JOB ACTION DAY UPDATES

As If What We’ve All Been Doing Hasn’t Been One Massive Job Action …

-Election Day Eve, and the Harris campaign is truly pulling out all the stops. After reportedly knocking on over 8 MILLION doors over the weekend in the battleground states and contacting about 14.5 million voters nationally, a massive Get Out the Vote phone bank has begun with an all-star roster of folks joining in with volunteers to GOTV – among them Jessica Alba, Mark Cuban, Ken Jeong, John Legend, Ben Stiller, Bradley Whitford, and Democrats including Jasmine Crockett, Roy Cooper, Wes Moore, Josh Shapiro, Eric Swalwell, and Gretchen Whitmer.

-That is on top of an all-out show of force, with no less than eight GOTV rallies scheduled in major cities in every swing state, with various candidates and distinguished Democrats making appearances. While the final rally is in Milwaukee, the big names are loaded up for rallies in Philadelphia and Pittsburg, with those rallies featuring Lady Gaga, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Kate Perry, the Roots, and Oprah Winfrey, among others – and dueling rallies in Pittsburgh between Kamala Harris and Republican nominee REALLY Old REALLY Weird Convicted Felon Ex-President Trump (R-apist).

-Now, let it not be said that Trump could not generate some star power of his own. In Georgia, Trump managed to bring up former University of Georgia running back and losing Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who did his best to emulate the candidate by exhorting the modest crowd assembled to “vote for your friend – Donald Trump Jr.! Donald Trump! Jonald J. Trump!!” After the six-minute intro, Trump – wearing the Proud Boys black-and-gold color MAGA hat and mirror shades to likely hide another bad eye makeup job – thanked Walker and then … promised he would be in charge of missile defense in another Trump regime. It is suspected Trump actually meant Walker would be in charge of a new plant in Macon, GA that built some part of some missile defense system, but even that … and who the Hell knows …

-… because, with the hours dwindling, the clearly exhausted and addled Trump is just not looking and sounding like a confident candidate. The Daily Beast noted that in his 2016 upset, handlers managed to rope Trump’s crazy remarks down to a relative handful, got him to follow a transcript, and toned down the crazy long enough to convince just enough moderates to flip from Hillary Clinton after the Comey letter dropped the weekend before – and did so criss-crossing the country with massive rallies to help organize volunteers and keeping an energetic buzz around him.

-In stark contrast, in 2024 Trump has reduced the rallies to a precious few, in large part because of his cognitive and physical degeneration, in large part because of unpaid bills in venues stretching back to 2016, and in very large part because those rallies have turned into dirges of half-filled small venues that feature walkouts in mid-speech, Trump rhetoric that is full of dystopian threats (when the rhetoric is even decipherable), and crowds that feature MAGAts who treat Trump as if he was Jerry Garcia and they were Deadheads of a different sort. Witness a rally taking place as this update is being drafted in NC that features Trump trying to cover up his incoherent rambling (it’s actually called “The Weave” and smart people tell Trump it’s the smartest thing they’ve ever heard – which is why his slurring about Nancy Pelosi is genius!) that C-SPAN has shown to be perhaps 70% filled at the most.

-How bad is it? Even the Trump-leaning New York Times is now noting how “Trump’s Crowds are Dwindling as His Campaign Winds Down.”

-And when Trump can be understood, it is super counter-productive – especially trying to get people out to vote. The first rally yesterday featured Trump arriving at least an hour late, reminiscing about what a mistake he made leaving the White House in January 2021 after Joe Biden beat him (as if the Secret Service wouldn’t’ve noticed – especially after January 6), and then casually mentioned he “wouldn’t mind” if a few members of the press weren’t shot if they somehow got in between another assassin and him. The Bulwark reported Trump’s handlers were extremely upset at Trump for veering off course like that, and Trump reportedly agreed with them.

-That agreement between Trump and his handlers comes as a shock given a report in The Atlantic that reports Trump and the team of election professionals running his campaign, in particular Chris LaCivita and Susie Wells are more or less not on and have not been on speaking terms for several weeks. Already on edge because of Trump’s inability to maintain any kind of message or personal discipline, a revelation that LaCivita posted on social media in 2021 that Trump tried to steal that election from Joe Biden (Fact Check: TRUE) made Dear Leader proclaim LaCivita was “DEAD TO (TRUMP)!” and that the only reason he was not fired was because of fear of more negative campaign publicity.

