Sorry, all, no Q&A today. This stupid COVID isn't going away, and rest is called for. We do have a handful of short items for your reading pleasure, which is better than nothing... right?

Georgia Hates Democracy

We wish we would never again have to write one of these "hates democracy" items. Unfortunately, various red states keep doing undemocratic things, and we certainly don't want to just look the other way.

It's not much of a secret that the board that oversees Georgia elections has been stacked with Trumpers, and that they've been plotting and planning and scheming to find a way to help their boy. Yesterday, by a vote of 3 (the Trumpers) to 2 (the one Democrat and the one independent), the board adopted a new rule that says that election workers must count ballots on Election Day, to make sure that the number of physical ballots matches the number the ballot machines counted.

This is, of course, meant to cause chaos. At best, it's going to take a bunch of extra time, once the polls are closed, to complete the counting. And if the human number and machine number don't match, then they'll have to count again. And again. And again. And if they STILL don't match, then what happens? Nobody knows.

The Elections Board is also considering other ideas, which would also serve to gum up the works and to create chaos. For example, they are thinking about implementing a requirement that provisional/emergency ballots and absentee ballots have distinctive markings, so they can be distinguished from each other. This serves no particular purpose, but if it was wanted nonetheless, it would have been easy to implement a few months ago—before the ballots were printed. Now, the markings would have to be done by hand. To take another example, the Board is considering a requirement that early ballots also be hand-counted. There are an additional nine time-wasters like this on their to-do list.

The broad goal here, which anyone can see, is to cause the counting of Georgia ballots to drag on for countless additional hours and days. That, in turn, will create potential openings for Donald Trump to whine about unfair voting, and/or for his team to file the many lawsuits they already have ready to go. Naturally, these kinds of stunts could not make it clearer that the Republicans don't think their chances of winning a legitimate election are very good, and that they need to turn to unethical and antidemocratic trickery to try to get their candidate over the hump.

And now the good news. Georgia AG Chris Carr (R) has warned the Board that there is no statutory basis for these new rules. He may file suit or, if he does not, someone else will surely do so (say, the ACLU). The Board of Elections will face an uphill battle when that happens, since not only is the law not on their side, but judges generally don't look favorably on changing the rules so close to an election, even if the change is justified (which this one isn't).

As a case in point, consider this bit of good news out of Arizona. Not too long ago, a database error was discovered, which threw into question whether 98,000 immigrants, who have not yet proven their citizenship, would be able to vote in all races on the Arizona ballot. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes insisted that they be given the right to vote, while Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer disagreed. You don't need us to tell you which political party each of those two men belongs to. In any event, yesterday, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that it's too close to the election to straighten this out, and that the presumption has to be in favor of the 98,000 people, who had no idea anything was wrong. So, they will get to vote the full ballot in November. (Z)

Maybe This Is What's Wrong with Trump?

Yesterday, we had an item about some of the wacky things Donald Trump said this week, indicating that the Trump cheese has slid even further off the Trump cracker. We speculated about what is going on, but we missed an obvious (possible) explanation.

The New York Times' Maggie Haberman, a.k.a. The Trump Whisperer, was on CNN yesterday, and she reported that the various attempts/near attempts on Trump's life have really freaked him out. He was having enough trouble processing the first attempt, where he was in real danger. And now, with the second attempt, even though he was not in real danger that time, he is seeing gun-wielding boogeymen everywhere.

Although Haberman did not get out her meerschaum pipe and play armchair psychiatrist, we can see at least two possible dynamics that might be going on here. The first possibility, which we speculated about the day after the first attempt, is that Trump is suffering from PTSD. That's tough for anyone, and he seems particularly ill-suited to bear that particular burden. The second is that even a fully focused Trump is not exactly going to be confused with Abraham Lincoln when it comes to public speaking. If he's spending 20% of his brain capacity watching for potential threats, then it isn't too surprising that something strange or incongruous or really frightening might issue forth on a regular basis.

On the other hand, maybe it's something completely different. Keep reading. (Z)

Or Maybe This Is?

There were a whole bunch of state-level presidential polls yesterday. And getting lost in there was the newest from AP/NORC, which, if correct, is very interesting.

The poll, instead of being a "Who are you going to vote for?" poll, is a "Who do you trust on the issues?" poll. And here are the results:

Issue	Harris	Trump	Net
The Economy	41%	43%	Trump +2%
Healthcare	50%	30%	Harris +20%
Crime	40%	39%	Harris +1%
Immigration	40%	45%	Trump +5%
Abortion Policy	55%	27%	Harris +28%
Gun Policy	47%	35%	Harris +12%
Climate Change	54%	15%	Harris +39%
Israel and Hamas	33%	36%	Trump +3%

The margin of error on the poll is 3.4%.

