With The Conversation keeping this site’s regular US correspondent busy, a quick post of my own on the US election campaign, and a forum for the discussion thereof. The big news from my perspective is that, after all the noteworthy forecasters closed for refurbishment following Joe Biden’s withdrawal, Nate Silver has lifted the lid on his Harris-versus-Trump model.
The model launches with a 61.3% win probability for Trump and 38.1% for Harris, the balance presumably reflecting the possibility that one candidate or the other doesn’t survive until November. These numbers suggest a model with a judiciously wide zone of uncertainty around projections that superficially look very encouraging for Trump. Silver’s model records an essentially dead head on the national popular vote, and doesn’t credit Harris with a better than even chance unless she lands at least two points clear. State-level projections find Trump more likely than not to flip Wisconsin (just), Michigan and Pennsylvania (a little further ahead), Nevada (a little further again) and Arizona and Georgia (both about as strong for Trump as North Carolina, which he carried in 2020).
The Economist’s model is still on ice, but its page explaining its methodology is well worth reading. Its charts comparing the predictiveness of its poll-based and “fundamentals” models going back to 1948 are particularly interesting in finding that the latter have the superior record – certainly at predicting the result 150 days out, but even unto election day itself. However, one of its parameters does not seem to me to be quite as fundamental as all that, being a poll-based measure of presidential approval.
The question of polls-versus-fundamentals was the focus of a critique by Nate Silver of the new model developed by FiveThirtyEight, the enterprise formerly synonymous with Silver but now bought out, LucasFilm style, by Disney. Its new incarnation is overseen by G. Elliott Morris, of whom Silver says he is “not a fan”. This was producing remarkably bullish results for Biden up until it was put on ice, which evidently wasn’t persuading too many senior Democrats. As well as criticising a lack of transparency, Silver observes that the model seems to be overwhelmingly favouring fundamentals, despite its supporting data suggesting that fundamentals should in fact be viewed as less predictive than polls. Its thesis, Silver argues, is that – as of July 21 – “Joe Biden is a reasonably clear favorite to win the popular vote because he’s an incumbent, and it’s too early to really update that assumption based on the polling or anything else”.
@Badthinker what’s “blacki authenticity”?
Asha @ #350 Thursday, August 1st, 2024 – 6:42 pm
I know right? Or whether my getting it wrong, about who is still alive and who isn’t, invalidates the point I was making.
Also, I have not been able to find one reference to Kamala Harris’ father scolding her in any way for claiming her ‘Black authenticity<blockquote'. Not one. And google is pretty good at that sort of thing. So it just seems to me to be yet another MAGA media ecosphere creation to try and give some validity to Donald Trump's latest slur.
Of course, Badthinker would believe he could get away with just putting it up here without attribution, because we wouldn't dare criticise what Kamala's father said, would we? And he wouldn't dare make up something that Kamala's father said either, would he? 😐
I heard that, because Amy Coney Barrett is a staunch Catholic, and not an Evangelical, that has led to her thinking going in a different direction to some of the other Conservative Justices.
There are 6 Catholics, 1 Jew, 1 Episcopalian [Anglican, raised Catholic] 1 non-denominational protestant [Ketanji Jackson].
No Evangelicals.
I’m catching up with YouTube tonight and came across a small-town perspective, that’s 5k to 50k people, and a Zoom call being organised for “Dirt Road Democrats”. In the video “Miss Beau” makes some good points and has some simple rhetoric to match.
https://youtu.be/SXAT7Otqzic
Some quotes:
* “… for Dirt Road Democrats they [Democrats] barely have any messaging at all”
* “… rural people, live our lives by lefty economic principles”
* “We like to say, what doesn’t bother the cattle doesn’t bother us, meaning mind your own business.”
* “… for a long time Republicans have been the only dog barking.”
IOW, small towns can be convinced to support Democrats, come join the Zoom call.
Letter ‘i’ above letter ‘k’ on keyboard.
Thanks for pointing it out, edit window now closed.
TropicalWonderland @ #351 Thursday, August 1st, 2024 – 6:46 pm
If I’m getting the rationalisation correct, it’s along the lines of Tony Abbott’s comment about ‘urban aboriginals’ and ‘authentic aboriginals’
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-13/abbott-criticised-for-urban-aboriginal-mp-comment/4369688
So, you can only be an ‘authentic Black’ if you’re all Black? Not of Mixed Race.
Harris has to be very careful using her father to claim Black authenticity, he’s called her out before.
