…As I said at the debate – “Will you remember that Texas?Pennsylvania? Ohio? New Mexico?” I will always protect American Energy and American Jobs! Get out and VOTE #MAGA!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2020

Daily Beast: “When Harrison decided last year to mount what seemed like an improbable challenge, he bet that he could convince voters that Graham had changed in important ways—that his allegiance to Donald Trump eroded the integrity he once was respected for in Washington as well as back home. But he also bet that the state itself had changed over Graham’s three decades on Capitol Hill, and has left him behind. So Harrison, a South Carolina native and savvy Democratic political hand, set out to build an operation meant to turn out every single Democrat—overwhelmingly the party of Black voters here—and introduce himself to every independent and Republican, too.”

“Many months, and over $108 million raised, later, you can’t turn on a TV, watch a YouTube video, listen to the radio, or drive down a highway in the state of South Carolina without seeing Harrison’s name and face. A race that was once seen as uncompetitive is now regarded as a toss-up. In a matter of hours, Democrats will find out if the gambit worked. ‘We executed our strategy to the best of our abilities,’ Harrison told The Daily Beast in an interview after addressing voters in North Charleston, saying that his campaign brought presidential-level campaign organizing to a state that had never seen anyone but a presidential candidate achieve it.”

“Federal authorities are expected to put back into place a ‘non-scalable’ fence around the entire perimeter of the White House on Monday as law enforcement and other agencies prepare for possible protests surrounding the election, a source with knowledge of the matter confirmed to CNN. The fence, the same type that was put up during protests this summer, will encompass the Ellipse and Lafayette Square.”

“It will go down 15th Street to Constitution Avenue and then over to 17th Street. The fence will then run up to H Street and across by Lafayette, and then come down 15th Street, the source said. The Secret Service did not respond to a request for comment. The extra layer of security marks the most high-profile example to date of authorities preparing for unrest following this year’s election, particularly if there is no clear winner come November 4” – CNN.

AP: “President Donald Trump is suggesting that he will fire Dr. Anthony Fauci after Tuesday’s election, as his rift with the nation’s top infectious disease expert widens while the nation sees its most alarming outbreak of the coronavirus since the spring. Speaking at a campaign rally in Opa-locka, Florida, Trump expressed frustration that the surging cases of the virus that has killed more than 230,000 Americans so far this year remains prominent in the news, sparking chants of ‘Fire Fauci’ from his supporters.”

“‘Don’t tell anybody but let me wait until a little bit after the election,’ Trump replied to thousands of supporters just after midnight Monday, adding he appreciated their ‘advice.’ Trump’s comments on Fauci less than 48 hours before polls close all but assure that his handling of the pandemic will remain front and center heading into Election Day.”

The US Postal Service must hold meetings with senior management to remind them that they must undertake “extraordinary measures” to ensure that ballots must be delivered to election offices with expediency, a federal judge ruled Sunday, according to Reuters.

Judge Emmet Sullivan of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the USPS to use its Priority Mail service to make sure ballots reach their destination without delay.  Sullivan previously ordered the USPS and Postmaster Louis DeJoy to rescind changes designed to slow delivery, reinstating standards that were in place in July, before DeJoy took office.

The order demands that the USPS “delivers every ballot possible by the cutoff time on Election Day.”  Sullivan order the USPS to hold the meetings to stress to managers that “all ballots with a local destination must be cleared and processed on the same day or no later than the next morning for delivery to local offices, from now through at least November 7.”

In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong. Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people! https://t.co/of6Lna3HMU

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2020

Otter Globe and Intelligencer: “‘Regulatory capture’ is an economic theory that under certain conditions, regulatory agencies will come to be dominated by the industries they are supposed to regulate. This process occurs for a variety of reasons. One reason is that in some industries there are a limited number of individuals who have specialized knowledge of a field, and those individuals move back and forth between jobs in the public and private sectors. Regulatory capture may also occur as a result of politicians who appoint industry lobbyists to lead government agencies, a phenomenon which is plainly obvious in the Trump Administration, where a number of Acting Directors in the Department of the Interior are former fossil fuel industry and real estate development lobbyists. The end result of this process is that regulatory agencies end up putting the interests of industry ahead of the concerns of the general public. The activities of the Federlist Society may be described as a form of ‘judicial capture’, which will be defined here as the systematic selection, grooming nomination and confirmation of conservative justices for the purpose of delivering preferred rulings for Republican Party donors.”

