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Anthrocon 2025 Report
Posted 4 months agoI went to Anthrocon 2025 this year. Well obviously it would be odd if I went to Anthrocon 2025 some other year. The point is I flew to Pittsburgh for a big ol’ furry convention. I left early Wednesday morning so I could get there at a reasonable time and get fed.
Due to Southwest changing their bag policy I flew American Airlines which was a little more irritating. The airline is clearly running things close these days. Even minor disruptions can cause big delays. They lost the plane from Dallas to Pittsburgh I was supposed to be on and spent an hour struggling to fill that it. Yes you heard me fine they said “we lost the plane” over the loudspeaker. My guess is someone messed up a document and a plan that was supposed to arrive went somewhere else and they were trying to figure out what to fill in for the mistake.
I genuinely like the Pittsburgh Airport. It has the charm of feeling like a much older airport and has some unique nooks and crannies. The t-rex skeleton from the Carnegie Museum is a fun touch. I’ll miss the old airport but they’re doing major reconstruction and it will likely become one of the more modern sleek locations. This is necessary but I admit I like the old oddball spot.
Check in was a breeze at the hotel. I was staying in the Drury with the FurPlanet crew. After that I grabbed dinner at my old staple and then a milk shake at the Milk Shake factory to be indulgent. Then it was unpacking and waiting for the Furplanet folks to arrive for the evening. In the end it was Savrin, Fugue, Tempo, Ajax, Buck, WuWei, and I between two rooms which we easily all managed despite some small logistical issues due to the hotel computers. A busy and full day though.
Thursday I slept in a bit then did breakfast with Rowland fox at Waffles Incafinated where I got some very good chicken and waffles and tried to take in a tiny bit of the city before things got busy. Registration was a breeze this year and went quickly. Anthrocon needs to be praised for working extremely hard here and streamlining a system that was overwhelmed the year before. After that Teiran arrived and we thought we were going to get onto set up but there were some snafus. No one’s fault but the loading doors weren’t ready. Eventually we got in and did set up. Runa and Bree had arrived as well and were a big help. Shiloh and Slanter had arrived as well and were exhausted. They aren’t at the table but Shiloh and I have been chatting a lot recently so….
Ajax, Tempo, Savrin, and I hit up Ajax’s favorite Chinese place. Eating hearty after a busy day.
Friday was the start of the crush. I wont bore with by blows of the busy convention dealing circuit. It was busy, I saw a lot of great furry folk, saw some people get some good books. Shiloh’s panel went well. I went to the Yard for dinner. Got a great green tomato grilled cheese. I also got perogies. The only perogies I got all trip as they didn’t seem to be around as much this year (or last year). That is a real shame as I love perogies.
Got my last milk shake of the year (just didn’t go back afterwards which was a shame). Met a very nice dragon named Iro though and we hung out for a bit.
Saturday was the day of the big parade. I got to see a little of it but I over extended and exhausted myself at the table. I felt that for Sunday too. I over did it and honestly I am thinking maybe I should stop going to conventions just because I wore myself out so much. Part of it was I didn’t want to be stuck out of the convention during the parade but maybe that would have been okay. I enjoyed seeing the street fair afterwards and how the area became one massive block party but I can’t even remember what I ate or did.
Sunday was a bit better but like I said, I over extended. Pack up went well but I didn’t take many photos or hang out as much. I did get to see Mangi, Heyoka, and Syr for a brief bit but not long. Got dinner at the Bill Burger Bar place which was fine but I was scrambled. Did a little hanging out with Unstabill and others but I went to bed.
Monday was a wrap up day. Saying good bye to everyone one by one. It went smoothly mainly because we were all tired. Teiran and I got some tacos at Condado tacos. I got a very good burrito. He got Tacos. Teiran had been eating there much of the convention as everyone else had but I had been avoiding it to have other dishes. We chatted for a bit about nothing important then I got in the taxi and left.
The flight home was more difficult. There had been several days of bad weather on the continent and a rain storm was blowing in. So might flight got delayed to Dallas then another delay caused me to have to rearrange my trip. Then getting to Dallas my flights were delayed again. So while I got a decent bowl of pho at the airport I ended up getting home after midnight when I had been scheduled to get there at 7 PM.
I’ll admit that also messed with my sleep bank a bit. Overall I had a good Anthrocon. It was fun. I just overstretched myself a bit.
For its part Pittsburgh remains a great city to visit. It has a scruffiness to it that I think fits. The folks there are lovely and welcoming. The convention clearly benefits the town https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/.....CNM-00-10abd1h
Pittsburgh itself will be doing the NFL draft in 2026 in April 2026 which means the city is already doing improvements and hotel work. I hope that will benefit Anthrocon in the long term infrastructure will be getting improved upon. I hope to go again, but we’ll see.
Due to Southwest changing their bag policy I flew American Airlines which was a little more irritating. The airline is clearly running things close these days. Even minor disruptions can cause big delays. They lost the plane from Dallas to Pittsburgh I was supposed to be on and spent an hour struggling to fill that it. Yes you heard me fine they said “we lost the plane” over the loudspeaker. My guess is someone messed up a document and a plan that was supposed to arrive went somewhere else and they were trying to figure out what to fill in for the mistake.
I genuinely like the Pittsburgh Airport. It has the charm of feeling like a much older airport and has some unique nooks and crannies. The t-rex skeleton from the Carnegie Museum is a fun touch. I’ll miss the old airport but they’re doing major reconstruction and it will likely become one of the more modern sleek locations. This is necessary but I admit I like the old oddball spot.
Check in was a breeze at the hotel. I was staying in the Drury with the FurPlanet crew. After that I grabbed dinner at my old staple and then a milk shake at the Milk Shake factory to be indulgent. Then it was unpacking and waiting for the Furplanet folks to arrive for the evening. In the end it was Savrin, Fugue, Tempo, Ajax, Buck, WuWei, and I between two rooms which we easily all managed despite some small logistical issues due to the hotel computers. A busy and full day though.
Thursday I slept in a bit then did breakfast with Rowland fox at Waffles Incafinated where I got some very good chicken and waffles and tried to take in a tiny bit of the city before things got busy. Registration was a breeze this year and went quickly. Anthrocon needs to be praised for working extremely hard here and streamlining a system that was overwhelmed the year before. After that Teiran arrived and we thought we were going to get onto set up but there were some snafus. No one’s fault but the loading doors weren’t ready. Eventually we got in and did set up. Runa and Bree had arrived as well and were a big help. Shiloh and Slanter had arrived as well and were exhausted. They aren’t at the table but Shiloh and I have been chatting a lot recently so….
Ajax, Tempo, Savrin, and I hit up Ajax’s favorite Chinese place. Eating hearty after a busy day.
Friday was the start of the crush. I wont bore with by blows of the busy convention dealing circuit. It was busy, I saw a lot of great furry folk, saw some people get some good books. Shiloh’s panel went well. I went to the Yard for dinner. Got a great green tomato grilled cheese. I also got perogies. The only perogies I got all trip as they didn’t seem to be around as much this year (or last year). That is a real shame as I love perogies.
Got my last milk shake of the year (just didn’t go back afterwards which was a shame). Met a very nice dragon named Iro though and we hung out for a bit.
Saturday was the day of the big parade. I got to see a little of it but I over extended and exhausted myself at the table. I felt that for Sunday too. I over did it and honestly I am thinking maybe I should stop going to conventions just because I wore myself out so much. Part of it was I didn’t want to be stuck out of the convention during the parade but maybe that would have been okay. I enjoyed seeing the street fair afterwards and how the area became one massive block party but I can’t even remember what I ate or did.
Sunday was a bit better but like I said, I over extended. Pack up went well but I didn’t take many photos or hang out as much. I did get to see Mangi, Heyoka, and Syr for a brief bit but not long. Got dinner at the Bill Burger Bar place which was fine but I was scrambled. Did a little hanging out with Unstabill and others but I went to bed.
Monday was a wrap up day. Saying good bye to everyone one by one. It went smoothly mainly because we were all tired. Teiran and I got some tacos at Condado tacos. I got a very good burrito. He got Tacos. Teiran had been eating there much of the convention as everyone else had but I had been avoiding it to have other dishes. We chatted for a bit about nothing important then I got in the taxi and left.
The flight home was more difficult. There had been several days of bad weather on the continent and a rain storm was blowing in. So might flight got delayed to Dallas then another delay caused me to have to rearrange my trip. Then getting to Dallas my flights were delayed again. So while I got a decent bowl of pho at the airport I ended up getting home after midnight when I had been scheduled to get there at 7 PM.
I’ll admit that also messed with my sleep bank a bit. Overall I had a good Anthrocon. It was fun. I just overstretched myself a bit.
For its part Pittsburgh remains a great city to visit. It has a scruffiness to it that I think fits. The folks there are lovely and welcoming. The convention clearly benefits the town https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/.....CNM-00-10abd1h
Pittsburgh itself will be doing the NFL draft in 2026 in April 2026 which means the city is already doing improvements and hotel work. I hope that will benefit Anthrocon in the long term infrastructure will be getting improved upon. I hope to go again, but we’ll see.
Furry Fiesta 2025 Con Report
Posted 7 months agoI left early for Texas Furry Fiesta 2025 this year. I had skipped 2023 and 2024 due to health reasons so this would be my first time in the Sheraton in the new convention space and seeing downtown Dallas in earnest. I should add Fiesta remains one of my favorite conventions and an event I have loved attending for many years. It was a shame I missed those years and broke my streak. Still, it could not be helped.
I’ll admit this year I considered canceling going. With the current state of national politics and Texas politics in particular I was disinterested in spending tourism money there. Further with a huge measles outbreak I admit some health concerns. The only reason I ended up sticking to the plan was my friend Ronnie from the UK was attending and I wanted to meet up with him finally. Besides I had made my arrangements and I would be remiss to skip out on Teiran, Fuzz, and Ajax at the furplanet table.
The long and short is that Furry Fiesta remains one of the most well run and seamlessly operated conventions in the USA and a great event to attend. I had a great time and enjoyed myself. I saw some great people and had a good time. My biggest regret is not taking enough pictures.
MONDAY
I had left a few days early to see my friends and spend a few days relaxing into the convention. I wanted to also help the FurPlanet crew with preparations especially as it had been a rocky and difficult March for them. So that Monday I got on a plane at a reasonable hour of 8:30 AM Mountain time and landed at 11:30 AM Central time. Taking a cab to the Sheraton and checking in I found the room extremely nice (though it had an odd layout). I found out the room was one the team had the year before and liked as a space to spread out in.
After a shower to clean off the travel funk and a little unpacking I grabbed some lunch, a porkbelly sandwich (oh Texas never change). After that walked over to the hotel Ronnie, Hyperriffic, Ricky Fox, Flare Fox, and Corgi were all staying in. It was a whirl wind of introductions but lovely to meet folks there and hear from everyone. We hung out for a bit and chatted and it was honestly a nice chill first meeting with a lot of good furry folks.
TUESDAY
Ronnie had the smoked salmon stack and I got a delightful avocado toast for breakfast. We headed off to the main group. Ronnie and the others had been active tourists the last few days and did a little sight-seeing. Hyper had rented a car to get around Dallas-Fort Worth in so that made us all mobile. We hit the Video Game museum first. It was a lot of fun watching everyone excitedly enjoying the space and seeing the old games. Apparently all the UK furs were shocked the Super NES had purple buttons when it came out. They had the more standard Red-Green-Blue-Yellow. I’ll admit I don’t know video games as well but it was fun seeing what the museum centered and how they presented the industry and its development as well as the collapse of the American marketplace in 1983.
We grabbed Breadzepplin (a new chain in Dallas where they do hollowed bread filled with salads and fixings) then we met up with Ajax at Madness Games and Comics a huge Dallas store filled with games, manga, and comics. A really fun spot to walk around and shop. I didn’t see anything that grabbed me but it was fun doing it with Ronnie and Ajax (and everyone else). We then hit H-Mart a Korean Grocery store that was very upmarket. They had some amazing selections of things and foods. I got some Mango Mochi!
After that we drove home and the big logistical problem for FurPlanet became obvious the convention used to be a lot closer to them and now it wasn't. The drive was long and Dallas being a sprawling city has serious traffic issues. I admit I hit my wall by the time we got back to the hotel area. I was peopled out and the drive back in traffic was stressful. So I begged off hoping I wasn’t too grumpy. Heading back to hotel alone I grabbed some food (chicken tenders and fries) and decompressed by walking around the neighborhood a bit to clear my head.
WEDNESDAY
I headed downstairs for breakfast where I got a broken egg sandwich and Ronnie got a massive omelet. We were parting for the day as I wanted to help furplanet out and Ronnie and the gang were doing their own event including a dinner at Buddy’s house. I couldn’t do the hour drive out and help the team so I skipped the dinner. This also meant I didn’t get to meet Horizon Hyena when he arrived.
I took a lyft out to FurPlanet HQ and arrived to find Ajax decided to spoil me instead of having me do work. So we went to Half Priced books to look for some editions of a book series I am collecting (the 1992-1995 run of Rex Stout novels) and hung out for a few hours. We stopped at Maggiano’s for a delicious Italian lunch. Then getting back to HQ I did some of the count to help out. I don’t think I was very helpful but I got a little work done for them. Sadly Fuzzwolf had really hurt his back a few days before and he was out of sorts. It was a real shame for the wolf and for all of us as his presence adds to everyone’s good time.
Buck and WuWei arrived and Teiran suggested dumpling at Wu Wei Din (no relation to the wolf except he loves it). Very good dumplings! Then back to the hotel where Buck and Wu Wei were spending the night. I hear it was a good dinner at Buddy’s for Hyper, Ronnie, Flare, Ricky, Corgi, and Horizon!
THURSDAY
I had told the FurPlanet guys to call me in when they needed me but I had to help a few folks that morning so I didn’t rush over to HQ. WuWei had a meeting for work and I took the morning lightly reading League of Frightened Men. We got Wuwei and Buck situated in their room after that and by then it was nearly lunch.
I met up with Kit and Kyell as well as Ronnie. Ricky joined us for a bit in the room but he had to bounce. Storing their bags in the hotel room we got some baller tex mex at Uno Mas. Somehow the Rat and Fox always know the best spots. It was a delicious lunch and walk in Dallas downtown with folks and conversation about books.
Ronnie had also been asked to join our room for a few days. So he moved his bags in and it was nice to have him there. Honestly it was a lovely upgrade for me personally. Teiran and Ajax though thought Ronnie a wonderful addition to the room so that was nice.
That evening it was far busier as the load in and set up began. As I was already there I hung out with Nighteyes and Roz as well as Rukis and Alistair. Fuzz and Teiran drove their fully loaded cars down a little later and everyone helped in the unload and set up. Teiran, Fuzz, and Ajax were exhausted from a difficult day dealing with not just packing the cars but also insurance so they all were home for the night. More badger cuddes for me
FRIDAY
The official start of con saw me rushing out early to Starbucks to get tea and then at the table to do a little more set up work. Getting that all in order took time and I admit feeling stressed but after a little early lunch the table was ready for folks.
I won’t go into too much detail except it was BUSY and active as usual for Fiesta as a con. A lot of people. A lot of new people. I saw several familiar faces and good folks. That evening Fugue, Ajax, and I ate in the hotel restaurant and hung out for a bit. Apparently Ronnie and the gang got some amazing Korean BBQ that has ruined them on future Korean BBQ. I freely admit I collapsed into bed.
SATURDAY
Another busy day of the table but it went smoothly. I slept in later as opening wasn’t until 10ish. Ronnie and I grabbed breakfast. A pleasant day had by all. Busy as well. Ronnie actually got to see the table and how crazy busy it can get. A lot more hours there but it went smoothly. I got to see AstralTanuki and Shamblessed. I met some other cool folks. WuWei got Third in the Charity poker tournament. A good day!
Teiran got Maggianos for the table and we ate in the room. It was good but I was missing vegetables by this part of the Texas trip. After cleaning that up Ajax, Ronnie, and I hung out and went to the gaming space on the 36th floor. It was a trek to get there and does highlight some of the problems with the Sheraton in finding spaces for all the convention events. Having to switch elevators to reach the spot was amusing but a little daunting. I did get to meet Budyd finally and he's a good big beast. Getting back to the room we had a grand time laughing and chatting with each other. Ajax will forever remember Ronnie’s comments on Emma Frost/White Queen.
SUNDAY
It does seem like these entries are short but what is there to say? I did sales, I saw folks, I had fun showing people books and comics. In the end it was a good day and we got the car packed up nicely. Ajax was tired and went home to sleep in his own bed. I went out for Sushi with Rukis, Alistair, Kit, and Kyell at Yellowtail a very high end fancy sushi place. It was a delightful meal and time. I just wish Ronnie had been there for it, however he was having dinner with Hyper and Flare and the rest. Kit, Kyell, and I got ice cream and walked back to the hotel.
So the day ended and while busy and active I’m just not sure what to write. We did hear the convention had 8,600+ attendees! Which is amazing. It was good the convention took health seriously and had a check up station for testing and a pro-masking policy.
MONDAY, redux
Ronnie left first then Teiran and I cleaned up the last of our things and we loaded the van and left. A successful Furry Fiesta done. We joined up at FurPlanet HQ with Ajax and made quick work emptying the van. I got started on the count but WuWei, Ocean, Kit, Kyell, and Buck joined us at the HQ and we went off to the breakfast restaurant Awake. After a decent waffle we got back to HQ to hang out and chat with Fuzz and the rest. As everyone slowly trickled away I excused myseIf and finished the count of the novels.
Kit, Kyell, Teiran, and I hit Hard Eight BBQ (another Texas institution) and I think I hit my wall for meat. It was delicious though. Dropping the rat and fox off at their hotel we got back to HQ and I crashed into sleep.
TUESDAY, the final day
Waking up early I got a little reading done then after Ajax woke up I did the counts on the comics and magazines for FurPlanet. I’m such an early riser I admit I was camped on the couch reading for a few hours. Still I was happy to get to work on the counts as this always takes time and is a task that can be hard. We shockingly got it down and done and to celebrate Ajax and I went to get crepes. Very, very, very sweet crepes, no more meat! Teiran and Fuzz had to do their day jobs.
As the time for the flight rolled around I said goodbye to both wolves. I did leave feeling great that I helped with the count. Ajax took me to the airport and we said those goodbyes. Ronnie and the UK furs flew out the same day but from a different airport.
I got home to a happy to see my dog and my family. Dog was happy to see me. Parents happy to see me as well. I spent the day unpacking and plotting the work needed for Wednesday (getting my new laptop from Costco before the tariffs hit, laundry, and making a cake)
In the end it was a long trip but one I felt ended on a good note of helping friends. I found out Ronnie who I have spoken to for years and I have good chemistry and a similar sense of humor. I saw good friends. I had a fun time. It was a good convention but my biggest regret is not getting many pictures. That was an error on my part, still picture failures aside I wouldn’t have changed much of my activities and events. So a good time and a good convention. We will see where the future leads.
I’ll admit this year I considered canceling going. With the current state of national politics and Texas politics in particular I was disinterested in spending tourism money there. Further with a huge measles outbreak I admit some health concerns. The only reason I ended up sticking to the plan was my friend Ronnie from the UK was attending and I wanted to meet up with him finally. Besides I had made my arrangements and I would be remiss to skip out on Teiran, Fuzz, and Ajax at the furplanet table.
The long and short is that Furry Fiesta remains one of the most well run and seamlessly operated conventions in the USA and a great event to attend. I had a great time and enjoyed myself. I saw some great people and had a good time. My biggest regret is not taking enough pictures.
MONDAY
I had left a few days early to see my friends and spend a few days relaxing into the convention. I wanted to also help the FurPlanet crew with preparations especially as it had been a rocky and difficult March for them. So that Monday I got on a plane at a reasonable hour of 8:30 AM Mountain time and landed at 11:30 AM Central time. Taking a cab to the Sheraton and checking in I found the room extremely nice (though it had an odd layout). I found out the room was one the team had the year before and liked as a space to spread out in.
After a shower to clean off the travel funk and a little unpacking I grabbed some lunch, a porkbelly sandwich (oh Texas never change). After that walked over to the hotel Ronnie, Hyperriffic, Ricky Fox, Flare Fox, and Corgi were all staying in. It was a whirl wind of introductions but lovely to meet folks there and hear from everyone. We hung out for a bit and chatted and it was honestly a nice chill first meeting with a lot of good furry folks.
TUESDAY
Ronnie had the smoked salmon stack and I got a delightful avocado toast for breakfast. We headed off to the main group. Ronnie and the others had been active tourists the last few days and did a little sight-seeing. Hyper had rented a car to get around Dallas-Fort Worth in so that made us all mobile. We hit the Video Game museum first. It was a lot of fun watching everyone excitedly enjoying the space and seeing the old games. Apparently all the UK furs were shocked the Super NES had purple buttons when it came out. They had the more standard Red-Green-Blue-Yellow. I’ll admit I don’t know video games as well but it was fun seeing what the museum centered and how they presented the industry and its development as well as the collapse of the American marketplace in 1983.
We grabbed Breadzepplin (a new chain in Dallas where they do hollowed bread filled with salads and fixings) then we met up with Ajax at Madness Games and Comics a huge Dallas store filled with games, manga, and comics. A really fun spot to walk around and shop. I didn’t see anything that grabbed me but it was fun doing it with Ronnie and Ajax (and everyone else). We then hit H-Mart a Korean Grocery store that was very upmarket. They had some amazing selections of things and foods. I got some Mango Mochi!
After that we drove home and the big logistical problem for FurPlanet became obvious the convention used to be a lot closer to them and now it wasn't. The drive was long and Dallas being a sprawling city has serious traffic issues. I admit I hit my wall by the time we got back to the hotel area. I was peopled out and the drive back in traffic was stressful. So I begged off hoping I wasn’t too grumpy. Heading back to hotel alone I grabbed some food (chicken tenders and fries) and decompressed by walking around the neighborhood a bit to clear my head.
WEDNESDAY
I headed downstairs for breakfast where I got a broken egg sandwich and Ronnie got a massive omelet. We were parting for the day as I wanted to help furplanet out and Ronnie and the gang were doing their own event including a dinner at Buddy’s house. I couldn’t do the hour drive out and help the team so I skipped the dinner. This also meant I didn’t get to meet Horizon Hyena when he arrived.
I took a lyft out to FurPlanet HQ and arrived to find Ajax decided to spoil me instead of having me do work. So we went to Half Priced books to look for some editions of a book series I am collecting (the 1992-1995 run of Rex Stout novels) and hung out for a few hours. We stopped at Maggiano’s for a delicious Italian lunch. Then getting back to HQ I did some of the count to help out. I don’t think I was very helpful but I got a little work done for them. Sadly Fuzzwolf had really hurt his back a few days before and he was out of sorts. It was a real shame for the wolf and for all of us as his presence adds to everyone’s good time.
Buck and WuWei arrived and Teiran suggested dumpling at Wu Wei Din (no relation to the wolf except he loves it). Very good dumplings! Then back to the hotel where Buck and Wu Wei were spending the night. I hear it was a good dinner at Buddy’s for Hyper, Ronnie, Flare, Ricky, Corgi, and Horizon!
THURSDAY
I had told the FurPlanet guys to call me in when they needed me but I had to help a few folks that morning so I didn’t rush over to HQ. WuWei had a meeting for work and I took the morning lightly reading League of Frightened Men. We got Wuwei and Buck situated in their room after that and by then it was nearly lunch.
I met up with Kit and Kyell as well as Ronnie. Ricky joined us for a bit in the room but he had to bounce. Storing their bags in the hotel room we got some baller tex mex at Uno Mas. Somehow the Rat and Fox always know the best spots. It was a delicious lunch and walk in Dallas downtown with folks and conversation about books.
Ronnie had also been asked to join our room for a few days. So he moved his bags in and it was nice to have him there. Honestly it was a lovely upgrade for me personally. Teiran and Ajax though thought Ronnie a wonderful addition to the room so that was nice.
That evening it was far busier as the load in and set up began. As I was already there I hung out with Nighteyes and Roz as well as Rukis and Alistair. Fuzz and Teiran drove their fully loaded cars down a little later and everyone helped in the unload and set up. Teiran, Fuzz, and Ajax were exhausted from a difficult day dealing with not just packing the cars but also insurance so they all were home for the night. More badger cuddes for me
FRIDAY
The official start of con saw me rushing out early to Starbucks to get tea and then at the table to do a little more set up work. Getting that all in order took time and I admit feeling stressed but after a little early lunch the table was ready for folks.
I won’t go into too much detail except it was BUSY and active as usual for Fiesta as a con. A lot of people. A lot of new people. I saw several familiar faces and good folks. That evening Fugue, Ajax, and I ate in the hotel restaurant and hung out for a bit. Apparently Ronnie and the gang got some amazing Korean BBQ that has ruined them on future Korean BBQ. I freely admit I collapsed into bed.
SATURDAY
Another busy day of the table but it went smoothly. I slept in later as opening wasn’t until 10ish. Ronnie and I grabbed breakfast. A pleasant day had by all. Busy as well. Ronnie actually got to see the table and how crazy busy it can get. A lot more hours there but it went smoothly. I got to see AstralTanuki and Shamblessed. I met some other cool folks. WuWei got Third in the Charity poker tournament. A good day!
Teiran got Maggianos for the table and we ate in the room. It was good but I was missing vegetables by this part of the Texas trip. After cleaning that up Ajax, Ronnie, and I hung out and went to the gaming space on the 36th floor. It was a trek to get there and does highlight some of the problems with the Sheraton in finding spaces for all the convention events. Having to switch elevators to reach the spot was amusing but a little daunting. I did get to meet Budyd finally and he's a good big beast. Getting back to the room we had a grand time laughing and chatting with each other. Ajax will forever remember Ronnie’s comments on Emma Frost/White Queen.
SUNDAY
It does seem like these entries are short but what is there to say? I did sales, I saw folks, I had fun showing people books and comics. In the end it was a good day and we got the car packed up nicely. Ajax was tired and went home to sleep in his own bed. I went out for Sushi with Rukis, Alistair, Kit, and Kyell at Yellowtail a very high end fancy sushi place. It was a delightful meal and time. I just wish Ronnie had been there for it, however he was having dinner with Hyper and Flare and the rest. Kit, Kyell, and I got ice cream and walked back to the hotel.
So the day ended and while busy and active I’m just not sure what to write. We did hear the convention had 8,600+ attendees! Which is amazing. It was good the convention took health seriously and had a check up station for testing and a pro-masking policy.
MONDAY, redux
Ronnie left first then Teiran and I cleaned up the last of our things and we loaded the van and left. A successful Furry Fiesta done. We joined up at FurPlanet HQ with Ajax and made quick work emptying the van. I got started on the count but WuWei, Ocean, Kit, Kyell, and Buck joined us at the HQ and we went off to the breakfast restaurant Awake. After a decent waffle we got back to HQ to hang out and chat with Fuzz and the rest. As everyone slowly trickled away I excused myseIf and finished the count of the novels.
Kit, Kyell, Teiran, and I hit Hard Eight BBQ (another Texas institution) and I think I hit my wall for meat. It was delicious though. Dropping the rat and fox off at their hotel we got back to HQ and I crashed into sleep.
TUESDAY, the final day
Waking up early I got a little reading done then after Ajax woke up I did the counts on the comics and magazines for FurPlanet. I’m such an early riser I admit I was camped on the couch reading for a few hours. Still I was happy to get to work on the counts as this always takes time and is a task that can be hard. We shockingly got it down and done and to celebrate Ajax and I went to get crepes. Very, very, very sweet crepes, no more meat! Teiran and Fuzz had to do their day jobs.
As the time for the flight rolled around I said goodbye to both wolves. I did leave feeling great that I helped with the count. Ajax took me to the airport and we said those goodbyes. Ronnie and the UK furs flew out the same day but from a different airport.
I got home to a happy to see my dog and my family. Dog was happy to see me. Parents happy to see me as well. I spent the day unpacking and plotting the work needed for Wednesday (getting my new laptop from Costco before the tariffs hit, laundry, and making a cake)
In the end it was a long trip but one I felt ended on a good note of helping friends. I found out Ronnie who I have spoken to for years and I have good chemistry and a similar sense of humor. I saw good friends. I had a fun time. It was a good convention but my biggest regret is not getting many pictures. That was an error on my part, still picture failures aside I wouldn’t have changed much of my activities and events. So a good time and a good convention. We will see where the future leads.
Further Confusion 2025 Con Report
Posted 9 months agoSo earlier this month I went to Further Confusion 2025. I was going in part to do my usual FurPlanet table silliness selling books and comics. The major reason though is that FurCon remains my favorite convention to attend and one of my favorites to just be at. The San Jose based con really has a nice collection of people running it, a relaxed atmosphere, and I know a lot of cool people who attend. Sure I wish the dealer den’s space wasn’t split into two rooms, but I love the Zoo (the tables and free space meeting spot) being so close by.
Besides I like Whispers the nearby breakfast crepe location. I always get a bagel with cream cheese and crepes to pop over to Starbucks to get drinks for the table. Honestly there are a lot of good food options nearby with the San Pedro Square Market and the SoFA markets being in such easy walking distance. I love these sort of modernized upscale food courts though I think they work best in the temperate weather of the bay area.
With the recent changes in my living situation I didn’t need to schedule a dog sitter. My father dropped me at the airport early on Thursday morning. So with some sugar cookies bouncing in my pack I got on my way. I had made the cookies the day before to have at the table. Teiran asked for those and I think they might be my go to recipe for sugar cookies from now on.
I actually landed early in the day and Jax the Coyote was on my flight so we got to hang out and chat during the flights and the trek to the hotel. It was very nice and they’re a good coyote fur from New Mexico. Almost makes me miss being a coyote. Almost. I got in early enough that I did indeed hit Whispers for an early lunch. I couldn’t check into the hotel because I was early but I could drop off my bags. Then it was off to help with table set up. Despite the usual logistical hiccups and the teamsters being short handed we had the table done fairly quickly.
