Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
edited November 2020
Meanwhile, tha faithful, patient election staff have counted by hand about 20% of the Georgia votes with some 6 days to go to the certification deadline. And in Pennsylvania, Joe Biden’s majority has risen to 65.5 thousand.
I think (and it’s hard to be sure) there are key court cases in Pennsylvania and Michigan this week, seeking to bring into doubt the very sizeable majorities which have been counted. I understand these cases have very little chance of success. I think there may be, subsequently, a Hail Mary to the Supreme Court but am not clear what form that might take.
I’ll say it again. I feel great sympathy for USA Shipmates as they watch the current President, aided and abetted by the GOP in Congress, tear down democratic norms, create conflict and confusion. Some of which has now spilled onto the streets.
I think it may have to be endured for several days more.
The incumbent (mark it well: who has been defeated in the presidential election!) continues to tweet, as in this apparently now deleted message from Saturday night, and about the clashes between his supporters (amongst them, it seems, the Proud Boys) and supporters of the rightfully elected 46th President here:
Antifa SCUM ran for the hills today when they tried attacking the people at the Trump Rally, because those people aggressively fought back. [...]
It is very clear that he tries to stir up unrest wherever he can. What a ghastly person!
Somehow, I think T would fare either nightmarishly horribly in prison, or very well.
If he goes to prison, it would be Club Fed. Although, being a former president with the security needs this entails, I'd guess there would be an alternative arrangement found.
Depends on who convicts him. New York state is actively pursuing several charges. If they convict Trump first, he will go to state prison. He will not be in the federal system. There are several medium-security prisons in the state and a few low occupancy prisons. Myself, though, I would like to see him locked up in the Clinton Correctional Facility. Poetic Justice.
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
edited November 2020
I’ve been trying to think of any parallel case of a patently false narrative having a long term baleful influence. There is one and it’s a telling tale.
At the end of WW1 an antisemitism myth, called “the Stab in the Back” took hold. The essence of the myth was that the German military was not losing the war but was betrayed by civilian government representatives, strongly influenced by some powerful German Jews. The group who determined that Germany should agree the Armistice were called “the November criminals” and the myth was integral to Hitler’s political rhetoric in his rise to power.
The myth filled a deep emotional need amongst the German people particularly after the humiliations of Versailles. The fact that it was a lie really did not matter. A humiliated people needed to believe it.
Of course the circumstances are very different. But so many USA citizens didn’t just want Trump to win. They needed him to win to combat the dark forces of liberalism and socialism.
It is this deep emotional need which does not bode well for attempts to replace confrontation with co-operation. Democrats are not seen as opponents. Too many see them as the enemy of national pride and way of life.
I’ve been trying to think of any parallel case of a patently false narrative having a long term baleful influence. There is one and it’s a telling tale.
At the end of WW1 an antisemitism myth, called “the Stab in the Back” took hold. The essence of the myth was that the German military was not losing the war but was betrayed by civilian government representatives, strongly influenced by some powerful German Jews. The group who determined that Germany should agree the Armistice were called “the November criminals” and the myth was integral to Hitler’s political rhetoric in his rise to power.
The myth filled a deep emotional need amongst the German people particularly after the humiliations of Versailles. The fact that it was a lie really did not matter. A humiliated people needed to believe it.
Of course the circumstances are very different. But so many USA citizens didn’t just want Trump to win. They needed him to win to combat the dark forces of liberalism and socialism.
It is this deep emotional need which does not bode well for attempts to replace confrontation with co-operation. Democrats are not seen as opponents. Too many see them as the enemy of national pride and way of life.
And this looks like about as much of a concession speech as we're likely to get out of Trump. Delivered via Twitter, because that's how he rolls.
Donald J. Trump
He won because the Election was Rigged. NO VOTE WATCHERS OR OBSERVERS allowed, vote tabulated by a Radical Left privately owned company, Dominion, with a bad reputation & bum equipment that couldn’t even qualify for Texas (which I won by a lot!), the Fake & Silent Media, & more!
! This claim about election fraud is disputed
7:47 AM · Nov 15, 2020
I've whited out all the lies and whining for your convenience.
Reaching into the far recesses of my memory...
Oh. My. Gosh. That's who my late ex-father-in-law was named after!!! That explains a lot!
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
edited November 2020
Nice one Croesos. Your post of October 18 (which as a Host I admit, with some embarrassment to having read and at least half-forgotten) looks remarkably prescient now.
What occurred to me in the parallel was this idea of his supporters absolutely needing to believe the lie. We explored some of these ideas when looking at Trumpism as a cult.
I suppose the GOP might do something to help the cult members with deprogramming. They show no signs at present of doing anything like that. Leaving folks with their delusions intact seems to be something they are happy with. Which really doesn’t bode well for the future.
Nice one Croesos. Your post of October 18 (which as a Host I admit, with some embarrassment to having read and at least half-forgotten) looks remarkably prescient now.
What occurred to me in the parallel was this idea of his supporters absolutely needing to believe the lie. We explored some of these ideas when looking at Trumpism as a cult.
I suppose the GOP might do something to help the cult members with deprogramming. They show no signs at present of doing anything like that. Leaving folks with their delusions intact seems to be something they are happy with. Which really doesn’t bode well for the future.
Trump and his followers suite their needs, at least at present. They hope that message will help them keep the Senate in the runoff election, it justifies there obstruction even if they do not.
