SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2024
There is no cure for hapless: In all candor, it would be hard to be more clueless.
It was 9:25 on Friday morning. On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough was describing the lay of the American land.
Through no fault of her own, Jen Psaki was forced to deal with his remarkable cluelessness. At any rate, in a striking display, the cable news star said this:
SCARBOROUGH (11/8/24): I'm a huge believer in humility in victory and humility in defeat...I just want to follow up on something you said, because what Democrats need to be asking is, "Why did so many people stay home and not vote?"
PSAKI: Yes.
SCARBOROUGH: Two numbers. The first number is, 12 million less people voted for Kamala Harris than Joe Biden.
But here's the kicker. Are you ready?
Already, the youthful analysts were glancing around in a state of pre-despair. What was the cable star talking about? Did he actually think that all the votes, nationwide, had already been recorded?
It almost sounded like his did! And then, quite quickly, sure enough! His oration continued as shown:
SCARBOROUGH (continuing from above): Two numbers. The first number is 12 million less people voted for Kamala Harris than Joe Biden. But here's, here's the kicker. Are you ready for this?
Donald Trump got four million votes less, Jen, this year than he got four years ago. If Democrats had turned out, and Independents and Republicans...
He blathered a bit at this point. But as you can see by clicking here, this was the gist of his speech:
SCARBOROUGH: Two numbers. The first number is 12 million less people voted for Kamala Harris than Joe Biden. But here's, here's the kicker. Are you ready for this?
Donald Trump got four million votes less, Jen—
PSAKI: Yes!
SCARBOROUGH: —four million votes less this year than he got four years ago. If Democrats had turned out, and Independents and Republicans—
[...]
And Jen, how shocking is it that, again, Donald Trump got four million votes less, and now Democrats are going, "Oh my gosh, this is the greatest landslide of all time. How did this happen?"
It happened because they stayed home, or because a lot of voters that voted for her last time stayed home. Forgive me for going on, but this is an important point.
As you can see if you click that link, Scarborough continued making his astonishing misstatement. On a vastly brighter side, the Internet Archive is back on its feet, a full month after being taken down by a cyberattack.
For that reason, we're able to link you to videotape of this fuller pseudo-discussion.
As for Psaki, she gently tried to mention the fact that many votes were still uncounted. But in accord with Hard Cable News Law, she didn't tell her cable news host that he didn't know what he was talking about—that he seemed to be astoundingly clueless.
It's hard to know less than Scarborough did as he made his important point. It's as we've told you in recent days:
There's never been a cure for human. That becomes especially true when very large corporate salaries are handed out to cable news stars in search of larger cable ratings and higher profit margins.
It would be hard to know less than Scarborough did that day. Today, with millions of votes still unrecorded, let's take a look at the actual record as it currently exists:
As of today, Candidate Trump has in fact received more votes than he did in 2020. Here are the nationwide vote totals for the past three elections, even as millions of votes remain unrecorded this year:
Nationwide popular vote, 2016 election
Clinton: 65,853,51 (48.2%)
Trump: 62,984,828 (46.1%)
(Turnout: 60.1%)
Nationwide popular vote, 2020 election
Biden: 81,283,501 (51.3%)
Trump: 74,223,975 (46.8%)
(Turnout: 66.6%)
Nationwide popular vote (to date), 2024 election
Trump: 74,263,792 (50.5%)
Harris: 70,355,827 (47.9%)
(Turnout: To be determined)
As you can see, Trump's vote total has already surpassed his total from 2020. It's true that Harris trails the Biden total from 2020, but she's now eleven million votes behind that total, with millions of votes to go before we get to sleep.
At this point, a bit of unintentional comedy comes in.
If you click the kink from the Internet Archive, you can see the chyron producers were playing even as their host kept misstating. Their own chyron was showing Trump with more than 73 million votes.
Sad! He was already very close to surpassing his 2020 total.
Even as we type today, how many votes remain uncounted and unrecorded? Out in some of the western states, the wheels of vote-counting grind slow.
According to the AP's current (ongoing) tabulation, the state of California's vote is only 63% reported. That suggests that as any as three or four million votes may still be unrecorded in that large state alone.
Other states in the laid-back west are reporting their votes at the usual leisurely pace. According to the AP tally, these are the percentages currently reported:
Percenatge of votes already reported:
California: 63%
Oregon: 84%
Washington: 90%
Arizona: 82%
Utah: 80%
Colorado: 91%
For the record, it isn't just the western states. Right here in Maryland, on the east coast, the percentage stands at 85%.
By the way:
Does that mean that 15% of Maryland's total vote remains unreported? Or does it mean that the vote in 15% of Maryland's jurisdictions hasn't yet been reported?
What does that percentage actually mean? The AP tally doesn't say! We humans are strongly inclined to blow past such distinctions. We're disinclined to notice the fact that such distinctions exist.
All in all, across the nation, millions of votes remain unrecorded. It happens this way every four years. Every four years, people like Scarborough don't seem to have grasped this fact.
Meanwhile, full disclosures:
As those votes are added to the total, Candidate Trump's victory margin will likely move toward two percentage points, or possibly even less. It's even possible that his share of the nationwide vote will drop below 50 percent.
This isn't exactly the major landslide you'll see some cable stars cite, especially (but not exclusively) in Red America's cable landscape.
That said, Candidate Trump has already surpassed his 2020 total, and he'll likely add several million votes to his total before the counting is done. Candidate Harris will still lose the nationwide vote, but the margin by which she lost will almost surely grow smaller.
Scarborough's one point will remain true. If Harris had matched Biden's total vote from 2020, she would have won the election.
(Eventually, this year's turnout figure will even be known!)
