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They arn't looking to take back the Republican Party 'after Trump', they have crossed the Rubicon so to speak they can't return. They are looking to bolster a conservative faction within the Democratic Party.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
Once Trump is OOO and the Dem coalition is in power they will be running campaign ads targeting moderate and conservatives Dems to push out Progressive agenda. They are still neocons at heart.
BBC News - Donald Trump suggests delay to 2020 US presidential election
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53597975
So surprised by this development. Really didn't see this coming ~;)
So the election (if he loses) will be put down to fraud by the trumpians and conspiraloons.
Get ready US - full scale fascism is on its way, all orchestrated by Putin.
OF COURSE he wants a delay. He isn't a reader and has the attention span of a gnat apparently, but he can read a poll summary. And they ain't pretty.
But he will not achieve his sought-for delay.
The only delayed election ever was the first one in 1788 (actually 10 Jan 1789). None have since been delayed regardless of natural disaster, pandemic, or wars both foreign and domestic.
He has about 100 days to change the predicted results.
And full fascism will not be coming any time soon. Any actual attempt to impose it will generate a civil war and Trump's cadre, however ardent, would lose.
Theory is that Trump brought up delaying the election to distract from 2 pieces of bad news: the report that we had the worst GDP decline (32.9%) over Q2 in history, and that he killed Herman Cain. Trump does this all the time, "bad news coming? say something outrageous!" He floated it to see the reaction, but he would do it if he thought he could get away with it.
Tangentially, I have been informed that I should not use the terms "skew" and "bias" interchangeably, as bias is a systematic statistical error whereas skew refers to the mathematical asymmetry of a statistical distribution. A statistical bias might not involve skew, and a statistical skew might not be biased.
Op-ed by former Republican operator:
As always, who already knew this 4, 10, 20, 40 years ago? Why weren't they listened to?Quote:
I spent decades working to elect Republicans, including Mr. Romney and four other presidential candidates, and I am here to bear reluctant witness that Mr. Trump didn’t hijack the Republican Party. He is the logical conclusion of what the party became over the past 50 or so years, a natural product of the seeds of race-baiting, self-deception and anger that now dominate it. Hold Donald Trump up to a mirror and that bulging, scowling orange face is today’s Republican Party.
I saw the warning signs but ignored them and chose to believe what I wanted to believe: The party wasn’t just a white grievance party; there was still a big tent; the others guys were worse. Many of us in the party saw this dark side and told ourselves it was a recessive gene. We were wrong. It turned out to be the dominant gene.
Quote:
Racism is the original sin of the modern Republican Party. While many Republicans today like to mourn the absence of an intellectual voice like William Buckley, it is often overlooked that Mr. Buckley began his career as a racist defending segregation.
In the Richard Nixon White House, Pat Buchanan and Kevin Phillips wrote a re-election campaign memo headed “Dividing the Democrats” in which they outlined what would come to be known as the Southern Strategy. It assumes there is little Republicans can do to attract Black Americans and details a two-pronged strategy: Utilize Black support of Democrats to alienate white voters while trying to decrease that support by sowing dissension within the Democratic Party.
That strategy has worked so well that it was copied by the Russians in their 2016 efforts to help elect Mr. Trump.
In the 2000 George W. Bush campaign, on which I worked, we acknowledged the failures of Republicans to attract significant nonwhite support. When Mr. Bush called himself a “compassionate conservative,” some on the right attacked him, calling it an admission that conservatism had not been compassionate. That was true; it had not been. Many of us believed we could steer the party to that “kinder, gentler” place his father described. We were wrong.
Conservatism is always nothing more than an elite legitimating casuistry. It's just that in the America of our lifetimes it shed the semblance of an intellectual core for the plain guttural shriek.Quote:
How did this happen? How do you abandon deeply held beliefs about character, personal responsibility, foreign policy and the national debt in a matter of months? You don’t. The obvious answer is those beliefs weren’t deeply held. What others and I thought were bedrock values turned out to be mere marketing slogans easily replaced. I feel like the guy working for Bernie Madoff who thought they were actually beating the market.
Mr. Trump has served a useful purpose by exposing the deep flaws of a major American political party. Like a heavy truck driven over a bridge on the edge of failure, he has made it impossible to ignore the long-developing fault lines of the Republican Party. A party rooted in decency and values does not embrace the anger that Mr. Trump peddles as patriotism.
This collapse of a major political party as a moral governing force is unlike anything we have seen in modern American politics. The closest parallel is the demise of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, when the dissonance between what the party said it stood for and what citizens actually experienced was so great that it was unsustainable.
From the comments:Quote:
Only fear will motivate the party to change — the cold fear only defeat can bring.
Quote:
There is nothing so bracing as the foxhole conversion of a Republican who manifests a convenient crisis of conscience.
Sadly, Mr. Stevens’ mea culpa comes just a bit too late, and only after polls have begun to indicate that the nation is turning against Republicans, generally, and some of them specifically. Many of us saw the disturbing trends of party policy long ago, courtesy of clearly visible immorality and selfishness that has long characterized its true raison d’etre. It’s faux fiscal responsibility, bootstrap policies and morality ploy has been nothing more than a long-con, designed to feather its own nest. Many of us saw it long ago. Not, apparently, Mr. Stevens.
It’s more than time for his likes to own up to Republicans’ sorry evolution toward totalitarianism, racism, ultra-nationalism and selfish irresponsibility, not to mention his own part in it. That he waited, however, until the handwriting was on the wall, courtesy of a roused public which has increasingly had enough, should best be viewed as yet another example of too little too late.
The GOP’s self-immolation has been apparent to many of us before Donald Trump expropriated it for his own political purposes. Instead of claiming that “we lost the battle” and hiding behind NYT opinion piece, let’s see whether Mr. Stevens rises to the occasion and demonstrates some true bravery by meaningfully walking his nascent talk. As Donald Trump would say, we’ll just have to wait and see.
