Two new polls: is either right?

Emerson reports Daines leads Bullock by 9 points —
but Data for Progress reports Bullock leads by a point

Two online polls of likely Montana voters were released last week. One, by Emerson College, reports Republican Sen. Steve Daines has a nine point lead over Democrat Gov. Steve Bullock. The other, by Data for Progress, reports Bullock has a one-point lead.

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Notes on Harris v. Pence

After a few minutes, after Kamela Harris used the phrase “here’s the thing” (her annoying variation of Biden’s annoying “here’s the deal”), I turned off the debate. I read the transcript later.

The candidates debated in Utah, sitting at tables four meters apart because of Pence’s recent exposure to the SARS Cov2 virus. Holding it in person was reckless. It should have been held virtually, with the candidates and moderator in separate studios. The third Kennedy-Nixon debate, held 13 October 1960, with Kennedy in New York City, Nixon in Los Angeles.

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Montana Dems: this ain’t over yet

If Trump’s support is contracting from a red giant to a white
dwarf, what are the consequences for Daines and Gianforte?

Recent polling reveals President Trump’s support in red states may be shrinking like a giant red star’s collapse into a superhot white dwarf, leaving him with a reduced but superintense base that’s no longer large enough to win the electoral college. According to the Washington Post:

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Election month begins Friday: what effect, if any, will
Trump’s bout with Mr. Covid have on Montana’s voters?

On Friday, 9 October, ballots will be mailed to absentee voters, and in 46 of Montana’s 56 counties, to all voters. Many voters, fearful of a slowpoke U.S. Postal Service, will mail back their ballots within a few days of receiving them, effectively moving election day closer to early October than to 3 November.

Early voting helps candidates with polling leads by locking down the votes at the time of the lead. In Montana’s U.S. Senate election Republican Sen. Steve Daines leads Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock by approximately a point. In Montana’s gubernatorial election Republican U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte leads Democratic gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney by six points or so. Bullock’s predicament is considerably less fraught than Cooney’s, but neither man may be moving fast enough to grab the lead before the finish line is reached.

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Guest post

To Sit; or Not to Sit

By James C. Nelson and James M. Regnier
Retired Montana Supreme Court Justices

The Senate Judiciary Committee is about embark on the important task of determining whether President Trump’s newest nominee to the United States Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett, is qualified to serve as a Justice.

A Seventh-Circuit, federal appellate court judge and Notre Dame law professor, Judge Barrett is variously described as a tough, originalist conservative cut in the mold of right-wing beacon Antonin Scalia, for whom she clerked. She is the mother of seven. She is also a devout Roman Catholic.

In judicial appointments, a person’s religion shouldn’t matter. In fact, the Constitution’s Article VI prohibits any religious test for federal public office. But, in this case, Judge Barrett’s Catholic religion is relevant because she, herself, has made it an issue.

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Stand down notice

Flathead Memo is standing down for the weekend. This golden October weather won’t last forever, and not getting out and enjoying it would be madness.

Autumn leaves are starting to fall, but new
Covid-19 cases in Montana continue to rise

As this grim graph shows, more people are doing more things that have adverse Covid-19 consequences. The benefits of social distancing and Gov. Bullock’s mask-up mandate have been more than offset by more risk taking by individuals, and by more group activities, such as school, which is essential, and sports, which are not. A lot of the additional Covid-19 activity is in Indian Country, where poverty and multi-generational homes without enough space for effective distancing are resulting in cluster outbreaks.

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Montana’s most important election for Democrats

Cooney, falling farther behind Gianforte,
is running out of time to make up the deficit

Democratic candidate for governor Mike Cooney is six points behind Republican Greg Gianforte a week before absentee ballots are mailed to Montanans and widespread voting begins.

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Capt. Sullenberger urges Americans to vote Trump out

Remember airline captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenburger, the man who ditched an engines out Airbus in the Hudson River without losing a life? Now an aviation safety consultant, he’s a former Air Force officer and fighter pilot.

Sully knows leadership — and he doesn’t see it in President Donald Trump. Yesterday, under the auspices of Vote Vets, he released this powerful 90-second video urging his fellow veterans and Americans to deny Trump a second term.

