The 0.0027 Factor

We’ve all heard that this election is going to be very, very close and that “every vote matters.” To explore just how small a slice of the electorate will determine the outcome, I decided to do a little math.

First I took the voting totals from 2020 in the six swing states as a proxy for this year’s turnout and then multiplied those numbers by the percentage lead either Harris or Trump had as of Friday, according to 538.

This should yield the margin in votes the winning candidate would get state-by-state if the election were held today.

The results were as follows: Harris wins Michigan by 128,000 votes, Pennsylvania by 89,000, Wisconsin by 68,000 and Nevada by 14,000. She also wins the “blue dot” district in Nebraska by a comfortable margin — the latest poll has her up by 11 points there.

Meanwhile, Trump wins Georgia by 44,000 votes, Arizona by 43,000 and North Carolina by 22,000.

Harris would win the popular vote by 4.7 million votes and the all-important Electoral College, 276-262. An interesting facet of the current state of the race is that even if the state with the smallest vote margin, Nevada, should flip to Trump, Harris would still win the Presidency by two electoral votes, 270-268.

Assuming my calculations are correct, 538’s polls are accurate, and the present trends hold over the next 38 days, approximately one-quarter of one percent of the anticipated 162 million voters are going to determine the outcome of this election.

Of course, these estimates are based on the 2020 turnout and one huge variable is whether turnout increases or decreases this year. So with that and many other caveats, it goes without saying that all of this is well within that good old margin of error.

HEADLINES:

• Israel kills Hezbollah leader Nasrallah in airstrike (Reuters)

• Harris heads to the US southern border, looking to close a polling gap with Trump (CNN)

• Harris multiplied Biden’s lead among young voters (WP)

• Majority of Americans continue to favor moving away from Electoral College — More than six-in-ten Americans (63%) would instead prefer to see the winner of the presidential election be the person who wins the most votes nationally. (Pew)

• Jack Smith lays out Jan. 6 case against Trump. Will filing be public? (WP)

• Revealed: the US government-funded ‘private social network’ attacking pesticide critics (Guardian)

• Scenes From Florida as Hurricane Helene Roared Through (NYT)

• Historic and deadly Hurricane Helene slams Florida to the Carolinas (Axios)

• JD Vance harshly criticized Donald Trump’s record in private 2020 messages. (WP)

• An independent journalist was banned from X, formerly Twitter, after he published a dossier on Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) via his newsletter and promoted the link on the app. [HuffPost]

• Eric Adams pleads not guilty to federal charges in New York (The Hill)

• Tucker Carlson is on a nationwide tour, but he doesn’t seem to know why. (WP)

• Israel keeps bombing Lebanon, with Hezbollah and civilian deaths rising, as Netanyahu shifts tone on cease-fire (CBS)

• Netanyahu Defiant as World Leaders Press for Israeli-Hezbollah Truce (NYT)

• Russia rattles the nuclear sabre again, as Ukraine devastates its munitions (Al Jazeera)

• China's newest nuclear-powered attack submarine sank earlier this year, a senior US defense official said, a potential embarrassment for Beijing as it seeks to expand its military capabilities. (Reuters)

• If the Universe Is a Hologram, This Long-Forgotten Math Could Decode It (Quanta)

• ‘Deep sadness and frustration’: The end comes for the A’s in Oakland (WP)

• OpenAI as we knew it is dead (Vox)

• OpenAI execs were reportedly worried the company could collapse when Ilya Sutsveker left — and tried to woo him back (Business Insider)

• Sam Altman tells OpenAI staff there’s no plan for him to receive a ‘giant equity stake’ in company (CNBC)

• ChatGPT is changing the way we write. Here’s how – and why it’s a problem (The Conversation)

• Archangel Hangs Around After Delivering Message Hoping For Tip (The Onion)

 

Making Sense

 (This odd little essay is from three-and-a-half years ago.)

It's back to the present tense today after a week where my recollections of the early days of the pandemic suddenly took over my writing impulse completely. Maybe the seemingly sudden end of the Covid crisis led to my obsession with how it all began.