We recognize that this is only one poll, and that these "who do you trust?" questions can be a little fuzzy. But if AP/NORC has the right of it, this is a disaster for Donald Trump. He appears to have ceded his previous large advantage on his core issues, particularly the economy, immigration and crime. Is that because Harris has successfully shed herself of Biden baggage? Or because Trump rarely talks about the issues (and when he does, he says crazypants stuff, like "they are eating cats and dogs")? Maybe both?

Meanwhile, Harris is crushing Trump on her key issues, particularly climate change and abortion policy. That said, the most surprising number may be that she's now neck-and-neck with Trump on crime. That may be without precedent for a Democrat in the past half-century.

Again, it's only one poll. But if it's on target, well, Trump has internal polling that would be telling him the same thing. And if he believes he is losing on the issues, then his general response would be to: (1) get more extreme and/or (2) to lean into personal attacks. And these things are exactly what he's been doing since the debate. (Z)

More on the Teamsters

We had a brief item on one of the more notable news stories of the week, namely that the Teamsters Union decided not to make an endorsement in this year's presidential election. Slate's Steven Greenhouse has an item and Vox's Ellen Ioanes has another that raise some very interesting points about the non-endorsement.

To start, there is little doubt that Teamsters president Sean O'Brien is pro-Trump (per his speech at the RNC). Certainly, some/much of the rank-and-file of the Teamsters is also pro-Trump. That said, the voting conducted among union members was somewhat less than methodologically rigorous. There were straw polls at various Teamsters meetings, some sort of phone survey and, apparently, a ballot printed on the back page of the monthly bulletin of the union. Point is, that "59.6% of members support Trump, while 34% support Harris" result may not capture things accurately. The fact that numerous local Teamsters chapters promptly came out for Harris lends some credence to this supposition.

Meanwhile, of the nation's 10 largest labor unions, 9 backed Harris. The Teamsters are the only holdout. It is hardly a surprise that most unions are with Harris, as the Biden-Harris administration has been as pro-labor and pro-union as any presidential administration since, very possibly, that of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Both Biden and Harris personally walked the picket lines. They secured passage of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO), which labor leaders said was their #1 priority heading into the 2020 elections. The administration also secured passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, all of which will create many union jobs. Harris also supports an increased minimum wage. By contrast, Trump opposed all of these bills (especially PRO) and he likes the current minimum wage just fine, thank you ver much.

Given that Harris is head and shoulders better than Trump on labor issues, what the heck happened with the Teamsters? Part of it is probably that Teamsters are overwhelmingly non-college white men, which is Trump's bread and butter. But Greenhouse argues that the real issue here is Sean O'Brien. One of the most important jobs of a labor leader is to keep the membership well informed about what's going on. If the members of every other union understood where Harris and Trump stand on the issues of concern to labor, and the members of the Teamsters do not, then that can pretty much only be laid at O'Brien's feet.

Greenhouse further argues that if a union takes from a political party, but doesn't give its votes to that party, the the party will move on and stop paying attention to the union's concerns. We're not sure we buy this, if only because it would be rather difficult for Harris to do what the other unions want without the Teamsters coming along for the ride. But we pass it along, in case readers disagree with us. (Z)

Senate Democrats Try to Pick up the $10 Million Ball

The report from The Washington Post that Donald Trump may have taken a $10 million gift from Egypt in 2016, and that the Bill Barr-led DoJ may have made the problem go away, kind of flew under the radar. Now, Senate Democrats are trying to bring it back to life. Sens. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) want the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which they both serve, to take a long look at what happened. Meanwhile, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), wants the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which HE serves, to do the same.

On the surface, the story certainly seems plausible. The Egyptians are clearly open to paying bribes, having done so with former senator Bob Menendez (D). And Trump is clearly willing to take money under shady circumstances. That said, we're not exactly sure what might be done at this point. Presumably the statute of limitations has run on any crimes committed, and besides, the president is now a king thanks to Chief Justice John Roberts and five of his closest friends. Obviously, an impeachment isn't going anywhere if Trump is reelected.

Then there is the fact that the Congressional term is almost over, and there certainly isn't time for a proper investigation in the next 6-8 weeks. The only way we can see this going anywhere is if: (1) the Democrats hold at least one chamber of the upcoming 119th Congress, and (2) it turns out that the $10 million payment was not only made, but that it was the commencement of an ongoing funneling of money to Trump.

