Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, October 19th, 2024.
Sam: It is just before 23 UTC as I'm starting to record this. I'm Sam Minter.
Sam: Yvonne Bowe is not here. So we had, you know, lately we've been doing Friday
Sam: night U.S. time or Saturday during the day.
Sam: So like Saturday UTC almost always recently because I now have something on
Sam: Thursday evenings U.S. time. I've got to do.
Sam: And so Yvonne asked me if we could do Saturday this time because he had something going on Friday.
Sam: And so when we do it Saturday, it's daytime US time. And we were going to do it at 16 UTC.
Sam: But just a couple hours before that, Yvonne texts me and lets me know he's not feeling well.
Sam: And I don't know if he's going to want to give any more details about what's
Sam: up with that next week or not. I don't know. Probably not.
Sam: Long past by then. But the bottom line is he wasn't feeling up to or able to do anything.
Sam: So he's like, I'm sorry, last minute cancel. I'm out.
Sam: And it was close enough to the time we were scheduled to record and that I didn't
Sam: attempt to get any substitute hosts in on two hours notice or whatever.
Sam: But also, to be honest, I'd been up all night with some other stuff going on. I was tired.
Sam: I was going to be staying up. Just, I was getting, you know,
Sam: I'm like, oh, I'm not doing the podcast.
Sam: That means I can sleep a couple hours.
Sam: So I went back to bed and it's hours later.
Sam: Now I did, you know, and agenda wise, this first segment is the rambly personal
Sam: slash non-current events-y, well, non-serious news.
Sam: Sometimes we can do current events that's not serious in this segment.
Sam: That kind of segment. And then we will have two segments of sort of actual newsy stuff.
Sam: And, you know, I guess this time they're going to both be picked by me.
Sam: You can, of course, guess that, you know, hey, look, we've got so little time
Sam: left before the election at this point.
Sam: You know, as I am recording this, it is down to 17 days, 17 days until polls start to close.
Sam: And so, of course, I'm going to be talking about the election. It is.
Sam: If it's not like, I don't know, like I'm struggling to come up with anything
Sam: non-election even to talk about in this initial segment.
Sam: The whole damn rest of the show is probably going to be election stuff in one way, shape, or another.
Sam: You know, 17 days left. What the hell do you expect, people?
Sam: You know, what? I'm going to
Sam: spend like the whole time talking about the Europa Clipper or something.
Sam: I mean, it's on our list. Or the WordPress thing.
Sam: Honestly, I don't have enough to say about those things. The WordPress thing
Sam: seems like it's like an idiotic turf war thing.
Sam: And, you know, people need to get a hold of themselves and, you know,
Sam: just get over it and be civil and work things out and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And it seems like the automatic guy is the guy who's like nutso on this one, not the other people.
Sam: But whatever, whatever. ever. And Europa Clipper, cool.
Sam: They launched it. It won't actually get there for six years.
Sam: And, and, and by the way, six years is 2030, 2030.
Sam: For those of us who remember when the year 2000 was still like way in the future,
Sam: like 2030 coming up on us
Sam: very rapidly it's just it's just wrong it's just
Sam: wrong anyway so what
Sam: do i want to talk about on this this initial slice of
Sam: show you know i actually contemplated just
Sam: being like hey yvonne's not here i'll be back after this break and talk about
Sam: politics but what i will mention and it it's it's relating to the politics vaguely
Sam: but like because it's election graphs related like i i mentioned on a show that i am taking.
Sam: The basically the rest of the time between now and the
Sam: election off and a little bit of time after the election basically i'm taking
Sam: the i'm not going to be back at the day job until november 11th okay so i'm
Sam: taking three weeks off the first two in a little bit are pre-election and then
Sam: is like a few days after the election as well.
Sam: And the reason for this is because in previous years, the volume of polls by
Sam: this point was already absolutely overwhelming.
Sam: And I've mentioned before, I hand enter these polls.
Sam: I manually, like the way election graphs is set up, like, yes,
Sam: I know they're like 538 provides an API. I could do,
Sam: And every four years, I consider it because there have been,
Sam: whether it was 538 or other people
Sam: before that, there have been ways to automatically ingest polling data.
Sam: But I always say to myself, you know, first of all, I may make different decisions.
Sam: Like I'm including some things that 538 doesn't.
Sam: Now, most of the things that I include that 538 doesn't are included by DDHQ
Sam: slash the Hills database. And they also have an automated way to get their stuff
Sam: so I can combine them or something.
Sam: But like I, I make different decisions about what to include the,
Sam: some of the things I include aren't included by either of them.
Sam: Because I'm like, when people do all kinds of variants of like,
Sam: oh, okay, not just here's the registered voter, here's the likely voter,
Sam: but here's the number before we press people for.
Sam: First we just ask people, and then we push the undecided people to make a decision.
Sam: And so that's what's called the with leans.
Sam: It adds in the people who say they're not really decided, but they're kind of
Sam: leaning towards one candidate or the other.
Sam: And I include some of those different ways of looking at it.
Sam: I just include all the variants I can find.
Sam: And so not all of that information is available. And I also feel like there's, there's a value in the,
Sam: having hands-on and looking at each and every data point I put in and what's its effect.
Sam: I also, the way election graphs is structured right now, like it really is set
Sam: to like process one new data point at a time.
Sam: So like I add a data point and then I trigger updating of the site and the mechanisms
Sam: I have to update right now sort of assume there's only one new data point.
Sam: So like if i added five data points and
Sam: then told it go it would get confused like
Sam: mainly in terms of like automatic
Sam: posts on mastodon and stuff like that i think the web website for the most part
Sam: would eventually figure it out but it wouldn't be ideal it's not set up to do
Sam: that it's not set up to sort of detect and handle a bunch of stuff at it at once.
Sam: It really expects one at a time.
Sam: And like, I know that's bad design and I could fix that at some point,
Sam: but it hasn't been a priority for me.
Sam: And I kind of, you know, enjoy doing it data point by data point.
Sam: But the point of all this is I'm doing it manually and I'm not only typing in
Sam: the line of data manually, but after I type in the data and I trigger the processing,
Sam: it takes It takes a couple minutes for it to do everything it's going to do with the new data point.
Sam: It can be, and then if it's something that triggers a tipping point change or
Sam: a state crosses from one of my categories to another, it takes even longer because it waits on,
Sam: like some things are processed like immediately and other things are on like
Sam: a time thing where it only gets looked at every five minutes or whatever.
Sam: So if it's one of those, I have to wait for it and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Anyway, the point is, it takes me on average...
Sam: Maybe three or four minutes per data point. Like some of them are less and some of them are more.
Sam: And so like when there are lots and lots of polls, it ends up taking me lots and lots of time.
Sam: And in previous cycles, like four years ago, by the time you got to two weeks
Sam: out, I mean, I was, you know, taking six plus hours a day.
Sam: Like it was getting close to being a full-time job, just putting all the stuff
Sam: in. there were a couple of outlets that were doing, you know,
Sam: 50 state tracking polls where every day they were putting out new numbers for every state.
Sam: And there were, you know, and all the swing states were getting like a whole
Sam: bunch every day, practically, etc.
Sam: And so for the last couple of cycles, I've taken time off before election day.
Sam: I think last time I also like four years ago, I think I also took three weeks.
Sam: The time before that, I think I only took two weeks.
Sam: But it feels slower this
Sam: time like there are a bunch of
Sam: polls right now like as i am recording right now there
Sam: are a bunch of polls that came out friday afternoon slash evening and it's saturday
Sam: afternoon right now and i haven't put them in yet because i was otherwise occupied
Sam: and i'll do it after I finish this segment, probably.
Sam: And it's, it's, it's probably going to be, I don't know, an hour or two of stuff
Sam: to catch up, but an hour or two is not six hours.
Sam: You know, it does seem slower than it was. And, and maybe it's just like,
Sam: I'm not remembering properly.
Sam: And it was like this, but you know, I'm, I'm hoping that I actually not only
Sam: get to do all the election graph stuff, but I have time to do some other stuff.
Sam: Like I want to catch up around the house. I want to, you know,
Sam: I want to do some cleaning.
Sam: I want to do some laundry.
Sam: I want to do a little bit on some projects other than election graphs.
Sam: I want to spend some time watching TV with Alex, you know, all this kind of
Sam: stuff and a few other things, you know, um.
Sam: But I don't know, we got two weeks left, maybe it'll like radically ramp up
Sam: just for the last two weeks.
Sam: And I shouldn't be saying, oh, it looks better than the other cycles.
Sam: Because I'm going to end up back absolutely hammered for the next two weeks. We'll see.
Sam: Hammered, not in the sense of like drinking and being drunk,
Sam: but hammered in the sense of just having lots of stuff to do, you know.
Sam: Anyway but i'm hoping to do
Sam: other stuff and frankly like look it's it's
Sam: different than a real vacation i haven't taken like a real vacation where like
Sam: myself and the family or myself and my wife or whatever like go somewhere and
Sam: just freaking relax by a pool or something in like,
Sam: I cannot remember us doing that ever, honestly.
Sam: And we really fucking should at some point, like all of my vacations are like,
Sam: I'm going to take off a week to do something.
Sam: The last time I took a week off was to add the, the,
Sam: the with time left probabilistic models
Sam: to election graph and now i'm taking time off to
Sam: do election graph stuff and then one week
Sam: after the election ostensibly to sort of recover and
Sam: also to pick up my wife's campaign yard signs but like the yard signs aren't
Sam: that much this because she was unopposed this year so like i only put out like
Sam: between 20 and 30 signs whereas two years ago when she had an opponent it was
Sam: between 200 and 300 signs,
Sam: I think. Maybe it was about 200 signs.
Sam: It might be slightly under 200. I don't know. In that ballpark,
Sam: I could look it up, but it feels like it was 200 to 300 signs.
Sam: A week wasn't even time to pick up all the signs and to check all the locations.
Sam: I shouldn't say pick them all up because the reality is a significant fraction of them will be gone.
Sam: People will have stolen them, thrown them into the woods where you can't get to them.
Sam: Although we tried really hard. If we could see it in the woods, we, we would get it.
Sam: Like I even bought like one of these like long 25 foot apple picker things so
Sam: that I could reach one that somebody had thrown into like a thicket and try to pull it back out.