Trump's strategy is really no different to theirs at its core: "Believe the bullhsit and ignore that the actual agenda is harmful to you"
What occurred to me in the parallel was this idea of his supporters absolutely needing to believe the lie. We explored some of these ideas when looking at Trumpism as a cult.
I suppose the GOP might do something to help the cult members with deprogramming. They show no signs at present of doing anything like that. Leaving folks with their delusions intact seems to be something they are happy with. Which really doesn’t bode well for the future.
It's not just something they're happy with, it's something they encourage. The American conservative movement (and the Republican party which is its main vehicle) spent the last half-century building and installing those delusions. Not these specific ones, but a lot of effort was expended through talk radio, Fox News, and now websites like Breitbart turning the Republican faithful into reprogrammable meatbags who will believe whatever Rush and Fox & Friends tells them, even if it's the opposite of what they were told to believe last week.
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
I guess that is the real evil. The real darkness. I keep hoping the penny will drop for at least some of them. Right now it feels a bit of a forlorn hope.
About 90 minutes later, [Rank, Beetle-headed Ratsbane] wrote, "He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!"
"WE WILL WIN!" he added.
(About 1/3 of the way down, in a longish article. )
There's also a section on why a "smooth transition [is] essential".
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
edited November 2020
The slow but certain progress of facts continues. Biden’s majority in Pennsylvania is now about 66,300. The remaining provisional ballots are taking a while to clear. I am sure care continues to be taken with every vote,
Plus I’ve just read a summary of a discussion on Fox News, hosted by Chris Wallace re the legal cases. Laurence Tribe slaughtered Kenneth Starr.
Meanwhile, though, we should all bear in mind the ways in which The Orange Menace works. The questionable stunts he has more-or-less successfully pulled off follow a pattern:
1. TOM (The Orange Menace) tweets / speechifies / announces Attempted Evil #1, creating Horrified Hubbub among opponents.
2. Hubbubbers screech, carry on, begin roiled-together efforts to protest, block, resistprevent, and/or undo (as needed) Attempted Evil #1. (It helps enormously to have operatives handy to set these groups against each other, fighting over goals and strategies for combating TOM, as this effectively prevents any widespread organized resistance.)
3. TOM meanwhile sets in motion -- offstage, as it were, and behind the scenes -- an entirely different and unrelated move, as evil as #1 or even worse, which is set in motion unannounced and largely unnoticed by potential opponents. TOM may or may not slide a mention or allusion to this Attempted Evil #2, as he regards this "cover" as a way of (a) legitimizing his move and (b) softening up his victims and readying them for the kill.
4. TOM pulls trigger on Attempted Evil #2, dropping and ignoring Attempted Evil #1, since it was never anything more than a planned distraction to keep potential opponents busy and out of his Orang Locks.
Opponents, unprepared, few in number, and taken by surprise, are left with no strategy or options save protthe Bastille est at TOM's fait accompli.
It's utterly demoralizing to see this simple, obvious bait-and-switch trick work over and over again.
I don't pretend I know what TOM has up his sleeve, but I am confident that when it's revealed, we are all going to regret not having stormed the Bastille White House and run the fucker out of DC on a spiked, red-hot rail.
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
Sure. This time it will involve a late plea to the SC on an issue not directly connected to the State lawsuits.
Why do you think he's going to the Supreme Court? Has he even appealed the cases he's lost? Does he have grounds to do so? The court has direct jurisdiction on very few things, and state elections are not one of those things.
Croesus posted something about Gorsuch and Kavanaugh laying the groundwork for overturning the decisions of state supreme courts on state-run elections somewhere I think. It was scary stuff.
He was quite open about expecting the election to wind up at the Supreme Court, and very openly made a point of installing a new Supreme that he believes will be on his side. Whether Justice Amy CB would be is another matter.
I don't know if the election will wind up with the Supremes. But, if there's a way to be found, T and his minions will probably find it and try to use it.
Was it about a Pennsylvania matter? That's my memory, just before the election, about extending time for receipt of mail in ballots...?
Here's a list of all the lawsuits and their status, updated Friday. I think the one you mean is a case already before the U.S. Supreme Court about whether PA ballots received after 8 pm on Nov 3 should count; the Court apparently hasn't decided whether to take the case. Either way, it won't change the outcome, as Biden's margin of victory is significantly larger than the number of ballots received after 8 p.m. that day.
Trump did win a ruling in Pennsylvania allowing his observers to be just 6 feet from Philadelphia vote counters. Philadelphia election officials have appealed to the state supreme court, but the case hasn't been heard yet. This won't change the outcome; the process of counting has simply been slowed down.
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
edited November 2020
Ruth
I was speculating on what kind of bait and switch he might pull. I think many of the lawsuits so far have not been worthy of the name and what I’ve read about next weeks stunts is of about the same quality.
But the guy is always about the flash new narrative. “Trump pleads to the Supremes” will factor in somewhere in that narrative.
Given that his overt aim is to block certifications, whose dates are known, he’ll find some kind of Hail Mary even if it’s rubbish.
But that's his problem; at this point, the Supreme Court has no real reason to accept his rubbish, and plenty of reasons against it. He seems to think that appointing a justice makes that person loyal (to the point of skulduggery) for life; he has forgotten that, once appointed, the justices do their own thang and, if they are going to be swayed by political motives at all, the biggest looming motive is getting along with a Brand New Administration.™
For a man that goes about demanding loyalty from everybody, he seems to have no clue of how this actually works.