-That those professionals continue to reportedly have increasing “concern” that Trump will lose – a report confirmed by Trump frantically booking appearances in must-win-for-him PA and wasn’t-this-supposed-to-be-his NC in the last few days, and the Harris campaign being confident enough to reportedly start saying they no longer felt like the underdogs in the race confirms the vibes that Harris has surging momentum and a campaign full of a lot more fun and joy than Trump’s does.

-One small area where Trump did get a minor “w” was on NBC. After Harris’ appearance on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, MAGAts started crying about the appearance as a violation of equal time provisions – and a MAGAt Trump appointee to the FCC warned Maria Bartiromo that NBC could have its broadcast license revoked because of their bias. Perhaps anticipating that, or to simply get them off their back, NBC did agree yesterday to give Trump equal time by allowing extra Trump commercials on a post-race NASCAR show and, reportedly, SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL. Crisis averted!

-Attention begins to pivot to Tuesday and, more importantly, Tuesday night and beyond. First comes the vote counting, with the Harris campaign releasing a video where Campaign Manager Jen O’Malley Dillon warns that Trump is very likely to declare victory as votes are being counted (as he did in 2020 and, as we all forget, threatened to in 2016) but to be patient and let the votes be counted.

-GA and NC will likely be the earliest of the battleground states to be called, as their ballots are tallied as they are received – GA reports 70% of the entire vote could be counted by 9 pm EST! – while other states will be slower (particularly PA, which cannot start organizing mail-in ballots until Election Day morning and then have to be removed from two envelopes, smoothed out, and batched for counting). In other words, simply put, if GA and/or NC go blue we will know early, and the possibility of an earlier election call may be made as a result of that. (Or other surprises, as the IA shock poll giving a 3% lead to Harris may have been.) Expect a late night for the always-tight WI and hand ballot counts in AZ and NV.

-One more note of encouragement: the Puerto Rico slur from Madison Square Garden now has a number attached. A Univision poll of Latino voters gives Harris a massive 64%-30% advantage, with the PR remark being pointed at as the reason for the gap.

-We are finally at the point where it will be about counting the votes, so until that starts happening, as the campaign has delightfully put it, ALL GAS – NO BRAKES!

-And also, thanks for another readership record set for this here lil’ ol’ Substack! I’m chatting with another Substacker to possibly do some simultaneous Notes entry on Substack or Threads or Facebook as the returns come in, so heads up for that as well!

-But FIRST …

-On this date in 1842, Abe Lincoln married Mary Todd. On this date in 1922, the tomb of Egyptian King Tutankhaman was discovered, leading to one of the greatest comedic music bits in history courtesy of Steve Martin. On this date in 1979, Iranian militants overtook the American embassy and took 57 Americans hostage. On this date in 1980, Ronald Reagan became President. (Boo!) 2008, Barack Obama became the first African-American to be elected President. (YAY!)

-Debuts on this date: the Gatling gun (1845), the refrigerator (1879), a female U.S. Governor (Nellie Tayloe Ross, 1974), UNESCO (1946), RATTLE AND HUM (1989), DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990), HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE (2001), the Paris climate accords (2004).

-Happy Birthday to Will Rogers, Gig Young, Walter Cronkite, Art Carney, Cameron Mitchell, Martin Balsam, Doris Roberts, Tito Francona, Loretta Swit, Delbert McClinton, Robert Mapplethorpe, Markie Post, Jacques Villeneuve, Chris Difford, James Honeyman-Scott, Kathy Griffin, Jeff Probst, Ralph Macchio, Eric Karros, Carlos Baerga, Matthew McConaughey, Jeff Kaplan, Curtis Stone, Orlando Pace, Devin Hester, and Dez Bryant.

-Rest in Peace/Rest in Power to Felix Mendelssohn, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Cy Young, Jacques Tati, Fred “Sonic” Smith, Yitzhak Rabin, Sheree North, Michael Crichton, Sparky Anderson, Andy Rooney, Melissa Mthison, Dave Butz, and today, Quincy Jones.

-Feed the Worms: Puff Daddy – or whatever the F he’s calling himself – entered Earth on this date.

-Laura Bush was born on this date. You decide if she gets a Happy Birthday or if she Feeds the Worms.