"A stunning 51% of Hispanic, naturalized US citizens voted for Trump over Harris, according to the Pew Research Center’s 2024 election post-mortem."

"Trump, who on the campaign trail pledged to crackdown on illegal immigration and shore up the southern border, bested Harris among foreign-born Hispanics by 3 percentage points and performed 12 points better within the demographic than he did in 2020.... The Pew Research Center analysis... surveyed almost 9,000 voters in the weeks after the 2024 election.... The president carried 15% of Black voters (up from 8% in 2020), 40% of Asian voters (up from 30% in 2020) and maintained the same 55% support from white voters he received four years earlier...."

From "Trump won more than half of foreign-born Hispanics — still would have beaten Harris if every eligible person voted in 2024 election: analysis" (NY Post).

And here's "Behind Trump’s 2024 Victory, a More Racially and Ethnically Diverse Voter Coalition/A study of the 2024 election, based on validated voters" (Pew Research Center).

"[Musk] told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use."

"He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it. It is unclear whether Mr. Musk, 53, was taking drugs when he became a fixture at the White House this year and was handed the power to slash the federal bureaucracy. But he has exhibited erratic behavior, insulting cabinet members, gesturing like a Nazi and garbling his answers in a staged interview."

From "On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama/As Mr. Musk entered President Trump’s orbit, his private life grew increasingly tumultuous and his drug use was more intense than previously known."

In March 2024, Musk that the ketamine was prescribed — for depression — and that he only took a small amount. The FDA "has formally approved the use of ketamine only as an anesthetic in medical procedures," but "doctors with a special license may prescribe it for psychiatric disorders." But: "The drug has psychedelic properties and can cause dissociation from reality. Chronic use can lead to addiction and problems with bladder pain and control."

The NYT article reveals a text message he wrote last May: "There are at least half a dozen initiatives of significance to take me down.... The Biden administration views me as the #2 threat after Trump. I can’t be president, but I can help Trump defeat Biden and I will."

After he bounced around on stage at a Trump rally on October 5, he texted: "I’m feeling more optimistic after tonight.... Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.... This is not something on the chessboard, so they will be quite surprised... 'Lasers' from space."

"The erosion of working-class support — among Black, white and Latino voters alike — has unnerved every ideological wing of the Democratic Party."

"Ben Tulchin, a pollster who worked on Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns, said the old political calculations for how Democrats can win elections were now obsolete. 'The math doesn’t work,' he said. 'For years, the belief was Democrats have had demographic destiny on our side. Now, the inverse is true.' Some Democrats hope that this is only a phenomenon of the Trump era, and that G.O.P. gains will evaporate once the president is no longer on the ballot.... But Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist who served as chief of staff to former Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who left the party last year, warned that such optimism was misplaced. 'Trump is the symptom, not the disease,” he said. “The disease is the fact that you have lost touch with a whole swath of voters that used to consistently vote Democratic.”... [Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat from the Bronx said] 'I am convinced that Donald Trump is a singular phenomenon in American history.... I am unconvinced that his appeal is necessarily transferable to the Republican Party writ large. That remains to be seen.'"

From "The Democrats’ problems run deep, nearly everywhere.This is where voters shifted toward President Trump in each of the last three elections" (NYT)(free-access link, because there are a lot of interesting graphics showing the dramatic shift toward Trump (or something more than just Trump)).

"Look, it would be easy for me not to just respond, when you say that, and I could just let you go on. But I’m a very honest person."

Said Donald Trump when The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg asked him why he doesn't quit saying he won the 2020 election.

Trump continued: "I believe—I don’t believe; I know the election was rigged. Biden didn’t get 80 million votes. And he didn’t beat Barack Hussein Obama with the Black vote in the swing states—only in the swing states; it’s interesting. We have lots of other things. I mean, we have so much information, from the 51 agents—that was so crooked—to the laptop from hell, to all of these different things. So it would be easier as you say that to just let you go on. But I’m a very honest person —

"Democrats did worse in the 2024 election than you think. They completely failed to win over less engaged voters..."

"... who are becoming much more Republican. The higher the turnout, the more these voters show up and the worse it is for Democrats.... Low turnout is now the Democrats’ BFF!... Shor’s analysis... suggests that Trump outright won voters under 30. ... He also finds that Gen Z voters under 25 regardless of race or gender are now more conservative than the corresponding Millennial voters. So much for the Democrats’ generational tsunami. The issue landscape in 2024 was worse than most Democrats thought. The only really important issue Democrats had an advantage on was health care and that advantage was tiny by historical standards. The Democrats did have a large advantage on climate change—but voters don’t really care about the issue.... The way out is not with a feel-good Democratic playbook that leaves Democratic shibboleths intact. That hasn’t worked and it won’t work."

