are they going to have sufficient turnout?"

In 2016, Clinton won 89 percent of the Black vote, but minority turnout in Michigan seven dropped points from 2012 to 2016. While part of the blame for Clinton's loss in Michigan is directed towards her campaign's lack of attention to the state, leading political experts say it was also because of her low engagement with Black voters. Hutchings believes Black voters will not turn out for Biden as much as they did for Obama. “But they don't have to. They just have to do more than they did for Clinton. ”

Wendy Caldwell-Liddell, from left, who helped start Mobilize Detroit, and Paris Powell talk with a voter in Detroit, Michigan, US [AP Photo/Paul Sancya]

Yolanda Herbert, an African American precinct delegate in the county, is working the phones and delivering Biden signs. Volunteers are going door to door but are not making contact due to COVID-19, she said. "Everyone wants to stay safe."

Herbert said she has lost about 40 friends to COVID-19. She referenced a commonly-heard saying: "When America catches a cold, Black America ends up with pneumonia, and that's because we get hit worse." She believes Black voters will be motivated to come out and vote because of what they see as Trump's poor handling of the pandemic. And she also thinks Harris will energise Black voters.

Wayne County is also home to Dearborn, home to the largest concentration of Muslims in the US, per capita.

Nada al-Hanooti, ​​executive director of Muslim get-out-the-vote group Emgage Action, said Bernie Sanders enchanted voters there in the primary. “It's definitely harder to get the vote out for Biden,” she said.

She said it helps that Biden promised to rescind the Muslim ban on day one and that he quoted the prophet in a July video.

Al-Hanooti told al Jazeera her community knows the stakes are high this election, and with 270,000 registered Muslim voters in the state, they could make an impact.

“When Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away the other day, my organizers, who are from 16 to 25 years old, they're like, we're gonna make every call count now. That just encouraged them more. ”

Trump's base is in northern Michigan and the upper peninsula but the real battle is in the suburbs of Detroit. Clinton won the city subur Oakland County by eight points in 2016. Governor Gretchen Whitmer told Democrats in August, “The key to the White House goes through Michigan, and the key to Michigan is Oakland County.”

Hutchings predicts Trump's 2016 razor's edge win in Michigan was a blip, not the start of a trend. It was followed by a landslide victory for Whitmer in 2018, combined with Michigan's two Democratic senators, suggesting it is still a Democratic state.

Voting more accessible

Sharon Dolente, voting rights strategist for ACLU Michigan, has worked to make casting a vote more accessible. She helped pass a ballot initiative in 2018 that made it easier to register to vote, and allowed voters to access an absentee ballot or mail-in ballot for any reason.

The first statewide election with new voting rights was the March primary, which saw a surge of votes by mail. In the August primary, during the pandemic, 60 percent voted by mail and 40 percent in person. "You did not see our election system collapse as you did in some other places, right?" Dolente said, and that makes her cautiously optimistic the presidential election will run smoothly.

But turnout is usually higher in a presidential election, and Michigan voters have already requested a record number of absentee ballots: More than two million.

The biggest issue is sending out a high volume of absentee ballots, getting them back in time, and counting them, Dolente said. A normal election has lots of poll workers on a single day to handle in-person voting, but with more votes by mail, the state will need extra staff over a longer period of time.

The state House passed a bill on September 24 to allow clerks to start processing absentee ballots one day early, but not count them before election day. A group of election clerks signed a letter saying one day is not enough - they need seven days. To become law, the bill must be signed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who supports it.

Dolente does not expect COVID-19 to have a negative effect on turnout because she said Michigan voters recognize how historic this election is.

Loffreda-Weston said she plans to vote in person with her dad, who also flipped to Trump in 2016 after voting Democrat for 50 years. “I want my vote to be counted immediately when it goes to the machine,” she said. She predicts civil unrest no matter the outcome. "One party's not going to be happy."

