October 28
T: I think the Pennsylvania ballots that come in after Election Day will be tossed, if Trump pushes it to the Supreme Court.
And I’m fine with it. I mean, if it’s up to me, get the fucking things in on time. It’s not a hardship situation like the military overseas; Pennsylvanians have Post Offices in every zip code. I mean, literally every zip code. They aren’t on a ship in the middle of the Indian Ocean. They ain’t camped somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan.
J: My only worry is a concerted effort to delay the ballots in the mail to keep them from making it to their destination in time. That’s the main reason for the ruling.
T: Well, that would be the Post Office doing it, if that’s the case; the rule isn’t that the ballots have to reach their destination by election day; it’s that they are postmarked by election day.
J: Good luck explaining the distinction to a MAGA; Trump’s gonna tell his rally monkeys that late ballots were printed in Hillary Clinton’s basement.
T: Yeah, sigh … let’s face it; we’ve seen more than enough Post Office interference from Trump already; we can expect more Snidely Whiplash moves.
J: Trump will try to claim victory on Election Night unless he absolutely gets a spanking; he’ll say that only the election-night counts should be official, never mind that there have been late ballots in every Presidential election, ever.
T: Will Fox News back him on that? It sounds insane to think they will, but we live in some pretty insane times.
J: Fox seems to be going a little more hard-news these days, much to Trump’s displeasure.
T: So who backs Trump if he calls the election before all the votes are counted?
J: Only the really right-wing nutters.
T: The last thing we need is a mainstream network backing that shit up.
J: I doubt even Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter will back him up.
T: Answer: Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.
Question: Name two people who, if you looked at them you would have guessed that the wrong one was dying of cancer.
J: Oh, SNAP.
October 29
T: Hey J, what battleground states might get mostly counted on election night? I mean not leaving a few million mail-in ballots on the table?
J: I think Michigan and Florida will be the big ones that will be counted by the end of Election Night; I’m pretty sure they’re allowed to start processing ballots before election eve.
T: I suspect this election is going to be like waiting for Tim Conway to give you your HIV test results.
J: That’s a fresh reference.
T: For people under 50, that means the results will be really slow.
J: There’s a lot of talk about the “red mirage.” Trump might have an edge on Election Night because most Republicans will vote in person and those votes will be counted first, but the mail-in vote is expected to be something like 3-1 Democratic, which will erase Trump’s leads in most places.
T: I think the 3-1 might be grandiose, but 60+ is in play.
J: My guess is at the end of Election Night Trump will probably have a lead, maybe 54-46 or so.
T: If it’s close on election night, the pundits will be saying “this ain’t good for Trump; he needs to have a big lead at the end of the night or Biden will sail right on by as the rest of the mail-in vote is counted. ”
J: They’ll be right; Trump needs to be massively ahead to be in the ballgame.
T: But it’ll look like he’s winning big.
J: That could be a problem if his voters are stupid.
T: Uh oh.
October 30
T: It’s calm on the Election front for the most part today; the polls are regurgitating the same results. Biden leads by 5.2 percent in Pennsylvania and is 89 percent to win on FiveThirtyEight.
J: Trump seems to be pinning his hopes on the Supreme Court intervening to help him obstruct the count.
They don’t seem inclined to get involved.
T: Kavanaugh said some pretty dumbassed things, at least dumb in relation to what a SCOTUS justice should know about elections.
I wonder how many phone calls he got after his weird statements about ‘flipping’ were published?
In effect, he said that whatever ballots were counted on election day are all that should count, because the other ballots might change the results.
J: No, he shouldn’t have said that.
T: Maybe he was drunk and he thought the Constitution was a co-ed?
J: You know he’s a lawyer, don’t you?
T: Oh, right. Just kidding, legitimate satire! Legitimate satire!
J: Lucky you, literally nobody will see that joke.
T: Not even our friends?
J: A couple, maybe. Most of our friends are drunk.
T: Legitimate satire?
J: I wish.
October 31
J: Did you see the news that Sean Connery died?
The name’s Bond. Dead Bond.
T: At the crematorium, you know they are pissing themselves over dead Bond jokes.
“Is that rigor mortis, or are you just happy to see me?”
“Should we shake his ashes? Or stir them?”
“Well, I guess you should shake him first … ”
“And?”
“See if he stirs.”
J: The man is dead. Show some respect, for fuck’s sake.
T: Ok, rest in peace.
J: You mean Rescht in peace.
T: Is that supposed to be a Scottish accent?
J: Not a good one.
T: Connery’s passing is the first real news we’ve had in a week, isn’t it? The news sites are mostly people taking bets on what democratic wall Trump will try to climb over next.
J: And with all the mail-in ballots, there is no promise that Election Night will be all that newsy.
T: What could have been the rapt election-of-all-elections might wind up being a snooze-fest, mostly pundits saying, “see you next week.”
J: “Or next month.”
T: “Or next year, I guess … we really don’t know when this shit will be decided.
J: The concern is Trump claiming victory days, weeks or even months before there is an actual winner
T: MAGA’s outrage meters would fucking explode.
J: Empty heads all over the place.
T: Ironically that’s —
J: Stop it.
T: It could happen … I think Trump started calling this election rigged in February.
He did the same thing in 2016, too, calling the results rigged long before the actual election. He only believes what he wants to believe.
J: I’m kinda hoping that he’ll lose indisputably on Tuesday night; it’ll make all the nightmare scenarios irrelevant.
If he loses Florida, it’s over.
T: Which means bet your life savings on Trump winning Florida.
J: Probably.
T: If there is a sure thing about this election, it’s that it won’t be ‘over’ until the nation is sweatier than a fat lady.
J: Singing for a week.
T: At least.
November 1
T: Weird things happening in the FiveThirtyEight model … Silver’s polling numbers individually show Biden with a steady, stubborn 6-point lead in Pennsylvania but the model keeps lowering the lead, now down to 4.9 percent.
I think Silver is herding, but not with other pollsters. Silver is herding with himself. Herding with 2016. He is terrified to the point of the dry heaves that Trump will win again. So he’s fudging in every way he can to make sure his model gives Trump a better chance than the fruit fly predictors.
J: Nobody wants to admit that Biden is heavily favored to win and just leave it.
T: Especially not Silver, who is still PTSD from all the unreasonable scorn heaped on his model for being merely the least wrong instead of actually predicting that insane 2016 result.
J: He is obsessed with that 10 percent … he said, “I spend 90 percent of my time thinking about that 10 percent, because the stakes are just so high this time around.”
T: I don’t give Trump a 10 percent chance. I give him a 1 percent chance this time around, and that 1 percent is all Snidely Whiplash things like blocking polling centers in the battleground states and suppressing mail-in ballots.
That 1 percent reflects my confidence that our judicial system is still a free, democratic system. We aren’t Iran yet. But there is a 100 percent chance that Trump will try to cheat to win. He won’t see it as cheating, though. He is the sort of guy who steals the money from the Monopoly bank and says, “I win. I have all the money.”
J: He’s always had all the money. That’s the rub.
T: Yeah, he’s terrified of not having all the money.
J: He told aids privately that he expects a parade of prosecutors coming after him if he loses.
T: Are you saying that he can see the lights of the charge brigade?
J: That’s awful. But basically, yes.
T: He has to be shitting himself.
J: So what’s a few more charges if he can swing a miracle and get rid of all of them?
T: Yeah, what’s he got to lose?
Snidely Whiplash wishes his motives were so clear.
J: And his tactics so obvious.
*****
T: Taylor Tomlinson again, still apparently talking about sex:
“In bed, I’m a wild animal — far more afraid of you than you are of me.”
