US Election Week 2020

[Habbaku]

I'm not making the assertion that he's changing his own message--he's attempting to modify the greater Republican narrative away from "FRAUD!1" to "a little dusting of fraud, but Trump lost."

[Admiral Yi]

I'm not surprised to see Fox distancing themselves from Trump.  I commented on Chris Wallace being let off the leash a while back.

[Barrister]

I'm not surprised to see Fox distancing themselves from Trump.  I commented on Chris Wallace being let off the leash a while back.

Now I don't get Fox News, never mind watch it, but I do read too much political coverage.

My understanding is this is part of the ongoing split between the Fox news programming (rightish, but mostly fair, of which Chris Wallace is a part of) and the Fox Primetime opinion programming (Hannity, Carlson, and very, very Trumpy).

[PDH]

Don't see how he's moving the goal posts, then.

Maybe you should watch less then.

You brought him up.

Jesus, a slap fight is so gay.

[Habbaku]

Yeah, as Beeb says, it really depends on the group. I'm not surprised to see Wallace, Baier, Cavuto, etc. veer away from Trump in his loss. Those folks are much more professional than the opinion-side. I am surprised to see the opinion-side start to give up after what seems a relatively brief struggle.

[DGuller]

Maybe Fox realized that it's not in their interest to explode the country, keeping it boiling is where the greatest profits are.

[The Minsky Moment]

Lindsay Graham released an affidavit tonight from an Erie country postal worker alleging ballots arriving at the post office Nov 4 were re-postmarked Nov 3. Even if true it would not significantly impact the result as these ballots are already being challenged as part of the general challenge to postmarked ballots arriving at the clerk's office after Election Day (and those aren't anywhere close to enough to reverse the result).

The affidavit is also somewhat less than compelling. It basically says he overheard a conversation between 2 other people. He did not witness any postmark manipulation himself.  He also mentions contacting Project Veritas (infamous for doctoring videos as part of fake exposes), and ends with a reference to "old allegations against me that have since been resolved"

If this is their best shot Biden can sleep easy tonight.

I'm shocked, *shocked* to report that the affiant retracted his claims when he met with postal inspectors. Only to attempt to retract the retraction in a Project Veritas video a few hours ago.

Your average shit show is a couple steps more dignified and wholesome than Trump's post election legal strategy.

[Admiral Yi]

News announcers can go back to saying "not a single shred of evidence of fraud."

[Sheilbh]

Who could have guessed that outsourcing collecting evidence to Jacob Wohl might not work out

On Fox and the opinion stuff - I think everyone knows Trump watches it and this is largely a form of large-scale counselling through media to talk him through his anger and grief. As I say, in my view, he is psychologically incapable of losing.

[Solmyr]

I feel that would lead to riots in the streets.

Yup

Would that matter to the republicans? There were BLM riots in the streets in summer and they just sent police to beat and gas the protesters. Right now they (up to Pompeo and Barr) are keeping up the pretense that there was widespread voter fraud and Trump has actually won. Sorry, the US is not out of it yet, at this point I won't expect Biden to actually become president until I see him sworn in.

[Josephus]

I'm not surprised to see Fox distancing themselves from Trump.  I commented on Chris Wallace being let off the leash a while back.

Now I don't get Fox News, never mind watch it, but I do read too much political coverage.

My understanding is this is part of the ongoing split between the Fox news programming (rightish, but mostly fair, of which Chris Wallace is a part of) and the Fox Primetime opinion programming (Hannity, Carlson, and very, very Trumpy).

I don't get Fox News either, but over the last month I have been watching bits of it on the Internet, where it is available for free. I concour with your understanding. The news does have a left bias (as much as CNN has an obvious right bias), but by and large they report news objectively. Their commentators on the other hand have definately drunk the Kool Aid

[OttoVonBismarck]

I really don't even want to contribute towards giving air to Trump's tantrum nonsense, which in most respects appears to be a way to generate money for a PAC he's forming (his legal fund is not even routing most of its donations to the legal fight but to the general purpose Trump PAC he is building), but the States have a certification process and the electoral college votes on 12/14. If you see any of these lawsuits significantly delay the certification process that is when your ears should perk up.

So far I haven't seen that happening, and many of these lawsuits again, even if they were successful, would not imperil certifying the various state level elections for Biden. There's a hilariously long shot case he's running in PA that could, but there's no evidence it will have even temporary success as of yet. I guess on some level it's worth paying attention to, but the types of cases Trump is filing seem a lot different than the legal campaign Bush waged in 2000, i.e. a serious legal effort to establish the outcome of the election, and much more like theater. That could change, and at that point my commentary would as well.

It's also telling despite retaining three very prominent national firms, the Trump campaign isn't even using them for these efforts, but is instead using niche/small boutique conservative firms that frequently are involved in relatively unimportant election related litigation. That in itself tells a story about the serious of the effort as well.

[alfred russel]

Estimated 40k votes left to count in Arizona

Trump is averaging 57.7%   Trump needs 66.0%

How's you feeling about that bet Dorsey?

I never bet anyone on Arizona. I just was sort of hoping Trump would win because my girlfriend was annoyed I was still talking about Arizona after the AP called it, and that would demonstrate that I was right that the AP called it too early.

The fact we are still talking about it over a week later I think proves that the call was too early, but at this point I doubt she even remembers that I thought Trump still had a prayer in Arizona on election night despite the AP call.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The real heavy lift to keep in mind for Trump's chances are legally speaking PA had the most shenanigans going on, arguably, and if by some insane miracle the results there were overturned (which I'm not sure I can emphasize enough how unlikely that is), that still leaves Biden with 286. They would have to undermine multiple other states as well to knock Biden out here. Wisconsin is probably their best bet, which still wouldn't be enough. If you look at like, the pre-election legal wrangling over election law, NV / AZ / GA didn't have nearly as much as the midwestern swing states, so are probably much less fertile ground for dispute.

What really makes it a heavy lift for Trump is his margins in some of those states like PA and MI are just so far behind, WI is the closest of all of them but even still would be a heavy lift.

This isn't like FL2000 where Trump is Gore, and Gore needed a longshot success in court in one state, Trump needs even longer shot success in multiple states on multiple different areas of law in which it is highly unlikely even extremely conservative courts will rule his way.

[Syt]