#world Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=11229&feed_id=8205

[lorajackson]

‘Slipping and Sliding down the Polls’

This is an excerpt from episode 233 of The Editors.Rich: So Jim Geraghty, I have the RealClearPolitics Biden versus Trump polling page up right here. I’m just going to read you some numbers going back to … This is a CNBC poll from the 10th and 12th of June. And I’m just going to run through to the latest poll. Biden plus ten. Biden plus eight. Biden plus twelve. Biden plus nine. Biden plus twelve. Biden plus 14. Biden plus nine. Biden plus eight. Biden plus four. Biden plus eight. Let’s look at Wisconsin, Jim. Wisconsin. Biden plus twelve. Biden plus 14. Biden plus nine. Biden plus eight. Biden plus four. Biden plus eight. Sorry, that was the general election again. Florida, Biden eleven. Biden plus seven. Biden plus six. Biden plus nine. These are the real Wisconsin numbers. Whoops, now I’m on Florida. I’m back on Florida 2016 for some reason. Wisconsin, here it is. Biden plus nine. Biden plus eleven. Biden plus four. Biden plus eight. Trump plus one. Let’s do Pennsylvania just for fun. Pennsylvania, Biden plus ten. Biden plus three. Biden plus five. Jim Geraghty, what do you make of it?Jim: Well, for all the listeners who lost track of all those numbers in there, let me summarize what Rich just laid out over the last couple of minutes. Everything is bad. The polls are bad.Rich: There was a Trump plus one in one of these states. Florida maybe. Was it Florida or Wisconsin?Charlie: Wisconsin. It was the Trafalgar poll in Wisconsin.Rich: Trafalgar. I think Trafalgar has him up in one of these other states, too. I won’t bore our listeners by trying to find where it is.Jim: Broadly speaking, the big three swing states up in the upper Midwest, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, they all look pretty bad. Florida, maybe not looking bad but still not looking great. Every now and then Arizona, which everybody kind of thinks of as a Trump state, not looking that great. Iowa and Ohio, two states that Trump won by pretty sizable margins last time, not looking great. Well actually, there’s a fairly consistent movement across all the polls, across all the country of anywhere I would say from two to five to ten points against Trump towards Biden. Now, when you have this discussion with Trump supporters, they’ll jump up, and they’ll say, “Hey, there are some people out there who don’t want to tell a pollster that they’re voting for Donald Trump, but they’re going to vote for him anyway.” I think that’s true. I think that’s probably … I don’t know what percentage of the population that is. I don’t know what percentage of the electorate that is. I think it’s probably worth one or two points easily. Five points? Not so sure. The idea that it’s going to overcome a ten-point deficit we’re seeing in these polls, I’m rather skeptical of it. And I certainly would not want the Trump campaign to walk around saying, “Oh don’t worry; we’re totally doing fine.”And I think probably what might have been a particularly useful canary in the coal mine, for weeks and months we’ve been hearing, “Oh, don’t worry; don’t worry about these polls. Polls were wrong in 2016.” Brad Parscale is building the Death Star. By the way, if you’re going to compare your campaign to some sort of science fiction device or instrument, please don’t pick one that blew up twice when a small underfunded band decided to go after it. Probably what I think was the steam coming out of the engine for the Trump campaign was the Tulsa rally last week. The turnout was nowhere near what the Trump campaign expected. Parscale himself was saying a million tickets had been requested. And yeah, maybe some people were afraid of the protesters. No doubt I think some people were understandably worried about catching coronavirus at a large indoor event with crowds. Maybe some of the factor was people who ordered tickets who had no intention of showing up. But let’s face it; it’s Tulsa, Okla. It’s Trump, it’s a Saturday. There’s really no good reason for him to not be able to put a decent crowd together. And the fact that this was so much lower than they expected, I think that convinced even the skeptics on the Trump campaign that no, they’re not winning this race. Everything is not fine.The interesting thing is, I actually think one of the most encouraging headlines I saw, even articles that I saw in the past week was by Politico, June 27th, “Trump Knows He’s Losing.” Trump admits that he’s losing and the story begins, “The president has privately come to a grim realization in recent days. People told Politico, amid a mountain of bad polling and warnings from some of his staunchest allies that he’s on course to be a one-term president.” You can’t solve a problem unless you see a problem and unless you recognize it’s a problem. And I think the worst possible thing for the Trump campaign between now and November would be to walk around saying, “We don’t have to worry about any of these polls. These polls are meaningless. We’re still doing fine. We’re still doing great.” Look, there’s a very simple way to explain why Trump would be in lousy shape up against Joe Biden at this point. When in fact, at the beginning of the year, he was not in that rough shape.For a long time the idea is: Okay, these Democrats have taken over the suburbs. There’re a whole bunch of white soccer moms and minivan-driving dads out there who abhor what the president does. They just don’t like what they see. They can’t stand what he’s saying on his Twitter feed. But that’s okay because we’re going to make up for it amongst