= new reply since forum marked as read
[center]
GOTV. Let's win Ohio, Arizona, Georgia, and Iowa too!
By David Jarman Oct 31, 2016
You’ve probably already OD’d on reading about Friday’s cryptic Comey memo, which re-opened the e-mail can of worms (if only to reveal the can was empty), from every legal and messaging angle. I don't have anything to add about it from those perspectives, so I’ll just stay in my lane here and answer the questions about “what does this do to the polls?!?” It’s a pretty simple answer, though: nothing so far. The Daily Kos Elections model is still holding steady in the mid-90s, currently giving Hillary Clinton 96 percent odds of victory according to Monday’s numbers.
It shouldn't be hard to see why: a) many people simply haven’t heard the story (believe it or not, most people don’t follow the news as obsessively as your average Daily Kos reader), focusing instead on football or on earning enough money to survive or simply having a life on the weekend; b) many people who’ve heard the story just walked away from it with more question marks than they before; and most importantly c) thanks to the intense levels of political polarization in today’s society, most people who fully digested the story already made up their minds long ago, and what few truly undecided swing voters still remain are more likely to be making their last-minute decisions based on their own personal economic situations or the ol’ “have a beer with” test, instead of the baffling sequel to a story that was highly-technical and boring the first time around.
(There’s also: d) 21 million people have already voted, which we’ll discuss in more detail shortly. And while the early voters are probably the most hardcore partisans of the electorate, the ones least likely to be swayed by a story like this, that’s still possibly 1/5th of the electorate ... is already locked in.)
It's all about turnout at this point. Clinton is a heavy favorite to reach 270+, but a closer than expected contest will impact down-ballot races as well as the media narrative following the election (the message will be, "Clinton has no chance of lasting more than 4 years because she barely beat the worst candidate in modern history."
.
We live in a pretty screwed up nation.
Where Clinton emails (or Clinton staffer emails) rule all.
Where the mainstream media doesn't much care that Trump faces a lawsuit for allegedly raping a child, that Trump's campaign may have highly questionable ties to Russia, that Trump has sexually assaulted numerous women, that Trump has no substantive policy position, that Trump is a racist and a xenophobe, that Trump has stiffed contractors and students of his university and others, that Trump doesn't pay taxes and brags about it, and so on.
Where Donald effing Trump may get 50 million votes.
As someone in another thread said, it's Kafkaesque. Actually, it's beyond Kafkaesque. We need a new term to describe just how insane this all is.