In both fiction and nonfiction, you often discover you can't really begin a story properly until you know how it ends. That's why so many murder mysteries start with the body of the victim. Knowing how the story ends makes everything leading up to that conclusion an extended state of anticipation, of dread and thus a quest for some logic and meaning for it all.

For everyone's sake, you want things to make sense, don’t you? That's what I'm trying to do with the pandemic and also with my life story.

It feels like I've been asleep for the past 15 months or so, but now I'm awake, I'm wondering whether things really happened as I remember or whether it was all just a dream. 

***

Friday started out with my daughter Julia's graduation from Goucher College in Maryland. The president of the college in his commencement remarks cited Bureau of Labor Statistics data  predicting that the class of '21 will have an average of 11 different jobs during their careers. Starting now.

Also at the ceremony, the mayor of Baltimore noted that the graduates are entering a world where racism, poverty, gun violence, and other severe problems await new leaders to propose new solutions.

Indeed. And we need to be hopeful for their sake and ours as we welcome the next generation of 22-year-olds to the struggle to make our only partially democratic society much more equitable, peaceful and inclusive.

Their work is cut out for them. That is a cliche and it is true. At least eleven jobs each -- that's what it will take to reach retirement, the experts believe. Personally,  I hope Julia can retire a half-century from now knowing she did her best to make this a better world to the best of her ability.

But for now she stands where I did in May 1969. Did I do everything I could have done to make the world a better place?

Not by any measure. Like most people, my most idealistic self struggled over and over with my pragmatic self, and sometimes pragmatism won out. I can rationalize that as well as the next guy, but the universal battle seems to be how to balance self-realization with loftier work on behalf of everybody else.

(Painting by Daisy Comolli, aged 10)

HEADLINES: 

• Helene lashes the South with wind and sheets of rain. Millions are without power (AP)

• Vice President Harris leads Trump in Michigan, Pennsylvania polls (The Hill)

• Nebraska’s ‘blue dot’ district suddenly at the center of election (WP)

• Republicans’ Electoral College Edge, Once Seen as Ironclad, Looks to Be Fading (NYT)

• Democrats hope to win a House majority on Harris’s California coattails (WP)

• The Most Obvious Scandal in New York City’s History (New Yorker)

• Battleground House Dems in New York call for Eric Adams’ resignation (Politico)

• Foreign leaders seek meetings with Trump as knife-edge election nears (WP)

• Hezbollah Targets Tel Aviv as Israel Moves Forces Toward Lebanon (NYT)

• Netanyahu distances himself from U.S.-led proposal for ceasefire in Lebanon (Axios)

• Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz rejected proposals for a ceasefire with Hezbollah after the United States and France called for a 21-day halt in fighting that has killed hundreds in Lebanon and raised fears of a ground invasion. (Reuters)

• Trump says Ukraine is ‘demolished’ and dismisses its defense against Russia’s invasion (AP)

• A prolific documentary filmmaker is out with a new account of the Jan. 6 insurrection ― and he has a stark warning about this November. [HuffPost]

• GDP: US economy grows at 3% annualized pace in second quarter (Yahoo)

• Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Huge Mistake (Atlantic)

• Google says a closed ad ecosystem isn’t anticompetitive — it’s just safer (Verge)

• At-Will Employment Must End. Our Civil Rights Depend on It. (The Nation)

• Maggie Smith, beloved ‘Downton Abbey’ and ‘Harry Potter’ star, dead at 89 (CNN)

• Behind OpenAI’s Audacious Plan to Make A.I. Flow Like Electricity (NYT)

• OpenAI hit by staff exits as it seeks to restructure and raise new funds (WP)

• That Message From Your Doctor? It May Have Been Drafted by A.I. (NYT)

• Climatologists Say Humanity’s Best Hope Is Hurricanes Spinning In Different Directions And Canceling Each Other Out (The Onion)

The Threat

On a number of occasions over the past few years, I’ve argued that the U.S. is in danger of slipping from a democracy into an autocracy, but now somebody else has done a much better job at documenting that than I ever have.

Check out this week’s article in Scientific American, entitled “Meet the New Autocrats Who Dismantle Democracies from Within.”

Citing case after case all over the world, authors Cecilia Menjívar & Deisy Del Real show how modern day would-be dictators seize power. These men — Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, India’s Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro — all use the same tactics.