I was speculating on what kind of bait and switch he might pull. I think many of the lawsuits so far have not been worthy of the name and what I’ve read about next weeks stunts is of about the same quality.
But the guy is always about the flash new narrative. “Trump pleads to the Supremes” will factor in somewhere in that narrative.
Given that his overt aim is to block certifications, whose dates are known, he’ll find some kind of Hail Mary even if it’s rubbish.
I'm not Ruth and won't pretend to her astuteness, but the fact is that peppering opponents with useless / hopeless / time-&-energy-consuming busywork is a well-established TOM delaying strategy. The replacing of Pentagon personnel, while I don't pretend to know what that accomplishes, means bad trouble; it scares me. Who else is he moving around behind the scenes? Is Biden going to have to take the White House on Jan. 20 by force? CAN he, since he won't yet have been sworn in?
I would put NOTHING past this megalomaniac. And I am shocked and scared by the sheer numbers I'm seeing on TV of TOM supporters raising havoc in various locations across the US.
I really don't think you have to be worrying like that. We've had assurances from the military that they won't do jackshit in regards to the election; they don't need to, there are other authorities for that. And they have no reason to lie, because Trump isn't their favorite dude for a whole ton of reasons. He's been a shitty boss, he disrespects them (and their dead) on every possible occasion, he mocks their heroes and glorifies their criminals, doesn't give a crap when Russia puts bounties on their heads, and forces them to abandon allies (the Kurds) to international dishonor and shame. Trump can do whatever foolishness he wants, but they've had four years to take his measure, and even leaving aside the strong, strong weight of the tradition of non-interference, they wouldn't have him. Why would they? What does he have to offer American troops but shame and death?
The Pentagon shuffling isn't likely to get him anywhere, IMHO. We're two months away from a new administration that can undo his shuffling, and will, unless by some miracle he's managed to put a competent, decent person in charge (heh). This is rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.
At this point, all he has to offer anybody is a chance at a two-months job, except in the rare cases (like SCOTUS) where something with a life term untouchable by the next president opens up. This is the rapidly fading fairy dust he has to reward his loyalists with--and each week that goes by diminishes its value. Similarly, he can fire the good, competent people--or people he simply dislikes, good or bad--but the good ones know they have a shot at getting back in with Biden, even if they are Republicans. And at this point, being fired by Trump is a badge of honor. I doubt it will hurt their careers, though it may alter their career paths in unexpected ways.
As for paperwork, it's certainly a delaying tactic, but I don't know that I'd dignify it with the name of strategy. I don't think the man has enough brains for strategy, and after four years, I'm of the same opinion still. I think what's going on here is similar to the old tactic of hiding under the bedclothes. As long as a lawsuit is going, he can hold to the idea that somehow, in some magical unspecified way, it will all come right again. After all, he had one near miracle in 2016. I suspect it's ruined his common sense for life--what there was of it.
Lawsuits are his pacifier, and he'll suck on them as long as he can. "Baffle them with bullshit"--even though it's not working. But it's a tactic he's used forever, and he's not going to give it up now, even when it's clearly useless. Why should he? He doesn't expect to foot the bill, after all. He'll either con someone else into it (supporters fundraising) or just file for bankruptcy. And if he's in prison, as he well may be, none of that is going to matter anyway. He'll be judgment-proof--because you (largely) can't take your $$$ into jail with you, and at his age, he's not likely to get out before death, and I doubt he gives a crap about his family.
And he has nuclear weapons and their codes. You may be confident he wouldn't go there, and that the personnel hauling them around would defy an order to use them. I'm not.
And he has nuclear weapons and their codes. You may be confident he wouldn't go there, and that the personnel hauling them around would defy an order to use them. I'm not.
I think I remember a story about Nixon becoming despondent towards the end of his presidency, The JCOS was concerned that he might order a launch, so they switched the verification codes so he could not launch without their okay.
I tend to believe the military will refuse to accept any such order unless we are under actual attack
And some people around him are still enabling him. Like Mike Pompeo, Sect'y of State: he was recently asked by the press about whether there'd be a smooth transition from T to Biden. Pompeo said (approx.) "there will be a smooth transition to the second T administration". He seemed to mean it.
Pompeo is an arse, but a smart arse. He'll want to look loyal till its over, and then he will move on to the next thing. I thought that the beauty of his statement is that it could be read either way. That's smart, for an arse.
Trump doesn’t have the nuclear codes, he has a guy (probably several guys) with the wherewithal to start a nuclear attack. Like the guy with the “football.” He would have to give an order to another human being, and I’m fairly sure there’s a short chain of command before anybody actually touches a button. And especially under current circumstances (transition) but probably since day one, given his... frank insanity, I expect there have been other safeguards (“if he says anything to you, just say yes and come tell us”) unofficially added to the system.
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
edited November 2020
I suppose the key question is this. What happens if hearings for law suits are still pending on the date the vote is due to be certified? There is a promise of more new lawsuits this week, no doubt to replace any dismissed by a judge or court of appeal. That could be a continuing tactic.
That question seems likely to be an important one in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
In UK terms, Trump is a vexatious litigant and there are legal remedies in UK law against such litigants. I don’t know if there are any in State or Federal law.
It would seem ridiculous if constant submissions of lawsuits could effectively overrule normal certification processes and throw the decision back to political representatives about who should go to the EC. But I don’t know enough to answer the question of its legal effectiveness.
I'm not sure vexatious litigant would apply yet. He's been at it less than two months. Better to say its an abuse of process - using litigation for an ulterior motive.