Sam: And I successfully got it, but I had to like buy equipment.
Sam: To get that thing out. But anyway, so what, what I'm hoping like is I actually am,
Sam: don't end up completely slammed by election graphs and signs and all this kind
Sam: of stuff and actually can relax a little bit too, you know?
Sam: And yeah, I mentioned like filling some of that time with housework and okay.
Sam: Yeah. There's all kinds of housework and chores and things that
Sam: just need to get done and it's nice to have time
Sam: to do that too and to some degree that's like relaxing to
Sam: me too depending on what the task is some of them i have like dread but others
Sam: i'm like yeah i actually find doing laundry like like a sort of relaxing zen
Sam: thing you know i have a specific method of course you know i have all my autistic tendencies i have like.
Sam: A 30 step algorithm that I use that probably no one else does it anywhere near the way I do.
Sam: And there are certain things that are important to me about the process that
Sam: no one else would care about. And there are certain things that other people
Sam: would care about that I don't even bother with at all.
Sam: But the point is, you know, I can spend an hour or whatever,
Sam: like sorting laundry, putting away laundry, moving laundry from place to place
Sam: and putting it in a machine and blah, blah, blah, and taking it upstairs, downstairs, whatever.
Sam: And, you know, while I'm doing that, I'm listening to something cool on the
Sam: headphones and I'm, you know, just relaxing a little bit, but you know,
Sam: it'll be nice if these three weeks actually end up with a decent amount of time
Sam: for me to just be sitting on the couch,
Sam: watching TV with Alex or other stuff, you know,
Sam: I could deal with that.
Sam: You know, relaxing is fun. And, you know, I...
Sam: One of these days I should really do another, you know, the thing I should do
Sam: is another one of those random vacations.
Sam: Like I've the, the next on the list one has been go to go to the Yucatan in
Sam: Mexico for like two decades.
Sam: It's time to actually freaking do that thing.
Sam: Maybe next year we can organize that. I don't know. At one point Yvonne was like, I'll go with you.
Sam: So that'd be fun. Curmudgeons corner live from the Yucatan.
Sam: You know, we could do that. Anybody else want to join me there?
Sam: Like a random trip, Southern Yucatan, like, like right near the border of Belize
Sam: is where we're talking, not like Cancun or the major tourist spots.
Sam: Although I guess it's, it's the, the, the Mayan Riviera or whatever.
Sam: Like, so there's, there is tourism nearby anyway.
Sam: Like, so I'm on vacation on sort of a personal work project sort of vacation, which,
Sam: you know, I understand I need to do the other type someday, but this is as close as I get.
Sam: And I get to do things that are sort of my priorities that I figure out what
Sam: I want to do and how I want to spend my time. And it's not governed by like
Sam: work needs this or work needs that.
Sam: And even that alone is refreshing. You know, even if it's not like you're,
Sam: I'm not going somewhere on a trip and doing typical tourist stuff,
Sam: but it's like actually having time that's mine.
Sam: And that's, that's important. Like, I mean, yes, I have time that's mine every
Sam: weekend and in the evenings, but it's not the same.
Sam: Like honestly i am just
Sam: like by the time i get to the end of the weekend i'm just feeling like i've
Sam: started to recover and i'm ready to like you know because of course i fill the
Sam: weekends with stuff like this podcast and with election graph stuff anyway and
Sam: with with other things like that So,
Sam: you know, I sort of complete all of that stuff, usually sometimes Sunday,
Sam: and then it's already time to start thinking about Monday, you know.
Sam: So anyway, I'm looking forward to the next three weeks.
Sam: Well, I'm nervous about the election, and we'll talk about that soon enough.
Sam: But, but just from a personal point of view,
Sam: like not worrying about going into work, not worrying about what's going on there and like,
Sam: you know, all of the, the, the chaos that's associated with any workplace and
Sam: with my workplace in specific at the moment is nice.
Sam: Do I have any more, but first stuff to do? Have I rambled long enough about
Sam: how I'm enjoying like the fact that I'm on now on vacation?
Sam: This is like, I'm like less than 24 hours in to not having to deal with work stuff.
Sam: But, and so I, I'm not like fully into it yet. I haven't actually started any
Sam: of the things I intended to do during these three weeks yet.
Sam: I haven't even entered in a single data point for election graphs yet.
Sam: I'll, I'll do that after. I'm just doing this normal weekend thing of recording the podcast.
Sam: And I haven't done any household chores yet, you know, but I will.
Sam: I will do all these things.
Sam: So I'm just at the beginning. I'm still excited about it. We'll see how I feel
Sam: in another week or whatever.
Sam: Only other but first. Let's see. Let's, let's, let's click off the things that
Sam: are not like news politics related.
Sam: SpaceX catch, catched SpaceX caught their booster thing. Cool.
Sam: It's still too bad. Elon is, has his name associated with that,
Sam: but SpaceX does do some cool stuff and it's not cause of Elon.
Sam: It's cause of all of the other good engineers who work at that company.
Sam: And good management, et cetera.
Sam: Like from everything I can tell, that place is doing well in part because Elon
Sam: isn't fucking with it on an everyday basis.
Sam: I still worry about like the amount of dependency our space program is getting
Sam: on SpaceX right now because Boeing's doing so badly right now and the government
Sam: itself is doing less on its own and contracting out almost everything.
Sam: I mean, even when they did like Saturn V and the space shuttle and stuff, Obviously,
Sam: contractors built the actual machines, but the government was much more in the
Sam: driver's seat, whereas now they're sort of in a, we want private contractors to do like everything.
Sam: And, you know, that's a little worrying, but it's still cool.
Sam: They, the new heavy, I mean, they've been landing their rockets for a long time
Sam: now, but this is the biggest one yet that they've actually managed to catch.
Sam: And it's a key element in the future plan. So awesome. Good job.
Sam: The WordPress press stuff. I mentioned briefly the Europa stuff.
Sam: I already mentioned briefly, uh.
Sam: Is that it? I think that's it. So here you go.
Sam: I am going to take a thingy.
Sam: Yeah, I'm going to take a break.
Sam: And I'm probably going to come back and record the next segment tomorrow.
Sam: Since I don't have a co-host, I'm splitting this up over probably three different
Sam: sessions, And then I'll put out the actual audio version.
Sam: If you were on YouTube, you can see the parts as they get done, if not live.
Sam: So nobody's been watching live this time around, but that's okay. That's okay.
Sam: I feel okay by that. I'm not feeling neglected. Yeah.
Sam: Okay. First break. What did I say? First break. First break. It's this one.
Sam: It's this one right here. And we'll be back after this. And look,
Sam: the rest of the show, one way or another, is going to be related to the presidential election.
Sam: Like, I mean, we maybe talk about, you know, tangentially related politics as
Sam: well, but it's basically all politics and basically all election.
Sam: Because, like I said, the days are ticking down.
Sam: There's not much left. But first, this break.
Break: Do, do, do. This podcast is sponsored by alexemzilla.com.
Break: Alex Emzilla is great. It's on YouTube.
Break: And it has lots of fun videos.
Break: Alex Emsola is awesome and great.
Break: I love his videos, and they are obviously better than Curmudgeon's Corner.
Break: While they're funnier, they're more interesting. And frankly,
Break: he seems at least a little smarter than either of the hosts of Curmudgeon's Corner.
Break: Honestly, it's ridiculous how endlessly talented and phenomenal Alex Emsola is.
Break: That's how great his YouTube channel is A-L-E-X-M-X-E-L-A dot com Yes Do, do, do!
Sam: And so we are back It is now Sunday,
Sam: October 20th At just before 17 UTC As I'm starting to record this second segment
Sam: So the plan here I'm going to do the election graphs update for this segment
Sam: and talk about polls and polling and where things look and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Although to be honest, we're kind of in the same situation we have been,
Sam: but I'll talk about it in more detail.
Sam: And then in the next segment, I'll talk about everything else in terms of how
Sam: things are going and what's going on in the race and all this kind of stuff.
Sam: So poll wise, first of all, right after I published last week's show,
Sam: I did an election graphs update.
Sam: I ended up like I put in a place what I do, like I'll start the blog post and
Sam: I'll put in a tentative title and then I'll actually do the blog post when I pull.
Sam: And as part of that, I'm pulling all the data. I'm looking at which states moved
Sam: which way since the last blog post, all of this kind of stuff.
Sam: And then, and then I put it, I write sort of TLDR summary at the very top.
Sam: And then, you know, which I, I, I don't write that summary until I have,
Sam: after I've done the analysis in case the analysis gives me something different than my impression.
Sam: And then I should go back in and change the title of the post too. But I forgot that.
Sam: You know so i had put in the tentative title
Sam: bad week for harris because my
Sam: overall impression prior to pulling all the data
Sam: is it had been kind of a bad week but in reality when i pulled the data it was
Sam: very very mixed the tipping point moved by 0.1 percent and it actually moved
Sam: towards harris the the things that made me think it was a bad week which were
Sam: bad factors were that last week,
Sam: there were a number of just barely Harris states that moved to just barely Trump.
Sam: And so, yeah, that was movement away from Harris.
Sam: And it left a situation with no, there were no weak Harris states left at all.
Sam: There were no states, when I did that last update, that were between a tie and
Sam: Harris up by 5%. Those had all been emptied out. Those had all gone to Trump.
Sam: That seemed bad but when i did all of the analysis it
Sam: looked well like i said the tipping point moved
Sam: by 0.1 and that 0.1 was towards harris
Sam: and the the the
Sam: win odds were all roughly the same it ended up being kind of a flat week so
Sam: i i realized i hadn't changed the title after i hit publish and at that point
Sam: the permalink is set the url is set i mean there are ways to change it but you
Sam: break those permalinks.
Sam: And so I just added a question mark to the title of it.
Sam: Bad week for Harris question mark without changing the text of the post itself,
Sam: which is kind of lame because really it should have been,
Sam: you know, a flat week and with everything still in the where we are right now.
Sam: And I'll get to the changes in the last week momentarily, but for a long time
Sam: now, it's been, hey, it's too close to call.
Sam: We are within the zone where polling can't tell you the winner.
Sam: It is reasonably possible that Harris will win by a decent margin.
Sam: It is also reasonably possible that Trump will win by a decent margin.