“Those include manipulating the legal system, rewriting electoral laws and constitutions, and dividing the population into “us” versus “them” blocs. Autocrats routinely present themselves as the only presumed savior of the country while silencing, criminalizing and disparaging critics or any oppositional voice. They distort information and fabricate “facts”through the media, claim fraud if they lose an election, persuade the population that they can “cleanse” the country of crime and, finally, empower a repressive nationalistic diaspora and fund satellite political movements and hate groups that amplify the autocrats’ illiberal agenda to distort democracy.”

Sound familiar?

Here in the U.S., we have an autocrat who seeks to regain power. He tried to dismantle our democracy the first time around but our established system of checks and balances plus a few brave people in his own party, including Vice-President Mike Pence, held him off — barely.

He’s back and this time he’s much better prepared. Read Project 2025. It’s a blueprint for dismantling the federal government and centralizing autocratic power. And yes it can happen here. But there’s still one way to stop him and that’s at the ballot box.

(Thanks to John Jameson for alerting me to this article.)

HEADLINES:

• Meet the New Autocrats Who Dismantle Democracies from Within. The new interconnected breed of autocrats gains and retains power by deception, globally undermining democracies through their own institutions (Scientific American)

• New York Mayor Eric Adams expected to face federal charges (NBC) 

• Hurricane Helene forecast to explode into catastrophic Category 4 ahead of Florida landfall (CNN)

• Lebanon strikes are preparing for ground offensive - Israel army chief (BBC)

• On the cusp of all-out war against Hezbollah, Israel weighs next move (WP)

• Biden Warns the World Is at an ‘Inflection Point’ Amid Global Crises (NYT)

• House passes bill to avert a shutdown before the election, sending it to the Senate (NBC)

• Republicans Are Finally Tired of Shutting Down the Government (Atlantic)

• Will Mark Robinson Derail Donald Trump’s Chances in North Carolina? (New Yorker)

• Donald Trump Ignores the Elephant in the Room at North Carolina Rally (Newsweek)

• Trump is losing his edge on the economy among voters (WP)

• Behind Kamala Harris’s Rise: Silicon Valley’s Wealthiest Woman (NYT)

• What is Parkinson’s disease—and why is it so hard to diagnose? (National Geographic) 

• The Quest to Build a Telescope on the Moon (New Yorker)

• China’s central bank tries to save the economy (Economist)

• Russia has established a drone factory in China. (Reuters)

• Poetic Irony That OpenAI o1 New Superpower Artificially Convinces You That Pigs Can Fly (Forbes)

• OpenAI's technology chief Mira Murati to leave (Reuters)

• Rethinking ‘Checks and Balances’ for the A.I. Age (NYT)

• Biblical Scholars Say Mary Stole Idea For Jesus’ Baby Name From Friend (The Onion)

 

Prevailing Winds

 Predicting the outcome of this year’s election is like trying to guess where on the Gulf Coast Helene will make landfall — it’s anyone’s guess. Many of us would desperately like to discern a clear pattern among the likely voters, but the polls only reveal a complicated, murky picture.

And the maddening thing about polls is that, although over recent years they have become arguably more accurate, they still have such a large margin of error that in a close race like this year’s, any prediction would be problematic.

Still, we can try.

Based on the polling averages compiled by 538, Kamala Harris maintains a 2.6 point lead over Donald Trump nationally. This translates into a projected victory by over 4 million votes, but of course the popular vote is not what really matters here.

In modern times the Democrats almost always win the popular vote; they’ve done so every election cycle since 1992, save one. That lone exception was George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004, which came after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Every other time, the Republicans have lost the popular vote, though twice (2000-Bush and 2016-Trump) they’ve won in the Electoral College. The GOP has a built-in advantage in the Electoral College, which all but renders the popular vote meaningless.

That said, if this year’s election were today, based on 538’s latest polling averages, which are the best we have, Harris also would narrowly win in the Electoral College, 276-262. Her totals would include a sweep of the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where she is currently ahead, as well as in Nevada and the “blue dot” district in Nebraska, where she also leads.