Writes Ruy Teixeira, in "How Deep Is the Hole Democrats Are In? Pretty deep" (Substack).

Shor = David Shor, who explained his findings here:

"Less than a week before the 2024 presidential election... [u]sing the now-disgraced and shuttered 538 as its unimpeachable source..."

"... the [New York] Times scoffed at a number of the latest polls that showed Trump leading. A 'torrent of polls began arriving just a few weeks ago, one after the other, most showing a victory for Donald J. Trump,' wrote the Times. These polls 'stood out amid the hundreds of others indicating a dead heat in the presidential election.'... [T]he Times accused those pollsters — 37 in all — of being 'focused on lifting Republican enthusiasm before the election' and 'cementing the idea that the only way Mr. Trump can lose to Vice President Kamala Harris is if the election is rigged.'... 'Unlike its competitors, RealClearPolitics does not filter out low-quality polls' and also 'does not weight its averages.' Which is just another way of saying that, unlike 538 (which got the election wrong and has lost so much money and credibility it just closed in disgrace), RCP does not put its thumb on the scale. It lists the polls and offers the averages, and that’s it...."

From "Far-Left NY Times Owes RealClearPolitics Apology After 538 Shutdown" (Breitbart).

"The two candidates who have emerged as front-runners... are both middle-aged white men from the upper Midwest and chair of their state parties whose politics are well within the Democratic mainstream...."

"[Ken] Martin, 51, is campaigning on a platform of returning power and resources to state parties, while his supporters are attacking [Ben] Wikler, 43, as a tool of major donors and Democratic consultants in Washington. Mr. Wikler’s supporters include a host of D.N.C. officials who have been perturbed at Mr. Martin for creating a group of state party chairs that has competed within the national committee for influence. They say that the Wisconsinite, who turned his state party into a fund-raising juggernaut, is the more dynamic figure who managed to turn state elections... into national causes.... Some Democrats see the D.N.C. contenders’ arguments about relationships with donors and their regular promises of more money for state parties as papering over a broader discussion of why Vice President Kamala Harris lost the election."

"As Democrats Reel, Two Front-Runners Emerge in a Leadership Battle/The race to lead the Democratic National Committee centers on the favorites, Ken Martin and Ben Wikler, but the party’s infighting over them looks nothing like a broad reckoning with its 2024 defeats" (NYT)(free-access link).

Well, Kamala Harris had plenty of money, so she lost for reasons other than money. And yet, if it's pretty obvious why she lost — and isn't it? — then raking in the money may still be more important than any elaborate soul-searching about the dismal loss last November. In any case, what evidence is there that Martin is better than Wikler at figuring out why the Dems lost? Personally, I knew Ben Wikler when he was a teenager, and I think he can do anything. I mean, I knew Ben Wikler when he was a white teenager, and now he's a middle-aged white man, and I tend to think he can do the best that anyone can to revive the Democratic Party.

"Remarkably, Trump’s margin of victory in Florida in 2024 was larger than Kamala Harris’s in New York."

"Such a result seemed unthinkable until it happened. In the seven prior presidential elections, the margin of victory in New York generally exceeded that in Florida by more than 20 percentage points.... In the more than 35 years since Ronald Reagan left office in January 1989, no other presidential candidate of either party has won Florida by even half as much as Trump did in 2024....  The ribbon of interconnected states running through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa has held vital importance for American presidential elections for more than 150 years.... In presidential races spanning 1996 through 2012, Republican candidates won the respective contests in those five key states just 12 percent of the time (three wins, 22 losses). In the subsequent three elections, Trump won the battles in those states 80 percent of the time (12 wins, 3 losses). Trump’s success in Ohio and Iowa is particularly remarkable.... Trump also gained ground in uncompetitive states, such as New York, New Jersey, and West Virginia...."

Writes Jeffrey H. Anderson, in "How Trump Remade the Electoral Map/The president-elect has shaken up state-level results across his three campaigns" (City Journal).

"What was the Lie of the Year?"

Meade asked me just now, referring to the annual designation that appears in PolitiFact.

I thought for a moment, then said: "Joe Biden is sharp as a tack."

Meade said he thought PolitiFact would pick "They're eating the pets."