blue-collar whites in those key swing states. Well, that works when unemployment is between 3 percent and 4 percent. That doesn’t work when unemployment is in double digits, and it’s easy to see some white blue-collar workers saying, oh, you know what, I’m pretty disappointed with this presidency; maybe I should give this guy Biden a try. I don’t think the cake is fully baked yet. I don’t think that Trump is actually defeated yet. He just needs to run a very different campaign from here on out. And I thought your observation on the Corner the other day, Rich, where you know, asked by Sean Hannity this ultimate softball, what do you want to do in your second term? And Trump gives this meandering Mississippi River of an answer that talks about how experience is good and I didn’t think experience was good before. John Bolton’s a real SOB.If I had the chance to talk to the president, I would say, “Mr. President, you need to start talking to people about what will happen in your second term and what you can deliver. People need a sense of what will happen. You need to lay out an extensive second-term agenda.” I think this argument you’ve seen from … I don’t often agree with Sohrab Ahmari about all these other guys who are saying, you got to put up a forthright defense of the American Founding, the American principles. You need to say, this is a good country. We have laws, and we’re not perfect, but we are seeing this violent anarchist movement that wants to tear down everything we have, and I will not stand for it. That’s a message that can win. But you can’t wake up every morning, watch the TV and complain on what you see on cable news. And you’ve got to get rid of … Anyway, so I’ll stop for my usual … I think the polls are that bad. I think he is on course to lose. I think there’s time to fix it, but he’s got to get focused, and time is ticking away right now.Rich: It’s kind of funny. Some of Trump’s worst moments have been on Hannity. And they’re so bad exactly because Hannity has zero intention of making them bad. It involves whiffing on a softball. But Charlie, what do you make of the general terrain?Charlie: I really like that the impression that Jim did of Trump was actually of Chris Mathews. They have similar hair maybe. That’s such a good Chris Mathews impression, Jim. What do I think? I think Biden is winning and is likely to win. I don’t think that Biden will win by ten points when it comes to Election Day. There’s a small part of me that wonders if we’ve been here before, but that’s not based on any intelligent analysis. It’s just the lizard part of my brain remembering how sure I was that Hillary Clinton was going to win and also remembering seeing some similar—Rich: You weren’t 100 percent. In your defense, you weren’t 100 percent sure. There’s that moment I starkly remember we were sitting in your office. We might have been recording a podcast. We were recording a podcast. You had the sizable office back in the old NR world headquarters, and you were playing around with 270 to win or the RealClear electoral map. And I remember you pointing to 270 on the Trump side. And it involved those blue wall states. Playing around with those blue wall states.Charlie: Yeah, so I should probably separate out the year because at this point in the summer of 2016 I was absolutely convinced that Hillary was going to win. And we were seeing similar polling at the state and the national level, and we were also being told that Republicans were going to lose the House and the Senate. I would need to look up the numbers, but I distinctly remember them being down by about seven on the generic ballot in the House. As it got closer to it, yeah, I started to play around with the map and to wonder. And then there was one incident which I think I texted you about, Rich, where I went to get a haircut in Connecticut, and all of the people who worked in this old-fashioned barber shop were either second- or third-generation Hispanic immigrants or Italian Americans. And all of them were for Trump. Every single one. And it made me wonder. Not that he won Connecticut, but there’s just something about the way they were talking about Trump and Hillary that made me wonder. But I didn’t think that Trump was going to win even on Election Day.And I’m not saying that this is the same. I don’t think it is. But there’s a part of my brain that’s just been humbled by that experience. I also remember Romney being up seven points in the Gallup poll a lot in 2012. And I look at these Florida polls and sure, maybe Biden’s up eight. Entirely possible. It’s also true that Andrew Gillum was up over Ron DeSantis by seven points on Election Day in 2018. And that’s partly because of who votes in Florida. So there’s a part of me that is of the view that this is a bit early and that we don’t know. And the other contrarian view that I have is that Donald Trump is losing the people he is best suited to win back. If Biden were 80 to 15 or 80 to 20 with Hispanic voters, I would think, game over. But he’s not. Trump’s actually not doing as badly with Hispanic voters as you would assume. He seems to have kept about the same amount of black support, which is very low. But he hasn’t gone to a 1 or 2 percent. He’s at 8 or 9, and enthusiasm for Biden seems to be lower than usual. Where he’s really suffering is with seniors. Especially white seniors and white working-class women.Now, I don’t think he’s going to, but if the election becomes an actual election, those are the people you would assume he would be best placed to win back. My problem in seeing him winning and the reason I think Biden is winning and will win, is