I have yet to see an expression of fear or edginess on the part of any of the recipients of these bombs, or their surrogates. Democrats are concerned about civilization, the future, our children, our planet, education, the environment. Attacks on these key elements of society cause concern, and Democrats fight those attacks. Democratic values don’t include being afraid. Nobody is afraid.

To be clear, over the last three years, Donald Trump has publicly compiled an enemies list, that includes President Obama, Secretary Clinton, Vice President Obama, George Soros, Maxine Waters, Director Brennan, AG Holden, and several others. This enemies list has been converted into a hit list, and a fake bomber, or an utterly incompetent bomber (not sure which is better), has taken on the obvious task of attempting to terrorize those individuals. For now, I’ll assume that the lack of a bomb in Elizabeth Warren’s mailbox is the slowness of the postal system around Boston this time of year.

There is an attack going on, but not one that will do anything but elevate paragraphs about Trump’s hatred and his enemies list to an earlier position in the eventual Wikipedia page on his regime.

Later on, Richard Nixon was impeached because he and his minions carried out crimes that were kinda bad and then tried to cover them up, which led to the absurd modern day aphorism that “it’s not the crime, its the cover up,” implying that no matter how bad the crime is, the cover up is worse (wrong). Nixon was not thrown out of office, but rather, he left on his own.

Later on, Bill Clinton was impeached for his affair with a White House Aide. But other than anti-Clinton Republicans, most people, while not liking the affair thing, did not see this as worthy of impeachment, and recognized the Republican effort to impeach Clinton as a bald faced political move.

Now, we are faced with Trump. We don’t know where impeachment will go. It may be impossible until there is a Senate super majority, and that may not happen any time soon. Trump will have to be caught talking on the phone to Vladimir Putin, discussing their recent successful assassination of Bambi. But likely, that won’t do it either. Republicans put party over country every time. The only way Trump is going to leave office is feet first in the case he croaks on his own, or by being voted out of office, and the latter is not likely to happen because, face it, Trump represents American values in he (slim) minority, but that minority rules due to voter suppression and Russian-powered ignorance.

Whatever. The point is, impeachment is on the table, and there is a new book out that helps us understand the earlier impeachments, and I recommend it. Impeachment: An American History by Jon Meacham, Peter Baker, Tim Naftali, and Jefrey Engel.

Four experts on the American presidency examine the three times impeachment has been invoked—against Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton—and explain what it means today.

Impeachment is a double-edged sword. Though it was designed to check tyrants, Thomas Jefferson also called impeachment “the most formidable weapon for the purpose of a dominant faction that was ever contrived.” On the one hand, it nullifies the will of voters, the basic foundation of all representative democracies. On the other, its absence from the Constitution would leave the country vulnerable to despotic leadership. It is rarely used, and with good reason.

Only three times has a president’s conduct led to such political disarray as to warrant his potential removal from office, transforming a political crisis into a constitutional one. None has yet succeeded. Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868 for failing to kowtow to congressional leaders—and, in a large sense, for failing to be Abraham Lincoln—yet survived his Senate trial. Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974 after the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against him for lying, obstructing justice, and employing his executive power for personal and political gain. Bill Clinton had an affair with a White House intern, but in 1999 he faced trial in the Senate less for that prurient act than for lying under oath about it.

In the first book to consider these three presidents alone—and the one thing they have in common—Jeffrey A. Engel, Jon Meacham, Timothy Naftali, and Peter Baker explain that the basis and process of impeachment is more political than legal. The Constitution states that the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” leaving room for historical precedent and the temperament of the time to weigh heavily on each case. This book reveals the complicated motives behind each impeachment—never entirely limited to the question of a president’s guilt—and the risks to all sides. Each case depended on factors beyond the president’s behavior: his relationship with Congress, the polarization of the moment, and the power and resilience of the office itself. This is a realist view of impeachment that looks to history for clues about its potential use in the future.