Trump, meanwhile, maintains slim leads in the sunbelt swing states of Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.

But what is messy about all this is that in all seven swing states, the margins are excruciatingly thin — from half a point to two-and-a-half points, tops.

So trying to predict the outcome is maddening. Everything remains up for grabs, it would seem, and whoever wins will probably do so by a whisker.

Meanwhile, when these twin partisan storms finally hit the continent sometime around November 5th, much like with hurricanes there’s likely to be collateral damage.

HEADLINES: 

• Florida Facing Major Hurricane Threat Thursday (Weather Channel)

• Evacuations begin in Florida as the state faces a major hurricane strike from Helene (CNN)

• US is sending more troops to the Middle East as violence rises between Israel and Hezbollah (AP)

• Lebanon reels after Israeli strikes kill nearly 500 (WP)

• Raising the Stakes, Israel Gambles That Hezbollah Will Back Down (NYT)

• Israel and Hezbollah renew fire after the deadliest day in Lebanon since 2006 (AP)

• Biden says ‘Putin’s war has failed’ and vows support for Ukraine in address to UN leaders (Guardian)

• Fed's rate cut offers limited relief for US factories facing China competition (Reuters)

• What Does China’s Stimulus Mean for Your Money? (Bloomberg)

• FBI finds violent crime declined in 2023 (AP)

• Mark Robinson Scandal in North Carolina Injects Chaos Into Presidential Race (WSJ)

• Trump’s pledge to deport legal immigrants is toxic in more ways than one (WP)

• Haitian group in Springfield, Ohio, files citizen criminal charges against Trump and Vance (AP)

• Trump Shows Signs of Strength in Sun Belt Battlegrounds, Polls Find (NYT)

• Polling Whiplash (American Prospect)

• The GOP conceded defeat in their push to change how the state of Nebraska counts its electoral votes as a way to help former President Donald Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris in November after a key Republican opposed the move. [HuffPost]

• American democracy is in trouble — even if Harris wins (WP)

• Understanding the Republican Party’s rightward march (Economist)

• Trump foments distrust of federal law enforcement over assassination attempt probe (WP)

• Cats have more freedom than Afghan women - Meryl Streep (BBC)

• ‘U.S. News’ ranks UC Berkeley No. 2 public school in the country (UC Berkeley)

• Football Hall of Famer Brett Favre says he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease (CNN)

• Will A.I. Be a Bust? A Wall Street Skeptic Rings the Alarm. (NYT)

• They think they’re building God (Verge)

• Artificial intelligence could someday help spot dementia sooner. (WP)

• Amazon Update Says Package Now Arriving When The Sky Shatters, The Sun Shines Black, And Rivers Weep Like Men (The Onion)

TODAY’s LYRICS: ”You ain't goin' nowhere”

Clouds so swift, rain won't lift
Gate won't close, railing's froze
Get your mind off wintertime
You ain't goin' nowhere

Ooh-wee, ride me high
Tomorrow's the day my bride's gonna come
Oh-ho, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair?

I don't care how many letters they sent
The morning came, the morning went
Pack up your money, pick up your tent
You ain't goin' nowhere

Ooh-wee, ride me high
Tomorrow's the day my bride's gonna come
Oh-ho, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair?

Buy me a flute and a gun that shoots
Tailgates and substitutes
Strap yourself to a tree with roots
You ain't goin' nowhere

Ooh-wee, ride me high
Tomorrow's the day my bride's gonna come
Oh-ho, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair?

Now Genghis Khan, he could not keep
All his kings supplied with sleep
We'll climb that hill, no matter how steep
When we get up to it

Ooh-wee, ride me high
Tomorrow's the day my bride's gonna come
Oh-ho, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair?

Ooh-wee, ride me high
Tomorrow's the day my bride's gonna come
Oh-ho, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair?

— Bob Dylan

The Slip

Donald Trump finally said something that made me happy. He said that if he loses the election this November that it will be the last time he’ll run for President.

What made me happy is that for the first time he admitted that he could lose. Donald Trump never admits that he loses — at anything.

This is a man who cheats at golf on his own golf course playing against sycophants who are going to let him win anyway. 

He can’t bear the thought of losing..

