American Election 2024

Selzer still has no explanation for her 15 point miss, though she claimed to be retiring before the 2024 election. The article says she also overstated the Democratic nominee by 7 points in 2008 and 6 points in 2004.

As many of you know my first Tesla Model S was from April 2016 - June 2019 and we have had the 2019 Model S since Aug. 2019. As it has the rare combination of fast charging rate and free supercharging we are likely to keep it for a long time.
His Tesla Y (SUV?) is horrible in snow and stays hidden all winter in Colorado.
spinbackwards was one of my Tesla referrals in 2018. The big issue in winter was the OEM wheels and tires. He got rid of the low profile wheels and put on some good snow tires and the problems were solved.

As for the politics, I don't particularly believe in mixing politics and personal economic decisions. And there is really no amount of Elon behavior that can offset the enormous positive contributions to society of Tesla and SpaceX. I believe that with X/Twitter Elon moved outside his circle of competence.

I had the Walter Isaacson bio of Elon on my Africa trip. There are a few quotes in there about Trump. Recall in 2017 that Musk was part of an advisory roundtable of top CEOs even though he had contributed to the Obama and Hillary campaigns.
He concluded that Trump as president was not different than Trump as a candidate. The buffoonery was not just an act. "Trump might be one of the world's best bullsh!tters ever, like my dad [That's a SERIOUS insult coming from Elon]. Bullsh!tting can sometimes baffle the brain. If you just think of Trump as sort of a con-man performance, then his behavior sort of makes sense." When Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord, Musk resigned from the presidential councils.
On the subject of reinstating Trump to X, Musk was conflicted:
"I want to avoid the bullsh!t disputes about Trump. If he's engaged in criminal activity -- it seems increasingly likely he is -- that's not okay. It's not free speech to subvert democracy."
Then Musk decided to let a free-for-all online poll make the decision. On Nov. 18, 2022 more than 15 million user voted 51.8% to 48.2% to reinstate Trump. Isaacson asked if Elon guessed how the poll would go [No] and if if he would have kept Trump banned if it had gone the other way.
"Yes. I'm not Trump's biggest fan, He's disruptive. He's the world's champion of bullsh!t."
But as noted before Elon hates Biden for promoting green energy but snubbing Tesla. And then there's Elon's estranged trans child and the "woke mind virus."

Today's L.A. Times has a feature article "It's Going to Be a Golden Era for Musk with Trump." The obvious example is with SpaceX government contracts. The article also cites ChrisC's point:
He hopes Trump gets rid of the $7500 Tax Credit per EV vehicle sold because it should hurt upstart and legacy car makers worse.
That is at odds with Tesla's early mission statement that the objective is to disrupt legacy ICE auto and eventually have EVs dominate the market.

The big picture IMHO is that Elon really hates government regulation and that ire has become a major focus since the COVID era in California. Autonomous driving is Elon's top current priority with Tesla, and there's an adversarial relationship with government on that subject in recent years.

I do wonder how long this bromance will last. Elon does not suffer fools and surely Trump eventually will do something to piss him off. I would presume another Paris withdrawal is coming. Either Elon thinks he can head that off, or more likely views it as window dressing that's less important than having his companies advance unfettered by annoying regulations.
 
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Sorry if this is thread drift...I'm thinking Trump's election is going to lead to an end to the stalemate in the Ukraine conflict. I've heard rumors that a deal of sorts has already been cut between him and Putin. Hopefully, it's something that Ukraine can live with, literally and figuratively. But between now and Inauguration Day it could get real ugly over there as both sides try to grab as much as they can for negotiating strength in advance of peace talks.
 
Sorry if this is thread drift.
The election is over and we aired and linked some postmortems. So now we seem to be moving on to the aftereffects. Ukraine was near the top of my list of why I didn't want Trump to win. But I recognize that is speculation on my part. And if the war is ended in some manner, it's still wait and see over the long run whether that's a positive development. Are the terms so weak that Putin can reinvade and take over a few years down the road? If Ukraine survives independently that's probably a win even if with only 80% of its prior territory.
 
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It's important to note that Trump no longer has 50% of the popular vote. High 40%'s at most.
From what I read it's within rounding of 50.0% now but might decline a bit with California still only 93% counted. However Trump still leads the popular vote by 1.7% and I see that margin declining by 0.2% at most. I won't argue the point that this margin is not exactly a mandate but will be treated as one.
 

“California’s shift over the last two decades to primarily voting via vote-by-mail ballots, which contrary to the name often end up in drop boxes instead, has steadily resulted in slower counts.”

and

“Compounding the delay is that under vote-by-mail rules in California, the state accepts postmarked ballots for a week after election night, whereas some states, such as Florida, do not accept them after polls close on Election Day.”
 
In New Jersey, I dropped off my ballot ten days before the election and two days later received a receipt in the mail that it had been received and counted
Colo is 100% mail ballot voting. Most are returned via specific voting drop boxes. Unless you explicitly set yourself up within the system you will never get a receipt though. In Colo, ballots must be RECIEVED by the end of business day on voting day to be counted. So there are ads and TV news reminders of when it would have to be mailed in (several days ahead of election day) if you were to do so.

Not a fan of mailing it in and then having for states to wait for ballots to show up in the mail for an extra week. Seems like a poorly thought out system. If you wait till election day to fill it out, you should have to return it to a drop box that same day IMO. With mail ballots you have them in your hand for several weeks ahead of election day. No excuse to wait to snail mail it in that late.
 
Not a fan of mailing it in and then having for states to wait for ballots to show up in the mail for an extra week. Seems like a poorly thought out system. If you wait till election day to fill it out, you should have to return it to a drop box that same day IMO. With mail ballots you have them in your hand for several weeks ahead of election day. No excuse to wait to snail mail it in that late.
I agree with all of that; however, the fact that CA can wait so long to certify (and it ultimately doesn't matter because the state isn't competitive in the EC) is yet another reason for a popular vote and putting an end to "I live in a state where my vote doesn't really make a difference."

Yeah I know; I have a poor understanding of how it works. :icon-wink:
 
Not a fan of mailing it in and then having for states to wait for ballots to show up in the mail for an extra week. Seems like a poorly thought out system. If you wait till election day to fill it out, you should have to return it to a drop box that same day IMO. With mail ballots you have them in your hand for several weeks ahead of election day. No excuse to wait to snail mail it in that late.
Agree 100% I posted this on Nov. 6:
Trump currently has a popular vote lead of 4.5 million (3.3%), which is likely to end up more like 3.5 million after California is fully counted.
That popular vote lead is now 2.6 million and will drop a little more once California (now 94% counted) is done. I have underestimated the shift in total popular vote margin due to California's slow reporting in 2016, 2020 and 2024.
the fact that CA can wait so long to certify (and it ultimately doesn't make a difference because the state isn't competitive in the EC) is yet another reason for a popular vote and putting an end to "I live in a state where my vote doesn't really make a difference."
Imagine the $#!%show we would be in right now if there were no electoral college and Trump had a popular vote lead of 1.5 million on Nov. 6!

California's system potentially IMHO degrades trust in overall vote integrity. Think of the temptation to corrupt or interfere with vote counting a week after an election if you know it could make a difference in who becomes president.
 
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