Can courts ask that any and all complaints of electoral fraud are presented now with suppporting evidence so they don't drag out the process of tying up the results? Then set a deadline and stick to it. ie : Let's see if you actually have anything real or you're just milking it to cause delay through ill-founded claims.
A tangent. For want of something better to watch the other night, we binge watched the Smithsonian channel - "Aerial America", flying down New England, learning stuff we had never heard. About half way through, they showed a building where a group of people had met to start up a party to work for the abolition of slavery, since the ruling Democrats were supporting the slave "owners". "What?!" was our reaction on being told this was the origin of the Republicans. (We did know which party Lincoln belonged to.) What happened to them?
A tangent. For want of something better to watch the other night, we binge watched the Smithsonian channel - "Aerial America", flying down New England, learning stuff we had never heard. About half way through, they showed a building where a group of people had met to start up a party to work for the abolition of slavery, since the ruling Democrats were supporting the slave "owners". "What?!" was our reaction on being told this was the origin of the Republicans. (We did know which party Lincoln belonged to.) What happened to them?
Broadly speaking a perusal of results from googling "Southern Strategy" will explain. Basically when LBJ signed the Civil Rights (and related) Acts he knew, and said, that he would piss off the white supremacists in the southern states. Nixon went after those states hard in 1968, sounding dog-whistles on "states' rights" to appeal to the segregationists, who were traditionally Democrats. There was and is a lot of overlap between white supremacy and white evangelicalism, so a pact between the two ended up putting Reagan, and ultimately Trump, in office.
A tangent. For want of something better to watch the other night, we binge watched the Smithsonian channel - "Aerial America", flying down New England, learning stuff we had never heard. About half way through, they showed a building where a group of people had met to start up a party to work for the abolition of slavery, since the ruling Democrats were supporting the slave "owners". "What?!" was our reaction on being told this was the origin of the Republicans. (We did know which party Lincoln belonged to.) What happened to them?
Broadly speaking a perusal of results from googling "Southern Strategy" will explain. Basically when LBJ signed the Civil Rights (and related) Acts he knew, and said, that he would piss off the white supremacists in the southern states. Nixon went after those states hard in 1968, sounding dog-whistles on "states' rights" to appeal to the segregationists, who were traditionally Democrats. There was and is a lot of overlap between white supremacy and white evangelicalism, so a pact between the two ended up putting Reagan, and ultimately Trump, in office.
And looking at the larger economic forces, the Republicans since their founding had been a big-business party, moreso than the Democrats, who tended toward the interests of southern agrarians(including slaveholders) and northern urban workers.
Business in the 19th Century was hostile to a slave economy, and so allied with abolitionists in the GOP. Following abolition, when the economic interests of blacks were linked more closely to government interventionism, blacks moved over to the Democrats, and business stayed with the Republicans, who used the aforementioned Southern Strategy to pick up the old "Dixiecrat" faction of the Democrats' coalition.
Why do you think he's going to the Supreme Court? Has he even appealed the cases he's lost? Does he have grounds to do so? The court has direct jurisdiction on very few things, and state elections are not one of those things.
Croesus posted something about Gorsuch and Kavanaugh laying the groundwork for overturning the decisions of state supreme courts on state-run elections somewhere I think. It was scary stuff.
Trump's plan for the 2020 election was:
Lose the popular vote. This wasn't so much a "plan" as a recognition of reality.
Keep the electoral college close, so that if it came out in Biden's favor flipping one large or mid-sized state would reverse the election in Trump's favor.
Make enough noise about fraudulent mail-in ballots that a friendly court (either state or U.S. Supreme) tosses out enough ballots to flip the state to Trump.
Failing that, declare the vote so corrupted as to be useless and get the state legislature to toss out the whole thing and pick Trump-favoring electors themselves. This last would be declared Constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court with its three Trump-appointed Justices collaborating with at least two fellow Republican-appointed Justices.
It's the one playbook they had and they're still doggedly following it. Where it's failing is that the electoral vote margin wasn't that close (point #2) so that the Trump campaign would need to find a way to flip three or more states, some of which weren't that close. (Biden's current margin in Pennsylvania is just under 70,000 votes at this point.) Overturning the election in multiple states seems like a bridge too far for plausibility.
That said, if Biden's electoral college tally was 289 or less and his margin in Pennsylvania more like 10,000 votes (or less), I'm pretty sure Republicans would be going all in on that plan.
My earlier post linked to a Gorsuch dissent [PDF] where he was apparently setting up exactly this argument. The traditional understanding of election law is that it's pretty much like any other state law; passed by the state legislature, subject to veto by the governor in states whose constitutions allow a gubernatorial veto, reviewable by state courts, and subject to alteration by referendum in states that allow referendums. Gorsuch says this is wrong. He points to Art. II, § 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which says:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
The traditional interpretation of this is that "in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct", means through the normal legislative process described above. Gorsuch says no, it actually means the state legislature, narrowly defined as the body of legislators. This means that, unlike every other type of law, governors cannot veto any election law passed by the state legislature and state courts can't review such laws to make sure they're compliant with the state constitution. More importantly neither the governor nor the courts has the power to make emergency alterations to election practices. You know, like there's a pandemic or something. Interestingly Gorsuch's argument means that while state courts have no say over state election law, federal courts do.
At any rate it should be remembered that most of the Republican apparatus was willing to steal the 2020 election, it just wasn't close enough for them to do so. That's very different than having any kind of commitment to democracy.
