Y’all, it is semi-probable that Dick Cheney moved to Portland, Oregon, and became the police chief.

Portland Police Chief Larry O’Dea is under state investigation for accidentally shooting a friend in the back during an eastern Oregon hunting trip last month.

O’Dea was on vacation April 21 in Harney County when he fired his .22-caliber rifle, striking a friend once in the lower left side of his back, according to police and Harney County dispatch records.

Left lower side of the back translates into left hiney cheek.

Now, here comes the fun stuff.

Chief O’Dea was with the former head of firearms training at the Police Bureau.  So it’s not like there was a overabundance of people who didn’t know what the hell they were doing.

Which might explain why the chief did not acknowledge that he shot his friend until a month after it happened.

Harney County Sheriff’s Lt. Brian Needham said he couldn’t make a police report available because it hasn’t been finalized. He didn’t release further details about what occurred. The investigation is ongoing, he said.

Sooooooo … how drunk was he?

The friend will be okay.

Thanks to Epp for the heads up.

I got called at the last minute to help with the Ballot Board in our county.  The Ballot Board certifies signatures on the ballots by mail, opens them, and then stacks them for counting by a scantron machine.  If a ballot is defective or gets kicked out of the machine, we determine voter intent, if possible.  In short, we insure that ballots by mail are counted accurately and fairly.  It is tedious but important work.

This was a run off for a primary election.

In our county, a Democrat and a Republican sit across the table from each other and certify that the signature on the outside of the ballot envelope matches the voter registration card and the application for a ballot by mail.

There is a large degree of difficulty in finding a Republican who will sit across the table from me.  I do not understand that.  I am a nice person who bathes regularly.  One Republican claimed that I am intimidating.  Can you believe that?

Anyway, if you have a ballot board in your county, volunteer for it because the most interesting damn things happen on a ballot board.  I say volunteer because it pays a whole $10 an hour.  However, you get to see how poorly your fellow citizens can follow simple instructions.

They go like this:  fill out your ballot and put it in the white envelope.  Seal the white envelope. Put the white envelope in the larger yellow envelope and seal it in the normal manner anyone seals an envelope,, lick it and stick it.  Last, sign your name across the seal on the giant red line with the big damn red arrow beside it.

Oh no.  That is too confusing.  I swear I got a ballot that had been signed five times, including on the ballot itself.  Yea, secret ballot.  And there’s the people who want to make opening the envelops a lot of fun for us so they use half a damn roll of tape to seal it.  One guy put staples all across the top of the envelope and another finally found use of his giant roll of duct tape he bought for Y2K.

And then there’s the christians, who eel the need to send their ballot with Jesus.

They tuck all manner of religious crap into their ballot, like this.

So here’s the deal.  If you feel the insatiable need to put some in your mail ballot, cash will do nicely, thank you very much.

Remember: when Democrats count votes, Democrats’ votes count.

Go volunteer for your ballot board.

As we noted earlier, close elections like the two for Dubya earlier this century are unusual, and since 1912, all but 4 victorious Presidents have had Electoral College wins north of 300 electoral votes (EV). Of those 22 wins, about 2/3 of them – fourteen – have been what we defined as “blowouts” of over 400 EV. And three have been “huge” at over 500 EV for the winner.

It will take a lot of work for Hillary to reach the 400-vote benchmark, and due to the current Republican strongholds in the Deep South and in the Northern Plains, general election wipe-outs where the loser wins only one or two states seem highly unlikely. But the small populations (and, thus, small EV prizes) of those states make it possible that Trump could win several states, and still take home fewer than 39 electoral votes.

What would that look like?

First, win all the toss-ups from our previous map. That would give Hillary 470 EV. The key to all that, of course, is minority turnout in places like Texas, Georgia and the Chicago burbs of Indiana. She’d have to win AR as a home state, and carry states like KS and LA based on the failed GOP governance there.

Then, to get the 30 remaining votes she needs, she’s going to have to build off the momentum she gained in GA, MO, IN and AR to draw in Kentucky and Tennesee, for an additional 19 EV. In declining order of switch-ability, the states remaining to Trump that she’d then have to gain another 11 votes from are: NE (4 more EV, we already gave her 1), WV (5), AK (3), OK (7), SD (3), WY (3), MS(6), AL (9), SC (9), ND (3), MT (3), ID (4).

Can all this happen?

Not unless Trump helps by being so patently, obviously, completely an unqualified candidate that GOP voters stay home in droves in every damn state. This is not a difficult case to make, obviously, but it is a very difficult case to sell.

