I Believe

At 22:18 hours last night we messaged our fellow North American, 'It's time to believe.'

We managed to tune out the election from 7-9 PM. Our last bit of intel was Trump underperforming slightly in some Indiana county. We tuned out with dread. By the time we tuned back in the NYT elections needles were ever so slightly tilting toward Trump nationally and in the swing states. From there the numbers snowballed. Minute by minute Trump grew stronger, we could feel it. Slowly his lead grew. By 11 PM the NYT needle said 87 percent. At 0120 hours Fox called PA for Trump. DDHQ followed. And that was all.

Last night is a haze a blur, a fog of elation. We'll be honest, we approached election night with - say it with us - great fear and trepidation. To put it another way, we didn't believe. We could see it, we could just see it...network analysts reporting Kamala was outperforming Joe, and Trump was under performing in key districts...one by one key Swing states being called for Kamala...And it never happened. We haven't had an election night like that in 20 years. 

Polls like Atlas, Rasmussen, Trafalgar, Echelon, which showed Trump with a near sweep of the swing states and a popular vote victory were right. Everyone else was wrong. Our great question was answered in the affirmative. After three elections, the pollsters still haven't figured out how to count Trump voters. 

We'll have more to say about all of the above throughout the week and weekend. For now we're just going to enjoy and savor. 

Cometh Forsooth Once More

Election Day Cometh Forsooth, Election Day Cometh Forsooth Again, and Election Day Cometh Forsooth Once More. 

We thought about titling this post: Election Day Nerves. 

Here we are, on our second and LAST cup of coffee this morning. To be blunt, we're a little jumpy. At 0742 hours we have no idea how we're getting through today, much less tonight. And BTW, we may not even know the winner tonight. Gee, wonder why?

What can we say? For every modeler saying Trump's gonna win, there's a modeler saying Kamala's gonna win. Atlas, Emerson, Echelon, and intriguingly DDHQ have Trump ahead. NYT/Sienna, Cook Political Report say Kamala's in the lead. The RCP average is even but slightly red. Someone's gonna be wrong. The early vote is 49-46 for Kamala. The GOP early vote is way up from 2020. Assuming they haven't cannibalized the ED vote, GOP is going to kill it on election day. And that should be more than enough. Exit question: have pollsters figured out how to poll Trump voters?

We have lots more to say on what's happened, what we think is happening and what we think is going to happen. But guess what, we don't wanna risk having to write the meaculpa/oops post. So that will wait till things are over. And gee again, how long will that take? We'll say this, if Kamala wins it'll be because they turned out every last elite white, white woman, and anti-Trump GOP. 

The Monday Before the Tuesday Of

We broke out our leaf blower yesterday and created the mother of all leaf piles for Youngest Daughter and friends. Man, is it dry out there. 

Over the weekend Mrs. Stroock's Nittany Lions lost a close game to Ohio State 20-13 and dropped from 3 to 7 in the national rankings. Penn State has a good program and a good coach in James Franklin. But they'll never beat the likes of Ohio State or [insert nefarious SEC program here]. And rightfully so. Even after the Sandusky scandal a decade back, the Penn State program is well thought of. It's clean. Bad players are disciplined and good players graduate. Is it really worth forfeiting that reputation to contend Clemson and Alabama?

On the pro circuit Mrs. Stroock's Eagles defeated the struggling Jaguars of Jacksonville 28-23 despite failing to convert several 4th downs, unnecessary two-point conversion attempts (and failures) and a missed FG. 'Here Jacksonville, you take the game...No Philadelphia, we insist...' Coach Nick Sirianni is a madman. Bill Belichick sure would look good in Kelly green. Mrs. Stroock not pleased with suggestion. 

The Giants still suck, which we find oddly comforting. This is the tenth season without Tom Coughlin (who didn't go out in a blaze of glory himself) and the Giants have two playoff appearances, one win and four head coaches to show for it. The Giants appear on Sunday and Monday night on reputation only. In the 80s and 2000s the Giants were on prime time because they were one of the best teams in the league. 

A second Iowa poll came out yesterday showing Trump winning the state, this time by 8 points. So much for that Selzer Harris + 3 poll and the general freakout about rural voters. Otherwise a bevy of polls came out yesterday showing Trump tied or leading slightly nationally and with small leads in the seven swing states.* We were waiting for one pollster or odds maker that wasn't necessarily GOP friendly to show Trump ahead. Well, here is DDHQ in partnership with The Hill. 