Read this book as a distraction from the current intense and rather explosive (nearly explosive?) political climate. A little history to distrat you from the future…

Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World is an empowering letter from former Hillary Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri to the first woman president, and by extension, to all women working to succeed in any field. By using lessons learned during her experiences with Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and Elizabeth Edwards–to name a few–Palmieri through each chapter creates a forward-thinking framework of inspirational and practical advice for all women everywhere–from boardrooms to living rooms–who are determined to seize control of their lives, their workplaces, and their country. DEAR MADAM PRESIDENT will turn the results of the 2016 election into something incredibly empowering for future female leaders and independent thinkers everywhere.

As a country, we haven’t wrapped our heads around what it should look like for a woman to be in the job of President. Our only models are men. This of course was seen during the Hillary Clinton campaign, and no one knows this better than Jennifer Palmieri. While wildly disappointed by the outcome of the election, Palmieri optimistically argues in the book that the Clinton candidacy and all she experienced on the campaign trail–confusion, admiration, hate, love, acceptance, rejection–can now open the country up to reimagining women in leadership roles. And that is what Palmieri takes on in this book–redefining expectations for women looking to lead and creating a blueprint for women candidates and leaders to follow.

And it turns out that this was the Russians. The people doing this were not the Russians. Rather, the Russians, either working for Trump or working in parallel with him (we shall eventually find out) were isolating vulnerable individuals, individual who fit a certain discernible pattern of attributes, and psychologically manipulating them to rage against Hillary.

Looking back, it is now pretty clear that this vitriolic wall of hate, rising up unexpectedly and looking a certain way, was an anomaly. Yes, yes, there was all this Hillary Hate before, but that was from a different demographic, had a different look, and a different feel. This new thing was a different thing, and looking back, one can see it clearly.

And now, it is back. The statements being made that, when you run them down, are not based on reality. The vitriol, almost threatening way it is put. The logical conclusion of the rhetoric being self defeating and damaging to the Democratic Party and progressive idea.

But this time it is about Bernie. I will bet all my bagels and muffins against all your donuts that the Russians are hacking us again, but this time, instead of manipulating Bernie-favoring people to hate bigger and better on Hillary, they are manipulating Hillary supporters to bash Bernie.

It is the same level of vitriol, the same badly sourced accusations, the same direct link between accusation and a final solution of leaving or tearing apart the Democratic party, etc. It appeared in the social networking world instantly, and it is suddenly everywhere. Have you seen it?

I’ll give yo an example. Perez gets up in front of an audience and all the Bernie Bots boo him. That is what is being said. What really happened is that Perez got Bernie to do a talk in a place where Bernie was very popular, to shore up Democratic support, and a lot of Bernie people cheered the heck out of Bernie. There was not moment of booing Perez, though there may have been one moment of mixed hemming and hawing. The actual non-false, real thing that happened is that Perez gave a speech that had the audience cheering and on their feet, then Sanders gave a speech that had the audience cheering and on their feet. If you don’t believe me, you can watch it yourself, below.

But this was converted into a false accusation that Bernie was trying to ruin the Democratic Party. The vitriol is intense. He’s a socialist, run him out. He’s an independent, run him out. He lies all the time. Etc.

The result of this falsehood laced vitriol is to split anti-Republican and anti-Trump forces and to throw the grassroots of the Democratic Party in to chaos.

OK, I do not know that this is Russian Hacking. But it looks exactly like the Russian anti-Hillary hacking. It has the same form, the same technique, some of the same rhetoric, and is exploiting a similar set of vulnerable individuals. If this is not Russian hacking then, indeed, you can have all the muffins and bagels in the land for yourself.

Tom Perez Was Not Booed; that is a pernicious lie

How many Democratic events have you been to? This was a pretty typical one, but slight bit more raucous. There is a heckler yelling something in the beginning, I have no idea what. Hecklers could be paid operatives, or just crazy people, or just people who are not fully in control of themselves.

The so called “booing of Perez,” which was not booing of Perez, happens at just after 6:18. Perez is not on the stage, therefore he is not booed. The speaker asks the audience if they are there to hear about the future of the Democratic Party and the new chair. This is an audience of people who came to hear Sanders. It is a light hearted, fun, charged up rally. If you say to them, “you are here to see ______” where the blank is filled in with anything at all that is not the keynote speaker, they will boo. So, some booed, some cheered, it was pretty ambiguous, and most importantly, UTTERLY MEANINGLESS. It is this moment of alleged but not actual booing of Perez that is among the items being used to bash Bernie and create this unnecessary division.

