A number of televised prognosticators have claimed recently that the race for the open PA Senate seat is a dead heat. Don't buy it.
Most of those speculations have been based, incorrectly, on Nate Silver's work. GOTV believes the interpretations to be incorrect because they ignore 538's stated policy of offering a range of scenarios. Adhering to that more exact method has John Fetterman winning 57 out of 100 times over Mehmet Oz.
... from Westmoreland County PA on November 5. Former President Donald Trump will appear there just three days before the November 8 election, to campaign for Senate candidate Mehmet Oz and gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano.
Pennsylvania prepares for its first general election - the midterms coming in two weeks - under new
legislative maps. The revamped state House and Senate districts' lines have already spawned a wave of retirements. See spotlightpa.org for more detail on the shape and proximity of new districts, and their effect on the makeup and control of the PA legislature.
Tuesday's debate between Democrat John Fetterman and MAGA Republican Mehmet Oz was rather unsatisfying. As noted by a number of reviewers, each participant relied heavily on memes and name-calling. But in the end, GOTV agrees with Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Bunch noted that Feterman's occasional stumbling was indicative, not of cognitive problems but rather simply of auditory ones. Bunch then gave what GOTV considers a reasonable, and apt, summation of the debate, when he said that Fetterman's clear and sincere concern for the average citizen far outweighed his problems with vocalizing. As Bunch said of the Democratic candidate, He has a heart.
Spotlight PA reports today that Gov. Tom Wolf and (Republican) legislative leaders are negotiating a $3.6 billion tax credit package that includes a program to encourage natural gas-fueled hydrogen
production in the Commonwealth.
The package, if passed, would be even bigger than the record-setting $1.65
billion incentive given to Shell for its Beaver County plastics plant.
The Fetterman - Oz debate will take place at 8 PM tonight.
GOTV wonders if any questions about Mr. Oz's experimenting on animals while at Columbia University will arise.
Today, Ballotpedia reports on the five most expensive campaigns for seats in the PA House of Representatives.
It's worth noting that in three of the five, Democrats out-raised their Republican (and other) opponents.
Ballotpedia reports today that the dates upon which the results of the upcoming midterms are certified vary. That's because every state has its own election certification deadline, assigned by state law.
Here's the skinny:
Frequently, GOTV gets annoyed at CNN's practice of interpreting news and events, rather than simply reporting them. For instance. today the online news network centered on former President Barack Obama.
In a recent podcast, Mr. Obama warned Democrats to try to avoid coming off as a buzzkill. By that, the former President was advising his party to focus on topics voters really care about. But CNN's Chris Cillizza morphed that very sensible premise into Democrats losing bigtime in the upcoming midterms.
Such
extrapolation ahead of the facts can be dangerous, especially if it
leads folks to believe that there's no point in their going to the
polls. Republicans control that meme; we don't need CNN supporting
it.
Today's
edition of Spotlight features
two intriguing articles on the upcoming gubernatorial race in
Pennsylvania. GOTV particularly appreciates this one - an instance of pots calling kettles black.
Republican
gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano will be expected to testify on
Rudy Giuliani's behalf in an ethics case involving Giuliani's false
claims of widespread voter fraud in 2020 in Pennsylvania. The
Guardian reports Mastriano and his campaign's senior legal adviser,
former Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis, were
named on a witness list filed by lawyers for Giuliani last week.
The
ethics prosecution hearing is scheduled for December. The D.C. Bar
brought the ethics charges in June over Giuliani's role in backing a
Trump campaign lawsuit that sought to invalidate as many as 1.5
million Pennsylvania mail ballots.
Spotlight
PA reports today that the Wolf administration will count undated
mail ballots in the upcoming November midterm. The administration
intends to give guidance to counties, directing them to tally such
ballots, whatever the differing legal interpretations of ballot
status. The administration says two Commonwealth Court rulings in
favor of counting undated mail ballots are still its guidepost,
especially after a decision last week by the U.S. Supreme Court
in a similar case.
Adam Bonin, an attorney who
frequently argues election cases on behalf of Democrats, agrees that
the Commonwealth Court decisions, which were delivered by a
Republican judge, are reliable.
Bipartisanship … Of which GOTV is particularly glad, since we will be voting by mail.