that as Jim says, I’m not really sure what he can do. The economy’s not going to go back to where it was by the end of the year. He’s not going to gain a reputation for having guided us through the coronavirus storm by the end of the year. He is unable to articulate why he wants to be president for four more years. He’s very easily distracted. And although I understand why he’s criticizing the Supreme Court for its decisions over the last two weeks, “vote for me and I’ll appoint different justices than the ones I already appointed” is less likely than not to be a winning message. So I can’t quite see how he gets on track. I am nonetheless a little bit hesitant at this stage, both because of what happened last time but also because of who it is that he seems to be losing.Rich: Yeah, so Jim, my problem is given what happened in 2016, I just don’t think I could ever count Trump out again. If these were the polls a week out, yeah. I guess I’d count him out. But we’ve got four months to go. The difference though is the nature of the opponent. Biden is not as hateable as Hillary Clinton. There was a stark number I believe in the last New York Times/Siena poll that had Trump down 14, which kind of seems like a lot. But just had Biden’s very unfavorable number. And it’s 20 something. I don’t know, 23 something. And Hillary’s at this point, I believe it said it was like at 46. And Trump is about 46 very unfavorable. So he’s where Hillary was. Now he was also where Hillary was in 2016 with a very a … But still managed to win. And the other thing that’s going on now is Trump’s a known quantity. He’s not the change candidate anymore. And he’s had these two crises that people have a really negative view of his handling of them. And absent having some other crisis that he handles in an unquestionably confident and deft manner that people really approve of, it’s hard to see how he can unring the bell of his numbers on the coronavirus and on police/race relations.Jim: Yeah. Look, you’re not running on potential and promise anymore. You are a known quantity. I have a suspicion that a key ingredient of that unexpected 2016 victory came from the sense of, people who were not thrilled about the course of the country under the two terms of Obama, including quite a few Obama voters. People forget, the year heading into Election Day 2016, we had the San Bernardino shootings, we had the Orlando shootings. We had the shooting of the cops in Dallas right before the convention in Cleveland. I remember heading out to that Republican convention in Cleveland and being really afraid there’s going to be some mass shooting or some sort of terrible terror attack. There was a sense … If you look in the right places, there was a sense that the country was coming apart at the seams in 2016. Of course now it looks like the good old days. This is where the president has to govern where he is, and he cannot keep running this sort outsider insurgent campaign because you’re the president now. You’re in charge. You are the status quo whether you like it or not.You need to make the case either that things are going well, which is going to be very, very tough considering the circumstances or probably the better argument is, I had things going really, really well and then this terrible virus came over here from China. And it’s a challenge like we’ve never seen before and haven’t seen in 100 years. And it forced us to shut down the economy that was the goose that was laying the golden egg. If you keep me in charge, once we get this virus under control, I can keep government policy in a direction to restore the golden goose. I can get us back, and you know the Democrats don’t do that. You know the Democrats are going to want to raise taxes. You know they’re going to want to do the crazy New Deal. Sooner or later, Joe Biden will succumb to the Bernie Sanders side. Joe Biden was not put on this earth to stand up to the left wing of the Democratic Party. Joe Biden is a back slapper. Joe Biden wants everybody to get along. Joe Biden will not stand up for you. He couldn’t even stand up for the businesses that were being trashed by rioters.There’s an argument to be made. Except the president needs to focus and do that, and he can’t run on his own personal grievances. I think it was Ramesh who made this very good point. The Trump campaign of 2016 was about doing things. Building the wall, immigration security. We’re going to bring back U.S. domestic production. Just on the issue of China alone there was an enormous potential for the president to get on this. But he’s got to stop thinking about like, China is merely a—Rich: I can’t believe you did this, Jim. I was just about to steal Ramesh’s point, and you stole it before I could get to it. I would express Ramesh’s point a little differently, or maybe this is a different point. Some of my best punditry is based on stealing Ramesh’s points, Jim.Jim: Here you go.Rich: Don’t hone in on my territory here.Jim: I’ll spike the volleyball over to you.Rich: I don’t know whether Ramesh has written this or just said it. But the thing about the 2016 campaign is Trump was hitting on issues that were under-discussed in our politics, underappreciated among the political elite. Fears of terrorism, concerns about illegal immigration, concerns about de-industrialization. Whereas this time around, very often his obsessions are just totally his obsessions or the obsessions of a very small group of people that might include us on this podcast. Probably includes a lot of our listeners. But Obamagate and Section 230 and these are not things that hit people where they live, and what I wonder