I like the photo of Trump embedded in the article.
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020...y=90&auto=webp
The military leadership already told him following the Lafayette Square incident during the height of the BLM protests, in so many words, to jog on.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
Without the military all Trump has is a few thousand sicherpolizei and the hypothetical ardor of his militias. He's done.
One of Trump's saving graces is that, though he's a fascist, he's too lazy and stupid to actually attempt to suborn the whole bureaucratic apparatus to a long-term agenda, of which he has none other than 'steal whatever I can.' The same applies to his functionaries. The closest he's come is with immigration and border security, but even there he could have accomplished more with some dedication and legal suavity. Everything Trump does is ad hoc and oriented toward short-term satisfaction of personal corruption or his perception of the media cycle. All told, Trump's fascism is therefore defensive (rather than ambitious) and someone without his astonishing medley of personal and mental defects could be much more dangerous in office. I mean come on, what kind of proper fascist utterly bungles a served-up opportunity in the form of a public emergency to consolidate personal control over the central government and central control over daily life? If even Tucker Carlson were switched out for Trump immediately following impeachment, his approval rating would be 52% (though trying to repress civil rights protests would be an inexorable loser for these people).
None of this is to diminish or dismiss the unprecedented damage done by Trump to our institutions and cultures of governance, only to point out that there can be (will be?) even worse with just a little, normal, non-debility at the head.
We will never reach a full understanding of how bad at politics Trump is, following from his total inability to act as something other than a dumb criminal bigot.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020...-cost-him-2020
Quote:
If Donald Trump loses in the fall, the first week of June might have marked the beginning of the end. On June 1, with the country consumed by historic protests against racism and police brutality, some of them violent, Trump decided to position himself as the “law-and-order” president, made clear by his tweets and his now infamous march that evening across Lafayette Square, outside the White House. His path cleared by the National Guard and D.C. police who used chemical agents on lawfully assembled protesters and roughed up journalists, Trump walked across the street to stand in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church for an inscrutable and buffoonish photo op, in which he held up a Bible and said nothing much at all about the cities on fire and the country’s dismal legacy of racism. “We have a great country,” Trump said. “That’s my thoughts.” The moment was an emblem of Trump’s presidency: attention-seeking, bereft of empathy, gut over strategy. It was so embarrassing and borderline anti-American that one of his generals, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley, apologized for participating in the walk and reportedly considered resigning. Like so many of Trump’s decisions, it was a sugar-high tactic designed to please his base and get TV ratings, with almost no thought about the larger sweep of American history, let alone his reelection campaign.
Politically, it was a disaster. In the days that followed, Trump’s approval ratings tumbled to their lowest point in over a year, and their lowest point of the coronavirus pandemic, according to FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker. The first two weeks of June also saw Trump fall even further behind his Democratic rival, Joe Biden. Before June, Biden steadily held a four-to-six-point lead over Trump in national polls, fueled in part by massive support among the independent voters whom Trump won in 2016. Shortly after Lafayette Square, though, Biden began to open up an even bigger lead, a nine-point average lead over the president, with a Washington Post–ABC News poll this week showing Biden winning by as many as 15 points.
Trump’s reaction to the protests was not the only reason for his summer collapse. Most pollsters say that Trump’s continuing inability to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, and the economic havoc that’s come with it, has been the dominant factor. And last week, for the first time, polls began to show Biden beating Trump on the question of who would best handle the economy, the only decent card left in Trump’s deck. But if Trump loses in November, the nationwide protests against racism and police brutality that erupted in early June have to be seen as a significant breaking point. Not just because they threw an exhausted nation into even more chaos, and not just because they forced Trump into the most astoundingly dumb photo op in presidential history, surpassing George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished!” blunder. In fact, new polling and research provided to Vanity Fair suggests that the protests themselves changed America’s opinions about race so quickly, and so profoundly, that Trump unknowingly planted himself even further on the wrong side of public opinion than previously understood.
Shortly after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, the Democratic research firm Avalanche went into nine battleground states—Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Georgia, North Carolina, Iowa, and Pennsylvania—to measure how segments of Americans were reacting to the protests. Unlike most pollsters at the time, Avalanche surveyed two large back-to-back samples of 6,986 registered and unregistered total voters—one on June 1 and a second on June 10 and 11—allowing it to track how sentiments changed during what might have been the most consequential chapter of the protests. Like most polls, Avalanche found widespread support for the protests by June 11, with 68% of respondents saying the protesters were “completely right” or “somewhat right.” But rather than measuring responses by self-identified partisanship—Democrat, Republican, independent—Avalanche measured by vote choice. It organized respondents into five segments: Vote Trump, Lean Trump, Mixed Feelings, Lean Biden, and Vote Biden.
Avalanche found resounding support for the protests not just among Biden supporters, but among persuadable voters and even soft Trump supporters. The hardcore Vote Trump respondents were against the protests, with 56% opposing them. But among the softer Lean Trump set, an eye-opening 59% said the protesters were “completely right” or “somewhat right”—probably not what the president had in mind when he commandeered Lafayette Square. And 72% of Americans with Mixed Feelings about the presidential race—precious undecided voters—said the protesters were right too. “There’s not a lot of issues where you get even a strong majority of Americans on the same page,” said Michiah Prull, the CEO of Avalanche. “It speaks to that historic moment, and it speaks to a degree of national alignment on something that's honestly pretty rare these days.”