Now, watch Perz at just after 32:00 . He gives a great speach. He is cheered and loved. there is not Perez hate here.

The people who are being manipulated by this latest round of psychological warfare are unlikely to be convinced that they are wrong. Assuming this is manipulation, the psychology is immune, laced with paranoia and preformed hatred of disagreement. What needs to happen is this: People need to realize that the hacking that happened before can happen again and, probably, is happening again now. The other thing that needs to happen is that the individuals who are doing this hacking, who can’t find their center, their rational self, and slough it off, need to be isolated. Don’t engage, don’t follow, just … well, just do this:

Because that is what your friend’s facebook page looks like.

Also, there is the possibility again small, of so-called “faithless electors” giving Trump a pass. If something like that happens, from Clinton’s perspective, it would be nice if even one of these states flipped (most likely Wisconsin).

So, to keep track of the numbers, here are the current vote values prior to any recount. I’m not too sure about Wisconsin because the Wisconsin Secretary of State does not actually provide the numbers to the general public, which I’m guessing is a violation of their state’s statute or constitution, but hell, that’s Wisconsin for you. The Louisiana of the North, they call it these days.

Friday, November 25th

Michigan (16 electoral votes): 10,704 (0.2%)
Wisconsin (10 electoral votes): 27,257 (0.9%)
Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes): 70,638 (1.2%)

On the electors: Some will claim that an elector is somehow rigging, violating, or otherwise besmirching the process by not voting for the candidate that won their state’s popular vote. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The electors are carrying out a duty in service of the United States Constitution, and and the Constitution does not stipulate that they vote for the majority in their state.

There have been so-called “faithless electors” — those that do not follow that state mandated rule — in the past, and they were never fined or otherwise prosecuted for violating state statute. There is, as I understand it, a reason for that. The state laws that tell an elector how to vote are so blatantly unconstitutional that even a right wing judge whose corrupt brother in law was the candidate harmed by the elector could not possibly uphold the law under an appeal. If a faithless elector was taken to court, and that case was challenged (which it would be), the entire edifice would instantly crumble and the electoral college would have to start to function like it did in the old days.

And, how is that, you ask?

Well, in their Enlightened wisdom, the Founding Fathers, who are today revered, even fetishized, by the likes of the Tea Party and the Sage Brush Rebellion and all the other yahoos, deemed the unwashed masses — the yahoos — unfit to vote for President (or Senator for that matter). The Electors are supposed to be your betters, who will make the decision for you. And, soon, possibly by the time of the next election, this is how we shall start to do things.

Or maybe not the next presidential election, but if the electoral system is tossed aside this year (Wisconsin shifts so the vote becomes 280-242 and 11 electors dump Trump so the vote becomes 269-253) and the election goes to the House of Reprehensible to decide, you can bet on change happening over the next few years, though it will probably come in the form of a bunch of state laws that continue to fly under the Constitutional radar screen.

But this year, strange as it it and stranger thought it may become, is not the strangest ever. That goes to 1876.

Wow.

Dump your comments and observations here.

I’ll be looking at several SOS web sites, and eventually I’ll find the best on line tracker of results for the whole country. During the primaries, the Washington Post was the best. Let me know if you have any ideas.

So far heavy turnout has been noted in Minnesota, where turnout is always high, and something close to 30% of the usual number of voters had already voted early.

The biggest fear, a among those of us who have felt the pain of defeat at least as often as the thrill of victory, is this: Heavy turnout usually means more Democrats vote, but it can also mean more of the so called “silent majority” votes. The “silent majority” is actually a plurality, consisting of old angry uneducated white men (see illustration). We always worry that we’ll get Nixoned by those bastards. Ever since they figured out that they can do that. When a pollster calls them, they lie, or hang up, then they go and vote for the fascist.

