October 31, 2024

"This is pre-postmortem. They know it's lost."

I say from across the room, as Meade plays today's episode of the NYT Daily, "Black Voters and the Democratic Party: One Family’s Story."
In our reporting, we called dozens of black men across Georgia and heard story after story like this of people who are frustrated with their prospects right now, especially their place in the economy....

You can listen to the whole thing. I'll just say this is what prompted my remark, from a man talking about how his mother would be disappointed to know he hesitated to vote for Harris:

"I'm someone who has been raised with understanding the importance of voting, with understanding how many people sacrifice for us to have this right. To participate in the process. And so to give that vote away, to use that vote in a way that could possibly hurt a candidate like Kamala Harris, you know, it, it kind of goes against what my people have decided. Majority of my people have decided that this is, you know, what we're doing. And for me to vote against Harris would be a little bit of a betrayal."

I've only used the word "pre-postmortem" once before on this blog, but I've been thinking it a lot in the last couple weeks. The prior usage was on October 14th, in a post titled "When Joe Biden called Kamala Harris on the morning of Sunday, July 21st, she was... wearing sweatpants and a hoodie..."

I chose this article to blog first this morning, but it was one of the many headlines I saw that made me want to create a new tag, something like "pre-postmortem."

69 comments:

Dave Begley said...

My people? My people have decided? Is this guy an American? Whatever happened to individual choice and freedom?

rehajm said...

Yah Dave, to my sorry white ass it sounds like such a loss of autonomy, a crude sacrifice of the individual for some amorphous collective. Some of us used to dare to claim that kind of deference is a factor in a lack of economic and personal achievement…

Another old lawyer said...

But remember - his use of "my people" does NOT allow you to utter the racist phrase "you people."

rehajm said...

Yesterday Fox news told me Kamala’s people believe they’re reaching more suburban white ladies than last time when they garnered
nearly all of them. Now that they’ve found some more they claim they more than make up for the loss in black support, so Fox claims they claim…

Jonathan Burack said...

"My people" came here from Russia awhile back, to get away from being slaughtered, etc. I've been voting for all my life (a while, that is). I do not recall every wondering what my mother (or father) would have thought about it. I guess that shows what an uncaring, ungrateful guy I am. Maybe even a "garbage" kind of guy. Oh well, no one's perfect.

mezzrow said...

More than half a million people in Georgia who didn’t vote in the presidential election four years ago cast a ballot this month during early voting, according to an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and GeorgiaVotes.com.
https://www.ajc.com/politics/early-voters-georgia-2024-over-half-million-of-early-voters-this-year-didnt-vote-in-2020/3GEPA56CEZDXTI5J7CYHNS7GAU/

rehajm said...

I however do not feel pre-postmortem vibes, mostly because I’m a piece of the garbage that refused to move on and think the level of trust is lower than the snakes’ bellies. An equally plausible explanation to me is they are choosing to abandon campaigning to line up the steal and accompanying lawfare. It wasn’t that Kamala was too busy for Rogan, the people running her are ATM…

Shouting Thomas said...

What happens to Trump if they pull off the cheat? What happens to Trump voters? Democrats seem content to turn over the government to the invisible hand of the Intel services, so long as the DEI quota system and the green energy kickback scams continue.

Michael said...

In the past two weeks a friend has continually sent me links to news and opinion pieces that fit Ann's pre-postmortum frame. Black men, Teamsters, the Federal Reserve, Rpgan, etc....all planting the seeds that somehow these people have failed Kamala. Get ready for an avalanche of stories that will figuratively line them up against the wall to be shot for destroying democracy.

Shouting Thomas said...

It makes sense if you believe that DEI supersedes all, including merit. Continuing the quota system is paramount.

rehajm said...

The list is so long. It’s like they’re losing the ability to keep people in line or something…

RMc said...

They really have no shame at all, do they?

Ralph L said...

I watched all of Trump's WI speech (at 1.5x) that Althouse posted last night. I've only watched clips of speeches before, though I did the whole Rogan. Trump put the shoutouts to other people at the end. Clinton did it at the beginning.