But just as remarkable were the shifts among those persuadables in the 10 days between June 1 and June 11, a window that opened with burning cities and Trump’s march to St. John’s Church, but concluded with mostly peaceful demonstrations nationwide. During that period Avalanche found that support for the protests grew 10 points among Mixed Feelings voters, 14 points among Lean Biden voters, and a head-spinning 25 points among Lean Trump voters. “I had never in my research career seen public opinion shift on the scale in this time frame,” Prull said. “When we look at this from electoral context, when you see a 25-point swing in Lean Trump supporters from disapproving of the protests to at least somewhat agreeing with them, that’s just a scale of public opinion shift you don’t see in this line of work very often.”
Quote:
Originally Posted by drone
How sad is it that it was considered "smart PR" for a President to make fascistic statements that undermine the democratic process rather than god forbid talk about the economy.
The efficacy of this strategy is directly tied to the degree that American culture among the white middle class has become indulgent and narcissistic.
I mean when even one of the co-founders of the Federalist Society says calling to delay the election is fascistic you know you are starting to lose people.
What I think is needful: Punitive anti-GOP voting come November. Aside from those GOP'ers who have consistently opposed Trump (3? fewer?) we should pick the Dem and fire for effect.
On a related note, would you say that proponents of the Second Amendment as the guarantor of liberty who have also supported Trump's violations of constitutional norms have lost all authority?Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
To quote my second favorite Never Trumper, "every last one of them has to go."Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
Oh absolutely. I really hope that the protesters can take back the Gadsden flag from the gun-toting, beer-bellied idiots its been appropriated by.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pannonian
Oh and if anyone is wondering why the NRA has been suspiciously quiet, its probably because they are treading water financially and have laid off a huge number of their staff.
Thoughts and prayers.
They have the same "authority" they had before -- the suffrage.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pannonian
If you meant, 'do I believe that they have lost the moral high ground to preach about the vital nature of one aspect of the Constitution by championing a fumbling would-be pseudo-autocrat who is at best operating extra-constitutionally and quite possibly in direct contravention of other portions of that document' I would say "yes" -- while noting that they will never recognize much less acknowledge the logical and ethical fallacy in which they are engaged.
I once had a chap on this forum ask me how I, a small government conservative, could oppose abortion -- since any legislation thereupon by government would be intrusive to the individual. As in, how could I keep calling myself a small government somewhat-libertarian and, at least implicitly, call for greater government intervention into people's everyday lives.
It was a darned good question. And one I not only took days to answer for myself, but to which I still review/consider my stance every once in a while.
I would not expect that level of reflexive evaluation from the Trumpian Core.
Joe has picked Kamala Harris to be his VP.
Can't say I didn't see this coming, despite all the cloudiness over the past couple weeks regarding the pick. I figured she would be a very strong VP candidate for whoever won the primaries after she dropped last December. She is a good choice and definitely brings more excitement to the ticket. Would also love to see Karen Bass take over her senate seat if they win in November. Very glad he didnt pick Rice though, she would have dredged up a bunch of stuff like Benghazi and the whole unmasking thing that would be easy red meat for Trump's base.
At least now the VP debate might be as amusing as the president, pity it wasnt the scientologist, would have been fun watching Mike "Taze the Rainbow" Pence share a stage with Xenu.
Considering that Jeff Sessions admitted that he got nervous when she questioned him, its going to be a fascinating VP debate.
Edit: the GOP attacks on her are amusing so far. Doesnt seem like they really know what to do with her. Trump didnt really seem to have a good line about her either. Called her phony as I recall from the presser but that seems pretty weak. Meanwhile The Federalist is selling "Kamala is a cop" tshirt which just make me confused who its supposed to appeal to? I thought the GOP liked cops? If its for the people on the left who don't like her, why would they be buying anything from The Federalist in the first place? Meanwhile in GOP talk show land they are claiming she isnt really the pick and its just a smokescreen. And others trying to connect her to Epstein or something? Weird. I'm sure they will figure out a more coherent line of attack later but for now they just seem confused. But in the meantime, Palin has some surprisingly wholesome words for Kamala.
Harris' problem isnt so much across the aisle, its in-house.
Expect Gabbard's takedown to resume circulating in liberal circles, as the BLM "all cops are bastards" tone of the last two months crashes against the symbol of all that is corrupt in law enforcement being selected VP.
A twist of the knife in the bernie bros, no mistake.
I dunno, I feel like the vast majority are fine with the pick, even if some are grumbling about it not being Warren or Bass. The fact that some of her biggest critics early on such as Shaun King are expressing their support now speaks volumes. The loudest people complaining about Harris being picked are the very online folks who Biden has been successfully ignoring during the campaign. If any lesson is learned from all of this its probably that Twitter isnt real life when it comes to electoral politics.
*checks primary voter turnout stats* W H OMEGALULQuote:
Originally Posted by Greyblades
This is the perennial pragmatism vs purity. Biden's pick is a solid one for trying to get minorities and as many "law and order" types from the middle as humanly possible. They are the ones which are required to win elections.
I imagine that there are some Democrats who wanted Bernie to team up with AOC and the rest of The Squad who can then all snipe at Trump from Twitter for the next four years as he does further damage. But Bernie and AOC is the wonderfully "pureist" choice of proper Left wing politics which is quite some way from the "average" voter and would probably galvanise a nasty mix of money, racists and xenophobes to ensure that the Useful Idiots stay in power.
~:smoking:
I mean Trump is already going full-blown dog whistle and its not even September yet.
He never stopped. He is always on the attack. It is his metier.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
Forgive me, I periodically forget liberal is paradoxically synonymous with progressive in america.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
My point is she's a nightmare for those who are less than enthused with the drug war, for-profit prisons, wrongful death sentances and pretty much every other thing people have been railing against the last two months in the american legal system. They might be happy enough now but Biden's got to keep Harris' AG record an obscurity for another three months else people start realizing she has an even deeper "tough on crime" authoritarian streak than he does.