Was it about a Pennsylvania matter? That's my memory, just before the election, about extending time for receipt of mail in ballots...?
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania issued a court order back in September that mail-in ballots should be accepted up to three days after Election Day. You can see how that fits with Gorsuch's argument that state courts don't have any authority over state election law. If Pennsylvania had been decided by late-arriving mail-in ballots (it wasn't) you can see how this would have played out.
And he has nuclear weapons and their codes. You may be confident he wouldn't go there, and that the personnel hauling them around would defy an order to use them. I'm not.
Trump has access to one set of codes. Someone at the launch end of each device must also input codes.
I tend to believe the military will refuse to accept any such order unless we are under actual attack
The number of Vasily Arkhipovs in any given military is questionable. Military indoctrinate their soldiers to obey, it is how they work.
And despite LC's contention, plenty of the American military support Trump. Nearly half according the recent polls.
BTW, the military as a whole do not make the decision to honour the President's demand to launch. The chain of command from him to the person who presses the actual button is necessarily short. Whilst the US military is technically apolitical, that is not how life works, there will be those loyal to him. The brass, during his administration, have both worked to curb his impulses and gone along with them.
That said, nuking one's own people is an unlikely outcome.
He was quite open about expecting the election to wind up at the Supreme Court, and very openly made a point of installing a new Supreme that he believes will be on his side. Whether Justice Amy CB would be is another matter.
I don't think so. I'm not a fan of her opinions to say the least, but she's a rigorous thinker, and I'd be quite surprised if she even bought Gorsuch's nonsense about the state legislatures. But given that Pennsylvania isn't going to come down to "late" ballots, and Trump wins NC whatever, the point is moot.
Barrett's record is very conservative on voting rights - I certainly wouldn't look to her to decide on principle that people should be entitled to have their vote counted, for example, but it's far from clear to me that she'd go along with Gorush's creative interpretation of "legislature".
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
Croesos
My recollection is that Biden’s near 70k majority doesn’t yet include the late arriving ballots.
The other issue I’ve seen, the corrected mailed in ballots where people were phoned up in some counties, not others, seemed to me to have some point. It looked as though there was an element of vagueness in the guidelines. But the numbers involved must be too small to affect the now very sizeable majority.
Following on from the analysis above by Croesos, that the Republicans were set on reversing Biden's win, what would happen if they managed it? I'm assuming that they won't, because Biden has too big a lead. But suppose his lead was smaller, and got reversed, would most people knuckle down and accept it? I would think there would be tumult in the streets, but presumably, Trump could bat that away.
The other problem with having to flip multiple states is that it depends on coordinated action between multiple state governments. This quickly runs into the Two Generals' Problem (or possibly a variation on the non-iterated Prisoner's dilemma). Namely that the state legislatures involved would have to believe that the other state legislatures required to make this work would actually do their part. If someone else doesn't come through, then you've attempted subvert democracy, look really bad, and have really pissed off both your voters and the next president, all for no result.
My recollection is that Biden’s near 70k majority doesn’t yet include the late arriving ballots.
That is correct. There are about 10,000 ballots that fall into that late-arriving category in Pennsylvania according to the latest reporting. Since Biden's margin of victory in Pennsylvania, which doesn't include any of those ballots, is nearly seven times that number, including those ballots or not won't affect the outcome of Pennsylvania's presidential election.
The other issue I’ve seen, the corrected mailed in ballots where people were phoned up in some counties, not others, seemed to me to have some point. It looked as though there was an element of vagueness in the guidelines. But the numbers involved must be too small to affect the now very sizeable majority.
Ideally every voter should have the exact same opportunity to cure a deficient mail-in ballot. Realistically, you can't expect the exact same level of diligence and competence from every election official in each of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. Some are going to be more diligent and/or more competent than others and that's just human variation. There's only so much a set of guidelines can do to correct that.
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
edited November 2020
I agree re ideally and realistically and it’s a de minimis argument anyway.
BTW Trump has now tweeted that the Georgia recount is a scam. It’s not finished but early returns from four counties have reported minimal difference. So he’s now arguing about signature matching. No proof of course that there is any cause for concern.
I’ve checked the Georgia deadline and it requires the SecState to certify the results to the Governor (Brian Kemp) by 20 November. Kemp is mentioned in the Trump tweet. Trump must be hoping Kemp will support his assertion. No doubt Raffensperger will confirm to the governor that all possible steps have been taken to ensure that only legal ballots have been counted. Including signature checks. At least that’s what I would do.
Let’s see if there is a late surprise. I’d be surprised if there was.
Meanwhile, though, we should all bear in mind the ways in which The Orange Menace works. The questionable stunts he has more-or-less successfully pulled off follow a pattern:
1. TOM (The Orange Menace) tweets / speechifies / announces Attempted Evil #1, creating Horrified Hubbub among opponents.
2. Hubbubbers screech, carry on, begin roiled-together efforts to protest, block, resistprevent, and/or undo (as needed) Attempted Evil #1. (It helps enormously to have operatives handy to set these groups against each other, fighting over goals and strategies for combating TOM, as this effectively prevents any widespread organized resistance.)
3. TOM meanwhile sets in motion -- offstage, as it were, and behind the scenes -- an entirely different and unrelated move, as evil as #1 or even worse, which is set in motion unannounced and largely unnoticed by potential opponents. TOM may or may not slide a mention or allusion to this Attempted Evil #2, as he regards this "cover" as a way of (a) legitimizing his move and (b) softening up his victims and readying them for the kill.
