Kamala Harris Does NOT Need a Landslide

Even Democratic women of color are allowed to win by one vote

Nov. 1: Team Trump freaking over early-voting polls … North Koreans prepare to enter Ukraine war … Tucker Carlson allegedly attacked by non-metaphorical demon like with horns ‘n’ shit … Halloween parade had Harris manacled and chained …

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Former Pres. Donald Trump and Vice Pres. Kamala Harris during the Sept. 10, 2024, presidential debate when asked to act out Trump farting. (Screengrab / ABC News video.)

It’s understandable that people keep saying Vice Pres. Kamala Harris needs a landslide on Tuesday.

And, yes, a massive margin for Harris will make it a lot easier for her votes to be counted and certified, and a lot more difficult for corrupt, bad-at-thinking, pro-Donald Trump officials to cherry pick all the votes they need to count or discount to wrap things up for Trump, reality be damned.

Just ask Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. If Trump needed 11 votes in Georgia in 2020, instead of 11,000, most of today’s swing-state voting already would’ve been shut down by Attorney General Jesse Waters.

And, yes, a Harris landslide would show a lot of voters that America really isn’t a land of racism and misogyny, doesn’t live in fear of others, and is excited about having a woman president who’s both Black and Indian-American. So a landslide would be fun as balls and salubrious for all kinds of reasons.

But we refuse to endorse the idea that the Black, Indian-American, Democratic woman must clear a higher bar to become president.

If Harris wins the Electoral College by one vote thanks to a one-vote margin of victory in the one district in Nebraska that was allowed to vote independently thanks to one vote in the state Senate, her victory still counts and enjoys just as much even more legitimacy than George W. Bush had in 2000 when the Supreme Court gave him Florida’s votes during the War on Christmas.

And there’s reasons to think a Harris victory is more secure than Biden’s was.

In 2020, Trump controlled the Justice Department. Today, Democrats almost control it.

In 2020, Democrats had hundreds of election lawyers deployed around the country to defend the vote. Today, they have thousands.

Does Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) control the House? He does. But he might not by Jan. 6, 2025!

Have the MAGA county clerks and state legislators had four years to learn and improve their chicanery? Newsfucker, they have. But also, Newsfucker, they don’t learn.

And also also, most of those MAGA officials are in states that Trump would win legitimately. There are just seven battleground states, and because they’re battleground states, they’re already contested territory. There are already Democratic officials and political leaders in position there and a teeny handful of sane Republican allies, like the former¹ Michigan Republican Party executive director who just endorsed Harris.

And more also also, since 2020, multiple MAGA cheating officials have been arrested. Tried. Convicted. Sentenced to prison. It’s not just Jan. 6, MAGA kids and infantile adults! One Colorado county clerk just got more than eight years in prison.

This means two things about current election officials. You can bet they know about the threat of prosecution. And their ranks no longer include the ones who were convicted or voted out. Likewise, right-wing media have a billion reasons to be a tad more circumspect about platforming election lies. (Thanks, Dominion!)

And, hey, kids, look, Raffensperger’s still out there doing his Raffensperging! Here he is calling bullshit on Georgia election lies!

Now, will MAGA cry and pout and shitpost and Foxwhine if Harris ekes out a narrow win? Of course. But will they do anything differently if she absolutely floods him and then deprives him of FEMA aid? Nyet.

Yes, a landslide is better. For many reasons. (I was about to write that if Harris wins with a landslide, the party will attribute it to voters not caring about progressive causes, but if she wins with a squeaker, they’ll blame progressives for not showing up. So, lose-lose!)

And, yes, extolling the reasons a landslide is better is a helpful way of getting out the vote in mass quantities.

But one thing no one should do is suggest that Harris needs a landslide.

Because MAGA need to understand now that the bar for Harris victory is not set at “landslide.” They do not have permission to attack government offices or officials counting the votes just because Harris didn’t win enough.

MAGA need to understand now that there are already processes and people in place giving Trump more than enough leverage to mount and win legitimate challenges. Trump hasn’t identified a single, specific instance of a vote-counting apparatus that’s suspect, let alone explained why.

But even if MAGA can’t figure out any of that, tough fucking noogies. MAGA confidence in the vote is not a prerequisite.

Kamala Harris is hereby allowed to win by one vote. No less than the white guy needs.

Team Trump Has Already Blown Their Cheating Story

We’ve got multiple reports coming out now of the Donald Trump campaign sweating the early voting.

Which they wouldn’t be doing if they didn’t believe in polling OR if they genuinely believed the campaign of Vice Pres. Kamala Harris was stealing this thing.

Here’s what I mean: Trump is out there claiming he’s going to win massively². But his campaign is acknowledging their fears to reporters — who damn well better remind us of this if the campaign starts claiming otherwise on Wednesday. Trump’s own polls had them worried, so they can’t claim a Harris victory isn’t exactly what they knew was legitimately possible.

Also, they wouldn’t care about the polls if Harris somehow rigged this thing. The polls wouldn’t matter.