She was far better than any of her white counterparts at the time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Greyblades
During Harris tenure, people charged with petty drug crimes were given a chance at diversion as an alternative to prosecution. Harris’ diversion program was so successful it became a national model. That didn’t exist before she was in office — she championed that program specifically as a route to reduce the injustices that POC face against the system.
The agency’s data shows there were 1,883 admissions to state prison on marijuana offenses during the years Harris was attorney general. There were another 92 admissions for crimes related to hashish, a drug made from cannabis resin. Notably, the figures dropped dramatically during Harris’ tenure, from 817 marijuana-related admissions in her first year in office to 137 in her last.
SOURCE:
Attachment 23916
So let’s be clear: Kamala was sworn into office in 2011 and within the very first year used her prosecutorial discretion to reduce marijuana related prosecutions by 70% — despite that marijuana remained illegal and her role as AG requires she enforce the existing laws on the books regardless of her personal feelings.
70%! That’s a whole lot of discretion favoring would-be defendants. By the time she ended her tenure in 2016, she reduced marijuana related prosecutions by 83%. Again, marijuana was still illegal in California the entire time she was AG. Yes, she has discretion, but discretion doesn’t mean refusing to enforce the laws that are on the books ever again.
Dropping 83% of prosecutions for marijuana isn’t nothing.
The state prison population went down under her watch.Quote:
for-profit prisons,
Do you mean the Kevin Cooper case? Because by the time she became AG he had already exhausted all appeals, and the only avenue left was clemency which is solely up to the governor. Other than that, shes pretty infamous in California for being anti-death penalty, refusing the death penalty for a cop killer which really angered the police unions and Senator Feinstein who famously held a grudge against her when Kamala was running for senate.Quote:
wrongful death sentances
If you want justice in criminal justice, you need diversity inside the system. To me, a portion of the people hating on her career seem to be saying that we should leave all policing matters to white people. That doesn’t sit right with me.Quote:
and pretty much every other thing people have been railing against the last two months in the american legal system.
Biden's got to keep Harris' AG record an obscurity for four months else people start realizing she has an even deeper authoritarian streak than he does.
You can’t judge her record in a vacuum. She didn’t build the system and isn’t personally responsible for failing to singlehandedly rectify a century and a half of racial oppression from the CA Attorney General’s office. Was she perfect? Of course not. But she definitely deserves far more credit than a lot of people give her. Kamala intentionally entered public service as a prosecutor at a time criminal justice was often led by very anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-sex work white men. Kamala was the first Black person to be AG of California - a state of 40 million in the 2000s tough on crime era. Any attorney general’s record for a state and department that huge (the largest state DOJ in the US) can be cherry picked.
Anyways, apparently the campaign raised a record-breaking $30 million in a single 24-hour period after Harris was named VP. The enthusiasm is definitely there.
I spent way too many hours on this.
I am doubtful that being better than her counterparts is much of a compliment considering... well, California.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
I looked up the california diversion laws and the only two I could find were proposition 36 (2000) and Penal code: Pt2: Title 6: chapter 2.5: 1000-1000.65, amended Jan 1st 2018, neither appear to make any mention of her supporting either.
Could you clarify what law you refer to and how it could be considered to be of Harris making?
What agency do you refer to and from where did you get this table?Quote:
The agency’s data shows there were 1,883 admissions to state prison on marijuana offenses during the years Harris was attorney general. There were another 92 admissions for crimes related to hashish, a drug made from cannabis resin. Notably, the figures dropped dramatically during Harris’ tenure, from 817 marijuana-related admissions in her first year in office to 137 in her last.
SOURCE:
Attachment 23916
So let’s be clear: Kamala was sworn into office in 2011 and within the very first year used her prosecutorial discretion to reduce marijuana related prosecutions by 70% — despite that marijuana remained illegal and her role as AG requires she enforce the existing laws on the books regardless of her personal feelings.
70%! That’s a whole lot of discretion favoring would-be defendants. By the time she ended her tenure in 2016, she reduced marijuana related prosecutions by 83%. Again, marijuana was still illegal in California the entire time she was AG. Yes, she has discretion, but discretion doesn’t mean refusing to enforce the laws that are on the books ever again.
Dropping 83% of prosecutions for marijuana isn’t nothing.
Posession of less than an ounce was demoted to a misdemeanor in Senate Bill No. 1449, Sep 30th 2010, came right before her tenure and coincides with a major arrest dip but I find no involvement of Harris in its favour.
How do you determine the cause being her discretion and not any other factor?
Again how do you determine it was caused by her?Quote:
Far as I can tell her opinion was a closely guarded secret; making no comment during two sentancing reform referenda and her only action appears to be when she represented the governer fighting against reform in 2011
She publically recused herself on the topics; failed to blow the whistle when her deputies discovered a police lab technician had been intentionally sabotaging her work, putting over 600 drug cases in question.
Also in opposition to her attempting to appeal a dismissal of a case where a prosecutor had witheld and tampered with evidence as well as lying under oath.
And especially opposed to her being handed an investigation into into a sheriff’s deputies placing informants in cells next to inmates who were awaiting trial and using thier testemony as evidence without knowledge of judge or jury, only to sit on it till her term was up and 4 years later it was closed by her successor.
I would say the amount of effort she has put into not investigating potential false convictions indicates reducing numbers was not her highest priority. Apparantly maintaining the state's prison labour population was to some of her underlings.
(The NYT also wrote a claim about a George Gage whose prosecutor supposedly witheld evidence that Harris defended in the article I have been using as a starting point but they didnt corroberate it with a source so I cant be sure if this george gage exists.)
