Wednesday, October 30, 2024

No One's Mentioning This In Corporate Media

Politico has a piece from yesterday that I can only call wishful thinking:

Kamala Harris is counting on suburban voters to do what they’ve done since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016: reject him.

It may be the single most important piece of her electoral math. While Donald Trump has made inroads with Black and Latino men, polls in the late stage of the election show the suburbs could still power her to victory. The latest Wall Street Journal poll found Harris leading among suburban voters by 7 percentage points, while a Reuters/Ipsos analysis showed the vice president winning suburban households by 6 points.

. . . Inside the Harris campaign, aides said they believe they will improve on President Joe Biden’s performance with suburban voters in 2020, driven by college-educated voters and women who are turned off by the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and by the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Another piece there from yesterday claims this is in fact paying off:

There’s a new kind of gender gap in the 2024 election: Women are voting early in huge numbers, far outpacing men.

It’s giving anxious Democrats — who see female voters as key to a Kamala Harris victory — newfound hope heading into the final week of the campaign.

. . . It’s impossible to know who these women are voting for, including whether Democrats are winning over unaffiliated or moderate Republican women disillusioned with former President Donald Trump. But the gender gap has been one of the defining features of the 2024 campaign, and Harris allies see the lack of a surge of male voters as an encouraging sign.

Here's the problem I see. Reports from the field, especially Pennsylvania, indicate that there are hours-long lines for early voting -- but local government operatives are trying to get people to leave before they vote. Farther down in the thread, a post noted that if people are in line before 8 PM, they're entitled to cast their votes. Elsewhere in suburban Bucks County, we see this: Levittown is quintessentially suburban -- if the suburbanites waiting in line for hours to vote are there to support Kamala, as Politico claims they are, wouldn't the polling staff want to give them every chance to vote, sooner rathee than later? Elsewhere in suburban Bucks County, we see this: So operatives who aren't even election officials are trying to look like they are, and they're telling Bucks County suburbanites to go home and come back later, although as long as the voters are in line by 8 PM, they can cast their votes. As of this morning,

The Trump-Vance campaign has filed a lawsuit against Bucks County, Pennsylvania, accusing county election officials of obstructing GOP voters from participating in on-demand mail-in voting.

Speaking at a packed rally in Allentown, RNC Chair Michael Whatley emphasized the historic momentum of Republican voters across the state and blasted Bucks County officials for attempting to halt the red wave sweeping Pennsylvania.

“Now, I know that a lot of you today have seen these videos of people being turned away at the polls in places like Delaware County and Bucks County. And last night, we even saw one of our great local leaders, Val Biancaniello, arrested at the polls for telling people to stay in line. All she was doing was telling folks, ‘Stay and vote.’ They took her away in handcuffs,” Whatley said during the rally.

“Folks, here’s what’s happening: Democrat election officials are seeing our numbers. They’re seeing our turnout. They are seeing us breaking early vote records across Pennsylvania. They are terrified, and they want to stop our momentum. We are not going to let them suppress our votes. We are going to fight.

Lancaster County, which is rural Amish country and more traditionally Republican, also had long lines for early voting:

Voters attempting to vote early at the Lancaster County Elections office were met by lines that stretched out the door and out onto the sidewalk earlier this week.

Tuesday was the last day to apply for a mail-in ballot and take advantage of Pennsylvania’s version of early in-person voting for this year’s presidential election. Voters from across Lancaster county – many voting early for the first time – attempted to cast their ballot through an unfamiliar process.

. . . Her story was not uncommon among the voters gathered at the elections office Monday and Tuesday for early voting. Many had never done in-person early voting and were pushed toward this method by circumstances or a distrust of mail-in voting.

The post below is from a voter in Pittsburgh suburb Bethel Park, where again there are hours-long lines waiting to vote early. In this case, busloads of Spanish-speaking voters were escorted past the lines to vote ahead of the others, apparently faciolitated by poll workers -- but if the Harris campaign believes college-educated suburban women are going to tip the balance, why interfere with them this way? This all has my contrarian instincts tingling.

posted by test @ October 30, 2024   0 Comments