6 States
Plus: Stormy's testimony, colleges posting bail, Optimus rising, RFK's brainworms, and more...
Your vote probably doesn't matter: "The titanic Biden-Trump election likely will be decided by roughly 6% of voters in just six states," reports Axios. The truly contested states in 2024 will probably be Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—same as the 2020 battlegrounds—with a possibly contested seventh state, North Carolina. And, within those six states, both campaigns are calculating that it's really only about 6 percent of voters who are truly fence-sitters.
New April polling "found [President Joe] Biden is ahead in just one of the seven states most likely to determine the outcome of his matchup with [former President] Donald Trump, leading Michigan by 2 percentage points," reports Bloomberg. "Biden trails the presumptive GOP nominee slightly in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and his deficit in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina is larger." Political analysts believe that some of this is due to dismal views of the economy, which voters are more likely to pin on Biden. (For better or worse, people frequently blame economic woes on the sitting president. In Biden's case, given the massive COVID-era spending—which Trump also had a hand in—which massively spiked inflation, it arguably makes a bit more sense.)
"Education now transcends race as the best predictor of voting," Doug Sosnik, a senior adviser to former President Bill Clinton, told Axios. "People are increasingly choosing to live around others who share their values and beliefs, which has led to a homogenization of how communities vote."
It's going to be a very tight race, decided by a very small handful of voters.
Stormy takes the stand: This week, porn star Stormy Daniels, whose tryst with Trump (and pocketing of hush money payments) is central to the criminal trial against Trump, took the stand.
"The charges against Mr. Trump stem from her story of sex with him during that 2006 celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, a story she was shopping a decade later, in the closing days of the presidential campaign," reports The New York Times. "Mr. Trump's longtime lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, paid Ms. Daniels $130,000 in hush money before Election Day, and the former president is accused of falsifying business records to cover up reimbursements for Mr. Cohen."
As for the sex itself, Daniels' testimony seemed to be tinged with trauma rhetoric, claiming that even though she never said no outright, there was a "power imbalance" and implied that it was something less than consensual. "I was staring up at the ceiling, wondering how I got there," she said on the stand.
As for the hush money, Daniels claimed that "my motivation wasn't money," which is…a little confusing, given that she accepted a large sum in 2016. (The judge, once the jury was out of the room, said that Daniels might have "credibility issues.")
Scenes from New York: This is not only wrong on the merits, but also a terribly inappropriate soundbite coming from our esteemed governor, Kathy Hochul.
"Young black kids growing up in the Bronx who don't even know what the word 'computer' is," - New York Governor Kathy Hochul, saying something that would get a Republican instantly cancelled, but it's (D)ifferent. pic.twitter.com/zcntbt8fKg
— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) May 7, 2024
QUICK HITS
- The U.S. pauses weapons shipments to Israel over the Rafah invasion.
- How the University of Southern California is trying to hold commencement festivities despite pro-Palestine protests.
- "Homeowners with mortgages hold just under $17 trillion in equity, a record high, per a report out this week," reports Axios. "A record $11 trillion of home equity is 'tappable,' meaning homeowners can borrow against it while still maintaining at least 20% equity in the house, per the report, which looks at data from March. About 48 million folks have access to tappable equity, with an average of $206,000 per mortgage holder."
- Literal brainworms: Long-shot presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has just revealed that, a little more than a decade ago, he began experiencing severe brain fogginess and memory loss that doctors ultimately attributed to a dead parasite in Kennedy's brain, which the presidential candidate says may have eaten a portion of it (!). Kennedy says there are no lingering effects from the parasite, and his spokeswoman said, when asked if his mental acuity was compromised from the health issue, "That is a hilarious suggestion, given the competition." (Kind of an amazing diss, if you ask me.)
- The college posted bail for its students?
Emerson College posted bail for its arrested students, asked that charges not be pressed, committed to not disciplining them, and offered summer housing until their legal issues are resolved.
Now President Jay Bernhardt is apologizing and setting up a bias response team. pic.twitter.com/RE8pxWu2Eu
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) May 7, 2024
- Inside some really egregious data manipulation:
To summarize, Zucman's "stunning graph" in the NYT is a result of two acts of data manipulation.
1. He suppresses the true effective tax rate on the rich over time by misallocating corporate tax incidence to them.
2. He simultaneously inflates the rate for the poor by excluding… pic.twitter.com/6IrbqtvNj9
— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) May 4, 2024
- Optimus (who is the robot, not the child, to be clear) progressing!
This was Optimus not long ago pic.twitter.com/nqlXuSYCkQ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 7, 2024