4. TOM pulls trigger on Attempted Evil #2, dropping and ignoring Attempted Evil #1, since it was never anything more than a planned distraction to keep potential opponents busy and out of his Orang Locks.
Opponents, unprepared, few in number, and taken by surprise, are left with no strategy or options save protthe Bastille est at TOM's fait accompli.
It's utterly demoralizing to see this simple, obvious bait-and-switch trick work over and over again.
I don't pretend I know what TOM has up his sleeve, but I am confident that when it's revealed, we are all going to regret not having stormed the Bastille White House and run the fucker out of DC on a spiked, red-hot rail.
LC alluded to this in her response to you, but I'd like to emphasise it. Attempted Evil #2 is nothing to do with him retaining power. It's about the cash. He is trying to leverage his political support into cash, and he's had his lawyers designing his T&C's so he can get around your laws concerning the use of campaign funds.
Trump knows he's done as President. He's milking his supporters. Behind the scenes, he will be trying to pillage the Federal Government. See Croesus' post above.
[edit: I see I have missed almost a page of posts, so this will seem out of context. Sorry about that. The Croesus post I'm thinking of is the one about renting office space for ex-Presidents.]
Comments
I think (and it’s hard to be sure) there are key court cases in Pennsylvania and Michigan this week, seeking to bring into doubt the very sizeable majorities which have been counted. I understand these cases have very little chance of success. I think there may be, subsequently, a Hail Mary to the Supreme Court but am not clear what form that might take.
I’ll say it again. I feel great sympathy for USA Shipmates as they watch the current President, aided and abetted by the GOP in Congress, tear down democratic norms, create conflict and confusion. Some of which has now spilled onto the streets.
I think it may have to be endured for several days more.
The incumbent (mark it well: who has been defeated in the presidential election!) continues to tweet, as in this apparently now deleted message from Saturday night, and about the clashes between his supporters (amongst them, it seems, the Proud Boys) and supporters of the rightfully elected 46th President here:
It is very clear that he tries to stir up unrest wherever he can. What a ghastly person!
At the end of WW1 an antisemitism myth, called “the Stab in the Back” took hold. The essence of the myth was that the German military was not losing the war but was betrayed by civilian government representatives, strongly influenced by some powerful German Jews. The group who determined that Germany should agree the Armistice were called “the November criminals” and the myth was integral to Hitler’s political rhetoric in his rise to power.
The myth filled a deep emotional need amongst the German people particularly after the humiliations of Versailles. The fact that it was a lie really did not matter. A humiliated people needed to believe it.
Of course the circumstances are very different. But so many USA citizens didn’t just want Trump to win. They needed him to win to combat the dark forces of liberalism and socialism.
It is this deep emotional need which does not bode well for attempts to replace confrontation with co-operation. Democrats are not seen as opponents. Too many see them as the enemy of national pride and way of life.
I made a similar observation on another thread.
And this looks like about as much of a concession speech as we're likely to get out of Trump. Delivered via Twitter, because that's how he rolls.
I've whited out all the lies and whining for your convenience.
Reaching into the far recesses of my memory...
Oh. My. Gosh. That's who my late ex-father-in-law was named after!!!
What occurred to me in the parallel was this idea of his supporters absolutely needing to believe the lie. We explored some of these ideas when looking at Trumpism as a cult.
I suppose the GOP might do something to help the cult members with deprogramming. They show no signs at present of doing anything like that. Leaving folks with their delusions intact seems to be something they are happy with. Which really doesn’t bode well for the future.
Trump's strategy is really no different to theirs at its core: "Believe the bullhsit and ignore that the actual agenda is harmful to you"
It's not just something they're happy with, it's something they encourage. The American conservative movement (and the Republican party which is its main vehicle) spent the last half-century building and installing those delusions. Not these specific ones, but a lot of effort was expended through talk radio, Fox News, and now websites like Breitbart turning the Republican faithful into reprogrammable meatbags who will believe whatever Rush and Fox & Friends tells them, even if it's the opposite of what they were told to believe last week.
From Reuters:
(About 1/3 of the way down, in a longish article. )
There's also a section on why a "smooth transition [is] essential".
Plus I’ve just read a summary of a discussion on Fox News, hosted by Chris Wallace re the legal cases. Laurence Tribe slaughtered Kenneth Starr.
1. TOM (The Orange Menace) tweets / speechifies / announces Attempted Evil #1, creating Horrified Hubbub among opponents.
2. Hubbubbers screech, carry on, begin roiled-together efforts to protest, block, resistprevent, and/or undo (as needed) Attempted Evil #1. (It helps enormously to have operatives handy to set these groups against each other, fighting over goals and strategies for combating TOM, as this effectively prevents any widespread organized resistance.)
3. TOM meanwhile sets in motion -- offstage, as it were, and behind the scenes -- an entirely different and unrelated move, as evil as #1 or even worse, which is set in motion unannounced and largely unnoticed by potential opponents. TOM may or may not slide a mention or allusion to this Attempted Evil #2, as he regards this "cover" as a way of (a) legitimizing his move and (b) softening up his victims and readying them for the kill.
4. TOM pulls trigger on Attempted Evil #2, dropping and ignoring Attempted Evil #1, since it was never anything more than a planned distraction to keep potential opponents busy and out of his Orang Locks.