Sam: At the very moment, last week and also this week,
Sam: if you just give every state to whoever's ahead by even the tiniest amount in
Sam: my averages, it gives a slight narrow advantage to Trump.
Sam: And in my probabilities it gives an
Sam: even bigger advantage to trump just simply because my
Sam: probabilities are based on looking at the last four election cycles and how
Sam: have the polls been off in the last four election cycles and more often than
Sam: not they have underestimated republicans so my odds are essentially based on
Sam: okay we're probably going to underestimate the republicans again.
Sam: There's a chance that we won't, but we're probably going to underestimate the
Sam: Republicans again, which gives a little bit more of an advantage to Trump than, you know,
Sam: other folks who give odds, give it much closer to 50-50 than I do at the moment,
Sam: because I'm assuming we're going to underestimate Republicans again.
Sam: If we don't underestimate Republicans again, and you know, it's more likely,
Sam: like, I think a lot of the others are assuming that there's no correlation between
Sam: past performance and past polling errors with current polling errors.
Sam: So they assume there can be polling error, but they assume that we have absolutely
Sam: no idea which way that polling error will go.
Sam: Whereas I assume that it'll be like previous years and on average previous years
Sam: have underestimated the Republican.
Sam: We won't know who's right on that until we count things.
Sam: And honestly, you know, as I've said on this show before, I personally think
Sam: there are a lot of signs that the polling is actually going to underestimate Harris this time.
Sam: There are a lot of reasons to think that. But I'm not going to put my thumb,
Sam: on what my models are doing.
Sam: I'm basing it off the data, basing it off previous elections.
Sam: I'm not going to be like, oh, my gut says that this time they're going to underestimate
Sam: Harris and therefore change something.
Sam: Or even just assume flat, you know, so we'll see.
Sam: But I actually feel like election graphs is, I don't know. I don't know.
Sam: I feel like I personally am more optimistic than what election graph says.
Sam: But as I keep saying over and over again, you know, I don't want to like,
Sam: my gut is not something I'm necessarily going to trust here.
Sam: I'm going to be like, look, if things are like previous years,
Sam: to really feel confident about being ahead, Harris has to have a decent lead
Sam: in all the swing states, not just be tied in all the swing states.
Sam: And essentially, that's where we are.
Sam: So now, since last week, we've had a bunch of polls.
Sam: And as I am, let's see, what were we down to? As I'm recording now,
Sam: we're down to 16.3 days between polls, days before polls start to close.
Sam: And by the way, the 16.3, I also checked, like double-checked the polling close
Sam: times, you know, and I'm regretting a little bit my choice of where I set this,
Sam: like when I set the site up a while ago. And I've debated changing it.
Sam: I have it set to, the end date is 23 UTC on election day.
Sam: And the thing is, polls do start to close at 23 UTC, but no full states close
Sam: until zero UTC, an hour later.
Sam: So I've been like, you know, stressing over the fact that, hey,
Sam: I should have had the end date set all this time to zero UTC rather than 23
Sam: UTC, because that's when full states start to close as opposed to just partial states.
Sam: And really if you're talking about partial states you
Sam: have like a whole day earlier with like well not
Sam: quite a whole day but like 18 hours earlier or something when dicksville notch
Sam: and all of those little towns start to close but anyway i'm keeping it how it
Sam: is like my my site again is set up stupidly like if i wanted to change that
Sam: date i have to change it in like 20 or 30 different places,
Sam: and it would be easy to miss one.
Sam: And I don't. I don't. This is stupid. Like, it should be one place and then
Sam: everything else picks it up from that place.
Sam: But no, no, I had to be stupid.
Sam: It's in, like, 23 different places because it's all, like, historical.
Sam: It was put there when it was and I never standardized it and blah, blah, whatever.
Sam: And it is when the first, like, major sections of states close.
Sam: You know, it's what, what, what could I say? It is what it is.
Sam: Do I still have the map? Yeah, I have the map. So here it's 23 UTC,
Sam: by the way, is going to be.
Sam: Oh, and also there was effective, like they changed when savings time would
Sam: be, but savings time is still before election night.
Sam: So it didn't actually affect this. The first things to close at 6 p.m.
Sam: Eastern, which is 23 UTC, are part, well, most of Indiana, but not all of Indiana,
Sam: and the eastern half of Kentucky.
Sam: Those are going to be the first two things to close, but they won't give results
Sam: for either of those states until the entire state closes an hour later at 7 p.m., which is zero UTC.
Sam: And then at seven we've got like vermont
Sam: virginia indiana kentucky south carolina georgia and
Sam: florida so we'll start to get an indication for real then anyway how did i get
Sam: a tangent tangent i was talking about like stuff for this week hold on yeah
Sam: here we go here we go blah blah blah okay Okay,
Sam: stuff for changes in the polls this week.
Sam: Basically, the bottom line of what happened is some of those states that had
Sam: gone over from just barely Harris to just barely Trump have now gone back.
Sam: We now have Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania back on the just barely Harris,
Sam: weak Harris side of things.
Sam: We still have Trump favored in my averages.
Sam: Just the straight averages, forget the probabilities for the moment,
Sam: because Wisconsin, Trump still has a lead in Wisconsin by 0.1%.
Sam: So, you know, and I, and I would suspect that it probably will go back soon, but again,
Sam: like the theme that we've had all along is so many close States right now under
Sam: 2% margin in the poll averages.
Sam: We have Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina,
Sam: and then we have Georgia at exactly 2% and Arizona at 2.1%.
Sam: So you can generally throw those in again. So we have the same seven states,
Sam: Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia,
Sam: and Arizona, who are all razor thin in terms of polling averages.
Sam: So, like...
Sam: If polling averages are just randomly wrong, then, you know, it could go either way.
Sam: If polling averages are systematically underestimating Trump again,
Sam: then Trump will win by a decent margin.
Sam: If polls are systematically underestimating Harris this time,
Sam: then she will win by a decent margin.
Sam: And everything in between there is still possible at any point in time.
Sam: Now one people one thing that
Sam: people had asked a number of times is well
Sam: what about this whole thing with the zone being flooded by conservative pollsters
Sam: are they intentionally trying to manipulate these kinds of averages to make
Sam: things look more republican than they would otherwise to help Trump out?
Sam: And honestly, I think the answer is yes. I think they are.
Sam: I did an analysis the other day.
Sam: Let me see if I can find it. I should have had it. I should have had it ready.
Sam: I should have had it ready. But let me get that up for you.
Sam: Somebody on Mastodon asked the election graphs account, well, what about this?
Sam: Specifically, they were like, what
Sam: happens when you take out the red wave polls this was
Sam: let's see somebody titled themselves
Sam: trump chaos fatigue with handle
Sam: di di x is nine on
Sam: mastodon.social anyway what happens when you take the red wave polls out and
Sam: so what i did as just an example and probably when i do the next blog post for
Sam: election graphs i'll do this again on whatever is now of the tipping point state
Sam: but But I did it on Pennsylvania,
Sam: and this was like three days ago now, so the numbers would have changed.
Sam: But just as an example...
Sam: I looked at my polling average and the election graphs philosophy is to include fucking everything.
Sam: Include everything we can find, including folks like Rasmussen,
Sam: who have a known partisan agenda, including folks like Trafalgar, same thing.
Sam: And then there are others that are less clear, like, you know,
Sam: maybe, maybe there are Republican aligned pollsters or maybe they're not.
Sam: And they just like, but they seem to historically bias towards the Republicans, whatever.
Sam: So what I did is, because one of the reasons I don't take that into account
Sam: is I don't want to get into the game of making judgment calls of like who to
Sam: include or who not to include.
Sam: Or even more complicated like try to
Sam: rate them and weight them
Sam: differently depending on their accuracy or do
Sam: like 538 does and apply correction factors that say like this pollster usually
Sam: overestimates the democrats so we're going to apply a correction factor blah
Sam: blah blah i just don't want to get into that game that's like it's so much putting
Sam: your you know to use the phrase Again,
Sam: putting your thumb on things that, you know, you end up having so much room
Sam: for judgment on what do you include?
Sam: What do you not include? How do you weigh it? How do you do this?
Sam: How do you do that? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And you can get completely different fucking answers depending on what you do.
Sam: And I don't want to do that on election graphs. So I just include everything.
Sam: But 538 does have pollster ratings. They go from a zero to three scale where
Sam: they basically look at all kinds of things about the pollster,
Sam: including their accuracy in terms of how the polls have done compared to the actual results.
Sam: But that's not the only thing that goes into the rating.
Sam: They also take into account things like how transparent are they about their
Sam: methodology and a variety of other factors.
Sam: But they end up giving that zero to three score on pollsters.
Sam: And basically, like, if you're close to a three, you're a really good,
Sam: high quality pollster that, you know, everyone should trust and pay attention to.
Sam: And if you're getting down close to zero, you're kind of trash and people should mostly ignore you.
Sam: And then they've got they've actually got a fourth category pollsters.
Sam: They've entirely banned that don't even have a rating because they exclude them
Sam: from their from their averages entirely.
Sam: And so I recalculated the Pennsylvania average at that time, which right now is.
Sam: Three days later, I have Pennsylvania. It rounds to 0.0.
Sam: It's, it's like, I have it listed as a 0.0% Harris lead, but my system,
Sam: the way my averages work, it actually can't be exactly 0.0.
Sam: Like if it's, if it really is an exact high, it'll pull in older polls until
Sam: it's not. So I know it's not exactly 0.00, it rounds to 0.0.
Sam: Anyway, three days later, I have it at zero. But when I did this analysis, it had Harris up by 0.1%.
Sam: But then if you restrict it to only pollsters who rated 1.5 or above on 538
Sam: scale, it jumps to Harris by 0.4%.
Sam: If you restricted it to only 2.0 and above, it's up to 0.8.
Sam: And if you restrict it to 2.5 and above, it's Harris by 1.5.
Sam: So for Pennsylvania at that moment in time,
Sam: ignoring lower quality pollsters without trying to identify are they specifically
Sam: like red wave polls or pollsters?
Sam: Are clearly like trying to i shouldn't
Sam: say clearly i don't want to imply you know impugn
Sam: people's motives although i think there's plenty of evidence um
Sam: you know if you take out the low quality pollsters harris's numbers went up
Sam: by 1.4 percent in pennsylvania on that example but i think that like that's
Sam: going to vary by state that's going to vary over time so like like if i do this again,
Sam: you know, right now the tipping point state is Wisconsin, where Trump is up by 0.1%.