A nice dinner at the SoFA market where I got vietnoms and a quiet evening ahead.
Friday the dealers den didn’t open until 11. Actually this is something I like about FurCon the dealers space time is consistently 11 to 6 all three days. That can be fairly long and tiring BUT it is consistent and can be planned around. So breakfast at Whispers (sensing a theme) where apparently I am now so well known that the register guy went “Oh is it FurCon again?” I will admit that made me want to fall into a crevice from embarrassment of being THAT predictable. Still, it is my favorite breakfast place.
Well the table was already together and sales went well. Despite my being there a lot I wont linger on the table much. I swear. As MFF had been just a month ago there were not too many new releases for FurCon. Oren’s Forge: Incursion (the second book) was the big new title and plenty of people came for that at least. I got to hang out with Kyell Gold a bunch, sell some favorite titles like Eternal Party, Dry Spell, Price of Thorns, and Spot of Murder. I had hoped, this convention, to have two other titles I had been working on out but that didn’t happen.
The table had the usual crowd of Teiran, Savrin, Buck, WuWei, and Kyell Gold was there to sign his own books. Jakebe, Pen, and a Certain Rat were by as well as was PadFoot. Jakebe had wanted to do some table work and was a help several times. Great to see the Jakalope! Joaquin Baldwin of the Noss Saga books ( https://bsky.app/profile/joabaldwin.com ) stopped by the table. Gum ( https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:s5.....io4fw2ci4nye34 ) and some friends grabbed Altered State. I got to see Boken and Chariot who are such lovely people. Calzone stopped by a few times which was very nice to see and interact with them. Koge stopped by once which was a delight! Wagster stopped by to say I was his memorable sus hug giver. Tredain, Zex, and Donryu were by as well once or twice and it was great seeing them. Cactus fox was seen BREIEFLY before they zipped away.
Dinner that night was SoFA market again. I hung out with Korkem and his crew, cuddled Vesper and Chariot mainly, and saw a lot of good friends.
Saturday was a repeat of much the same though I had a long lunch meeting with Kyell Gold to discuss a few of his books. Which was very fun. We had been book clubbing mystery novels lately and it was a fun way to discuss a recent project he is working on. Dinner that evening was San Pedro Square Market where I got some excellent fish and chips and for dessert I got Mochinut for the first time (loved it). I did head over to the con to see the night market lines which were hugely busy. It is a big event at FurCon but not one for me. I saw Foxpresso briefly who was at the con but didn’t hang out much because I was exhausted.
Sunday was much the same though I was flagging by the end and after break down disappeared to the room for a bit. Grabbing dinner with the table crew, Kit and Kyell, and Jakebe and A Certain Rat I think we all agreed it was a good convention if a bit tiring. Early to bed for me after a little walking around the convention space.
Monday I had an evening flight so I lazed in the room with Teiran for a while. Savrin, who had driven the entire stock to the convention, left early. Good speed to them on their drive as it was a huge commitment of work for the fennec and FurCon wouldn’t be possible without their efforts. Teiran and I joined Buck and WuWei for lunch. Briefly said hello to Arthur Husky and then off to the airport to check in. After that it was just waiting for my flight. Then flying back home. Sadly the big weather changes that had been slamming the continent hit me hard on that flight home as the entire flight from San Diego to Albuqueruque was a turbulent mess. Yuck.
Still, I got home safe and slept well recovering. The next day I began the big project or putting away the Christmas décor (we always keep it up until MLK Jr. weekend in our family) and reorganizing the closets. The later task made the project one that took five days. Still the house is clean in time for the Lunar New Year and it feels likes a big accomplishment. Overall things are done and steady in the home and it was a good convention.
My next one will be Furry Fiesta in Dallas April 2025.
Besides I like Whispers the nearby breakfast crepe location. I always get a bagel with cream cheese and crepes to pop over to Starbucks to get drinks for the table. Honestly there are a lot of good food options nearby with the San Pedro Square Market and the SoFA markets being in such easy walking distance. I love these sort of modernized upscale food courts though I think they work best in the temperate weather of the bay area.
With the recent changes in my living situation I didn’t need to schedule a dog sitter. My father dropped me at the airport early on Thursday morning. So with some sugar cookies bouncing in my pack I got on my way. I had made the cookies the day before to have at the table. Teiran asked for those and I think they might be my go to recipe for sugar cookies from now on.
I actually landed early in the day and Jax the Coyote was on my flight so we got to hang out and chat during the flights and the trek to the hotel. It was very nice and they’re a good coyote fur from New Mexico. Almost makes me miss being a coyote. Almost. I got in early enough that I did indeed hit Whispers for an early lunch. I couldn’t check into the hotel because I was early but I could drop off my bags. Then it was off to help with table set up. Despite the usual logistical hiccups and the teamsters being short handed we had the table done fairly quickly.
A nice dinner at the SoFA market where I got vietnoms and a quiet evening ahead.
Friday the dealers den didn’t open until 11. Actually this is something I like about FurCon the dealers space time is consistently 11 to 6 all three days. That can be fairly long and tiring BUT it is consistent and can be planned around. So breakfast at Whispers (sensing a theme) where apparently I am now so well known that the register guy went “Oh is it FurCon again?” I will admit that made me want to fall into a crevice from embarrassment of being THAT predictable. Still, it is my favorite breakfast place.
Well the table was already together and sales went well. Despite my being there a lot I wont linger on the table much. I swear. As MFF had been just a month ago there were not too many new releases for FurCon. Oren’s Forge: Incursion (the second book) was the big new title and plenty of people came for that at least. I got to hang out with Kyell Gold a bunch, sell some favorite titles like Eternal Party, Dry Spell, Price of Thorns, and Spot of Murder. I had hoped, this convention, to have two other titles I had been working on out but that didn’t happen.
The table had the usual crowd of Teiran, Savrin, Buck, WuWei, and Kyell Gold was there to sign his own books. Jakebe, Pen, and a Certain Rat were by as well as was PadFoot. Jakebe had wanted to do some table work and was a help several times. Great to see the Jakalope! Joaquin Baldwin of the Noss Saga books ( https://bsky.app/profile/joabaldwin.com ) stopped by the table. Gum ( https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:s5.....io4fw2ci4nye34 ) and some friends grabbed Altered State. I got to see Boken and Chariot who are such lovely people. Calzone stopped by a few times which was very nice to see and interact with them. Koge stopped by once which was a delight! Wagster stopped by to say I was his memorable sus hug giver. Tredain, Zex, and Donryu were by as well once or twice and it was great seeing them. Cactus fox was seen BREIEFLY before they zipped away.
Dinner that night was SoFA market again. I hung out with Korkem and his crew, cuddled Vesper and Chariot mainly, and saw a lot of good friends.
Saturday was a repeat of much the same though I had a long lunch meeting with Kyell Gold to discuss a few of his books. Which was very fun. We had been book clubbing mystery novels lately and it was a fun way to discuss a recent project he is working on. Dinner that evening was San Pedro Square Market where I got some excellent fish and chips and for dessert I got Mochinut for the first time (loved it). I did head over to the con to see the night market lines which were hugely busy. It is a big event at FurCon but not one for me. I saw Foxpresso briefly who was at the con but didn’t hang out much because I was exhausted.
Sunday was much the same though I was flagging by the end and after break down disappeared to the room for a bit. Grabbing dinner with the table crew, Kit and Kyell, and Jakebe and A Certain Rat I think we all agreed it was a good convention if a bit tiring. Early to bed for me after a little walking around the convention space.
Monday I had an evening flight so I lazed in the room with Teiran for a while. Savrin, who had driven the entire stock to the convention, left early. Good speed to them on their drive as it was a huge commitment of work for the fennec and FurCon wouldn’t be possible without their efforts. Teiran and I joined Buck and WuWei for lunch. Briefly said hello to Arthur Husky and then off to the airport to check in. After that it was just waiting for my flight. Then flying back home. Sadly the big weather changes that had been slamming the continent hit me hard on that flight home as the entire flight from San Diego to Albuqueruque was a turbulent mess. Yuck.
Still, I got home safe and slept well recovering. The next day I began the big project or putting away the Christmas décor (we always keep it up until MLK Jr. weekend in our family) and reorganizing the closets. The later task made the project one that took five days. Still the house is clean in time for the Lunar New Year and it feels likes a big accomplishment. Overall things are done and steady in the home and it was a good convention.
My next one will be Furry Fiesta in Dallas April 2025.
Squeak Thief [Book Review]
Posted 9 months agoSqueak Thief by Kyell Gold came out at Anthrocon 2024 and it has taken me a while to get to the review of it.
Quickly and succinctly: a fun romp of a book well worth the $15 as an entertaining read. I’d describe this as a scuzzy jolly jape of a read. Heavily leaning into more erotic and horny aspects compared to some of his other recent works Squeak Thief is a breezy book perfect for when you have a day off or just want to have a frothy gay read.
Disclaimer: as has been noted before I know Kyell Gold from conventions and have been around him a few times. I often sell books at the FurPlanet table and this book is published by FurPlanet.
The physical book can be ordered here for mail: https://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=1272
The ebook is here:
https://baddogbooks.com/product/squeak-thief/
This book, to me, falls into the category of a jolly jape. Those are books that rely on witty banter, character interplay, and a somewhat silly plot. The concept for this novel is a heist movie (Oceans 8, The Sting, How to Steal a Million) style robbery of a necklace. It is very clear Kyell Gold likes the genre of the heist movie and he has put a lot of thought not just into how to pull off a clever heist, but also the mechanics of how this genre works and is effective.
The elements of a heist movie are: compelling characters, interesting set pieces, at least one double cross, and a clever theft of some object from a security system. Often the word you want to say during and after a heist movie is: clever. This genre depends on misdirection and unreliable narrators as its stock and trade. I think Kyell Gold pulls that off admirably with this story. What I also like is that he subverts the heist concept pulling it from its stylized and romanticized framing and setting it into a more realistic setting. The characters do not have plot armor, they are not geniuses with brilliant omnipotence, instead they are two regular men trying to pull of a daring plan.
I liked how the heist played out. Their various plans and adaptation of the two characters to problems. How Bryce and Kris balance each other’s weaknesses in their thieving and how they solve problems together and use that to become closer to each other. There was a fun propulsion to this story that was interesting but also an acidity to the often humorous situations the two get into. As the story slowly reveals why this particular item is being stolen and reveals more of the characters (a classic Kyell Gold story conceit played of well in this genre) I genuinely liked the antics.
As I have noted before I like Kyell Gold because every novel he puts out tries some new variation on his writing. Some level of experimentation is visible if you read enough of his novels. Here there is a real leaning into the scuzzy and unseemly parts of life and a really interesting discussion about responsibility and adulthood. Kyell’s books do center on LGBTQIA+ romance and are driven by character emotions and interactions. However, I find the variations and set up for how these events interesting as well as the variety of characters he often plays with, rarely does he repeat a main character. The two main characters are a contrast to each other which underscores the novel’s larger themes of contrasting extreme wealth and poverty.
Here we have Bryce and Kris, who are two of his more fun characters to spend time with, in a story. Both deeply flawed, both a little seedy, and both satisfyingly interesting. I genuinely did not want the story to end because I just wanted to spend more time with these two fellows and their back and forth. As a story driven by character interaction and interplay that says a lot. Even as their affection grows for each other and they learn about the each other it is made clear both are feeling out the other for how to double cross each other. It is an interesting dynamic to see two people you, as a reader know, are looking to hoodwink each other, but who you want to have a positive relationship at the end of the story. I think Mr. Gold delivers nicely on resolving those tensions and showing why they resolve. Kris and Bryce earn their relationship and both are forced to shift their personal perceptions and be more vulnerable to each other.
Kris as a character comes from extreme privilege and personal security. The mouse has never had to seriously struggle and as the story evolves we see he often has a very naïve understanding of life. It is underscored often that he views the entire heist in the framing of movies and popular culture, and needs to be corrected. He has talent and intelligence but has never had to focus them. If he wanted he could have a comfortable life, but it is underscored that he wants to have more then that, at the very least he wants sincere connection, which is in part what draws him to Bryce. There is a lot to Kris that speaks of a person with ideals who has never had to practice those ideals living in a comfortable ivory tower of stories and theory. Smart but naïve, and a little to assured of his own talents. In some ways at the start we get the feeling he wants to enter into committing crimes as a past time and isn’t worried about consequences.
Bryce meanwhile has had a life of serious struggle: loss, abandonment, homelessness, and institutionalization. As we learn more of his backstory we see a man who has had to struggle with life and trust. Bryce has had to deal with consequences constantly to things outside of his own control. He yearns for people he can trust, but can’t be vulnerable. Kris offers him a challenge but also a chance to be vulnerable by fulfilling Kris’ need for sincerity. There is a fascinating scene where Bryce explains part of his life that really defined the two characters nicely for me. He is as smart as Bryce, clearly, but it is honed with a wisdom of failure and experience.
These two men with different skills, different expectations, and backgrounds make a wonderful pair of thieves and an interesting contrast to each other. Kris wants to play at criminality, Bryce has been forced by circumstances into it. As I noted early on this story leans in on a scuzzy and skeezy aspect. There is a feeling of grime and oiliness to many locations that contrast with the bright glitz and anodyne locations of the wealthy and powerful. Bryce comes from a world where people struggle and have been defined by those struggles, and Kris from a world of such extreme privilege that he knows people who are almost gelatinous. This does not celebrate poverty as noble and strengthening, rather it is an indictment of how these ultra wealthy people waste their lives while others struggle needlessly. What point is there to a car you never drive, never truly enjoy, but only can sit in once in a while whereas other people wonder about their next meals. A lot of heist genre material does not always play with that concept and I think it is done in an interesting way here.
The sexual politics in the story are interesting as Bryce and Kris figure out their physical attraction and mutual interest. This one is heavy on sexual encounters but they often are not just for titillation but about how the two men are finding ways to trust and interact with each other. How they see sex and each other’s bodies is tied up with modern gay sexual politics but also their backgrounds. Even there with a few of them there is that same sense of grime. It works well though I admit I wanted more scenes of the fox and mouse just playing off each other as they have excellent charisma together.
The story itself is fun, interesting, and I kept turning the pages. I loved the story of two people thieving and stealing each other’s hearts. I think it did a good job playing with the genre, concept, and characters. I loved the climax of the story and how it played out because of how it used the genre of the heist. The ending made sense and had a playful quality reminding us that these two people have come far but they have not changed fundamentally, they’ve just learned to trust. I don’t think there needs to be more with these two people, but I am sorry I don’t have them as my companions and that likely says a lot about the characters.
Pick this one up if you want a fun quick read that will make you miss two interesting characters.
Quickly and succinctly: a fun romp of a book well worth the $15 as an entertaining read. I’d describe this as a scuzzy jolly jape of a read. Heavily leaning into more erotic and horny aspects compared to some of his other recent works Squeak Thief is a breezy book perfect for when you have a day off or just want to have a frothy gay read.
Disclaimer: as has been noted before I know Kyell Gold from conventions and have been around him a few times. I often sell books at the FurPlanet table and this book is published by FurPlanet.
The physical book can be ordered here for mail: https://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=1272
The ebook is here:
https://baddogbooks.com/product/squeak-thief/
This book, to me, falls into the category of a jolly jape. Those are books that rely on witty banter, character interplay, and a somewhat silly plot. The concept for this novel is a heist movie (Oceans 8, The Sting, How to Steal a Million) style robbery of a necklace. It is very clear Kyell Gold likes the genre of the heist movie and he has put a lot of thought not just into how to pull off a clever heist, but also the mechanics of how this genre works and is effective.
The elements of a heist movie are: compelling characters, interesting set pieces, at least one double cross, and a clever theft of some object from a security system. Often the word you want to say during and after a heist movie is: clever. This genre depends on misdirection and unreliable narrators as its stock and trade. I think Kyell Gold pulls that off admirably with this story. What I also like is that he subverts the heist concept pulling it from its stylized and romanticized framing and setting it into a more realistic setting. The characters do not have plot armor, they are not geniuses with brilliant omnipotence, instead they are two regular men trying to pull of a daring plan.
I liked how the heist played out. Their various plans and adaptation of the two characters to problems. How Bryce and Kris balance each other’s weaknesses in their thieving and how they solve problems together and use that to become closer to each other. There was a fun propulsion to this story that was interesting but also an acidity to the often humorous situations the two get into. As the story slowly reveals why this particular item is being stolen and reveals more of the characters (a classic Kyell Gold story conceit played of well in this genre) I genuinely liked the antics.
As I have noted before I like Kyell Gold because every novel he puts out tries some new variation on his writing. Some level of experimentation is visible if you read enough of his novels. Here there is a real leaning into the scuzzy and unseemly parts of life and a really interesting discussion about responsibility and adulthood. Kyell’s books do center on LGBTQIA+ romance and are driven by character emotions and interactions. However, I find the variations and set up for how these events interesting as well as the variety of characters he often plays with, rarely does he repeat a main character. The two main characters are a contrast to each other which underscores the novel’s larger themes of contrasting extreme wealth and poverty.
Here we have Bryce and Kris, who are two of his more fun characters to spend time with, in a story. Both deeply flawed, both a little seedy, and both satisfyingly interesting. I genuinely did not want the story to end because I just wanted to spend more time with these two fellows and their back and forth. As a story driven by character interaction and interplay that says a lot. Even as their affection grows for each other and they learn about the each other it is made clear both are feeling out the other for how to double cross each other. It is an interesting dynamic to see two people you, as a reader know, are looking to hoodwink each other, but who you want to have a positive relationship at the end of the story. I think Mr. Gold delivers nicely on resolving those tensions and showing why they resolve. Kris and Bryce earn their relationship and both are forced to shift their personal perceptions and be more vulnerable to each other.
Kris as a character comes from extreme privilege and personal security. The mouse has never had to seriously struggle and as the story evolves we see he often has a very naïve understanding of life. It is underscored often that he views the entire heist in the framing of movies and popular culture, and needs to be corrected. He has talent and intelligence but has never had to focus them. If he wanted he could have a comfortable life, but it is underscored that he wants to have more then that, at the very least he wants sincere connection, which is in part what draws him to Bryce. There is a lot to Kris that speaks of a person with ideals who has never had to practice those ideals living in a comfortable ivory tower of stories and theory. Smart but naïve, and a little to assured of his own talents. In some ways at the start we get the feeling he wants to enter into committing crimes as a past time and isn’t worried about consequences.
Bryce meanwhile has had a life of serious struggle: loss, abandonment, homelessness, and institutionalization. As we learn more of his backstory we see a man who has had to struggle with life and trust. Bryce has had to deal with consequences constantly to things outside of his own control. He yearns for people he can trust, but can’t be vulnerable. Kris offers him a challenge but also a chance to be vulnerable by fulfilling Kris’ need for sincerity. There is a fascinating scene where Bryce explains part of his life that really defined the two characters nicely for me. He is as smart as Bryce, clearly, but it is honed with a wisdom of failure and experience.
These two men with different skills, different expectations, and backgrounds make a wonderful pair of thieves and an interesting contrast to each other. Kris wants to play at criminality, Bryce has been forced by circumstances into it. As I noted early on this story leans in on a scuzzy and skeezy aspect. There is a feeling of grime and oiliness to many locations that contrast with the bright glitz and anodyne locations of the wealthy and powerful. Bryce comes from a world where people struggle and have been defined by those struggles, and Kris from a world of such extreme privilege that he knows people who are almost gelatinous. This does not celebrate poverty as noble and strengthening, rather it is an indictment of how these ultra wealthy people waste their lives while others struggle needlessly. What point is there to a car you never drive, never truly enjoy, but only can sit in once in a while whereas other people wonder about their next meals. A lot of heist genre material does not always play with that concept and I think it is done in an interesting way here.
The sexual politics in the story are interesting as Bryce and Kris figure out their physical attraction and mutual interest. This one is heavy on sexual encounters but they often are not just for titillation but about how the two men are finding ways to trust and interact with each other. How they see sex and each other’s bodies is tied up with modern gay sexual politics but also their backgrounds. Even there with a few of them there is that same sense of grime. It works well though I admit I wanted more scenes of the fox and mouse just playing off each other as they have excellent charisma together.
The story itself is fun, interesting, and I kept turning the pages. I loved the story of two people thieving and stealing each other’s hearts. I think it did a good job playing with the genre, concept, and characters. I loved the climax of the story and how it played out because of how it used the genre of the heist. The ending made sense and had a playful quality reminding us that these two people have come far but they have not changed fundamentally, they’ve just learned to trust. I don’t think there needs to be more with these two people, but I am sorry I don’t have them as my companions and that likely says a lot about the characters.
Pick this one up if you want a fun quick read that will make you miss two interesting characters.
Midwest FurFest 2024
Posted 11 months agoSo, Midwest FurFest 2024 has come and gone. I actually did attend it so here is my journal.
To start with I love Midwest FurFest. It is among one of my favorite conventions. It comes at a tricky time of the year for me personally as Thanksgiving and Christmas are a busy period and I’m usually in the middle of other projects. Still, I love Chicago and I love MFF so I am always happy to make time and go.
I got there Wednesday afternoon. Ajax had arrived a little earlier so after we unpacked our stuff and settled we set about finding a place to eat. Ajax hadn’t been back to MFF in several years so the food options were new to him. After a little wandering at the ice rink we ended up at Fogo de Chao. I had never eaten there before (it just never came up) but Ajax was excited to show me the ropes. We had a wonderful dinner and left satiated. After a quick detour to get Bree and Runa their room keys (logistics is always fun at a con) we got back to the room and I crashed down asleep like the pumpkin I am.
Thursday we woke up early, Teiran had arrived last night at some point but I was too asleep to notice, and set about the day. Well trying not to wake Teiran first (we failed). Ajax wanted to do a little touristy stuff in Chicago. He had been reading the Harry Dresden novels and wanted to see Sue the T-Rex. So we hopped a train to downtown. It was a good and quick ride, then did a little walking in a brisk Chicago day and chatted. I enjoyed it but Ajax had his glasses fog up fierce. Still we got to the Field Museum and toured the place seeing several fun exhibits and dodged various school groups. Getting a Lyft back (Ajax wanted to go quick) we grabbed lunch at the hotel then went over to assist with set up.
A quick birthday dinner for Donryu was that evening. Brian Reynolds joined me and Teiran in celebrating the artist’s birthday. He’s a great fellow to just hang out with so it was a very nice evening. We got pizza at the wood fire place.
Friday was the real event as dealers den opened. A solid brunch to fuel up and we were off to the races and… it was busy and active. Honestly there isn’t much to say except it was busy. I saw a lot of wonderful people I had missed all year. I sold books I loved. I had fun. It just all blurs together and gets tiring.
The room staggers entry for safety reasons so it was a constant flow of people. The dealer’s room closes at seven so food options were crazy. After several years of the seven close time we had a plan in place. Grabbing Chicago style pizza in Buck, WuWei, Runa, and Bree’s room I added in some bundt cakes from the stall in the dealer’s den. Kyell, Kit, Gneech, and Hashtag joined us as well. So a good evening but I was exhausted
Saturday I was up early, still a morning woozle, and after spilling some scalding hot tea on myself I was very awake for the table to begin. Saturday was the busiest day for me. So it was great that Flux stopped by and we were able to grab lunch at the new taco place at the ice rink. At the end it was an exhausting day. Grabbed dinner at the Double tree with Teiran and Bree then crashed into bed.
Sunday was much the same. Ealy wake up, over to the table. Bill’s new book had sold out the day before and other folks were finding great books. Shiloh Skye the book reviewer and critic stopped by the table to talk about how his panel had gone. It was an amazing event that really juiced a lot of people to stop by the table and grab books he had talked about like Induction and Heart Theft. He’s a very good pup. I had my fun but I’ll admit being pretty tired by the end. Double Tree for dinner with Kit, Kyell, Hashtag, the Rukis gang, Teiran, Bree, and Runa. It was a good meal and shop was talked but I was done. I did enjoy talking with Kyell about some of his upcoming projects.
I had fun on Sunday but I was sort of too tired at this convention. I had been fighting off a cold the week before and so I came already a little zonked. I’m sort of annoyed at myself for not making time to go to the convention proper. I didn’t go to the main hotel or really walk around as in previous years. A lot of it was being lazy and tired. I need to make sure I do it next year.
Monday was breakfast with Teiran and saying goodbye. Then I took a lyft down to Chicago proper. My mom and I have a tradition of going to Chicago a few days after the convention to enjoy Christmas in a city we both love. We met up at the Drake hotel and had dinner at the hotel restaurant. Both of us tired (her from travel, me from con) it was an early night.
Tuesday my mom remarked she just wanted to sleep in a bit. So we had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel room and enjoyed ourselves. We walked up Michigan Ave. and just enjoyed being in Chicago talking about past trips. At one we did our favorite tradition the Drake High Tea in the Palm Court, a favorite time, and spent several hours chatting and just relaxing. We agreed we should do one of these trips in spring or summer to enjoy the hotel and Chicago for just a few days.
Sadly this had to be a short trip so we left Wednesday. I lucked out and was able to get an earlier flight then planned for no extra cost. Still I got home tired and just hit the hay.
A good Midwest FurFest but it did feel like it passed too quickly. Now onto Christmas and then New Years!
To start with I love Midwest FurFest. It is among one of my favorite conventions. It comes at a tricky time of the year for me personally as Thanksgiving and Christmas are a busy period and I’m usually in the middle of other projects. Still, I love Chicago and I love MFF so I am always happy to make time and go.
I got there Wednesday afternoon. Ajax had arrived a little earlier so after we unpacked our stuff and settled we set about finding a place to eat. Ajax hadn’t been back to MFF in several years so the food options were new to him. After a little wandering at the ice rink we ended up at Fogo de Chao. I had never eaten there before (it just never came up) but Ajax was excited to show me the ropes. We had a wonderful dinner and left satiated. After a quick detour to get Bree and Runa their room keys (logistics is always fun at a con) we got back to the room and I crashed down asleep like the pumpkin I am.
Thursday we woke up early, Teiran had arrived last night at some point but I was too asleep to notice, and set about the day. Well trying not to wake Teiran first (we failed). Ajax wanted to do a little touristy stuff in Chicago. He had been reading the Harry Dresden novels and wanted to see Sue the T-Rex. So we hopped a train to downtown. It was a good and quick ride, then did a little walking in a brisk Chicago day and chatted. I enjoyed it but Ajax had his glasses fog up fierce. Still we got to the Field Museum and toured the place seeing several fun exhibits and dodged various school groups. Getting a Lyft back (Ajax wanted to go quick) we grabbed lunch at the hotel then went over to assist with set up.
A quick birthday dinner for Donryu was that evening. Brian Reynolds joined me and Teiran in celebrating the artist’s birthday. He’s a great fellow to just hang out with so it was a very nice evening. We got pizza at the wood fire place.
Friday was the real event as dealers den opened. A solid brunch to fuel up and we were off to the races and… it was busy and active. Honestly there isn’t much to say except it was busy. I saw a lot of wonderful people I had missed all year. I sold books I loved. I had fun. It just all blurs together and gets tiring.
The room staggers entry for safety reasons so it was a constant flow of people. The dealer’s room closes at seven so food options were crazy. After several years of the seven close time we had a plan in place. Grabbing Chicago style pizza in Buck, WuWei, Runa, and Bree’s room I added in some bundt cakes from the stall in the dealer’s den. Kyell, Kit, Gneech, and Hashtag joined us as well. So a good evening but I was exhausted
Saturday I was up early, still a morning woozle, and after spilling some scalding hot tea on myself I was very awake for the table to begin. Saturday was the busiest day for me. So it was great that Flux stopped by and we were able to grab lunch at the new taco place at the ice rink. At the end it was an exhausting day. Grabbed dinner at the Double tree with Teiran and Bree then crashed into bed.
Sunday was much the same. Ealy wake up, over to the table. Bill’s new book had sold out the day before and other folks were finding great books. Shiloh Skye the book reviewer and critic stopped by the table to talk about how his panel had gone. It was an amazing event that really juiced a lot of people to stop by the table and grab books he had talked about like Induction and Heart Theft. He’s a very good pup. I had my fun but I’ll admit being pretty tired by the end. Double Tree for dinner with Kit, Kyell, Hashtag, the Rukis gang, Teiran, Bree, and Runa. It was a good meal and shop was talked but I was done. I did enjoy talking with Kyell about some of his upcoming projects.
I had fun on Sunday but I was sort of too tired at this convention. I had been fighting off a cold the week before and so I came already a little zonked. I’m sort of annoyed at myself for not making time to go to the convention proper. I didn’t go to the main hotel or really walk around as in previous years. A lot of it was being lazy and tired. I need to make sure I do it next year.
Monday was breakfast with Teiran and saying goodbye. Then I took a lyft down to Chicago proper. My mom and I have a tradition of going to Chicago a few days after the convention to enjoy Christmas in a city we both love. We met up at the Drake hotel and had dinner at the hotel restaurant. Both of us tired (her from travel, me from con) it was an early night.
Tuesday my mom remarked she just wanted to sleep in a bit. So we had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel room and enjoyed ourselves. We walked up Michigan Ave. and just enjoyed being in Chicago talking about past trips. At one we did our favorite tradition the Drake High Tea in the Palm Court, a favorite time, and spent several hours chatting and just relaxing. We agreed we should do one of these trips in spring or summer to enjoy the hotel and Chicago for just a few days.
Sadly this had to be a short trip so we left Wednesday. I lucked out and was able to get an earlier flight then planned for no extra cost. Still I got home tired and just hit the hay.
