Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of November 7

Election day is tomorrow! This is the second election I’m working, and the first general election I’ve ever worked. I’m already tired thinking about it, but I know how satisfying it will be once we’re all done with the day.

Dems keep control of Senate with Nevada win

Now that the stolen election argument seems like a political loser, and Trump seems like a political loser, it will be interesting to see how many were simply along for the ride while it lasted, and how many were true believers.

It's very disheartening to see Georgia's voters so evenly divided between one thoughtful, intelligent man and one hypocritical... idiot as candidates. You'd think the choice would be particularly clear for Georgians.

Good to see that the red wave hasn't come to fruition.

• Some have noted that abortion rights have galvanized a lot of people across the spectrum.
• I'm glad that Democrats have improved their handling of the crime narrative. According to surveys, crime is a high concern for many Americans. The "defund the police" movement in 2020 was a messaging disaster for Democrats.

The Largest Political Donation in US History Took Place in the 2022 Midterms
https://truthout.org/articles/the-largest-political-donation-in-us-history-took-place-in-the-2022-midterms/

It has now been 12 years since the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling opened up the floodgates to corporate donations and super PAC monies coming into elections. And, as a result, each election cycle since then has seen the growing consequences of this decision, as the super-wealthy use their money to prop up pet candidates and determine crucial citizens’ initiatives.

For example...

Earlier this year, The New York Times and ProPublica reported that 90-year-old Barre Seid, a secretive Chicago manufacturing tycoon, had donated $1.6 billion to the Marble Freedom Trust, to push its agenda of securing conservative judicial appointments up and down the ranks of state and federal judiciary. This is a long-term investment that over the coming years and decades will buttress conservatives as they groom the next generation of right-wing legal scholars, and work to ensure the election of politicians who will nominate ever more right-wing figures to judicial benches.

That money, the largest one-off political donation in U.S. history, instantly made Seid, hardly a household figure in U.S. public life, one of the country’s most important arbiters determining the face of the legal system — and by extension the country’s regulatory edifice, its environmental policies, access to abortion, voting rights, the fate of gun control laws, civil rights and so much more — over the coming decades. And it catapulted him into the top tier of politically active billionaires, joining a club that includes Charles Koch, on the right; George Soros, on the left; and a handful of others.

Something I thought was worth noting is that Steve Bannon recently stated that the elections we've had in Brazil are illegitimate and advocated for a coup. If Trump was reelected and this guy was still on Trump's cabinet, I think there's a 90%+ chance that our military would have tried a coup by now, and Trump's US would have helped a right-wing coup, just like in the cold war.

A Bottomless Pinocchio for Biden — and other recent gaffes (Washington Post)

“Folks, I spent a lot of time — more time with Xi Jinping than any other head of state. … I’ve traveled 17,000 miles with him.”

— remarks at a political event in San Diego, Nov. 3

This is an old claim we had debunked shortly after Biden took office, giving him Three Pinocchios. There is no evidence Biden traveled that much with Xi, the president of China — and even if we added up the miles Biden flew to see Xi, it still did not total 17,000 miles. The White House could not offer an explanation for that number either.

But it’s noteworthy because, despite our fact check and a White House admission that Biden’s line of “traveling with” Xi was not accurate, with this comment, Biden had made the claim 20 times during his presidency. (He then said it a 21st time a few hours later, in another speech, with a slight twist: “… when I traveled 17-, 18,000 miles with him.”) Biden is so fond of this bogus statistic that he even mentioned it during high-profile speeches such as a joint session of Congress and a commencement address.

Why is this significant? Readers may recall that during Donald Trump’s presidency, we established a new category, the Bottomless Pinocchio, to account for false or misleading statements repeated so often that they became a form of propaganda. A statement would get added to the list if it had earned a Three or Four Pinocchios rating and been repeated at least 20 times. By the end of the Trump presidency, 56 claims made by Trump had qualified.

Now Biden has earned his own Bottomless Pinocchio.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/abortion-rights-are-reshaping-american-politics/

I have an actual serious question for our American Tilderinos, because something occurred that I haven't been able to actually mentally process.

This result in Oregon is what I mean. If you don't want to click the link, it's "remove slavery as a punishment for crime from constitution amendment" and it passed.

My reading of this is that it repeals slavery as a punishment, and that 55% of people supported it. Conversely 45% of people supported slavery as a punishment.

Is this the correct reading?

For the first time ever, DeSantis is more popular than Trump among Republicans

Trump issued a lengthy statement Thursday deriding DeSantis, in a sign that he is prepared to declare war against any Republican seeking to usurp him.

Among Republican voters, 41% said they preferred DeSantis compared to 39% who preferred Trump, while 8% said they preferred neither.

And somewhat similarly:

Trump targets Youngkin in latest outburst against a 2024 rival

Former President Donald Trump on Friday jabbed at Virginia Gov. Glen Youngkin, lashing out for a second straight day at a potential rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

With this hilarious nugget:

“Young Kin (now that’s an interesting take. Sounds Chinese, doesn’t it?) in Virginia couldn’t have won without me,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, the social media platform he helped found. “I Endorsed him, did a very big Trump Rally for him telephonically, got MAGA to Vote for him - or he couldn’t have come close to winning. But he knows that, and admits it. Besides, having a hard time with the Dems in Virginia - But he’ll get it done!”

Looks like 2024 for the GOP is favoring the side of chaos. One thing I've seen posted online is some Republicans complaining about how Trump doing stuff like this is needlessly dividing the GOP. They're gonna learn very well why we were so horrified of this man back in 2016.

Why it could take weeks to get final L.A. election results. ‘We aren’t sitting on ballots’

“We aren’t sitting on ballots,” said county Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan, explaining that election officials had tabulated all the vote-by-mail ballots ready to be tallied in their possession by the wee hours Wednesday.

After election week, county election officials generally release new updates only twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, though Logan said his office hadn’t ruled out the possibility of an additional update between those days, depending on the volume of ballots tallied.

“What I think we want to avoid is doing these incremental updates where things are bouncing back and forth, as opposed to getting substantial updates so we start to see the trends and the definition that’s taking place in the outcome,” Logan said.

This is not the way.