Election Updates- Where the Wild Things Are
with "White Dudes for Harris"
A lot has gone on behind the scenes in the presidential election this week. Some of the stories that were a bit more underground are worth highlighting.
To begin.
The first presidential debate is scheduled for Sept. 10, to be held in Philadelphia without an audience. That is three days from now. It will be held at the following time:
6:00 PM Pacific
7:00 PM Mountain
8:00 PM Central
9:00 PM Eastern
The debate is being hosted by ABC, whose parent company is Walt Disney. David Muir and Linsey Davis will moderate.
David Muir is the anchor of ABC World News Tonight and co-anchor of ABC News magazine 20/20. He keeps his political beliefs to himself, but he is widely thought to be a Democrat.
Linsey Davis is an American broadcast journalist at ABC News, who currently anchors the Sunday edition of World News Tonight and a prime-time streaming program, ABC News Live Prime with Linsey Davis. Her personal website prominently lists her as a Christian, and her bestselling children’s books deal with topics such as multiracial identity, girl empowerment, and bereavement.
There are indicators that the MSM is worried about Kamala’s performance.
According to a recent poll, less than half of Americans know the time and date of the first debate. So far, MSM has not publicized this debate much. I think the reason is that they are afraid of Kamala Harris’ debate performance. The Hill writes:
To say Harris has problems speaking off the cuff is a major understatement. Whether it’s bad quips, awkward laughs or the many varieties of word salad she serves up, Harris is simply not good on her own. It is telling that she and her team have stonewalled every interview request save one — not to mention that her one post-nomination solo interview included her running mate taking some of the pressure off.
I have put the debate time and date into my online calendar because, as cringe-worthy as the debate may be, I intend to watch every second of it.
Forecasting Data on the Election
For those who don’t know, Nate Silver sold 538.com to ABC News a few years back. Why is this important?
FiveThirtyEight used to be the go-to site for election forecasting. Not so much now.
538, originally rendered as FiveThirtyEight, is an American website that focused on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging in the United States. Founder Nate Silver left in 2023, taking the rights to his forecasting model with him to his website Silver Bulletin. 538's new owner Disney hired G. Elliott Morris to develop a new model. On September 18, 2023, the original website domain at fivethirtyeight.com was closed, and web traffic became redirected to ABC News pages. The logo was replaced, with the name 538 now used instead of FiveThirtyEight.
Interestingly enough, Nate Silver and Elliot Morris have “feuded” in the past and are now enemies. So Disney's hiring Morris to develop a new model was indeed a fast ball aimed right at Silver’s private parts.
Silver’s predictive forecasting has always included a weighting of polls based on their historical performance. To me, it appears that 538 has now abandoned that model.
This is important because political operatives, political action committees, and the candidates themselves hire polling companies to conduct polls. These polls are often weighted in favor of the sponsor. For instance, there are reports that before Kennedy suspended his campaign, pollsters would intentionally leave him off of the selection of candidates to choose from. Polls can be influenced in a variety of ways. Some of those ways can be very subtle. For instance, the order of the candidates listed or how favorability ratings are ranked can influence respondent choices.
The “poll of polls” promoted at sites like Disney’s 538 or Real Clear Politics do not appear to differentiate between polling organizations. The majority of polls that have cropped up overnight seem to originate from left-leaning news organizations are sponsored by the left, or do not provide sponsorship information.
No methodology is presented on many of these “poll of polls’ to weigh the results for bias or historical accuracy. So, these types meta-analysis seem to be prone to bias. The chart below shows that during the last two presidential elections, polls overestimated the Democrat’s margin over Trump’s margin by a substantial amount.
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Pew Research has documented that the number of pollsters has exploded over the past two decades, and there are no longer any standards in methodology.
Who to trust for accurate polling data?
Nate Silver, whose work I admire, is advising a relatively new venture funded by Peter Thiel called Polymarkets. This site is billed as the “the world's largest prediction market”, and trading (betting) on the market is the business model.
I find the Polymarket site fascinating. To understand more about predictive markets, consider reading this Axios piece.
However, if you want to know what pollster Nate Silver forecasts about the Presidential election, you have to go to his Substack, The Silver Bulletin.