Sullenburger’s landing in the river brought him fame. His post ditching career as an aviation safety authority brought him respect. This short, convincing, message will change minds.

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That Godawful debate last night

Donald J. Trump, narcissistic sociopath and President of the United States, and trailing Joe Biden in the polls, went into last night’s debate with one goal: to dominate Joe Biden and Chris Wallace in a mano a mano barroom brawl. It was a goal born not of rational calculation but of a powerful primal compulsion to always be the alpha male in the room. He constantly interrupted and belittled Biden, intending to throw the former Vice President off his stride and disrupt his train of thought.

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Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett

Nominating a supreme court justice just six weeks before an election is constitutionally permissible, but it is not always an exercise in placing the nation’s needs above partisan interests. Indeed, the constitution permits a president who loses his bid for re-election to nominate a justice after the election, during the lame duck session of Congress. Again, that would not always be an exercise in placing the nation’s needs above partisan interests.

It is also, as the Garland Merrick debacle proved, constitutionally permissible for the Senate not to take up or vote on a nominee. The constitution only requires the Advice and Consent of the Senate before the nominee can take a seat on the court. The constitution sets no timetable for confirming a nominee.

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Music for a September Sunday

Pays D’en Haut performing, a woman in T-strap shoes dancing. The lead singer plays an impressive resonator guitar.

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Montana's data reporting system is mediocre

Covid-19 is surging out of control in Montana

 Updated  1805 mdt. From March through early June, Montana’s response to the SARS-cov-2 coronavirus was among the nation’s most effective. Now, as the plot below displays, Montana’s new case rate per million persons is rising and is higher than the mean national case rate.

Equally concerning: (1) the Covid Tracking Project, the nation’s best aggregator of Covid-19 test results, gives Montana only a “C” for coronavirus reporting, and (2) the Kaiser Health News, edited by former emergency room physician Elizabeth Rosenthal, reports that Montana does not break out PCR Covid tests from antigen Covid tests.

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The issue was decided on 8 Nov. 2016

Romney kills Democratic hopes of blocking confirmation
of Trump’s nomination to replace Ginsburg on SCOTUS

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) announced this morning that he supports voting on President Trump’s nomination to replace Justice Ruth Ginsburg, who died last week, on the U.S. Supreme Court. Unless two more Republican senators join Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) in agreeing that the man elected President on 3 November should choose Ginsburg’s replacement, a possibility more remote than a snow cone’s not melting in a blast furnace, a jurist from the theocratic right will join the court.

Romney’s announcement confirms what the cognoscenti have always known: Democrats are powerless to block the confirmation of a justice nominated by Trump. The issue was settled on 8 November 2016 when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, and the voters put a Republican majority in the senate. Whether a justice could be confirmed in a lame duck session following the defeat of an incumbent president running for re-election was settled when the constitution was confirmed.

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A torch not passed becomes a torch dropped

A great jurist loses a great gamble —
those she cared about will pay the price

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in poor health for two decades, survived many cancers, falls, and surgeries. Today, at 87, she died of pancreatic cancer.

A champion of civil liberties and rights, of women and minorities, of the people owed equal rights but accorded unequal treatment before the bar of justice, she was adored, sometimes to the point of de facto deification, by those for whom she she cared, and by the advocates who plead their cases before Ginsburg and her colleagues.

Now her death during Trump’s presidency jeopardizes all she lived to protect, for her passing provides theocratic Republicans with one last opportunity to nominate, and get confirmed, a justice who will overturn Roe. v. Wade; a justice who will champion special justice for the one percent at the top instead of equal justice for all.

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Montana’s Democrats should allocate all of their
resources to Mike Cooney’s bid for governor

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney has closed the range on his Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte, to just one point (46 % C, 47 % G) according to a poll conducted by the Global Strategy Group for the Democratic Governors Association during the third week of August.

Six-hundred likely voters were interviewed by telephone. A one-page summary of the topline results is available, but the crosstabs are not. FiveThirtyEight classifies this as a partisan poll, but the methodology appears to be sound.

An Emerson College poll conducted in late July reported Cooney was trailing by 8.4 points.