Undoubtedly, Hirono, Booker and Wyden all know this, and they also know there's a real chance that Democrats will no longer control the Senate committees as of January 3 of next year. So, while we tend to agree that this question should be looked into, we assume that their strong words are mostly just electioneering meant to insinuate that Trump is corrupt. (Z)

The Green Party May be Dying on the Vine

There was a very interesting study published by some scientists at Oxford about a week ago. It affirms something that's been suggested a few times, namely that switching to green sources of energy will actually be cheaper than sticking with the old-fashioned stuff. How much savings do they anticipate, assuming a full-fledged effort to convert? How about $12 trillion worldwide by 2050?

This is really the argument that environmentalists should be making. That is to say, people who care about the planet, or who fear the consequences of climate change, are already on board that there's a problem. Making this about dollars and cents, and about profit, has the potential to win over some sizable number of holdouts.

And you know who, in particular, should be making this argument? Jill Stein (who is the actual subject of this item). She is never, ever going to win an election as a Green Party candidate, whether it's for president or for Vice Associate Dogcatcher of East Cupcake. The power of established third parties is that they have a semi-seat at the table, and can potentially steer the national dialogue a bit. If she used every media hit to talk about the big bucks in green energy, she might actually have an impact.

But that is not what Stein actually talks about, as far as we can tell. We've seen a few speeches, and of course we've read plenty of articles, and she seems to address environmental issues, and environmental policy, very rarely. Mostly, she seems interested in griping about how the U.S. political system doesn't give candidates like her a fair shake. She's not unlike a third-party version of Donald Trump, up to and including the buddy-buddy relationship with Vladimir Putin.

According to a new piece from The New Republic (which is very friendly to lefty politics), the proof is in the pudding when it comes to Stein. She has been the leader of the Green Party for nearly a decade now, and the Party is a sinking ship. There are only 143 officeholders in the entire U.S. affiliated with the Party, and none of them occupy statewide or federal office. More damning, perhaps, is that when Stein first became involved with Party leadership (early 2000s), there were 319,000 registered Greens in the country. Now, despite the considerable population growth of the last two decades, that's down to 234,000.

This week, Stein was asked a very basic civics question (How many members of the House are there?) and could only hazard a very wrong guess (600). This caused Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to take Stein to task as an unserious political actor and activist:

Y'all, this is a little spicy, but I have thoughts. What I have a problem with is the fact that if you're running for president, you are the de facto leader of your party... Trust me on this, I've run as a third-party candidate in New York. I've also run as a Working Families Party candidate in addition to running as a Democrat... I've been on record about my criticisms of the two-party system, so this is not about that... If you run for years and years and years and years in a row, and your party has not grown and you don't add city council seats and you don't add downballot candidates and you don't add state electeds, that's bad leadership. That, to me, is what is upsetting. If you have been your party's nominee for 12 years in a row, 4 years ago and 4 years before that and 4 years before that, and you cannot grow your movement pretty much at all and can't pursue any successful strategy, and all you do is show up once every 4 years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, but you're just showing up once every 4 years to do that, you're not serious. To me, it does not read as authentic, it reads as predatory.

That was in an instagram post, which went viral, having been viewed at least 20 million times.

The lesson here seems awfully clear: If the Green Party wants to get serious about the environment, or about politics, or about keeping itself going as an active concern, Stein needs to go after this election. Whether that will actually happen, however, may be a different matter. (Z)

What's Your Political Type?

The good people at Pew Research have put together an interesting quiz. You answer 16 questions, and then it tells you what political "type" you are (basically, where you fall on the left-right spectrum, as it exists in the United States).

We toyed around with it, and the thing that stood out to us is that you really don't have to be all that lefty to qualify as "far left" (Pew calls it "progressive left") in the U.S. It would seem the old aphorism, that the spectrum is shifted much further left in Europe, has some truth to it.

Anyhow, if you would like to take the quiz, it is here. They don't save individual results, so nobody will know how you answered, except for you. We did set the link up to be an Electoral-Vote.com "group," so you can see how you compare to Electoral-Vote.com readers, how you compare to the general public, and how Electoral-Vote.com readers compare to the general public. (Z)

Today's Presidential Polls

We don't believe Virginia is this close. Either a bad sample here or a bad model of the electorate.

State	Kamala Harris	Donald Trump	Start	End	Pollster
Pennsylvania	52%	47%	Sep 12	Sep 18	MassINC
Virginia	48%	46%	Sep 03	Sep 09	Research America

Click on a state name for a graph of its polling history.

Today's Senate Polls

These seem more reasonable.

State	Democrat	D %	Republican	R %	Start	End	Pollster
Pennsylvania	Bob Casey*	49%	David McCormick	42%	Sep 12	Sep 18	MassINC
Virginia	Tim Kaine*	49%	Hung Cao	43%	Sep 03	Sep 09	Research America

* Denotes incumbent

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