mtutiger

Elon or someone else domestically seems more plausible to me than a foreign government.... although it's not without risks for him to weigh in that way either.

Yeah, that seems like a pretty huge complicating factor. And when people throw out these alternate funding scenarios, it seems like it gets avoided *a lot*

Wouldn't Putin be evading sanctions to even get the money to Trump in this hypothetical? Maybe the shell companies and cutouts exist to facilitate, but even getting money into the US from Putin seems like it would be a lot more difficult than it's being made out to be in this discussion.

I'm not sure that Engoron is the one who would seize the assets, my understanding is that NYS, under the auspices of James, would be the ones moving on assets. I also don't think NYS is nearly as concerned about the optics as you suggest. Given that it's the home of Wall Street, it's the one state in the country that I could see being able to handle a case of this magnitude. But time will tell.

Understood. But my point still stands.... they have to do both and they *did* both in 2020. And, money wise, they will have the resources to do both in 2024 to the extent they can.

Even aside from partisan breakdowns, there are shifts in the body politic that happen every cycle that candidates need to address. 2016 experienced a large shift away from HRC/Dems from WWC voters, 2020 marked a large shift away from Trump/GOP with suburbanites as well as a smaller but profound shift with Latinos toward Trump (particularly in FL and TX). I know that election wins require many groups, but in 2020 in particular, there were at least three states that Biden won (Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia) where historically GOP voters in suburban areas made a profound difference on the outcome. Including some who voted for Trump in 2016 I would imagine. In 2024, though the polling crosstabs are probably way overstated, there's likely to be a continued shift among Latino voters.... I imagine Biden's campaign will invest a lot of money trying to stem that shift (and could succeed to a degree), but if you're running one of these campaigns, that's the stuff you're gonna think about. Obviously this could be countered within suburban areas and further shifts there, but you have to put in the work *and* persuade in order to maximize those gains. That's why it isn't all just about turnout.... if that's all you are focusing on, you aren't addressing larger demographic changes and are hedging that you can retain every single vote you earned last time. And that's risky as hell.

I do think in terms of motivation, Trump has benefitted a lot from not being front and center in the news and seeing his remarks at rallies not getting more coverage overall. He's also not on Twitter these days, and his campaign has clearly worked hard to keep his public appearances for interviews generally with friendly press outlets. The "bloodbath" comments are a good example of the downside risks though, and probably mark the end of that honeymoon period. And it was always inevitable as this race shifts to a general election state.

Yikes

In the short term, I agree. In the long term, you always need to be adding.

I think they have to do both, personally. Not an either/or proposition.

Also it's a misunderstanding of the terrain upon which these elections are fought.... they aren't being fought over the die-hards, they are fought over swing voters and marginal voters in each party who are theoretically persuadable. I don't necessarily think that the truth or facts don't matter to everyone in this cohort.

I know my role around here is to push back against the "everything that happens is good for Trump" tendency, but the reaction from his allies suggests to me that they don't see this one as a win and that this broke through in a way that previous incendiary comments haven't. Like, they've come down hard trying to spin this one their way, they aren't laughing it off. I would add that there's a lot of other content in that speech that didn't get as much attention (such as the section where he continues to trash on Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley) that could be potentially damaging at a time when he is struggling to retain support from marginal GOP voters who want him to go away and is struggling to raise money from GOP donors (both large and small $$$)

There was plenty of gnashing of teeth this weekend about what he actually meant about the "bloodbath" comment (ie. ackshully, it's about the auto industry)... but I think that sort of misses the point.... the reality is that it's about his rhetoric and the fact that there is a history of it being inflammatory and leading to violence. And moments like that remind people. On another note, in the Evan Osnos profile of Biden's campaign in The New Yorker, they (particularly Mike Donilon) caught a lot of grief for saying that their campaign would be invoking themes around January 6th and democracy.... but this weekend is also a reminder that *Trump* will be invoking themes around January 6th too. Because of that, and because of the advantage that Biden/Dems have on issues surrounding it, it would be malpractice not to emphasize it at least to some degree while campaigning.

I honestly don't know either, but at least in the case of the EJ Carroll bond (posted by Chubb Insurance), the bond had to be accepted by the presiding judge in order to post.

Also, there's the whole "getting the money from Point A to Point B" issue....

This seemed inevitable.... what lender in their right mind would choose to underwrite a half billion dollars for this guy?

Footwear in general has become more casual over the past few years, and that's probably a good thing IMO

Real "tan suit" energy here

It's possible that he's finding his current life more profitable... he built a name and brand for himself that probably sells some Substack subscriptions and will sell some books whenever he finishes this one he's working on. But it does seem like he's he's kinda coasting on his reputation at this point.... and the degree to which he doesn't embrace uncertainty in his analysis (which *is* a change versus 2016) makes him seem more like a pundit than an expert on poll aggregating.

A couple of observations about Silver these days (all double as reasons why I also don't care for his analysis): (1) He is incapable of uttering the phrase "I don't know".... the tweet above that he's responding to (from John Harwood) actually illustrates it pretty well; Harwood himself is very skeptical of Silver's analysis but concedes "I don't know for certain". I could not imagine Silver doing that; Silver thinks he's right about everything and is thin-skinned whenever he's questioned. His dig at "motivated reasoning" is interesting as well, because honestly, I think he's as susceptible as anyone to it. (2) I'm not sure when it happened (was it COVID?), but at some point, I think Silver started moving away from the original genesis of his work after he left the baseball space (ie. election modeling) and more toward other pursuits, whether it be punditry, his poker game, writing his book, etc. And I think as he has moved further away from the election modeling world, I think he's lost some speed on his fastball. I liken it a lot to professionalism, particularly in fields that involve licensure (such as my field, engineering).... part of maintaining a license is a requirement for a certain amount of continuing education credits in order to maintain the license. The reason isn't just to make us watch boring webinars or make venders money, at least ostensibly, it's to keep people sharp and up-to-date on new technologies or methods or research in the field. Which in turn helps us to maintain our skills as an engineer while getting further and further into the career. With Silver, I think a lot of people liken his contrarianism exclusively to bad faith, and maybe that's true to an extent, but it may just be that he's further from this world than he was in 2012 and 2016. And I think it shows in a lot of his analysis.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the front runner...

Trump has a charisma about him that will be hard to replicate.

I used to think this way in 2020, but strategically if I was someone like Pence (who I believe genuinely doesn't want Trump to win) and wanted to change hearts and minds, I would have to take into account the constituency that I appeal to. Pence's constituency are social conservatives, particularly evangelical ones. At this moment, this group is central to Trump's support (like, 80-20 or somewhere in that range). From reading part of Tim Alberta's new book on the evangelical movement, my takeaway is that a move like endorsing Biden would probably backfire with this group and cause them to just tune Pence out. It goes against the grain, but to the extent that any of it matters, withholding the endorsement alone is a more effective bridge in this case.

Yeah, I think may have associated your comment a little too closely with 84's. I agree with what you say above... The other thing to keep in mind is that, while it's probably not realistic for people like Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, etc. to endorse Biden because their entire lives are wrapped around this political party, voters who are in the mold or prefer the GOP of Pence/Haley/etc. in the real world don't necessarily have that same calculus. That's why the "permission structure" thing matters... 2020 is a good example.... there was no shortage of conservative pundits (and some politicians) in 2020 who didn't like Trump who would talk about voting third party, but the reality is, looking at a map of the Milwaukee or Phoenix suburbs and how they voted in 2020, it's pretty clear that there were plenty of people like this who *did* vote for Joe Biden.

This framing is pretty smart....