All I want for Christmas is for Ted Cruz to lose.

I'm on a plane to Atlanta to do work at Six Flags Fright Fest there for a couple of days. In flight I'm working on putting out fires for teams at 5 other Six Flags parks.

This is already a hectic day and I'm not even off the plane.

Seconding Dana!

A Cruz loss would truly be icing.

Sorry about the hectic day, ND. That's a lot of firefighting.

I love and endorse the analysis, David. There are just so many groups where she has the advantage. Women, youth, minorities. And she is chipping away at and/or he is alienating groups like vets and law enforcement. I feel good about it.

I do so hope to see her wipe the floor with him tonight. She knows his playbook.

Things that are more discouraging:

No matter what vile shit Trump says, his base thinks he's the messiah.

Thing that is more encouraging: Trump's base was already locked in, numbers-wise. He was never going to get *more* voters. The biggest issue when Biden was still the candidate was voter apathy on the Democratic side, where Trump would get all his votes, but Democrats just wouldn't vote at all.

Where we are now seems like the Democrats (particularly younger people and Black women) are energized for Harris/Walz, which points to a higher turnout than they would have seen for Biden, and a likely win.

Even so, I'd like to cast my absentee ballot and then be put into a drug-induced coma until after the election.

In purely unscientific observation, There are far fewer Trump signs in this very red area. As in extremely rare, which was not the case in the prior 2 elections. Noticeably fewer. I have heard the same from friends and relatives in other red areas. I'm going to take it as a good indication. Or at least not a bad one.

She knows his playbook.

It's not just that he's a liar (though he obviously is), he's increasing incoherent verbally. For real, Trump's speech patterns remind me very very much of how my dad talks, and *he* hallucinates blue people and aliens in his apartment. I would be 110% UNsurprised to learn that Trump hallucinates people and/or aliens.

In purely unscientific observation, There are far fewer Trump signs in this very red area. As in extremely rare, which was not the case in the prior 2 elections.

They are all over the place here, but I wasn't here for the last election so it could be that there are less. It probably makes me a bit more pessimistic though.

Thing that is more encouraging: Trump's base was already locked in, numbers-wise. He was never going to get *more* voters.

His favorability is higher than it has been in the past, so Harris has to probably outperform Biden from 2020 and right now she isn't there yet, which is making me think Trump will win. She really needs to get back to his 2020 level with Black and Latino voters.

That's a lot of firefighting.

We are opening a total of 32 Haunted Houses, across 5 states and they all open in a three week window. First ones opened last week, another round this weekend, and the final round the next weekend.

Stretch goals: Both NC and TX(!) are closer than they ought to be, because downticket races are dragging Trump down, rather than the opposite.

That's actually another big positive, the bounce Kamala got opened up more lines of attack that the Republicans have to spend time defending. So even if she doesn't win Texas, they have to spend money, energy and focus there to defend against down ballot effects.

Also, the GOP wasn't really spending money on NC before because they thought they had it in the bag. Now it's super tight. Also the GOP had a stretch goal of New Hampshire and have given up on that.

Ugh. It makes my stomach tight and I've got to focus on Matilda's travel stuff.