A good Midwest FurFest but it did feel like it passed too quickly. Now onto Christmas and then New Years!
I was wrong about this election
Posted a year agoSo, I suppose this is my supper of crow. I honestly was wrong, and my opinion and statements were incorrect. This can happen, clearly my assumptions clouded my judgement of where things would go.
It is a small comfort that Yvette Herrel got trounced and the Republicans have utterly failed in my state by frankly ridiculous margins. Again.
At the same time I was wrong. It does in fact appear we have a great case study and information that campaign organization, get out the vote systems, and good fund raising don't really matter. Or they matter far less then I thought. That is a weak defense of my own errors. You'd think that would cause me to avoid hubristic thought but that is hardly how I work. Still I think I will stop doing these political essays. My nattering is not useful to the current time.
Good luck to everyone out there. To those struggling remember you do matter to many people.
To those who voted for Trump: Unfollow me, I have no interest in having you in my life.
It is a small comfort that Yvette Herrel got trounced and the Republicans have utterly failed in my state by frankly ridiculous margins. Again.
At the same time I was wrong. It does in fact appear we have a great case study and information that campaign organization, get out the vote systems, and good fund raising don't really matter. Or they matter far less then I thought. That is a weak defense of my own errors. You'd think that would cause me to avoid hubristic thought but that is hardly how I work. Still I think I will stop doing these political essays. My nattering is not useful to the current time.
Good luck to everyone out there. To those struggling remember you do matter to many people.
To those who voted for Trump: Unfollow me, I have no interest in having you in my life.
What to expect Election Night 2024
Posted a year agoAt the surface these essays are often about “who will win and when will we know” and as usual I’d like to take a different tack. There are usually more to those other essays and I’m being a little dismissive, but I wanted to frame what this was going to be a bit more then usual.
This election has been odd in some ways. In others it has behaved like a normal election. Still the biggest changes are the quiet ones: the national normalization of early voting, the rise in small donations which have been solidified, and the obvious ways polling companies are struggling to collect enough data.
More than likely we are looking at a big election day with very long lines. High turn out seems very possible in most states despite the historic early vote turn out. I think that is largely a good thing in general. We have seen a stabilization of the concept of early voting access and that is good.
I stand by my earlier statements that I believe Harris will win. That said I understand other people are struggling emotionally with this election. So lets review the two major campaigns.
The Harris Campaign’s theory of victory is to secure a big turn out in urban centers then run up the numbers as much as possible in the suburbs and ideally shave off some folks in rural communities. This relies heavily on getting women out to vote and various other groups with young voters to fill in the cracks. Harris and Walz need to get about 92% of what Biden got in black voters in 2020 and 59% of the Latino voters Biden got in 2020. This model needs a good ground game and needs to pull in a diverse and some what unstable coalition of very different voters.
The Trump campaign meanwhile has leaned heavily on a base turn out. The concept is to provoke serious verve among his supporters to turn out in big enough numbers like in 2020 to swing a few states. This also depends on an extensive ground game to get low propensity voters to the polls as well as chip away at the Democrats BIPOC voters. Heavy rural turn out and a strong suburban drive.
At this point the swing states everyone will focus on are: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, and Nebrask012
Because Nebraska is a proportional electoral state (as the Founding Fathers intended all the states to be) NE-02 with Omaha is seen as likely to swing to Harris. Winning NE02 is crucial to the Harris/Walz backup strategy and the campaign has not taken the race for granted. Advertisement spending in Omaha has been extensive and Walz as well as other surrogates have visited the area.
North Carolina to me is the mystery of the lot. I don’t think anyone can really say with certainty what is happening there. Hurricane Helene ravaged the state’s infrastructure and people. It is hard to care about voting when your home is gone and loved ones missing or dead. Being polled in such an environment is difficult as communications were disrupted and records ruined. Further the lt. Governor is still deeply controversial with his multiple sex scandals and the various unseemly revelations of posting about being a black nazi on at least one porn site. While it is rare for a candidate lower on a ticket to drag down the top it can happen and the Democrats have spent heavily to connect the Lt. Governor to every Republican who endorsed him. We have no idea what the impact will be of either event. Still both campaigns have invested heavily with extensive visits and investment. Something is going on there.
Pennsylvania is the keystone, ironically, to both campaigns. If Harris wins PA she is likely to win the 270 needed. If Trump wins then Harris has a very uncertain path forward. The Dems have much to be optimistic about but the state will take the longest to tally its votes so it can’t be relied on to end the night quick.
Wisconsin as the closest race of 2020 will likely be the bellwether on how long the night goes and what is going on. A big turn out is expected as several high profile down ticket races for the state legislature as well as a senate race are also on the ballot. Both campaigns have spent obscene money in the state advertising and the local population is likely very sick of it. Still, where Wisconsin goes Michigan and Pennsylvania are likely to mirror.
Iowa has revealed itself to be in play, at least according to Ann Selzer. If Iowa is close and in play we will learn it and see the results. Though not until late the state closes its polls historically later then most places and they take time voting/tallying. Still a lot of eyes will be on Iowa as pollsters worry if Selzer has pantsed them again.
So let’s go through what to expect election night time table wise:
First it is important to know different states count their ballots at different times. In some states the early and mail in ballots are counted throughout the day. States like Pennsylvania will not count any ballots until full poll closure.
Indiana and Kentucky have the first poll closures of the night at 6:00PM EST. They have the shortest window for voting though some parts of their state being in central time mean the state wont fully close until 7:00PM EST. Ballot counting will begin in earnest in those stats at 6:00PM EST.
7:00PM EST is when the big states start to close with Virginia, Vermont, Georgia, and much of Florida closing. Virginia will get heavy media scrutiny as while the state is seen as a lock for Democrats the size and scope of a win is big. A narrow win to many will bode ill for the Harris campaign. A margin over 10 pts will be seen as good for Harris. Georgia being defined as a swing state will get a lot of attention as well but it is expected the vote tally will take time. Florida’s biggest population centers will have closed but they take time being tallied. Results in this portion of Florida will be picked over.
8:00PM EST is when polling locations close in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and much of Texas. A lot of money and time will be spent on watching Pennsylvania but unless there is a shocking number the state will take time to count. Lehigh Valley will get a lot of attention as it behaves like a suburb (despite its large city of Allentown and Bethlehem) but it also has a staggering number of Puerto Rican voters. If Harris wins Lehigh Valley over 10 points she is likely to carry the state
9:00PM EST is when New Mexico polls close. As the state is expected to be an indigo blue result no one really cares there. Unless the entire polling industry and knowledge is somehow very factually incorrect. Other states will be talked about and people will be looking at results from bigger places. People will care that Arizona’s polls have closed and will be watching the state heavily.
10:00PM EST is when Nevada the last of the swing states close by then we will have a good idea where several other states are in their results. Nevada has a key senate race as does Montana which also closes at this time. So people will be watching.
As they say the prayer of the campaign and the election worker is: Please let it be a landslide. The prayer of the media is: Please, let it be a nail biter.
Generally I maintain Trump is doing poorly. He wasted the last week of his campaign on weird stunts like dressed as an Oompa Loompa garbage man and provoking weird controversies while trying t deal with an furious contingent of Americans (Puerto Ricans). Meanwhile stories continue to trickle out of his Get out the Vote operation being a morass of failures. We will see if that is true and if it has an impact.
Good luck out there, treat yourself well and take of yourselves.
This election has been odd in some ways. In others it has behaved like a normal election. Still the biggest changes are the quiet ones: the national normalization of early voting, the rise in small donations which have been solidified, and the obvious ways polling companies are struggling to collect enough data.
More than likely we are looking at a big election day with very long lines. High turn out seems very possible in most states despite the historic early vote turn out. I think that is largely a good thing in general. We have seen a stabilization of the concept of early voting access and that is good.
I stand by my earlier statements that I believe Harris will win. That said I understand other people are struggling emotionally with this election. So lets review the two major campaigns.
The Harris Campaign’s theory of victory is to secure a big turn out in urban centers then run up the numbers as much as possible in the suburbs and ideally shave off some folks in rural communities. This relies heavily on getting women out to vote and various other groups with young voters to fill in the cracks. Harris and Walz need to get about 92% of what Biden got in black voters in 2020 and 59% of the Latino voters Biden got in 2020. This model needs a good ground game and needs to pull in a diverse and some what unstable coalition of very different voters.
The Trump campaign meanwhile has leaned heavily on a base turn out. The concept is to provoke serious verve among his supporters to turn out in big enough numbers like in 2020 to swing a few states. This also depends on an extensive ground game to get low propensity voters to the polls as well as chip away at the Democrats BIPOC voters. Heavy rural turn out and a strong suburban drive.
At this point the swing states everyone will focus on are: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, and Nebrask012
Because Nebraska is a proportional electoral state (as the Founding Fathers intended all the states to be) NE-02 with Omaha is seen as likely to swing to Harris. Winning NE02 is crucial to the Harris/Walz backup strategy and the campaign has not taken the race for granted. Advertisement spending in Omaha has been extensive and Walz as well as other surrogates have visited the area.
North Carolina to me is the mystery of the lot. I don’t think anyone can really say with certainty what is happening there. Hurricane Helene ravaged the state’s infrastructure and people. It is hard to care about voting when your home is gone and loved ones missing or dead. Being polled in such an environment is difficult as communications were disrupted and records ruined. Further the lt. Governor is still deeply controversial with his multiple sex scandals and the various unseemly revelations of posting about being a black nazi on at least one porn site. While it is rare for a candidate lower on a ticket to drag down the top it can happen and the Democrats have spent heavily to connect the Lt. Governor to every Republican who endorsed him. We have no idea what the impact will be of either event. Still both campaigns have invested heavily with extensive visits and investment. Something is going on there.
Pennsylvania is the keystone, ironically, to both campaigns. If Harris wins PA she is likely to win the 270 needed. If Trump wins then Harris has a very uncertain path forward. The Dems have much to be optimistic about but the state will take the longest to tally its votes so it can’t be relied on to end the night quick.
Wisconsin as the closest race of 2020 will likely be the bellwether on how long the night goes and what is going on. A big turn out is expected as several high profile down ticket races for the state legislature as well as a senate race are also on the ballot. Both campaigns have spent obscene money in the state advertising and the local population is likely very sick of it. Still, where Wisconsin goes Michigan and Pennsylvania are likely to mirror.
Iowa has revealed itself to be in play, at least according to Ann Selzer. If Iowa is close and in play we will learn it and see the results. Though not until late the state closes its polls historically later then most places and they take time voting/tallying. Still a lot of eyes will be on Iowa as pollsters worry if Selzer has pantsed them again.
So let’s go through what to expect election night time table wise:
First it is important to know different states count their ballots at different times. In some states the early and mail in ballots are counted throughout the day. States like Pennsylvania will not count any ballots until full poll closure.
Indiana and Kentucky have the first poll closures of the night at 6:00PM EST. They have the shortest window for voting though some parts of their state being in central time mean the state wont fully close until 7:00PM EST. Ballot counting will begin in earnest in those stats at 6:00PM EST.
7:00PM EST is when the big states start to close with Virginia, Vermont, Georgia, and much of Florida closing. Virginia will get heavy media scrutiny as while the state is seen as a lock for Democrats the size and scope of a win is big. A narrow win to many will bode ill for the Harris campaign. A margin over 10 pts will be seen as good for Harris. Georgia being defined as a swing state will get a lot of attention as well but it is expected the vote tally will take time. Florida’s biggest population centers will have closed but they take time being tallied. Results in this portion of Florida will be picked over.
8:00PM EST is when polling locations close in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and much of Texas. A lot of money and time will be spent on watching Pennsylvania but unless there is a shocking number the state will take time to count. Lehigh Valley will get a lot of attention as it behaves like a suburb (despite its large city of Allentown and Bethlehem) but it also has a staggering number of Puerto Rican voters. If Harris wins Lehigh Valley over 10 points she is likely to carry the state
9:00PM EST is when New Mexico polls close. As the state is expected to be an indigo blue result no one really cares there. Unless the entire polling industry and knowledge is somehow very factually incorrect. Other states will be talked about and people will be looking at results from bigger places. People will care that Arizona’s polls have closed and will be watching the state heavily.
10:00PM EST is when Nevada the last of the swing states close by then we will have a good idea where several other states are in their results. Nevada has a key senate race as does Montana which also closes at this time. So people will be watching.
As they say the prayer of the campaign and the election worker is: Please let it be a landslide. The prayer of the media is: Please, let it be a nail biter.
Generally I maintain Trump is doing poorly. He wasted the last week of his campaign on weird stunts like dressed as an Oompa Loompa garbage man and provoking weird controversies while trying t deal with an furious contingent of Americans (Puerto Ricans). Meanwhile stories continue to trickle out of his Get out the Vote operation being a morass of failures. We will see if that is true and if it has an impact.
Good luck out there, treat yourself well and take of yourselves.
The Iowa Selzar Poll
Posted a year agoI cannot avoid talking about the big news in extremely nerdy circles. Ann Selzer put out a poll on Saturday Night November 2, 2024. This will be extremely nerdy and silly perhaps.
I’ve mentioned her and her polling company many times but I think it is important to define who Ann Selzer is for this conversation:
Ann Selzer started her own polling company in 1996. Before that she had gotten her PhD in Iowa and worked at the Des Moines Register. Her company works almost exclusively with the Register and only polls the state of Iowa. Since starting that company she has made her own cottage industry on polling and interpreting polling for the state of Iowa. One would ask how one can make a successful internationally recognized name out of such an endeavor. The answer is: the Iowa Caucus. Ms. Selzer’s caucus polls for the party candidates are taken as gold and a lot of international media companies pay for access to her data. She also handles local legislator races and governor races. She more rarely does polls for presidential elections, but she only does them in Iowa.
Ann Selzer knows her state extremely well and by all indications spends months carefully phrasing questions, recruiting questioners with the right accent, and refining how to contact voters in Iowa. Unlike many other pollsters she refuses to engage in modeling and weighting her polls. The Des Moines Register/Selzer polls are considered very accurate and have a long history of accuracy. Her polls since 1996 have very few misses. Her biggest one was a governor race in 2014 where she was off by 5 points. Ms. Selzer relies on her name recognition and branding to build trust in her niche polling. Famously she has also at her own expense and risking her company tossed out polls she feels are incorrect rather then releasing them. Many feel they can extrapolate to some extent onto other midwestern states that share similar racial and cultural backgrounds. To a degree I think you can but you should be careful.
Selzer in 2016 famously released a poll showing Trump would win the state by 7 points, she did one in 2020 showing Trump winning by 8 points. She stuck by those results despite a lot of other pollsters having very different results and Selzer getting some derisive comments. She turned out to be correct both times and many saw it as an augur in both elections of the serious problem Democrats were having with white working class voters.
So, when Ann Selzer releases a poll saying Harris is winning Iowa about 3 Percentage points that is going to get noticed. The Des Moines Register did a write up here https://www.desmoinesregister.com/s.....e/75354033007/ The break down is 47% Harris, 44% Trump, 9% undecided or other candidate with a margin of error of 3.9% In theory that means Trump could still win the state but that sort of result is going to turn heads and set off alarm bells. In September she had a poll that had Trump leading by 4 points https://www.desmoinesregister.com/s.....n/75180245007/ which considering the many other polls showing Trump in a strong position itself was noteworthy.
The more noteworthy thing from the poll was that inside it showed Harris winning women by over 20 points and this is powered by senior women over 65 who are choosing Harris 63% to 28% (a thirty five point rate difference). You know, senior aged white women the most likely people to vote in the USA. If even half that kind of rate is occurring in other states with women then that changes the entire map. If that is the case it means women are crossing party lines, it also means Texas, Ohio, and Florida are in serious jeopardy for the GOP. This would in fact line up with the 2022 election results to some degree. Though the word “if” happens to be doing a lot of work in that entire theory.
A lot of people can easily say one cannot extrapolate that far. That Selzer is only talking about Iowa and one must be careful on going to far. Even neighboring Nebraska and Wisconsin have different results then Iowa. I am not a believer in one state essentialism so I too would urge extreme caution on going too far. Iowans as a rule tend to take civic engagement very seriously and so pay close attention to politics in ways other states just aren’t as involved. They are older and whiter then many states.
Iowa has been seeing a fair bit of the Harris campaign. She has been running extensive commercials in Omaha, Nebraska which covers much of the Iowa Media market. The Harris campaign has had surrogates like Tim Walz in the area as well regularly. This is to secure Omaha because the Harris campaign is not leaving much to chance so that might influence the state of Iowa.
Further some point out Iowa has one of the most aggressive anti-abortion laws in the country with a six week ban and the state has had several high profile medical emergency cases involved women that have been news there even if they did not become national news. Further the state saw an aggressive cutting in education spending that heavily impacted rural school funding, as well as extensive reports on book censorship. Two issues that do historically motivate women (healthcare and education) and they are going to pay attention to, but then how many states have a six week abortion ban that is high profile and numerous stories about education cut backs and censorship that might be causing a backlash?
You know, besides Florida.
My general recommendation is to treat the Selzar poll with a bit of skepticism. I think Harris can win the state, I think she might pull that off. I just wouldn’t get too far over my skis. That said talk about a late and noteworthy shift.
I’ve mentioned her and her polling company many times but I think it is important to define who Ann Selzer is for this conversation:
Ann Selzer started her own polling company in 1996. Before that she had gotten her PhD in Iowa and worked at the Des Moines Register. Her company works almost exclusively with the Register and only polls the state of Iowa. Since starting that company she has made her own cottage industry on polling and interpreting polling for the state of Iowa. One would ask how one can make a successful internationally recognized name out of such an endeavor. The answer is: the Iowa Caucus. Ms. Selzer’s caucus polls for the party candidates are taken as gold and a lot of international media companies pay for access to her data. She also handles local legislator races and governor races. She more rarely does polls for presidential elections, but she only does them in Iowa.
Ann Selzer knows her state extremely well and by all indications spends months carefully phrasing questions, recruiting questioners with the right accent, and refining how to contact voters in Iowa. Unlike many other pollsters she refuses to engage in modeling and weighting her polls. The Des Moines Register/Selzer polls are considered very accurate and have a long history of accuracy. Her polls since 1996 have very few misses. Her biggest one was a governor race in 2014 where she was off by 5 points. Ms. Selzer relies on her name recognition and branding to build trust in her niche polling. Famously she has also at her own expense and risking her company tossed out polls she feels are incorrect rather then releasing them. Many feel they can extrapolate to some extent onto other midwestern states that share similar racial and cultural backgrounds. To a degree I think you can but you should be careful.
Selzer in 2016 famously released a poll showing Trump would win the state by 7 points, she did one in 2020 showing Trump winning by 8 points. She stuck by those results despite a lot of other pollsters having very different results and Selzer getting some derisive comments. She turned out to be correct both times and many saw it as an augur in both elections of the serious problem Democrats were having with white working class voters.
So, when Ann Selzer releases a poll saying Harris is winning Iowa about 3 Percentage points that is going to get noticed. The Des Moines Register did a write up here https://www.desmoinesregister.com/s.....e/75354033007/ The break down is 47% Harris, 44% Trump, 9% undecided or other candidate with a margin of error of 3.9% In theory that means Trump could still win the state but that sort of result is going to turn heads and set off alarm bells. In September she had a poll that had Trump leading by 4 points https://www.desmoinesregister.com/s.....n/75180245007/ which considering the many other polls showing Trump in a strong position itself was noteworthy.
The more noteworthy thing from the poll was that inside it showed Harris winning women by over 20 points and this is powered by senior women over 65 who are choosing Harris 63% to 28% (a thirty five point rate difference). You know, senior aged white women the most likely people to vote in the USA. If even half that kind of rate is occurring in other states with women then that changes the entire map. If that is the case it means women are crossing party lines, it also means Texas, Ohio, and Florida are in serious jeopardy for the GOP. This would in fact line up with the 2022 election results to some degree. Though the word “if” happens to be doing a lot of work in that entire theory.
A lot of people can easily say one cannot extrapolate that far. That Selzer is only talking about Iowa and one must be careful on going to far. Even neighboring Nebraska and Wisconsin have different results then Iowa. I am not a believer in one state essentialism so I too would urge extreme caution on going too far. Iowans as a rule tend to take civic engagement very seriously and so pay close attention to politics in ways other states just aren’t as involved. They are older and whiter then many states.
Iowa has been seeing a fair bit of the Harris campaign. She has been running extensive commercials in Omaha, Nebraska which covers much of the Iowa Media market. The Harris campaign has had surrogates like Tim Walz in the area as well regularly. This is to secure Omaha because the Harris campaign is not leaving much to chance so that might influence the state of Iowa.
Further some point out Iowa has one of the most aggressive anti-abortion laws in the country with a six week ban and the state has had several high profile medical emergency cases involved women that have been news there even if they did not become national news. Further the state saw an aggressive cutting in education spending that heavily impacted rural school funding, as well as extensive reports on book censorship. Two issues that do historically motivate women (healthcare and education) and they are going to pay attention to, but then how many states have a six week abortion ban that is high profile and numerous stories about education cut backs and censorship that might be causing a backlash?
You know, besides Florida.
My general recommendation is to treat the Selzar poll with a bit of skepticism. I think Harris can win the state, I think she might pull that off. I just wouldn’t get too far over my skis. That said talk about a late and noteworthy shift.
Tiring
Posted a year agoHonestly the last few weeks have been tiring. I have been dealing with a lot of unpacking and moving and sorting. Further I have had to deal with the various needs of my family. Truly I need a break
General Thoughts as the 2024 Presidential Election Ends
Posted a year agoSo here we are, just a few days until the election. I rarely make predictions in these essays instead talking about my perspective and the mechanics and the times. I’m not an expert and people shouldn’t come to me for expert opinion.
That said in my opinion Vice President Kamala Harris will be the next President and Governor Tim Walz will be the next Vice President. I’m fairly certain of this point and will say it. I’ll eat crow if I am wrong like others should. That does not mean Trump can not win, rather it means I find it personally very unlikely due to events as they have progressed and the data I see in front of me. Now it is always possible that despite my efforts my data is flawed, that there are errors in conception, and the situation is different. I also think a lot of political scientists are about to see a real life study of a long running debate play itself out on the national stage. The data will be fascinating and dug into for a lot of papers.
I have discussed in a previous essay all the ways in which 2024 is not 2016, and why people should be very careful making judgements of comparison. 2020 has its own problems there as well. The 2020 pandemic is part of why I am very skeptical of measuring the early vote numbers as any sort of significant sign or symbol. You’d likely have a better augury tool in reading sparrow entrails. The modern national system of early voting wasn’t in place in 2016, the one existing now came into being during 2020 which was a frankly odd year (one candidate saying not to do it, as well as so many people stuck at home due to plague choosing to do it to avoid lines).
We have very little to judge the data on and give context to these early vote results. I think turn out has been good in general, I think it is good people are taking part in a peaceful civic process, and I am skeptical of how some people have looked at the numbers and think results are good for Republicans. I just don’t see how the conclusion can be drawn. In states like Michigan and Pennsylvania more Democrats are showing up just not to the numbers in 2020 (but again there was a plague on then so that isn’t a measure of enthusiasm). Again, we don’t know how they voted just their party identification. So leaving that somewhat good indication for Harris let’s move onto my main point.
On paper if this was any presidential election of the last seventy years I’d call this for Kamala Harris despite the close polls. She has more fundraising from small donors (which is a fairly strong measurement of enthusiasm), she has higher favorability in every poll conducted, and she frankly has a better and more efficient field organization. All that together makes it very hard to see how Trump can pull out a win unless there is an utter collapse in the expected and known aspect of politics.
As I have said before, one of the great debates in political science circles is the value of a ground game, campaign team, and Get out the Vote organization. I’ve noted before Harris has a very traditional volunteer and operation system built on local state operatives and offices that have spent years recruiting and refining their operation for post cards, calls, and door knocking. The Harris ground game is running concurrent to the DNC, DCCC, and DSCC and other campaign teams This was a system Biden had set up and I’d argue was key to his 2020 victory. Trump in 2016 and 2020 had something similar run out of the RNC. That isn’t here in 2024 because Trump believes such an operation is a waste of money and he farmed it out to private contractors like Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk and as I have noted before I do not believe they are delivering successfully. I happen to believe such ground game operations are actually important and useful at the very least in marginal voter turn out (not cost efficient, but no one has figured out a cost efficient method). We are about to see one of the cleanest experiments in value of turn out and campaign operations versus a lack.
The polls meanwhile have remained remarkably, abnormally, stable for the last year. Most within the margin of error with little variation. Since Harris became the candidate in August she has mostly been ahead of Trump but almost every polls has been within the margin of error. You’d expect at least some variance. A few polls from important companies with a wider range. If they really are that stable and within the margin of error then a turn out operation will be key. As will enthusiasm and likeability. Those same polls all point one way: Harris might not be as well known but people generally see her favorably. They don’t hate the Biden administration and they don’t connect her to the parts they dislike. She is more favorable and more liked. Further Democrats are far more enthusiastic about voting and turning up https://news.gallup.com/poll/649397.....nthusiasm.aspx I’m not willing to toss out polls even if I find them suspect and the fact is looking into other aspects of the polls they make a tight race look more favorable for Harris/Walz.
I also think the polling companies are over emphasizing the 2020 and 2016 models. Both were odd years as I have noted. Also they both happened before the Dobbs Decision. There is an odd habit in some corners of the commentariat to dismiss Dobbs as old hat at this point as it happened in June of 2022. The problem with that is that every week the national press or state press has another horror story of some woman suffering horribly because of the intransigence of Republican politicians after Dobbs. This is fresh in the minds of a lot of people and women are clearly not happy. We have now had several elections that show a serious desire to punish Republicans and restore some common sense mercy to the situation. I’ve seen too many opinion pieces talking about the heightened gender divide this election and then focusing on young men. The real story here is how far woman of all ages groups have moved. There is a reason why the Harris campaign has focused so tightly on this issue.
Women make up 53% of all Registered Voters in the USA. Not just voting age adults, people who are fully capable of voting and registered to do so. Women in every age group are much more likely to vote and more likely to turn out then men. This has been a fact since the 1920’s. Now generally women voters used t behave like male voters and divide more on education, economic situation, racial background, and age. Taken as a whole Democrats have not won a majority of White Women as a group since 1964. Democrats do depend on women voters more then Republicans but they tend to need women of color and slicing into the margins of various groups of women. Trump and Mitt Romney both won white women as a whole. If November 2022 and all of 2023 is an indication we are looking at a shift here. I’m not saying Harris will win White Women, that is unlikely, but there is clearly a shift and she might be able to win a significant portion.
Polling companies and political commentators are I think missing this aspect as they are worried about missing shy trump voters like in 2016 and 2020. They still might be missing such folks, but the question is are they also missing the Dobbs shift.
That of course is extrapolation and supposition. My core point remains: Harris has a more favorable perception, she keeps getting heavy enthusiasm, and her fund raising points towards a highly energized base. I think she can win and is likely to win. It just might take some time to get everything counted. Perceptions of the economy are negative for her, that might cost her the election and over ride the other bits. However, I remain skeptical that this negative perception is weighing her down.
I’ll likely, if I find the time, do my usual states to watch break down and thoughts for election day. But for now that is my view. If I am correct I might write an essay on what I think cost Trump this election.
That said in my opinion Vice President Kamala Harris will be the next President and Governor Tim Walz will be the next Vice President. I’m fairly certain of this point and will say it. I’ll eat crow if I am wrong like others should. That does not mean Trump can not win, rather it means I find it personally very unlikely due to events as they have progressed and the data I see in front of me. Now it is always possible that despite my efforts my data is flawed, that there are errors in conception, and the situation is different. I also think a lot of political scientists are about to see a real life study of a long running debate play itself out on the national stage. The data will be fascinating and dug into for a lot of papers.
I have discussed in a previous essay all the ways in which 2024 is not 2016, and why people should be very careful making judgements of comparison. 2020 has its own problems there as well. The 2020 pandemic is part of why I am very skeptical of measuring the early vote numbers as any sort of significant sign or symbol. You’d likely have a better augury tool in reading sparrow entrails. The modern national system of early voting wasn’t in place in 2016, the one existing now came into being during 2020 which was a frankly odd year (one candidate saying not to do it, as well as so many people stuck at home due to plague choosing to do it to avoid lines).
We have very little to judge the data on and give context to these early vote results. I think turn out has been good in general, I think it is good people are taking part in a peaceful civic process, and I am skeptical of how some people have looked at the numbers and think results are good for Republicans. I just don’t see how the conclusion can be drawn. In states like Michigan and Pennsylvania more Democrats are showing up just not to the numbers in 2020 (but again there was a plague on then so that isn’t a measure of enthusiasm). Again, we don’t know how they voted just their party identification. So leaving that somewhat good indication for Harris let’s move onto my main point.
On paper if this was any presidential election of the last seventy years I’d call this for Kamala Harris despite the close polls. She has more fundraising from small donors (which is a fairly strong measurement of enthusiasm), she has higher favorability in every poll conducted, and she frankly has a better and more efficient field organization. All that together makes it very hard to see how Trump can pull out a win unless there is an utter collapse in the expected and known aspect of politics.
As I have said before, one of the great debates in political science circles is the value of a ground game, campaign team, and Get out the Vote organization. I’ve noted before Harris has a very traditional volunteer and operation system built on local state operatives and offices that have spent years recruiting and refining their operation for post cards, calls, and door knocking. The Harris ground game is running concurrent to the DNC, DCCC, and DSCC and other campaign teams This was a system Biden had set up and I’d argue was key to his 2020 victory. Trump in 2016 and 2020 had something similar run out of the RNC. That isn’t here in 2024 because Trump believes such an operation is a waste of money and he farmed it out to private contractors like Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk and as I have noted before I do not believe they are delivering successfully. I happen to believe such ground game operations are actually important and useful at the very least in marginal voter turn out (not cost efficient, but no one has figured out a cost efficient method). We are about to see one of the cleanest experiments in value of turn out and campaign operations versus a lack.
