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November 09, 2020 06:59 AM UTC

Monday Open Thread

  • 57 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

–Seneca

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57 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread”

    1. His family needs to tell him that the White House is being moved to Palm Beach, Florida, and will operate out of Mar-A-Lago.

      They can escort him there, bring him some Sharpies and a pad of paper, and he spend his time writing letter to Kim Jong-Un and drawing clocks.

      The rest of the world can then move forward.

  2. Phenomenal positive news from Pfizer.  They have a vaccine that is 90% effective.  
    Thank god they didn’t announce this just one week earlier because Trump could have won PA, etc.  American democracy dodged a heat seeking missile.

    1. Well, Trump did predict that COVID would “miraculously disappear” on November 4.

      This isn’t quite a miraculous disappearance nor did it happen on November 4, but this will certainly give him fuel for his narrative.

      1. I'm not overstating when I say this could be one of the most important days in human history.  Apparently, the methodology they used can be transferred to other viruses and maybe other human diseases.  But, the vaccine won't be widely available until at least Spring, 2021.  So, we'll have to mask up, etc. until then.

        There are so many political implications that need to be assessed.  Perhaps this gives Trump a face saving out where he says Itlduso, I was right, Pfizer delayed the announcement to screw me, the election was stolen from me, blah, blah, but there's nothing we can do about it. 

        The effect on the GA Senate runoff races could go either way.  I don't know which side becomes more motivated to vote.

        Bottom line:  There may be an end to all of this nonsense: health, politics, economy in the near future, and we can go back to arguing about which TV show was the best in history.

        1. A most important date indeed about the vaccine methodology.

          Here's something pols can talk about next year; from Charles Ashby at the Sentinel, "So far, nearly 600 Coloradans with a wide array of backgrounds and political leanings, including many recognizable residents, have applied to be on one of the two state commissions that are to draw new congressional and legislative district lines next year."

    3. Happy Birthday, Dave!

      It was 10 November here, though. We woke up that morning to news reports of people punching holes in The Wall. It was a weird coincidence. Germany was officially divided on what would become my birthday, two years before I was born. The gates were thrown open on Karen’s 31st birthday.

  4. Damn. I thought today's quote was from "Closing Time" by Semisonic, but Pols' attribution checks out. Did Seneca also say "you don't have to go home but you can't…stay…here?"

  5. President Harry Truman often made this point in his speeches. He said in 1952:

    Socialism is a scare word [Republicans] have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years. Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security. Socialism is what they called farm price supports. Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.

    Who can you think of who recently used farm price supports to help keep farmers solvent while tariffs did their damage?

  6. Stupid question?  Does the winner of a presidential race have to be officially recognized by some entity. And if so who…DoJ? Scotus?  I've never been aware of an official announcement before, but maybe i just tuned them out assuming the vote count was all that was needed. 

      1. Emily Murphy is the GSA head holding up the start of Biden's transition.

        She is also the bureaucrat who pivoted from rebuilding FBI headquarters on-site to putting the new building way out in the burbs so that dump's hotel didn't have to deal with any new competition if a lux hotel happened to (it was being planned) take over the space.

        1. She's also the one who determined that the GSA lease terms prohibiting government officials from ownership in the entity running the facility at the US Post Office building (now the Trump hotel) didn't REALLY mean the President.

    4. There are multiple layers of recognition.

       * vote totals announced and eventually, the various decision desks advising media sources have seen enough to "call" the election.

       * Secret Service protection gets ramped up to presidential levels. [it is possible it was there already, due to threat assessment.] Several people made much of declaration of a National Defense Air Restriction over Delaware.

       * GSA Administrator "ascertains" the result at some point, which opens up funding, office space and official status for representatives of the elected to go to agencies.

       * At some point, President-elect and designated people begin getting national security briefings which mirror what the existing President gets [and in this case, hopefully, more].

       * States certify the results of the election, announcing "final" vote totals.

       * Electoral College convenes in various states for their vote on the "Monday after the second Wednesday in December" — this year, December 14.

       * State EC Certificates Must Be Delivered to the Designated Officials "by the fourth Wednesday in December,"

       * Jan 6, 2021, the certificates are opened during a joint session of the new Congress and there is a Declaration.

        1. I was wondering about that, too.

          I suspect not because the one-vote-per-state is when they hold a contingent election (no one has the votes in the electoral college so the House of Reps elects the president).

          This is a question of accepting the electoral votes that were cast.

          But who the hell knows for sure. We’re recklessly going where no one (at least in our lifetimes) has gone before.

    5. Doesn’t House and Senate need to accept, count and certify electoral college ballots at beginning of January?

       

      In 2001, I remember watching poor Al Gore presiding as various House Dems objected to the count, Gore would ask each if there was a Senator who joined the objection, and each said “No.”

  8. Unfortunately, the Republican Party did very well down ballot. 

    We need to wait for all the post-scripts, but we can look at Democratic failure to win the Senate, and losses of House seats as a huge warning flag.

    (1) Republican execution was very good – Brad Parscale may be a sad-sack, but he knows micro targeting and digital marketing. The Democratic Party is always fighting the last battle (2018), or actually two-battles back (2016)

    (2) It isn't about policy. I believe in Socialist Security, Obamacare, the CDC, and all the other useful government programs. But, Republicans cared about owning the Libtards. Guess which message won?