Hearing that, I agreed. Because PolitiFact would want to go against Trump, not Biden. And because "They're eating the pets" was such an extravagant and wild statement. It was interesting to talk about the instant Trump said it. But "Joe Biden is sharp as a tack" was much more of a lie. Because it was believed. For a long time. And it was completely momentous. It prevented a normal primary process for the Democrats and left them, in the end, with a candidate who couldn't win. 

I looked it up. PolitiFact made its Lie of the Year announcement 3 days ago. We hadn't noticed. Here: "'They’re eating the pets'/Trump, Vance earn PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year for claims about Haitians."

PolitiFact, which for 16 years has issued a year-end lie of the year report, keenly understands that when emotions collide with facts, emotions often prevail. To wit: Trump increased his voter support in Clark County, Ohio, which includes Springfield, this year above what he garnered in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns....

Speaking of garnering... the brilliant song made from Trump's "pet" bit has garnered over 14 million views:

ADDED:

 

"It’s clear from this election that there are many voters, especially those hardest hit by rising prices, those who experienced the pandemic-era financial support slipping away, who voted primarily on the economy."

"We’ve seen in the United States and worldwide if you have to break pearls in half to be able to afford your groceries, that is going to be the top-of-mind issue when you go to the ballot box. Democrats win when voters know that we’re the ones fighting for them against those who will seek to rip them off to add an extra billion dollars to their bank account."

That's Ben Wikler, answering the question: "You have said for years that abortion rights is the issue that best motivates Democratic voters and best convinces Republicans to vote for Democrats. Did something change about that in this election, or did the Harris campaign not focus enough on abortion rights?"

From "Wisconsin Democratic Chair Says He Is the One to Revive a Distressed Party/Ben Wikler, who has led the Wisconsin Democratic Party since 2019, announced a bid to be national party chair with a platform to 'unite, fight, win'" (NYT)(free-access link).

I like Ben because I knew him quite well when he was a teenager. He's obviously got highly developed verbal skills. Not highly developed enough to keep me from noticing that he didn't confront the complexities of the Democrats' involvement with the abortion issue. They forefronted it, and he wanted them to forefront it.

Did something change about that in this election, or did the Harris campaign not focus enough on abortion rights? What's the answer? The question required him to pick. Either it's no longer true that abortion is the Democrats' best issue OR the Democrats needed to push even harder on the abortion issue. But maybe leaping past a reporter's well-structured question and saying "It's the economy, stupid" in elaborate, elegant language is a good demonstration of the skill Democrats want in their chair.

ADDED: I spent a lot of time trying to ascribe meaning to "break pearls in half." A commenter — wild chicken — asked if that's "a saying in Wisconsin." And I got all involved:

I googled it when I was writing the post, and I considered elaborating on this figure of speech. I couldn't find any example of "break pearls in half" as a figurative expression. I did find out that pearls are *cut* in half for some purposes, but these were real, not metaphorical, pearls. What did Ben mean? All I can think of is Mickey Mouse, starving, and cutting one bean into slices.

Then I got a text from Meade: "Pills/Bad transcription by NYT."

For more laughs, here's Mickey:

"These operatives had the gall to say they were fighting to protect our democracy. In reality, they undermined it at every turn..."

"... with frivolous lawsuits, character assassination, and outright lies designed to prevent No Labels from exercising our constitutional right to get ballot access. If you are wondering why Americans are losing faith in our democracy and so many of our country’s self-anointed elites, this is Exhibit A."

Said Dan Webb, a No Labels volunteer legal adviser, quoted in "No Labels goes after opponents of third-party presidential bid in court/Clowns, early-morning noise and mobile billboards in the Georgetown area of D.C. are among the proposed tactics revealed in subpoenas" (WaPo)(free-access link). 

The headline fails to specify that the "opponents" in question were Democrats, but it's in the text of the piece: "Leaders of the centrist group No Labels abandoned a planned third-party presidential bid in April after a successful campaign by Democratic allies of President Joe Biden damaged their public appeal and undermined their ability to recruit electable candidates."

The "mobile billboards" connected the leaders of No Labels to Donald Trump using the slogan: "There is no place for MAGA hate in Georgetown."

"So what happened in this campaign is Donald Trump said to the American people, you are angry. You're really pissed off."

"And I know that, and you're right. And then he gave his explanation and his explanation, which was obviously nonsense and false and racist, et cetera, was that millions and millions of undocumented people were coming across the border. They were invading. America, we're an occupied country. They were taking your jobs, taking your benefits, eating your cats and your dogs. That is why you are hurting. Now, that is a crazy explanation, but it is an explanation. Now you tell me what the Democratic explanation was.... Well, the Democratic explanation was, hey, we have passed some good things, very important things in the Biden administration, which happens to be true.... There was no appreciation — no appreciation — of the struggling and the suffering of millions and millions of working class people.... You know, you can't fight something with nothing. You gotta have an alternative vision. Trump had his vision. It was incorrect, it was dishonest. It was in many cases racist and sexist. He had a vision, he had an explanation. To my view, Democrats really did not."