So Team Trump has already conceded it’s a fair race and the (real) polls aren’t rigged. The polls may be wrong, but they’re not rigged (with the exception of the GOP polls aiming to skew the averages).

So, what does the legit polling say? Well, tens of millions of people have already voted. So now pollsters are asking, “Who did you vote for?” We’re basically already getting exit polls. Here’s what they’re saying.

According to Puck, Team Trump got a little too excited a little too early, as Team Trump is wont to do. Now, Puck reports, “as the early results from Pennsylvania reveal an influx of first-time female voters who will likely break for Harris, a newfound anxiety is taking hold.” 

And, just to prove I wasn’t the giggling baby who first thought of the premature ejaculation insinuation, Puck writes, “some in the Mar-a-Lago-sphere are starting to believe that his surge last week was two weeks premature.” Two weeks!

So far, Pennsylvania women are outvoting men by 13 points. And if you think it likely that men will get their shit together in equal numbers by the deadline, have you met men?

And it’s not just women — who are most of people — it’s also old people, who biologically speaking are technically still people.

Politico reports that 58% of the senior vote cast in Pennsylvania so far is Democrats. Only 35% of the elderly vote so far is registered Republicans, despite the two parties having an equal number of senior voters in Pennsylvania.

And nearly half of all ballots cast are from these ostensible “people” over 65. 

Of course, Pennsylvania Republicans have blocked these votes from being counted early, ensuring that the count and results will be late, giving Team Trump fodder to claim shenanigans, but it seems pretty clear that even most mainstream media are hip to this jive and will push back on it if when it happens.

Nationally, polls of already-voted voters show Harris ahead by at least 19 points. That’s better than 2016, but not as good as 2020, during the pandemic, when Republicans were discouraging mail-in voting.

Ironically, Republicans are now pegging their hopes for making up the difference on in-person voting on Election Day…which they’ve made more difficult (for everybody).

Plus, y’know all that GOP ground-game incompetence that TFN has been newsfucking? New data point last night. Wisconsin Democratic Chair Ben Wikler posted this:

Elon Musk has financed a patchwork paid canvass, only supporting Trump.
The Koch network (Americans For Prosperity) is knocking on doors just for [Senate candidate] Eric Hovde.
Here and there, candidates or county parties are hitting doors.
Rs in disarray.

Almost as if the party of unbridled individualism doesn’t do great at the whole teamwork thing.

BREAKING: Trump Bragged About Committing Sexual Assault

Before he became president, Donald Trump was caught on tape bragging that he made sexual advances on women regardless of consent, let alone interest, and said that when you’re a celebrity you can just do it, and even “grab them by the pussy.”

The tape first came to light in 2016, when voters were first shocked to hear it and then shocked to discover he could win anyway. But now, the Washington Post reports, the tape is re-coming to light for voters who were too young to see the story in 2016 and are now shocked to hear it and then shocked to discover that he won anyway.

According to the Post, young, first-time voters are losing their almost-fully-developed minds that America elected a prideful sexual abuser. And they’re making tons of much-watched videos about it. (Billie Eilish shared one with her 65 million followers who can’t fucking believe this shit.)

The Post, however, suggests much of the traffic is limited to TikTok, one of the only platforms to confirm it’s not suppressing posts with the word “vote” in them. This may not matter, of course, because Trump’s remarks are already familiar to the news junkies still on Twitter and the old “people” on Facebook. Not so much the kids on TikTok. Thanks, China!

Ukraine May Be Fucked

Who says North Koreans never get to leave their country? Some 8,000 of them are expected to deploy with Russia’s army in the next few days, Secretary of State Tony Blinken said yesterday.

Now, ideally, the vast majority of them will defect just as soon as they can distract their Russian commanders by yelling, “Look, vodka!”

The ones who do engage in combat against Ukraine, however, will become legitimate targets, Blinken said. With Russia taking an estimated 1,200 casualties every day, Blinken said, “Putin has been throwing more Russians into a meat grinder of his own making in Ukraine. Now he’s turning to North Korean troops, and that is a clear sign of weakness,”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the North Korean reinforcements “won’t come close” to making up for the Russian casualties.

That said, and however weak Russia is, the New York Times reports its army is having more success on the ground than it has since the invasion’s early days. It’s honestly a pretty terrifying story, quantifying Russian gains this year.

And, the Times says, the Russians have now largely cleared much of the toughest terrain. They’ve made it past many of Ukraine’s mines. The remaining territory between them and key Ukrainian industrial sites is less protected.

Of course, in one sense, the most important battlegrounds for Ukraine are the seven swing states in next week’s election. With a rePresident Donald Trump in the White House, there’s a greater chance Ukraine will agree to trade already-captured territory for peace.

And a greater chance Russian President Vladimir Putin will no longer want to.

(Man this was depressing. Here’s an idea: Read it backward so you can leave with the hopeful stuff about North Korean troops as sign of weakness.)