Quayle said...

Müll und Abfall über alles!

Political Junkie said...

If black turnout drops, or a tiny portion is more R, then the only D hope is running up the female vote.

Mr. Forward said...

If sheep could vote.

Political Junkie said...

In 2002 elections, with Bin Laden the "bad guy" in everyone's minds, the D's had a hard time mobilizing the black vote.That is why the D's had a bad result that year even though it was a mid term election, which usually goes against the sitting president's poarty.

Temujin said...

I see the same sort of 'captured' mentality from the Jewish community. Some (but not all) of my family and friends scattered around the US. Of course, those in the Northeast are the most captured. Those of us who grew up in the Midwest, interestingly, are more prone to independent thinking.
But this idea that my folks voted this way, and their folks voted this way, so despite what my own eyes and ears are telling me, I'm going to keep voting this way, seems insane. Really- the very definition of insanity: doing the same thing and expecting different results.

If you did not see the results you like from Kamala as Veep, just what makes you think things will be different if she's the Big Cheese? She'll be worse. Unleashed, not more insightful, careful, considerate.

And so, so many Black and Jewish Americans are mentally locked into 'the way we've always voted', accepting bizarre claims from the media who are busy playing them, per the Democratic Party instructions.

It's sad to watch. I do believe the ether is slowly wearing off. But it's only a little bit each election. At this rate I'll be long gone before either demographic group actually votes as independent people, thinking for themselves, not as a collective.

tim maguire said...

“The people before us fought hard for our right to participate and we owe it to them to waste that effort, to squander our votes by using them to push candidates who are sort of our color instead of candidates who will protect our interests and make our lives better.”

rehajm said...

…and bigot if you dare offer the exact same explanation he does…

R C Belaire said...

But don't discount the cheating aspect. Completed ballots are waiting in their boxes!

Amadeus 48 said...

Consider pre-bunking, defined as "to preemptively debunk a line of disinformation by publishing an account of that disinformation along with a simultaneous refutation before the disinformation itself is actually disseminated by its author." But what if the "disinformation" is true? Then we have a propaganda operation. What if the Hunter Biden laptop has been in the hands of the FBI for months before October 2020, had been verified as real by them, and is later used as evidence in Hunter's tax case? But 51 intelligence "experts" put out a letter supporting the idea that the laptop was Russian disinformation. In fact, that letter was CIA disinformation.
I have mixed feelings about Trump, but there is no doubt that we need to elect him to clean out the garbage (heh) in DC.

Leland said...

The betrayal would be to have fought for the right to vote only to then be taken for granted and used for others advantage. Using the right to vote to choose your own destiny is what others fought to give you.

Dixcus said...

Blacks don't have a place in our economy. Mexicans took their place.

Blacks are meant to be on the dole. Not working. To destroy their spirit. As Democrats have been doing since the last Civil War and will continue to do until the next Civil War.

Dixcus said...

They have 3 days AFTER the election in Arizona to print up however many ballots they need to win, and don't even have to mail them (postmarks provide evidence, after all).

The elections are FAKE. Stop participating in fake elections.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I'm not so sure there's a watertight seal in between a guilty conscience and fear of retribution.

Quayle said...

DIXCUS, You seem pretty intent on sewing discord and negativism. How is the weather in Moscow today?

narciso said...

They dont want working class blacks or whites they want a lumpen class because the mlddle class is a buttress against tyranny

rehajm said...

heh

donald said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dave Begley said...

I dated a very smart and successful woman about two years ago. Her issue is abortion. That’s it. Thankfully she lives in FL.

Duke Dan said...

They fought for your right to vote, not be a rubber stamp. By voting based on your own actual thoughts and ideas is finally making that effort worthwhile.

Shouting Thomas said...

@Dave Begley. A “smart and successful woman” can’t figure out how to manage birth control?

