Is The Turning Point Approach a Failure?

This article suggests that turning out the base is going to be a failure for Trump and the Republicans. Will it be? 

The base turnout strategy worked pretty good in 2016, and would have worked even better in 2020, given the high turnout of the Republicans, except that the Democrats succeeded in turning out their base too. Turning Point apparently wants to rely on megachurches to boost their turnout. My opinion is that I basically agree with the author here - megachurches will not be enough. The megachurch turnout is pretty high already, but not that many Americans belong to megachurches.  And Turning Point doesn't have enough experience doing this:

CNN reported that “Donald Trump’s campaign is taking a vastly different approach to 2024 compared with 2020, with plans for fewer staff and expenses [and instead] relying on wealthy conservative groups for data, infrastructure, and significant bank accounts.” It further noted that one of the most important of these groups is Turning Point Action, part of the Turning Point network that began with Turning Point USA.

Turning Point USA is a right-wing student group founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk, an 18-year-old soon-to-be college dropout, and Bill Montgomery, an elderly Tea Party activist.

...In 2022, the Turning Point network entered the ground game business, mainly in Arizona, where it is headquartered. As the Arizona Republic reported, “Turning Point PAC, the political action committee started by Turning Point USA, spent $494,105 during the 2022 election cycle, including the primary elections. The bulk of that, $377,201, went towards the general election races for U.S. Senate, governor, and Secretary of State in Arizona.” Turning Point’s candidates lost all of those races.

What did Turning Point do to help on the ground? Per the Arizona Republic:

Outside of money, Turning Point Action, the advocacy arm of the parent non-profit, Turning Point USA, held a string of rallies in key legislative districts. Volunteers who showed up were handed materials provided by Turning Point PAC and sent out to knock on doors and engage voters.

And, though it did not advocate certain candidates, Turning Point USA, the parent non-profit, started its Turning Point Faith initiative in August 2021 that aimed at persuading Christians to become more civic-minded.

At monthly events held at a Phoenix megachurch, Kirk would speak about current events and cast political involvement as a spiritual duty to protect the nation from falling under the control of Satan. Excerpts of those events played as part of a half-hour radio show that began airing on dozens of Christian radio stations.

None of this had any discernible impact. In the Arizona gubernatorial race, Turning Point’s preferred candidate, Kari Lake, led the Democratic nominee, Katie Hobbs, by 2.4 percentage points in the final FiveThirtyEight poll average. Yet Hobbs won by a 0.7 percentage point margin. Underperforming the polls by 3 points indicates that Lake and her Turning Point comrades got beat on the ground.

Too Low

This story reminded me of a flight I took to Albuquerque in 2011. Apparently low altitude was the problem:

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a Southwest Airlines flight that descended to just 525 feet above ground as it approached Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City on Wednesday, triggering an altitude warning from air traffic control that it was getting too low.

Southwest flight 4069 was about 9 miles from the airport, over Yukon, Oklahoma, when it descended to the low altitude just after midnight on Wednesday, flight tracking information from FlightRadar24 shows. 

“Southwest 4069 low altitude alert,” a controller is heard saying in an air traffic control recording by LiveATC.net. “You good out there?”

I recognize that airport too. When I worked at Sierra, I did some modeling for that airport in 2015/16.

I remember a low-altitude flight into Albuquerque in May, 2011.  I thought that was really low, but I can see from the photo below that we must have been at least 2,000 feet above the ground.  So, not a crisis.  But still, a memory!

 

The airliner was jumping all over the place!

One tactic pilots have of dealing with turbulence is to descend to lower altitudes (where eddy sizes tend to be smaller). So, we descended, but we kept the lower altitude even as we approached the city. We passed over ABQ at a surprisingly-low altitude, making an alarmingly-low-altitude arc over the city's northern suburbs as the plane bucked and kicked. 

Here's Cottonwood Mall, on the left. The pilot seemed intent that we should fly through the mall. 

Trump's Memory

Here are 3 minutes straight of Donald Trump confusing and forgetting people's names, the names of cities he is in and more pic.twitter.com/OJSixOIBR9

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) June 19, 2024

Fire Fatality in Ruidoso

How do you keep cool little mountain towns from getting nuked by rampaging forest fires? I don't know. It seems to be their fate. 

This fellow couldn't get out in time. He could be any of us:

One of the structures lost was the Swiss Chalet, built in 1962 and nestled among the picturesque mountain vistas that were covered by a thick blanket of smoke as Ruidoso residents fled their homes during the fires.

It’s where Pearson was living when the fires crept at first into town, then exploded, tripling in size over Monday night. He was still healing from a recent out of town surgery after breaking his leg and returning to the Chalet on June 10.

Pearson had arranged a ride out of town with friends, but it was too late as that vehicle was denied entry to Ruidoso as the highways were shut down.

So, he appeared to set out on foot, Mallak said, using a walker. Eventually, she said the smoke appeared to become too much for Pearson. He was found curled up in a fetal position in the hotel’s parking lot. 

"I know he was in pain already with his leg being broken," Zach Pearson said. "Being in a walker trying to escape all that couldn't have been easy. I just hope he didn't suffer for so long."

Happy Summer Solstice (Northern Hemisphere)!

And we are still approaching major lunar standstill. Right now, the declination of the full moon is -27 degrees, so it's almost as far south as it can get.

In addition to the April 8 total solar eclipse and vibrant displays of auroras, there's another celestial treat for skywatchers this year: the first "major lunar standstill" since 2006. During this event, the moon rises and sets at its most extreme northerly and southerly positions on the horizon, reaching its highest and lowest points in the 18.6-year lunar cycle.

This is possible because the moon doesn't follow the same path as the sun. Its rising and setting positions on the horizon change constantly due to the movements of Earth and the moon. The solar system is flat, with the planets orbiting the sun on the same plane, known as the ecliptic. Earth rotates on an axis tilted by 23.4 degrees with respect to this ecliptic, causing the sun to rise and set within almost 47 degrees — a range it gradually covers over an entire year. The moon's orbit is tilted by 5.1 degrees relative to the ecliptic, allowing it to rise and set within a 57-degree range in any given month.

This explains why the moon can sometimes rise and set at points on the horizon farther north and south than the sun can. 

A major lunar standstill, or lunistice, occurs when the tilts of both Earth and the moon are at their maximum. During this period, the moon rises and sets at the extremes of its range. It rises at its very highest northeasterly point and sets at its very highest northwesterly point. During this period, it also rises at its most southeasterly point and sets at its most southwesterly point.

A Classmate's Side Hustle

Or maybe it's her main hustle these days. Nice!