Sam: If I do that same thing, do I get the same result? I don't know.
Sam: Eyeballing right now the latest polls in the
Sam: mix for that state are bullfinch rmg research
Sam: redfield and wilton patriot polling and rasmussen
Sam: those are the ones that are in my average right now which ones do i know and
Sam: like that's i think rmg research patriot polling and rasmussen are probably
Sam: all ones that you would potentially consider as at least in the zone of suspicion,
Sam: for the effect we're talking about.
Sam: And guess what? First of all, those are three out of five polls in my average.
Sam: So they definitely dominate the average.
Sam: Those are the three that have Trump ahead. RMG has Trump up by one.
Sam: Patriot polling has Trump up by one. Rasmussen has Trump up by two.
Sam: The other two in the average, Bullfinch, if you average their two results, have Harris up by 2.5.
Sam: Redfield and Wilton have Harris up by one. Now, if I was actually going to do
Sam: like the analysis I did before, I wouldn't just average those two.
Sam: I'd find two other older ones to include in the average that were more trustworthy.
Sam: Just glancing through, I think that would be morning consult,
Sam: which has Trump up by one and probably insider advantage, which has Trump tied.
Sam: So you would pull in a couple of Trump things, but they would be Trump things
Sam: that aren't quite as strong as the ones you just excluded.
Sam: But even when you put all that into place, it's a relatively small difference.
Sam: It's like that Pennsylvania example where I actually did all the math.
Sam: It was a 1.4% difference.
Sam: 1.4% is very small. However, when you've got seven fucking states that are all
Sam: at a 2.1% or less margin right now,
Sam: 1.4% doesn't look that small anymore.
Sam: It's pretty big. But the thing, and so you have to keep in mind though, that the actual,
Sam: all of this is still just coming out to say it's close enough.
Sam: The polls can't tell you the difference.
Sam: Even, even with this. Now, could you like, if I did all my averages with only
Sam: pollsters that had 2.5 or above on 538 scale, would it be different? Yes.
Sam: Would it be more towards Harris?
Sam: I think right now it would be. I haven't done the analysis on more than that
Sam: one thing on, on Harris, on Pennsylvania, because that took me a while to do.
Sam: You know, I was like going through the list of polls on my site and looking
Sam: up the pollster rating on each one and then deciding whether to include it or
Sam: not, and then doing the average by hand and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: You know, so it took me a little while to do that. I might do,
Sam: hell, for my post, I might do it on all seven swing states just to see.
Sam: That will be very interesting. I think I now determined I need to do that.
Sam: But yeah it's yes I think they are doing that I think they are,
Sam: putting their thumbs again the thumbs and what are you supposed to put your
Sam: thumb on the are you putting your thumb on the needle,
Sam: as the scales you're putting your thumb on the scales that's where that comes
Sam: from it's like you're you're you're weighing stuff and you're you're making
Sam: it look like you have a you're selling a little bit more than you actually are whatever I've got it
Sam: that that's thumb on the scales not thumb on the needle not thumb on the thing
Sam: thumb on the thing sounds like a good title for the show though anyway the tipping
Sam: point in the last week oh i,
Sam: one more thing on the these pollsters and that may be intentionally well more
Sam: than one thing that may be intentionally trying to skew averages because people
Sam: have been saying they've been flooding the area.
Sam: Like they've been putting out lots of results from all kinds of different right-wing
Sam: pollsters all over the place in all the swing states.
Sam: And so it's like, well, what's their motivation exactly?
Sam: Like, because if you're trying to actually figure out what's going to happen
Sam: in a state, you want to do your damn best to not be biased.
Sam: You want to do your best to make assumptions that reflect reality so that you
Sam: can get the best estimate you possibly can of what's going on.
Sam: But there are other possible motivations. Well,
Sam: and before I go to other possible motivations, it is very possible that the
Sam: Republican leaning pollsters actually just honestly believe their models,
Sam: honestly believe all the other pollsters are missing Trump voters.
Sam: And they are doing things with their modeling to make it more likely to catch those voters.
Sam: And in both 2016 and
Sam: 2020 including these right-wing
Sam: pollsters at the very end of
Sam: the election made i can't speak for the other folks anybody else doing averages
Sam: but including them i am convinced made my averages closer to the actual results
Sam: than they would have been otherwise because the other pollsters were missing Republicans.
Sam: There were Republicans who weren't answering polls, the famed Trump shyness or whatever.
Sam: And so they were, whatever their motivations, whatever their methodologies,
Sam: which may or may not be valid by, you know, what pollsters say you should be
Sam: doing, gave better answers.
Sam: Now, maybe they were just lucky. They essentially skewed their polls to be more
Sam: Republican, more Trumpy, and just happened to be right.
Sam: It doesn't mean their methodology was correct.
Sam: They just happened to be right.
Sam: So like, this is another reason I'm reluctant to like manually make decisions
Sam: to remove certain pollsters from my averages is because frankly,
Sam: I don't know who's right.
Sam: Even if, even if they are motivated by things other than accuracy,
Sam: I don't know who's right.
Sam: And and my my methodology
Sam: of doing probabilities and all
Sam: that takes into account the fact
Sam: that the last few weeks before the 2016 and 2020
Sam: elections there were lots of pollsters in the field who were redder than the
Sam: others and my averages reflected that so like if i change that this time around
Sam: it changes the ability to compare to those previous years anyway it does look like that's happening.
Sam: So when you look at polls and polling averages, interpret accordingly.
Sam: If you want to look at the election graphs ones and say, well,
Sam: how would that look if you only do pollsters that aren't known to be affiliated
Sam: in some way with right-wing causes?
Sam: The state detail pages have the exact list of polls I include and the exact
Sam: list of historical polls pull out of whichever ones you think you trust and
Sam: make your own average. See where that is.
Sam: Okay, having said all that, back to the national summary and where we are right now.
Sam: The tipping point since last week has moved from Trump leading by 0.8% to Trump
Sam: only leading by 0.1% with all of the caveats about interpreting that than I just said.
Sam: If you plug that into my time left before election models,
Sam: you end up with Harris's chances at between 17.8 and 34.2%, which I would be
Sam: much happier if it was over 50, but it's not right now.
Sam: And the main reason is what I mentioned before.
Sam: I'm kind of assuming, based on the historical averages, that polls are underestimating Harris.
Sam: And right now, well, first of all, right now, just with the straight poll averages,
Sam: Trump wins anyway, even without putting that into effect.
Sam: He's ahead by 0.1% in the tipping point state. If he actually wins Wisconsin,
Sam: North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona, he wins.
Sam: He wins by six electoral votes. It ends up being super close in terms of the
Sam: electoral college, and he wins.
Sam: But even if you give Wisconsin, let's say Wisconsin moves from 0.1% Trump to 0.1% Harris.
Sam: She's still got nevada pennsylvania
Sam: and wisconsin less than half a point ahead and michigan not at only 1.7 and
Sam: if you and that's about how far i'm gonna have to like pull it hold on what's
Sam: the exact number i think it's like 1.3 1.4 something like that,
Sam: Okay, I'm going to look up the post where I said, I always forget this number.
Sam: My actual, here we go, 1.3%.
Sam: If you look at the curves I use for looking at an individual state and what
Sam: are the odds of the Republicans or Democrats winning,
Sam: the break-even point where there's a 50-50 chance is Democrats ahead by 1.3%.
Sam: So basically my models say that in order for Harris to have a better than even chance in a state,
Sam: you need to have her poll averages, not just on her side, but more than 1.3% on her side.
Sam: And right now, you know,
Sam: that means that Nevada and Pennsylvania are still more likely to go to Trump
Sam: than to Harris with my model and Michigan just barely like, I lie.
Sam: Even Michigan, like that I, at the moment, oh yeah, here we go.
Sam: And this is where it differs from with the time left before the election versus now.
Sam: In Michigan, if the election was held today, I give Harris a 57.1% with her 1.7% lead.
Sam: But with 16.4 days left, I actually
Sam: only give her a 49% chance because there's time for that to change.
Sam: And historically things have changed in that time. so anyway.
Sam: Look, all of this round and round and round on this just really in the end comes
Sam: down to, we can't fucking tell.
Sam: There's too many closed states. We can't tell.
Sam: I'm like, you know, going from, you know, does Trump have a slight advantage
Sam: to this? Harris have a slight advantage.
Sam: Either way, it could go either way.
Sam: Like if you look at my of i
Sam: said between 17.8 and 34.2 percent according
Sam: to my accounting for time left models i think
Sam: the my and here's my gut that i don't put on the website directly but like i
Sam: feel like between those two models reality is probably like 70 of the way towards
Sam: the uniform swing model.
Sam: So the two models, the independent states model, that's the one that gives 17,
Sam: 8% assumes that the polling error is completely unrelated in all the states.
Sam: Like you could have one state underestimating Harris by 3% and another state
Sam: underestimating Trump by 3% and then it can all be doing like that.
Sam: Uniform swing assumes the same polling error everywhere.
Sam: And so if the polls are underestimating Harris by 3%, they're underestimating
Sam: Harris by 3% everywhere.
Sam: Now, obviously, neither one of those two extremes is going to be correct.
Sam: It's going to be somewhere in between.
Sam: I think it's going to be closer to uniform swing, simply because you got the
Sam: same pollsters that are producing polls in all the swing states.
Sam: So if they've got some sort of methodological assumptions that produce a polling
Sam: error, it's likely to be the same in all the swing states.
Sam: So I think it's going to be closer to uniform swing.
Sam: Anyway, so let's call it 30%. Let's say Harris has a 30% chance.
Sam: 30-70 does not mean Harris can't win.
Sam: 30-70 means that, yeah, maybe Trump would be slightly favored.
Sam: But it's not – I always bring back the average odds that people gave Trump in 2016 were about 14%.
Sam: So Harris has much better ads now than Trump had eight years ago.
Sam: And so you should not be like 30%. Oh no, that's like nothing.
Sam: And again, that's assuming that poll errors this time will be somewhat like
Sam: poll errors in the last couple of years, which I think is a reasonable way to do assumptions.