“If the nightmare scenario occurs and Biden-Harris wins, anticipate Kamala, Bernie Sanders, AOC and perhaps others of the radical, anti-America, globalist-loving members of the Democrat Party to sit Biden down in the Oval for that sober conversation. They’ll tell him that because of the Biden Family Scandal, it’s in the best interest of the country to magnanimously step down. After all, Joe would finally have president on his resume after four tries. So, for the good of the Party, they’ll tell Joe to step down. Maybe they’ll dangle a pardon or two in front of him. Out goes Joe.”

“Harris as president would be an absolute disaster for our country, and her sites on destroying the United States are ambitious. She cackles when she doesn’t want to answer a question because a truthful answer will reveal a true radical. Nothing about Harris is a laughing matter and her cackle only reveals that despite having climbed her way through the California liberal hack system, she didn’t learn how to conceal her agenda with grace” – Julie Strauss Levin, Tennessee Star.

Two days before Election Day seems to be a good time to break out the election forecasts, so here I go with my guess at the outcome of the presidential election.

First things first:  I don’t believe that this will be called by Tuesday or even Wednesday, no matter how much Trump would like you to believe it will be.  I believe the court fights to allow votes to count will go on for at least two weeks.  I do not, however, think it will be decided by the Supreme Court.  This will not be a replay of 2000, when Bush and his legal team, including Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, took the case to SCOTUS.  

That being said, my prognostications are based on what the final results actually will be (in my view).  There are three states–Texas, Georgia and Iowa–which I put in the republican column only because I think that the GOP will fight tooth-and-nail to void ballots.  

“President Trump’s election night party will be held in the East Room of the White House, and aides are discussing inviting roughly 400 people, according to two officials familiar with the discussions. The party had been moved from the Trump Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, the original venue chosen by the campaign, in part because of rules in Washington prohibiting gatherings of more than 50 people indoors to try to limit the spread of the coronavirus.”

“Now, what had initially been expected to be a small gathering in the East Room has ballooned into a large indoor party with several hundred people expected. The event is certain to raise questions about safety, given that the coronavirus spreads more easily in indoor spaces. An event on Sept. 26 for Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court, at which people were bunched together both indoors and outside in the Rose Garden, was widely seen by health experts as a point of spread of the virus” – New York Times.

“President Trump denies he’ll declare victory early but says ‘I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait for a long period of time after the election…We’re going in the night of — as soon as the election is over — we’re going in with our lawyers'” reports CNN White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins.

Just a couple thoughts on this:

• If no one else can use the 1,000% match until I do, Trump is pretty well screwed on this.
• If you’re donating to Trump at this point, you’re not donating to his campaign; you’re donating to his legal defense fund.

Protesters demonstrating in front of Attorney General Bill Barr’s McLean, Virginia home have, for some reason, brought a white horse to the gathering.

https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1322657190738616321

The protesters have assembled outside the AG’s home for a number of days, demanding that the Department of Justice indict Joe Biden for some sort of crime.

Emerson College: “The final Emerson College poll before the November 3rd election in Texas finds the presidential election in a dead heat, with President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden 49% to 49%. Two percent (2%) of voters plan to vote for someone else and one percent (1%) are undecided. Biden has a lead among suburban voters, 49% to 48%, and urban voters 57% to 41%. Trump has a lead among rural voters 68% to 32%.”

The FBI is investigating the coordinated harassment of a Biden campaign bus in Texas, when scores of vehicles attempted to stop the bus and run it off the road in an apparent attempt to intimidate the passengers on the bus and people following in cars, CNN reports.

The Biden bus, on which neither member of the Democratic ticket were riding, was traveling to Austin from San Antonio when it was swarmed by cars and pickup trucks flying Trump flags.  Texas Democratic Congressional candidate Wendy Davis, however, was on the bus.