Ahhh...FB tells us that four years ago today was the day after election 2020. Quoth Will, 'Is it me or do the dems/media seem kinda disappointed this morning?' And they were. Despite what the polls said, The Dems still needed five days to manufacture enough votes for the steal...

We'll just scroll on to the nice pics and videos of the girls. That's much better...

Scrolling further we see a note that we voted for Corey Booker in 2014. No regrets. He seemed kinda cool after rescuing someone from a fire. We'd vote for the GOP senate candidate this year if we knew who the hell he was, so Andy Kim it is. And lastly, we see this note way back in 2008, 'Thinks maybe, just maybe, John McCain.' Thank goodness we were wrong about that one. And here we are the day before election 2024. 

Monday Metal, Metallica, but they're a mid-60s rock band:

At once horrifying and engrossing. Enchanting? We're partial to Sad but True, we've always been partial to Sad but True on the original. 

*NYT/Sienna shows the inverse, but even their own Nate Cohn admits they may not have figured out how to count Trump voters. If that's the case...

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 11/3/24

Whoa, clocks back last night? Didn't even realize. As far as we're concerned right now the time is 7:52.

Yesterday we mowed the lawn for the last time this year. We're six + weeks without any rain and it was dry AF, yo. We didn't do the front lawn because it's covered with red leaves and we rather like it. The fall foliage is past peak. Actually, because of the dry and often unusually warm weather, we never really had a peak. 

We swore we wouldn't spend this election going over polls, but this one's a doozy. We'd never heard of the Iowa Selzer Poll, but it's supposed to be a big deal and representative not just of Iowa but of rural Midwestern voters as a whole. Well last night this Selzer poll returned a 47-43 lead for Kamala. 

We asked our man on the ground in Iowa, who was a county turnout coordinator back in 2020. 'What are they, fucking nuts?' he replied and said he had to get back to the Hawkeyes game.* If you believe the Mistress of San Francisco is winning Iowa by 3, we got some Arkansas real estate opportunities you're going to love. They're just fucking with us now. 

Emerson dropped an Iowa poll an hour before Selzer, Trump + 10. Three polling firms, Echelon, Atlas and Rasmussen (of course) show Trump leading nationally and in the big seven swing states this year. If they're wrong and this Selzer person is right, then that barren wombed Whore of Babylon is gonna win bigly and none of this will matter and there's no point anymore. 

Moving on to Will's Good Idea for the Week of 11/3/24. War Night: Stories of the Great Nuclear War of 1975 is ten stories and 62,000 + words. That's a novel. We're planning on two more stories, nuclear artillery at Fulda, and the Soviet Salyut space station. But things being what they are, we may just call a lid and move on. Or...we can write one story in November and one in December. Maybe. 

*We're having fun with poetic license there, 'I looked at it, laughed, and told her on Twitter that she nuked her credibility for an obvious suppression poll.'

Saturday Updates

A fine Diwali party last evening, which we're sorry to say we didn't enjoy as much as we could have as we spent a lot of time fretting. Bad/stupid on us. 

Oh look, the boil water advisory is lifted. 

We've four days to go till election 'day'. 

Kamala's campaign seems designed to maximize women voters, college educated whites, and disaffected GOPs. This strategy leaves us with nothing but questions. Can Liz Cheney turn out voters for Kamala? Is that enough? What are we missing? Hey, we didn't get Barry Soetoro's strategy in 2012.

Right now, we're seeing a deluge of suppression polls showing a Kamala surge. The betting markets are turning her way as well. News articles are filtering out saying the pollsters are underestimating the Dem vote because they're still wincing from their 2016 and 2020 misses.

 

Keep Yellowstone's John Dutton in mind, 'This ain’t checkers son, this is chess. And you’re about to play it with masters.'  

It's gut check time. 

Look at us with Christopher Messina, whom we met on Substack. 

We talk about writing, Israel, American Jews, and of course the election. 

The things.

In War Night, Morning Rory is done and ends cornily. The Australia story is almost done. The story has its thematic core now we don't quite know where things are headed with it. 

An Orange Halloween (Of Course) and a bit Green

And a good post-Halloween, pre-Diwali party to Stroock's Books reader(s) wherever they may be.  

Chindia was tricked, then it was treated. I got a rock. 

The weather remains unseasonably warm. And since we haven't had rain in a month, there will be no Diwali fireworks tonight. Damn it. We blame the Jews' weather machine.

Bridgewater is still under a boil water advisory. Damn it also.