Opponents, unprepared, few in number, and taken by surprise, are left with no strategy or options save protthe Bastille est at TOM's fait accompli.
It's utterly demoralizing to see this simple, obvious bait-and-switch trick work over and over again.
I don't pretend I know what TOM has up his sleeve, but I am confident that when it's revealed, we are all going to regret not having stormed the Bastille White House and run the fucker out of DC on a spiked, red-hot rail.
It will fail.
Yup. And good post.
:votive:
I don't know if the election will wind up with the Supremes. But, if there's a way to be found, T and his minions will probably find it and try to use it.
Here's a list of all the lawsuits and their status, updated Friday. I think the one you mean is a case already before the U.S. Supreme Court about whether PA ballots received after 8 pm on Nov 3 should count; the Court apparently hasn't decided whether to take the case. Either way, it won't change the outcome, as Biden's margin of victory is significantly larger than the number of ballots received after 8 p.m. that day.
Trump did win a ruling in Pennsylvania allowing his observers to be just 6 feet from Philadelphia vote counters. Philadelphia election officials have appealed to the state supreme court, but the case hasn't been heard yet. This won't change the outcome; the process of counting has simply been slowed down.
I was speculating on what kind of bait and switch he might pull. I think many of the lawsuits so far have not been worthy of the name and what I’ve read about next weeks stunts is of about the same quality.
But the guy is always about the flash new narrative. “Trump pleads to the Supremes” will factor in somewhere in that narrative.
Given that his overt aim is to block certifications, whose dates are known, he’ll find some kind of Hail Mary even if it’s rubbish.
For a man that goes about demanding loyalty from everybody, he seems to have no clue of how this actually works.
I'm not Ruth and won't pretend to her astuteness, but the fact is that peppering opponents with useless / hopeless / time-&-energy-consuming busywork is a well-established TOM delaying strategy. The replacing of Pentagon personnel, while I don't pretend to know what that accomplishes, means bad trouble; it scares me. Who else is he moving around behind the scenes? Is Biden going to have to take the White House on Jan. 20 by force? CAN he, since he won't yet have been sworn in?
I would put NOTHING past this megalomaniac. And I am shocked and scared by the sheer numbers I'm seeing on TV of TOM supporters raising havoc in various locations across the US.
The Pentagon shuffling isn't likely to get him anywhere, IMHO. We're two months away from a new administration that can undo his shuffling, and will, unless by some miracle he's managed to put a competent, decent person in charge (heh). This is rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.
At this point, all he has to offer anybody is a chance at a two-months job, except in the rare cases (like SCOTUS) where something with a life term untouchable by the next president opens up. This is the rapidly fading fairy dust he has to reward his loyalists with--and each week that goes by diminishes its value. Similarly, he can fire the good, competent people--or people he simply dislikes, good or bad--but the good ones know they have a shot at getting back in with Biden, even if they are Republicans. And at this point, being fired by Trump is a badge of honor. I doubt it will hurt their careers, though it may alter their career paths in unexpected ways.
As for paperwork, it's certainly a delaying tactic, but I don't know that I'd dignify it with the name of strategy. I don't think the man has enough brains for strategy, and after four years, I'm of the same opinion still. I think what's going on here is similar to the old tactic of hiding under the bedclothes. As long as a lawsuit is going, he can hold to the idea that somehow, in some magical unspecified way, it will all come right again. After all, he had one near miracle in 2016. I suspect it's ruined his common sense for life--what there was of it.
Lawsuits are his pacifier, and he'll suck on them as long as he can. "Baffle them with bullshit"--even though it's not working. But it's a tactic he's used forever, and he's not going to give it up now, even when it's clearly useless. Why should he? He doesn't expect to foot the bill, after all. He'll either con someone else into it (supporters fundraising) or just file for bankruptcy. And if he's in prison, as he well may be, none of that is going to matter anyway. He'll be judgment-proof--because you (largely) can't take your $$$ into jail with you, and at his age, he's not likely to get out before death, and I doubt he gives a crap about his family.
And he has nuclear weapons and their codes. You may be confident he wouldn't go there, and that the personnel hauling them around would defy an order to use them. I'm not.
I think I remember a story about Nixon becoming despondent towards the end of his presidency, The JCOS was concerned that he might order a launch, so they switched the verification codes so he could not launch without their okay.
I tend to believe the military will refuse to accept any such order unless we are under actual attack
That question seems likely to be an important one in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
In UK terms, Trump is a vexatious litigant and there are legal remedies in UK law against such litigants. I don’t know if there are any in State or Federal law.
It would seem ridiculous if constant submissions of lawsuits could effectively overrule normal certification processes and throw the decision back to political representatives about who should go to the EC. But I don’t know enough to answer the question of its legal effectiveness.
Pedantic, yes. Incorrect, possibly.
Broadly speaking a perusal of results from googling "Southern Strategy" will explain. Basically when LBJ signed the Civil Rights (and related) Acts he knew, and said, that he would piss off the white supremacists in the southern states. Nixon went after those states hard in 1968, sounding dog-whistles on "states' rights" to appeal to the segregationists, who were traditionally Democrats. There was and is a lot of overlap between white supremacy and white evangelicalism, so a pact between the two ended up putting Reagan, and ultimately Trump, in office.
And looking at the larger economic forces, the Republicans since their founding had been a big-business party, moreso than the Democrats, who tended toward the interests of southern agrarians(including slaveholders) and northern urban workers.