A NYT article alledged Harris had been in the position to refuse to allow DNA testing when Harris became aware of the article instead of refutating the idea she had the power to do so she gave this statement.Quote:
Do you mean the Kevin Cooper case? Because by the time she became AG he had already exhausted all appeals, and the only avenue left was clemency which is solely up to the governor. Other than that, shes pretty infamous in California for being anti-death penalty, refusing the death penalty for a cop killer which really angered the police unions and Senator Feinstein who famously held a grudge against her when Kamala was running for senate.
Puts us into a wierd position where death row abolishonist either had refused to allow a potentially exonerating DNA test (one that is apparantly being done as we speak) or a death row abolishonist is refusing not to refute a false accusation that she did so.
There is nothing just about a quota and corruption knows no race.Quote:
If you want justice in criminal justice, you need diversity inside the system.
To me a portion of the people caling her a good pick seem to be saying race and sex should matter over capability when selecting people for pretty much anything. That hasnt sat right with me for about 10 years now.Quote:
To me, a portion of the people hating on her career seem to be saying that we should leave all policing matters to white people. That doesn’t sit right with me.
Where did it come from, where will it go... something something cotton eye joe.Quote:
Anyways, apparently the campaign raised a record-breaking $30 million in a single 24-hour period after Harris was named VP. The enthusiasm is definitely there.
I'll do a more in-depth rebuttal tomorrow since its almost midnight here, but just to quickly point out before I go to bed, the table about marijuana prosecutions says where its from in the top left corner and the diversion program I mentioned is called Back on Track (pdf warning).
On QAnon overwhelming the Republican party and base, as confessors increasingly run for office.
https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-c...-congress-2020
Oddly, of the 75 examples listed 2 were running in Democratic primaries for the House. Both were also big believers in Pizzagate. Thankfully, both turned out to be marginal nonentities.
@Papewaio might be interested in this stuff.
This is the Trump administration suing Nevada over the alleged unconstitutionality of a new law that provides for mail ballots to be issued to all Nevada voters (and extends the deadline for their valid submission), and mandates per-capita minimums for in-person polling locations. The Trump administration insists this violates the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The argument is reliant on Bush v. Gore, which was explicitly rendered as non-precedential at the time, and has never been used in case law in the 20 years since. The premise here is that the Trump administration believes the Nevada law will deny equal access of the franchise to some voters, even though the law is designed and provisioned to do the opposite, and the Trump administration and other Republican actors have persistently acted to deny voters equal access of the franchise. Very 1984.Quote:
Sections 11 and 12 of AB4 are also unconstitutional. Those sections set forth the
number of in-person polling places for early voting (Section 11) and vote centers for day-of-election
voting (Section 12). Under those sections, the number of in-person voting places a county must
establish is tied to the county’s population, resulting in more in-person voting places per capita for
voters in urban counties than in rural counties. [Ed. Do they know what "per capita" means?] This disparate treatment of Nevada voters based on
county population violates rural voters’ rights under the Equal Protection Clause.
The suit also claims that because the law would permit non-postmarked ballot mail to be accepted up to 3 days after election day - preexisting law allowed much the same but required a legible postmark - it creates the possibility that ballots mailed after election day could be counted, which could potentially conflict with federal election law that "electors of President and Vice President shall be appointed, in each State, on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, in every fourth year succeeding every election of a President and Vice President.” It is unclear why the potential for a ballot cast after election day would conflict with this clause if states failing to complete their counts or call the election before midnight of election day is not also in conflict with the law. In fact, in the subsequent clause of the legal code:
lolQuote:
Whenever any State has held an election for the purpose of choosing electors, and has failed to make a choice on the day prescribed by law, the electors may be appointed on a subsequent day in such a manner as the legislature of such State may direct.
LOL
But wait, there's more to this business than Nevada.
Trump just told us how mail delays could help him corrupt the election
How the Media Could Get the Election Story WrongQuote:
It’s telling that after President Trump was widely rebuked for suggesting a delay of the election, he wasn’t remotely chastened. Instead, he floated another scenario that could help him accomplish the same goal of avoiding a free and fair election:
He suggested that only the votes that can be tallied on Election Day should count.
This may seem like Trumpian bluster. But it’s much more alarming in light of an important new exposé in The Post that reports on big backlogs in mail delivery due to “cost-cutting” by the new head of the U.S. Postal Service — who, by spectacular coincidence, just happens to be a top Trump fundraiser.
And here’s an additional reason for alarm that needs more attention: The impact of those delays could be dramatically exacerbated by state laws that invalidate ballots that are mailed before Election Day but arrive after Election Day.
Guess which key presidential swing states have such provisions invalidating ballots that arrive after Election Day?
All of them do, with the exception of North Carolina.
“In states where ballots won’t count if they are received after Election Day, the impact could be devastating," Vanita Gupta, the CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, told me, adding that this could “result in potentially hundreds of thousands of ballots getting rejected.”
“The delays are going to be unpredictable with the cuts being made on the postal service,” Gupta continued. “That impact could turn a swing state completely.”
The Post exposé reports that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is implementing changes that have critics charging that mail delays may be “the result of a political effort to undermine absentee voting.”
These changes, The Post reports, include “prohibiting overtime pay, shutting down sorting machines early and requiring letter carriers to leave mail behind when necessary to avoid extra trips or late delivery on routes.” The result:
A spokesperson for the USPS is vowing that the changes are temporary and are not intended to delay the transmission of mailed ballots. But delays could nonetheless end up having a massive disenfranchising effect whatever the USPS’s motives, due to the precise confluence of factors coming together right now.Quote:
The new policies have resulted in at least a two-day delay in scattered parts of the country, even for express mail, according to multiple postal workers and union leaders. Letter carriers are manually sorting more mail, adding to the delivery time. Bins of mail ready for delivery are sitting in post offices because of scheduling and route changes. And without the ability to work overtime, workers say the logjam is worsening without an end in sight.