about, Charlie, going back to Jim’s point in his first answer, that’d be great if Trump gave a speech about how this is a good country. You know, we have this wonderful Constitution. We need to defend our heritage. I certainly think he should give that speech. Any president should give that speech at any given point in time. But I just wonder if the toppling of the statues and all the rest of it infuriating and appalling to us, whether the average voter cares about it so much.I’ve basically been on board Jim’s theory. There’s going to be some sort of backlash to what’s been going on. But I wonder if it’s just not top of mind enough for the average voter.Charlie: So we have the opinion of the cause delivered by a Ponnuru, R. and joined in concurrence with Geraghty, J. and Lowry, R. I feel I should dissent just to make it a proper case. I think Ramesh is right, and I think that there is something to what you just said, Rich, but I think that that is only the case if you look at this narrowly. One of Trump’s problems is that he’s not eloquent. He is incapable of developing an argument, and he is incapable of nuance. And this is a moment that requires both. Now, four years ago just by talking about, just by mentioning topics that had been swept under the rug for so long, he had people sitting at home for better or for worse and saying, “I think that. I want to talk about that.” You could distill the entire immigration question, which is a complicated topic, down to “build the wall.” And people would hear, he cares about this. You could distill the question of China into a few soundbites. You can’t do that when you’ve been in charge for four years. Because you have to defend your record and explain why it’s different than the aspirant’s. But also this is a moment which calls for Trump to thread needles. The coronavirus question is complicated. You can’t just say, open up our businesses. You have to acknowledge this is a real threat. People have died.And the same is true of these protests. You have to acknowledge that what happened to George Floyd was terrible, and historically African Americans have been persecuted legally, systematically. But also to defend some of America’s great figures and to defend America’s virtue. And Trump’s contributions thus far are to tweet three- or four-word sentences in all caps. LAW AND ORDER. KEEP THE STATUES. I think that there is a real appetite out there for a defense of America. But he hasn’t made it. He’s been oddly silent. For all of the worry about Tom Cotton, and for all the, in many cases, correct anger at what happened in the park outside the White House, Trump’s been fairly hands-off. There’s been no real moment where he has become the avatar of a movement that doesn’t think America is rotten to the core. At least not beyond his usual platitudes. And one of the problems with being so effusive as he is, is it loses its currency. If you say all the time, this is the best, this is the greatest, this is the most influential, this is the … People say, “all right, whatever."You look back to presidents that have capitalized on this, you look back to Ronald Reagan when he first ran for governor of California, and he ran against the students at Berkeley and indeed the faculty at Berkeley. Find the video on YouTube of him telling them that they were in charge of spoiled children. If you look at Richard Nixon in 1968. They were pretty clear. They weren’t battering rams, and they weren’t just mouthing platitudes or shouting three-word slogans. They were clear about what it is that they thought. I do think maybe the statues per se aren’t American’s No. 1 concern. But I do think that the sort of sentiment that was expressed by Drew Brees about the importance of the flag, what it meant to him, what he thought about when he looked at it. The generational argument. The Burkean argument for America. I think that is extremely poignant and extremely poignant for a majority and extremely poignant for what it’s worth, for an awful lot of minorities. I don’t like this narrative that we’re seeing. The white person’s country. That’s absolute nonsense.It’s very important that we acknowledge disparities and historical persecution. But let’s not pretend that there aren’t lots and lots and lots of non-white people in this country who love it very dearly and who are glad to be here. Trump has an opportunity to be that guy. Joe Biden is not going to be a caricature. He’s not going to be a stereotype. He’s not going to burn the flag. So Trump if anything has to do it more than he would otherwise. But he’s not. He hasn’t sent in the authorities to shut down what’s happened to these statues. He hasn’t made a big speech about it. He hasn’t had a great sister–soldier moment where he just says no. He’s absent. And for all the talk about Joe Biden being in his basement, so is the president. And without that sort of action there’s just really no rationale for him beyond people saying, well we need him as a bulwark against Joe Biden. But that just doesn’t sell in the way that it did against, say, a Hillary Clinton.Rich: Yeah Jim, there are, I’m going to say it, things that I don’t understand about Trump’s view of the presidency. But I think I do understand them. But rhetorically I don’t understand why given the opportunity to give a national speech about American history and our heritage and our heroes, I’d love to do that. I wouldn’t want to do any other presidential duty, but I want to do that. And by the way, our listeners are wondering, we’re going to talk about the Russian intelligence thing probably later in the week when we have a firmer bead on it. But I’d