Doug
Mastriano didn't impress former colleagues and instructors. Nor
does he impress GOTV as anything but a fear-monger and opportunist. Based
on our experience in academia in general, and in classrooms at a
number of levels, nothing he claims passes muster.
As reported in today's Inquirer, Tami Davis Biddle, the former chair of the faculty council at the U.S. Army War College, wrote in a Harrisburg newspaper last week that Doug Mastriano doesn’t deserve our trust or support. Rick Coplen, another retired professor at the College, where Mastriano studied and taught, says the Republican gubernatorial candidate poses a threat to American democracy. The guy is not fit for office, Coplen said.
Other academics have sounded similar alarms. James Gregory, a graduate history student at the University of Oklahoma, has been calling attention for nearly two years to what he describes as questionable conclusions and outright fabrications in Mastriano’s published work on World War I. He’s literally changing history, Gregory said last week, reiterating concerns of other researchers over Mastriano’s work on Sgt. Alvin York. Jeffrey Brown, the University of New Brunswick professor who for a time advised Mastriano on his doctoral dissertation, called the retired colonel a dangerous religious zealot with a post-fact worldview. UNB recently announced that, as a result of questions surrounding Mastriano’s Ph.D., it's reviewing its standards and methods for awarding doctorates.
All four of the scholars mentioned above told The Inquirer they are speaking publicly about Mastriano due to:
what they see as an emerging pattern of academic falsehoods
fears that he will interfere with future elections if he becomes governor
The fact that there are colleagues and associates of Mastriano’s that are speaking up now, under ordinary circumstances would be highly unusual, said Jeffrey Brown. But these circumstances, I think, are far from ordinary.
One more question stands out. Would you want anyone with the following positions holding any office, let alone Governor of Pennsylvania?
Mastriano supports outlawing abortion with no exceptions, including the life of the mother, and supports criminal penalties for those providing abortions. In 2019, Mastriano said women who violated his proposed 10-week abortion ban should be charged with murder. He's called the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade worse than the Holocaust.
The Associated Press stated that Mastriano leads an increase in Christian nationalism among GOP candidates. Republican strategist Mike Madrid told Politico Mastriano's Christian nationalism is … a movement [with] ...separation between evangelical Christianity, white identity and American nationalism is basically gone. They're merging into the same thing.
No evidence of compromised voting machines, whomever the vendor might be, has been found. Nonetheless, Mastriano has said that if elected, he would, within his first 100 days in office, immediately end all contracts with compromised voting machine companies. He's offered no indication of to determine which companies those might be.
Mastriano would repeal Pennsylvania's no-excuse mail voting law, which he previously voted for.
As Governor, Mastriano would have the power to appoint Pennsylvania's Secretary of State, who oversees elections in the state. In April 2022, Mastriano said that his Secretary of State would reconfigure voter rolls so that Pennsylvanians would have to re-register to vote. Someone should tell him that, according to legal scholars consulted by the Associated Press, such an action would be a clear violation of federal law and constitutional protections.
At a campaign event this year, Mastriano suggested that he might only certify Pennsylvania's election results if the Republican candidate for president wins.
Mastriano supports pulling Pennsylvania out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a market-based program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change. He justifies his opposition by claiming climate change is just a theory based on pop science.
Mastriano, has called for cuts to funding of public education and proposed reducing per-student school funding from $19,000 to about $9,000. The Pennsylvania State Education Association analyzed Mastriano's education plan and determined it would amount to a school funding cut of $12.75 billion, and could lead to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in public schools in Pennsylvania.
During a rally this month, Mastriano said, if elected Governor, that he would eliminate the sexualization of our kids, pole dancing, and all this other crap that's going on ... in our schools.
Mastriano supports removing undocumented immigrants living in Pennsylvania, suggesting that they be bussed to Wilmington, Delaware, hometown of President Joe Biden.
Mastriano opposes efforts to ban or discourage conversion therapy, a pseudoscientific practice of attempting to change an individual's sexual orientation, calling efforts to discourage the practice disgusting, and claiming the practice can be used to cure children who are confused.
GOTV's nominee for the most distasteful campaign ad to date showed up yesterday. Created and paid for by an organization called Citizens For Sanity, it outdid any other far-right, hate-filled, fear-mongering message. Those like C for S who call themselves conservatives are no more than robots, directed by egomaniacs like 45 and his devotee, Tucker Carlson.