What’s more, USPS officials can plead innocence all they want, but Trump himself is banking on these delays to save his reelection hopes. Trump is basically telling us so himself.
[...]
It’s all there. Trump is looking to declare himself winner on Election Day, no matter how many mail ballots remain uncounted. He will say they are fraudulent. And if they tip the result against him, he will say that outcome is rigged, something he has already said publicly is inevitable.
[...]
This sheds more light on an important piece by David Wasserman predicting a disaster brewing around absentee ballots. Democrats will use vote-by-mail in far higher numbers than Republicans — due to Trump’s nonstop attacks on it — yet absentee ballots get rejected at disproportionate rates, due to procedural complexities.
[...]
“This is particularly unreasonable during a pandemic,” Weiser said. “We’re already experiencing substantial delays in the mail that will make it exceedingly difficult for many to meet those states’ deadlines, through no fault of their own.”
There is recourse here: Top Democratic lawyer Marc Elias tells me Democrats are litigating against these laws in every swing state, with an eye toward getting ballots counted that are postmarked before but arrive after Election Day. The absurdity of that deadline amid a pandemic and postal cutbacks might boost their legal case.
Postal Service overhauls leadership as Democrats press for investigation of mail delaysQuote:
The coronavirus crisis means that states like Pennsylvania may be counting mail-in ballots for weeks, while President Trump tweets false allegations about fraud. And the last barriers between American democracy and a deep political crisis may be television news and some version of that maddening needle on The New York Times website.
I spoke last week to executives, TV hosts and election analysts across leading American newsrooms, and I was struck by the blithe confidence among some top managers and hosts, who generally said they’ve handled complicated elections before and can do so again. And I was alarmed by the near panic among some of the people paying the closest attention — the analysts and producers trying, and often failing, to get answers from state election officials about how and when they will count the ballots and report results.
“The nerds are freaking out,” said Brandon Finnigan, the founder of Decision Desk HQ, which delivers election results to media outlets. “I don’t think it’s penetrated enough in the average viewer’s mind that there’s not going to be an election night. The usual razzmatazz of a panel sitting around discussing election results — that’s dead,” he said.
The changes the media faces are profound, with technical and political dimensions.
First, there’s already a shift underway from a single-day, in-person election. In the 2018 midterms, only 60 percent of the votes were cast in person on Election Day. More votes will probably be sent in this year by mail or cast in September and October. That risks coverage misfires: In 2018, cable news commentators spent election night suggesting that the “blue wave” hadn’t arrived. But they were simply impatient: The Democratic surge showed up when the final California races were called weeks later. If the 2016 election had been conducted amid the expected surge in mail-in voting because of the coronavirus crisis, the Pennsylvania results might not have been counted until Thanksgiving.
Quote:
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s mail service, displacing the two top executives overseeing day-to-day operations, according to a reorganization memo released Friday. The shake-up came as congressional Democrats called for an investigation of DeJoy and the cost-cutting measures that have slowed mail delivery and ensnared ballots in recent primary elections.
Twenty-three postal executives were reassigned or displaced, the new organizational chart shows. Analysts say the structure centralizes power around DeJoy, a former logistics executive and major ally of President Trump, and de-emphasizes decades of institutional postal knowledge. All told, 33 staffers included in the old postal hierarchy either kept their jobs or were reassigned in the restructuring, with five more staffers joining the leadership from other roles.
[...]
The Postal Service will implement a hiring freeze, according to the reorganization announcement, and will ask for voluntary early retirements. It also will realign into three “operating units” — retail and delivery, logistics and processing, and commerce and business solutions — and scale down from seven regions to four.
The structure displaces postal executives with decades of experience, moving some to new positions and others out of leadership roles entirely, including McAdams, Williams and chief commerce and business solutions officer Jacqueline Krage Strako, who previously held the title of executive vice president and chief customer and marketing officer.
[...]
A letter signed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) and seven other Democrats, including Connolly, urged Postal Service Inspector General Tammy L. Whitcomb to examine how DeJoy came to implement policies that prohibit postal workers from taking overtime or making extra trips to deliver mail on time, and how such delays specifically affect election mail.
“Given the ongoing concerns about the adverse impacts of Trump Administration policies on the quality and efficiency of the Postal Service, we ask that you conduct an audit of all operational changes put in place by Mr. DeJoy and other Trump Administration officials in 2020,” the letter states.
It also asks Whitcomb to review the finances of DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Wos, the nominee for ambassador to Canada. The couple’s holdings include between $30.1 million and $75.3 million in assets in USPS competitors or contractors, according to a financial disclosure Wos filed with the Office of Government Ethics when she was nominated. Postal Service mail processing contractor XPO Logistics — which acquired DeJoy’s company New Breed Logistics in 2014 — represents the vast majority of those holdings. Their combined stake in competitors UPS and trucking company J.B. Hunt is roughly $265,000.
During the USPS’s quarterly board of governors meeting Friday, DeJoy said he negotiated the loan terms with Mnuchin. Upon accessing the loan, the Postal Service, subject to confidentiality restrictions, will hand over proprietary contracts for its 10 largest service agreements with private sector shippers. Those businesses use the mail service for “last mile” package delivery from distribution centers to consumers’ homes or businesses.
Mnuchin had sought sweeping operational control of the Postal Service in previous loan terms, including provisions that would allow the Trump administration to approve senior postal personnel decisions, service contracts with third-party shippers, collective bargaining negotiation strategies and high package prices.
In April, shortly after Congress authorized the loan, Trump called the Postal Service “a joke” and said he would not approve any emergency funding unless the USPS quadrupled package delivery prices, a move analysts said would quickly bankrupt the agency by chasing away customers to private-sector competitors.