love to read the presidential daily brief every day. The best gossip basically around the world gathered by the most adept spies in world history and surveillance techniques served up in a binder on your desk every morning. Who wouldn’t want to read that? And the president of the United States, you can have dinner with anyone you want, you can reach out to anyone you want. Any historian. Any issue expert at your beck and call. And instead of sitting and watching Fox News, which I can do as an ordinary American every night not being president of the United States.But these things don’t appeal to him because what he’s really … He’s in the job for the show. He wants to be the center of attention every day and to vent and say whatever he’s feeling at any given moment, no matter how reckless or heedless like that villages thing he retweeted. And be the center of attention and watch people talk about him every morning and every night and during a lot of the day on cable TV.Jim: Yeah. Maybe we’ll talk about this a bit later in the podcast when we start talking about the coronavirus stuff, but there’s considerable evidence that Donald Trump doesn’t actually enjoy the job part of being president. He likes all the pomp and circumstance. He likes the title. He likes being the center of attention. But it’s not like you see him spending a lot of time hashing things out with legislators and trying to put together some sort of majority to pass a bill. He clearly has very little interest in the details of policy. At one point you had said something about all the different things he could talk about, and Charlie mentioned the tweets of three or four words all in caps that he does. Do you know what’d probably be helpful, guys? If he’d stop retweeting videos of his supporters shouting “white power.” That’s probably not helpful at a point of a national conversation about racial inequities and stuff like that. That’s probably not helping. Yeah, I know the other guy said you’re not supporting him, you’re not black. Somehow we’ve managed to pick the two least self-aware, sensitive, erudite septuagenarians to run for president this cycle. But there is a …At the end when Trump couldn’t articulate that second-term agenda … Basically what is the cause? What does America get if it reelects Trump? More Trump. Him. Him being in the White House is the victory. So you’ve had some very interesting arguments of what does Trump really want to do in a second term? I think the first attack against Barack Obama from the John McCain campaign that drew blood was the celebrity ad. And Barack Obama was not merely a celebrity president, but he definitely leaned into it. Doing the picks on ESPN and doing the wacky videos with BuzzFeed and all the appearances on late-night talk shows and slow-jamming the news with Jimmy Fallon. Barack Obama was a full-spectrum celebrity for a good portion of his eight years. And I have a suspicion that’s part of the job. That may have been how Trump thought the job was. And guess what? Being president involves a heck of a lot more than that. Particularly when you’re facing major crises of urban unrest and this terrible pandemic going around.And if Trump doesn’t win reelection, I think a big chunk of the reason will be, he never really understood the job and never really wanted to do the parts of the job that are necessary to succeed in the job.Charlie: I have never wanted to be president, which is good because I can’t be. But watching Trump gives me that strange instinct. You know when you’re watching sports and you just sort of kick your leg out to try and kick the ball in soccer or if you’re watching baseball and you see they’re just going to miss catching it, you sort of put your arm out? I just sit there watching Trump so often and sort of just wish I could substitute myself—Rich: Yeah. I can do that better.Jim: You just got this yearning for mind control. Just for a short period of time.Charlie: I never felt like that before.Rich: I can see as Charlie’s striding boldly in a black and white picture from the White House to St. John’s Church after the protesters had been tear-gassed. You’re like, I could have done that better.Charlie: Yeah. I mean for a start, I think I would have said, if anyone is liable to get hurt or moved in order for me to do this, let’s not do it. It is a different feeling because with Barack Obama, I opposed almost everything he did. He was built in a laboratory to annoy me politically. But I never thought, “well I would do it better.” I thought, you have an ideology that I don’t share and I really wish you weren’t there. But with Trump it’s like watching someone drop the ball all the time. You just want to stand up and say, oh no, don’t say that. Oh no, don’t do that. Here’s … It’s just genuinely frustrating.Rich: Jim Geraghty exit question to you. At this juncture, which is more likely in November, a Joe Biden landslide or another Donald Trump narrow Electoral College victory without winning the popular vote?Jim: Joe Biden landslide. Didn’t take me very long to make that decision.Charlie: Yeah. I think it’s more likely that there’ll be a Joe Biden landslide.Rich: I’m going to say more likely narrow Trump victory because I think the race will close up, and I don’t see the landslide happening at this juncture. But I don’t totally discount the possibility that ten days out this race could really flip and could be an utter catastrophe for Republicans. But at the moment I’m more likely a Trump narrow victory, but obviously the most likely scenario is just a solid, non-landslide Joe Biden victory.

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