#i can only imagine the backlash of trump supporters celebrating their win

[chickorita305]

Election Day is Nigh

It’s unavoidable: Election Night is coming. 

The news tonight is running several news stories related to things in the election. As I type this, my dad is listening to the local news headlines, including one that says the governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, is preemptively putting the National Guard on call for potential violence on Election Night. Upon looking it up an OPB article about it ("Oregon Gov. Kate Brown will declare emergency, ready National Guard ahead of election" on their website), I find that these National Guard troops will only be stationed around "the Portland area," if they are deployed at all, in part as a way to discourage people from discouraging voters to drop off their ballots. With the civil unrest and nightly protests that have been occurring in Portland since the start of the George Floyd protests on May 28, 2020, and the clarification in the OPB article that this could provide authorities with special permission to use crowd-control tactics that have otherwise been banned due to the backlash from their use in those protests, I can only imagine how poorly this will go over with the residents of Portland.

Despite the high tensions in Portland, and the Donald Trump rallies that have been held in the city and around the state, most polls project Oregon to be very likely to give their electoral votes to Joe Biden. As a state that has given their electoral votes to the Democratic nominee for president in the past 8 election cycles (a tradition that dates back to 1988 and which may have been influenced by the influx of people to Oregon due to companies like Intel moving their headquarters to the state), it is not unusual for polls to be projecting Oregon as in "safe Biden" territory, as websites like 270towin.org have phrased it. As someone hoping for the end to the Trump presidency, this projection seems both accurate and comforting. However, my concern, and the concern for most people anxiously watching the election as my family and friends have been doing, is not with Oregon. 

Our concern dates back to the 2016 presidential election cycle, when then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton faced off against soon-to-be-president Donald Trump. The polls back then were projecting a win for Hillary Clinton. 

To people like myself, this seemed like a foregone conclusion: Hillary Clinton had years experience in politics, having served in several different capacities for the federal government. She lead delegations, served in the US Senate, and had been First Lady and Secretary of State throughout her career. Donald Trump, meanwhile, had built his career being known by putting his name on brands and making appearances in shows like The Apprentice, where his tagline quote was "You're fired!" It is true that Hillary Clinton was known to be out of touch with the youth, something that was often shown in her awkward uses of the slang of the day and popular trends such as the Nae-Nae. However, when compared to Donald Trump's platform, which he had built out of exclusion, disparaging people who did not agree with him or fact-checked his statements publicly, and reactionary policies, Clinton's out-of-touch image did not deter me. 

There are a number of instances just during the days of Trump's first campaign that should have disqualified his bid for the presidency in any prudent voter's mind. Donald Trump mocked people with disabilities when he mocked the appearance of a reporter on the autism spectrum after the reporter, Serge Kovaleski, called Trump out for creating and spreading a lie that a "large Arab population" celebrated as the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were hit. He called people coming over the border from Mexico, people who he lumped together as "Mexicans" despite the fact that more Mexicans were moving to Mexico from the US than vice versa after the Great Recession of 2008 according to the Pew Research Center ("More Mexicans Leaving Than Coming to the U.S." from 2015 on their website) and the fact that, by the time Donald Trump was running, the majority of undocumented immigrants crossing that border were from other Central American nations than Mexico, rapists, criminals, and drug-dealers. He was a big contributor to the spread of interest in claims that former president Barrack Obama was actually a citizen of Kenya, a conspiracy theory often referred to as "Birtherism" that has racist undertones for relying on the fact that Obama's father was born in Kenya and had British and Kenyan citizenship. His comment spoken and recorded in 2005 in a trailer with Billy Bush where he claims that he could do anything to women, including "grab them by the pussy," since women would let him do anything came to light and ignited backlash that later found prominence in the #MeToo movement and was incorporated into the 2017 Women's March with the appearance of knitted Pussyhats.

With all of these instances, the polls predicting his demise, and the experience of the Democratic presidential candidate after what seemed to me a leap forward in leadership domestically under a Democratic president for 8 years, it seemed clear to me that Donald Trump was destined to lose. Men like him didn't win offices like the presidency. In my world, fostered by fictional stories from a young age of strong women who worked hard and proved their place at the table with their competence and forged in the faith that the citizens of a nation cared more for uplifting each other than focusing on their own short-term, personal, material gain or the fear-mongering for the need of a strong military against a hazy, foreign (read: Middle Eastern) enemy in the minds of those that had lived through the attacks of 9/11, there could only be one choice. I went to bed that night believing that I would wake up to the news of the first woman elected to be President of the United States.