The polls meanwhile have remained remarkably, abnormally, stable for the last year. Most within the margin of error with little variation. Since Harris became the candidate in August she has mostly been ahead of Trump but almost every polls has been within the margin of error. You’d expect at least some variance. A few polls from important companies with a wider range. If they really are that stable and within the margin of error then a turn out operation will be key. As will enthusiasm and likeability. Those same polls all point one way: Harris might not be as well known but people generally see her favorably. They don’t hate the Biden administration and they don’t connect her to the parts they dislike. She is more favorable and more liked. Further Democrats are far more enthusiastic about voting and turning up https://news.gallup.com/poll/649397.....nthusiasm.aspx I’m not willing to toss out polls even if I find them suspect and the fact is looking into other aspects of the polls they make a tight race look more favorable for Harris/Walz.
I also think the polling companies are over emphasizing the 2020 and 2016 models. Both were odd years as I have noted. Also they both happened before the Dobbs Decision. There is an odd habit in some corners of the commentariat to dismiss Dobbs as old hat at this point as it happened in June of 2022. The problem with that is that every week the national press or state press has another horror story of some woman suffering horribly because of the intransigence of Republican politicians after Dobbs. This is fresh in the minds of a lot of people and women are clearly not happy. We have now had several elections that show a serious desire to punish Republicans and restore some common sense mercy to the situation. I’ve seen too many opinion pieces talking about the heightened gender divide this election and then focusing on young men. The real story here is how far woman of all ages groups have moved. There is a reason why the Harris campaign has focused so tightly on this issue.
Women make up 53% of all Registered Voters in the USA. Not just voting age adults, people who are fully capable of voting and registered to do so. Women in every age group are much more likely to vote and more likely to turn out then men. This has been a fact since the 1920’s. Now generally women voters used t behave like male voters and divide more on education, economic situation, racial background, and age. Taken as a whole Democrats have not won a majority of White Women as a group since 1964. Democrats do depend on women voters more then Republicans but they tend to need women of color and slicing into the margins of various groups of women. Trump and Mitt Romney both won white women as a whole. If November 2022 and all of 2023 is an indication we are looking at a shift here. I’m not saying Harris will win White Women, that is unlikely, but there is clearly a shift and she might be able to win a significant portion.
Polling companies and political commentators are I think missing this aspect as they are worried about missing shy trump voters like in 2016 and 2020. They still might be missing such folks, but the question is are they also missing the Dobbs shift.
That of course is extrapolation and supposition. My core point remains: Harris has a more favorable perception, she keeps getting heavy enthusiasm, and her fund raising points towards a highly energized base. I think she can win and is likely to win. It just might take some time to get everything counted. Perceptions of the economy are negative for her, that might cost her the election and over ride the other bits. However, I remain skeptical that this negative perception is weighing her down.
I’ll likely, if I find the time, do my usual states to watch break down and thoughts for election day. But for now that is my view. If I am correct I might write an essay on what I think cost Trump this election.
Some brief thoughts on October Surprise
Posted a year agoI had an interaction over two decades ago with a Republican. They decried early voting as bad because there might be an October surprise that those who voted would regret their vote. I’ve always found that argument suspect. If you are turning out to vote early you likely are very set in your opinion and the candidates. There will always be outliers but in general those who early vote already know what they are doing. An October surprise is not going to shift you.
Still, let’s review October Surprises and what they are: the term was coined in 1980 dealing with the hostage crisis where Iranian militants were holding American Diplomats hostage. Different people apply the term to different aspects of that crisis (the failed rescue, the idea that there might be a break through, and so on). I’m not going to litigate that aspect. This is when the term was coined, and the general subject. It was used again 1992 in relation to the revelation of the Iran-Contra Scandal when the story broke on October 30, 1992 connecting George H.W. Bush with questions of what did he know and when did he know it. The term was used again in 2000 when it was revealed that George W. Bush had an undisclosed DUI from 1974 (Karl Rove blamed the breaking of the story for the failure of Bush to win several states and the close election). The term also has been applied to 2008 when in September Lehman Brothers collapsed. In 2016 the term was applied to Hillary Clinton’s campaign when FBI director Comey announced new investigations eleven days before the election.
As you can see not every presidential election has an October surprise and I’d argue in all the cases except 2000 and 2016 those revelations rather reinforced the direction of the election and the campaign. I would dispute Rove’s claims happily and 2016 was a close election in hindsight (one could easily argue the Access Hollywood tape was its own October surprise). But in 1992 George H.W. Bush was already struggling in the polls. McCain in 2008 was also dealing with a messy campaign that was being vastly out raised and out spent. So on and so forth.
Generally, these October surprises (all of them) reinforce a preexisting narrative on how people feel about the candidate reminding them of problems with the candidate. Their impact is more on undecided voters and hesitant voters. More often then not it cause repress voting or change opinions, instead it ossifies and stabilizes opinions.
If I were to point to one in this election it would be the October 14, 2024 evening when Trump chose to sway to music for 39 minutes instead of engaging in a Town Hall event. I think that did turn some people off from his campaign and was a surprise. I suspect if we define it as an October Surprise it solidified for folks that Trump was unstable. I’d still be hesitant to take that track, did it really shift or stabilize an opinion?
Some people have pointed to his Madison Square Garden Rally where he delivered a lugubrious speech that was tired after several other speakers gave incredibly incendiary comments one of which infuriated Puerto Rican voters. I think that was more of a self-inflicted Wound. I’m not sure it actually has impact, though there is some fascinating anecdotal data.
As you can tell I am skeptical of the term and its application. I think people are looking for a place to apply the term because they feel there must be one and no that isn’t a necessity.
Still, let’s review October Surprises and what they are: the term was coined in 1980 dealing with the hostage crisis where Iranian militants were holding American Diplomats hostage. Different people apply the term to different aspects of that crisis (the failed rescue, the idea that there might be a break through, and so on). I’m not going to litigate that aspect. This is when the term was coined, and the general subject. It was used again 1992 in relation to the revelation of the Iran-Contra Scandal when the story broke on October 30, 1992 connecting George H.W. Bush with questions of what did he know and when did he know it. The term was used again in 2000 when it was revealed that George W. Bush had an undisclosed DUI from 1974 (Karl Rove blamed the breaking of the story for the failure of Bush to win several states and the close election). The term also has been applied to 2008 when in September Lehman Brothers collapsed. In 2016 the term was applied to Hillary Clinton’s campaign when FBI director Comey announced new investigations eleven days before the election.
As you can see not every presidential election has an October surprise and I’d argue in all the cases except 2000 and 2016 those revelations rather reinforced the direction of the election and the campaign. I would dispute Rove’s claims happily and 2016 was a close election in hindsight (one could easily argue the Access Hollywood tape was its own October surprise). But in 1992 George H.W. Bush was already struggling in the polls. McCain in 2008 was also dealing with a messy campaign that was being vastly out raised and out spent. So on and so forth.
Generally, these October surprises (all of them) reinforce a preexisting narrative on how people feel about the candidate reminding them of problems with the candidate. Their impact is more on undecided voters and hesitant voters. More often then not it cause repress voting or change opinions, instead it ossifies and stabilizes opinions.
If I were to point to one in this election it would be the October 14, 2024 evening when Trump chose to sway to music for 39 minutes instead of engaging in a Town Hall event. I think that did turn some people off from his campaign and was a surprise. I suspect if we define it as an October Surprise it solidified for folks that Trump was unstable. I’d still be hesitant to take that track, did it really shift or stabilize an opinion?
Some people have pointed to his Madison Square Garden Rally where he delivered a lugubrious speech that was tired after several other speakers gave incredibly incendiary comments one of which infuriated Puerto Rican voters. I think that was more of a self-inflicted Wound. I’m not sure it actually has impact, though there is some fascinating anecdotal data.
As you can tell I am skeptical of the term and its application. I think people are looking for a place to apply the term because they feel there must be one and no that isn’t a necessity.
League of Women Voters Help Sheet
Posted a year agoAs a reminder the nonpartisan League of Women Voters have their online help sheet here https://www.vote411.org/ this is a useful site for looking at your ballot and finding out useful voter information. It is secure and your data won't be sold to any companies.
2024 is not 2016
Posted a year ago2024 is not 2016 I know this sounds obvious on the face but I think it needs to be reiterated because people are making too many comparisons without consideration. In part this is because recent elections are the most viable point of comparison. However, it is flawed to do so. Every election cycle has a different set of circumstances. They happen every four years so the samples are small and a lot can happen in four years. The economy changes, population metrics will change, as will the voting records of those involved. So, it is natural to compare to 2016 because Trump versus woman mainstream Democratic candidate on its face is enough of a comparison. This is deeply flawed but it makes a certain sense. We don’t compare to 2020 because there was a massive plague at the time and the consensus is that skewed things because more people were at home watching the news and engaged with events (yet polling companies changed their models after 2020 anyway due to the perceived large miss).
There is also a segment of very online people who want to see it as narratively similar.
To be clear the Harris/Walz campaign has rightly framed itself as the underdog. There is every opportunity for Harris to lose the election. The current disconnect is that the fundamentals (ground game, enthusiasm, money) do not agree with the polls and this means different people and experts are casting around for explanations for the lack of agreement and relying on prior assumptions and thus return to the 2016 Election as a data point.
I think it important to point out that 2016 gets a lot of conversation but there is no unanimity for how to interpret the results. In part it is because the election was so recent and in part because a lot of people have built a personal mythology to explain it. I certainly do not lack bias here. I am not interested in trying to litigate other’s opinions rather I am simply going to compare data points
In 2016 we saw for the first time in decades a race between two deeply unfavorable candidates. Clinton and Trump were both unpopular, both had underwater favorability, and low trust. We had not seen a race like that at any time since popularity and favorability became a measured trait in polls. There are plenty of reasons for these historically bad numbers, I certainly think political factionalism doesn’t help. Both candidates had those numbers drop even further as the election progressed. This is also why 2016 had a historically much larger portion of undecideds unlike now. Both saw their numbers improve afterwards. However, the fact is while Trump’s unfavourability has been constant in 2024 Harris actually has a strong favorability, and she was always more popular then Biden. Her numbers aren’t good per se but they’re stronger and higher then Trump or Clinton in 2016 and have improved as people got to know her. Does this assure a win? No, but it is a stark difference from 2016.
There is much to criticize the Clinton campaign on for their handling of the 2016 race. I think some of it is post-election naddering but the fact is that the Clinton campaign ignored some fairly big issues. At the time I was willing to over look the troublingly close polling in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Those three had been reliable for the Democratic electoral map since 1992 (Wisconsin since 1988), it wasn’t unreasonable to argue they would remain stably Democratic. This turned out to be incorrect. However, I will agree that even at the time I thought Clinton needed to visit those three states more often and pulling commercials from their media markets was a bad choice. She had no commercials in Wisconsin since the primaries, and only surrogates campaigned in all three states. The campaign argument was that she was trying to aggressively expand the map in North Carolina, secure Virginia, and work for Arizona, Georgia, and Florida. By contrast in 2024 Harris has not taken PA, WI, or MI for granted. She has visited all three extensively and has poured money into advertisements and campaign offices. That is a huge difference and while she can still lose any of those states or all three it wont be from lack of trying. (also in 2016 Michigan and Wisconsin both had popular Republican governors. In 2024 all three states have wildly popular Democratic Governors who won their reelections/elections handily)
In 2016 Trump was the first Republican since 1984 to exceed Democrats in small-dollar fundraising. The Democrats had been a major player in small donations for a while and in the Obama campaign’s case they turned it into a major funding stream that won the 2008 and 2012 election. The Clinton campaign had more money in the end from large donors and PAC contributions but the Trump campaign clearly had a groundswell in small donations. Trump also out did Biden in that regard in 2020 in this regard. This meant Clinton was doing more fund raising events late into the campaign. This is no longer the case in 2024. Harris has returned the Democrats to the clear and massive winner in small-donations while Trump has seen his small- donations dry up and is doing a lot more fundraiser events. https://apnews.com/article/trump-ca.....260e4c86d2c552
Money is not everything and the impacts are debated in an election. I still want a lot more regulation of campaign donations, PACs, and more knowledge on who is giving what to whom. That said Haris has substantially more money, does not have to spend time on campaign donation drives, and is spending more time cutting ads and meeting voters. Those are big differences from 2024.
Compared to 2016 and even 2020 there has been extensive improvements on the infrastructure for early voting and early turn out. The Harris campaign is exceeding the Biden campaign of 2020 there and they have strong numbers in all the states that can be tracked https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-.....-early-voting/ again not indicative of a win but a huge different between 2016 and 2024. In 2016 Clinton’s turn out operations were frankly terrible compared to Obama’s 2008 and 2012 she did a bad job in urban turn out, rural African American turn out, and other places. I maintain a good turn out operation is important and Harris is using Biden’s extensive infrastructure well.
I also think that in 2016 there was great complacency in general. A lot of people assumed Clinton would win, which is why the results surprised so many (including myself to be fair). At the same time anecdotally I got into several arguments with people who insisted that there was no way Trump could win (which I did disagreed with as he had the chance). Several studies after the 2016 found that a portion of people assumed Clinton would win and voted (or skipped voting) with that in mind. Voting to send a message to the “winner” Clinton. Anecdotally I knew fifteen different people some in those swing states who had supported Senator Bernie Sanders in the primary who voted for Trump in the general election. I know some of those same people did the same in 2020. Some did it because they believed Biden would win and they wanted to send a message. Others did it because they’re apple cart tippers. Others just liked Trump as much as they liked Senator Sanders. I knew others who just didn’t vote or voted write-ins because they felt sure Trump would lose. If people had believed Trump could win would that have changed some votes in 2016? Perhaps, but that is harder to measure or say. It is also hard to say how impactful this group is, I can easily argue that my personal experiences and these studied groups were small enough they did not impact the race but there is an argument they did. I do think in 2024 the entire conversation is very different and there is at least an agreement that Trump has the potential to win if not considered favored to win. That is very different and clearly impacts how some people will vote. Again a rather sizeable difference.
Biden 2020 did worse then Clinton in 2016 with Hispanic voters, losing over 40%. Harris appears to be on track for a similar result. So, in that case you’d want her to be closer to Clinton and 2016. On the issues the fact is the Abortion issue remains vastly different form 2016 where Roe remained in place. I’ve discussed this before so I won’t repeat myself there. I will say poll after poll finds abortion to be a major top line issue. The economy issue is vastly different between 2016 and 2024. In 2016 the economy was considered fairly stable and positive. In 2024 while the general measurements show it in a positive state most people consider the economy less then ideal.
Harris has similar to Biden levels of support among African American voters (which is good because Biden did much better then Clinton in 2016), but there is real concern that the old Souls to the Polls pipeline of black voting pools is no longer working. Consistently for African Americans under 40 Black pastors now rank lower in trust then black politician and black business leaders. That’s a big cultural shift that changes an old trusted dynamic for voter turn out. To be fair older black voters continue to rely on their local churches and church turn out operations and they’re more reliable voters. However, the Harris campaign and Democrats in general have not been complacent here and have been for months trying to drive up turn out operations in this group https://www.notus.org/harris-2024/d.....-kamala-harris there are real questions if they will succeed but at least they see the problem and are trying. That is informing a lot of recent think pieces on the topic but I am skeptical anyone fully understand what this means for the election or in the future. Again, a large difference from 2016.
Finally, we have Hurricanes Helene and Milton. It is crass to bring up two natural disasters that have in quick succession ruined so many lives, wrecked towns, and decimated communities. However, like Hurricane Sandy it is part of the conversation because the election is so near. At this point any poll out of Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina need to be treated with deep skepticism as all three states have serious interruptions in basic infrastructure. It is hard to care about an election when your home is gone, your pets are gone, or you have lost loved ones. I don’t know how the conspiracies swirling around the two will impact thing either.
In summation: Harris can lose. So can Trump. However, they will lose for very different reasons then 2016 or 2020. I think Harris has tried to run a competent campaign with a very short window of activity. I think, though I can not prove, that Trump has a fatigue problem. We will see what happens in November.
There is also a segment of very online people who want to see it as narratively similar.
To be clear the Harris/Walz campaign has rightly framed itself as the underdog. There is every opportunity for Harris to lose the election. The current disconnect is that the fundamentals (ground game, enthusiasm, money) do not agree with the polls and this means different people and experts are casting around for explanations for the lack of agreement and relying on prior assumptions and thus return to the 2016 Election as a data point.
I think it important to point out that 2016 gets a lot of conversation but there is no unanimity for how to interpret the results. In part it is because the election was so recent and in part because a lot of people have built a personal mythology to explain it. I certainly do not lack bias here. I am not interested in trying to litigate other’s opinions rather I am simply going to compare data points
In 2016 we saw for the first time in decades a race between two deeply unfavorable candidates. Clinton and Trump were both unpopular, both had underwater favorability, and low trust. We had not seen a race like that at any time since popularity and favorability became a measured trait in polls. There are plenty of reasons for these historically bad numbers, I certainly think political factionalism doesn’t help. Both candidates had those numbers drop even further as the election progressed. This is also why 2016 had a historically much larger portion of undecideds unlike now. Both saw their numbers improve afterwards. However, the fact is while Trump’s unfavourability has been constant in 2024 Harris actually has a strong favorability, and she was always more popular then Biden. Her numbers aren’t good per se but they’re stronger and higher then Trump or Clinton in 2016 and have improved as people got to know her. Does this assure a win? No, but it is a stark difference from 2016.
There is much to criticize the Clinton campaign on for their handling of the 2016 race. I think some of it is post-election naddering but the fact is that the Clinton campaign ignored some fairly big issues. At the time I was willing to over look the troublingly close polling in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Those three had been reliable for the Democratic electoral map since 1992 (Wisconsin since 1988), it wasn’t unreasonable to argue they would remain stably Democratic. This turned out to be incorrect. However, I will agree that even at the time I thought Clinton needed to visit those three states more often and pulling commercials from their media markets was a bad choice. She had no commercials in Wisconsin since the primaries, and only surrogates campaigned in all three states. The campaign argument was that she was trying to aggressively expand the map in North Carolina, secure Virginia, and work for Arizona, Georgia, and Florida. By contrast in 2024 Harris has not taken PA, WI, or MI for granted. She has visited all three extensively and has poured money into advertisements and campaign offices. That is a huge difference and while she can still lose any of those states or all three it wont be from lack of trying. (also in 2016 Michigan and Wisconsin both had popular Republican governors. In 2024 all three states have wildly popular Democratic Governors who won their reelections/elections handily)
In 2016 Trump was the first Republican since 1984 to exceed Democrats in small-dollar fundraising. The Democrats had been a major player in small donations for a while and in the Obama campaign’s case they turned it into a major funding stream that won the 2008 and 2012 election. The Clinton campaign had more money in the end from large donors and PAC contributions but the Trump campaign clearly had a groundswell in small donations. Trump also out did Biden in that regard in 2020 in this regard. This meant Clinton was doing more fund raising events late into the campaign. This is no longer the case in 2024. Harris has returned the Democrats to the clear and massive winner in small-donations while Trump has seen his small- donations dry up and is doing a lot more fundraiser events. https://apnews.com/article/trump-ca.....260e4c86d2c552
Money is not everything and the impacts are debated in an election. I still want a lot more regulation of campaign donations, PACs, and more knowledge on who is giving what to whom. That said Haris has substantially more money, does not have to spend time on campaign donation drives, and is spending more time cutting ads and meeting voters. Those are big differences from 2024.
Compared to 2016 and even 2020 there has been extensive improvements on the infrastructure for early voting and early turn out. The Harris campaign is exceeding the Biden campaign of 2020 there and they have strong numbers in all the states that can be tracked https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-.....-early-voting/ again not indicative of a win but a huge different between 2016 and 2024. In 2016 Clinton’s turn out operations were frankly terrible compared to Obama’s 2008 and 2012 she did a bad job in urban turn out, rural African American turn out, and other places. I maintain a good turn out operation is important and Harris is using Biden’s extensive infrastructure well.
I also think that in 2016 there was great complacency in general. A lot of people assumed Clinton would win, which is why the results surprised so many (including myself to be fair). At the same time anecdotally I got into several arguments with people who insisted that there was no way Trump could win (which I did disagreed with as he had the chance). Several studies after the 2016 found that a portion of people assumed Clinton would win and voted (or skipped voting) with that in mind. Voting to send a message to the “winner” Clinton. Anecdotally I knew fifteen different people some in those swing states who had supported Senator Bernie Sanders in the primary who voted for Trump in the general election. I know some of those same people did the same in 2020. Some did it because they believed Biden would win and they wanted to send a message. Others did it because they’re apple cart tippers. Others just liked Trump as much as they liked Senator Sanders. I knew others who just didn’t vote or voted write-ins because they felt sure Trump would lose. If people had believed Trump could win would that have changed some votes in 2016? Perhaps, but that is harder to measure or say. It is also hard to say how impactful this group is, I can easily argue that my personal experiences and these studied groups were small enough they did not impact the race but there is an argument they did. I do think in 2024 the entire conversation is very different and there is at least an agreement that Trump has the potential to win if not considered favored to win. That is very different and clearly impacts how some people will vote. Again a rather sizeable difference.
Biden 2020 did worse then Clinton in 2016 with Hispanic voters, losing over 40%. Harris appears to be on track for a similar result. So, in that case you’d want her to be closer to Clinton and 2016. On the issues the fact is the Abortion issue remains vastly different form 2016 where Roe remained in place. I’ve discussed this before so I won’t repeat myself there. I will say poll after poll finds abortion to be a major top line issue. The economy issue is vastly different between 2016 and 2024. In 2016 the economy was considered fairly stable and positive. In 2024 while the general measurements show it in a positive state most people consider the economy less then ideal.
Harris has similar to Biden levels of support among African American voters (which is good because Biden did much better then Clinton in 2016), but there is real concern that the old Souls to the Polls pipeline of black voting pools is no longer working. Consistently for African Americans under 40 Black pastors now rank lower in trust then black politician and black business leaders. That’s a big cultural shift that changes an old trusted dynamic for voter turn out. To be fair older black voters continue to rely on their local churches and church turn out operations and they’re more reliable voters. However, the Harris campaign and Democrats in general have not been complacent here and have been for months trying to drive up turn out operations in this group https://www.notus.org/harris-2024/d.....-kamala-harris there are real questions if they will succeed but at least they see the problem and are trying. That is informing a lot of recent think pieces on the topic but I am skeptical anyone fully understand what this means for the election or in the future. Again, a large difference from 2016.
Finally, we have Hurricanes Helene and Milton. It is crass to bring up two natural disasters that have in quick succession ruined so many lives, wrecked towns, and decimated communities. However, like Hurricane Sandy it is part of the conversation because the election is so near. At this point any poll out of Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina need to be treated with deep skepticism as all three states have serious interruptions in basic infrastructure. It is hard to care about an election when your home is gone, your pets are gone, or you have lost loved ones. I don’t know how the conspiracies swirling around the two will impact thing either.
In summation: Harris can lose. So can Trump. However, they will lose for very different reasons then 2016 or 2020. I think Harris has tried to run a competent campaign with a very short window of activity. I think, though I can not prove, that Trump has a fatigue problem. We will see what happens in November.
Had a very good friday
Posted a year agoGot a big project done this Friday. A massive one. This has been part of the last two months of various labors. Still not at an end but in a better position then before. If that makes sense.
Further election thoughts this saturday
Posted a year agoSo, I won’t do this every week or often but I wanted to organize my thoughts on this week in politics a bit and explore my thinking.
At its core this race remains extremely close. Just as it has all year. Most of the polls remain within the margin of error and when accounting for that favor neither candidate directly. At the same time all things being equal one would prefer to be Harris due to her high fundraising (often from small donations), her large organizational network, and the sheer scale of people volunteering or at least talking. I think Harris is running an enviable campaign that has made few slips in its basic work. You can’t discount Trump, he can win this, but he was never assured a win and he has several drags that are under cutting him.
Still there was some important news that I think speaks a lot of the current situation. First and foremost is that Ann Selzer came out with a new poll. For those unaware, because why would you care about individual polling companies, Ann Selzer is considered the gold standard of polling. At once one of the most honest, the most rigorous, and the granular and accurate of the pollsters. This is a woman who has thrown out polls she conducted for accuracy problems even if she took a financial hit for it. Ann Selzer is considered one of the best and most accurate. She has made herself very financially successful on keeping that good pedigree.
The reason why you might not have heard of her is that Selzer focuses on polling and studying only one state. Carefully watching the state’s demographics, financial shifts, linguistic drift, and local events. She does all of this to carefully design her polling questions and sample formulas. That state: Iowa. Her data for the caucuses, which are famously hard to poll, is excellent and when Iowa was more of a swing state she was a reliable data point for campaigns and news agencies. I bring this up because she came out with a new poll recently https://www.desmoinesregister.com/s.....n/75180245007/ basically this shows a huge shift towards Vice President Harris. Not enough to win Iowa (though it is close). In June Selzer’s last presidential poll had Trump 50% to Biden 32%. Now it is Trump 47% to Harris 43% a change of 18 points. Further because Selzer is meticulous she included ever other candidate that would be on the Iowa Ballot officially even if they dropped out (so RFK jr got 6% this time). Selzer’s poll also shows the enthusiasm gap has closed between Democrats and Republicans in Iowa.
Now it is hazardous to extrapolate these results too widely. Selzer really is focused on Iowa, but it can often say something about the current national trends. Many point to Selzer’s final 2016 poll as the warning canary in the coal mine for Democrats as it showed a distinct shift to Trump late in the election cycle. You just can’t apply it to widely. However, you can make a good argument that Iowa is close to its neighbors and as such the data might say something about Wisconsin and Nebraska and where white voters are in those states. I would say this poll might say something about where Wisconsin folks are currently which consider the state’s position is a good sign for Harris (we will get back to Nebraska in a bit). Simply put if a lot of Iowans have shifted like this, then Wisconsin might have shifted as well.
At the same time another poll came out that got much more press and attention. For the first time since 1996 the Teamsters Union has sat out an endorsement and at the same time released a poll of their internal members that was extremely unfavorable to Harris showing a bit shift towards Trump since Biden left the ticket: https://us.cnn.com/2024/09/18/polit.....ent/index.html There is a lot to unpack historically and currently. In 1988 the Teamsters endorsed George H.W. Bush and they have skipped out other elections. Of all the major labor unions the Teamsters have been more willing to endorse Republicans nationally and on a local level. Further while Harris has picked up a lot of other labor union endorsements (she got nine of the ten largest unions in the USA) the unions are no longer a reliable vote turn out operation that they used to be. It isn’t uncommon for labor union members to break from their Union’s recommendation. That is why the internal poll would be considered important, because it might point to a big shift among non-college educated workers in several states and their voting preferences that might be missed among general pollsters and journalists as well as the campaigns and local parties.
If that is the case then it is a real indictment on the theory that results matter to voters. Biden has been the most pro-labor union President of my life time (which is damning with faint praise). Biden delivered a massive rescue of the Teamster’s pensions https://www.statesman.com/story/new.....t/69729204007/ Biden and the Democrats got the PRO Act, the Infrastructure Act, The Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPs Act passe which are all geared towards pro Union labor. Further Harris and Biden both showed up in picket lines and protested with the Unions who were on strike these last few years and have been a major supporter of these things. Trump meanwhile was extremely opposed to the PRO Act and in the recent disastrous interview with Elon Musk spoke favorably of breaking Unions sparking a demand from the United Auto Workers for an investigation by the National Labor Relations Board. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politi.....-investigation
Yet none of that matters to the Teamsters? They are internally opposed to Harris and for Trump? That certainly was the news story and the look of it. I’d be hesitant to toss the data point out and the story getting such wide play is its own reinforcement. If true it becomes a problem for a lot of political theories and ideas. It also sounds like a massive alarm bell for the Harris Campaign (though what they can do if policy isn’t going to move votes is anyone’s guess).
However, I am skeptical of this data point. Sean O’Brien the current head of the Teamsters spoke glowingly of Trump at a prime time RNC speech. O’Brien has a bit of a history of being very pro-Trump and he clearly wanted to at least personally endorse the former President. There are likely a lot of reasons why he feels this way, draw your own conclusions. What is clear is he told the Trump campaign before he made the announcement. Further, this poll vote in the Teamsters appears to have been not conducted with methodological rigor: Some teamsters did straw polls at meetings (making the vote public on where people stood) and it was not publicized there would be a vote at those meetings, others conducted polls by phone calls, others were ballots printed on the back of newsletters. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to why the polling and voting were done this way and some teamsters have complained they were shut out. Some have put forth the theory Sean O’Brien manipulated the votes and how they were cast to get result he wanted (and he didn’t get the results he really wanted which would have been a 70% Trump support vote allowing him to have the union endorse Trump). I have some skepticism there, but I can see why my Grandmother who was ardently pro-union hated the Teamsters.
It should also be noted several local and state wide Teamsters quickly came out in support for the Harris campaign and have pledged to organize and do voter turn out of their members. Many of these local Teamsters who endorsed Harris include the Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin branches. https://www.axios.com/2024/09/21/te.....rsement-harris
I would say don’t discount that data point but I have a lot more trust in the Selzer poll. Both are extrapolations and tea leaf reading to some degree and one should be very careful with both and going too far. As said I maintain the election is close, and as I said before might heavily rely on Get out the Vote and turn out operations.
