Enjoy your conspiracy theorizing, I guess. Absent evidence, I’ll pass.
I love the support - thanks ever so much.
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Parscale: Polls can’t capture the complexity of the electorate and politics - AND the polls are capturing just how far ahead Trump is.
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In 2004, the egregious Ken Blackwell was Ohio secretary of state and fully engaged in a Rove approved insanely over the top campaign of official state election ratfuckery. There were persistent stories, and compelling evidence aired in a lawsuit that included testimony a guy who caught a mysterious case of dead indicating that it had been deliberately set up to enable Blackwell to change election returns in real time.
In 2004, as exit polling results were being leaked to and shared with the campaigns by the press, GWB indicated to Rove that it looked like this was it and hey, it wasn’t so bad. Rove said “let me make some calls” and, lo and behold wouldntchaknowit in the end there was an inexplicable 6.7% discrepancy in the exit polls and the outcome.
In 2012, Rove was going bananas on the air in Fox, insisting that it was too early to call Ohio for Obama. Ohio, however, had a different secretary of state who, while a full on corrupt lackey, was also a cowardly little shitweasel who took note of how Blackwell had been underbussed and memory holed in the wake of the lawsuit.
Rove’s 2012 election night meltdown didn’t convince me Rove was an idiot. It convinced me that my 2004 suspicion that he had a little “break glass in case of imminent defeat” software hack set up in Ohio was true but had an Ohio secretary of state who lacked the balls to push the button in the face of an imminent Democratic landslide, a Democratic incumbent, a Karl Rove in no position to protect him and, oh yeah, a witness in the post-2004 lawsuit who somehow lost control of his airplane.
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I remember this. Rove’s rant was unsettling and hard triggered my instincts that some dark acts were going on here. Felt like something screwed up with their attempt at stealing Ohio.
That feeling remains. I’ve pondered whether “they” succeeded in 2016 in other states or regions.
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Couldn’t agree more. I remember it was around 9 PM CST when the whole thing turned completely around. I also recall a piece online that was written by a woman rightwing journalist named Buehler who was on the phone with Rove when that happened. She called him to get a comment on their apparent loss and he said Hold the phone, that is changing right now. And it did.
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i.e., “we’re cheating our asses off, rigging machines and electoral results as much as possible and expect to win despite abysmal poll numbers as a result, so here’s our lame ass excuse the MSM will help us make…”
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Mine too. I had always suspected they stole Ohio. There was a lot of evidence. But Turdblossom consistently overestimated the extent of his reach, abilities and residual power after he left.
And the thing about Ohio is that it was a classic example of the “they couldn’t do that because it would come out” form of normalcy bias. It did come out. The stench of corruption was huge. But people wouldn’t believe it.
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The stench of election corruption has been all but unbearable wafting from the GOP since 2000.
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Smells that way to me. And the MSM’s systemic, institutionalized normalcy bias will be there to do the work for them once again when it happens.
But, at the same time, I think they may well also be locking themselves in with the inmates and risking becoming one of them. They’re cooking numbers to keep Trump calm, injecting false assumptions and push questions into them to give him things to keep him calm while they steal it (which, of course, they can’t tell him anything about because he’ll blab) and, in so doing, risking creating the same kind of hallucinatory bubble Romney put himself into in 2012 and, in the process, damaging their ability to successfully steal it.
The only way to steal it is successfully is to keep two completely separate sets of books and only believe the honest set. It will take enormous mental discipline not to take a hit off the crack pipe as it passes by and then another and another and another.
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I love the lede.
Although I would posit that Trump’s political pitch is framed not around a distrust of elites, but a conspiracy with his cult members to dismiss any and all facts that do not accord with their desire to drag the U.S. back into the 19th century.
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Why did you repost the same image?
(Though I do say Ham Rove is looking pretty spry there, considering he was brutally murdered on cable television.)
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"making the results highly dependent on how those policies were described "
This could be a fun game. I’ll go first…
“Some experts believe that Democrats’ pro-abortion ‘choice’ position could lead to a gov’t mandate requiring all white Christian women, upon turning age 18, learn about their right of ‘choice’ by using a turkey baster to inject a black Muslim man’s semen directly into their womb and then choosing between the sin of abortion or raising the child in the Muslim faith. Do you agree with the Democrats pro-abortion position?”
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Hmmm. Docked three points for lack of “socialism”. However, 
for the turkey baster.
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I hear you but I don’t think they are going to be able to pull that one off again. Letting that little tidbit out about the Russian electric grid might make Putie think twice. I think that was timed just right.
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This is the kind of thing I need to hear. Sneering at me for something doesn’t help me not believe it but this does help. Thanks - you’re right.
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I expect massive shenanigans. Polls closing while people are in line, complaints about IDs being rejected on a galactic scale, machines switching votes, machines just not working, machines just not showing up, polling places being moved or just somehow never even opening, lost boxes of ballots, weird vote reporting errors like the spreadsheet goofiness we heard about at one point a while ago, full on intimidation, disruption efforts like causing fights and other insanity and accepting arrest and prosecution just to get the polling location closed down, widespread electioneering and intimidation at polling locations, a conga line of lawsuits the likes of which we’ve never seen, deceptive ballots, etc. etc. etc.
I’d say watch places like WI, NC and FL the most, because those fucking GOPers there are needle-in-the-red corrupt and will have no compunction blowing up election results as a last ditch effort to hand everything over to the SCOTUS for another 5-4 coronation of KKKing of the Oligarchs.
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We all go there from time to time, hell we have good reason to. I do think the IC is doing things we are not aware of to keep bad players out. Trump and Co can not steal it on their own. 
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In some of the early Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes, that’s essentially how the crew handled the deranged Captain Peter Peachfuzz. After being rejected from the Navy (for being a complete nutcase), he inherited a fortune from his uncle and bought a cruise ship and insisted on being captain. In order to keep the ship on course, the crew disconnected the bridge controls and let Peachfuzz do whatever he wanted, while they moved all the real controls to a secret second location. (Which worked fine until he accidentally wandered into the real bridge and started doing his usual nutty routine.)
I can’t help but draw parallels to the current administration whenever I think of that.
I think ever since Nixon started the “Southern Strategy,” they’ve been goosing themselves in that direction. There’s now been 2-3 generations of GOPers who’ve grown up basting in the fever swamp of “unskewed polls” and the like. They already had one foot in the asylum before Trump. He was just the first one to jump all the way in and he’s dragging the rest of them in after him. And because they were half-convinced already, it’s not hard for them to lose all moorings with reality-based existence.
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Socialism’s in there, the turkey baster is free.
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