Said Bernie Sanders, in the new episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "Bernie Sanders Says Democrats Have Lost Their Way."

The NYT still has the Electoral College race stalled at 295 to 226...

... with Nevada and Arizona lingering, endlessly unreported.

But Real Clear Politics shows all the states decided, with a final score of 312 to 226. We know where Nevada and Arizona are going — into the big landslide.

So I just want to declare my victory as the one who predicted the final score on December 14, 2023: "Predicted Electoral College vote: 312 Trump, 226 Biden."

I mean, the word "Biden" is wrong, but 312 to 226 was right on the nose.

I gave some good advice then too: "The demonization of Trump has not worked for Democrats.... My advice, not that I think Democrats would or even could follow it: Fight Trump on the substantive merits of the issues. Show us that you deserve the power you seek."

That advice is still good advice. Especially now that it's a landslide. 

It's Election Night at last, and the results are almost in.

I hope to hear The Big Answer before I fall asleep, and that is not an expression of hope for insomnia. I hope there's a nice big juicy clear result that comes in early. A good brisk dose of reality. And then we can all stop fighting, come together, and get some rest.

I'll update this as we go along... if I've got anything to say and I don't conk out.

But, please, get the comments started. The first polls close in about half an hour. 

ADDED, at 12:37 AM: Just woke up after sleeping 3 hours. I see I got what I wanted, a nice clear outcome. Hope you’re happy… or at least keeping your wits about you. 

AND: Dana Bash, on CNN at 1:15: “We’re all living in the manosphere now.”

"He should stand up and say: 'Hey, I’ve won this. And we have teams right now that are going to make sure that this thing is not going to be stolen.'"

Said Steve Bannon, quoted in "Trump, Preparing to Challenge the Results, Puts His 2020 Playbook Into Action/Step by step, Donald J. Trump and his allies are following the strategies that caused chaos four years ago. Election officials say they are ready this time" (NYT)(gift link, because there's a lot of procedural detail to see).

In recently filed court papers naming Mr. Bannon as a co-conspirator in Mr. Trump’s federal election interference case, the special counsel, Jack Smith, noted that Mr. Bannon had said the same thing four years ago. 

“What Trump’s going to do is just declare victory, right?” he said, according to the records, later adding, “That doesn’t mean he’s the winner, he’s just going to say he’s the winner.”

I presume that under at least some circumstances, Kamala Harris would also want to say "Hey, I’ve won this. And we have teams right now that are going to make sure that this thing is not going to be stolen." It's all about when you say that, and not that you'd never say that. If the win is narrow enough, there are challenges. There's litigation. There's such a strong need, for the Harris campaign, to portray Trump as demonic for going as far as he did in January 2021, but that can't mean that it plans to concede immediately if the initial announcement says Trump won.

"I have been working in politics since 1980, and in every single presidential election, at this point in the campaign, I had a clear sense of the winner. (OK, I got it wrong in 2016.)"

"Heading into the final weekend of the race, it is not clear which candidate will win. Given Mr. Trump’s resiliency and his advantages in the Sun Belt states, I believe he has a more plausible path to winning the Electoral College than Ms. Harris does. Still, I would not count Ms. Harris out, because of the potency of the issue of abortion, her superior ground game and the fact that a majority of Americans do not want four more years of Mr. Trump as president...."

Says Doug Sosnik, in "How Harris or Trump Could Win This Deadlocked Presidential Race, in 19 Maps" (NYT).

It sounds as though he has "a clear sense of the winner" this time too, but also has a clear sense of what is wanted from him right now. 

The top-rated comment over there — by a lot — is "Harris/Walz will win Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. And they have a good chance of winning Arizona and Georgia. Stay positive, it helps."

The simple point that's made in the article — despite all the fancy map-graphics — is that Harris needs to win all 3 "blue wall" states and Trump only needs to win one.

"The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election."

 "We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates. As our Editorial Board wrote in 1960: 'The Washington Post has not "endorsed" either candidate in the presidential campaign. That is in our tradition and accords with our action in five of the last six elections. The unusual circumstances of the 1952 election led us to make an exception when we endorsed General Eisenhower prior to the nominating conventions and reiterated our endorsement during the campaign. In the light of hindsight we retain the view that the arguments for his nomination and election were compelling. But hindsight also has convinced us that it might have been wiser for an independent newspaper in the Nation's Capital to have avoided formal endorsement.'" 