Remember Harris asked about smoking marijuana, instead of a straight answer she expessed amazement that she would be put on the spot considering her Jamaican heritage.
Donald Harris released a statement that neither he nor any Jamaican member of the Harris family had any connection to marijuana.
Sorry Badthinker it wasn’t the ‘blacki’ part I was interested in but the alleged lack of authenticity.
Curious how someone in Australia could be on that bullshit bandwagon.
I know you are a shit stirrer but didnt realise that you would stoop that low.
Sad.
“Also, Kamala Harris was Black from the day she was born because of who her father was. She was also Indian from the day she was born, because of who her mother is.”
Sounds like you either can’t write a sentence or you weren’t aware that Harris’s mother died years ago but her father is still alive and well?
And very jealous of the Harris family good name.
Kamala Harris once made a harmless joke about Jamaicans smoking pot and her father, to his immense discredit, humourlessly and publicly rebuked her for it. As flimsy a basis as this is for attacking Harris, Badthinker isn’t making it up. Focus instead on what I understand to be his argument that one loses one’s national identity when one’s parents die.
TropicalW:
You’re unaware of Harris’s lack of connection to the American Black community, even though she’s been an adult 40+ years and could’ve taken the opportunity to connect, like Obama did, despite not being raised by Black people?
Kamala Harris once made a harmless joke about Jamaicans smoking pot and her father, to his immense discredit, humourlessly and publicly rebuked her for it. As flimsy a basis as this is for attacking Harris, Badthinker isn’t making it up. Focus instead on what I understand to be his argument that one loses one’s national identity when one’s parents die.
My point is that the commenter appeared to believe, if the comment can be taken seriously, that Harris’s mother is alive and her father isn’t.
viz: …. who her mother is … who her father was.
Not a big deal, but, the commenter hasn’t addressed my comment yet, just the typo, plus built a strawman.
Badthinker @ #357 Thursday, August 1st, 2024 – 7:00 pm
William Bowe @ #360 Thursday, August 1st, 2024 – 7:12 pm
Wow, I missed that!
Therefore, using that ‘logic’, Kamala Harris is now only Black because her father is the only one of her parents who is still alive.
Badthinker @ #362 Thursday, August 1st, 2024 – 7:18 pm
I made a harmless mistake and you’ve built your whole Trump position-supporting argument here today based on THAT!?! That’s not bad thinking, that’s evil thinking!
Not directly relevant to Kamala, but looks at similar issues.
Are You Scottish?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65XL1bwwTxg
A young Kamala with her father…
With father and mother and now…
”
Badthinkersays:
Thursday, August 1, 2024 at 6:27 pm
“Also, Kamala Harris was Black from the day she was born because of who her father was. She was also Indian from the day she was born, because of who her mother is.”
Her mother has been dead 15 years.
Donald Harris is very much alive at 86.
Harris has to be very careful using her father to claim Blacki authenticity, he’s called her out before.
”
MM and Badthinker
Harris went to college at Howard University in 1986 and got a degree in political science. (Howard University is Afro-American University). So it seems Harris wanted to and established her “Blacki authenticity” in 1986 when she was 21 years old. Otherwise there is no need to go to a Afro American University with her smarts.
Reuters
Fact check: Kamala Harris did not switch from identifying as Indian-American to Black
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/fact-check-kamala-harris-did-not-switch-from-identifying-as-indian-american-to-idUSKBN25H1Q9/
Were I to ever find myself in a position where journalists were interested in my marijuana use (not bloody likely), I could easily imagine myself making a similar joke, just with Daintree substituted for Jamaica. Seriously, what’s the big deal?
Continuing from @7:42 pm
As per Wiki
Kamala Harris: She attended Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C., living initially in a dorm room at Eton Tower near Thomas Circle.[42][49] While at Howard, she interned as a mailroom clerk for California senator Alan Cranston, chaired the economics society, led the debate team, and joined Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.[47][50] She also completed a summer internship at the Federal Trade Commission, worked as a tour guide at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and participated in anti-apartheid protests at the South African embassy and National Mall.[49][51][52][42] Harris graduated in 1986 with a degree in political science and economics.[53]
Harris then returned to California to attend the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco (formerly the University of California, Hastings College of the Law) through its Legal Education Opportunity Program (LEOP).[54] While at UC Law SF, she served as president of its chapter of the Black Law Students Association.[55] She graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1989[56] and was admitted to the California Bar in June 1990.[57]
Kamala Harris addresses the Trump slur as she incorporates it into her stump speech, which just keeps getting better and better:
https://youtu.be/ukK9PYPSl2w?si=p6k1MIJMnyercwqf
A vibe sort of article with some acute insights, IMO:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/01/kamala-harris-donald-trump-democrat-candidate
The discussion of Harris’ heritage is truly weird.