The Trump drivers attempted to stop the bus, and succeeded in slowing it–and all following traffic–to about 20 miles per hour.  The traffic hazard caused at least one minor accident.

“Axios reported on Sunday that ‘President Trump has told confidants he’ll declare victory on Tuesday night if it looks like he’s ‘ahead,’ according to three sources familiar with his private comments.’ This is largely in line with Republican lawsuits this election season, including a request over the weekend by Texas Republicans for a federal judge to throw out more than 100,000 ballots, which is likely to fail. Any such effort to continue this ploy after election night would be a disgusting attempted coup to try to stop the counting and manipulate public opinion, but the good news is it is also very unlikely to work.”

“Trump’s blatant telegraphing of this strategy through leaks to Axios is a blessing in disguise. The public is now going to be hearing from the media about Trump’s plans over the next few days and learn more about why election night vote totals are not likely to reflect the final results if the election is close. The strategy is not going to work. The networks and news organizations are prepared for this and Americans have learned to discount anything the president says. Most are inoculated from his lies about voting. And assuming there are no major foul-ups in how the rest of election day voting goes, it is hard to imagine any legal strategy that will lead courts to order a halt to the counting of ballots that have arrived before election day (even if there could still be litigation over late arriving ballots). So far, all of the Trump and Republican suits aimed at stopping the easing of voting rules during the pandemic on grounds of a risk of fraud have failed miserably, and any post-election attempt on these grounds should fail too. The mantra for the next few days is: Count all the ballots arriving legally under state law. Ignore premature victory statements. Take a deep breath” – Rick Hasen, Slate.

Washington Post: “In a frenzied burst of campaigning in the last days of the presidential race, President Trump has accused doctors of fabricating coronavirus deaths for money, pantomimed a physical fight with Democratic rival Joe Biden, mocked a Fox News host for wearing a mask and celebrated his supporters for using pickup trucks to ambush a Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway. As the president traverses thousands of miles to hold 17 rallies in eight states through Monday night, his closing message is a classic display of the kind of red meat tailored specifically to animate his most faithful supporters.”

“Convinced that it’s too late to change the minds of voters who are not yet sold on Trump, the president’s advisers are intensely focused on turning out those who are. Trump’s decision to forgo a broad, unifying closing message and instead double down on appealing to a narrow but enthusiastic slice of the electorate is a gamble. Whether it pays off or becomes a cautionary tale will not be known until the polls close Tuesday and the votes are counted.”

Scores of cars flying Trump flags blocked a portion of New Jersey’s Garden State Parkway Sunday for some reason, apparently thinking that causing families to be stuck in traffic persuades people to vote for incumbent republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, the Independent reports.

The rationale of causing traffic problems to demonstrate support for Trump seems to be one that has swept the country, encouraged by calls for Donald “Lucky Sperm” Trump Jr. on Twitter for MAGA supporters to disrupt traffic.

Cars blocked the express lanes of the parkway near Cheesequake, New Jersey.  The tactic is reminiscent of the plot by republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and his staff to block lanes accessing the George Washington Bridge from Fort Lee in retaliation for the city’s mayor not endorsing Christie.

Political IQ: “The final PoliticalIQ Battleground State poll shows former Vice President Joe Biden with a modest lead over President Trump in Florida. The poll, conducted October 28-30 by Scott Rasmussen, shows Biden winning 51% of the vote while Trump picks up 47%. Two percent (2%) have or will be voting for some other candidate. If Biden wins Florida, there is virtually no remaining path to a re-election victory for the President. This result reflects a slight improvement for Biden. He led by just two points in each of the previous PoliticalIQ surveys. Last week, just prior to the final presidential debate, Biden was up by a 50% to 48% margin.”

Incumbent republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made a generic accusation against Democrat Joe Biden, although it’s uncertain who Trump was referring to.

Biden is a proven Castro puppet! Vote TRUMP

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2020

It’s not clear if Trump knows Fidel Castro died in 2016.