Business in the 19th Century was hostile to a slave economy, and so allied with abolitionists in the GOP. Following abolition, when the economic interests of blacks were linked more closely to government interventionism, blacks moved over to the Democrats, and business stayed with the Republicans, who used the aforementioned Southern Strategy to pick up the old "Dixiecrat" faction of the Democrats' coalition.
Trump's plan for the 2020 election was:
It's the one playbook they had and they're still doggedly following it. Where it's failing is that the electoral vote margin wasn't that close (point #2) so that the Trump campaign would need to find a way to flip three or more states, some of which weren't that close. (Biden's current margin in Pennsylvania is just under 70,000 votes at this point.) Overturning the election in multiple states seems like a bridge too far for plausibility.
That said, if Biden's electoral college tally was 289 or less and his margin in Pennsylvania more like 10,000 votes (or less), I'm pretty sure Republicans would be going all in on that plan.
My earlier post linked to a Gorsuch dissent [PDF] where he was apparently setting up exactly this argument. The traditional understanding of election law is that it's pretty much like any other state law; passed by the state legislature, subject to veto by the governor in states whose constitutions allow a gubernatorial veto, reviewable by state courts, and subject to alteration by referendum in states that allow referendums. Gorsuch says this is wrong. He points to Art. II, § 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which says:
The traditional interpretation of this is that "in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct", means through the normal legislative process described above. Gorsuch says no, it actually means the state legislature, narrowly defined as the body of legislators. This means that, unlike every other type of law, governors cannot veto any election law passed by the state legislature and state courts can't review such laws to make sure they're compliant with the state constitution. More importantly neither the governor nor the courts has the power to make emergency alterations to election practices. You know, like there's a pandemic or something. Interestingly Gorsuch's argument means that while state courts have no say over state election law, federal courts do.
At any rate it should be remembered that most of the Republican apparatus was willing to steal the 2020 election, it just wasn't close enough for them to do so. That's very different than having any kind of commitment to democracy.
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania issued a court order back in September that mail-in ballots should be accepted up to three days after Election Day. You can see how that fits with Gorsuch's argument that state courts don't have any authority over state election law. If Pennsylvania had been decided by late-arriving mail-in ballots (it wasn't) you can see how this would have played out.
The number of Vasily Arkhipovs in any given military is questionable. Military indoctrinate their soldiers to obey, it is how they work.
And despite LC's contention, plenty of the American military support Trump. Nearly half according the recent polls.
BTW, the military as a whole do not make the decision to honour the President's demand to launch. The chain of command from him to the person who presses the actual button is necessarily short. Whilst the US military is technically apolitical, that is not how life works, there will be those loyal to him. The brass, during his administration, have both worked to curb his impulses and gone along with them.
That said, nuking one's own people is an unlikely outcome.
I don't think so. I'm not a fan of her opinions to say the least, but she's a rigorous thinker, and I'd be quite surprised if she even bought Gorsuch's nonsense about the state legislatures. But given that Pennsylvania isn't going to come down to "late" ballots, and Trump wins NC whatever, the point is moot.
Barrett's record is very conservative on voting rights - I certainly wouldn't look to her to decide on principle that people should be entitled to have their vote counted, for example, but it's far from clear to me that she'd go along with Gorush's creative interpretation of "legislature".
My recollection is that Biden’s near 70k majority doesn’t yet include the late arriving ballots.
The other issue I’ve seen, the corrected mailed in ballots where people were phoned up in some counties, not others, seemed to me to have some point. It looked as though there was an element of vagueness in the guidelines. But the numbers involved must be too small to affect the now very sizeable majority.
Not being complete idiots, the various state legislatures being asked to do so have responded with some variation of "no thank you".
That is correct. There are about 10,000 ballots that fall into that late-arriving category in Pennsylvania according to the latest reporting. Since Biden's margin of victory in Pennsylvania, which doesn't include any of those ballots, is nearly seven times that number, including those ballots or not won't affect the outcome of Pennsylvania's presidential election.
Ideally every voter should have the exact same opportunity to cure a deficient mail-in ballot. Realistically, you can't expect the exact same level of diligence and competence from every election official in each of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. Some are going to be more diligent and/or more competent than others and that's just human variation. There's only so much a set of guidelines can do to correct that.
BTW Trump has now tweeted that the Georgia recount is a scam. It’s not finished but early returns from four counties have reported minimal difference. So he’s now arguing about signature matching. No proof of course that there is any cause for concern.
I’ve checked the Georgia deadline and it requires the SecState to certify the results to the Governor (Brian Kemp) by 20 November. Kemp is mentioned in the Trump tweet. Trump must be hoping Kemp will support his assertion. No doubt Raffensperger will confirm to the governor that all possible steps have been taken to ensure that only legal ballots have been counted. Including signature checks. At least that’s what I would do.
Let’s see if there is a late surprise. I’d be surprised if there was.
@Ohher
LC alluded to this in her response to you, but I'd like to emphasise it. Attempted Evil #2 is nothing to do with him retaining power. It's about the cash. He is trying to leverage his political support into cash, and he's had his lawyers designing his T&C's so he can get around your laws concerning the use of campaign funds.
Trump knows he's done as President. He's milking his supporters. Behind the scenes, he will be trying to pillage the Federal Government. See Croesus' post above.
[edit: I see I have missed almost a page of posts, so this will seem out of context. Sorry about that. The Croesus post I'm thinking of is the one about renting office space for ex-Presidents.]