Carlson, who lionizes autocrats like Viktor Orban of Hungary, founded C for S. Carlson 's mordancy lags only a micron or so behind Trump's and Orban's. The ad in question uses the far right's go-to tactics:
But the hate isn't limited to one TV ad. Far-right web sites (they don't deserve to be called conservative) engage in duplicity that's as severe. Know who and what they are, and inform anyone who'll listen to reason.
At GOTV, we fancy ourselves wordsmiths. But no words of ours, or of anyone's, can render harmless the complete contempt the far right holds for our democracy.
For the sake of it and of us all, inform yourselves, and vote.
The PA General Assembly, the state analog to the Federal House of Representatives, consists of 203 members, elected for two-year terms. On the average, a State Representative district has a population of about 62,000 residents. PA's General Assembly is the largest full-time state legislature in the U.S.
All of which makes it imperative that as much attention be paid to these contests as to those that send folks to DC. Due diligence in the GOTV sense begins with the info here. It will get you started on candidates, their locations, and their positions.
According to The Hill, and with only a month remaining before the midterms, Democrats are somewhat unexpectedly competitive in the contest for the House.
Top political handicappers still feel Republicans will win control of the lower chamber in November. But they also feel expected margins for such a victory have shrunk considerably. This gives Democrats hope they can minimize their losses and better their odds of retaking the chamber two years from now. Like GOTV, House Dems also look forward to making life tougher for potential Speaker (ugh!) Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who’s already struggling to control his most conservative wing – a task analogous to herding cats.
We’re increasingly optimistic about our ability to hold the House Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told reporters Friday. But yearning-to-be-Speaker Kevin doesn't agree. McCarthy, encouraged by Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R) victory in Virginia a year ago, predicted the GOP would pick up 60 seats.
But his envisioned red wave appears increasingly remote. Over the summer, prominent campaign forecasters made numerous shifts in their predictions, increasingly in favor of Democratic candidates. Amy Walter of Cook’s, noted a difference between this year and 2010, the last time Democrats lost control of the House. Then, polls showed Republicans had a 13-point advantage among persuadable voters. The figure this year is 3 points. Walters continued In order to make significant gains, Republicans would need to win in districts that Biden carried by 6 points or more.
Republicans need to net only four seats to win back control of the
House. But margins could prove crucial for McCarthy and other GOP
leaders. The hard-right flank in the GOP House already looks to
impeach Biden, slash federal spending, and take on the Washington
establishment — even its own leadership. Just ask John Bo.ehner
and Paul Ryan ...
Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) addressed crime and reparations at a rally in Nevada for Republican office-seekers.
In his Saturday speech for Senate candidate Adam Laxalt and gubernatorial candidate Joe Lombardo, Tuberville towed the MAGA line, accused Democrats of being pro-crime, and thereby affirmed Buffalo Springfield.
According to Tuberville, Democrats want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.
Sounds like racism, paranoia, and a reminder of why voting is so important, to us here at GOTV.
GOTV believes that today's Republican Party has become, even welcomed, what John Dean called conservatives without conscience . The Senatorial race in PA exemplifies that. In an attempt to spotlight speech and hearing impairments John Fetterman experiences due to the stroke he suffered in May, Mehmet Oz released his medical records, and challenged Lt. Gov. Fetterman to do the same. Voters should have full transparency … Oz declaimed.
Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, whose seat is the one up for grabs and the one which will change the balance of power in the Senate, chimed in with more put-downs. If John Fetterman were elected to the Senate, and he’s not able to communicate effectively, if he’s not able to engage with the press, if he’s not able to engage with colleagues, he will not be able to do the job.
Discriminatory digs at people with disabilities are, sadly, nothing new for the GOP. Remember 45's mocking a disabled reporter on live television?
Because of occasional auditory and hearing issues, Fetterman has opted out of media gaggles. Instead, he meets with reporters via video conferencing. Nor has he taken part in multiple debates. But he responds to criticism by:
saying In June, I released a letter from my doctor where he clearly stated that I am fit to serve
saying I trust my actual doctors over the opinion of a charlatan who played one on TV
agreeing to debate Oz on Oct. 25 for a televised debate two weeks before the election
It’s common practice to release health records in presidential elections, but not Senate races. Even if that weren't the case, GOTV feels it important to point out that the narrow concept of being fit to serve in the way it’s being used in the Fetterman-Oz race relies on a definition of health that labels disability as invalidating.