At some point, we'll actually know what the real numbers actually are. But the shortfall will be much smaller than the self-assured cable news star was saying as Psaki played along.
That said:
On Friday morning, there he sat, the most clueless man on the planet. He had an important point to make—and he seemed to have no earthly idea what he was talking about.
Just a guess:
He'd probably watched the Ravens and the Bengals with Jack on Thursday night. As a general matter, this is the way this cable news program had gone all through the course of this White House campaign.
There is no cure for such conduct. Major experts, now in hiding, describe this remarkable detachment from fact as "human all the way down."
They insist that it's unlikely to change. "For better or worse, we're built this way," these experts hotly proclaim.
Coming next week: The endless stream of endless examples of Blue America's endless paths to self-defeat
ReplyDeleteNo one with a functioning brain needs to worry about the "nationwide" numbers. America is a federation of states. American president represents the United States.
that's right, not these United States.
DeleteWe fought a Civil War that made us a Union, not a Confederation.
Whatever you say, Mr. Soros, Sir.
DeleteYeah, that's the way it is, Boris.
DeleteJoy and hope to you too, Boris. Joy and hope.
DeleteYou mean Joy and Whoopi.
Deletefuck you, fascist maggot
DeleteJoy and hope to you too, fascist maggot. Joy and hope.
DeleteOkay, make it Joy and Rachael
DeleteDon't you have to go do laundry or wash your car? Why are you the first one here and the last one to leave every day? What do you contribute to this blog besides annoying people?
DeleteJoy and hope to the annoyed soros-bot. Joy and hope.
DeleteWho are you going to name as democratic/liberal puppet and paymaster once 94-year old soros dies? Meanwhile, I’d like to address all the Thiel bots and Musk bots that post here.
DeleteAnonymouse 12:29pm, balance.
DeleteThe media pretending there was "border chaos" didn't help Harris. The good news for Trump is he doesn't have to do anything about the border except claim "it's fixed", and the media will report that too.
ReplyDeleteSee: https://jabberwocking.com/donald-trump-should-have-the-easiest-presidency-ever/
DeleteTrump will boast about Biden's accomplishments as being his own until the inevitable Trump recession hits, and then Trump will blame Biden.
Delete“He'd probably watched the Ravens and the Bengals with Jack…”
ReplyDeleteJack Daniel’s?
You oughtta know.
DeleteAlanis?
DeleteTypical Somerby faceplanting.
ReplyDeleteEvery election cycle generally involves a significant increase in the number of votes, because the population keeps growing, the number of voters keeps growing, averaging about a 7-10 million increase.
The fact that Trump can only manage to essentially match his 2020 vote, when he badly lost, is striking.
The fact that that Harris is getting over 10 million less votes than 2020 is also striking and very curious.
Some of the missing votes for Harris are likely due to mail in ballots not being universal. In CA where mail in ballots are universal, Harris is on track to nearly match the 2020 CA vote.
Trump voters tend not to utilize mail in ballots, so Trump’s underwhelming vote count is a clear indication his support has weakened.
Trump did not win, Harris lost, and the real question is what happened to all those millions and millions of votes? Extrapolating from CA, it would appear that Harris would have cruised to victory if mail in ballots were universal nationwide. But it still would not explain all of those millions of missing votes, something else is going on and it is most likely related to racism and sexism, and the usual Republican dirty tricks.
Racism and sexism are not going anywhere anytime soon, but it’s also an unsatisfying explanation considering the huge wave of new voter registrations.
Something else is going on, and it’ll be interesting to see if anyone bothers to dig into it and find a credible and coherent explanation backed by evidence.
Republicans are extremely clever, so who knows.
As has been the case for generations we live in two Americas, but increasingly the more pertinent split seems to be: there is ‘merica and there is CA. CA is the 5th largest economy in the world, 2nd in the world by per capita; CA is the engine that drives the US. CA generates the most gdp that the rest of the country then feeds off of (in fact most blue states are “givers” and most red states are “takers”). CA Gov Newsom is more a centrist, a bit cheesy, but of obvious presidential material, and he is moving quickly to block Trumpism from impacting CA, and as previously noted CA carries a lot of weight.
Don’t forget antisemitism. Josh Shapiro was a superior VP choice based on location, competence, record and public esteem. Harris spurned him. Obviously Harris herself is not antisemitic. But she thought her followers are,
DeleteAntisemitism had nothing to do with the VP pick, Walz is more likeable than Shapiro and he better aligns with the progressive/center left inclinations of the party and its electorate.
DeleteFurthermore, the way down ballot voting went this election indicates that Shapiro would have been a bad choice for Harris even if it were intended merely to help with PA.
This blog offers poor electoral analysis, and you can see the downdraft impact in the bad analyses on offer from the fanboys/trolls.
OTOH there is quite a bit of antisemitism among Republicans, and there are indications that Harris lost significant key votes in several swing states due to her defense of Israel and lack of calling out the genocide in Gaza.
12:42 That is a really, really, dumb analysis.
DeleteShapiro was a better candidate based on "competence, record and public esteem".
DeleteWhich follows an extremely thorough non-analysis by you. Another out-of-my-butt opinion.
@12:24 — you left out part of my quote. I’m sure you don’t dispute that Shapiro was a better VP choice based on geography.
Delete“ The endless stream of endless examples of Blue America's endless paths to self-defeat”
ReplyDeleteIt’s unlikely that Somerby will figure out the real reason(s), so we’ll get an endless parade of false right wing manufactured depictions of liberals.
This. Exactly.
DeleteAnd this. I love my comments. I am Corby.
DeleteThere is nothing funny about 3:02 being all butthurt, y'all need to stop laughing at this poor lost soul.
Delete