It has gotten a lot harder in the last week as GOP folks, for the most part, seem to be falling in line behind Trump, and the Never Trump movement has run out of steam. Trump’s support in the primaries has been shown to be the same old hard-right mouth breathers that have formed the snacilbupeR base since Nixon, only now they are turning out for primaries rather than just in November. This bespeaks a small but energized base who can cause a lot of trouble in tiny states like we’ve listed here.

What does the historical precedent look like?

The three times this has happened (1936, 1972 and 1984) it’s been done by sitting Presidents running for re-election who won their first term by at least 300 EV (two by 400+ blowouts) and were building on that basis. Their opponents have been selected by contentious primaries, and the electorate was facing hard times, but times they felt were getting better under the current President. Each sitting President had been elected as a repudiation of the other Party based on those hard times.

How is this year different?

Besides none of those historical conditions obtaining, the electorate is a lot more polarized, and a lot more diverse.   This means that rising minority participation is helping to raise Democratic numbers, but hard-right enclaves make it more difficult to pull some states out the red column and into the blue. Furthermore, Hillary Clinton, while building on the popularity of the Obama Administration – essentially framing herself as a third Obama term – carries high negative perceptions herself. Combined with coming off a contentious primary of her own, it seems highly unlikely that massive turnout will propel her to a high-end victory over 500 EV.

What elements could contribute to the Perfect Storm?

• Let Trump be Trump – and also let him be so bad that it overcomes the cognitive dissonance that has held the GOP coalition together since Reagan.
• Perception: The media “horserace” narrative must be overcome – this is not an even fight between two differently-qualified individuals. It is a fight between qualified and not; between engaged and not; between Presidential and not. There’s not enough honest media to present that, so it will have to be overcome by hard work and lots of ads. And by folks like us.
• Depressed GOP turnout – especially among women, who will be subjected to months of Trump’s misogyny. The risk with that is that, after awhile, it just blends into background noise. But we might also see lower turnout also among Trump’s base, low-information white males, who may find the effort to vote in a losing cause too egregious to bear.
• Strong Dem turnout and some crossover GOP votes – especially among women and minorities.
• Vice Presidential nominees – although they rarely have an effect on the race, especially with the “home state” nonsense, sometimes they DO have an effect. The right VP pick could ensure greater women and minorities turnout for Hillary. The wrong VP pick could utterly destroy Trump. Consider – I can’t believe it’s even a thing, but there it is – a Trump/Palin ticket.   Just, stop reading for a minute, put your hands in your lap, and consider it. Back now? Did the score “538-0” enter your mind?
• Election strategy – Trump is the king of earned media and very little else in the professional political toolkit. His understanding of the election is based on the air war, and so far he hasn’t shown a lot of organizational skill. He just now hired a pollster, but I believe that will be less for micro-targeting and more for lying about internal poll numbers showing him doing better than he is. In other words, for more earned media. Hillary should be able to out-organize him everywhere.
• Will – you can’t just sit back and wait for all 50 states to come to you. Team Hillary and the Democratic Party must full embrace Dean’s 50-state strategy and CHALLENGE EVERYWHERE. In this election, especially, the best defense is a good offense. Challenging in KY and WV shores up Ohio and Michigan. Challenging in South Dakota shores up Wisconsin. Challenging in the South shores up the mid-Atlantic and flips Georgia.

Come on, Primo, is all this gonna happen?

It really would have to be The Perfect Storm. That’s highly unlikely, although I think 400 is eminently do-able. The beauty of that is that the same strategy you would use to reach 500 guarantees you 400, and also helps all your down-ticket races.

But the whole key to everything, the reason I have believed from the start that Hillary would not only be the nominee, but also President of the United States, is because of the women’s vote. As we’ve noted in the past, the percentage of women in the November electorate has been rising slowly, but steadily, up to around 54%. Obama got 55% of that, which equates to a 5.4 percent head start in final totals. If Hillary, thanks to Trump’s big mouth, can pull in 60% of the women’s vote, that’s an 11% boost.  There are 8 women who are potential freshmen Democratic Senators.   What an exciting prospect!

So many things would have to go right for Hillary and wrong for Trump for the Democrats to pull off their first 500 EV Perfect Storm since FDR. I just don’t think we’re going to get there.  But for the first time in 84 years, it’s a conversation we can finally have.

And there’s always Hillary’s re-election in 2020!

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Guys, I got called in to work at the ballot board this morning.  Chat amongst yourself.

So, there’s a virus being spread by a mosquito.

“Senate Democrats tried and failed Wednesday to expedite emergency funds to combat the Zika virus, stymied by Republicans who objected and tried to extract cuts to Obamacare as a condition for their agreement.”

Well done, Senate Democrats, well done.  Bite me.

Thanks to Alan for the heads up.