Sam: If you did not have that assumption though, like, you know, most of the like
Sam: 538 and the economist both have it really close to 50, 50.
Sam: And that's where we are still. And honestly, I'd say like 70-30,
Sam: 30-70 is still effectively a coin toss.
Sam: It's a weighted coin, but it's nowhere near like, it's still too close to call.
Sam: You still would not be surprised by a Harris victory.
Sam: A Harris landslide is even still within the realm of possibility.
Sam: But i'd still much rather actually be ahead.
Sam: I'd much rather actually be ahead but as as folks have said,
Sam: if it's in within the margin of error it's when it's within,
Sam: if it let me say that again without like
Sam: if it's within the margin of error it's
Sam: within the margin of effort and i
Sam: think that's very true and that's why
Sam: people are trying hard and we're
Sam: going to wrap up this segment about polls and then we'll start
Sam: talking about the the non-polling parts of
Sam: what's going on with the election and and
Sam: there we'll get into some of the reasons why you know
Sam: i keep saying my gut is that polls are
Sam: underestimating harris related to how
Sam: the campaign is actually going right now and so yeah we'll talk about that in
Sam: a minute well a minute for you for me i'm gonna go off do some household chores
Sam: do some other stuff maybe get some food,
Sam: i'm gonna do stuff and come back to do another segment later a few hours later
Sam: later in the day tonight. I don't know.
Sam: When I feel like it, I'll get back to you. But for you, for you,
Sam: it is only this lovely short break.
Break: Okie dokie. Here it comes.
Break: Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!
Break: It was just my internet being stupid. My internet being stupid is a new song we will make.
Break: The baby
Break: build a little bit more than you do Come on,
Break: come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.
Break: I'm tired. What's wrong? I'm really tired.
Break: You, you, you, it's, it's amazing. To get the show on the road.
Break: There's a road? There's a road? Oh my god, there's a road!
Sam: And here I am again. So, let's see, now it is Monday, October 21st, just before 2 UTC.
Sam: So that's still Sunday night, West Coast time, where I am, U.S. West Coast time.
Sam: So we'll finish this sucker up, and then we'll edit it up, and then we'll send it out.
Sam: And my editing at this point is very light. Like I try to do like absolute minimal,
Sam: like just basically you see what you get.
Sam: You see, you know, well, on the audio podcast, you see nothing on YouTube.
Sam: You get to see a little bit more getting ready and stuff. And I don't know,
Sam: like if, if there's lots of coughing and stuff, I'll get rid of that.
Sam: If my son interrupts me, I'll get rid of that. But otherwise it's just straight on through.
Sam: Like, I don't care. Like, I mean, I do care, but it takes too much time to care.
Sam: So I don't care if you know what I mean. So let me start out.
Sam: My voice did a little start, start thing like there.
Sam: Since I did that last segment, there have been, of course, new polls.
Sam: There are new polls all the time now.
Sam: And so just to highlight the things that changed, basically Pennsylvania went
Sam: for, I mean, there were, there were polls in a bunch of states,
Sam: but these are ones that matter.
Sam: Pennsylvania moved from just barely Harris back to just barely Trump.
Sam: Meanwhile, Wisconsin went from just barely Trump to just barely Harris.
Sam: And some others moved around a little bit. The tipping point moved from Trump
Sam: by 0.1 back up to Trump by 0.9.
Sam: So back sort of in Trump's direction overall is the general sense of this.
Sam: And my counting for time left odds got a little bit worse for Harris now at
Sam: between 17.9% and 28.3%. with all the caveats I gave before.
Sam: The one thing that I forgot, I think I started down this road,
Sam: but forgot was on the polling, like why would the red state pollster,
Sam: or red state pollsters, why would the Trump leaning pollsters care about flooding the zone?
Sam: And I sort of went off to, well, maybe they actually believe it and maybe they
Sam: do. But I forgot to get back to the other reasons.
Sam: Like if you think they're doing it,
Sam: If you think they know that they're pushing things in the direction of their
Sam: candidate beyond real life, then why would they do that?
Sam: One reason is just like, hey, it'll make Trump happy. He likes to see good numbers, maybe.
Sam: Another reason would be like, hey, you want to discourage the Democrats.
Sam: You want to make them think that Trump is winning and it's hopeless and why
Sam: bother voting just stay home?
Sam: I don't know if I buy that one that much because like for that to like be an
Sam: effect, you, you want to see like, I mean, yes, people will stay home because it's hopeless.
Sam: If it's hopeless, like if, oh my God, Trump is winning by 18,000 points in every swing state.
Sam: But even if you take these Trumpy
Sam: pollsters at face value and don't even include them
Sam: in an average it still shows a close race
Sam: it still shows like yeah maybe Trump's ahead by a little bit but certainly within
Sam: shooting distance for the Democrats most of them are showing margin of error
Sam: even even the like most optimistic Trump ones are showing like within margin
Sam: of error still So I don't know if I buy that.
Sam: Like, if anything, that will encourage turnout.
Sam: Like, oh my God, it's close. I got to vote.
Sam: Or, you know, we're just barely losing. And maybe if I vote,
Sam: we won't be. I don't know.
Sam: Like, I don't buy that. The other thing that people are saying is they're trying
Sam: to set up the narrative for contesting the votes.
Sam: Like if it turns out that Donald Trump does lose these states,
Sam: but narrowly, they can point to a whole bunch of posts, a whole bunch of polls
Sam: showing Trump was actually ahead in those states.
Sam: How could he possibly have lost? He was ahead. and just to make it more plausible
Sam: for whatever things they end up deciding to contest. I don't know.
Sam: I honestly, like...
Sam: I feel like the most likely motivation is actually these right-leaning pollsters
Sam: actually believe their polls.
Sam: Are they flooding the zone to make the narrative match their own views?
Sam: Sure. They're putting out a lot of polls, and I can certainly see that.
Sam: And those other motivations, maybe there's some of that there. I don't know.
Sam: But I feel like these pollsters are, are they constructing their models in a
Sam: way such that the results match what they want to see? Probably.
Sam: But I'm guessing most of them actually feel like that's the truth.
Sam: Like they do a turnout model that represents what they think is going to happen
Sam: which involves more Republicans turning out I don't know anyway,
Sam: enough of that I said I was done with polls and it was time to talk about other stuff,
Sam: this is basically all election 2024 stuff and almost all of it is going to be
Sam: at the presidential level.
Sam: So that's what you're getting.
Sam: I guess I'll go through some of these things roughly in the order that we noted
Sam: them down in our potential topics list.
Sam: So over the course of the week, one is just the Trump campaign.
Sam: And this is comes from both Harris and Vance is really double and tripling down on the racism.
Sam: Like, and there should be no surprise to this.
Sam: I mean, it's been a continuous theme of Donald Trump's presidential races since
Sam: the moment he came down the escalator in 2015.
Sam: And so there's no surprise here, but it's getting, it's more and more and more overt, less hiding.
Sam: I mean, there hasn't been much hiding in a while, but it's like,
Sam: it's getting to be so blatant.
Sam: And you know all the Haitian stuff was
Sam: part of it but I mean like the comments
Sam: on they don't care if they're legal I you know Vance was said something along
Sam: the lines the other day of like yeah well I'm still gonna call them illegal
Sam: and I don't have a list of examples in front of me because I'm stupid and unprepared,
Sam: but it just seems like it's been ramping up and ramping up and ramping up.
Sam: And I guess this has happened the other elections too. It's like,
Sam: I'm surprised there haven't been like live video covering a caravan of migrants
Sam: coming up from Central America.
Sam: Cause that, that seemed to happen every election for several elections in a
Sam: row. Cause the reality is that's happening all the time.
Sam: They just chose to highlight it during election season.
Sam: But it's, it's so discouraging every time you see something new and you know,
Sam: to expect it and you know, it's their thing.
Sam: You know, it's, it's, it's the key.
Sam: It's, it's the core of, of Trumpism, like racism and grift, basically.
Sam: I mean, it's, it's like the fundamental theme is, I mean, make America great again.
Sam: It's all about, let's go back to some previous America where, you know,
Sam: the white male Christian ruling class
Sam: was in charge and didn't
Sam: have to think about anybody else so it's
Sam: not surprising when there's a new comment or whatever
Sam: i mean there have been ai generated
Sam: images that they're sharing all
Sam: over social media that are just scary looking foreigners being violent it's
Sam: so annoying so discouraging and the fact that it resonates with so many people
Sam: in this country is even scarier.
Sam: I mean, I've said this before, but yes, Trump is scary.
Sam: But the thing that's really depressing is not Trump himself.
Sam: It's not even how the Republican party has capitulated to him.
Sam: It's that enough of the American population likes what he's putting out that
Sam: this race is within the margin of error.
Sam: And we can't, like, it could go either way.
Sam: Like the fact that this
Sam: isn't an absolute freaking blowout
Sam: on the with the democrats winning like
Sam: if the republicans put up something like this is just depressing at to every
Sam: level of my existence it is just and again i it's an entirely different thing
Sam: like i i know some people did but i don't feel that way,
Sam: you know, or I didn't feel that way about Romney or McCain or even W or,
Sam: or the older Bush or Reagan, you know,
Sam: like I had problems with each and every one of those Republicans I listed still do.
Sam: And God knows like Clinton and Obama and Biden aren't perfect and neither is terrorists.
Sam: But those other older style Republicans, I didn't automatically think,
Sam: okay, if you support them, there's a problem with you too.
Sam: You know, it's like, it's the difference between,
Sam: you know, arguing on
Sam: the margins of about policy stuff or
Sam: even like yeah they sort of are really
Sam: bad in certain areas to certain populations i care about but they at least i
Sam: don't know trump is a whole different world i feel like i had no problems being
Sam: friends with somebody who was like a Romney supporter.
Sam: You know, agree to disagree kind of things. You know? You know?
Sam: But given what Trump is, I can't, you know, like, I don't feel like if I know
Sam: somebody's a Trump supporter,
Sam: I can't have, I mean, I'm going to be civil to them in the grocery store or
Sam: something, but they're certainly not somebody I'm going to like do something
Sam: socially with. I'm sorry.
Sam: It's beyond the pale morally.
Sam: And and they're doubling down on it they're doubling
Sam: tripling quadrupling down on it as we get to the end i'm gonna be a little scattered
Sam: with these that's okay whatever you care next up there's been a lot of talk
Sam: depending who you talk to you'll you'll hear people either.