That's "A note from the publisher," William Lewis, of The Washington Post, "On political endorsement."

Great! I prefer this policy, especially if it is based on a real commitment to professional, high-level journalism. There's a crazy amount of bias, which drives me away from whatever they are hoping to push. My sympathy for Donald Trump, the target of so much unfairness, is a bit absurd. I'm supposed to hate him? You idiots have made me love him. But somehow now you are drawing the line. What game is this?

"Last week, the Democratic National Committee and Kamala Harris’s campaign did something never done before by a Democratic presidential campaign."

"They released a 30-second TV ad attacking a third-party candidate, specifically the Green Party nominee.... The ad mentions the Green Party nominee by name. I’m not—because she should be ignored, not paid attention with an ad buy or a Washington Monthly bounce in Google algorithms...."

Writes Bill Scher, in "Hey, Democrats: Ignore Green Party Presidential Candidate J**l St**n/The perennial third-party presidential aspirant can’t be a spoiler if voters don’t know she exists and they barely do" (Washington Monthly).

"... Democrats have evidence that confronting third-party candidates works after throttling the independent presidential bid of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.... But Kennedy, coasting on his famous name, began his independent bid with unusually high poll numbers and outsized media attention, warranting a muscular effort to drive him out of the race....  I hear you screaming, But! But! But! The battleground states are dead even!... Sure, but when a third-party candidate is polling between zero and one, you can’t assume many of those voters are even available to either major party candidate.... Despite what the new Democratic Party ad asserts, the evidence does not support the claim that the Greens played a spoiler role in 2016.... The case is much stronger that Nader did play a spoiler role in 2000.... Of course, infinitesimal margins could always happen again—especially when polls are so tight.... But the current Green candidate has been suffocating from a lack of media oxygen—unlike Nader, who was a household name—until the Democrats ran an ad about her!..."

Today the DNC is releasing its first-ever ad focused on third-party candidates.

Trump “likes” that Jill Stein is in this race—because Jill Stein can’t win, but she can help Trump win. pic.twitter.com/93FK6pGIkz

— Jaime Harrison (@harrisonjaime) October 11, 2024

"Seventeen pornographic film actors on Monday announced that they had launched a $100,000 ad campaign on porn sites warning that Project 2025.... wants to ban pornography and imprison people who produce it."

"The online ads will run in the states that will decide the presidency: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.... Vice President Kamala Harris is losing to former President Donald J. Trump among men, but younger men might be winnable — and pornographic websites are among the most heavily trafficked on the internet.... Mr. Trump has sought to distance himself from Project 2025, saying he knows nothing about it or the people involved in its creation...."

The NYT reports.

If you're genuinely concerned about censorship, why would you choose the Democratic Party as the one to trust? 

It's October 5th, so that means 1 month until Election Day.

And maybe you think the race is really tight, almost exactly tied. But I'm looking at this...

Biden was up 6.0 points in Wisconsin in 2020 on October 5th, but he won the state with only a 0.63 margin. Clinton was up 5.5 in Wisconsin in 2016 on October 5th, but Trump won, with a 0.77 margin. How can Harris be looking at a win, when she's only up by 0.8? To believe the candidates are truly tied, you ought to see Harris up by something closer to 5 points.

Note that Harris needs Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Trump only needs to pick off one of those states. In all 3, Harris is far behind where Biden and Clinton were on October 5th. Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 with a 0.72 margin. In 2020, Biden won it, but he had only a 1.17 margin, when the polling on October 5th showed him with a 6.6 point lead. As for Michigan, Biden won by 2.78 points, after showing a 5.8 lead on October 5th. And in 2016, Trump won Michigan — by 0.23 — after Clinton was up by 5.7 on October 5th.

Imagine if Harris were up by 5.7 in Michigan right now, 5.5 in Wisconsin, and 7.5 in Pennsylvania. The media would portray her as absolutely crushing Trump. That's what Clinton had on October 5th. Her supporters were very confident, calling those 3 states the "blue wall." And then Trump won them all.

Of course, Harris's advisers must see this. I presume that behind the scenes, there is panic, if not despair.

ADDED: Here's the headline at The Washington Post for you to read between the lines: "Harris is running a much bigger campaign than Trump. Will it matter? She spends three times as much, employs hundreds more staff and dominates the ad war. But the race is effectively tied."