As I was thinking about all of this, I suddenly realized that no human being has ever so thoroughly upset my basic sense of what our world is about as Donald J. Trump. 

It’s not the felonies, the rash statements, the terrible personal behavior, the awful word selection in his bizarre speeches, his lack of judgement about those he surrounds himself with, no, not even the fact that he is an existential threat to democracy.

No, for me it is that Donald Trump relentlessly advocates for hate in a world I want to believe is capable of love. 

Donald Trump is a relentless purveyor of fear, where I believe we must cultivate hope.

Donald Trump wants us to believe the worst about other people, whereas I wish to believe the best about other people.

His kind of poison crushes the spirit and I definitely have had way too much of the poison that is Donald J. Trump.

So when he made his offhand comment that he could lose in November, that gave me the tiniest glimmer of hope.

And that, if only for a moment, was a very special feeling.

HEADLINES:

• Israel is playing a high-risk game with its new Hezbollah strategy (CNN)

• Israel kills Hezbollah commander in airstrike on Beirut, security sources say (Reuters)

• Cold military logic takes over in Israel-Hezbollah conflict (BBC)

• Is this war? The Israeli-Hezbollah conflict is hard to define — or predict (AP)

• Exploding Pagers and the Tech Race With China (WSJ)

• Tension in the Middle East looms over Biden’s last big U.N. meeting (WP)

• Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards Corps has ordered all members to stop using any type of communication devicesafter thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon blew up in deadly attacks last week. (Reuters)

• Future Tropical Storm Helene A Hurricane Danger To Florida, Gulf Coast; Alerts Issued In Cancun (Weather Channel)

• The Southern California Wildfire Paradox (Atlantic)

• The politics of immigration play differently along the US-Mexico border (AP)

• GOP effort to change how Nebraska allocates electoral votes hits roadblock (WP)

• Trumponomics: the radical plan that would reshape America’s economy (Financial Times)

• John Oliver Says Donald Trump’s Comments on Immigrants Should Be ‘Disqualifying’ (Rolling Stone)

• Trump says, if he loses, 2024 run will be his last (AP)

• The Long, Strange Saga of Kamala Harris and Kimberly Guilfoyle

  More than two decades ago, the future vice president and the future conservative firebrand were rising legal stars in San Francisco. Then Ms. Guilfoyle accused Ms. Harris of trying to deny her a job. (Cal Today)

• Travel appears to slow the aging process— the social interactions, physical activity and healthy cuisines — help to delay the body’s decline, a new study found. (WP)

• SpaceX plans to launch about five uncrewed Starship missions to Mars in two years, CEO Elon Musk said in a post on social media platform X. (Reuters)

• Decades later, string theory continues its march toward Einstein’s dream (WP)

• Letta, one of UC Berkeley’s most anticipated AI startups, has just come out of stealth (TechCrunch)

• LinkedIn is training AI on you — unless you opt out with this setting (WP)

• Wedding Cake Gets More Compliments Than Bride (The Onion)

Exquisite Ambiguities

(This is a rewrite of an essay I wrote in 2022.)

At a coffee shop with an old journalist friend, we found ourselves speculating about the intersection between math and language. And why it is at that exact place on the left-right brain spectrum where some of us feel most comfortable.

When it comes to math, we like the logic and the specificity, and the certainty that there will be an answer, once enough patience kicks in.

When it comes to language, we like the cadence and trajectory, but also the Old Germanic specificity of English. We also like the layers of meaning and adaptability of English, thanks to the Norman invasion and other historical events that altered the course of the Anglo-Saxon dialect with French diversions.

Maybe, when it comes down to it, what we really like most about English is its exquisite ambiguity, which is quite unlike math. Whenever we can convey multiple meanings with our words, that suits us just fine.

There is a very specific, math-like reason for this. As journalists, we prefer to avoid being placed in a position where we’re expected to tell people what they should think. That is simply not our job.

Our preference is to present the facts as we’ve discovered them to be and let readers draw their own conclusions.

That’s what we aspire to. Let the math of language meet the language of math. Where certainty encounters uncertainty. Alas, we fail as often as we succeed. It’s the law of averages.