Sam: Praising Kamala Harris's strategy at this point, or the complete opposite,
Sam: saying that this is guaranteeing she's going to lose, etc.
Sam: And that's that she has been really spending most of her time at this point
Sam: trying to nail down the center.
Sam: She's been campaigning with the former Republicans that support her,
Sam: Liz Cheney and all of those folks.
Sam: They had some events specifically related to that, like Republicans for Harris
Sam: in Pennsylvania and some other stuff.
Sam: She's also been going on a variety of shows that appeal towards less political folks.
Sam: And that that's not not so much a go after
Sam: the center as a go after the the apathetic
Sam: or the people who aren't following politics too much but
Sam: also like policy wise she's been saying things like oh i'm gonna have a bipartisan
Sam: council of advisors i'm gonna put a republican in my cabinet i'm gonna do this
Sam: i'm gonna do that and the interpretation of that is of course that she is putting there,
Sam: she is trying to set up something where disaffected Republicans who don't like
Sam: Trump can feel comfortable potentially voting for her.
Sam: And so she's going after that sort of audience of, you know,
Sam: can I get some people who voted for Trump in 2020 or 2016 to vote for me instead?
Sam: Or at least keep them from voting for Donald Trump again.
Sam: Give them enough context to be like, you know, I never really thought that I
Sam: would vote Democrat, but she doesn't seem that bad. Maybe I can vote for her.
Sam: And there are a lot of folks who think that is absolutely 100% the right strategy
Sam: and that is the audience she should be going after.
Sam: But there's a vocal minority out there that I see posts from on Mastodon all
Sam: the time who are basically your, I mean, it's, it's the,
Sam: the successors of the Bernie or busters who are basically like,
Sam: she's not saying what I want her to say on the Gaza situation.
Sam: She's not liberal enough on this situation. I don't like the fact that she's
Sam: talking to Republicans and therefore she hasn't turned my vote.
Sam: I'm not going to vote for her, whatever.
Sam: And what she should be doing is courting us leftists and, you know,
Sam: going after us and coming in our direction.
Sam: And look, I have said here with Yvonne a couple of weeks ago that I'm not sure
Sam: there's much room to do much on the persuasion side to like actually convert
Sam: Trump voters to Harris voters.
Sam: And I think it should really be about get out the vote and all this kind of thing.
Sam: But I think the people to go after are sort of those people who aren't paying
Sam: attention or who are more apathetic or just not tuned into politics and get
Sam: more of those people to vote.
Sam: I don't think it's about courting the far left.
Sam: You know, the far left is going to do whatever they're going to do.
Sam: I have seen a number of posts by people who did withhold their votes in 2016,
Sam: who either didn't vote or voted for Jill Stein or whatever.
Sam: I've seen a number of posts from those kinds of people saying,
Sam: I made a, I made a mistake.
Sam: I made a fucking mistake. Those of you who are talking like this again in 2024.
Sam: Like I know a lot of you are too young to remember 2016.
Sam: And that's one of the things too, as like someone like me, who's,
Sam: you know, 50 plus, I remember 2020.
Sam: I remember 2016. I remember 2000 and freaking Ralph Nader.
Sam: You know, I remember all these things.
Sam: It's been eight years since 2016
Sam: there are a lot of people
Sam: who are now potential voters
Sam: who tend to say things like that and and be like you know i i couldn't possibly
Sam: vote for harris because she's got the wrong position on issue x even though
Sam: they're on the left hand side of things and you presume don't like Donald Trump and say things like,
Sam: it's the lesser of two evils and I'm not going to vote for any evil and blah,
Sam: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: There are a lot of people out there who it's their first time through that rodeo
Sam: and they don't remember the others.
Sam: And so some of these videos of the people who did that in 2016,
Sam: I think are instructive. I hope.
Sam: It changes the minds of some of those people who are talking that way this time, but it probably won't.
Sam: I mean, you know, at a certain point, those folks are stuck.
Sam: Yeah. The bottom line is, I'm sorry, a vote is not an endorsement.
Sam: A vote is, it is not a, I want to be careful with words because you can endorse
Sam: somebody and say, yes, you should vote for them without actually,
Sam: a vote is not saying that you
Sam: agree with all that person's positions a vote
Sam: for them is not saying you think that
Sam: person should be a saint you know
Sam: it is saying that of the available
Sam: choices that it's it's a chess move and look i'll i'll admit like i remember
Sam: saying that crap myself when i was in my 20s like i voted for fucking Ross Perot.
Sam: I've voted for libertarians at various points in time.
Sam: And I'm like, you know, you don't get bonus points for picking the winner.
Sam: You should pick the person who most agrees with you.
Sam: And with the wisdom of age, that is bullshit in the American system.
Sam: If we had a parliament with proportional representation, okay, maybe go, go for it.
Sam: Makes sense. You vote for the person who's closest to you, and then they will
Sam: work in coalition with other groups to do whatever. Maybe, yeah.
Sam: But we don't. We live in a system that is winner-take-all, first-past-the-post.
Sam: And that means that, realistically, you got two choices.
Sam: Even if they both suck, you pick the one that's better.
Sam: And anyway i i think i think
Sam: the right some of those folks are hopeless you're not
Sam: going to convince them but i think there's very little juice left to squeeze
Sam: from the people who voted for trump before and you want them not to this time
Sam: maybe there's some juice there but i don't think there's a lot.
Sam: I think the place where they would get the most impact is getting the center left-ish but the.
Sam: Less likely to vote people, getting them out the door or getting some of the
Sam: people who just haven't been paying attention and don't think politics is useful.
Sam: The people who are sort of completely disaffected and believe that,
Sam: you know, nothing's, their vote doesn't matter.
Sam: Those are the people to get out and and
Sam: speaking of that briefly i want to highlight my stepmother stepmom kathy sunshine
Sam: on october 19th posted to her substack an article that i would recommend to
Sam: people it's titled welcome to the hotel pennsylvania and you'll find it on thirdage.substack.com,
Sam: And basically she's spending like most of the month of October doorbelling in
Sam: Pennsylvania near Harrisburg.
Sam: And it's a post about her experiences there.
Sam: I'll give a couple quotes here.
Sam: One, well, I'll give this one example. Read the whole article.
Sam: It's a really good article. Plug to her.
Sam: Here's one paragraph. In the poorest neighborhoods, disinformation is rife.
Sam: Many people believe that the pandemic stimulus checks bearing Trump's signature
Sam: came from him personally.
Sam: The exact deception he intended. And hope that if he is reelected,
Sam: another check will arrive.
Sam: That money was approved by Congress, I told one young woman,
Sam: who stared at me blankly and asked, What's Congress?
Sam: And that's the kind of thing that is out there.
Sam: I mean, something like 40% of eligible voters don't vote.
Sam: I think getting them is hard, but that's where the biggest pool of people you
Sam: could potentially get comes from.
Sam: But going after some of those disaffected Republicans, okay, fine.
Sam: Do some of that. But I think Harris is also doing what I was saying.
Sam: She's going on shows where they usually talk about sports.
Sam: She's going on shows where they usually talk about entertainment or relationship.
Sam: She's going on non-political. She's going and doing interviews at non-political
Sam: places. We talked about Howard Stern the other day.
Sam: We talked about the She's Your Daddy.
Sam: Whatever it is. I, I, her, her daddy, who's her daddy.
Sam: I don't know. I forget what the name of the damn thing is, but she's been on
Sam: a bunch of that and she's continuing to have been on a bunch of those kinds of shows.
Sam: And I think that's the right place. And I think that people fixating on,
Sam: oh, she's going after like Republicans and she's leaning to the center.
Sam: I think that's the right place to lean.
Sam: I mean, sorry, that's how American politics works. You run towards the center
Sam: in general elections and you try to get the middle.
Sam: I know people on the left want somebody to run to the left, but that ends up,
Sam: there are a lot of folks that, what's the right way to put this?
Sam: I think you lose more people than you gain that way.
Sam: Leftists may want to think that they're a silent majority, but they're no more
Sam: a silent majority than the conservatives used to be.
Sam: The center has the most people.
Sam: And if you go too far to the left, you lose them and you lose the election.
Sam: You sort of, you, the best way to get to a lot of the results that sort of the
Sam: far leftists say they want is to move incrementally in that direction more slowly.
Sam: Sorry, you know, I know they want rapid change and revolution and,
Sam: you know, get rid of the neoliberal capitalists and blah, blah,
Sam: blah, you know, fast change.
Sam: Some things need fast change. Look, I'll, of course, but more generally fast
Sam: change is like more generally, hold on. I have to write, make a note.
Sam: More generally, though, like, you know, you move things too fast,
Sam: you get a huge backlash, you get violence, you get all kinds of bad things,
Sam: you want to move more slowly.
Sam: But electorally, the main thing is, even where I agree that we should go faster
Sam: and the far left position is better, you end up losing.
Sam: You know, there's a real politic thing here of like, figure out how to win the freaking election.
Sam: Then once you're in charge, maybe you can do some stuff.
Sam: But you got to win the election first. And you don't win the election by alienating people.
Sam: You want to build your coalition and get it as wide as possible.
Sam: And I mean, we've got the, the Harris coalition right now goes from freaking
Sam: Bernie Sanders to Dick fucking Cheney.
Sam: They have both endorsed him.
Sam: Could you imagine anything that would get Dick Cheney and Bernie Sanders on
Sam: the same page a few years back? Come on.
Sam: That's a massively wide coalition. It's, will it win?
Sam: We'll find out. But I think, like, concentrate on, I have no problem with her
Sam: trying to convert to Republicans.
Sam: And I think she's doing the right thing by going after these places where people
Sam: pay less attention, congregate like there's no and she is doing some of the more mainstream media.
Sam: But I mean, come on, she doesn't need to go on fucking MSNBC.
Sam: Those people are already voting for her, you know, go after the other places.
Sam: OK, next up, I guess I touched on this with the people like Stein.
Sam: Stein specifically in the last two weeks, her campaign people,
Sam: like there've been a number of them caught or people who are her supporters
Sam: at Stein events have been recorded specifically saying things like,
Sam: we know we can't win Michigan,
Sam: but maybe we can keep Harris from winning.