Rex:
Yep. And it says a hell of a lot more about the people making such claims than it does about Harris.
In an ideal world, Harris’ heritage would not matter. But the America of today is not an ideal world. Her ethnicity and gender do matter a lot. Even if she was a white Boston Brahmin educated at Wellesley or Bryn Mawr, she still wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in Mecca.
Just as any non-white or female would be up against it in Oz. There’s a reason why Penny Wong is in the Senate and not the House of Reps. She was probably chosen as token DEI rep for Labor. Of those who are not white men only Jacinta Nampijimpa Price would have a chance at ever being PM – if she left the Senate and stood for Lingiari.
Sprocket at 7:32
Donald Harris and Shymala Gopalan went through a nasty divorce in 1972.
Reading between the lines, Gopalan refused to facilitate contact between Harris and their daughters afterward and moved the family to Canada.
I say it’s likely that Kamala Harris was brought up in the Hindu culture of her mother after the separation. Hard to get detail on when Harris and her father reunited, if they ever did.
My opinion, Harris will draw 99% of the female Black vote, same as Hillary and Joe, poor turnout from the male Black voter, only 85% for Harris.
No proof that she’s culturally Black, why she’s going down that road who knows?
.
https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a28259825/who-is-donald-harris-kamala-harris-father/
Donald Harris says:
https://www.jamaicaglobalonline.com/kamala-harris-jamaican-heritage/
BadT
So why do you think Harris went to a Historically Black College and University? At the age of 21.
Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of primarily serving African Americans.[1] Most of these institutions were founded during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War and are concentrated in the Southern United States.[2]
They were primarily founded by Protestant religious groups, until the Second Morill Act of 1890 required educationally segregated states (all in the South) to provide African American, public higher-education schools (i.e. state funded schools) in order to receive the Act’s benefits (19, generally larger institutions, fall under this Act).
During the period of racial segregation in the United States, the majority of American institutions of higher education served predominantly white students, and disqualified or limited black American enrollment.[3][4] Later on some universities, either after expanding their inclusion of black people and African Americans into their institutions or gaining the status of minority-serving institution, became Predominantly Black Institutions (PBIs).[5]
For a century after the abolition of American slavery in 1865, almost all colleges and universities in the Southern United States prohibited all African Americans from attending as required by Jim Crow laws in the South, while institutions in other parts of the country regularly employed quotas to limit admissions of black people.[6][7][8][9] HBCUs were established to provide more opportunities to African Americans and are largely responsible for establishing and expanding the African-American middle class.[10][11] In the 1950s and 1960s, enforced racial segregation in education was generally outlawed across the United States.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historically_black_colleges_and_universities
Ven at 7:42pm
Harris went to college at Howard University in 1986 and got a degree in political science. (Howard University is Afro-American University
“Afro-American” is no longer PC when referring to the 45 million+ descendants of slaves transported to North America.
PC term is “Black” when referring to this coomunity.
I thought Harris responded appropriately to Trump’s insanity. He is clearly not a well man and needs to step down.
What’s incredible is that his campaign needed to pull him off the stage because of the train wreck interview.
sprocket _ 8:18 pm
So why do you think Harris went to a Historically Black College and University? At the age of 21.
No idea.
I thought the answer might be in your screed below, but that doesn’t mention Harris.
So, do you know why she attended Howard?
What’s incredible is that his campaign needed to pull him off the stage because of the train wreck interview.
You have footage of this highly unlikely event?
I see the Right Wingers are having a normal one. I think we’re not too far away from phrenology. “Look at the shape of her head! That’s the skull of someone who is naturally deceitful and lazy!”
Really batting away the ‘weird’ allegations…
So why do you think Harris went to a Historically Black College and University? At the age of 21.
No idea.
And that’s why you are just making **it up as you go along.
Wat Tyler @ #383 Thursday, August 1st, 2024 – 8:43 pm
It’s Tony Abbott and ‘authentic Aboriginals’ redux. It’s how the Reactionary Right roll.
Divorces are bitter. That doesn’t equate with denying your parents’ heritage.
C@tmomma @ #386 Thursday, August 1st, 2024 – 8:48 pm
It’s offensive, that’s what it is. She responded appropriately, and if I were her I’d continue to invite him to say that shit to her face on a debate stage.