The world that I had believed myself to be living in proved to be just as fictitious as the stories that had nurtured them. I woke up the next day in my maternal grandmother's house, a comfortable 3-bedroom attached house an hour north of London, England, to the sobering news that Donald Trump had won enough electoral votes to take the election. Over the course of the week, when it became clear that Hillary Clinton had won the majority of votes cast, a sense that the presidency had been stolen was born among left-leaning voters. On that first day in a post-Trump win, however, I wasn't thinking of that. I was roiling with confusion as to how my fellow Americans could believe that a vote for Trump would be in anyone's best interest and struggling with a sense of grief as to what this would mean for the next 4 years to come. 

It turns out that there are many Americans who do not place themselves into the shoes of the people who struggle to make a living for themselves and their families. A more forgiving interpretation might be that many Americans were not convinced that a Clinton presidency would provide the security that a Trump one would, though I have always questioned with how much veracity the people claiming this truly believe it to have. I had also underestimated the power with which then-director of the FBI James Comey's "October Surprise" (that is, his announcement that the FBI had "learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation [Clinton's handling of sensitive information that pertained to Benghazi, which had Trump rallying his supporters to chant "lock her up" in reference to Hillary Clinton].") would have in the minds of voters. 

Perhaps more importantly, I had ignored how deeply unpopular Hillary Clinton was as a political figure. I had several friends and family members with whom I had talked about the presidential candidates, among whom many had expressed a dislike for Clinton whether or not they saw Donald Trump as a good alternative. That sentiment was widespread across the United States: In a 2016 Gallup poll ending the week of November 6, Hillary Clinton's favorability rating was 40% to Trump's 35%, while their unfavorability ratings were 52% and 61% respectively ("Trump and Clinton Finish With Historically Poor Images" on Gallup's news webpage). Stuck between a Democratic candidate from an established political family facing yet another scandal and a Republican one that preached the need for undoing all the policies of the past eight years, many voters chose the one they felt was at least better than the other candidate or, in many cases, didn't show up to the polls at all.

We know now that there was foreign interference in the 2016 US presidential election. It showed up in divisive memes online that hardened people's political stances and disrupted conversations that the right and left were having, polarizing our communities. It showed up in the discouragements of people, such as those in key swing states and BIPOC, to vote by convincing people that voting for officials never changed anything. It showed up in the access that Russian actors gained to voter registration and personal information in some circumstances. And it was Russian hacking of the Clinton campaign that lead to the leaking of tens of thousands of e-mails to WikiLeaks that would later become the October Surprise that James Comey would unleash near the Election Day of 2016. Much of this worked in Trump's favor to win the election.

Today, every news caster, website, or pundit that talks about poll numbers includes a disclaimer to the effect that "polls are not infallible" and stresses that "although the poll numbers are in Biden's favor, there is still a path for Trump to victory in this race." Behind these disclaimers are the memory of the 2016 presidential election. YouTube channel TLDR News US, which has reported on US national issues since June 2019, has made this a topic for more than one video on their channel. Their two videos "Can You Trust Polling Data? Is Biden Really Set to Win the Presidency" from August 11, 2020 and "If Polls Were Wrong in 2016, Can We Trust Them in 2020? Why Polls are More Reliable" from October 28, 2020 have been viewed for a total of 185,085 views as of November 2, 2020, with the majority of those views (specifically, 143, 683 of them) accounted for in the last 5 days for that latter video. Having watched these videos to help myself understand the reliability of the polls, I know first-hand how the anxiety of the election results drives people like me to search out information like this.

As we go into Election Day, this anxiety comes with me. While our election results will likely not be fully accounted for until all ballots can be counted, something that is unlikely to happen until later in November due to the record number of voters casting their ballots early through mail-in ballots and early voting events to avoid crowding the polls on Election Day and/or avoid the long lines typical of the day. While there is evidence that Trump has already decided to declare himself the victor on Election Night if the initial numbers look to be in his favor, polls are showing that Biden still has a lead in most states and could potentially deliver a crushing defeat through the electoral college...while also showing potential outcomes where Trump wins enough electoral votes to secure a second term of his presidency.

Tonight, I have more hope for the chances of a Biden presidency with the guidance of Kamala Harris than I do fear that Donald Trump will win the presidency again. What frightens me is that the fear that is there is so much heavier than the hope. It is not without recognition of the fact that any presidency will be flawed with overseas policy that aims to undermine the self-determination of people or acknowledgement of the fact that the presidency can only mean so much when the rest of the government is at odds with it that I watch this election with dreadful anticipation. 

Only time will tell if the polls this election cycle are just as misguided as the 2016 election polls were, and whether I am hopeful or despondent about the path that the White House will take for the next four years. Time that has passed so slowly and yet come all too quickly.

