Dear Readers,
This week has been completely crazy. I’m going to help you make sense of it.
Days until General Election: 23
Trump Supporters Endorse Racism, Riots, and Hell, Even a Coup
“If [Hillary Clinton]’s in office, I hope we can start a coup.” Or so said a Donald Trump supporter at an Ohio rally. He continued, “We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take. . . . I would do whatever I can for my country.” This is just one of the plethora of recent events involving Trump supporters calling for violence or revolution. Sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee said it was “pitchforks and torches time”, and a Trump supporter left a swastika on the media table at a rally.
Trump himself has been accusing the media, including Saturday Night Live (“Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me. Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election!”), of rigging the election. His supporters have been buying into that, and that’s really bad. Another Trump supporters describes himself as a “precinct watcher:” he says, “I’ll look for . . . well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American.” Trump supporters intimidating voters based on their race and claiming the election is rigged against them could mean actual widespread violence come November 9th, which is an awful thing to consider.
Thankfully, we always have Mike Pence to say “we will absolutely accept the result of the election.”
Trump’s Accusers
Since the video of Trump bragging about sexual assault surfaced last week, eleven women have accused Trump of touching them inappropriately. Again, I don’t enjoy talking about this, so I’ll let you all read this good article from the Daily Beast. Say what you will about the truth of these people, but there’s a very low chance all eleven of them - including his former wife - would be lying. In a normal election, this would completely disqualify Trump from being allowed to stand as a candidate, but of course it’s less damaging for Trump.
Evan McMullin? What?
Evan McMullin, famous for having low name recognition and being an obscure punchline among political nerds such as myself, has been found at 20% in three consecutive Utah polls. With the endorsement of Governor Gary Herbert and/or Mitt Romney, it’s not unthinkable to see him coming in second or even winning Utah polls, which are basically showing a three (or four)-way race at this point. When he announced his candidacy, it was clear McMullin was making a ploy for Utah and only Utah. And his bizarre strategy could work, leaving him as the first third-party candidate to win a state since George Wallace in 1968, and the first to win an electoral vote since John Ewards in 2004.
Weekly Predictions:
Electoral Votes: Clinton 357, Trump 181
Popular Vote: Clinton +7
Senate: Democrats 51, Republicans 49
This Week In World Elections
Lithuania: The Lithuanian Parliamentary election was won by the Homeland Union, a Christian party, who overperformed the polls. The leading Social Democratic party was expected to win, but fell to third place in a disappointing finish, behind the Lithuanian Peasants and Greens Union, who before the election held one seat. We do not yet know seat totals, since the second round of single-member constituency seats has not yet occurred.
Thanks for reading! As usual, comments are welcome!
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