Which leads to another data point I have discussed before: Trump’s GotV operation is severely truncated and smaller. In 2016 and 2020 Trump’s campaign relied much more heavily on the RNC’s core turn out operation as well as enthusiasm and down ballot candidate operations. Trump is famously distrustful of the GotV and campaign office system. Biden meanwhile was a true believer in it and set up a truly staggering operation that Harris inherited. I can see the argument, as said before, that GotV operations can quickly become overrun with expensive paid experts and often only deliver a percentage point or two. There is a theory that part of the Sanders campaign failure in the 2020 primaries was that they had an expensive turn out operation directed by too expensive experts (I’m of the opinion that argument falls apart, but it circulates in some circles). At the same time I tend to believe it is better to have it, and Biden’s turn our operations in 2020 were crucial to his victory. The fact is Trump has outsourced his GotV to private contractors something we have never seen before.
There are a lot of questions to the private contractor model simply because it has not been done as often and rarely on the scale of a national presidential campaign. The Republican party has been experimenting with it more over the last few election cycles with the assumption it might be more cost efficient but results have been less then stellar https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/el.....awed-rcna74920 (in this article stories of private Get out the Vote people who spent time in casinos and only logged they had done the work along with other failures). Some in the GOP are already concerned considering Trump’s much smaller coffers that this might actually end up being a boondoggle https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/20.....ans-rcna170516 I think there are a lot of unknowns. It is clear however that Elon Musk is extremely concerned and so has turned his Political Action Committee into an ad hoc GotV operation with his personal financing https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli.....ump-super-pac/ The problem is a question of does he have a staff that can do the job and the tolls needed at this stage. I don’t know myself but we are about to get a fascinating test on the idea. If it turns out the Harris-Walz campaign have a distinctly better Get out the Vote and ground operation and the Republicans don’t have anything to match it what would that mean?
The most interesting test case there is North Carolina. Harris has committed over 150 campaign officers, twenty offices, and visited nine times to the state so far. She is committing serious resources there and while that might help seal the deal in Virginia (which seems stable but keeps getting polls showing a closer race) it is a lot. Part of the theory is that she can goose serious rural black turn out, upper middle class professionals, research triangle transplants, and alloy them with college student turn out. The other part is the theory there will be a down ticket pressure pull on Trump. Which not well noted in history there have been times that a down ticket race for a state wide office disrupts a more important race.
Enter Lt. Governor Mark Robinson a man who had several incendiary comments in his past who was already running behind the democratic Attorney General Josh Stein. Robinson had a number of scandals already from stealing thousands of dollars in cookies from girl scouts to disturbing comments on LGBTQIA+ people. Calling abortion murder but having paid for an abortion in his life. There were already stories circulating of a massive pornography addiction even as he gave speeches trying to criminalize porn as well as equating LGBTQIA+ people with porn. Then Thursday a new iteration on his scandal prone Lt. Governor surfaced from CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/19/poli.....ery-porn-forum Robinson denies it but the problem for him is it confirms and fits into all the previous scandals. Including the idea he has spoken out against transgender people but admitted in internet chatrooms he likes looking at transgender porn. To me the porn consumption and writing porn isn’t the problem it’s the hypocrisy towards porn and the pro-nazi comments. As well as more extreme things like advocating for a return of slavery and that he wanted to buy slaves.
The question now is this: Trump was already in a relative tie with Harris at very thing margins in the polls. Is Robinson dragging him down, was that already the case? Could Robinson drag Trump down further. Most likely ardent Republicans will turn out and vote for both, that is expected, the issue is will moderate voters and ambivalent voters be depressed on turn out. Will they decide that with no other major races they will stay home because they are disgusted with the Lt. Governor and tar Trump with his behavior. In a very tight race if just a few thousand stay home because of that, well that might impact the entire ballot. I think it isn’t a given but I also think Harris has a good enough GotV operation and polls are close enough that it might be a factor. We will see how long this lasts and if Lt. Governor Robinson has any other big scandals (he has already been exposed as an Ashley Madison user). This latest twist wont show up in the polls for another week most likely but it isn’t to Trump’s benefit to have a man he assiduously endorsed showing up like this.
At its core this race remains extremely close. Just as it has all year. Most of the polls remain within the margin of error and when accounting for that favor neither candidate directly. At the same time all things being equal one would prefer to be Harris due to her high fundraising (often from small donations), her large organizational network, and the sheer scale of people volunteering or at least talking. I think Harris is running an enviable campaign that has made few slips in its basic work. You can’t discount Trump, he can win this, but he was never assured a win and he has several drags that are under cutting him.
Still there was some important news that I think speaks a lot of the current situation. First and foremost is that Ann Selzer came out with a new poll. For those unaware, because why would you care about individual polling companies, Ann Selzer is considered the gold standard of polling. At once one of the most honest, the most rigorous, and the granular and accurate of the pollsters. This is a woman who has thrown out polls she conducted for accuracy problems even if she took a financial hit for it. Ann Selzer is considered one of the best and most accurate. She has made herself very financially successful on keeping that good pedigree.
The reason why you might not have heard of her is that Selzer focuses on polling and studying only one state. Carefully watching the state’s demographics, financial shifts, linguistic drift, and local events. She does all of this to carefully design her polling questions and sample formulas. That state: Iowa. Her data for the caucuses, which are famously hard to poll, is excellent and when Iowa was more of a swing state she was a reliable data point for campaigns and news agencies. I bring this up because she came out with a new poll recently https://www.desmoinesregister.com/s.....n/75180245007/ basically this shows a huge shift towards Vice President Harris. Not enough to win Iowa (though it is close). In June Selzer’s last presidential poll had Trump 50% to Biden 32%. Now it is Trump 47% to Harris 43% a change of 18 points. Further because Selzer is meticulous she included ever other candidate that would be on the Iowa Ballot officially even if they dropped out (so RFK jr got 6% this time). Selzer’s poll also shows the enthusiasm gap has closed between Democrats and Republicans in Iowa.
Now it is hazardous to extrapolate these results too widely. Selzer really is focused on Iowa, but it can often say something about the current national trends. Many point to Selzer’s final 2016 poll as the warning canary in the coal mine for Democrats as it showed a distinct shift to Trump late in the election cycle. You just can’t apply it to widely. However, you can make a good argument that Iowa is close to its neighbors and as such the data might say something about Wisconsin and Nebraska and where white voters are in those states. I would say this poll might say something about where Wisconsin folks are currently which consider the state’s position is a good sign for Harris (we will get back to Nebraska in a bit). Simply put if a lot of Iowans have shifted like this, then Wisconsin might have shifted as well.
At the same time another poll came out that got much more press and attention. For the first time since 1996 the Teamsters Union has sat out an endorsement and at the same time released a poll of their internal members that was extremely unfavorable to Harris showing a bit shift towards Trump since Biden left the ticket: https://us.cnn.com/2024/09/18/polit.....ent/index.html There is a lot to unpack historically and currently. In 1988 the Teamsters endorsed George H.W. Bush and they have skipped out other elections. Of all the major labor unions the Teamsters have been more willing to endorse Republicans nationally and on a local level. Further while Harris has picked up a lot of other labor union endorsements (she got nine of the ten largest unions in the USA) the unions are no longer a reliable vote turn out operation that they used to be. It isn’t uncommon for labor union members to break from their Union’s recommendation. That is why the internal poll would be considered important, because it might point to a big shift among non-college educated workers in several states and their voting preferences that might be missed among general pollsters and journalists as well as the campaigns and local parties.
If that is the case then it is a real indictment on the theory that results matter to voters. Biden has been the most pro-labor union President of my life time (which is damning with faint praise). Biden delivered a massive rescue of the Teamster’s pensions https://www.statesman.com/story/new.....t/69729204007/ Biden and the Democrats got the PRO Act, the Infrastructure Act, The Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPs Act passe which are all geared towards pro Union labor. Further Harris and Biden both showed up in picket lines and protested with the Unions who were on strike these last few years and have been a major supporter of these things. Trump meanwhile was extremely opposed to the PRO Act and in the recent disastrous interview with Elon Musk spoke favorably of breaking Unions sparking a demand from the United Auto Workers for an investigation by the National Labor Relations Board. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politi.....-investigation
Yet none of that matters to the Teamsters? They are internally opposed to Harris and for Trump? That certainly was the news story and the look of it. I’d be hesitant to toss the data point out and the story getting such wide play is its own reinforcement. If true it becomes a problem for a lot of political theories and ideas. It also sounds like a massive alarm bell for the Harris Campaign (though what they can do if policy isn’t going to move votes is anyone’s guess).
However, I am skeptical of this data point. Sean O’Brien the current head of the Teamsters spoke glowingly of Trump at a prime time RNC speech. O’Brien has a bit of a history of being very pro-Trump and he clearly wanted to at least personally endorse the former President. There are likely a lot of reasons why he feels this way, draw your own conclusions. What is clear is he told the Trump campaign before he made the announcement. Further, this poll vote in the Teamsters appears to have been not conducted with methodological rigor: Some teamsters did straw polls at meetings (making the vote public on where people stood) and it was not publicized there would be a vote at those meetings, others conducted polls by phone calls, others were ballots printed on the back of newsletters. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to why the polling and voting were done this way and some teamsters have complained they were shut out. Some have put forth the theory Sean O’Brien manipulated the votes and how they were cast to get result he wanted (and he didn’t get the results he really wanted which would have been a 70% Trump support vote allowing him to have the union endorse Trump). I have some skepticism there, but I can see why my Grandmother who was ardently pro-union hated the Teamsters.
It should also be noted several local and state wide Teamsters quickly came out in support for the Harris campaign and have pledged to organize and do voter turn out of their members. Many of these local Teamsters who endorsed Harris include the Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin branches. https://www.axios.com/2024/09/21/te.....rsement-harris
I would say don’t discount that data point but I have a lot more trust in the Selzer poll. Both are extrapolations and tea leaf reading to some degree and one should be very careful with both and going too far. As said I maintain the election is close, and as I said before might heavily rely on Get out the Vote and turn out operations.
Which leads to another data point I have discussed before: Trump’s GotV operation is severely truncated and smaller. In 2016 and 2020 Trump’s campaign relied much more heavily on the RNC’s core turn out operation as well as enthusiasm and down ballot candidate operations. Trump is famously distrustful of the GotV and campaign office system. Biden meanwhile was a true believer in it and set up a truly staggering operation that Harris inherited. I can see the argument, as said before, that GotV operations can quickly become overrun with expensive paid experts and often only deliver a percentage point or two. There is a theory that part of the Sanders campaign failure in the 2020 primaries was that they had an expensive turn out operation directed by too expensive experts (I’m of the opinion that argument falls apart, but it circulates in some circles). At the same time I tend to believe it is better to have it, and Biden’s turn our operations in 2020 were crucial to his victory. The fact is Trump has outsourced his GotV to private contractors something we have never seen before.
There are a lot of questions to the private contractor model simply because it has not been done as often and rarely on the scale of a national presidential campaign. The Republican party has been experimenting with it more over the last few election cycles with the assumption it might be more cost efficient but results have been less then stellar https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/el.....awed-rcna74920 (in this article stories of private Get out the Vote people who spent time in casinos and only logged they had done the work along with other failures). Some in the GOP are already concerned considering Trump’s much smaller coffers that this might actually end up being a boondoggle https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/20.....ans-rcna170516 I think there are a lot of unknowns. It is clear however that Elon Musk is extremely concerned and so has turned his Political Action Committee into an ad hoc GotV operation with his personal financing https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli.....ump-super-pac/ The problem is a question of does he have a staff that can do the job and the tolls needed at this stage. I don’t know myself but we are about to get a fascinating test on the idea. If it turns out the Harris-Walz campaign have a distinctly better Get out the Vote and ground operation and the Republicans don’t have anything to match it what would that mean?
The most interesting test case there is North Carolina. Harris has committed over 150 campaign officers, twenty offices, and visited nine times to the state so far. She is committing serious resources there and while that might help seal the deal in Virginia (which seems stable but keeps getting polls showing a closer race) it is a lot. Part of the theory is that she can goose serious rural black turn out, upper middle class professionals, research triangle transplants, and alloy them with college student turn out. The other part is the theory there will be a down ticket pressure pull on Trump. Which not well noted in history there have been times that a down ticket race for a state wide office disrupts a more important race.
Enter Lt. Governor Mark Robinson a man who had several incendiary comments in his past who was already running behind the democratic Attorney General Josh Stein. Robinson had a number of scandals already from stealing thousands of dollars in cookies from girl scouts to disturbing comments on LGBTQIA+ people. Calling abortion murder but having paid for an abortion in his life. There were already stories circulating of a massive pornography addiction even as he gave speeches trying to criminalize porn as well as equating LGBTQIA+ people with porn. Then Thursday a new iteration on his scandal prone Lt. Governor surfaced from CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/19/poli.....ery-porn-forum Robinson denies it but the problem for him is it confirms and fits into all the previous scandals. Including the idea he has spoken out against transgender people but admitted in internet chatrooms he likes looking at transgender porn. To me the porn consumption and writing porn isn’t the problem it’s the hypocrisy towards porn and the pro-nazi comments. As well as more extreme things like advocating for a return of slavery and that he wanted to buy slaves.
The question now is this: Trump was already in a relative tie with Harris at very thing margins in the polls. Is Robinson dragging him down, was that already the case? Could Robinson drag Trump down further. Most likely ardent Republicans will turn out and vote for both, that is expected, the issue is will moderate voters and ambivalent voters be depressed on turn out. Will they decide that with no other major races they will stay home because they are disgusted with the Lt. Governor and tar Trump with his behavior. In a very tight race if just a few thousand stay home because of that, well that might impact the entire ballot. I think it isn’t a given but I also think Harris has a good enough GotV operation and polls are close enough that it might be a factor. We will see how long this lasts and if Lt. Governor Robinson has any other big scandals (he has already been exposed as an Ashley Madison user). This latest twist wont show up in the polls for another week most likely but it isn’t to Trump’s benefit to have a man he assiduously endorsed showing up like this.
Busy August
Posted a year agoI'll be honest August was exhausting. I got a lot done but I am clearly using September to recover mentally from all of the work and time.
On Presidential Debates
Posted a year agoSince it remains the current conversation and a big moment I thought I’d devote a few moments to discussing the recent Presidential Debate which made me want to backtrack and discuss debates in general.
I think it is important to remember that debates historically have a varied history on their importance and impact. When we talk about the historical record of political debates it is important to note I speak of modern politics after the advent of mass media. The political debates of the 1800’s were very different culturally and conceptually then they are with Radio/TV/Internet. The 1800’s debates like the Lincoln–Douglas existed in an era when such debates were a form of mass entertainment, the rules of such debates were culturally widely known, they could take several hours, and were often disseminated via telegraph and rail as transcripts of the event. Often these sorts of debates also had a point scoring system (unlike our modern debates where the victor is seen more arbitrarily). These were very different events and they fell out of favor by the 1880s.
The modern debate with mass media didn’t rise until 1948 the Republicans held a radio debate I 1948. That means that Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower all became President without a debate between them and their opponents. Wendel Wilkie tried in 1940 against Roosevelt and Roosevelt refused. Radio debates between congressional candidates did occur but they were rare. It wasn’t until 1960 with the now famous JFK versus Nixon that the mass media era saw its first debate and the historic nature of that debate has reverberated with a continuous conversation about its impact, importance, and interpretation. My general view is that the way people talk about the debate mythologizes the event far too much, but it was useful.
That said, despite how we in 2024 think about that debate there was no Presidential debate in 1964, 1968, or 1972. There was no expectation for them not the current modern view of how they worked. It was Jimmy Carter who changed these things when he not only agreed to Debate Gerald Ford in 1976 but agreed in 1980 to debate Regan. That started a trend because Regan knew his skill at photogenics favored him in televised debates.
The Commission on Presidential Debates (which created more formalized rules, acted as a neutral arbitration, chose dates, and created the modern conception of debate rules) did not come into place until 1987. This means only George H. W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden ever worked under the modern mass media debate system many are familiar with. Now, political parties did have debates with candidates inside the party several times over. So political campaign operatives often had experience with them but they were rarely regulated by rules and systems that we modern readers are familiar with, the modern internal party debates often take their cues from the Commission on Presidential Debates for rules.
So, it should be clear that one should ask WHY do we have debates and what do they serve. Or, rather, one should ask why do candidates and campaigns feel it benefits them to have a debate. In theory a debate is a risky proposition because you have a candidate in an unscripted marathon event having to perform for cameras with little control on questions and dealing directly with their opponent who in an unscripted event can directly hammer a candidate. That is an incredibly fraught and risky position.
I think it is important to talk about several political science terms here: Undecided Voters, Tune-ins, and Calendar Events.
I suspect a lot of people have a conception of Undecided Voters that isn’t the academic term and which might not fit the reality. I suspect a lot of people assume all Undecided Voters are treating the situation as a “chicken or fish” on the menu at a restaurant. That can be true in some elections but it isn’t necessarily true in general. Rather the term is an umbrella to cover some very different people. Some are people who have decided that they dislike one candidate but have not decided if they will support another candidate or vote. Others are people who have mostly decided but need some reassurances (and campaigns spend a lot of money trying to figure out what those nebulous reassurances are and if they can be fulfilled). Still more are people who dislike the candidates but feel it is a necessity to vote and are trying to reconcile their future action. There are those who claim the mantle of undecided but have made a choice and they just wish to avoid social judgement (they are hard to measure). There are people who really are trying to decide between candidates in every election and are truly undecided. This is not a majority of people, but because the two party system sees people fairly evenly divided between the two they have outsized power because we have multiple elections where the group called Undecided Voters breaking in some portion defines the election results. The obfuscated nature of these varied peoples makes predictions hard.
The term Tune-Ins is more my term for the phenomena that many people don’t really pay attention to an election until after the summer. Sometime in September and October people begin to actually pay attention to elections. Many of these people are reliable votes who will show up at the ballot box. They just decide not to pay close attention to the news or political events until close to the election. In some ways this is a luxury behavior of not needing to pay attention, that you don’t need to worry about some issues immediately. I would argue that there is a wisdom to saying “I can not control this situation currently so I will pay attention when I have some influence.” This habit can mean a person is very uniformed about candidates and party positions, but that is not necessarily true. A majority of voters actually do this, there is a reason why Party Primary turn out is such a fractionally small number compared to election turn out even in midterms or special elections. A lot of people use the debates as their scheduled time to tune in and find out who these candidates are and where they stand. A lot of people actually do feel they learn something at debates. I think they are often shallow and I get nothing new from them, but it is clear a lot of people actually do benefit from them and feel they learn about this candidates. This is a normal and predictable behavior.
Which leads us to Calendar Events. A lot of terms get thrown around like October Surprise, Media Moment, Inflection. Essentially it is a lot of terms for the concept that election trends can change. Many of these are unpredictable and unknown to campaigns and candidates until they happen. A calendar event is a moment that is predicted date and time that shown to change the narrative. Narrative is the human psychological behavior of stringing together events and information into a story to make sense of the information. We berry pick our data based on a narrative, and are more likely to reject information that doesn’t fit our narrative. This is normal human behavior. Campaigns want their candidate to reinforce a positive narrative and change a deleterious narrative. A calendar event is a moment you can plan and prepare with a candidate to ideally cause a shift or reinforce a narrative. That is better then the unpredictable events.
These factors are the reason why campaigns still engage in debates. They’re an excellent time to change a narrative (or protect it). They always get huge viewership numbers on TV, radio, and internet sources. So, you’re getting a chance to introduce a candidate to a lot of people who might not be interested in watching a one on one interview or reading a campaign’s literature. You’re getting a big chance to introduce people, convince people, and getting a potential campaign commercial event that doesn’t cost dollars. For a lot of campaigns that is worth a risk, especially since you can plan for it and prepare. Furthermore, debates can be an excellent time to get supporters excited and ever since 1988 campaigns have seen donations spike for their candidate after a successful debate.
That is why debates happen they have a record of getting money, fervor, and convincing the undecided. That said not every debate is made in the same mold. Often times since 1988 we have not seen debates change much, but they have the potential and so the risk is taken.
So the September 2024 debate does need to be spoken of here. In a lot of ways Kamala Harris went into the debate as the less well known candidate with a lot of people still unconvinced by her candidacy. I agree with Harris and Walz she is in the underdog position. Trump is very much in a stronger position even after the debate. The debate didn’t necessarily change that, but it is clear she won (but then most agree Clinton won against Trump in 2016 and Biden won the debate in 2020s against Trump). I think it has increased fervor for Harris among her supporters, she clearer made a campaign donation haul, she also got favorable news cycles with several focus groups saying she looked presidential.
The reason why Biden wanted to do a debate in June was because of the Nostalgia Factor. It is common for American voters, and this has been tracked by political scientists fairly regularly, to forgive the President out of office their sins. Americans often want to see the positives and forgo the negatives of an administration. This means a lot of people tend to wash out the negatives and not want the people involved punished for misdeeds, because it is past. The Biden Campaign, rightly in my opinion, saw that this nostalgia was touching Trump even though he was running and they wanted to shock people out of it with a major event that would be seen by a lot of people. Hence a debate, it utterly fell apart for many reasons, but the logic was sound. I would argue Trump actually didn’t have a good performance in June 2024 but that was over shadowed by the narrative of Biden being too old. I think Harris reminded people who Trump was in his administration and sand blasted that nostalgia. It has come late in the calendar though, there is a reason why Biden wanted it done in June.
I think Trump also had one of his worst debates. Period. He was unfocused, didn’t land a major argument, and seemed tired. He fell for a lot of rhetorical bait that Harris put out to distract him. At the same time he has won the narrative to a degree, people are talking about his irresponsible and utterly incorrect urban legend that immigrants are eating people’s pets. This story is utterly untrue but the internet is awash with memes and images of it and people talking about it days later. The town of Springfield has seen schools and court houses terrorized with bomb threats. Even if people are posting things ironically the internet is terrible at communicating irony and continuing the conversation allows it to percolate and for others to give cover to the story. We’re going to waste a lot of time talking about something that never happened and that will benefit Trump as he resolidifies his base.
Harris did no harm to her campaign and likely solidified her position with some folks. She won. There haven’t been many polls or other data points to look at so we don’t know if that win means anything.
I think it is important to remember that debates historically have a varied history on their importance and impact. When we talk about the historical record of political debates it is important to note I speak of modern politics after the advent of mass media. The political debates of the 1800’s were very different culturally and conceptually then they are with Radio/TV/Internet. The 1800’s debates like the Lincoln–Douglas existed in an era when such debates were a form of mass entertainment, the rules of such debates were culturally widely known, they could take several hours, and were often disseminated via telegraph and rail as transcripts of the event. Often these sorts of debates also had a point scoring system (unlike our modern debates where the victor is seen more arbitrarily). These were very different events and they fell out of favor by the 1880s.
The modern debate with mass media didn’t rise until 1948 the Republicans held a radio debate I 1948. That means that Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower all became President without a debate between them and their opponents. Wendel Wilkie tried in 1940 against Roosevelt and Roosevelt refused. Radio debates between congressional candidates did occur but they were rare. It wasn’t until 1960 with the now famous JFK versus Nixon that the mass media era saw its first debate and the historic nature of that debate has reverberated with a continuous conversation about its impact, importance, and interpretation. My general view is that the way people talk about the debate mythologizes the event far too much, but it was useful.
That said, despite how we in 2024 think about that debate there was no Presidential debate in 1964, 1968, or 1972. There was no expectation for them not the current modern view of how they worked. It was Jimmy Carter who changed these things when he not only agreed to Debate Gerald Ford in 1976 but agreed in 1980 to debate Regan. That started a trend because Regan knew his skill at photogenics favored him in televised debates.
The Commission on Presidential Debates (which created more formalized rules, acted as a neutral arbitration, chose dates, and created the modern conception of debate rules) did not come into place until 1987. This means only George H. W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden ever worked under the modern mass media debate system many are familiar with. Now, political parties did have debates with candidates inside the party several times over. So political campaign operatives often had experience with them but they were rarely regulated by rules and systems that we modern readers are familiar with, the modern internal party debates often take their cues from the Commission on Presidential Debates for rules.
So, it should be clear that one should ask WHY do we have debates and what do they serve. Or, rather, one should ask why do candidates and campaigns feel it benefits them to have a debate. In theory a debate is a risky proposition because you have a candidate in an unscripted marathon event having to perform for cameras with little control on questions and dealing directly with their opponent who in an unscripted event can directly hammer a candidate. That is an incredibly fraught and risky position.
I think it is important to talk about several political science terms here: Undecided Voters, Tune-ins, and Calendar Events.
I suspect a lot of people have a conception of Undecided Voters that isn’t the academic term and which might not fit the reality. I suspect a lot of people assume all Undecided Voters are treating the situation as a “chicken or fish” on the menu at a restaurant. That can be true in some elections but it isn’t necessarily true in general. Rather the term is an umbrella to cover some very different people. Some are people who have decided that they dislike one candidate but have not decided if they will support another candidate or vote. Others are people who have mostly decided but need some reassurances (and campaigns spend a lot of money trying to figure out what those nebulous reassurances are and if they can be fulfilled). Still more are people who dislike the candidates but feel it is a necessity to vote and are trying to reconcile their future action. There are those who claim the mantle of undecided but have made a choice and they just wish to avoid social judgement (they are hard to measure). There are people who really are trying to decide between candidates in every election and are truly undecided. This is not a majority of people, but because the two party system sees people fairly evenly divided between the two they have outsized power because we have multiple elections where the group called Undecided Voters breaking in some portion defines the election results. The obfuscated nature of these varied peoples makes predictions hard.
The term Tune-Ins is more my term for the phenomena that many people don’t really pay attention to an election until after the summer. Sometime in September and October people begin to actually pay attention to elections. Many of these people are reliable votes who will show up at the ballot box. They just decide not to pay close attention to the news or political events until close to the election. In some ways this is a luxury behavior of not needing to pay attention, that you don’t need to worry about some issues immediately. I would argue that there is a wisdom to saying “I can not control this situation currently so I will pay attention when I have some influence.” This habit can mean a person is very uniformed about candidates and party positions, but that is not necessarily true. A majority of voters actually do this, there is a reason why Party Primary turn out is such a fractionally small number compared to election turn out even in midterms or special elections. A lot of people use the debates as their scheduled time to tune in and find out who these candidates are and where they stand. A lot of people actually do feel they learn something at debates. I think they are often shallow and I get nothing new from them, but it is clear a lot of people actually do benefit from them and feel they learn about this candidates. This is a normal and predictable behavior.
Which leads us to Calendar Events. A lot of terms get thrown around like October Surprise, Media Moment, Inflection. Essentially it is a lot of terms for the concept that election trends can change. Many of these are unpredictable and unknown to campaigns and candidates until they happen. A calendar event is a moment that is predicted date and time that shown to change the narrative. Narrative is the human psychological behavior of stringing together events and information into a story to make sense of the information. We berry pick our data based on a narrative, and are more likely to reject information that doesn’t fit our narrative. This is normal human behavior. Campaigns want their candidate to reinforce a positive narrative and change a deleterious narrative. A calendar event is a moment you can plan and prepare with a candidate to ideally cause a shift or reinforce a narrative. That is better then the unpredictable events.
These factors are the reason why campaigns still engage in debates. They’re an excellent time to change a narrative (or protect it). They always get huge viewership numbers on TV, radio, and internet sources. So, you’re getting a chance to introduce a candidate to a lot of people who might not be interested in watching a one on one interview or reading a campaign’s literature. You’re getting a big chance to introduce people, convince people, and getting a potential campaign commercial event that doesn’t cost dollars. For a lot of campaigns that is worth a risk, especially since you can plan for it and prepare. Furthermore, debates can be an excellent time to get supporters excited and ever since 1988 campaigns have seen donations spike for their candidate after a successful debate.
That is why debates happen they have a record of getting money, fervor, and convincing the undecided. That said not every debate is made in the same mold. Often times since 1988 we have not seen debates change much, but they have the potential and so the risk is taken.
So the September 2024 debate does need to be spoken of here. In a lot of ways Kamala Harris went into the debate as the less well known candidate with a lot of people still unconvinced by her candidacy. I agree with Harris and Walz she is in the underdog position. Trump is very much in a stronger position even after the debate. The debate didn’t necessarily change that, but it is clear she won (but then most agree Clinton won against Trump in 2016 and Biden won the debate in 2020s against Trump). I think it has increased fervor for Harris among her supporters, she clearer made a campaign donation haul, she also got favorable news cycles with several focus groups saying she looked presidential.
The reason why Biden wanted to do a debate in June was because of the Nostalgia Factor. It is common for American voters, and this has been tracked by political scientists fairly regularly, to forgive the President out of office their sins. Americans often want to see the positives and forgo the negatives of an administration. This means a lot of people tend to wash out the negatives and not want the people involved punished for misdeeds, because it is past. The Biden Campaign, rightly in my opinion, saw that this nostalgia was touching Trump even though he was running and they wanted to shock people out of it with a major event that would be seen by a lot of people. Hence a debate, it utterly fell apart for many reasons, but the logic was sound. I would argue Trump actually didn’t have a good performance in June 2024 but that was over shadowed by the narrative of Biden being too old. I think Harris reminded people who Trump was in his administration and sand blasted that nostalgia. It has come late in the calendar though, there is a reason why Biden wanted it done in June.
I think Trump also had one of his worst debates. Period. He was unfocused, didn’t land a major argument, and seemed tired. He fell for a lot of rhetorical bait that Harris put out to distract him. At the same time he has won the narrative to a degree, people are talking about his irresponsible and utterly incorrect urban legend that immigrants are eating people’s pets. This story is utterly untrue but the internet is awash with memes and images of it and people talking about it days later. The town of Springfield has seen schools and court houses terrorized with bomb threats. Even if people are posting things ironically the internet is terrible at communicating irony and continuing the conversation allows it to percolate and for others to give cover to the story. We’re going to waste a lot of time talking about something that never happened and that will benefit Trump as he resolidifies his base.
Harris did no harm to her campaign and likely solidified her position with some folks. She won. There haven’t been many polls or other data points to look at so we don’t know if that win means anything.
Dry Spell Review
Posted a year agoDry Spell by Ryan Loup-Glissant a review
Well I finished reading Dry Spell, a book that came out nearly over a year ago. Let it never be said I am not topical. This is Mr. Loup-Glissant’s first novel though he has written many published short stories and taken part in organizing several anthologies. So a known quantity in furry fiction but this is his first long form novel. I was intrigued by the concept of the story and the author’s writing style is known if you have picked up Dissident Signals (furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=999 ) or Inhuman Acts ( furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=811 ).
If you want the physical book that can be mailed to you https://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=1250
The ebook is here https://baddogbooks.com/product/the-dry-spell/
To save everyone time: get a copy of this book. It is an excellent read from a new author who is really putting out some interesting and innovative writing. While a bit of a commitment I found it excellent and well worth picking up. It very much became a "can't put this down" novel.
The basic conception of this book is a 1920’s Prohibition Era Chicago with anthropomorphic animal characters. Flappers, Speakeasies, Jazz, and Prohibition combined with egg creams and the changing technologies of the Roaring Twenties. Only the book makes it clear from the Prologue and onwards that there is creeping dread and horror to this setting that quickly escalates. Monsters stalk Chicago and not all of them are Prohibition Agents, Mobsters, or Dirty Cops. The back of the book description makes it clear: Vampires, werebeasts, and other things such as zombie voters
So, a standard urban fantasy scenario only set in Prohibition Chicago? Not exactly. We’ll get to that.
I really enjoyed this read. It is a layered read with a lot going on with a big ensemble cast. The large cast of characters is were the book finds a lot of strength as the author juggles their voices and different points of view excellently to convey the story. When Bucky had the story I knew right away as his voice and even descriptive words were different from Celeste or Donovan or Crawford. My biggest critique is that I wanted more time with all of hem and if my biggest problem is I wanted more story from a four hundred page book that probably says something. Though really I wanted a lot more from Charlie as a character who while he has some excellent moments didn’t get nearly enough room to expand into the narrative the way I would have liked considering how much I enjoyed him. I suspect any reader of this novel will find a favorite character to latch onto as they are all well crafted and designed.
It is sometimes an over used statement to claim the setting and city of a story is a character. I won’t necessarily say that here but I will say the time period is a presence and character. The 1920’s are a fascination of mine and it is clear Mr. Loup-Glissant did a lot of research on styles, sounds, smells, and modes of communication for the era. Chicago is there but the 1920’s are a character for this book. I wouldn’t use this as a historical text obviously and there are spots I disagreed with in presentation (for instance it is 1923 but the term Scofflaw while used often wasn’t coined until 1924) but he does a great job creating a pastiche and if I am nitpicking to this level is there actually a problem or it just me?
This is actually the genius of Mr. Loup-Glissant’s work here and where his book really shines. He draws you in with very familiar setting and concepts, we all have some cultural osmosis of the era thanks to the Untouchables and Great Gatsby, along with other familiarity and then weaves in his subtle world building. The contrast growing as he set out while this world is familiar it is very different. There is a complex mythology and cultural organization that is different from our own where even if you draw parallels it can be alien at times. The author makes you want to know more and then crave details. Even in the last few pages he kept tossing out interesting little bits and details that kept me invested in his world. I won’t say the world building is perfect or he explains every detail, there were moments where I felt I needed more or something contradicted but they were rare.
The book demands a lot more focus then some of the more frothy and light furry novels I have read lately. It is a longer read as well and the demand on attention does mean more focus. Which made it harder to read unless I could really devote time to it. This was not pick up and read a page or two before bed type novel. Mr. Loup-Glissant is a greedy author for your time but he does make it worth the time spent.
The book’s concepts, character work, and scope are ambitious to say the least. A lot is happening in this effort. There are a lot of threads and not every story really intersects fully. Not every narrative has to have every story intersect and this does add to the feeling of sheer scope. Very full bodied and adventurous in intent that the author doesn’t always fully meet. Mr. Ryan Loup-Glissant makes a strong attempt but there were moments I felt that needed more finessing and the time line to me felt a bit uneven for how some characters developed. I also struggled with one of the major analogies in the book and I don’t think it landed like the author intended.
However, I’d argue that this ambition speaks well of the novel as a whole. Even where it did not perfectly stick the landing I was still engaged and interested. I enjoyed and was engaged the entire time. Mr. Loup-Glissant does not commit the sin of boredom in this tome. I appreciate someone who is really trying with their work to do interesting things with their world building, analogies, themes, and characters even when I disagree. I want people to read this book just because I want to talk to people about it I’ve rarely run into a furry novel where I thought: I wish I had a book club to really dig into this. That alone really contributes a lot to furry literature.
I really enjoyed the metaphysical and supernatural parts of the book. How these vampires and other creatures behave and act. How the world interacts and interposes on these people and the mythologies and stories. The vampires have some legitimately interesting concepts behind them and the author leans into the more visceral elements of vampires. That said I feel it should be stressed this book sits solidly in the Noir and the Horror. As I mentioned earlier it could easily be confused with Urban Fantasy (which often in my opinion has a more light hearted tone) but the sheer gore and some of the more troubling scenes and descriptions are clearly done to make the reader uncomfortable and underscore horror. So be aware this book has a vicious streak and it is okay to put it down or not pick up if you don’t want to deal with things like viscera, gore, and torture.
So, overall a strong recommendation if not a demand that you pick this one up and read it. This is an interesting addition to literature in general and has the temerity to do a lot of things differently.
As noted: If you want the physical book that can be mailed to you https://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=1250
The ebook is here https://baddogbooks.com/product/the-dry-spell/
Happy Reading!
Well I finished reading Dry Spell, a book that came out nearly over a year ago. Let it never be said I am not topical. This is Mr. Loup-Glissant’s first novel though he has written many published short stories and taken part in organizing several anthologies. So a known quantity in furry fiction but this is his first long form novel. I was intrigued by the concept of the story and the author’s writing style is known if you have picked up Dissident Signals (furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=999 ) or Inhuman Acts ( furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=811 ).
If you want the physical book that can be mailed to you https://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=1250
The ebook is here https://baddogbooks.com/product/the-dry-spell/
To save everyone time: get a copy of this book. It is an excellent read from a new author who is really putting out some interesting and innovative writing. While a bit of a commitment I found it excellent and well worth picking up. It very much became a "can't put this down" novel.
The basic conception of this book is a 1920’s Prohibition Era Chicago with anthropomorphic animal characters. Flappers, Speakeasies, Jazz, and Prohibition combined with egg creams and the changing technologies of the Roaring Twenties. Only the book makes it clear from the Prologue and onwards that there is creeping dread and horror to this setting that quickly escalates. Monsters stalk Chicago and not all of them are Prohibition Agents, Mobsters, or Dirty Cops. The back of the book description makes it clear: Vampires, werebeasts, and other things such as zombie voters
So, a standard urban fantasy scenario only set in Prohibition Chicago? Not exactly. We’ll get to that.
I really enjoyed this read. It is a layered read with a lot going on with a big ensemble cast. The large cast of characters is were the book finds a lot of strength as the author juggles their voices and different points of view excellently to convey the story. When Bucky had the story I knew right away as his voice and even descriptive words were different from Celeste or Donovan or Crawford. My biggest critique is that I wanted more time with all of hem and if my biggest problem is I wanted more story from a four hundred page book that probably says something. Though really I wanted a lot more from Charlie as a character who while he has some excellent moments didn’t get nearly enough room to expand into the narrative the way I would have liked considering how much I enjoyed him. I suspect any reader of this novel will find a favorite character to latch onto as they are all well crafted and designed.
It is sometimes an over used statement to claim the setting and city of a story is a character. I won’t necessarily say that here but I will say the time period is a presence and character. The 1920’s are a fascination of mine and it is clear Mr. Loup-Glissant did a lot of research on styles, sounds, smells, and modes of communication for the era. Chicago is there but the 1920’s are a character for this book. I wouldn’t use this as a historical text obviously and there are spots I disagreed with in presentation (for instance it is 1923 but the term Scofflaw while used often wasn’t coined until 1924) but he does a great job creating a pastiche and if I am nitpicking to this level is there actually a problem or it just me?
This is actually the genius of Mr. Loup-Glissant’s work here and where his book really shines. He draws you in with very familiar setting and concepts, we all have some cultural osmosis of the era thanks to the Untouchables and Great Gatsby, along with other familiarity and then weaves in his subtle world building. The contrast growing as he set out while this world is familiar it is very different. There is a complex mythology and cultural organization that is different from our own where even if you draw parallels it can be alien at times. The author makes you want to know more and then crave details. Even in the last few pages he kept tossing out interesting little bits and details that kept me invested in his world. I won’t say the world building is perfect or he explains every detail, there were moments where I felt I needed more or something contradicted but they were rare.
The book demands a lot more focus then some of the more frothy and light furry novels I have read lately. It is a longer read as well and the demand on attention does mean more focus. Which made it harder to read unless I could really devote time to it. This was not pick up and read a page or two before bed type novel. Mr. Loup-Glissant is a greedy author for your time but he does make it worth the time spent.
The book’s concepts, character work, and scope are ambitious to say the least. A lot is happening in this effort. There are a lot of threads and not every story really intersects fully. Not every narrative has to have every story intersect and this does add to the feeling of sheer scope. Very full bodied and adventurous in intent that the author doesn’t always fully meet. Mr. Ryan Loup-Glissant makes a strong attempt but there were moments I felt that needed more finessing and the time line to me felt a bit uneven for how some characters developed. I also struggled with one of the major analogies in the book and I don’t think it landed like the author intended.
However, I’d argue that this ambition speaks well of the novel as a whole. Even where it did not perfectly stick the landing I was still engaged and interested. I enjoyed and was engaged the entire time. Mr. Loup-Glissant does not commit the sin of boredom in this tome. I appreciate someone who is really trying with their work to do interesting things with their world building, analogies, themes, and characters even when I disagree. I want people to read this book just because I want to talk to people about it I’ve rarely run into a furry novel where I thought: I wish I had a book club to really dig into this. That alone really contributes a lot to furry literature.
I really enjoyed the metaphysical and supernatural parts of the book. How these vampires and other creatures behave and act. How the world interacts and interposes on these people and the mythologies and stories. The vampires have some legitimately interesting concepts behind them and the author leans into the more visceral elements of vampires. That said I feel it should be stressed this book sits solidly in the Noir and the Horror. As I mentioned earlier it could easily be confused with Urban Fantasy (which often in my opinion has a more light hearted tone) but the sheer gore and some of the more troubling scenes and descriptions are clearly done to make the reader uncomfortable and underscore horror. So be aware this book has a vicious streak and it is okay to put it down or not pick up if you don’t want to deal with things like viscera, gore, and torture.
So, overall a strong recommendation if not a demand that you pick this one up and read it. This is an interesting addition to literature in general and has the temerity to do a lot of things differently.
As noted: If you want the physical book that can be mailed to you https://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=1250
The ebook is here https://baddogbooks.com/product/the-dry-spell/
Happy Reading!
270 to Win election thoughts
Posted a year agoThe last few months have certainly been a lesson in being careful about assumptions. People claimed for year they knew what the election in 2024 would look like and who the two candidates would be. Assumptions that often varied on who would win but the core being who the players would be. To be fair some of this was not incorrect, it seemed like the most likely outcome. However, four years is a long time and a lot can change. As I have said before it was not assured Trump would win the nomination. Unknown events could occur.
Granted the months of July and August saw a few unprecedented or at least uncommon events. I, myself, did not think some things would happen that did. President Joe Biden doing something rare and giving up the potential for power for the perceived good of his political party and with the hopes of seeing his opponent defeated is rare. As there are under sixty days to go before election day now things seem more set (though there can always be surprises). The events on the calendar that can shift a race have happened. Both parties have their Vice Presidential picks sorted out, their conventions are done, and we have now had two debates (though there might be other debates none are currently on the calendar).
What can we take from them? I’d argue the Democrats ran a largely successful convention that got a lot of eyeballs and was run smoothly. Ratings were better then some years but lower then others. At the core since conventions are pep rallies these days and all the real work is done well before hand a well run convention is to sell competency. It was a chance to introduce Governor Walz and Vice President Harris to the wider public who were perhaps not paying close attention. It is normal for a lot of voters to turn into the conventions and make their choices on candidates. I’d argue the Republicans ran a successful convention as well but it didn’t get as much interest from viewers and Trump’s acceptance speech ran too long and has bene widely paned (but that isn’t going to change things much). Shockingly the race has not changed much from Biden versus Trump in March. The Polls have shown a roughly even race with neither candidate winning decisively. Modest, but small, bumps from the conventions. The Democrats continue to have much higher and superior fundraising numbers and dollars and a much larger turn out operation and state party turn out organization. The Republicans continue to have a more steady and loyal support base.
At this point we are in the place of the Electoral battleground strategy. I have a lot of problems with the electoral college. Those who know me very well have heard the story that the only time I got seriously punished in school was when I learned how that thing worked in Fifth Grade and became upset. It is, however, still in place because an entire political party is convinced it is their primary path to power and attempts to do away with the thing have so far been haphazard at best.
For the record: rank choice ballots, general ballot reform, and automatic registration of all citizens would be great steps. Another step, if we can’t just end the thing, would be to break the states into proportional EVs from before 1824.
It needs to be stressed, because not enough people are saying it, that the traditional Democratic states have lost 3 EV after the last census and the Republicans have gained 3 EV. This was after the 2020 Census was tabulated.
So, we have to think strategically about the states and the college and everyone gets annoyed. Using the website 270towin as a visualizer here is my map of the states I find most interesting in this conversation:
https://www.270towin.com/maps/gnvmG
This is my map and we’ll be getting into these choices in a moment but I do encourage folks to play with these things and look at them sometimes. They can offer interesting looks.
The Consensus map most agree on right now is this:
https://www.270towin.com/maps/conse.....ction-forecast
Why did I choose my states for this? Because some of them are genuinely interesting and some really are the story of the election. I’ll get into them in a moment but first I want to talk about the two campaigns and their theories of the election. Theory of the election is a messy political yammering term that isn’t really going to appear on any official documents or anything. Rather it is an encapsulation of a few ideas and interviews on how I see the two campaigns running to cobble together a strong enough coalition to win (because to win a national election you have to cobble together a coalition. No one has an overt majority.
The Harris Campaign Theory: Appealing to stable governance, a return to norms, and a pro-union labor outlook. The theory for the Harris campaign is to win urban areas and their suburbs as much as possible while running up the numbers in rural communities (you don’t need to win you just need to deny overwhelming victory). The core of the strategy is women over 30 in the suburbs, BIPOC voters over 30, organized labor voters, as well as life long democrats with a garnish of voters under 25 wherever possible to shore up the numbers. Essentially the same strategy as 2020, because it worked and has been a workable strategy for Democrats in the years past. With an emphasis on reproductive rights, protecting rights, and new industry investment.
This is a very safe and staid strategy and a pretty cost effective one. It plays to the Harris strengths with suburban women that has been seen before. The downside is that President Biden as he is connected to Harris has to deliver not only stability but a reasonably functional system. For Biden the big problem remains inflation in staples and luxuries. Food, Fuel, and Housing (while the prices have dropped a bit are) still inflated and people are reminded every time they go shopping. The overall economy is good for the average person: employment is shockingly high, wages are up, and several labor unions have had strong wins recently. However, for Biden’s core this is a real problem and an exploitable problem. Add in frustrations with the border and a perception of an unstable international news angle and the issues mount. It must also be said that sexism and racism remain a factor in American politics and in my opinion will inform some voters behavior (that is not to say all but rather to point out this is a factor for some).
The Trump Theory: Turn out nontraditional voters and the disaffected. Run up rural votes as much as possible and win by big margins while undercutting urban turn out as much as possible. Along with the traditional Republican base and voters try to bring in more BIPOC men under 40 who are dissatisfied with the Democrats (don’t assume you can win but bleed support, but also claim you can win to draw in the numbers). Women are a problem still so try and wedge them from Democrats on various issues. Run up the numbers in suburbs by appealing to cultural issues. Say the economy is better with fewer regulations, phrase abortion as a states rights issue as much as possible.
This strategy has risks to it and can be more expensive but it propelled a 2016 win. Contacting and finding nontraditional voters and getting them to turn out is more expensive and time consuming and demands cold call and demographic investigations that cost more. They’re not as reliable (that’s why they’re non traditional) which means more investment to make sure they show up. This remains a contention point as the Trump campaign is sparing on releasing their data and the Republican party wants that data. Reproductive Rights is clearly sheering into the talking points and annoys a lot of people broadly but especially in suburbs.
In general it must be reiterated again: Polling has been off in 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022, and in 2023 to varying degrees. While I do not advocate “unskewing” or ignoring the polls I do recommend extreme cuation.
So then the states.
First a quick run down of the also rans: Ohio, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Missouri. Most of these states used to be swing states or are seen as potential swing states. The major example, though I talk about it lower is Florida which in 2016 was decided by 1.2% points and was a swing state before that. In 2020 it was more decisive for Trump, but it could shift. In theory all those states could flip. The Republicans would dearly like Minnesota but that is unlikely. These states flip in a wave election scenario with a lopsided party turn out. Several of them (Florida, Texas, and Oregon) are decidedly expensive to run in so parties want them locked down.
Now then my points of interest:
Nebraska and Maine— Neither of these states are in serious contention. If either one was the election would be very different. However, both states share one feature the other 48 do not: they’re electoral votes are proportional. As in a candidate can win electoral votes by congressional district. As well as a few for the entire state. Maine since 1972 has 2 for winning the state and 1 for each of its two congressional districts. Nebraska since 1992 operated as has 2 for the state and 1 for each of its three congressional districts.
This is actually a throw back to how the Founding Fathers originally conceived and thought of the Electoral College. We have ample letters, papers, and essays from across the spectrum of the Founders politics for proportional Electoral Votes. This changed after the 1824 election when Andrew Jackson lost and spent four years campaigning to make the states winner take all. So the current system is yet another bit of long term damage that walking canker sore Jackson inflicted on the USA nearly two centuries ago from his disastrous presidency. In 2020 Biden won the Omaha Electoral Vote and Trump the Maine 02 Electoral Vote a rare circumstance.
I mention this because as has been reported in several places there has been a push to make the state of Nebraska winner take all. This has been tried before several times but this attempt came with added push by several eight wing celebrities like Charlie Kirk and a personal endorsement from Donald Trump.
abcnews.go.com/Politics/charlie-kirk-trump-nebraska-republicans-scrambling-change-states/story?id=108852864
This failed in part because Nebraska is the only Unicameral legislature in the USA and operates by a very arcane set of systems and rules with controls on how long it meets and when a session can be called. Still there was talk of calling a session to make the change in time for the 2024 election.
This appears to be ended as Maine has now threatened to become a winner take all state in retaliation if Nebraska tries to do so and the Governor and state legislature are very capable of doing it any time Nebraska tries.
abcnews.go.com/Politics/maine-democrats-threaten-switch-winner-delegate-system/story?id=109703620
I bring this up because it is A) a weird story but also B ) one has to ask why the Trump campaign wanted to push for this and what their internal thinking is if they see the race as that tight that they have to try for such an open change.
Florida— Florida is not really in contention. Granted Trump only won Florida by 1% in 2016, and 3% in 2020. Obama won the state in 2012 (by a razor thin margin). It is the third largest state population wise and it does have Democratic strongholds. While it is crass to point it out the state will also have reproductive rights on the ballot with a major ballot to defend abortion access in contention with the state’s aggressive six week ban. These abortion vote drive a lot of people to the polls. In theory the state is in play
Except that the local Democratic Party is clearly suffering from terrible organizational problems, the Republicans have a larger registration advantage ( www.tallahassee.com/story/news/poli.....cans-npas/72992415007/ ), and the state is prohibitively expensive to campaign in for staffing and commercials. It is very clear Democratic Party leaders decided to triage resources after 2022 towards Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona. I think that was the strategically sound move but it makes the current race extremely hard to run in Florida. The working public theory is the Harris Campaign wants the Trump campaign to waste their limited money and time in Florida. I don’t think Trump is that dumb, but it is clear both campaigns have internal numbers showing the state is close.
North Carolina— North Carolina has been on the Democratic Party’s wish lit since Virginia flipped blue and stayed blue. It is a nice pot of Electoral Votes if it could be won. It is also a significantly cheaper state to run adds in then Pennsylvania, Florida, and Nevada. It is just very unlikely to flip. Trump has a strong base there and the state has been close but never flipped to the Democrats. The local Republican Party is also one of the better run and organized groups in the USA. The stars would have to align for Harris, its clear there is a strong BIPOC and women vote for her there and polls are favorable, also the Republican Gubernatorial candidate is clearly unpopular and Democratic turn out is likely to be goosed by a lot of his incendiary comments. If she did win it then Trump would lose the election but there is no evidence it will happen. Still the Harris campaign clearly will sink resources and money in just to try and build for the long term win and the Trump campaign isn’t taking it for granted. It helps the media market covers several other states in play. As one of the earliest states to close polls on election night results here will define the evening. If Trump loses NC then it becomes near impossible for him to win. If he wins NC by a very thin margin then it’s a long night for everyone. A decisive Trump win would be good for him and close races for the rest of the night.
Georgia— Biden won Georgia by 11, 779 votes in 2020. It was one of this thinnest margins. Trying to secure another Georgia win, and perhaps running ads in the Jacksonville, FL media market, isn’t a terrible idea. There isn’t another marquee Senate race like in 2020 for Harris to ride the coattails into victory so I put this in the same region as North Carolina: unlikely but worth a few dollars to try and time visiting. Harris and Walz clearly are trying.
New Mexico— Trump will not win New Mexico. Why am I listing it? Because the Trump campaign and the RNC spent nearly $3 million dollars in 2020 trying to win the state. Trump visited multiple times campaigning with the families of dead cops and victims of violent crime after the Governor refused to crack down on BLM protestors. The GOP really thought the state was winnable and sunk serious cash into the state only to be utterly walloped. Biden won the state by over 10% and after 2022 Republicans have been locked out of almost every major position of power. Supposedly Trump was furious about the loss and waste but by every indication the Trump campaign is planning another run for the bite of the green chili. I say go right ahead but wouldn’t it be more efficient just to light your money on fire? If the Trump campaign really does make a move here it says something and to me it is either A) Harris is in serious trouble (there will be other indications for that) or B ) the Trump campaign is utterly broken. So far so quiet though.
Nevada— At one time Nevada was a very reliable win for Democrats with its extensive organized labor pools, engaged population, and a very well run get out the vote system set up by Senator Harry Reid. I’m not sure what happened but in 2020 and 2022 it is very clear the wheels have come off that cart. The state is a toss up and in play, numerous polls show Trump in a comfortable lead. I think it is closer the that and one should be careful on extrapolation but Harris will need to sink in resources into an expensive media marketplace. If Harris loses Nevada that makes everything a lot closer, she can win without it but she’d likely want that flank secured.
Arizona— Arizona is a mirror to Nevada it used to be a very reliable Republican state. Then Biden won it in 2020, by a smaller number then he won Georgia, and the 2022 election was a garbage scow fire of unpopular candidates many of whom appear to be returning to the ticket. This allowed the Democrats to take key seats and positions in the state. The state Arizona Republicans are by some accounts facing serious financial hardship or at least strains. That can have consequences on organization and turnout. That can change still, but there is only so far money can go if the personnel aren’t in cohesion. Running several unpopular candidates, like Kari Lake again, does not help their position. Further not to be crass but abortion is a top line issue in the state with a ballot measure on for abortion access and a recent total abortion ban overturned by the Democrats (to a still deeply unpopular 15 week ban). The Harris Campaign would be foolish not to sink serious time and money into the state but it will be a nail biter.
Wisconsin— One of the so-called blue wall states, that in 2016 were won by Trump securing his victory by thin margin. It was the closest of the three blue walls in 2020. I think it will be close and I want to see some more data. At the same time of all the states the public polling has been consistently good for Harris, and before her Biden. Still both campaigns have sunk huge sums into the state for campaign offices, commercials, and personel. Harris has a reasonably good chance here and if she wins it will likely win the others. It just doesn’t have the anecdotal data of PA and MI to back that up rather its all trend line and Trump has his own base of support here.
Michigan—There is a very ample population of people in the state who are not happy with the current Palestine humanitarian crisis, if they stay home Harris has a serious problem. At the same time Harris has a very well organized local operation, a lot of pro union turn out support, and is popular in other parts. The state Democratic Party is well organized and delivered a Democratic Legislature and Governorship in 2022 for the first time in decades. The local Republican Party has been riven by high profile conflicts and financial issues ( as an example: apnews.com/article/michigan-republican-party-kristina-karamo-2daaf24f17ba01d795612631d94e9654 this was high profile enough NPR’s This American Life did an episode on the mess https://overcast.fm/+E24ByaPBs ). The state is in other words plainly weird and hard to predict due to so many conflicting unknowns. Harris is currently polling decently there (but in the margin of error) and has been since she entered the race but these external factors of local group dissatisfaction, the instability of the local parties, are making this a state to watch and unstable.
Pennsylvania— As one of the so-called blue wall states PA used to be a reliable Democratic Party state now it is a swing state. It was key to Trump winning in 2016 and key to Biden winning in 2020. There are a lot of reasons why the state should be a win for Harris demographically. Further recent history wise in the last two years there have been six special elections in PA and they ALL went to the democrats, even in Republican leaning districts. The senate race is between a popular Democratic incumbent versus a guy from Connecticut, who is clearly not liked. Biden and now Harris have invested a lot of time and money in the state as well and the local party seems well organized. Yet, the polls remain closer here then Michigan and Wisconsin and with the big pot of delegates of all the states on this list this is the one everyone is watching. Victory here likely defines the election (Harris CAN win without Pennsylvania but it gets significantly harder to the point of unlikely. Trump can win without PA but it would be far easier with it). Both campaigns are deploying heavily in the state in the next few weeks and a lot of stops, commercials, and offices are planned. This is the state everyone is watching. Yet it is also the state whose polls close among the latest and who don’t count their early ballots quickly.
In other words there are a lot of unknowns and nothing is assured. At the same time we are getting a fascinating look at the value of local operations and turn out groups versus media buzz.
Granted the months of July and August saw a few unprecedented or at least uncommon events. I, myself, did not think some things would happen that did. President Joe Biden doing something rare and giving up the potential for power for the perceived good of his political party and with the hopes of seeing his opponent defeated is rare. As there are under sixty days to go before election day now things seem more set (though there can always be surprises). The events on the calendar that can shift a race have happened. Both parties have their Vice Presidential picks sorted out, their conventions are done, and we have now had two debates (though there might be other debates none are currently on the calendar).
What can we take from them? I’d argue the Democrats ran a largely successful convention that got a lot of eyeballs and was run smoothly. Ratings were better then some years but lower then others. At the core since conventions are pep rallies these days and all the real work is done well before hand a well run convention is to sell competency. It was a chance to introduce Governor Walz and Vice President Harris to the wider public who were perhaps not paying close attention. It is normal for a lot of voters to turn into the conventions and make their choices on candidates. I’d argue the Republicans ran a successful convention as well but it didn’t get as much interest from viewers and Trump’s acceptance speech ran too long and has bene widely paned (but that isn’t going to change things much). Shockingly the race has not changed much from Biden versus Trump in March. The Polls have shown a roughly even race with neither candidate winning decisively. Modest, but small, bumps from the conventions. The Democrats continue to have much higher and superior fundraising numbers and dollars and a much larger turn out operation and state party turn out organization. The Republicans continue to have a more steady and loyal support base.
At this point we are in the place of the Electoral battleground strategy. I have a lot of problems with the electoral college. Those who know me very well have heard the story that the only time I got seriously punished in school was when I learned how that thing worked in Fifth Grade and became upset. It is, however, still in place because an entire political party is convinced it is their primary path to power and attempts to do away with the thing have so far been haphazard at best.
For the record: rank choice ballots, general ballot reform, and automatic registration of all citizens would be great steps. Another step, if we can’t just end the thing, would be to break the states into proportional EVs from before 1824.
It needs to be stressed, because not enough people are saying it, that the traditional Democratic states have lost 3 EV after the last census and the Republicans have gained 3 EV. This was after the 2020 Census was tabulated.
So, we have to think strategically about the states and the college and everyone gets annoyed. Using the website 270towin as a visualizer here is my map of the states I find most interesting in this conversation:
https://www.270towin.com/maps/gnvmG
This is my map and we’ll be getting into these choices in a moment but I do encourage folks to play with these things and look at them sometimes. They can offer interesting looks.
The Consensus map most agree on right now is this:
https://www.270towin.com/maps/conse.....ction-forecast
Why did I choose my states for this? Because some of them are genuinely interesting and some really are the story of the election. I’ll get into them in a moment but first I want to talk about the two campaigns and their theories of the election. Theory of the election is a messy political yammering term that isn’t really going to appear on any official documents or anything. Rather it is an encapsulation of a few ideas and interviews on how I see the two campaigns running to cobble together a strong enough coalition to win (because to win a national election you have to cobble together a coalition. No one has an overt majority.
The Harris Campaign Theory: Appealing to stable governance, a return to norms, and a pro-union labor outlook. The theory for the Harris campaign is to win urban areas and their suburbs as much as possible while running up the numbers in rural communities (you don’t need to win you just need to deny overwhelming victory). The core of the strategy is women over 30 in the suburbs, BIPOC voters over 30, organized labor voters, as well as life long democrats with a garnish of voters under 25 wherever possible to shore up the numbers. Essentially the same strategy as 2020, because it worked and has been a workable strategy for Democrats in the years past. With an emphasis on reproductive rights, protecting rights, and new industry investment.
This is a very safe and staid strategy and a pretty cost effective one. It plays to the Harris strengths with suburban women that has been seen before. The downside is that President Biden as he is connected to Harris has to deliver not only stability but a reasonably functional system. For Biden the big problem remains inflation in staples and luxuries. Food, Fuel, and Housing (while the prices have dropped a bit are) still inflated and people are reminded every time they go shopping. The overall economy is good for the average person: employment is shockingly high, wages are up, and several labor unions have had strong wins recently. However, for Biden’s core this is a real problem and an exploitable problem. Add in frustrations with the border and a perception of an unstable international news angle and the issues mount. It must also be said that sexism and racism remain a factor in American politics and in my opinion will inform some voters behavior (that is not to say all but rather to point out this is a factor for some).
The Trump Theory: Turn out nontraditional voters and the disaffected. Run up rural votes as much as possible and win by big margins while undercutting urban turn out as much as possible. Along with the traditional Republican base and voters try to bring in more BIPOC men under 40 who are dissatisfied with the Democrats (don’t assume you can win but bleed support, but also claim you can win to draw in the numbers). Women are a problem still so try and wedge them from Democrats on various issues. Run up the numbers in suburbs by appealing to cultural issues. Say the economy is better with fewer regulations, phrase abortion as a states rights issue as much as possible.
This strategy has risks to it and can be more expensive but it propelled a 2016 win. Contacting and finding nontraditional voters and getting them to turn out is more expensive and time consuming and demands cold call and demographic investigations that cost more. They’re not as reliable (that’s why they’re non traditional) which means more investment to make sure they show up. This remains a contention point as the Trump campaign is sparing on releasing their data and the Republican party wants that data. Reproductive Rights is clearly sheering into the talking points and annoys a lot of people broadly but especially in suburbs.
In general it must be reiterated again: Polling has been off in 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022, and in 2023 to varying degrees. While I do not advocate “unskewing” or ignoring the polls I do recommend extreme cuation.
So then the states.
First a quick run down of the also rans: Ohio, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Missouri. Most of these states used to be swing states or are seen as potential swing states. The major example, though I talk about it lower is Florida which in 2016 was decided by 1.2% points and was a swing state before that. In 2020 it was more decisive for Trump, but it could shift. In theory all those states could flip. The Republicans would dearly like Minnesota but that is unlikely. These states flip in a wave election scenario with a lopsided party turn out. Several of them (Florida, Texas, and Oregon) are decidedly expensive to run in so parties want them locked down.
Now then my points of interest:
Nebraska and Maine— Neither of these states are in serious contention. If either one was the election would be very different. However, both states share one feature the other 48 do not: they’re electoral votes are proportional. As in a candidate can win electoral votes by congressional district. As well as a few for the entire state. Maine since 1972 has 2 for winning the state and 1 for each of its two congressional districts. Nebraska since 1992 operated as has 2 for the state and 1 for each of its three congressional districts.
This is actually a throw back to how the Founding Fathers originally conceived and thought of the Electoral College. We have ample letters, papers, and essays from across the spectrum of the Founders politics for proportional Electoral Votes. This changed after the 1824 election when Andrew Jackson lost and spent four years campaigning to make the states winner take all. So the current system is yet another bit of long term damage that walking canker sore Jackson inflicted on the USA nearly two centuries ago from his disastrous presidency. In 2020 Biden won the Omaha Electoral Vote and Trump the Maine 02 Electoral Vote a rare circumstance.
I mention this because as has been reported in several places there has been a push to make the state of Nebraska winner take all. This has been tried before several times but this attempt came with added push by several eight wing celebrities like Charlie Kirk and a personal endorsement from Donald Trump.
abcnews.go.com/Politics/charlie-kirk-trump-nebraska-republicans-scrambling-change-states/story?id=108852864
This failed in part because Nebraska is the only Unicameral legislature in the USA and operates by a very arcane set of systems and rules with controls on how long it meets and when a session can be called. Still there was talk of calling a session to make the change in time for the 2024 election.
This appears to be ended as Maine has now threatened to become a winner take all state in retaliation if Nebraska tries to do so and the Governor and state legislature are very capable of doing it any time Nebraska tries.
abcnews.go.com/Politics/maine-democrats-threaten-switch-winner-delegate-system/story?id=109703620
I bring this up because it is A) a weird story but also B ) one has to ask why the Trump campaign wanted to push for this and what their internal thinking is if they see the race as that tight that they have to try for such an open change.
Florida— Florida is not really in contention. Granted Trump only won Florida by 1% in 2016, and 3% in 2020. Obama won the state in 2012 (by a razor thin margin). It is the third largest state population wise and it does have Democratic strongholds. While it is crass to point it out the state will also have reproductive rights on the ballot with a major ballot to defend abortion access in contention with the state’s aggressive six week ban. These abortion vote drive a lot of people to the polls. In theory the state is in play
Except that the local Democratic Party is clearly suffering from terrible organizational problems, the Republicans have a larger registration advantage ( www.tallahassee.com/story/news/poli.....cans-npas/72992415007/ ), and the state is prohibitively expensive to campaign in for staffing and commercials. It is very clear Democratic Party leaders decided to triage resources after 2022 towards Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona. I think that was the strategically sound move but it makes the current race extremely hard to run in Florida. The working public theory is the Harris Campaign wants the Trump campaign to waste their limited money and time in Florida. I don’t think Trump is that dumb, but it is clear both campaigns have internal numbers showing the state is close.
North Carolina— North Carolina has been on the Democratic Party’s wish lit since Virginia flipped blue and stayed blue. It is a nice pot of Electoral Votes if it could be won. It is also a significantly cheaper state to run adds in then Pennsylvania, Florida, and Nevada. It is just very unlikely to flip. Trump has a strong base there and the state has been close but never flipped to the Democrats. The local Republican Party is also one of the better run and organized groups in the USA. The stars would have to align for Harris, its clear there is a strong BIPOC and women vote for her there and polls are favorable, also the Republican Gubernatorial candidate is clearly unpopular and Democratic turn out is likely to be goosed by a lot of his incendiary comments. If she did win it then Trump would lose the election but there is no evidence it will happen. Still the Harris campaign clearly will sink resources and money in just to try and build for the long term win and the Trump campaign isn’t taking it for granted. It helps the media market covers several other states in play. As one of the earliest states to close polls on election night results here will define the evening. If Trump loses NC then it becomes near impossible for him to win. If he wins NC by a very thin margin then it’s a long night for everyone. A decisive Trump win would be good for him and close races for the rest of the night.
Georgia— Biden won Georgia by 11, 779 votes in 2020. It was one of this thinnest margins. Trying to secure another Georgia win, and perhaps running ads in the Jacksonville, FL media market, isn’t a terrible idea. There isn’t another marquee Senate race like in 2020 for Harris to ride the coattails into victory so I put this in the same region as North Carolina: unlikely but worth a few dollars to try and time visiting. Harris and Walz clearly are trying.
New Mexico— Trump will not win New Mexico. Why am I listing it? Because the Trump campaign and the RNC spent nearly $3 million dollars in 2020 trying to win the state. Trump visited multiple times campaigning with the families of dead cops and victims of violent crime after the Governor refused to crack down on BLM protestors. The GOP really thought the state was winnable and sunk serious cash into the state only to be utterly walloped. Biden won the state by over 10% and after 2022 Republicans have been locked out of almost every major position of power. Supposedly Trump was furious about the loss and waste but by every indication the Trump campaign is planning another run for the bite of the green chili. I say go right ahead but wouldn’t it be more efficient just to light your money on fire? If the Trump campaign really does make a move here it says something and to me it is either A) Harris is in serious trouble (there will be other indications for that) or B ) the Trump campaign is utterly broken. So far so quiet though.
Nevada— At one time Nevada was a very reliable win for Democrats with its extensive organized labor pools, engaged population, and a very well run get out the vote system set up by Senator Harry Reid. I’m not sure what happened but in 2020 and 2022 it is very clear the wheels have come off that cart. The state is a toss up and in play, numerous polls show Trump in a comfortable lead. I think it is closer the that and one should be careful on extrapolation but Harris will need to sink in resources into an expensive media marketplace. If Harris loses Nevada that makes everything a lot closer, she can win without it but she’d likely want that flank secured.
Arizona— Arizona is a mirror to Nevada it used to be a very reliable Republican state. Then Biden won it in 2020, by a smaller number then he won Georgia, and the 2022 election was a garbage scow fire of unpopular candidates many of whom appear to be returning to the ticket. This allowed the Democrats to take key seats and positions in the state. The state Arizona Republicans are by some accounts facing serious financial hardship or at least strains. That can have consequences on organization and turnout. That can change still, but there is only so far money can go if the personnel aren’t in cohesion. Running several unpopular candidates, like Kari Lake again, does not help their position. Further not to be crass but abortion is a top line issue in the state with a ballot measure on for abortion access and a recent total abortion ban overturned by the Democrats (to a still deeply unpopular 15 week ban). The Harris Campaign would be foolish not to sink serious time and money into the state but it will be a nail biter.
Wisconsin— One of the so-called blue wall states, that in 2016 were won by Trump securing his victory by thin margin. It was the closest of the three blue walls in 2020. I think it will be close and I want to see some more data. At the same time of all the states the public polling has been consistently good for Harris, and before her Biden. Still both campaigns have sunk huge sums into the state for campaign offices, commercials, and personel. Harris has a reasonably good chance here and if she wins it will likely win the others. It just doesn’t have the anecdotal data of PA and MI to back that up rather its all trend line and Trump has his own base of support here.
Michigan—There is a very ample population of people in the state who are not happy with the current Palestine humanitarian crisis, if they stay home Harris has a serious problem. At the same time Harris has a very well organized local operation, a lot of pro union turn out support, and is popular in other parts. The state Democratic Party is well organized and delivered a Democratic Legislature and Governorship in 2022 for the first time in decades. The local Republican Party has been riven by high profile conflicts and financial issues ( as an example: apnews.com/article/michigan-republican-party-kristina-karamo-2daaf24f17ba01d795612631d94e9654 this was high profile enough NPR’s This American Life did an episode on the mess https://overcast.fm/+E24ByaPBs ). The state is in other words plainly weird and hard to predict due to so many conflicting unknowns. Harris is currently polling decently there (but in the margin of error) and has been since she entered the race but these external factors of local group dissatisfaction, the instability of the local parties, are making this a state to watch and unstable.
Pennsylvania— As one of the so-called blue wall states PA used to be a reliable Democratic Party state now it is a swing state. It was key to Trump winning in 2016 and key to Biden winning in 2020. There are a lot of reasons why the state should be a win for Harris demographically. Further recent history wise in the last two years there have been six special elections in PA and they ALL went to the democrats, even in Republican leaning districts. The senate race is between a popular Democratic incumbent versus a guy from Connecticut, who is clearly not liked. Biden and now Harris have invested a lot of time and money in the state as well and the local party seems well organized. Yet, the polls remain closer here then Michigan and Wisconsin and with the big pot of delegates of all the states on this list this is the one everyone is watching. Victory here likely defines the election (Harris CAN win without Pennsylvania but it gets significantly harder to the point of unlikely. Trump can win without PA but it would be far easier with it). Both campaigns are deploying heavily in the state in the next few weeks and a lot of stops, commercials, and offices are planned. This is the state everyone is watching. Yet it is also the state whose polls close among the latest and who don’t count their early ballots quickly.
In other words there are a lot of unknowns and nothing is assured. At the same time we are getting a fascinating look at the value of local operations and turn out groups versus media buzz.
Price of Thorns book review
Posted a year agoPrice of Thorns is the tale of Nivvy who is a master thief, though they are having just a bit of bad luck. A slump if you will that has gotten him imprisoned in a small town. Fortunately, a woman in frayed finery gets him out of his predicament and has hired Nivvy to "steal a kingdom" for her. He figures why not, it might pay well and get him back into the good graces of the Thieves Guild. Part of how he got into this bad turn is after he had been unjustly struck from their ranks. However, as the journey begins Nivvy starts to realize he might in fact be working for an Evil Queen from fairy tales. How far is he willing to go to fulfill a contract and what Price will she make him pay to finally fulfill her destiny.
I sat down and read this book rather quickly. Honestly, I fell in love with this book. This one really was a wonderful read and I got invested in it. I want other people to get it and read it so I can talk about it with them.
You can purchase the book here: www.furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=1253
The ebook here: www.argyllproductions.com/product/t.....t/the-price-of-thorns/
This really might have been my favorite book I read of 2023 (I was a bit slow to post this). Considering I read 107 books that year that is saying something (I’ve read more than usual in 2023 year to be fair but I am most glad I read Price of Thorns). This one was not only well written it hit a lot of personal interests and preferences for stories. So, your preferences will guide you to some degree as with any novel, but this book was truly excellent and is at least worth a try even if it doesn’t sound to your tastes. This is Tim Susman pulling out some of his best techniques and writing style to deliver not only a great story but a meditation on identity and perspective that I found intriguing.
For those who don’t need a deep dive I will say this: the characters are engaging, the writing witty, and the story has a strong momentum. For a 400+ page epic fantasy there is very little wasted space. Tim Susman’s Price of Thorns develops a world and its people holistically and even moments that seem extraneous have a habit of returning later as foreshadowing. As usual Susman’s talent for writing endings and denouement brings a tightly written novel to a satisfying and engaging ending. All while playing with the idea of endings as it implies so many more potential stories with these characters.
Tim Susman, as I have said many times before, has a real talent for writing characters and giving them interesting and believable motivations and actions. Imperfect people trying to do better (Dev and Lee), or just simply existing and trying to thrive (Jae from Unfinished Business) remains an area he loves to play with characters. As I have also said many times Susman as an author always tries to do something different with his novels always experimenting with formula and style in grand or small ways. Here he takes his familiar skill with characters and tries to place them in the context of fairy tale archetypes. In many ways he succeeds in humanizing such archetypes not by making them overly complex but instead delving into how such archetypes would behave in daily life. Nivvy, your standard scoundrel with a heart of gold, is humanized by their daily life and the people around them. We need to see Nivvy enjoying a bath, finding favorite foods, and cussing because that makes their archetype real. Bella, the evil queen, is made all the more human when her callousness collides with others and makes her enemies even as she doesn’t realize it.
I enjoyed this cast of characters. Even the ones I found most annoying or difficult were to the good of the novel and played in the world in an interesting way. I think it is to Susman’s credit that in my opinion this large cast of characters will get different reactions and no one who reads this book will realize which ones I hated and which ones I loved.
Price of Thorns is in my opinion a fascinating fantasy novel because it embraces the concept of fairy tales and the rules of fairy tales. Legends and folk tales provide the tapestry discussing the wider world and is obscure long history of sublime events. A world where flying castles, geese that lay precious metals, helpful wizened folk, dijinn, fair folk, and talking animals live beside princess, princesses, and the odd cursed comb and magic fruit. In this world Fairy Tales happen and they happen every day, though people don’t always believe the outlandish things said. Stories about the past are entertaining tales told for a bit of coin or in trade and they are also the force needed to power the very source of magic, which is a truly intriguing concept for a fantasy novel. With the right tale one can do incredible things, but if a story is forgotten the magic can be lost as well. So people trade stories not only for entertainment but for potential enlightenment and power.
I adore fairy tales and cuentos so to see these sorts of stories centered in a fantasy novel and celebrated is a delight. Often modern fantasy calls on aspects of these stories but here they are woven into not just the world, the setting, the very magic, but into the prose itself. Folk Tales inform the style here and it is a delight to see it used, and see it broken. We have an Evil Queen but the question the book puts forth is not why is she evil but HOW and that is to me an intriguing question. We understand at the end the why and what but Tim Susman delivers an important understanding of how these actions impact others and how sometimes people will want to excuse evil or dismiss horror. Lies that we tell ourselves and each other have power and it is clear Susman wanted to delve into that with Bella the Evil Queen.
It is important that the power of stories in the narrative is dissected in the book. Stories have power, even if they are not fully understood, but they are pointedly not true. Or they are not a whole truth, rather a perspective. I find it fascinating that characters say “That isn’t the way I heard it” rather then “that isn’t the true story” and Oigel the storyteller even details before he starts one tale why he chooses some names and places due to nostalgia and notes rather then a search for veracity. In many ways even the character Scarlet who insists her stories are the historical truth must be questioned in part, which the characters do despite her frustrated annoyance.
Stories are framed not just to have raw power but they also define the characters. Nivvy defines their transmasc identity as the story they tell. Price of Thorns loves to play with identity as a story. The power of identity and how others define you and you define yourself is an well trod path for Susman and one he has truly refined for this story. The core of the story and the climax is the confrontation between the story we tell about ourselves and the stories people tell about us. Identity has become more and more important in recent decades in the LGBTQIA+ community and this is an interesting meditation on that concept. To me at least this was an interesting idea to remember to question our own assumptions and remember the power we have over defining ourselves.
Considering how many characters are transmuted and transformed in this novel and must grapple with their identity and self-perception as well as how the world sees them this is a great concept to explore. This book is full of transforming curses, blessings, and artifacts.
In this world stories don’t just have literal power for spells they keep their figurative power to inspire, unite, divide, terrify, and warn. It is even mentioned one tale we hear early on was a tool of essentially propaganda that outlasted its origin. Stories can be told many ways and lack permanency and we end the book on a kind note about that, because Price of Thorns does not try to justify stories, rather the narrative says stories are worthwhile for their own sake. They may help us define ourselves, to define our happiness, to define our community, but in the end a story only needs to exist.
A deep, intriguing, and interesting novel I loved. I hope others pick this up!
I sat down and read this book rather quickly. Honestly, I fell in love with this book. This one really was a wonderful read and I got invested in it. I want other people to get it and read it so I can talk about it with them.
You can purchase the book here: www.furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=1253
The ebook here: www.argyllproductions.com/product/t.....t/the-price-of-thorns/
This really might have been my favorite book I read of 2023 (I was a bit slow to post this). Considering I read 107 books that year that is saying something (I’ve read more than usual in 2023 year to be fair but I am most glad I read Price of Thorns). This one was not only well written it hit a lot of personal interests and preferences for stories. So, your preferences will guide you to some degree as with any novel, but this book was truly excellent and is at least worth a try even if it doesn’t sound to your tastes. This is Tim Susman pulling out some of his best techniques and writing style to deliver not only a great story but a meditation on identity and perspective that I found intriguing.
For those who don’t need a deep dive I will say this: the characters are engaging, the writing witty, and the story has a strong momentum. For a 400+ page epic fantasy there is very little wasted space. Tim Susman’s Price of Thorns develops a world and its people holistically and even moments that seem extraneous have a habit of returning later as foreshadowing. As usual Susman’s talent for writing endings and denouement brings a tightly written novel to a satisfying and engaging ending. All while playing with the idea of endings as it implies so many more potential stories with these characters.
Tim Susman, as I have said many times before, has a real talent for writing characters and giving them interesting and believable motivations and actions. Imperfect people trying to do better (Dev and Lee), or just simply existing and trying to thrive (Jae from Unfinished Business) remains an area he loves to play with characters. As I have also said many times Susman as an author always tries to do something different with his novels always experimenting with formula and style in grand or small ways. Here he takes his familiar skill with characters and tries to place them in the context of fairy tale archetypes. In many ways he succeeds in humanizing such archetypes not by making them overly complex but instead delving into how such archetypes would behave in daily life. Nivvy, your standard scoundrel with a heart of gold, is humanized by their daily life and the people around them. We need to see Nivvy enjoying a bath, finding favorite foods, and cussing because that makes their archetype real. Bella, the evil queen, is made all the more human when her callousness collides with others and makes her enemies even as she doesn’t realize it.
I enjoyed this cast of characters. Even the ones I found most annoying or difficult were to the good of the novel and played in the world in an interesting way. I think it is to Susman’s credit that in my opinion this large cast of characters will get different reactions and no one who reads this book will realize which ones I hated and which ones I loved.
Price of Thorns is in my opinion a fascinating fantasy novel because it embraces the concept of fairy tales and the rules of fairy tales. Legends and folk tales provide the tapestry discussing the wider world and is obscure long history of sublime events. A world where flying castles, geese that lay precious metals, helpful wizened folk, dijinn, fair folk, and talking animals live beside princess, princesses, and the odd cursed comb and magic fruit. In this world Fairy Tales happen and they happen every day, though people don’t always believe the outlandish things said. Stories about the past are entertaining tales told for a bit of coin or in trade and they are also the force needed to power the very source of magic, which is a truly intriguing concept for a fantasy novel. With the right tale one can do incredible things, but if a story is forgotten the magic can be lost as well. So people trade stories not only for entertainment but for potential enlightenment and power.
I adore fairy tales and cuentos so to see these sorts of stories centered in a fantasy novel and celebrated is a delight. Often modern fantasy calls on aspects of these stories but here they are woven into not just the world, the setting, the very magic, but into the prose itself. Folk Tales inform the style here and it is a delight to see it used, and see it broken. We have an Evil Queen but the question the book puts forth is not why is she evil but HOW and that is to me an intriguing question. We understand at the end the why and what but Tim Susman delivers an important understanding of how these actions impact others and how sometimes people will want to excuse evil or dismiss horror. Lies that we tell ourselves and each other have power and it is clear Susman wanted to delve into that with Bella the Evil Queen.
It is important that the power of stories in the narrative is dissected in the book. Stories have power, even if they are not fully understood, but they are pointedly not true. Or they are not a whole truth, rather a perspective. I find it fascinating that characters say “That isn’t the way I heard it” rather then “that isn’t the true story” and Oigel the storyteller even details before he starts one tale why he chooses some names and places due to nostalgia and notes rather then a search for veracity. In many ways even the character Scarlet who insists her stories are the historical truth must be questioned in part, which the characters do despite her frustrated annoyance.
Stories are framed not just to have raw power but they also define the characters. Nivvy defines their transmasc identity as the story they tell. Price of Thorns loves to play with identity as a story. The power of identity and how others define you and you define yourself is an well trod path for Susman and one he has truly refined for this story. The core of the story and the climax is the confrontation between the story we tell about ourselves and the stories people tell about us. Identity has become more and more important in recent decades in the LGBTQIA+ community and this is an interesting meditation on that concept. To me at least this was an interesting idea to remember to question our own assumptions and remember the power we have over defining ourselves.
Considering how many characters are transmuted and transformed in this novel and must grapple with their identity and self-perception as well as how the world sees them this is a great concept to explore. This book is full of transforming curses, blessings, and artifacts.
In this world stories don’t just have literal power for spells they keep their figurative power to inspire, unite, divide, terrify, and warn. It is even mentioned one tale we hear early on was a tool of essentially propaganda that outlasted its origin. Stories can be told many ways and lack permanency and we end the book on a kind note about that, because Price of Thorns does not try to justify stories, rather the narrative says stories are worthwhile for their own sake. They may help us define ourselves, to define our happiness, to define our community, but in the end a story only needs to exist.
A deep, intriguing, and interesting novel I loved. I hope others pick this up!
May 2024 Political thoughts
Posted a year agoSo, it is May now and the consensus really is that the general election of 2024 began in earnest in March. A lot of people point to the big state of the union speech Biden gave as the kick off or towards Nikki Haley dropping out. Before then while you can say some people had been running since 2020 a number of factors have compressed. I firmly believe that Trump was not inherently going to be the nominee for the Republican Party (likely, yes, but not assured). Someone outside of Dean Phillips could have, in theory, run a campaign against Biden (though I sincerely doubt such a candidate would have won).
However, with sixmonths between now and the election I thought I’d write where I think the campaign is in general. To summarize: its May, a lot can happen in six months and we have a host of unknowns but several data points.
I maintain that having an election running this long (which is ahistorical for much of the modern presidency until 2008) is not a good thing. It is frighteningly expensive for one thing and as someone who thinks money in political campaigns needs to be tightly monitored and reviewed that is troubling. I also firmly believe it exhaust nuance in the modern media which needs fresh headlines constantly to feed the void and drive advertisement interest. I also firmly believe it tires people out, and frankly a large portion of the country who will vote are not paying attention (we’ll get to that so stick a pin in it for now).
In many ways as of right now this has looked and acted like a very normal, though long, campaign. In many ways it has been deeply normal in its contours despite the personalities and everything else. In many ways this gives us a fairly good concept of the direction of things. There are two oddities. 1) We have not seen a candidate who lost the presidency run for a nonconsecutive term and win his presidential primary in well over a century. 2) it is odd that a candidate is under multiple indictments and is currently on trial. Honestly, no one truly knows how those factors will impact the race.
While I don’t agree very often with Andy Craig and his commentary I don’t disagree with his assertion on March 28th www.theunpopulist.net/p/biden-vs-tr.....mp-is-the-rematch-that The fact is that while generally neither candidate is particularly popular with the general population they remain popular within their parties. There is also a very good argument that a lot of that unpopularity for both candidates is a stridency of party politics weighing the scale that didn’t exist culturally in decades past (I remain skeptical but I will admit the evidence is compelling).
This is the actual big unknown of the political race: both candidates are well known figures who have served in the office. For decades we have usually seen relative unknowns who need to be introduced to he general public and both campaigns spend gobs of money trying to frame public perception of the candidates and their stances. This is an odd occurrence we do not often see. It also means people have very intense ingrained views of both candidates, but we know how they will act in office. We’ve rarely seen that, and it likely does impact polling and perceptions.
I likely have a longer essay to say about polling, I’ll leave off on it mostly. Unless people want to read a very dry treatise. I will remind everyone polling is indicative not predictive (a thing I say often). It tells you how voters feel currently (or because most polls take time to organize their data how polled people felt some time prior to when you view it. People can respond to polling data and change and people will change their views as events go on. This far out from an election (six months) I usually urge caution on reading the polls too closely. I also think people have to have skepticism because (as will be noted later) a significant portion of the country isn’t paying attention yet and when someone asks a persona question on a topic they haven’t thought about you can get some pretty wild answers.
Which brings us to primaries, famously tricky to poll due to their small numbers, and people using them as a data point. As I have said over many years we must treat the primaries with a certain level of skepticism. Primaries rarely are predictive on end results, especially as their numbers and turn out are very small fractions of the overall population. I don’t think we can ignore he data from the primaries, but it should be treated carefully. The data does seem to show problems for both candidates.
President Joe Biden in the primaries I would argue has shown some positive aspects. He clearly has a well manage and organized ground game in most of the states for turn out, registration, and organization. This isn’t like 2012 where Obama had several bad news cycles because he did poorly in primaries (like having a convicted felon defeat him in West Virginia). The Biden campaign clearly wants to avoid that and he’s had solid turn out and support. To me that says: good ground organization. You can not have Biden winning New Hampshire definitively without a good turn out operation. Biden, lest we all forget, was not on the New Hampshire primary ballot this year. So, voters were turned out to write his name in (Properly) and win him a majority which happened.
That is all true but at the same time he clearly has a dissatisfied section of voters turning out in primaries and voting significantly, notably in Michigan and New York. Not in every state but in enough that the Biden campaign should be concerned. A lot of that is likely based on the current conflict in Israel and Palestine. That points to problems in the general election (though to what extent some will debate. I tend to think it will be a problem that needs to be addressed).
In many ways, Joe Biden in my opinion, has failed to meet the moment on policy, failed to handle a serious problem, and failed to communicate his goals and how long-term policy will change (because the status quo is clearly not working). Will that have an impact? No idea, it is May and the election is six months away, but this has clearly upset a portion of registered voters who are not happy.
By the same token and logic we can not ignore the fact that Trump has clearly had problems in his primaries and there is a dissatisfied section of registered Republicans at least in the primaries. Again, primaries have small populations in turn out. Some people want to dismiss the results claiming they are mischief makers from the Democrats. However, even if we look at closed primaries (where you MUST be a registered republican to vote) after Haley (the last challenger to Trump) stepped out we see in chronological order: Florida (19% against), Kansas (25% against), Connecticut (22% against), New York (18% against), and Pennsylvania (17% against). These are people who actively took time out of their day to vote in a primary against the person who has already secured a win. These are the people who will show up on election day as they’re dedicated voters. Nearly a quarter of them are not pleased with Trump.
The important detail to note is that these results mirror the open primary states matching with similar numbers. This undercuts the argument of a mass ground swell of trouble making Dems flooding these primaries. You’d have to assume sprawling conspiracy to organize people to change their registration and turn out to vote. That seems unlikely.
Are these eye-popping staggering numbers? No, but they shouldn’t be ignored just as you shouldn’t ignore Biden’s percentiles. Most of those people will end up supporting Trump in the ballot box, but if even a fraction do not show up or leave the presidential section blank that is a problem for Trump. The simple fact is to use Pennsylvania as an example that 17% translates to 116,000 people which isn’t much (that would be considered a midsized town or suburb) until you remember that Biden won PA by 80,000 votes. So, one has to wonder where independents and others are on this one.
Again, one must be extremely careful. Primaries are small population samples and there is no serious evidence they predict results in the general election. They are weird and tend to attract very involved voters. Further campaigns can and do adapt to problems and work on them. I think Biden’s campaign has at least made a token attempt to communicate with those within Democratic circles dissatisfied with him, I am less convinced with Trump dealing with such things. I suspect the Trump Campaign takes it as a given these dissatisfied primary voters will be coming back into the fold and want to focus on nontraditional voters. However, it is May, and you can easily repair such things over several months so it is a freefloating data point at this time. In this field there is a lot of behind the scenes work that isn’t going to be reported or seen by people.
Which brings us to the issue I mentioned above that large numbers of people are not really paying attention. This is a very old and settled point in political science and 2024 has not shown much variation on this point. A significant portion of the population just doesn’t pay attention to an election until October. September at the earliest. There are a significant number of people who aren’t actually aware Biden and Trump are the two candidates for president from the major parties much less who will be on their ballots in down ticket races. They’re not aware of the issues or current events in politics beyond generalities. They just aren’t paying attention yet except once in a while to a headline.
It must be stressed that many of these people do get informed. They do pay attention and research. There is ample strong evidence these people go into the ballot booth informed. They just aren’t doing it now, and honestly considering this is a marathon over long presidential campaign I can’t say they are wrong. Many of these people will vote for their preferred party because that works for them, but you can say the same thing of people who are paying attention now. Will there be deeply misinformed voters who aren’t paying attention? Yes, obviously, but I defy anyone to tell me there are people paying attention now who aren’t incredibly arbitrary and misinformed.
There is a famous anecdotal story from 1988 (and one I find apocryphal) where in people chose to vote against George H.W. Bush because of the frequency of times he looked at his watch and that sunk his campaign. Evidence has always been lacking but a lot of people have a bad tendency of referencing that type of story to shame and diminish those who don’t pay attention at all times. I’d like people to generally be better informed but I’d be lying if I said I was well informed myself and I question if people need to hear every news headline at once. Sometimes you’re better informed if you wait and see how an event plays out.
A lot of money, really an obscene amount, is going to be spent this election cycle on turn out and commercials trying to frame the candidates and attach policies. All of this in service to reaching not just the voters who are ignoring the current election news right now but potential voters who were unsure about voting or those who need outreach. To say nothing of the cottage industry of lawyers that have built up around the political parties like a barnacle reef.
There is a regular and robust debate on the utility and value of campaign outreach offices, local organization, and get out the vote operations. The counter argument goes campaigns are most effective when they energize the voters to turn out in various ways through rhetoric and speeches. You don’t need hesitant voter turn out you can’t predict if your voters aren’t hesitant. There is a reasonable evidence that they can become a way to bilk campaigns of money and that their effectiveness can vary. Similarly, commercials and campaign communication can also be a trap for wasted funds. I tend to believe these things can be useful if properly and competently run. I think they can have diminishing returns, but it is better to have a well-run system on a local level turning out and getting votes. It does take money, however, to do such outreach and offices.
A lot of ink has been spilled that the Biden campaign has been having very successful fund raising reports since March. That the backbone of their operation has been small donations under $200. They have been spending it expanding the Biden turn out operations and organization I mentioned above along with an aggressive advertisement buy. Similarly a lot of reporting has noted the Trump campaign has had weak fund raising numbers and their small donor pool has not been as forthcoming according to those reports. This is actually an area that has been fascinating as for a long time as Trump’s campaign famously will not share its donor rolodex with the Republican party as a whole unlike Biden with the various Democratic Party operations. Trump now has to in theory turn to the Republican’s various call sheets and contacts to fundraise. Trump has had fewer rallies as well and his rallies have had smaller numbers turn out since 2022. This gets pointed out a lot, and I don’t disagree with the data points but I think there are caveats.
We’re still six months out and serious fundraising often happens in the summer after the conventions or right before. I’d argue that as I said much earlier there is a lot of opacity in spending and money outside of campaigns. As the election draws closer there will be an increase in small and larger donations. Biden and Clinton significantly outraised Trump in 2016 and 2020. Money raised is a historically tricky measure of baseline support and turn out.
As noted ,though even with those caveats you can’t dismiss the datapoints. We have six months and a lot can change between then and now. That’s the big refrain. We have a frankly stupid amount of time and historically despite the fact that it often feels like a lot is happening, but historically this doesn’t always change very much. We have what appears to be a normal election cycle and since 2018 the Democrats have generally done better in each election then they should have from a historical trends perspective. Biden is doing better in several factors, but the President and the campaign would be fools not to take this very seriously and this will likely be a close election (not as close as 2000 but close enough).Both candidates have trouble with their coalitions and will have to figure out how to stitch together new ones, and they will both have difficulties.
However, with sixmonths between now and the election I thought I’d write where I think the campaign is in general. To summarize: its May, a lot can happen in six months and we have a host of unknowns but several data points.
I maintain that having an election running this long (which is ahistorical for much of the modern presidency until 2008) is not a good thing. It is frighteningly expensive for one thing and as someone who thinks money in political campaigns needs to be tightly monitored and reviewed that is troubling. I also firmly believe it exhaust nuance in the modern media which needs fresh headlines constantly to feed the void and drive advertisement interest. I also firmly believe it tires people out, and frankly a large portion of the country who will vote are not paying attention (we’ll get to that so stick a pin in it for now).
In many ways as of right now this has looked and acted like a very normal, though long, campaign. In many ways it has been deeply normal in its contours despite the personalities and everything else. In many ways this gives us a fairly good concept of the direction of things. There are two oddities. 1) We have not seen a candidate who lost the presidency run for a nonconsecutive term and win his presidential primary in well over a century. 2) it is odd that a candidate is under multiple indictments and is currently on trial. Honestly, no one truly knows how those factors will impact the race.
While I don’t agree very often with Andy Craig and his commentary I don’t disagree with his assertion on March 28th www.theunpopulist.net/p/biden-vs-tr.....mp-is-the-rematch-that The fact is that while generally neither candidate is particularly popular with the general population they remain popular within their parties. There is also a very good argument that a lot of that unpopularity for both candidates is a stridency of party politics weighing the scale that didn’t exist culturally in decades past (I remain skeptical but I will admit the evidence is compelling).
This is the actual big unknown of the political race: both candidates are well known figures who have served in the office. For decades we have usually seen relative unknowns who need to be introduced to he general public and both campaigns spend gobs of money trying to frame public perception of the candidates and their stances. This is an odd occurrence we do not often see. It also means people have very intense ingrained views of both candidates, but we know how they will act in office. We’ve rarely seen that, and it likely does impact polling and perceptions.
I likely have a longer essay to say about polling, I’ll leave off on it mostly. Unless people want to read a very dry treatise. I will remind everyone polling is indicative not predictive (a thing I say often). It tells you how voters feel currently (or because most polls take time to organize their data how polled people felt some time prior to when you view it. People can respond to polling data and change and people will change their views as events go on. This far out from an election (six months) I usually urge caution on reading the polls too closely. I also think people have to have skepticism because (as will be noted later) a significant portion of the country isn’t paying attention yet and when someone asks a persona question on a topic they haven’t thought about you can get some pretty wild answers.
Which brings us to primaries, famously tricky to poll due to their small numbers, and people using them as a data point. As I have said over many years we must treat the primaries with a certain level of skepticism. Primaries rarely are predictive on end results, especially as their numbers and turn out are very small fractions of the overall population. I don’t think we can ignore he data from the primaries, but it should be treated carefully. The data does seem to show problems for both candidates.
President Joe Biden in the primaries I would argue has shown some positive aspects. He clearly has a well manage and organized ground game in most of the states for turn out, registration, and organization. This isn’t like 2012 where Obama had several bad news cycles because he did poorly in primaries (like having a convicted felon defeat him in West Virginia). The Biden campaign clearly wants to avoid that and he’s had solid turn out and support. To me that says: good ground organization. You can not have Biden winning New Hampshire definitively without a good turn out operation. Biden, lest we all forget, was not on the New Hampshire primary ballot this year. So, voters were turned out to write his name in (Properly) and win him a majority which happened.
That is all true but at the same time he clearly has a dissatisfied section of voters turning out in primaries and voting significantly, notably in Michigan and New York. Not in every state but in enough that the Biden campaign should be concerned. A lot of that is likely based on the current conflict in Israel and Palestine. That points to problems in the general election (though to what extent some will debate. I tend to think it will be a problem that needs to be addressed).
In many ways, Joe Biden in my opinion, has failed to meet the moment on policy, failed to handle a serious problem, and failed to communicate his goals and how long-term policy will change (because the status quo is clearly not working). Will that have an impact? No idea, it is May and the election is six months away, but this has clearly upset a portion of registered voters who are not happy.
By the same token and logic we can not ignore the fact that Trump has clearly had problems in his primaries and there is a dissatisfied section of registered Republicans at least in the primaries. Again, primaries have small populations in turn out. Some people want to dismiss the results claiming they are mischief makers from the Democrats. However, even if we look at closed primaries (where you MUST be a registered republican to vote) after Haley (the last challenger to Trump) stepped out we see in chronological order: Florida (19% against), Kansas (25% against), Connecticut (22% against), New York (18% against), and Pennsylvania (17% against). These are people who actively took time out of their day to vote in a primary against the person who has already secured a win. These are the people who will show up on election day as they’re dedicated voters. Nearly a quarter of them are not pleased with Trump.
The important detail to note is that these results mirror the open primary states matching with similar numbers. This undercuts the argument of a mass ground swell of trouble making Dems flooding these primaries. You’d have to assume sprawling conspiracy to organize people to change their registration and turn out to vote. That seems unlikely.
Are these eye-popping staggering numbers? No, but they shouldn’t be ignored just as you shouldn’t ignore Biden’s percentiles. Most of those people will end up supporting Trump in the ballot box, but if even a fraction do not show up or leave the presidential section blank that is a problem for Trump. The simple fact is to use Pennsylvania as an example that 17% translates to 116,000 people which isn’t much (that would be considered a midsized town or suburb) until you remember that Biden won PA by 80,000 votes. So, one has to wonder where independents and others are on this one.
Again, one must be extremely careful. Primaries are small population samples and there is no serious evidence they predict results in the general election. They are weird and tend to attract very involved voters. Further campaigns can and do adapt to problems and work on them. I think Biden’s campaign has at least made a token attempt to communicate with those within Democratic circles dissatisfied with him, I am less convinced with Trump dealing with such things. I suspect the Trump Campaign takes it as a given these dissatisfied primary voters will be coming back into the fold and want to focus on nontraditional voters. However, it is May, and you can easily repair such things over several months so it is a freefloating data point at this time. In this field there is a lot of behind the scenes work that isn’t going to be reported or seen by people.
Which brings us to the issue I mentioned above that large numbers of people are not really paying attention. This is a very old and settled point in political science and 2024 has not shown much variation on this point. A significant portion of the population just doesn’t pay attention to an election until October. September at the earliest. There are a significant number of people who aren’t actually aware Biden and Trump are the two candidates for president from the major parties much less who will be on their ballots in down ticket races. They’re not aware of the issues or current events in politics beyond generalities. They just aren’t paying attention yet except once in a while to a headline.
It must be stressed that many of these people do get informed. They do pay attention and research. There is ample strong evidence these people go into the ballot booth informed. They just aren’t doing it now, and honestly considering this is a marathon over long presidential campaign I can’t say they are wrong. Many of these people will vote for their preferred party because that works for them, but you can say the same thing of people who are paying attention now. Will there be deeply misinformed voters who aren’t paying attention? Yes, obviously, but I defy anyone to tell me there are people paying attention now who aren’t incredibly arbitrary and misinformed.
There is a famous anecdotal story from 1988 (and one I find apocryphal) where in people chose to vote against George H.W. Bush because of the frequency of times he looked at his watch and that sunk his campaign. Evidence has always been lacking but a lot of people have a bad tendency of referencing that type of story to shame and diminish those who don’t pay attention at all times. I’d like people to generally be better informed but I’d be lying if I said I was well informed myself and I question if people need to hear every news headline at once. Sometimes you’re better informed if you wait and see how an event plays out.
A lot of money, really an obscene amount, is going to be spent this election cycle on turn out and commercials trying to frame the candidates and attach policies. All of this in service to reaching not just the voters who are ignoring the current election news right now but potential voters who were unsure about voting or those who need outreach. To say nothing of the cottage industry of lawyers that have built up around the political parties like a barnacle reef.
There is a regular and robust debate on the utility and value of campaign outreach offices, local organization, and get out the vote operations. The counter argument goes campaigns are most effective when they energize the voters to turn out in various ways through rhetoric and speeches. You don’t need hesitant voter turn out you can’t predict if your voters aren’t hesitant. There is a reasonable evidence that they can become a way to bilk campaigns of money and that their effectiveness can vary. Similarly, commercials and campaign communication can also be a trap for wasted funds. I tend to believe these things can be useful if properly and competently run. I think they can have diminishing returns, but it is better to have a well-run system on a local level turning out and getting votes. It does take money, however, to do such outreach and offices.
A lot of ink has been spilled that the Biden campaign has been having very successful fund raising reports since March. That the backbone of their operation has been small donations under $200. They have been spending it expanding the Biden turn out operations and organization I mentioned above along with an aggressive advertisement buy. Similarly a lot of reporting has noted the Trump campaign has had weak fund raising numbers and their small donor pool has not been as forthcoming according to those reports. This is actually an area that has been fascinating as for a long time as Trump’s campaign famously will not share its donor rolodex with the Republican party as a whole unlike Biden with the various Democratic Party operations. Trump now has to in theory turn to the Republican’s various call sheets and contacts to fundraise. Trump has had fewer rallies as well and his rallies have had smaller numbers turn out since 2022. This gets pointed out a lot, and I don’t disagree with the data points but I think there are caveats.
We’re still six months out and serious fundraising often happens in the summer after the conventions or right before. I’d argue that as I said much earlier there is a lot of opacity in spending and money outside of campaigns. As the election draws closer there will be an increase in small and larger donations. Biden and Clinton significantly outraised Trump in 2016 and 2020. Money raised is a historically tricky measure of baseline support and turn out.
As noted ,though even with those caveats you can’t dismiss the datapoints. We have six months and a lot can change between then and now. That’s the big refrain. We have a frankly stupid amount of time and historically despite the fact that it often feels like a lot is happening, but historically this doesn’t always change very much. We have what appears to be a normal election cycle and since 2018 the Democrats have generally done better in each election then they should have from a historical trends perspective. Biden is doing better in several factors, but the President and the campaign would be fools not to take this very seriously and this will likely be a close election (not as close as 2000 but close enough).Both candidates have trouble with their coalitions and will have to figure out how to stitch together new ones, and they will both have difficulties.
Enjoying more Green Tea
Posted a year agoHonestly of late I have been really enjoying a lot more green teas lately. Normally I am a black irish breakfast or earl grey type.
Michigan Results
Posted a year agoWell since exactly one person said these commentaries are helpful I think I’ll unpack the Uncommitted vote in Michigan a bit as a lot of ink is spilled on this and I have a perspective.
First of all as noted yesterday the people organizing the Uncommitted vote on the issue of Biden’s handling of Israel and Palestine are the winners here. They raised the profile of the issue, got it into major corporate news organizations, and are being praised in the news the day after for success. That is all factual and reasonable. Winning a news cycle is just as important to an issue as anything else.
If we compared to 2012 which was the last time a sitting Democrat had a primary in Michigan (and this is a very questionable comparison because Primaries are flawed and weird and should be treated carefully). In 2012 the Uncommitted vote (which was not heavily organized nor had a turn out operation) was 20,000+ and roughly 10% of the primary vote. In 2024 the Uncommitted vote was 101,000+. That is a very impressive number considering how late the turn out operations was in the state. I commented yesterday that this was a hurdle I training and communication but it was met. Some have pointed out Uncommitted can also mean people dissatisfied about Biden’s age, the Democrats in general, and the slew of candidates that isn’t incorrect that is likely I there but that is clearly not the entire pie here and one can’t ignore the organizing. It is clear that the Biden campaign needs to take that seriously.
Still, it must be pointed out that despite 5x the numbers state wide they only got 13.2% compared to the roughly 10% of 2012. That is because 762,000 people voted in 2024 as compared to194,000 in 2012 (a near 400% increase in the total vote turn out) and one of the biggest turn outs of 2024 for the Democratic Primary. Biden won 81% of the state handily. Structurally this means Biden gets 115 delegates and 2 Uncommitted delegates go to the national convention (not an unheard of number) A Significant majority of people turned out to support Biden in very large numbers that were atypical to the other states this year and very strong. His worst state in results is still New Hampshire with 63.9% (79,000+ voters) and Biden wasn’t even on that ballot those were write-ins (don’t even get me started on that). That can’t be ignored either and it raises questions of how those numbers got turned out.
The most obvious and logical conclusion is that much like in New Hampshire and other states Biden has a competent turn out operation and campaign to avoid embarrassment who are setting up an infrastructure for the general election for turn out. Said organization recognized the need to secure Michigan delegates and did so. Another option that I don’t prefer but I can’t dismiss out of hand is that a portion of Michigan voters were turned off by the Uncommitted campaign and turned out in opposition (this seems unlikely but that can happen with such small numbers in a primary). The other option is there is just a large number of very motivated Democratic Primary voters who are enthused for Biden. As is obvious I have my preferences in the reading of these data points.
It needs to be stressed one should be very careful reading the data of a primary. As I have said MANY times before Primaries are interesting but it is easy to over extrapolate from very poor data. There are over 10,000,000 people living in Michigan the turn out for the Democratic primary is less then 8% of that (and Republicans who had a much closer and more high profile primary had around 10%). I can not say Biden’s 81% win is bad, its good even for an incumbent, Trump is clearly having a much closer race even though he is the likely winner people are still turning out in a not insignificant number.. But you also can not ignore the Uncommitted vote. As noted Biden would be a fool to ignore them (and I don’t think he is, but he is moving in many people’s opinion too slowly and not in their preferred direction).
To me the 2024 race has been for some time a question of the value of campaign organization versus “vibes.” Biden is notable in that unlike Obama, Clinton, Romney, and Trump has been investing heavily in bulking up local party organization and state parties over creating a national campaign and it is clearly a well organized larger campaign. A lot of people can point to that as some of why 2022 went relatively well for Democrats. Trump’s campaign is not one I would accuse of robust and precise organization. Michigan has been in the news a lot for a very disorganized local party with serious cash flow issues and it is not the only one. Trump has a very active and energized core, and I would not say Biden can match that verve. It has long been a debate in political science which is more useful organization or passion (you prefer both but not every candidate can have both. I tend to lean towards organization being the end winner but there is a reasonable argument that a lot of campaign organization are bloated and don’t have a good return on investment.
None of that has anything directly connected into he Michigan results but I do think it is worth noting how I see the race’s “narrative.”
We will see what happens next. The Republicans have a few more races over the next few days. The Democrats will then share the Republican Super Tuesday of March 5th with seventeen difference states running races and an extensive pot of delegates. I haven’t heard of any plans to run other Uncommitted races though other states do have versions of that (and it would be a very short period of time before Super Tuesday to organize them if they aren’t in place) but I wouldn’t be shocked to hear there is at least the attempt. For now Biden continues to secure too many delegates to worry about a messy convention and Trump is likely in the same boat. Both candidates should have concerns but it remains folly to over extrapolate.
We will see what happens.
First of all as noted yesterday the people organizing the Uncommitted vote on the issue of Biden’s handling of Israel and Palestine are the winners here. They raised the profile of the issue, got it into major corporate news organizations, and are being praised in the news the day after for success. That is all factual and reasonable. Winning a news cycle is just as important to an issue as anything else.
If we compared to 2012 which was the last time a sitting Democrat had a primary in Michigan (and this is a very questionable comparison because Primaries are flawed and weird and should be treated carefully). In 2012 the Uncommitted vote (which was not heavily organized nor had a turn out operation) was 20,000+ and roughly 10% of the primary vote. In 2024 the Uncommitted vote was 101,000+. That is a very impressive number considering how late the turn out operations was in the state. I commented yesterday that this was a hurdle I training and communication but it was met. Some have pointed out Uncommitted can also mean people dissatisfied about Biden’s age, the Democrats in general, and the slew of candidates that isn’t incorrect that is likely I there but that is clearly not the entire pie here and one can’t ignore the organizing. It is clear that the Biden campaign needs to take that seriously.
Still, it must be pointed out that despite 5x the numbers state wide they only got 13.2% compared to the roughly 10% of 2012. That is because 762,000 people voted in 2024 as compared to194,000 in 2012 (a near 400% increase in the total vote turn out) and one of the biggest turn outs of 2024 for the Democratic Primary. Biden won 81% of the state handily. Structurally this means Biden gets 115 delegates and 2 Uncommitted delegates go to the national convention (not an unheard of number) A Significant majority of people turned out to support Biden in very large numbers that were atypical to the other states this year and very strong. His worst state in results is still New Hampshire with 63.9% (79,000+ voters) and Biden wasn’t even on that ballot those were write-ins (don’t even get me started on that). That can’t be ignored either and it raises questions of how those numbers got turned out.
The most obvious and logical conclusion is that much like in New Hampshire and other states Biden has a competent turn out operation and campaign to avoid embarrassment who are setting up an infrastructure for the general election for turn out. Said organization recognized the need to secure Michigan delegates and did so. Another option that I don’t prefer but I can’t dismiss out of hand is that a portion of Michigan voters were turned off by the Uncommitted campaign and turned out in opposition (this seems unlikely but that can happen with such small numbers in a primary). The other option is there is just a large number of very motivated Democratic Primary voters who are enthused for Biden. As is obvious I have my preferences in the reading of these data points.
It needs to be stressed one should be very careful reading the data of a primary. As I have said MANY times before Primaries are interesting but it is easy to over extrapolate from very poor data. There are over 10,000,000 people living in Michigan the turn out for the Democratic primary is less then 8% of that (and Republicans who had a much closer and more high profile primary had around 10%). I can not say Biden’s 81% win is bad, its good even for an incumbent, Trump is clearly having a much closer race even though he is the likely winner people are still turning out in a not insignificant number.. But you also can not ignore the Uncommitted vote. As noted Biden would be a fool to ignore them (and I don’t think he is, but he is moving in many people’s opinion too slowly and not in their preferred direction).
To me the 2024 race has been for some time a question of the value of campaign organization versus “vibes.” Biden is notable in that unlike Obama, Clinton, Romney, and Trump has been investing heavily in bulking up local party organization and state parties over creating a national campaign and it is clearly a well organized larger campaign. A lot of people can point to that as some of why 2022 went relatively well for Democrats. Trump’s campaign is not one I would accuse of robust and precise organization. Michigan has been in the news a lot for a very disorganized local party with serious cash flow issues and it is not the only one. Trump has a very active and energized core, and I would not say Biden can match that verve. It has long been a debate in political science which is more useful organization or passion (you prefer both but not every candidate can have both. I tend to lean towards organization being the end winner but there is a reasonable argument that a lot of campaign organization are bloated and don’t have a good return on investment.
None of that has anything directly connected into he Michigan results but I do think it is worth noting how I see the race’s “narrative.”
We will see what happens next. The Republicans have a few more races over the next few days. The Democrats will then share the Republican Super Tuesday of March 5th with seventeen difference states running races and an extensive pot of delegates. I haven’t heard of any plans to run other Uncommitted races though other states do have versions of that (and it would be a very short period of time before Super Tuesday to organize them if they aren’t in place) but I wouldn’t be shocked to hear there is at least the attempt. For now Biden continues to secure too many delegates to worry about a messy convention and Trump is likely in the same boat. Both candidates should have concerns but it remains folly to over extrapolate.
We will see what happens.
New Kellerman novel
Posted a year agoOoo a new Kellerman Novel, its a February 29 days, and I'm getting some cool commisison art. It feels like life has turned a bit of a corner.
2024 Primary thoughts so far
Posted a year agoSo, 2024 primaries have been interesting n some ways. In some ways predictable and in some ways a few surprises. I could comment about the Republican field winnowing down quickly and the shocking amounts of money spent on candidates like DeSantis (honestly seems more efficient to just incinerate piles of cash).
To me Trump winning the primaries was not assured. Likely perhaps but not assured. At this point the former President seems likely to have secured the delegates but if you had asked me in 2023 I would have said it was likely but any number of events could have interrupted it that are hard to predict.
I do think a comment could be made about the egregious amounts of money flowing into these primary campaigns. The very wealthy donors willing to put this money in raises an eyebrow or two. No one though will be hailed a genius for saying at least a few of these campaigns are scams for over priced consultants to rake in money. 2024 in the primaries does feel like an example of that so far. Honestly though more power to some of these consultants making bank off gullible wealthy people who can’t see the obvious. There is also much to say abut the vanishingly small numbers of people going to the primaries and caucuses compared to the last few decades.
As I have said many times before to me primaries and caucuses are more a measurement of the organizational skill of a campaign, the interest of highly motivated supporters, donor interest, and a testing ground for various talking points and defensive arguments. It is folly to extrapolate too far from primaries as they all have very small pools of people in them and historically the turn out in raw numbers of people in a primary rarely reflects the general election turn out. A primary is great for knowing where dedicated interested people are in an election. The people who will volunteer for campaigns, who will convince others to vote, and who will donate. It rarely tells you much about the general voting population (most of who won’t be paying real attention until September or October 2024.
Still, I won’t dismiss out of hand some of the naddering after South Carolina for the Republicans. I wouldn’t build a narrative from the results but I’d at least say they’re noteworthy and worth conversation. If I worked on a campaign I’d be paying closer attention and looking if it confirmed some trends.
We’ll see how Michigan does tonight with their primary. With the GOP of Michigan in a very public and messy internal dispute and reports of cash flow issues that certainly raises an eyebrow on what might happen. Trump is going to do well enough and likely better then South Carolina but I do have questions about how delegates will be handled and what happens.
Biden meanwhile has been walking with a very strong finish in every primary. Again, like the Republicans, turn out has been anemic. However, Biden is the incumbent so that is much more normal. His major challenger in the Democratic party is Dean Phillips who clearly has no understanding of the critiques against Biden within the Democratic party
There is a push in Michigan to vote in the Democratic Primary as Uncommitted as a protest against Biden’s handling of the current events in Israel and the brutal assaults on Palestinian civilians caught between the terrorist organization of Hamas and the criminally incompetent Netanyahu regime in Israel. I think that is a valid protest in a state with a very significant Palestinian population. It has clearly gotten a lot of national attention with NPR, MSNBC, and other news orgs covering the story and the protest votes. I’d honestly call that a win for those organizers raising the profile of their cause. We will see what the turn out numbers and results are, I’d be very hesitant to assign a percentile number (because very small turn out numbers make that hard). Obama in 2012 got 10.69% of the Democratic Primary as Uncommitted (20,000 + votes). As I said just getting the news coverage is pretty much the best scenario.
I also think this uncommitted plan was enacted a bit too late. To organize a protest vote like this you need people educated on how to do it because voting Uncommitted is atypical behavior and needs some level of training. People have to know how to request the ballot they will use and how to fill it out. Relatively easy but it needs training.
I think the news media will find a way to chew on this story. You can’t write Trump and Biden still winning majorities, that’s boring and wont get attention. Chaos in the local party is one headline. Another is the Uncommitted protest. Much like Trump “only” getting 61% in South Carolina it is noteworthy but very easy to exaggerate the proportional importance.
We’ll see what happens.
To me Trump winning the primaries was not assured. Likely perhaps but not assured. At this point the former President seems likely to have secured the delegates but if you had asked me in 2023 I would have said it was likely but any number of events could have interrupted it that are hard to predict.
I do think a comment could be made about the egregious amounts of money flowing into these primary campaigns. The very wealthy donors willing to put this money in raises an eyebrow or two. No one though will be hailed a genius for saying at least a few of these campaigns are scams for over priced consultants to rake in money. 2024 in the primaries does feel like an example of that so far. Honestly though more power to some of these consultants making bank off gullible wealthy people who can’t see the obvious. There is also much to say abut the vanishingly small numbers of people going to the primaries and caucuses compared to the last few decades.
As I have said many times before to me primaries and caucuses are more a measurement of the organizational skill of a campaign, the interest of highly motivated supporters, donor interest, and a testing ground for various talking points and defensive arguments. It is folly to extrapolate too far from primaries as they all have very small pools of people in them and historically the turn out in raw numbers of people in a primary rarely reflects the general election turn out. A primary is great for knowing where dedicated interested people are in an election. The people who will volunteer for campaigns, who will convince others to vote, and who will donate. It rarely tells you much about the general voting population (most of who won’t be paying real attention until September or October 2024.
Still, I won’t dismiss out of hand some of the naddering after South Carolina for the Republicans. I wouldn’t build a narrative from the results but I’d at least say they’re noteworthy and worth conversation. If I worked on a campaign I’d be paying closer attention and looking if it confirmed some trends.
We’ll see how Michigan does tonight with their primary. With the GOP of Michigan in a very public and messy internal dispute and reports of cash flow issues that certainly raises an eyebrow on what might happen. Trump is going to do well enough and likely better then South Carolina but I do have questions about how delegates will be handled and what happens.
Biden meanwhile has been walking with a very strong finish in every primary. Again, like the Republicans, turn out has been anemic. However, Biden is the incumbent so that is much more normal. His major challenger in the Democratic party is Dean Phillips who clearly has no understanding of the critiques against Biden within the Democratic party
There is a push in Michigan to vote in the Democratic Primary as Uncommitted as a protest against Biden’s handling of the current events in Israel and the brutal assaults on Palestinian civilians caught between the terrorist organization of Hamas and the criminally incompetent Netanyahu regime in Israel. I think that is a valid protest in a state with a very significant Palestinian population. It has clearly gotten a lot of national attention with NPR, MSNBC, and other news orgs covering the story and the protest votes. I’d honestly call that a win for those organizers raising the profile of their cause. We will see what the turn out numbers and results are, I’d be very hesitant to assign a percentile number (because very small turn out numbers make that hard). Obama in 2012 got 10.69% of the Democratic Primary as Uncommitted (20,000 + votes). As I said just getting the news coverage is pretty much the best scenario.
I also think this uncommitted plan was enacted a bit too late. To organize a protest vote like this you need people educated on how to do it because voting Uncommitted is atypical behavior and needs some level of training. People have to know how to request the ballot they will use and how to fill it out. Relatively easy but it needs training.
I think the news media will find a way to chew on this story. You can’t write Trump and Biden still winning majorities, that’s boring and wont get attention. Chaos in the local party is one headline. Another is the Uncommitted protest. Much like Trump “only” getting 61% in South Carolina it is noteworthy but very easy to exaggerate the proportional importance.
We’ll see what happens.