    (3) It isn't about the Squad or left-ish values in the Democratic Platform. Reps It was a failure to tie the Republican candidates to Donald Trump. DNC, DSCC, DCCC failed to nationalize the

    (4) Democratic digital campaign and door-to-door was poorly executed. Why TF   did Senators and Reps run a few points behind Biden. How is that not a major strategic failure?

    (5) Actually, Democratic turnout was huge… It's just that Republican Turnout was also huge. Parscale and Microtargetting.

    1. What they didn't do well was govern.

      Dems might not have gotten everything they hoped for but they got the big win that they needed.  Winning the White House is a BFD.

      2. Not so sure it will look like much of a BFD in two years after gridlock and the Republican advantage in redistricting given their statehouse victories around the country.

        The odds are good Biden or Harris may find themselves sitting alone in the White House with a Republican Congress and Supreme Court in 2023. I'd have rather won the Senate this year, even if it meant losing the White House.

    2. I do not have any data to support my opinion, but I do not think you can discount the desire for moderates to have a divided government. They expected Hillary to lose in 2016, so they voted for their down-ballot Repub. They hated Trump, so they went Dem in 2018. They expected Trump to lose in 2020, so they went back to their down-ballot Repub. 

    3. (4) Democratic digital campaign and door-to-door was poorly executed. Why TF   did Senators and Reps run a few points behind Biden. How is that not a major strategic failure?

      Democrats really didn’t do door-to-door, because, you know, the whole pandemic thing. But the message got out about mail in ballots, so there’s that. Imagine in four years, when there isn’t a pandemic going on, the field operation the Dems can mobilize to not only sustain this level of mail-in voting, but increase it. 

      I think once you look at the voting breakdowns, you’ll see a lot of of split ticket voting among moderate Republicans. They didn’t like Clinton, but they where ok with Biden. That’s all it took to not color in the bubble for Trump this time. They were still going to vote for Republicans everywhere else, though. Also, I think you’ll find a lot of people who just voted in the presidential and not the other races to explain the lack of coattails (Arizona excluded. The Astronaut outpacing everyone is not a surprise). Need to really hammer the issue home next time to vote the entire ballot. 

    4. “Unfortunately, the Republican Party did very well down ballot.”

      This is the truly amazing part of this story. It is the ability of these people to suspend logic and rational thinking. To reach their conclusion, one would have to believe that: (a) the votes cast for the top of the ticket were fraudulently cast, but (b) the folks who were out to get rid of Trump by committing election fraud (e.g., George Soros, CNN viewers, BLM, Mexicans voting illegally and Steve Schmidt)  were careful enough to split their tickets and vote for Republicans like Thom Tillis, Joni Ernst and Susan Collins so as to hide the fraudulent votes for Joe Biden.

      Pretzel logic doesn’t even do justice to how these people think.

      I’m sure Q-Anon will come forth with some kind of incoherent explanation for how this happened. And many will eat it up.

  9. Hope against hope for the Georgia Senate races.

    Trump is doing us a favor by fighting to the bitter end. That nationalizes the race and ties the Republicans to Trump. It forces the split in the Republican Party.

    Make the runoffs about the restoring national unity. 

    I'd love to see Lincoln Douglass style debates between Ossoff and Perdue. Maybe moderate the Debates by Obama or Biden, or hell bring the full A-team, rotate between them plus Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, 

    1. Ossoff already pounded on Perdue, from debate clips that I saw, I think, on MSNBC.

      Need to remember one thing: the McConnell dark money machine will be working overtime pumping messages about Dems, socialism, and other nasty things, into these races.

      I think, as of now, that grabbing both seats will be out of the Dems reach. However, the Reverend against the corrupt rich girl has potential. If Dems grab one seat, that puts them at 49 and Moscow Mitch will need to then be on his best behavior. After all, he’ll have to keep Romney, Murkowski, Collins happy. Loss of one vote, with a 51-49 split, means Vice President Harris breaks the tie.

      1. The results will be either both or neither won by the Dems.  All candidates are equally good (Dems) or bad (GOP).  You must be hallucinating to think that "Mitch will need to then be on his best behavior."  Some people don't learn from the first kick of the mule.

        1. It depends on what Mitch wants to "ram through." 

          As for Dems winning or losing both races, I was trying to be charitable. Deep down, I think the split will remain 52-48. But hope does spring eternal.

          1.      If history is any guide, it will unfortunately end up being 52/48. At least Biden could point the finger at Moscow Mitch as being the obstructionist.

    1. There are precedents of other elected officials keeping their benefits even when they went to prison, so I'd guess the answer is yes.

      I wouldn't care if they had to devote an entire wing to Trump in order for the Secret Service to do their duty to the impeached but not convicted Trump.  As long as he is held to the same standard of communication as others, which would mean no cell phone in prison.

    1. That was actually last week. More recently, his lawyer fired him as a client over the beheading remark.

      "Paging Rudy Giuliani. Please pick up the white courtesy phone. You have a potential client."

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