The first polls will close at 6:PM Eastern in some parts of Kentucky and Indiana. An hour later selected polls will close in several key states, including New Hampshire and Florida. Shortly thereafter, some will close in NOrth Carolina and Ohio. So, before 8:00 PM Eastern, we’ll be seeing some interesting results coming in. Remember to watch New Hampshire, Florida, and North Carolina closely.

At 8:PM Eastern, polls will be closed in about 172 electoral votes worth of states, including Maine, the Southern New England states, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland.

FLORIDA

Secretary of State Site

GEORGIA

I had placed Georgia as the first Red state likely to fall Blue if any such a thing was to happen, and indeed, Georgia is too close to call after polls closed. The reason? More hispanic voters than previously, pushing Georgia towards the Democrats.

MINNESOTA

Secretary of State Site

North Carolina

Hard to say where this is going yet, but early information indicates that a larger than expected share of white voters are going for Clinton.

MN CD 2 US House District, Angie Craig vs. Jason “single women are non thinking” Lewis
This is a key race. Lewis is a radio shock jock yahoo right winger Limbaugh wannabe. Craig would be one of the few open lesbians in a same sex marriage in the US House, and she’s cool. Piles of outside money.

MN CD 3 House District, Bonoff vs Paulsen.

This is my district. Paulsen is a Bachmann Republican who suported Trump early on. Bonoff is my State Senator (though I just moved into her district) and a Blue Dog who has run for this seat before and never gotten close. The theory is, you put in a Blue Dog or Centrist to run against the Republican, but that has never worked. I have no expectation that it will work this year. I hope Teri Bonoff wins, but she won’t, and maybe we will eventually learn that the only way to win in this district is to be real liberals.

Mills is a rich frat boy who should be running as a Libertarian but he’s too stupid. (Real libertarians tend be smart, even if they are totally wrong about everything.) This is a close eace, and I hear it is the most expensive, or one of the most expensive, races in the country. The Republicans are apparently frightened of Nolan.

PENNSYLVANIA

Secretary of State Site

It is not what you say, but how you say it. For several days now, I’ve been told by some how totally wrong I am in my various analyses of the electoral map. Half the naysayers say “But but FiveThirtyEight says this, so you are wrong” and the other half say “No, no, Sam Wang at Princeton says that, so you are wrong!” But all along, we’ve all three been saying something very similar. The difference in how we say it is, Sam Wang says something like “I’ll eat my shorts if Clinton doesn’t win” and I say “I think Clinton will win, but Trump has a small chance.” But really, we have very similar estimates as to what the situation is. And, that is:

1) Hillary Clinton is more likely to win this election than is Donald Trump.

2) Regardless of the initial probability distribution one might have been imagining, this has changed over time so that the chance of a Trump win has been increasing a bit.

3) A number of states are in play, and broadly speaking, the list of states can not be robustly assigned to either candidate is similar.

I myself have been avoiding making specific probability statements because I think that the necessary assumptions to talk about behavior of the electorate out at the margins are unknown or unreliable.

As you know I developed a model that I used during the primaries, that I’m applying to the electoral college vote, with modifications. In short, the model, as used here, reflects whatever polling data are used to seed it, but modifies the outcome to reflect general patterns of behavior. This, I suspect, removes strange results that the polls sometimes give. But it may also miss strange thing the electorate sometimes does. Which is happening in a particular case, for a particular state? Nobody knows. If we knew that, we wouldn’t need to do the actual voting.

So, here, I’m giving you two separate sets of results, initially. First, as in my previous post, a distillation of what the polls themselves are actually saying, using this approach.

First from the polls only:

As noted in the figure, the polls give Secretary Clinton enough electoral votes to win, barely, with Nevada being exactly split between the two candidates. We’ll look at swing states more closely below, but for now, this is my suggestion for the best guess based on the polls. So, if Clinton takes Nevada, she’ll win by 8 electoral votes.

As I had noted earlier, my model should converge on the polls by this point in time, but since there are so many states within a percentage point either way of the 50%-50% line, my model and the polls tend to differ a bit. Overall, my model is more favorable to Clinton because it give her Florida and Nevada.