Sam: And you can't get more overt than that in terms of saying that the Stein campaign's
Sam: objective is essentially to elect Donald Trump.
Sam: That's what they're saying. If you keep Harris from winning a state like Michigan,
Sam: then you're making sure Trump wins.
Sam: They know that's the effect they're having, and they seem to be fine with that
Sam: and be running with that.
Sam: And this is the same damn thing with West.
Sam: And, you know, I don't know what's up with Oliver Like, most of these folks, like At this point,
Sam: the positions in the polls of
Sam: all of these folks Are extremely small And Kennedy's essentially gone to zero
Sam: since he dropped out He had already gotten close to there As soon as Harris
Sam: took over from Biden And so the third party support right now is pretty damn
Sam: small in comparison to where it sometimes is.
Sam: But the problem is you've got these seven states that are super close.
Sam: So in order to make a difference here, these third parties don't need to get a lot.
Sam: They just need to convince a few people who might have voted for Harris to vote
Sam: for the third party instead.
Sam: And they can flip the election so and
Sam: stein specific i mean stein specifically is such a damn grifter you know it's
Sam: it's all about the scam and you know i'm sure she's making some money off it
Sam: she gets some attention every once in a while you know.
Sam: And, you know, I don't know that there's a direct connection,
Sam: but that whole, like, I'm going to sit with Putin a few years back,
Sam: that picture still keeps coming up.
Sam: You know, it's just there.
Sam: I've I know the argument that these sort of esoteric third parties.
Sam: Well, even the big ones, like, OK, fine. You know, Stein's with the Greens.
Sam: They've always been like fourth or fifth level party in the US.
Sam: But even like with the libertarians, like the whole notion that this somehow
Sam: gives visibility to their agenda and they're not going to win,
Sam: but they're going to influence the conversation and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: No, nobody, nobody's paying attention to any of that in terms of what they're actually saying.
Sam: The at you know it's
Sam: just at most right now a
Sam: protest vote it's like it's like the place people go when they don't want to
Sam: vote for either of the two main parties but it's there it's not serving sort
Sam: of the the view of you know hey we'll vote for the greens or we'll campaign for the Greens,
Sam: and it'll give more prominence to their positions on a whole bunch of issues.
Sam: Ditto with the Libertarians.
Sam: It's just, it's not working. If that's your strategy, it's a failure,
Sam: because that's not what's happening with those votes.
Sam: Okay. I'm going to keep going through a few more of these. We'll be done soon. I'm getting tired.
Sam: I mentioned Harris.
Sam: Bypassing traditional media. Trump obviously has been too.
Sam: He's been going on the right-wing podcasts and a few other places.
Sam: The closest thing to major media, I mean, he was on Fox the other day on their
Sam: morning, Fox and Friends, their morning program.
Sam: He went on that Univision thing, which was a disaster for him.
Sam: He got actual real questions from real human beings and he completely failed to answer them.
Sam: That audience looks so skeptical of everything he said.
Sam: Because for once it wasn't like an audience full of people who were already fawning all over him.
Sam: But Trump has been.
Sam: People criticized Harris for avoiding traditional media, and she eventually
Sam: did a few traditional media interviews and then was all over the place with
Sam: non-traditional media.
Sam: Trump, over the last week or two, has canceled something like three or four
Sam: interviews he had scheduled with real places.
Sam: Like he, he, he dropped out of one that he was going to do on CNBC.
Sam: He dropped out of one that he was going to do on regular MSNBC.
Sam: He dropped out of some podcast he was going to be doing that was sort of aimed
Sam: at black men, but there may have been another, I don't know.
Sam: Those are the three I can remember.
Sam: And obviously I didn't even, I don't remember the name of that third one.
Sam: And one of his staff members, and
Sam: this is the kind of thing a staff member should be fired for, honestly,
Sam: but one of his staff members apparently told the venue they were backing out
Sam: of that the reason they were backing out was he was exhausted.
Sam: And he has looked exhausted at a variety of his venues lately.
Sam: But that's not the kind of thing even if it's true you don't say it I mean it
Sam: looks like he's hiding it looks like his campaign is keeping him from anywhere else,
Sam: where he might be exposed to a real question from somebody who is not already in the tank for him,
Sam: I can't believe they let him do that Univision one I mean it was a disaster but I.
Sam: It would make sense that they're trying to keep him out of these things because
Sam: some of his rallies that are in front of diehard supporters are going really badly lately.
Sam: I don't remember exactly when the whole like he's going to play music for 40
Sam: minutes thing happened.
Sam: Like, did we talk about it last week? I don't remember. But like he also had
Sam: a situation where his mic stopped working and he just stood around on stage
Sam: for 20 minutes until they fixed it,
Sam: you know, and look.
Sam: Tech issues happen.
Sam: Although I'm honestly really surprised that for something like,
Sam: oh, the microphone's not working. There wasn't a pretty damn quick fix.
Sam: Like, why would that take 20 minutes to deal with? I mean, I don't know what
Sam: was happening behind the scenes, but 20 minutes seems like a long time to like,
Sam: can we get him another mic?
Sam: I mean, obviously, it had to have been something more substantial wrong with
Sam: that than that, right? I don't know.
Sam: But like, even assuming something real technical went down and they had to deal
Sam: with it, don't just stand there.
Sam: Like have him go back into the green room play
Sam: some music then and say he'll be back once we
Sam: fix the tech problems or whatever you know
Sam: the they just having him stand out there
Sam: looking lost for 20 minutes is
Sam: is it the right thing and all of this you know combines to the what what's up
Sam: with trump's decline like i can't remember how many times yvonne and i talked over the years.
Sam: About you know is trump losing it and we
Sam: always agreed something along these lines of he's clearly not
Sam: what he was in the 80s but he's still fine i
Sam: mean the same kind of thing we said about biden honestly you
Sam: know it's like he's is
Sam: he much is he much different than he was in
Sam: 2015 we always said no it's about the same he was he he was always rambly he
Sam: was always a little bit stupid he was always like not quite understanding what
Sam: he was really talking about and and he was always a little off the wall and
Sam: couldn't keep a coherent train of thought those things are always true,
Sam: And they were to a degree, but they do seem to have gotten significantly worse
Sam: just in the last few months.
Sam: I mean, the latest thing is...
Sam: Just within the last couple of days, he gave, at some sort of rally,
Sam: he spent like the first, what, I don't know, 10, 20 minutes or whatever. I don't know how long.
Sam: Even if it was one minute. He spent the beginning talking about,
Sam: let me get the stupid name right.
Sam: Let me make sure I want to quote the AP on this so that I don't like,
Sam: here's the AP headline, AP.
Sam: Like, and we've been complaining about how like the major media,
Sam: like with sane washing a lot of this kind of stuff.
Sam: And the New York Times kind of did that even with this event,
Sam: but AP, Trump kicks off a Pennsylvania rally by talking about Arnold Palmer's genitalia.
Sam: Really? Really?
Sam: He has seemed to be less coherent.
Sam: People pointed out that at the Fox and Friends thing, the people there,
Sam: the hosts, seemed to be guiding him around like a child, just to get to his seat and stuff.
Sam: And then once they were talking to him, sort of coaching and trying to lead
Sam: the conversation as he rambled.
Sam: It's will it it seems kind of obvious that it's getting worse and getting worse quickly,
Sam: will it make any difference that that's what we always ask right like you know will.
Sam: And i think the answer always comes down to do the right people see it and i
Sam: think the answer for the most part is no i mean maybe some people actually at these rallies i saw one
Sam: clip of someone who was videoed leaving a Trump rally.
Sam: I think I saw a clip. Maybe I read a quote, whatever, but the person was like,
Sam: I think he's passed his expiration date.
Sam: But if you go to the places where the most Trump voters are,
Sam: like conservative podcasts, conservative blogs, Fox News, especially Fox News,
Sam: for the most part, you don't see the craziest stuff.
Sam: They're not taking his rallies live. If they show clips from it,
Sam: they're going to show clips where it isn't the crazy stuff.
Sam: They're not going to be having conversations about maybe Trump's past as expiration
Sam: date, what's wrong with Trump, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Sam: Now, does it get to some of those people that I was talking about before that
Sam: just aren't paying attention very much?
Sam: So not the like diehard Trump partisans,
Sam: but just people who aren't paying attention and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Maybe some, you know, Saturday Night Live is making fun of it.
Sam: There are clips all over TikTok.
Sam: The mocking kind of stuff does seem to have the power of breaking through a
Sam: little bit, and people will understand the mocking.
Sam: And so if people are making fun of him for him being incoherent and such,
Sam: maybe that part of the narrative gets out.
Sam: But there's still, honestly, I don't know how much of this stuff is going to change anything.
Sam: You know, I had that whole segment on the polls and moving a little bit this
Sam: way, a little bit that way.
Sam: But the bottom line is things have been pretty static for months. Like, it's.
Sam: The vast majority of people in this country know where they stand on this,
Sam: and nothing's going to change their mind.
Sam: And even with this kind of thing, I mean, kind of, look, it's the same.
Sam: When we were talking about Biden and his potential limitations after the first
Sam: debate, one of the things that Yvonne and I said all the time was, so what?
Sam: If Biden can't make it through the four years, whatever, we got Harris. And Harris is fine.
Sam: Is the same thought process going on in terms of Vance?
Sam: Like if you look at Trump over the next, next.
Sam: If you look at what we've seen of Trump in the last few weeks,
Sam: it's getting harder and harder to imagine him actually making it through four years.
Sam: Do we really end up with a scenario that, you know, he gets sworn in,
Sam: assuming he wins, he gets sworn in on January 20th and on January 21st,
Sam: he makes a deal with Vance to resign and be pardoned or something.
Sam: Now, I don't think Trump's ego could actually handle that because he doesn't
Sam: quit anything, and that's a core part of his personality.
Sam: But could you see something where he doesn't want to be president?
Sam: He's never wanted to be president. He wants the grift that he can get out of
Sam: it, and he wants to be looked at as a winner.
Sam: He hoped that that would finally get him the respect and recognition from the
Sam: elites that he always craved. It didn't.
Sam: He doesn't actually like the job of being president. He just wants everything that goes with it.
Sam: So would he be perfectly happy just turning over all of the policy parts to
Sam: people that actually care?