Tucker Carlson Was Attacked by a Demon

A good part of my newsfucking day is spent wading through — and protecting you from — salacious, trivial, bullshit stories. It’s a vital task because determining what we pay attention to has everything to do with the trajectory of our futures.

Of course, no one upgrades to a paid TFN subscription to subsidize checking out and saving them from stories they’ll never know about.

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So the temptation is to chuck one in every once in a while. Y’know, as paid-subscription bait or virality bait. And you can fairly argue that this story is one of those, but, in my defense, Tucker Carlson says he was attacked by a demon.

Like, you can actually watch Carlson and his interviewer, John Heers, literally say these words with face noises:

Carlson:  I got attacked while I was asleep with my wife and four dogs and mauled, physically mauled.
Heers: In a spiritual attack by a demon?
Carlson: Yeah, by a demon. Or by something unseen that left claw marks on my sides.
Heers: So it left physical marks?
Carlson: Oh, they’re still there, yeah, yeah. Year and a half ago.
Heers: Was your wife terrified? I know you were.
Carlson: I wasn’t. I was totally confused. I woke up, and I couldn’t breathe, and I thought I was going to suffocate. And I walked around outside and then I walked in and my wife and dogs had not woken up. And they’re very light sleepers. And then I had these terrible pains on my rib cage and on my shoulder, and I was just in my boxer shorts and I went and flipped on the light in the bathroom, and I had four claw marks on either side underneath my arms and on my left shoulder. And they’re bleeding.

Let us fuck this…interesting…news about one of the right wing’s most listened-to commentators, shall we, Newsfuckers? 

Carlson believes in demons. And not just any demons. Carlson believes in demons that scratch people. Not kill! Carlson believes a demon or demons arose from Hell to walk this earthly plane, and either randomly located or geolocated him — Tucker Carlson — and once they had found their prey, they scratched him. But without, y’know, leading to serious blood loss or opening major arteries or even, apparently, requiring stitches.

Why then? Carlson says he was attacked “a year and a half ago.” That would be spring 2023. Why would Satan dispatch his demons to scratch a right-wing commentator at that time? Well, in April 2023, Fox settled its Dominion lawsuit. Dominion. So maybe Satan wanted Fox to keep fighting! But also that month, Fox fired Carlson…so maybe Satan was punishing Carlson (with, again, scratches) for losing a platform that accomplished so much evil? That would explain why Carlson almost immediately sold his soul to Satan’s other minion, Elon Musk.

Who the fuck knows. The important thing is, Carlson is ignoring the most obvious theory here:

Tucker Carlson’s dogs tried to kill him. Four dogs. Four scratches. Carlson even says they’re light sleepers. Are we supposed to believe they didn’t notice demons drawing Beloved Master Tucker’s blood? Or is it more likely they worked together to try to save us all? Of course, I don’t really think Carlson’s dogs tried to kill him. I’m just too nice to suggest it was his wife.

Three Quickies

• Former Pres. Donald Trump yesterday campaigned in a state he will not win, in a bid to make up with Hispanic voters, who he will not win. His appearance in New Mexico, the most Hispanic state in the country, was hastily organized after a speaker at his Sunday rally called Puerto Rico garbage and said “Latinos, they love making babies … There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country.” So last night Trump said, "I love the Hispanics… They are warm. Sometimes too warm."

• On the same day, in an interview with possessed commentator Tucker Carlson, the former president called former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) “a radical war hawk,” adding, “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

• A Pennsylvania Halloween parade last night included Vice President Kamala Harris … manacled and chained walking behind a golf cart. Someone dressed as former Pres. Donald Trump rode in the golf cart, which bore Trump signage. The organizers apologized and said the marchers were not vetted and that participation was on a first-come basis, which definitely includes Trump.

Recommended Reading

Even if former Pres. Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler, that doesn’t mean his supporters wouldn’t support him if he were.

And the New Republic has a fascinating new piece up looking at the dynamics that led Germany’s business leaders to fall in line behind the guy who literally was Adolf Hitler.

TCB

Lots going on, Newsfuckers! I’m trying to beat the election with a couple new stories any day now on the Jonathan Larsen Substack and I’m gonna try to hit you all with some weekend newsfucking, to boot. Y’know what’d give me a supercharge of energy and vim to power through it all? Aw, you guessed…!

ELECTION NIGHT Let’s do an Election Night live chat! A full-on, nail-biting, future-sweating, news-fucking live chat. Put the TFN live-chat link in your calendar and we’ll all fuck the news together, like Caligula would want us to.

FUCK THE NEWS You can help TFN fuck the news by restacking your favorite pieces on Substack, and by sharing whatever newsfucking caught your fancy on Threads, Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, Spoutible, or even Twitter. Thank you!

ALSO Check out LOLGOP’s Substack — for what you can do in the election’s final days — and BoltsMag.org for good reporting on lower-profile races.

Go get ‘em, kids!

1. Okay, very former, like 1990s former.

2. Do we still say hugely?