At this time, this is my best prediction of what I think will happen on Tuesday, unless there are secret unmeasurable forces having to do with unspoken voting behavior or get out the vote efforts.

This result, my model, is very similar to Sam Wang’s result.

One scary possibility is that Trump is gaining ground on Clinton. Looking at just the polls, there was a gaining of ground going on for a while, but it seemed to stop a few days ago. FiveThirtyEight agrees with that. But, what if all the polls end up being one percent off from what they say now, by the time Tuesday comes around? Can Trump then win?

The following moves all the states over by one point, from my modeled results (which I regard as more reliable than the polls) which, oddly, puts Pennsylvania right in the middle. Trump could win. Or Clinton could win.

It has been said that the Democrats may have a ground game, a GOTV plan, that is much superior to that of the Republicans. A good estimate of how that would change things is to add 2.5% to the Democrat’s votes, effectively for the swing states. In this case, Clinton is shown here to do about as well as anyone expected her to do. Don’t expect this, it will never happen, but this is more or less the maximum limit on where Clinton can go. Notice that Trump still takes Texas and Georgia, but may be a bit weak in Georgia.

Finally, by way of summary, here is a map that shows which states are either recognized by one analysis or another as a tossup, or that move back and forth across analyses or over short times scales or, as in the case of Georgia and Colorado, don’t change their color under those conditions but remain very close in percent distribution to those that do. (Note, for Maine, we are only talking about one electoral vote moving back and forth.) Regardless of which column these states actually end up in, they are states you want to watch to measure the strength of each candidate. Obviously, the eastern time zone states will be the most helpful in this regard early in the evening.

Here’s the thing.

Michael the Blackman (that’s his name), the black guy who stands or sits behind Trump at many of his rallies, tells us that Hillary is the financier of slavery. We know this because Hilary’s name is Hillary Rodham Clinton. Rodham is the descendants of Rothschild, and her biggest donor is a Rothschild. So, Rothschild – Rockefeller – JP Morgan. See? The financiers of slavery. See? The supporters of Clinton are the Canaanites. The ones you’ve seen in the night clubs, with the black fingernails, really white, with the blue veins. They call themselves blue bloods, but we may know of them as albinos. They are cursed with the curse. And they curse. They never come out in the daytime, and they are the supporters of Hillary Clinton. I simplify slightly. Watch the video.

This is not FBI Director Comey releasing vague memos. Well, there is that, but it is not clear if Comey wrote that damaging memo because he wanted to hurt Clinton, or if it was because he was not fully in control of his agents and was trying to pre-empt a leak. What we now know is that several FBI agents, spread across the country but with a pernicious group in New York, are strong Trump supporters, and have been taking action to hurt Clinton and help Trump. The New York agents, in particular, seem to be doing so in cahoots with Trump Surrogate, syphilitic former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Behind the whole thing is Breitbart, the hard right wing crazies and conspiracy theorists, who took over the Trump Campaign a while back. And behind that, is Robert Mercer.

Robert Mercer, a billionaire hedge fund investor, is the main funding source for Breitbart. Robert Mercer also funds a major pro Trump super-pac. Breitbart and the super-pac have supplied the Trump campaign with their campaign manager, deputy campaign manager, and CEO. If Trump wins this election, Putin won’t be the main guy in charge of the US. It will be Robert Mercer pulling the strings.

This group of unsavory characters and their colleagues are linked to the right wing organization known as the “Government Accountability Institute” which produced an anti-Clinton (both Clintons) book, which has apparently become the Conspiracy Bible for a number of FBI agents, who attempted to use this source as the basis to launch at least one investigation against Hillary Clinton. Higher level, relatively normal, FBI personnel put the kibosh on that effort, but the Trump supporting agents apparently continue to agitate against Clinton and in favor or Trump.

Comey’s release of the memo was either an attempt to get ahead of those agents, whom he felt were going to send the info around anyway, or in support of these lower level efforts.

And all of this has a vague relationship to the concept of having sex with piles of hay, trees, and mulch. You’ll have to watch this excellent report by Maddow to get that, and to link together all these details.

It is a long report but very much worth watching every minute: