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Front page of the New York Times

Hillary Clinton Says It’s Different This Time
The 2016 Democratic candidate on why she’s so confident that Joe Biden will win.

“‘Cuz ‘e ain’t me” is both accurate and not what is said.

42 thoughts on “Front page of the New York Times”

  1. Dunno, 2020 is too weird to call.

    If the polls are correct, Orange Man is in for an absolute shoeing.

    Otoh there’s legitimate reasons to think the polls, if not wrong, might not be a good predictor of results this time around. Most of the non-polling-based indicators (enthusiasm, incumbency, the economy) favour Trump.

    Neither side is behaving as if they have this election in the bag. Democrats are allegedly leading in states where virtually nobody’s turning out to their events, while tens of thousands attend Trump rallies.

    If Trump pulls this off, it’ll be hilarious.

  2. Dennis, Political Savant

    Trump wins, and it won’t be close.

    What the pollsters aren’t telling you is that Biden is polling weaker numbers than Clinton did at the same time in the 2016 campaign. His numbers are down and Trump’s are up. And that’s before you start factoring in polling bias and the hidden Trump voter phenomenon (known as the Bradley Effect).

    I live in Ohio. Trump took Ohio by 8 points in 2016. Trump and the RNC pulled all their ad dollars out of OH three weeks ago. You only do something like that when you are ahead by a mile or have no chance of winning at all. Biden ran tons of ads this weekend. If Trump had given up Ohio, Biden wouldn’t be running ads here. What’s it mean? Trump’s ahead in Ohio and Biden knows it.

    The biggest thing that came out of the last debate was Biden’s “transition away from oil” gaffe. It will probably cost him Pennsylvania. Polling releases today shows Biden badly underperforming (-10%) and Trump overperforming (+9%) over 2016 numbers in suburban Philadelphia, which should be Biden territory. This is a big deal, and it isn’t an isolated phenomenon either.

    Couple of other things to note… Biden isn’t campaigning in person today. Or tomorrow. Or Wednesday. Kamala Harris is headed to Texas instead of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin or Illinois. The chances of Biden taking Texas are very low, so why not have Harris in a rustbelt state? Why isn’t Biden out campaigning?

    Another thing to note… Heard anyone talking about the Democrats taking back the senate lately? You haven’t. That all started dying down a couple of weeks ago. What you are starting to hear is Antifa types and the “resistance” talking about shutting down the country after the election if Trump wins.

    Trump wins, and it won’t be close. Take to the bank.

  3. I hope you’re right, Dennis. But it doesn’t seem to me to say much good about the state of the USA that two successive elections involve the Orange Oaf versus, first, wicked Mrs Clinton, and secondly, versus the husk of Joe Biden.

  4. If terrorism returns to Northern Ireland I think most people would blame in order:
    1. The terrorists
    2= (in either order) The negotiators and governments of the UK and the EU
    I’m convinced that Biden would disagree with #1, and even worse, turn a blind eye to people from North America that finance them again.

    Trump is a bell-end but with a good eye for bad regulations and for avoiding new wars. I notice his administration has brokered a ceasefire in N-K where the belligerents, Turkey and Russia had failed.

  5. Unfortunately, Bongo, Azerbaijan immediately broke the ceasefire, as they did with the Russia brokered one. This one requires more action.

    As for the US election, Trump has it. No question. Biden isn’t campaigning and Trump is still holding daily max capacity rallies. There’s just no enthusiasm for Biden – he won’t get out the vote. The only way the Democrats win is voter fraud.

  6. Yes, Trump has it and this is all playing to the Obama-run DNC’s plan – win back the Senate in 2022 and run Michelle in 2024. The Biden/Harris candidacy is just a big fund-raise for those two elections.

  7. I have 2 bets on Biden only getting from 180 to 239 electoral college votes. Hoping for a “big ugly” this week.

  8. It’ll be interesting if the oaf & bell end wins a second term. My money’s on the Vastly Superior still insisting he’s an oaf & bell end.

  9. Harry Haddock's Ghost

    Whilst watching the Woken SS all have collective heart failure would be funnier than the fork handles sketch, I just can’t see Trump winning / being allowed to win.

  10. “Trump wins, and it won’t be close. Take to the bank.”

    I’m not putting money on it, but if you think that, there’s good odds out there.

    The trouble with polling is that it never captures that moment where someone has to tick a box and take an action. I don’t even believe this is “shy polling”. I think we poll with our hearts and vote with our heads. Like the Scottish independence looked close, and I’m sure people were thinking of Mel Gibson in Braveheart, but they walk into that polling station and it’s having to pay more for services because of the end of the English subsidy.

    How many polls have been really good? Like within the claimed margin of error? Not the last 3 elections in the UK. Scottish independence was pretty far out. Trump vs Clinton. Brexit vote.

    I’m not saying Trump is going to do it. I don’t know. I don’t actually think it means a hill of beans difference to the UK, so I’m hoping that Trump wins just because of the entertainment value of the meltdown.

  11. View from California: totally agree with Steve on too-weird-to-call. The polls could be signalling the right result, but if so it’s only by luck.

    Anyone catch the street rally in Los Angeles (California!) featuring “Latinos for Trump”? What’s with the surge in Trump support in black likely voters? How does that interact with white soccer moms being turned off Trump, but their public schools being shuttered? Does anyone take Biden seriously after that last debate? What the heck is going on?

    And now: Trump took 25 minutes this weekend to talk with Piers Morgan. Wuh?

    I wouldn’t bet against Dennis’s take; he’s a lot better-placed to read the swing states than I am. Anything could happen. Including President Kamala (shivers)

    Disclaimer: my best interests would be served by a Harris/Biden win. Because if Trump wins, I will rupture – probably fatally – my internal organs laughing at the local and national wokerati.

  12. The Democrats/media are fvcking clownish. A joke. Trump should win 49 states. Yet I hear what the media says.

    I need a Vulcan Mind Meld to convince me the bullets aren’t real.

  13. Dennis, He of the Fattened Wallet

    Reasons for a Trump win:

    Ground game: Trump campaign has knocked on the doors of over 20 million households in battleground states. The Biden campaign, after insisting a ground game was unnecessary, suddenly started putting together volunteers on Oct. 1. They will hit less than 1 million homes by the election.

    Biden campaign schedule: Today is a perfect example. Biden has no appearances scheduled. Trump is holding 3 (!) seperate rallies in Pennsylvania… A state both sides need if they are going to win.

    Biden… The male Hillary: I won close to $1,000 in 2016 betting on Trump. Why did I think Trump would win? Because if Hillary was going to be president, she would have been president in 2008. There was no reason for Dems to flock to Obama other than the fact that they didn’t want Hillary. Same goes for Biden. He ran in 1988 and 2008 and got nowhere. He only won the nomination in 2020 because the DNC strong armed all of the candidates not named Sanders to drop out so Biden could head off a Sanders victory. He was dragged across the finish.

    Harris: She polls badly with blacks and comes from a state Biden would win no matter what. A wasted pick by Biden. She brings nothing to the table.

    Hunter and the laptop: A drip, drip, drip of bad news that will continue up to Election Day.

  14. Harry Haddock's Ghost

    Anything could happen. Including President Kamala (shivers)

    When Biden wins, that’s basically a cert, isn’t it? I assume that’s when the civil war begins.

  15. Bloke in North Dorset

    Here’s a thread of “never Trumpers” saying they’ll vote Trump in 2020:

    “ InCons are a force this year.

    Involuntary conservatives are real. As I’ve told you: the failure to condemn @MayorJenny & @tedwheeler, acknowledge ANTIFA, admit to media bias or to level about cognitive issues etc. in a near octogenarian has created the Never-Trump Trump voter.”

    https://twitter.com/ericrweinstein/status/1318590052511854594?s=21

    There really is something weird going on that pollsters can’t tap in to and America’s media has blinded itself in to not seeing. Whether it’s representative of the wider population is to be seen, Twitter is a different world.

    The problem we have here is that our media are reporting the election through a never Trump lens and buying a lot of the bullshit.

  16. Dennis, The Ron Jeremy of Politics

    More reasons:

    The black vote. Trump’s approval is running anywhere between 15% and 45% in the black community. If he takes 15% to 20% of the vote, Biden cannot win. The math makes it impossible. Do not underestimate the effect of Kanye West, 50 Cent, etc. moving off the plantation.They represent the canary in the coal mine. For you wogs, remember what just happened to Labour’s Red Wall?

    Portland: The Dems own Portland, Seattle, BLM and ANTIFA. That shit may play in Portland, but it won’t play in Nashville, Kansas City and Columbus. And don’t think voters have forgotten Dems jumping on the defund the police bandwagon.

    The Bernie Bros: They won’t show. For them Biden and Trump are a distinction without a difference. Plus, the youth vote never shows up the way campaigns think they will.

  17. One think i feel certain about, even if he loses Trump will deal with it better and in a more presidential manner than Hillary ever did.

    As for youth vote Wyclef Jean summed it up masterfully with his election time anthem which is well worth a listen

    “My generation like, we okay
    As long as we got music, we gon’ dance all day
    He gon’ vote Taylor Swift, she gon’ vote Kanye-Ye-Ye
    Election time is coming, come on
    We okay, as long as we got music, we gon’ party all day
    She gon’ vote U2, he gon’ vote Coldplay-Play-Play
    Election time is coming, come on”

  18. A few things to keep in mind:

    – *MOST IMPORTANT* The media, the DNC and the pollsters (besides Trafalgar) have not changed anything at all about their methods. They still demonize anyone to the right of AOC, set cities on fire, over-sample democrats, mislabel people on the right (the Proud Boys are called “alt-right” and “white supremacist,” even though the leader is a black Cuban-American), and are still dismissing the fact that they’ve made it unsafe to say that you support Trump. All of those hidden people – and there are far more of them now, due to the AntiFa riots – get to stay anonymous in the voting booth. Trump won by promising these people they wouldn’t be ignored. Biden doesn’t even know these people exist. They’ve been having their businesses burned down, and thugs have been putting them in the hospital, and Biden calls AntiFa “an idea.”

    – The enthusiasm gap is even wider this time around. There were a lot of people on the left who put Hillary on a pedestal. Biden was made fun of by the left in those Obama/Joe memes, until he became the only choice left after the 2020 primaries. The media is also doing what they did in 2016…refusing to take pictures of the crowds at Biden’s events. He had JON BON JOVI at his Luzerne, PA rally, and I’ve only found one lackluster picture of the crowd so far. It was also taken at a strategic camera angle, just as was done in 2016 to make Hillary’s 200-person audience look like a full house. They wouldn’t be playing these tricks if Biden was doing well. Trump BEGS the camera guys to turn their rigs around and show the crowds. With one month left in the campaign, Biden started taking full weeks off to take naps at his house in Delaware. He takes the majority of his interviews from his basement, with pre-planned questions and a teleprompter at the ready with scripted answers. That’s why his conversation with Cardi B consisted of her free college ramblings and his aimless reminiscing about fighting Bull Connor. On the rare occasion he goes outside, Biden directly tells half of the voters at his events to vote for Trump. He lied to a union autoworker – who knew he was being lied to – about his Second Amendment views, and said “I don’t work for you.” That’s Biden’s way of dealing with any gentle nudging on his record. It’s like he’s banking on support from only people who worship him. That’s not how you win friends, let alone votes.

    – It is undeniable that there are many people, including those in minority groups, that have switched to Trump’s side since 2016. There are even never-Trump republicans that have embraced him since then (Ben Shapiro, Glenn Beck, etc.), and high-profile rappers and podcasters have at least become more neutral after seeing the results in the past 4 years. Tim Pool was in the bag for Bernie, and now he owns a gun and supports a lot of what Trump is doing. People like Candace Owens and Brandon Straka voted for Hillary, and now they lead entire organizations (Brexit and Walk Away) geared toward helping Trump win. There are people who used to work for The Young Turks, who now are friends with Trump supporters and moderates.

    – People are even more tired of woke culture than they were in 2016. Sports and entertainment ratings are down because of the misguided corporate pandering and hypocrisy (I can count the number of their condemnations of China on one hand). Everything these activists have yelled and lectured us about has backfired. The number of blackface scandals, #MeToo infractions, tax evasions and racist comments are staggering. Just this week, Chelsea Handler (whose grandfather was literally a Nazi) told 50Cent he has to vote democrat because he’s black. It’s one thing to be inundated with these messages, but add onto that the insane amount of riots all over the country – even in small cities – that target innocent people just trying to eat their lunch at a restaurant, and you have even low-information liberals starting to get turned off by SJWs. That tends to happen when you see white AntiFa members calling black people the N-word, and punching senior citizens. Trump has also been good at provoking people to do some extra research with simple one-liners, like “Who built the cages?” “You’ve had 47 years” and “Who’s the ‘big guy’?” Never underestimate the power of curiosity. Twitter and Facebook really hurt themselves when they censored the Hunter Biden story. The internet tried to censor Two Girls, One Cup as well…how did that work out?

    – The economy was doing exceptionally well, before COVID hit. The only people who actually think Trump “caused” the virus are those who are so biased they’ve forgotten how viruses work. The public is well aware of how biased and inaccurate the media can be. CBS showed footage from a hospital in Italy to mislead their audience on Trump’s handling of the virus. Governor Cuomo used a Chinese Communist Party talking point and spread the propaganda that the virus “came from Europe.” Cuomo spent his time taking victory laps and publishing a book about his COVID response, instead of creating a less deadly nursing home policy. He also used every federal resource available to get a 1,000-bed hospital ship in New York Harbor, which he didn’t even fill to 20% capacity. Governors across Blue America micromanaged their constituents’ lives and shut down most small businesses, while Nancy Pelosi showed off her gallons of gourmet ice cream and got a private hair color session. More and more people have been waking up to how authoritarian their local governments and representatives can be, since this behavior was on full display in 2020.

    – The fake news message is proving effective. Even people who hate Trump are now often heard saying, “Wait, let me double-check to see if this story is true” when they hear a news item. When people get tired of hearing the repetitive “Cheeto-Voldemort” name-calling (and they do get tired of it), the only substantive arguments they’re hearing are against the Democratic Party. People who are even remotely curious end up seeing that there are a number of ethnic minorities who not only support Trump, but have been helped by him. And once people find out they’ve been lied to about the “Charlottesville comments,” or the “disabled reporter” rumor, or kept in the dark about opportunity zones and HBCU funding, they want to know what else they’ve been lied to about. Even if those people don’t switch to Trump, they certainly leave the left. If the Democratic Party wasn’t failing, they wouldn’t be desperate enough to make up all of these lies and manipulative smear campaigns. For the most part, Trump gets all the free campaign advertising he needs just by clipping up news footage of his opponents. No stock photos necessary.

    To put it bluntly, the American left’s arrogance and pride have sabotaged their own efforts. Trump has only gained support these past few years (the number of people changing their minds based on Trump’s “character” is laughably negligible), while Biden is trying to hang onto what he still has by default. Biden has not convinced anyone, because he is still using campaign tactics from 1995. He’s talking about “taking the Amtrak to Delaware” and “families sitting around the breakfast table” when he should be talking about cutting the B.S. corruption out of our government. His message is changing depending on which city he’s in, just as we saw with Hillary. Trump has confirmed three Supreme Court justices in less than four years. He’s signed three mideast peace treaties in six weeks, with more to come. Trump has kept us out of war, while Biden helped send us to Iraq and Syria. He’s accomplished more in four years than Biden has in his entire career. I used to be a democrat, and even if I was still a democrat I would have to admit that Biden just isn’t doing well.

    Democrats are where republicans were in 2008. Instead of using the past four years to reform the party and find a suitable candidate, they have convinced themselves that Americans are stupid, and that they can get away with their B.S. messaging for the twentieth time. They forgot David Ogilvy’s most fundamental rule of advertising: The customer is not a moron, she’s your wife.

  19. I feel that Trump’s “Make America Great” proposition is considerably more compelling than Biden’s “Now too old to sexually assault anyone else”, so there’s that.

  20. “‘Cuz ‘e ain’t me” is both accurate and not what is said.

    The thing is – he *is* her. Career politician. No principles. Constantly surrounded by scandal and only survives because the media has been covering for him. Arguing that *this* election is about ‘character’ when he (and his running mate) have the worst character in the room.

    I mean, you have a dude who let’s his son prey on underaged girls – including his own cousin – and does nothing about it. A VP candidate who’s most famous for trying the hardest to throw more Blacks in jail than any of her predecessors *and* sleeping with a married man.

    Trump and Pence’s families seems pretty well-adjusted by comparison.

  21. dearieme
    October 26, 2020 at 2:55 pm

    I hope you’re right, Dennis. But it doesn’t seem to me to say much good about the state of the USA that two successive elections involve the Orange Oaf versus, first, wicked Mrs Clinton, and secondly, versus the husk of Joe Biden.

    By any objective metric, the Orange Oaf has done a pretty decent job the last 4 years. Definitely better than his last three predecessors.

  22. The polls are bullshit.

    Trump will win comfortably on the day. Then the Dems will knowhow many ballots they need to manufacture. When masses of these ballots turn up over the subsequent days, the y will be rightly called out as bullshit.

    Then the medias will say – didn’t you see the polls?

  23. Dennis and ??? above are correct. The polls–like UK crap about UK support for Blojob’s virus capers–are deliberately created BS.

    Flubber is correct–the polls are an attempt to cover the boxes of Demorat “votes” that will turn up post election.

    That still worries me.

  24. “The polls…are deliberately created BS.”

    Not “deliberately”. It’s a result of groupthink among pollsters about polling methodologies, particularly weighting.

    A conspiracy on such a scale would be impossible to conceal…

  25. Given the antics of FB/Twitter/MSM over the Hunter Biden laptop, I think its pretty safe to assume that the polls are garbage. The media made it very clear a while back that they were going to give the Trump campaign not so much the skewed playing field they offered last time, more a vertical cliff face this time. There is no way the polling companies are going to allow their polls to show anything other than a Democrat clean sweep. That way they can abrogate all ‘blame’ if Trump wins, and will have ‘done their bit’ to skew things Biden’s way.

    So we are left with similar rune reading that we used to have to indulge in when assessing where the USSR was going during the Cold War. And one has to say that the straws in the wind as mentioned by Dennis are far more pro-Trump than what the MSM narrative sets out.

    I want Trump to win, not because of him really or his policies particularly, but because of what his victory will do to his opponents. They will lose their shit over it, and that should (if he’s smart) give him a massive opportunity to crush them. If mass riots break out, declare Antifa a terrorist organisation, and start going after the money. Break the Hard Left on the wheel of being the funders of terrorism.

  26. @jim
    Plus if he is relelected he really doesn’t have to worry about another election as he cannot stand again

    Time to really double down on Democrat crime families, flush out the FBI etc and get on with pursuing domestic terrorists like antifa

  27. Hopper,

    “Anyone catch the street rally in Los Angeles (California!) featuring “Latinos for Trump”? What’s with the surge in Trump support in black likely voters? How does that interact with white soccer moms being turned off Trump, but their public schools being shuttered? Does anyone take Biden seriously after that last debate? What the heck is going on?”

    As someone observing from over the sea, my guess is the riots in various cities. You get your business looted, or your buddy gets his business looted and the Democrat government seem to do nothing, you’re likely to shift position very quickly.

    I think the thing of black people not voting republican is coming to an end. As someone observed here: Kanye West. But in a bigger sense, it’s about the success of people like Kanye West. A growing black middle and elite class. McDonalds producing thousands of black millionaires who created franchises. Do you think they want their money to be given to welfare queens?

  28. Searching through radio stations in the car today, I came upon Wee Jimmie Naughtie (R4 World at One) giving us the benefit (at great length) of his insights into US politics. It boiled down to a prolonged advert for Biden, who’s a great guy simply because he ain’t called Trump.

    No surprise there, of course, but I do wonder how the many, many BBC correspondents in N America feel about Marriott-points Naughtie being parachuted into every significant political event there (seemingly on the grounds that he spent his gap year on a Fulbright). In their shoes I’d be extremely pissed off.

  29. ad;flkadjf;ljas

    Is that your real name?

    Biden conspicuously acted to help credit card companies against consumers back in the ’90s. I’ve hardly heard a thing about it this campaign season. He’s an old turd.

  30. Gamecock, Yes I’m named after my father – kd;fhwoer

    I used to be a democrat…I voted Obama in 2008 and then Romney in 2012 (and now I regret that too lol).

    I probably won’t read up on the credit card company story. I would if I didn’t know anything about Biden to begin with, but there’s already so much wrong with him I don’t need anymore convincing. That said, if there’s something so glorious about him that I’m somehow missing, I’m all ears. Other than that, we tried the neoliberal and neocon agendas for the past half century +. They simply don’t work. I’ll stick with the Rodney Dangerfield I voted for in 2016.

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