Sam: And then, you know, sign on the dotted line every once in a while.
Sam: And then look from everything we've heard
Sam: like his biggest backers right now are
Sam: are the people who like set up vance as
Sam: the vp choice so do they really want vance like
Sam: is that is that what they're really looking for or or do
Sam: they not care as long as it's someone easily controllable that's
Sam: probably more like it but you know
Sam: i think the argument that a trump vote is
Sam: really a vote for vance is not out of
Sam: the question if it like
Sam: at the rate trump is deteriorating like is
Sam: he actually going to be able to do the job i don't
Sam: know but it's certainly something to be thinking about and and i don't know
Sam: like said a long time that what happens to the republican party after trump
Sam: And there are a variety of possibilities,
Sam: but the worst one is essentially someone like Trump, but smarter.
Sam: And is that what we get with somebody like Vance? I mean, so far,
Sam: he may be smarter in some sort of academic sense, but his political instinct seems pretty bad.
Sam: He's been kind of disastrous on the campaign trail.
Sam: So I don't know.
Sam: But, and on the curmudgeon score of Slack, I think it was Bob who asked,
Sam: if we get Vance, do we really get Thiel?
Sam: Maybe it was Pete. I don't know. Whatever.
Sam: And yeah, maybe. Maybe that's what we get anyway.
Sam: I mean, we got like Musk and Thiel and other folks like this clearly with a
Sam: major influence on what's going on here.
Sam: Their super PACs are going crazy, spending all kinds of money.
Sam: One of the other things in the news this week was Musk apparently offering monetary
Sam: rewards for people to register and stuff that,
Sam: depending on what you read, is either on the verge of being illegal or definitely
Sam: being illegal, depending on the exact details of how he did it.
Sam: Like he's trying to exploit some sort of loophole to, to get around the requirement,
Sam: but it's, yes, these billionaires are playing in this game and trying to exert
Sam: their influence through choosing this person.
Sam: Now, the thing with Trump in the past, and you'd think people would learn, right?
Sam: Like the mainstream Republicans in 2016, when it became clear that Trump was going to be the nominee,
Sam: many of them moved from fairly overtly saying that Trump would be a disaster,
Sam: Trump was horrible, Trump was a racist, Trump was this, Trump was that,
Sam: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Lindsey Graham doing his if we elect Trump it will destroy us comment,
Sam: all this kind of thing to getting all in behind him.
Sam: Because they felt that they could still manipulate him and get what they want. And look.
Sam: They did, to a large extent. I mean, what are the things that a lot of these
Sam: people cared about the most?
Sam: Tax cuts and Roe versus Wade.
Sam: They got their tax cuts for rich people, and they got the judges in place to
Sam: overrule Roe versus Wade and to push conservative viewpoints on lots of other subjects.
Sam: Like we still have all the fallout, you know, on the changes to the,
Sam: what can be done with regulations and stuff like that, that's gone through the Supreme court.
Sam: That's going to take a while to play out, but that's going to be very significant as well.
Sam: So yeah, they got most of what they want, but at the same time,
Sam: they got a loose cannon that did all kinds of stuff they would rather not happen.
Sam: And so do we have these folks, are folks like Musk and Thiel assuming that they
Sam: can control whatever comes out of this?
Sam: And I don't know.
Sam: They probably can't control the whole thing, but maybe they don't need to.
Sam: As long as they get a couple of key things they want, they want,
Sam: you know, they want to like make sure you've got an administration that won't
Sam: mess with their businesses, won't raise taxes,
Sam: won't try to impose rules, et cetera, et cetera.
Sam: Then, yeah, they'll get what they want out of Trump or Vance.
Sam: Musk seems to be all in on the racism. He'll certainly get that from Trump.
Sam: Probably from Vance, too. Like, Vance, you know...
Sam: I wonder with Vance, like how much of what he says is because that's what he
Sam: truly believes and how much is him positioning himself in a certain way.
Sam: I think he believes most of it. Okay.
Sam: It's time to wrap this sucker up. One more news thing that came out this week
Sam: that I just had to laugh at.
Sam: Stormy daniels and stormy daniels lawyers apparently
Sam: reached out to rachel maddow from msnbc this
Sam: week because they just wanted to tell an additional story like they were there
Sam: was there you know not to get it all into the stormy daniels history but there
Sam: was a point where Stormy Daniels sued Donald Trump for him disparaging her.
Sam: She lost that lawsuit.
Sam: Even though Donald Trump lost the other big lawsuit with New York,
Sam: not lawsuit, the criminal trial in New York about, you know,
Sam: the payoffs to Stormy Daniels and stuff.
Sam: Stormy Daniels lost the lawsuit that she filed against Donald Trump and was
Sam: ordered to pay all kinds of legal fees.
Sam: So she owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Donald Trump.
Sam: And she had set up a GoFundMe and blah, blah, blah, and raised a whole bunch
Sam: of money and was ready to pay Donald Trump.
Sam: And so her lawyers and Trump's lawyers were negotiating on the amount.
Sam: And they disagreed on the amount. Of course, Donald Trump's lawyers felt that she owed more.
Sam: Stormy Daniels felt that she owed less. but Donald Trump's lawyers basically
Sam: came back with, you know what?
Sam: We'll let it go with the lower number.
Sam: If you sign another NDA that you won't talk about Donald Trump anymore.
Sam: And this was not years ago. This was like this summer. This summer that just ended.
Sam: And they are once again trying to pay off Stormy Daniels to make her shut up.
Sam: Does she have anything new to say? No, it doesn't look like she has anything
Sam: new to say. Everything she has to say, she's said already.
Sam: She's described everything about their encounter in multiple venues at this point.
Sam: So it wasn't about not letting something new come out.
Sam: At least it certainly doesn't seem that way because Stormy Daniels,
Sam: by the way, laughed at this and they did not sign any new NDA or anything like that.
Sam: So if there was something more, she could certainly come out and say it.
Sam: No, it's just he doesn't want her saying it again. he just doesn't want her
Sam: talking he just like hates what she had to say and so it's just like he just
Sam: got convicted for doing this crap,
Sam: for trying to get her to sign an NDA in the lead up to an election because.
Sam: Of the potential influence on the election and he just did it again,
Sam: the exact same thing it's just like for what's her
Sam: name the the woman he raped in the department store
Sam: where every time he gets
Sam: a legal judgment it seemed like he went out and
Sam: just defamed her again eugene carroll that's
Sam: her name because he's like yeah i
Sam: don't care i'm gonna do what i want to do they say
Sam: i'm guilty they say i owe money for whatever
Sam: i'm gonna do what i'm gonna do i mean
Sam: he has seemed to be a little bit more quiet about eugene carroll
Sam: lately but you know she hasn't been in the news as
Sam: much lately anyway stormy again uh and with that let us say goodbye i i will
Sam: say like let's let's look at the what is the time left now as i'm finishing up this recording.
Sam: 15.8 days until polls start to close on election night. And I talked about the
Sam: beginning. That's partial states.
Sam: It's one hour later for full states. Anyway,
Sam: Two weeks, basically. Two weeks. We're almost done here. Well,
Sam: we're almost at the election.
Sam: We may or may not know the result on election night.
Sam: And there may or may not be chaos like four years ago, after the election.
Sam: I would assume that if it's even remotely close, we're once again going to see
Sam: like 60 lawsuits from the Trump people on every single possible thing.
Sam: And they certainly seem to be setting up to try to do some January 6th, this thing again,
Sam: if they could, I feel like anything that like assuming they lose,
Sam: like again, he could win legitimately, but assuming they lose,
Sam: I feel like any attempts to try to do something like that will be less successful
Sam: than they were last time.
Sam: Just because you know
Sam: well and this is one
Sam: of the things that makes me think like harris's polls
Sam: are are underestimated that they're
Sam: underestimating harris like the enthusiasm gap really does seem real there's
Sam: it's i don't know it's not quantified it's not whatever but there's so many
Sam: anecdotes of like less enthusiasm on the Republican side.
Sam: You've got his small rallies. You've got less yard signs.
Sam: You've got less people, their big trunk Trump flags on their trucks.
Sam: All of this stuff seems to be less than it was four years ago or eight years
Sam: ago, but we'll see. Okay.
Sam: Go to curmudgeons hyphen corner.com. You can find all the ways to reach us.
Sam: You can find our transcripts. You can find...
Sam: Our archive of shows going back to before we had, we only have transcripts for
Sam: like the last year, year and a half. I forget exactly what.
Sam: But before that, you can find all our archives going all the way back to 2007.
Sam: And of course, you can find our Patreon if you would like to give us cash money.
Sam: At various levels, we will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell.
Sam: We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug.
Sam: But at $2 a month or more, or, or if you just ask, we will invite you to the
Sam: Cummudgeons Corner Slack where Yvonne and I and a bunch of other folks are,
Sam: chatting throughout the week, sharing links, all of that kind of stuff.
Sam: It's a lot of fun. You should be there. If you were there right now,
Sam: you could, you, you could have gotten all kinds of information on exactly what
Sam: Yvonne's illness was that kept him from doing the show this week.
Sam: I'm sure you all want to get into that detail and really understand exactly
Sam: what is going wrong in Yvonne's body.
Sam: Or maybe not. Let's see.
Sam: What's a good highlight other than that from the from the curmudgeon's quarter slack.
Sam: We've talked about return to office stuff. I don't even want to talk about it on the show.
Sam: Yvonne posted something about neck restraints and motor sports.
Sam: A few examples were posted about AI doing stupid things again.
Sam: What else? Yeah, you know, good enough.
Sam: People were talking about the DJT stock and potential manipulation were not
Sam: there and also manipulation of the election betting markets.
Sam: Oh, I posted a really cool article from The New Yorker on how scientists are
Sam: starting to decode bird songs.
Sam: Cool stuff. All kinds of stuff. Okay, we are done.
Sam: Time to end this show. Hopefully, Yvonne will be feeling a lot better and be
Sam: able to join us next week and the week after, and as we rush headlong into this election.
Sam: But for everybody else, and for Yvonne, if you're listening,
Sam: have a great week. Feel better, Yvonne.
Sam: And stay safe. And we'll talk to you next time. Goodbye.
Sam: Now, why isn't the song going?
Sam: There we go. Thank you.