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Flathead Memo’s editor and janitor
injured in freak fall in Missoula

Update, 16 September. This photograph was taken shortly before sunset yesterday. My binocular vision has returned, the pain has subsided, and I’m getting stronger and steadier. Except for my right wrist, which is broken. The coming days, as one might expect, will be consumed with medical appointments, but I think I’ll be able to do some blogging.

11 September. I’m standing down from blogging for an indefinite period. Wednesday, while in Missoula for a surgical consultation, I tripped on a sidewalk a block east of St. Patrick’s Hospital. No broken bones, but plenty of painful contusions and heavy bleeding. And, as you can see from this morning’s selfie, narrowed vision. At the moment, I'm having a rough time, but I'll recover and return to blogging.

A lot of good people, family, friends, neighbors, are helping me get through this, and I thank them. — James Conner

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The nation’s Covid-19 new cases curve
has bent downward; Montana’s has flattened,
and its effective reproduction rate is ≈ 1

The Covid-19 plots below deliver news for Montana that’s mostly good. Montana’s new cases per million persons rate now matches the national average, but the national curve now bends downward while Montana’s has only flattened. The flattening started in late July, suggesting that Gov. Bullock’s mask-up mandate is having a positive effect.

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Wear your damn mask, cover your damn nose

Let’s confront store employees who flout mask-up rules,
and let’s file formal complaints with our boards of health

At Walmart this morning, the checker wore his mask below his nose in defiance of our governor’s mask-up directive. I confronted him. Yesterday, at Super 1, my bagger also wore his mask below his nose. I confronted him, too.

Super 1, and not just in downtown Kalispell, is becoming notorious for letting its employees violate the letter as well as the spirit of Gov. Bullock’s directive. I’ve received reports from trusted sources that this scoffmask behavior has occurred all summer, which means the stores’ managers know about it and either don’t care or actually condone it.

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Commissioners Mitchell & Mr. Covid naysayed

Flathead Commissioners Holmquist & Mitchell
vote for an all mail ballot election

Pam Holmquist and Phil Mitchell came lately to Jesus on a mail ballot election, but to Jesus they did come. Thursday morning they saw the light, joining the Church of Covid-19 Prevention in time to rescue poll workers, poll watchers, and voters, from the risk of catching the SARS Cov-2 virus while conducting an at the polls election during a pandemic.

I thank them. Everyone should thank them. Their reversal required not just a willingness to learn: it required considerable courage. Although they did the right thing, some of their fellow Republicans never will forgive them.

What brought about this change of heart? I think large segments of the medical community lobbied for an all mail ballot. Covid-19 cases are on the upswing in the Flathead. My sources report that Kalispell Regional Hospital’s Covid surge capacity is almost maxed out.

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Here are the metrics and Flesch-Kincaid readability scores for
the Biden, Harris, Trump, and Pence, acceptance speeches

Joe Biden’s rather brief acceptance speech may have been the most plainly and simply worded acceptance speech in American history — and that, reports Politico’s John Harris, was by design. More on that in a moment.

Donald Trump’s traditional get the crowd roaring acceptance speech was almost twice as long, and much more complexly worded — and that, too, was by design.

The readability scores and metrics of the speeches reveal how much the Democratic and Republican acceptance speeches differ:

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Plus, the irrefutable case for a mail ballot

My 50 years of voting in person at the polls
on election day officially ended yesterday

Beginning in 1968, when the voting age was still 21, I have always cast my ballot at my local polling place on election day. Doing so never was inconvenient, let alone burdensome. I was there gladly, joyfully discharging an obligation, and exercising a right, of citizenship. The presence of my friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens, reminded me that my vote affected others, causing me, I believe, to cast a more altruistic vote than I might have sitting alone at my kitchen table surrounded by bills straining my budget.

Unofficially, my 50-year run ended in December, 2018, when I was hospitalized for kidney failure. I knew then that that in my weakened condition I had to avoid crowds during the influenza season. I resolved to switch to an absentee ballot. But I could not bring myself to apply for an absentee ballot until Sunday evening, when I emailed a PDF of my signed application to Flathead County’s elections department. Yesterday at 1413 MDT, I received an email confirmation that I am now on the permanent absentee ballot list (thank you, Monica, for confirming so quickly).

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