Notes ScratchPad: The Presidential Race Is Nearly a Tossup—Meaning That Somebody Has It 80% in the Bag, But Polling Uncertainties Mean We Do Not Know Who
So pay the polls no attention for the next two weeks, and then come back. Plus who really made Biden decide to drop out—it was small & large donors. Plus MOAR. A scratchpad…
Journamalism: Dan Drezner is very smart and very reliable. He writes:
Dan Drezner: What if October is… Boring?: ‘It’s been a fat-tailed presidential election so far…. An awful lot of Big Events that transformed the 2024 U.S. presidential election…. There has been an awful lot of speculation about which October surprises could tip the election one way or another. This New York Times story by Shane Goldmacher and Reid Epstein <270towin.com/2024-countdown-clock from 48 hours ago represents the perfect distillation of this genre <270towin.com/2024-countdown-clock> of <270towin.com/2024-countdown-clock> story:
“Vice President Kamala Harris has cast herself as a candidate of the future, but she has been yanked back by the problems of the present… war… strike… hurricane… combined to knock Ms. Harris off a message that has been carefully calibrated…”.
You get the idea…. maybe—just maybe—it’s time… to take a breath…. Look at that FiveThirtyEight chart. Even with all of the shocks of August and September, there wasn’t a lot of movement in either direction… <danieldrezner.substack.com/p/what-if-oc…>
Now do not get me wrong. The election is almost certainly not close. If we knew everything about the state of the electorate right now, we would almost surely judge the probabilities as putting it 80% in the bag. But we do not know everything, and in particular we do not know where the systematic polling error lies, and how large it is.
But Dan is right. From our ignorant perspective, it is very close to a tossup, and will probably stay that way down to close to the wire.
Nate Silver and Eli McKown-Dawson right now have it thus:
Nate Silver & Eli McKown-Dawson: Silver Bulletin 2024 Presidential Election Forecast: ‘1:30 p.m., Friday, October 4. Another day… still very little change…. Harris… has a 56 percent chance of winning the election to Trump’s 44 percent chance… [with] a 21 percent chance Harris wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College… <natesilver.net/p/nate-silver-2024-presi…>
That is all the time you need to spend on the polls. Maybe come back and revisit <natesilver.net/p/nate-silver-2024-presi…> for five minutes in two weeks, or one week if you have anxiety disorder. Otherwise go do other, productive things.
Public Reason: I think this from Seth Masket is wrong. It was not the “party”, not the professional Democratic politicians and staffers, who successfully pressured Biden to step aside. Biden had, after all, successfully resisted such pressures applied sotto voce in 2022, 2023, and the first half of 2024. What did it was the donors. The massive flight downballot of both large and small donors is what done it. And that was an uncoördinated non-party action—just people giving at all levels deciding that they needed to direct their money elsewhere:
Seth Masket: Did the Parties Decide in 2024?: ‘How well does this model of elite coordination describe what we’ve seen from the two parties’ presidential nominations lately? It did a pretty good job describing how Democrats picked, say, Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020, giving their eventual nominee many structural advantages and nudging other candidates out of contention long before anyone started voting in Iowa or New Hampshire. But it falls well short of describing the much more aggressive version of party activity we saw among Democrats this past July. Even U.S. parties at their strongest have rarely had the kind of muscle needed to push an incumbent president out…. Direct pressure from top party elites… the desertion of many Democratic members of Congress, a decline in public approval, and a widespread consensus… that Biden had massively and viscerally bombed at the June debate… convinced the president to step aside… <hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/did-the-…>
Neofascism: It now seems long, long ago that Noah Smith told me that Elon Musk should buy Twitter—either he would destroy it and new and much better things would grow up in the Tweeting space, or he would find for it a profitable business model that would radically improve it as it found valuable things to its user base and so made it more worthwhile. In retrospect, that was a very bad take. Elon Musk appears to have lit $34 billion of his and his investors’ money on fire in order to create a worse misinformation engine, but while the thing is much less salient and has died as a profit-making entity or as an entity providing value to stakeholders, it still exists as a shitposting, misinformation-spreading entity:
Matt Egan: CNN: Elon Musk’s X is worth nearly 80% less than when he bought it, Fidelity estimates: ‘Fidelity discloses what it believes <cnn.com/2024/01/02/tech/fidelity-again-…> is the value of its shares of X, and those estimates serve as a closely watched barometer for the overall health of the company…. Analysts say Fidelity’s plunging price tag for X likely reflects shrinking ad revenue at the company, which no longer publicly releases quarterly financial metrics…. Musk faced a backlash from brands <cnn.com/2023/11/17/tech/lionsgate-suspe…>, some of which halted spending on X, after the billionaire embraced an antisemitic conspiracy theory <cnn.com/2023/11/17/tech/lionsgate-suspe…> favored by White supremacists.
Musk later apologized for what he called his “dumbest” ever social media posting. However, during that apology <cnn.com/2023/11/17/tech/lionsgate-suspe…>, Musk also told fleeing advertisers: “Go f**k yourself”… <cnn.com/2024/10/02/business/elon-musk-t…>
Neofascism: Every single news outlet should right now be saying this once a week. Hell, they should be saying this once a day. That they are not shows that they are deeply, deeply broken systems and people:
Heather Cox Richardson : October 6, 2024: ‘This morning began with a CNN headline story by fact checker Daniel Dale, titled “Six days of Trump lies about the Hurricane Helene response.” Dale noted that Republican nominee for president Donald Trump has been one of the chief sources of the disinformation that has badly hampered recovery efforts.
Trump has claimed that the federal government is ignoring the storm’s victims, especially ones in Republican areas, and that the government is handing out only $750 in aid (in fact, the initial emergency payment for food and groceries is $750, but there are multiple grants available for home rebuilding up to a total of $42,500, the upper limit set by Congress). He has also claimed—falsely—that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is out of money to help because the administration spent all its money on Ukraine and undocumented immigrants.
Trump’s lies are not errors. They are part of a well-documented strategy to overturn democracy by using modern media to create a false political world. Voters begin to base their political decisions on that fake image… <heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/oct…>
Neofascism: I do think that Brian Buetler has this absolutely nailed as to what the plan is, what the assignment is, and how many people understand it and are enthusiastically onboard. It reminds me of 2002 in some way—the 45th Fighting Keyboarders have a misinformation mission again!:
Brian Buetler: MAGA’s Hurricane Helene Lies Are A Trial Run For The Election: ‘The through-line is sowing chaos and hurting people for personal gain: When Donald Trump started telling conspicuous lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene, all of MAGA understood the assignment.
His supporters understood they should spread rumors or fabricate anecdotes consistent with Trump’s claims. They should portray their own confusion as government malice or incompetence. They should claim to have witnessed FEMA abandoning <x.com/jamessurowiecki/status/1842605704…> Republican-heavy regions and illegal immigrants walking away with relief money first hand. They should even use artificial intelligence technology to fabricate images that reinforce these lies.
Elon Musk and Trump’s other ultra-wealthy supporters understood it as their solemn duty to draw as much attention to these lies as possible.
Anyone who sought information about the recovery on social media has been bombarded with them for over a week now; Musk’s Twitter is a particularly prolific font of disinformation, because he spends all day plucking rumor, lies, and innuendo from the stream and retweeting them to is 200 million followers. He takes special care to algorithmically boost this content of his, even to people who aren’t regular Tiwtter users <x.com/jamessurowiecki/status/1842605704…>, and who don’t follow his account…. <offmessage.net/p/maga-hurricane-helene-…>