As for mail voting for its own sake, let's just say I'm glad New York isn't a swing state. After what happened with the primary in June - I'm not sure if they've finally fully certified the results, but if they have it took them almost 7 weeks, taking 2 or 3 just to start tallying. Tens of thousands of ballots have been invalidated on technicalities. I'm not even going to bother in November. Between walking to the county board of elections to hand-deliver a ballot, and walking to an early voting location, I'll cut the middleman (requesting a ballot) entirely and opt for the latter. Universal mail voting (with ancillary in-person option) is a great goal for streamlining the electoral process and promoting consistency and access, but this country needs a little more stability and competence to fully adopt it, despite reaching the milestone of designating the vast majority of voters eligible to vote by mail for the first time in history.
Florida is relatively good with the logistics of mail voting at least, or so I hear. Just this week, the city of Portland, Oregon held a special election, counted 170K votes, and certified the results by morning of the day after. Oregon is a state that runs ALL-MAIL ELECTIONS, and has done so for 20 years, so this shit is not impossible.
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/pol...5-a85fda859208
Redpilled. Based.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
The closest I've seen any of them come is Ammon Bundy distancing himself from organized anti-government groups because of backlash against him for suggesting that maybe immigrants aren't evil vermin.Quote:
If you meant, 'do I believe that they have lost the moral high ground to preach about the vital nature of one aspect of the Constitution by championing a fumbling would-be pseudo-autocrat who is at best operating extra-constitutionally and quite possibly in direct contravention of other portions of that document' I would say "yes" -- while noting that they will never recognize much less acknowledge the logical and ethical fallacy in which they are engaged.
...
Those who expect Trump to be memory holed or quasi-rehabilitated, like Bush II, or mythified like Reagan, are probably wrong.
There will be a new Lost Cause legend. Because it satisfies both the impulses to flatter oneself and one's commitments and to account for how a perfect ideology could be rejected on a national scale, which were the motivations toward the first Lost Cause (besides reinsinuating Southern power in an active way). The first Confederacy lost the fight but won the peace, enabling its adherents to advance the first Lost Cause. We must not allow it to happen again. The framework for permanent struggle is already here in QAnon.
(I do expect the name of Donald Trump to have more clout in the mouths of national Republicans than the man himself.)
As a reminder, Harris was for the elimination of private health insurance before she was against it, and post-California her record has been one of the most liberal for national Democrats (including working with AOC on climate policy and Sanders on economic relief). There is not a useful dichotomy between pragmatism and purity when what's really going on is fundamentally a difference in policy preferences and political priors, one that shifts over time. Few speak of the ideological purity of the hard-right Republican politicians (functionally the whole party), who are far more ideologically rigid than almost any national Democrat, including Sanders. (For example, in the categorical rejection of more government spending on pandemic relief.) But I've never even heard of a putatively non-partisan discourse of a tension between Republican "purity" and pragmatism, perhaps because it is widely assumed that only liberals have the agency or desire to seek to accomplish things, and therefore only liberals can be held to account for their aspirations and performance.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
Most candidates run to the center in the general election. Biden is moving left.
Admittedly, it may be an advantage that Biden has over Trump that polling has evinced a perception among the electorate of Biden being more moderate. Whereas in 2016 similar polling reported that Clinton was seen as more extreme than Trump. This comes despite Biden's platform being well to the left of where Clinton's started or ended. The electorate is malinformed, underinformed, and full of idiots. Politics should be understood in terms of mechanically manipulating these tendencies to maximal advantage, rather than allowing them to manifest as disadvantage. The chief example of a Sandersite "purist" illusion/handicap is the heartfelt belief that top-down persuasion is an available and useful component of organization (contrasted with mobilization) in electoral politics.
I'm not super-enthused in the context of the Democratic VP pick being the presumptive nominee in 2024 or 2028, but Harris has time to grow. As usual, Eric Levitz does very good syllogistic analysis (though this one is a rehash).
(It occurs to me that in a scenario of long-term single-party governance, the presidential field would become narrower than it ever has. Not that we're yet at the point of anticipating a Democratic lock on national politics, and a Republican single-party state would have the oligarchic politics of Putin's Russia, I'm just saying that given the current norms around the VP position a baton relay is what would naturally emerge in any long period of single-party rule).
I have suspicion that many Republicans want the low taxes / high corporate profits and are prepared to voice the gay bashing, bible thumping gun shooting rhetoric to keep in line. I don't even think that Trump really gives a damn about most of the stuff he pretends to be the leader of - and as long as he helps big business / places conservative judges and ensures no gun laws it all sort of all stays together.
In essence, they are collectively held together with their hatred of the "Left" with the views that differing not really conflicting.
~:smoking:
I am somewhat taken aback by the fact that this seems new to you.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
The man is trapped in his own world. Anything he does is of benefit to him alone. I don't think the Republicans have any ideas or new concepts for anything. The world is changing and the country is dealing with difficult problems, and half of the Republican senators think that if they sit back and do nothing, that everything will sort itself out. If only they extended this concept to their own campaigns.
Agreed. He has, as the classic demagogue, been USING the frothy fringe for his own ends. He doesn't truly give a rat's patoot about them.
You would be surprised at how ideologically diverse California is. Dont forget that Schwarzenegger, who ran as a Republican, was the governor until 2011.Quote:
Originally Posted by Greyblades
As I mentioned earlier, it was the Back on Track program, not a law.Quote:
I looked up the california diversion laws and the only two I could find were proposition 36 (2000) and Penal code: Pt2: Title 6: chapter 2.5: 1000-1000.65, amended Jan 1st 2018, neither appear to make any mention of her supporting either.
Could you clarify what law you refer to and how it could be considered to be of Harris making?