If having a stammer or a hearing impairment disqualifies someone from running or holding office, are we really living up to the promise of government by the people? Joe Biden’s stutter has been used by the congenitally ruthless to try to discredit him. Similarly, GOTV is reminded of an episode of the TV series The Untouchables. In it, Eliot Ness confronts a wheelchair-bound criminal. That man pleads his handicap as a defense. In response to his question What can a cripple do? Ness says He could be elected President of the United States.
Disabled Americans have the right to be represented, and most importantly, to work, and that includes working for the U.S. in any capacity.
Neither Pennsylvania's gubernatorial nor its senatorial races are hatched, but they're close. According to today's forecasts at 538, Dems are about ready to count chickens, hatched or not.
Josh Shapiro has a 96% chance of defeating Doug "No Exceptions" Mastriano. John Fetterman has a 73% chance of defeating Mehmet "Crudite" Oz.
Still a bit too early to break out the champagne, but looking good ...
GOTV continues to consult sources in western PA for political insights that affect the Commonwealth as a whole. WESA reports that Democratic gubernatorial nominee Josh Shapiro was endorsed by the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers Local 154, which has opposed other Democrats in the past.
The Pittsburgh-based union and local are active in the natural gas industry. 154 has, in the past, backed Republicans like former President Donald Trump, and former state senator / current gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano.
This endorsement comes on the heels of Shapiro's previously-expressed doubts about current Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to enter into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Shapiro has stated he feels the initiative could harm the state’s energy sector, but have little impact on climate change.
In spite of having lived in Delaware County for more than three decades, GOTV still sees western PA as home; we regularly check info sources there.
Today, WESA, the PBS / NPR station in Allegheny County, featured a piece on the effect on local political contests of SCOTUS deep-sixing Roe v Wade. As WESA sees it, the right to an abortion has become a key topic in state legislative races. In turn, those contests could determine control of Pennsylvania’s state House. For instance, State House District 30, a swing seat situated in the North Hills, is the site of a hotly contested race between Democrat Dr. Arvind Venkat, who supports abortion rights, and Republican Cindy Kirk, who opposes them.
What's germane to this discussion is that Representatives elected this fall may vote next year on a bill that includes removing from the PA Constitution any support for the right to an abortion.
Today's Republican Party appears to be stuck, not in neutral, but in some strange form of reverse. GOTV feels most GOP candidates believe they can succeed, in today's Trumpian ethos, by relying on golden oldies of political misrepresentation.
Take the indictments of Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D PA 5). Her Republican opponent on Nov. 8, Dave Galluch:
has no campaign website
chooses to communicate entirely through Twitter (which hardly lends itself to thoughtful explanations)
relies on classics of MAGA beliefs such as national debt, porous borders, and drug trafficing. To quote Mr. Galluch:
2021 saw the most illegal border crossings & fentanyl traffic in our nation’s history. In 2022 we will set a new record for both. We must invest in border security, a strategy to counter cartels & drug traffickers, & bring order to a chaotic immigration system.
Next thing GOTV expects: Mr. Galluch will fund-raise on Rep. Scanlon's policy positions ...
Merriam-Webster's online thesaurus lists 20 synonyms for Mehmet Oz's increasingly nasty attacks on John Fetterman.
To paraphrase Siddhartha Gautama, if you do not change direction, you may end up where you started. According to Nate Silver and his colleagues at 538, venom backfires. Despite Oz portraying John Fetterman as Mephistophelian, and thereby nurturing the MAGA crowd, Fetterman now has a 76% chance of winning the Senate seat for PA, while the good doctor has only a 24% shot.
The wheels of the dharma grind slow, but they grind exceeding smooth ...
A few days ago, a post to YouTube noted that, in an attempt to belittle John Fetterman over his clothing choices, Mehmet Oz indulged his inner pettiness. By doing that, he gave his opponent a huge tactical campaign advantage.
Fetterman has been brilliant at turning Oz's inanities back on him. But this time, he's outdone himself.
GOTV can think of no better response to Oz's, and Republicans', lack of reason.
Nate Silver and his colleagues at fivethirtyeight.com have a near-perfect record at political prognosticating. Here's a very informative, in-depth look at how they do what they do, and why they're so good at it.