HEADLINES: 

• Hezbollah hits back with rockets as it declares an ‘open-ended battle’ with Israel (AP) 

• Israel launches ‘extensive’ strikes on Hezbollah; Lebanon says 182 killed, 727 wounded (WP)

• Attacks on Hezbollah Alter Balance of Power in Long-Running Fight (NYT)

• Ohio residents flock to Springfield’s Haitian restaurants: ‘They are family’ (Guardian)

• Trump and his campaign enter turbulent phase in final weeks (WP)

• Newly popular Harris builds momentum, challenging Trump for the mantle of change (NBC)

• Harris gaining ground on Trump, TV network polls show (Reuters)

• Harris slightly improves lead over Trump in battleground states: Poll (The Hill)

• America sort of likes Kamala Harris – and that might just be enough (Business Insider)

• Harris shows gains in latest Post polling average; Trump resists another debate (WP)

• As President, Trump Demanded Investigations of Foes. He Often Got Them. (NYT)

• Sen. Lindsey Graham says embattled GOP candidate Mark Robinson must defend himself (NBC)

• Senate Democrats push to expand map to Florida, maybe Texas (WP)

• The supreme crisis of Chief Justice John Roberts (The Hill)

• As Taliban starts restricting men too, some regret not speaking up sooner (WP)

• US election uncertainty clouds UN climate finance progress (Reuters)

• 'Our husbands didn't go to war for Ukraine so we can sit around crying' (BBC)

• Volodymyr Zelensky Has a Plan for Ukraine’s Victory (New Yorker)

• The Joys of Talking to ChatGPT (WSJ)

• Stock Market Soars After Investors Decide That Would Be Fun Thing To Make Happen Today (The Onion)

 

The Measure

My youngest three kids are on the east coast this weekend, attending a ceremony honoring their maternal grandparents, both of whom died in recent years and whose ashes are being buried together in a family plot.

For most of us, the bleak finality of death is the one reality we are least prepared to comprehend and accept. When we do have to confront it, the range of emotions can be overwhelming, such that we are left without words.

In my case, I always turn to writing in an effort to cope with these feelings, and in this case, I wrote a short tribute to send back with my children to the memorial service.

I did not know whether the words I wrote would be read aloud at the ceremony or just shared in written form. I also could not know if they would bring comfort to those who in mourning or not. 

But they were my attempt to honor their grandparents by evoking our common sense of loss.

People mourn differently. It varies by culture, religion, family and even by individual. But the emotions that transcend those differences include sadness, grief, that awful sense of loss. 

After a funeral, what we all share is that we are the ones who are still here. And while it is not possible to know what our deceased loved ones would say to us if they were still able to, it’s a pretty good guess that it might go something like this: 

“Make the most of the time you have left. If today is rough, tell it to go screw itself. After all, you still have tomorrow!”

(In loving memory of Carey and Cis Matthiessen.)

HEADLINES:

• Israeli Strike Decimates Hezbollah Military Leadership (WSJ)

• Israel limits gatherings in north as attacks target Hezbollah (BBC)

• Exploding pagers leave clues to Israeli ‘red button’ plot, officials say (WP)

• Israel says actions are part of new war phase (Reuters)

• 4 dead and 18 injured after gunfire erupts at popular nightlife area in Birmingham, Alabama, police say (CNN)

• Pennsylvania, the crucial battleground in America’s election (Economist)

• Arizona’s top court says voters missing citizenship proof can receive full ballots (WP)

• Harris campaign seizes on suburban women as a key part of its North Carolina strategy (NBC)

• Harris accepts CNN debate invitation for October 23, again challenging Trump to another showdown (CNN)

• In-person voting begins in some US states (Reuters)

• EPA Scientists Said They Were Pressured to Downplay Harms From Chemicals. A Watchdog Found They Were Retaliated Against. (ProPublica)

• The 75 Greatest Horror Movies of All Time (IndieWire)

• It’s the Year 2030. What Will Artificial Intelligence Look Like? (WSJ)

• Tech giants push to dilute Europe's AI Act (Reuters)

• American Black Nazi Party Worried Mark Robinson Could Hurt Other Candidates Down Ballot (The Onion)