Christopher B said...

or "all lives matter"

Democratic Paychecks for Perks/ Dems for Demolition of Democracy/ fake-cares 4-U said...

The corrupt left chose illegals over blacks. The corrupt left chose illegals and crime over all of us.

Leland said...

In previous elections, I’d often see the Obama, Hillary or Biden/Harris bumper sticker on various cars in Houston. You can see from her recent rally, there are plenty of Democrats in Harris County. But this time, I’ve seen only one Harris/Walz bumper sticker. I don’t even know if there was a Biden/Harris 2024 sticker.
What I expected long ago, no matter what the polls showed, there can really be a 50/50 split among the electorate, but the polls don’t show the enthusiasm on the left to get out and vote for Harris.

Democratic Paychecks for Perks/ Dems for Demolition of Democracy/ fake-cares 4-U said...

The corrupt leftist mob and their $$$$ Maddow media = is the enemy within. Suck it - speech crime leftists.

planetgeo said...

Looks like black people haven't yet noticed that the candidates "my people" have always voted for and which they feel compelled to continue voting for have been purposely importing millions of "other people" to replace "my people" in jobs and in lines for the whole government gravy train. Not to mention loot, plunder, and burn down their neighborhoods. Wonder when they'll finally notice.

Former Illinois resident said...

chicago Trib has article after article, editorial after editorial, letter to editor after letter to editor, all exhorting voters to "Vote Blue" because because because:

1) It's your divine duty;

2) The economy is actually great, even if it doesn't feel that way;

3) Trump is a XXXXXX, take your pick.

No one attempts to demonstrate genuine competency of either Harris or Walz. And why has Gwen been sidelined and silenced? Hmm.

Inga said...

Quayle…

I’ve thought the same thing since he started commenting here.

Elliott A. said...

Maybe it is about time to remind people that the Civil Rights Act and the Voting rights Act were Republican backed legislation that a high percentage of democrats voted against. For the women, the suffragette movement led by Susan B. Anthony was spearheaded by women who were republicans, There is a statue in Central Park commemorating them

gspencer said...

"And so to give that vote away, to use that vote in a way that could possibly hurt a candidate like Kamala Harris, you know, it, it kind of goes against what my people have decided."

Charles Murray has been SOOOOOO on the money.

Birches said...

Speaking of people from Georgia, does anyone know why all the bussed in people from her rallies are from Georgia? I've just seen the GPS data.

Balfegor said...

Not over until it's over. It looks very good for Trump, but I remember it looked even better for Clinton in 2016. Kaine was gloating about how they were going to remake the Supreme Court. Liberals were gloating about how conservatism was dead. Republican politicians were settling in for a comfortable 4 years in opposition. The betting markets were spiking in Clinton's favour.

And then Trump won.

I suspect polls are underestimating Trump's support, just as in 2016 and 2020, not because of "shy" Trump voters, but because of mistrustful Trump voters. But the polls arrive at their numbers through a series of assumptions fed into a turnout model, so the polls really could be overestimating Trump this time. There's no transparency, as far as I can tell, about what goes into those models, so we can't say how the model and the assumptions have changed from 2016 and 2020.

Iman said...

Driving in Wisconsin, singing to his soul
The Donald’s out there turning garbage into gold
The Donald’s out there turning garbage into gold

Ruprecht said...

The Democrats appear to be divided into two groups: (a) those that desperately need the win because of their super-liberal issues or to keep from being arrested for fairly blatant corruption. (b) those that think the liberals have gone to far and can't support trans issues or the economy and hope they'll be crushed and begin rebuilding so they can be proud of their party again. Many (b) will vote for Kamala anyway but I suspect a lot are staying home.

I hope (b) is far larger than (a) for the sake of all of us because a good portion of (a) are insane.

Iman said...

The lack of self-awareness is amusing.

Hassayamper said...

More than half a million people in Georgia who didn’t vote in the presidential election four years ago cast a ballot this month

That's outstanding news. Trump owns the low-propensity voters these days. I read about a poll not long ago that showed almost two-thirds of those voting for the first time claim to have voted for him.