Whilst Trump tries to hog the headlines with his racist tropes, he is about to be blown off by some real US leadership
Wall Street Journal (WSJ) journalist Evan Gershkovich, who is serving a 16-year sentence in a Russian penal colony on contested espionage charges, could be on the cusp of a freedom as part of a rumored, imminent prisoner swap between Russia and the U.S. alongside Germany.
Per a report by the well-informed Politika.Kozlov political newsletter, re-printed up by the Moscow Times late Wednesday, between 20 to 30 political prisoners and journalists in captivity in Russia are on the verge of being freed in what would be the biggest prisoner swap since the end of the Cold War.
Also on Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/world/lawyer-ex-us-marine-whelan-jailed-russia-says-she-cannot-confirm-his-whereabouts-2024-07-31/
Badthinkersays:
Thursday, August 1, 2024 at 7:18 pm
Kamala Harris once made a harmless joke about Jamaicans smoking pot and her father, to his immense discredit, humourlessly and publicly rebuked her for it. As flimsy a basis as this is for attacking Harris, Badthinker isn’t making it up. Focus instead on what I understand to be his argument that one loses one’s national identity when one’s parents die.
My point is that the commenter appeared to believe, if the comment can be taken seriously, that Harris’s mother is alive and her father isn’t.
viz: …. who her mother is … who her father was.
Not a big deal, but, the commenter hasn’t addressed my comment yet, just the typo, plus built a strawman.
====================================================
While on the issue not addressing comments. You made a comment the other day involving Linda Tripp as an intern in the White House elevator with LBJ in 1968. You latter retracted some of it claiming it was Lucianne Goldberg instead. Do you still stand by the rest of it that she was in White House elevator with LBJ in 1968. Can you provide any evidence at all that Lucianne Goldberg was working in the LBJ White House in 1968, though she would have been far old to be an intern.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucianne_Goldberg
Frankly, anybody who thinks this bizarre stuff about Harris’ heritage matters in the slightest has some truly unsavoury ideas about race themselves. It’s as though they think America’s various cultural and racial demographics are all just homogenous hive minds who will immediately side with or against a candidate as long as they are on their team.
A normal person wouldn’t give a fuck.
Ashasays:
Thursday, August 1, 2024 at 8:59 pm
Frankly, anybody who thinks this bizarre stuff about Harris’ heritage matters in the slightest has some truly unsavoury ideas about race themselves.
========================================================
Exactly, the same sort of person who would make up a slanderous and completely false story about LBJ. Only to apparently smear the integrity of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that he signed. That is the sort of unsavoury ideas about race we probably looking at here.
Badthinkersays:
Thursday, July 25, 2024 at 8:21 pm
Reminds me of Linda Tripp, she told Monica Lewinsky to go public in 1998.
Anyway, Tripp was a White House intern in 1968, first day on the job she got into a lift with LBJ, who grabbed a nipple in his bony fingers and started twistin’.
Until the lift stopped and the door opened.
Then he walked out.
But, hey, he signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act!
Wat:
Of course you would say that. You have the brainpan of a stagecoach tilter.
Trump’s down in seven national polls; his stock has crashed by around 25%; and, the electoral college votes are trending for Harris:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSXXki2Om7o&t=236s
Early days, but promising.
_______________________________________
D & M: Thanks for today’s bumper batch.
TropicalWonderland @ #358 Thursday, August 1st, 2024 – 6:36 pm
A racist Australian? Never!
Wat:
We would certainly never see anybody questioning a person’s racial identity here!
Asha @ #393 Thursday, August 1st, 2024 – 9:08 pm
Apparently Trump doubled down on the ‘Indian thing’ after that debate.
Who is managing his campaign? And where can we see more of Trump unplugged? 😆
Indeed Asha, and there are no historical antecedents to back up any such allegation either.
Confession:
As far as I understand, Harris has never denied her Indian heritage and has always been completely upfront about being of both Jamaican and Indian descent, so… I really cannot fathom how anybody who isn’t profoundly racist could consider “she’s Indian!!1!” to be a anything resembling a legitimate criticism.
It reminds me, of, well…
https://youtu.be/zDnsIt2VwoI?si=LfszsBRVX4tABkgq
If the level of Trump supporters has sunk to the point of arguing that the daughter of a black American has no black heritage then they must believe things are no longer going their way.
This has to be one of the craziest arguments ever on this site.