Right now, The Silver Bulletin is predicting a 55.8% probability that Trump will win. Much of that has to do with the fact that Harris had a very modest post-convention bounce and the Kennedy endorsement of Trump.
The truth is that this election is close. It could go either way.
Most of The Silver Bulletin is behind a paywall, but for those who are election junkies - subscribing is something to consider.
In other news, Trump hush-money trial sentencing has been delayed until late November, after the election. Judge Merchan reasoned that he didn’t want the sentencing to be seen as election interference.
But a more obvious reason behind the delay is the fact that Congress is now investigating Merchan’s daughter for Merchan’s conflict of interest issues relating to his family and this court case.
Could the delay in Trump's sentencing announced by Merchan be because of Judge Merchan realizing that his politicized actions in this court case will cause Merchan and his family a lot of nasty blowback?
The backstory is that his daughter, Loren Merchan, is president of Authentic Campaigns @Authentic_HQ, and has represented top democratic politicians (including Biden, Harris and Schiff). Authentic campaigns has raked in big money since the Trump hush money trial
Congress has been investigating whether Loren Merchan’s involvement with these political figures presents a conflict of interest for the judge in the Trump trial. The House Judiciary Committee has concerns that Loren Merchan and Authentic Campaigns could have financially benefited from the prosecution and conviction of former President Trump. She has been subpoenaed and ordered to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on September 13th.
So, Judge Merchan sudden decision to delay the sentencing until after the election, suits his own personal agenda very well. In the meantime, that September 13th Congressional date with Loren Merchan looms large. Her testimony, as well as that of her business partner, Mike Nellis, should prove to be riveting.
“In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man,”
Kamala Harris, on accepting the Democratic nomination
Folks, this could be your next president of the United States.
And she calls Trump an “unserious person”…
This bit of news just came in:
The gators are leaving the swamp:
The Daily Caller reports that current Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has announced that he has no interest in serving in a Harris-Walz administration and will step down in January.
This must be the most absurd ad campaign ever…
The Democratic National Committee will welcome the start the college football season by trolling Donald Trump and JD Vance with plane banners over the biggest games on Saturday.
Banners will fly over the home games at University of Michigan’s Michigan Stadium, the University of Georgia’s Sanford Stadium, Penn State’s Beaver Stadium, and Camp Randall Stadium at the University of Wisconsin. The signs encourage fans to "sack" Trump and Project 2025.
In the case of Michigan, the DNC will remind fans exactly where JD Vance's loyalties lie: with arch rival Ohio State.
"It’s college football Saturday, and fans are ready to sack the competition and beat Project 2025, which would give Trump unprecedented power, allow Trump to ban abortion nationwide, allow the government to monitor pregnancies, and give tax giveaways for billionaires," DNC Deputy Communications Director Abhi Rahman said.
The best the Democrat party can do is run Harris against Project 2025, developed by the Heritage Foundation, which Trump has vehemently denied having anything to do with.
Why don’t they try picking some real issues?
Remember Loren Merchan’s Authentic Campaigns @Authentic_HQ from above? Well, her business partner, Mike Nellis, is none other than the guy who started the White Dudes for Harris political organization. They have raised millions of dollars in the first week of their founding.
If you want some interesting viewing, put in “White Dudes for Harris” as an X search term…
Rudeness abounds…
Blows my mind that ANYONE with an interest in the upcoming election is still sitting on the fence and will be swayed by these debates. That the performance of the current Administration the past 4 years has Harris within 20 points of Trump is a SCARY spiritual litmus test.
I’m hoping that in the debate Trump ignores the woke questions and puts focus on Kamala’s three major destructive policies she has put at the forefront of her campaign. First is price fixing on food. This communist policy has never worked and always ends with empty shelves and hunger. Second is a 25% tax on unrealized capital gains; this is an insane policy which is a theft of property. Imagine if your house has increased in value 200 thousand dollars, you still live there but you owe 50 thousand dollars. This will absolutely destroy home ownership and all investment plans. The third and not the last is increasing the corporate tax from 21% to 28 %. China’s corporate rate is 25%. This will increase prices on pretty much everything. It’s not a tax on the rich it just gets passed on to us. Trump should ignore the leftist questions and slam her on policy.