Partially that's a function of his showmanship and unapologetic America-first populism, but the other reason is the highly efficient, richly funded fraud-by-mail ballot harvesting that the Democrats have been doing for several elections now. Every black household in the swing states knows that they don't have to do lift a finger to vote, merely wait for the Party operatives to drop by and hand them a twenty dollar bill and collect their blank ballots.

Amadeus 48 said...

Furthermore, no one can look at the plight of black citizens on the south and west sides of Chicago and think that the city, county, and state governments have any interest in providing safe neighborhoods, good schools, and economic development. We pay high salaries to government workers who provide no valuable services.

Chicago's last GOP mayor left office in 1931, and he was a crook, too.

mikeski said...

That's impossible. I was told that the Georgia voting laws were Jim Crow reborn. Worse, even. Jim Eagle. Joe Biden himself told me so.

wendybar said...

AMEN, Iman!!!

Lazarus said...

"My people" does get used in different contexts without implying or signifying that the person using the phrase doesn't think of himself or herself as an American. Apparently, that happens a lot in the South: "Where'r your people from, son?"

Aggie said...

""And so to give that vote away, to use that vote in a way that could possibly hurt a candidate like Kamala Harris, you know, it, it kind of goes against what my people have decided......".

But: Where is the rest of this man's comment? What has he decided? When the light is just right, you can almost see the plantation......

Dr Weevil said...

If Trump wins, and has enough support in both houses of Congress, one of his highest priorities will be cleaning up the election system in all 50 states. It's already been done in Florida and Virginia.

Yes, I know voting laws are the responsibility of the states, but multi-state conspiracies can surely be prosecuted federally. We still don't know who coordinated the simultaneous shut-down of voting in 4 states - or was it 5? - in 2020, sending the Republican pollworkers home, and then restarting the counting. We don't even know how it was done: phone calls, e-mail, prior agreement on a set time?

Also, can Soros prosecutors be prosecuted for dereliction of duty, or accepting money under false pretenses, or something like that? If you're paid to prosecute crimes, and refuse to prosecute whole classes of crimes, that's certainly unethical, immoral, and stupid. Is it also illegal?

Dr Weevil said...

When I read "watertight seal" I couldn't help thinking of a marine mammal. Aren't all such seals watertight? I would hope so! If one somehow sprang (sprung?) a leak, would it drown internally, as it were? Get too waterlogged to surface? Inquiring minds and all that.

mikee said...

And of those votes cast, some to many of the voters knew they'd cast the vote. Still, all the votes will be counted and legal, because they're correctly harvested. by the Dems.

Yancey Ward said...

Yes, there is a lot opacity in the polls, however, the polls purposes are still the same- to depress Republican turnout and drive up Democrat turnout- it is why the models never seem to correct for differential response rate, even with historic data on which to model.

Sebastian said...

"his mother would be disappointed to know he hesitated to vote for Harris" Nonetheless, the excerpts hint at a certain black untethering. Perhaps some black mothers and grandmothers even realize that being able to choose to get off the Dem plantation is the ultimate emancipation. But as long as "my people" think of themselves first as "my people" and impose the social control that goes with it, full emancipation will have to wait.

Christopher B said...

I don't think that's an absolute on voting laws being responsibility of the states.

Article I Section 4
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations ...

Obviously there's things Congress can't do per the Constitution but Congress has passed regulations such as setting a uniform Election Day for all Federal Offices (which I think was just upheld by the 5th Circuit in regard to the collection of absentee ballots after election day).

hombre said...

Black voters, like American Jews, are ultimately self destructive. They will turn out for Democrats.

Original Mike said...

"I do not recall every wondering what my mother (or father) would have thought about it. I guess that shows what an uncaring, ungrateful guy I am. "

I know what my mother thinks of my voting.
She appears to love me anyway.

KellyM said...

There is no more America, merely an economic zone with groups of people working in their own self-interest. Do you think that any of the current Paper Americans really think of themselves as "Americans"? I would say for a vast majority right now, the answer is NO.