We have another month of book sales in the book (see what we did there)? Here's our top 10 eBook sellers this year:

We'd post the KENP (streaming) data but it looks almost exactly the same. Yellow is World War 1990: Norway. That blue surge earlier in the year is World War 1990: The Final Storm. Norway had an opening surge followed by a very steep fall off. The fall off thereafter is about 20 percent per month as always. The math is remarkably consistent. Sales for 2024 have equaled sales for 2023. As ever our sales strategy remains to grow that backlist. 

So we tuned into the Jets game last night and saw they were down 7-zip. After watching a few possessions, we found something else to do for a while. When we came back the Jets were up 21-10. What's up with that? The Jets aren't supposed to be able to do that. They're Jets are 3-6 and the season is not quite dead- yet. There's some winnable games on the sched and no reason the Jets can't put a few wins together and be in the playoff mix for a few weeks. In the end we expect the Jets will Jet and get gangrene. But for today the Jets are Gang Green. 

There's no getting around it. Trump had a great October, Kamala had a bad October. The election is being fought on blue ground, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, etc etc. Looking at polls, and data, and anecdotes (which are just bits of data), Trump is rising. MAGA hats have every reason to be optimistic.* Maybe the election is the easy part. The hard part comes with the post-election riots and election subversion. We shall see. Exit question: why are we talking about polls and turnout and election night as if it's all going to take days to sort things out. 

*Marist shows Kamala leading by a couple of points in PA, MI, and WI. Cause for concern? Marist's track record is meh, and we saw a great meme reminding us that in 2020 we knew to ignore all those 2020 polls showing Joe up 8, 10, 12 points someplace. Be based. Oh look, Rasmussen is saying almost the exact opposite. 

Blue Won the World Series, will Blue win the Election?

Happy Halloween. Trick or treating tonight, and a Diwali party tomorrow. 

The weather will be unseasonably warm, with temperatures climbing into the low 80s. We're going as a middle-aged father of three teenaged daughters. 

The Los Angeles Dodgers are the world champions. An impressive win, an impressive late inning comeback. The Dodgers were clearly better than the Yankees, who at least avoided getting swept. The Yankees are good at hitting homeruns and clubbing the opposition to death. They're not good at working the count, defense, baserunning - the fundamentals. These Yankees remind us of the 1990s Texas Rangers, whom Joe Torries' Yankees beat in the playoffs three times. It felt like there were a lot of Dodgers' fans at Yankees Stadium last night, no?

Dodgers' manager Dave Roberts has taken the team to the World Series four times in the last decade and won two of them. He's won a hundred games five  times.  Dave Roberts is the greatest Dodgers manager since Tommy Lasorda, obviously. Even as an admittedly casual fan now, it's nice to see the Dodgers being one of the great teams in baseball. Baseball is better with great teams. 

As for the Yankees they have some tough decisions to make, and we don't envy GM Brian Cashman. Would you give free agent Juan Soto a 15-year, $600 million contract? 

Oh, fuck no...In other sports news the Jets are on Thursday night football. 

In health news The Bridgewater-Raritan Daily Voice reports, 'Rise In Walking Pneumonia Cases Prompts CDC Warning...' Yes, we know. It's been going around. Readers will see cases of walking pneumonia peaked in August. August, you say? We had a terrible cough in late August and even mentioned it twice on this blog. At the time we wrote that we suspected our ailment was the thing from the place. 

Related: Bridgewater had a watermain break yesterday and we're under a boil water advisory here. 

Also we have a moody kitchen overhead light fixture that's not getting enough power. 

Trump arriving at a rally in a garbage truck and giving a speech in an orange vest is just masterful showmanship. French kiss.  When talking to someone about the election yesterday, we convinced ourselves that Trump was gonna win. We believed that to our core last night reading of the garbage truck business. We even messaged one of you people yesterday, 'Fuck it. We're gonna win.' You gotta admit, Trump's campaign is a lot of fun. Kamala's campaign seems angry. 

There was a batch of CNN polls yesterday showing Kamala leading by 4 or 5 points in PA, MI, and WI. Most other polls show Trump slowly but steadily inching ahead. The CNN polls are probably outliers. Probably. There's no reason for MAGA hats not to feel confident, cautiously optimistic even.  Exit question: what are the unknown unknowns?

War Night's Australian story is big and clunky and has too many words. Also, we don't know quite how it ends. This is normal. This story needs to be wrapped up and then placed in timeout for a while. Then we'll come back to it and figure out which words need to go. 

Oh look, World War 1990: Norway Has 200 ratings for a 4.3 star average. Huh, as of this writing Norway is ranked 200 in alternate history. By comparison World War 1990: The Final Storm is ranked 600 or so. Reminder, we are among the best there is at what we do.