#election day 2020 #us politics #2020 election #political #musings #rants

[ts1989fanatic]

WATCHING Katy Perry promote her new album by exhuming the three year old feud with Taylor Swift highlights just how differently the two women operate.

You would imagine Taylor Swift would have to be held at gunpoint before she agreed to be filmed for 72 hours, including sleeping.

Perry’s one-person Celebrity Big Brother is a very curious experiment in the limits of self-promotion.

While she’s had publicists swat away anyone asking about Swift for years, in the last few weeks Perry has ripped the Band Aid off the scab herself.

Perry confirmed Bad Blood is about them (Swift never named names) and that she clapped back with her Swift-bashing Swish Swish.

During her live stream this weekend, Perry — in an interview with Arianna Huffington, founder of celebrity-driven website Huffington Post — offered up what she knew would be instant global clickbait — “I forgive Taylor Swift”.

Mission accomplished.

It should be a celebration of her surprisingly experimental new album, but Perry herself has made the narrative about Taylor Swift again — smartly keeping her in news cycles.

It started with her Carpool Karaoke — the headlines following that were Perry doing a CSI of the feud. Turns out it was actually a fight over communal back-up dancers — hardly Tupac v Biggie or Bette v Joan. Ryan Murphy isn’t going to make a Feud over this.

Giving the drama oxygen is smart crisis marketing (with Witness getting so-so reviews, her singles flopping and a string of publicity faux-pas) but a dangerous long game.

Swift has spent her career carefully constructing a public image; a reliable brand.

She deliberately refuses to reveal who her songs are about, citing the Carly Simon You’re So Vain blueprint. 45 years on, people are still discussing who that song is about.

Make no mistake, Swift throws shade, she just seemingly does it in the shadows.

She deliberately told Rolling Stone Bad Blood wasn’t about an ex lover, but a female pop star, thus starting a debate she then withdrew from, at least in public.

Swift’s team are saying her back-catalogue landing on streaming services on the exact same day as Perry released Witness was a total coincidence.

Even if that was true, they knew that chess move would give ammunition to those who see her as a snake — as well as promote Swift’s music on Perry’s big day. Once again, Swift is letting her music do the talking — thanks to cunning timing.

Release dates are a big deal in the world of music, and Perry’s has been fixed for a while.

The two women actually have a lot in common. Both realise they have a large fanbase of pre-teen girls; Swift keeps herself nice, Perry sings about sex, often in thinly-veiled metaphor. However they’ve both championed supporting other women, even if that’s been ironic at times.

Swift went to Max Martin — who steered Perry’s first hit I Kissed a Girl — for her first flirtation with straight up pop, We are Never Ever Getting Back Together, then her country-free pop album 1989.

But Swift has always been clever about knowing what to show and what to hide. Mystery is increasingly powerful in the modern share-all era.

Perry’s Big Brother/Truman Show experiment seems to want to rip back the curtain and show an exaggerated version of what an A-list pop star does while in promotional mode.

The problem — the curtain is there for a reason.

No one is interesting enough to carry a 72 hour show themselves — Perry has strategically surrounded by herself with guests, many using the airtime to educate and uplift whoever is watching and talk. Good on her.

But there seems to be a lot of Perry doing her make-up and being surrounded by people on her payroll. The entourage of yes people paid to keep the golden goose happy. That’s what your life as a pop star is; there’s always an assistant two steps behind. They’re just usually never seen.

Perry is one of the first pop star examples of the backlash that came from publicly supporting Hillary Clinton.

Swift, who came to prominence in country music, was notably silent on Twitter during the US election.

It’s increasingly brave for a celebrity to be so open about political issues — and increasingly dangerous for a career.

Trump supporters have continually trolled Perry on social media; the singer suggested her new music would be more socially conscious, or “woke”, however beyond single Chained to the Rhythm, the album is more relationship driven.

Perry talking about her ‘white privilege’ on her live feed, frequently, will trigger conservatives even more.

Read the online comments on any Katy Perry or Miley Cyrus have done lately and you see why Swift remains silent.

In the end, no one really wins from Taylor v Katy’s schoolgirl pettiness. Unless you look at the chart — Bad Blood was a global No. 1, Swish Swish peaked at No. 35.

So far only Ruby Rose (a former friend of Perry) has acted as any kind of Swift spokesperson on the feud.

If Tay and Katy’s ratchet hatchet can be buried, that first picture of the two women together will be worldwide news in this weird new world of ours.

But don’t be surprised if that photo op does happen that it happens around the time Taylor Swift has something to promote.