If Heritage America is to survive, it needs to drop the individual choice stuff and start voting in the interests of its bloc. When the US was 85% White, it had the luxury of analyzing political issues on individual merits, despite nit-picky ethnic differences, and voting accordingly. That luxury no longer exists.

Laughing Fox said...

Keeping the Jewish vote is, I think, one motive for the "Trump is Hitler1" craziness. But it won't work with the pro-Gaza Ivy-League kids.

Dogma and Pony Show said...

There has been talk the last few days about how the polls could be understating Trump's support OR Harris' support. But my EYES tell me that Trump's lead in the polls is likely the real deal, or that his poll numbers are running a few points behind where he actually stands (i.e., a repeat of the 2016 and 2020 pattern). It just seems farfetched to imagine that Kamala can lose one news cycle after another for what seems like a couple weeks at least, and yet have some reserve level of electoral support that for some reason the left-wing establishment media, through their polling units, haven't seen fit to reveal to the public. Common sense suggests that, if anything, Trump's support is greater than what the establishment media are telling us.

I have also seen references made to how pollsters have supposedly made adjustments to avoid the underrepresentation of Trump support that we saw in the two previous elections. However, I have yet to see any specific explanation of what these adjustments consist of. It seems unlikely to me that essentially ALL pollsters have somehow INDEPENDENTLY arrived at the same set of adjustments needed to fix this problem in its entirety. Again, common sense would suggest that if there was a widespread, almost systemic problem in capturing Trump's full level of support through polling, dozens of polling companies, working more or less in secrecy, would have all done their part in arriving at a solution to that problem, unless perhaps the solution was a simple and obvious one that could be easily explained to the public.

Heath J said...

We always called it a pre-mortem.

GeoffNewbury said...

While we are talking about voting laws, Article 1, section 4 of the Constitution has already been noted. Congress has the power to declare all existing voting rolls void, and to require in person registration with ID, proof of residence and proof of citizenship, and to restrict mail-in balloting.

While looking up section 4, I noted Article 1, section 8 [Congress has to power ] To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
That is to say, that Congress has the authority to determine what the 14th amendment means, and to proscribe 'anchor baby' citizenship. Whether it can do so retrospectively is a major barrel of snakes, and I suspect not...

Balfegor said...

Re: Yancey Ward:

I think the differential response rate is hard to correct for because I think it's probably partly independent of demographics. E.g. maybe in "reality" white working class voters in region X are 75:25 for Trump. But 25% of them are deeply mistrustful of mass media and the universities etc., and 100% of that 25% are voting for Trump, and 0% of that 25% are willing to be polled -- because these two attributes are correlated (100% correlated in this exaggerated hypothetical). So you get a random sample of the remainder and it looks like 50:25 Trump, or 67% to 33%. You can't get to the "real" number by pumping up your WWC proportion so it matches the overall electoral demographics, because you're extrapolating an unrepresentative sample. But you also can't just hard code in an extra couple points for Trump to account for nonresponse bias -- I mean, it's not even a poll at that point.

And backtested adjustments to the model to try and reverse engineer correct 2020 and 2016 results based on the data you do have also seem likely to result in errors, because it'll probably just result in picking up on variables and correlations that make the math work, but don't actually capture the missing data. Like, maybe you zero in on a subset of WWC voters who do answer polls and supported Trump 90:10, and extrapolate them for the missing nonresponders . . but the sample size of the subsample was tiny so it might just have been noise. The 2022 polling errors in favour of Republicans could have been the result, and could drive errors in favour of Trump this time around too.

So yeah, my guess is still Trump wins, but I can definitely see an outcome where the polls are all off in Trumps favour because the modeling of the electorate is screwed up.

Achilles said...

It is easier to trick someone than it is to convince someone they were tricked.

Gator said...

It’s simple. 10 years ago any Black individual could get a jon at a grocery store. Now all jibs go to immigrants