Well according to one of the public defenders who opposed her in court, she would routinely reduce marijuana sales cases down to misdemeanors and just not charge possession cases at all. (the whole article is a good read)Quote:
What agency do you refer to and from where did you get this table?
Posession of less than an ounce was demoted to a misdemeanor in Senate Bill No. 1449, Sep 30th 2010, came right before her tenure and coincides with a major arrest dip but I find no involvement of Harris in its favour.
How do you determine the cause being her discretion and not any other factor?
The role of a DA and AG is executorial, meaning they manage the office that prosecutes on behalf of the state/district law. They do not create laws It is their job to do this regardless of their personal feelings on the law. This is similar to how public defenders must enforce all citizens rights to fair representation regardless of what evil what those people might have committed.Quote:
Far as I can tell her opinion was a closely guarded secret; making no comment during two sentancing reform referenda and her only action appears to be when she represented the governer fighting against reform in 2011
As for the rest of your post, I mentioned earlier that no AG record is perfect. Mistakes and bad calls happen. Harris ran for senate because she saw the problems with law enforcement and the criminal justice system in this country, and she wanted to change them. As prosecutor it wasn't within her power to fully challenge the system and change the rules, but as a senator it was, and it will be as VP. There's a reason she ran on legalizing weed, there's a reason she's running on a ticket with decriminalization, there's a reason she ran on criminal justice reform, there's a reason she ran on ethics in government, and it's because she saw the problems with the system and wants to fix them. Having a lack of diversity in the criminal justice system is how we got to where we are in the first place. A diverse criminal justice system isnt an automatic fix, but we need more people in it from different backgrounds who have a better understanding of the fixes that need to be in place to right the wrongs dealt to their communities. I know you are just concern trolling, but I feel confident that the majority of voters are fine with her, and the data supports this.
Anyways, the racist birther attacks against her have already started. Not as bad as in 2008 so I'd call this diet birtherism.
My point was that the Right's interests whilst often being mutually exclusive do not often actually get in each other's way where as often the Left's ideas are mutually contradictory. Hence one can appear more unified than the other.Quote:
Originally Posted by CrossLOPER
~:smoking:
As a Boomer, I had to have the latter term explained to me by my son. He suggested it is (started as?) some kind of alt-right code language. I will assume you meant it, given the Matrix reference, in the context of me finally having "seen the light" in my vehemence in opposing the current President of the USA. I will note, however, that I am in no way, shape, or form a proponent of the alt-right agenda. They are anathema to a conservative such as myself.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
As you are no doubt aware, the underpinnings of my disdain for the current occupant of 1600 PA Ave are quite different than your own, though we have come to share a short term political objective for reasons of our own -- some similar, others I suspect not so.
I realize I didn't include a link to the Nevada Trump campaign lawsuit I discussed above.
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/...4953.1.0_1.pdf
There have been more developments on the postal front:
Trump openly admits that he wants to hinder the postal service from functioning as a component of the electoral system.
https://factba.se/transcript/donald-...august-13-2020
But how are they operationalizing sabotage? Well, this is certainly ominous.Quote:
Well they’re right, and it’s their fault. They want $3.5 billion for something that will turn out to be fraudulent, that’s election money basically. They want 3.5 trillion -- billion dollars for the mail-in votes, OK, universal mail-in ballots, 3.5 trillion. They want $25 billion, billion, for the Post Office. Now they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots. Now, in the meantime, they aren’t getting there. By the way, those are just two items. But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.
https://www.axios.com/usps-pennsylva...bc83461d6.html
Add it to the list of the greatest impeachable offenses in American history. To be clear, this is subverting a national government institution, one of the most respected and non-partisan there is, providing one of the most vital services, in a naked attempt to fix the election. It's really hard to top this in the authoritarian playbook. Maybe - purging the military of the disloyal and secretly inducing the remaining leadership - financially or otherwise - to support a palace coup? The US can probably be categorized as a hybrid state at this point. Do Republicans want a Maidan? This is how you get a Maidan.Quote:
The U.S. Postal Service told Pennsylvania officials in a July letter that "there is a significant risk" that mail-in ballots may not be delivered on time for the November election because the state’s election deadlines are "incongruous with the Postal Service's delivery standards," according to a Thursday court filing.
Why it matters: The letter comes as President Trump has repeatedly attacked mail-in voting and vowed that he will block demands to fund mail-in voting and the USPS, claiming without evidence that the ballots produce widespread voter fraud.
The big picture: Pennsylvania's Department of State submitted the filing containing the letter to the state Supreme Court, asking it to order that mail-in ballots will remain countable as long as election officials receive them up to three days after the election, the Philadelphia Inquirer first reported.
The results of the presidential race in Pennsylvania, a battleground state, may not be known for days after Nov. 3 if the court agrees to issue the order.
What they're saying: Thomas Marshall, general counsel and executive vice president for the Postal Service, sent the letter to Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar on July 29.
In it, Marshall writes that "under our reading of Pennsylvania's election laws, certain deadlines for requesting and casting mail-in ballots are incongruous with the Postal Service's delivery standards."
"This mismatch creates a risk that ballots requested near the deadline under state law will not be returned by mail in time to be counted under your laws as we understand them."
The other side: Pennsylvania's Department of State told the court that Marshall's letter represented “a significant change to the outlook for voting by mail in the general election.”
"[T]he Postal Service had not indicated the likelihood of widespread, continuing, multiple-day mail-delivery delays presenting an overwhelming, statewide risk of disenfranchisement for significant numbers of voters utilizi
Meanwhile, the GAO has confirmed what has long been known, that for the past year Trump has illegally filled vacant leadership positions in the Department of Homeland Security (which is the parent organization of ICE). Wolf and Cuccinelli have not had their appointments confirmed by Congress, as is required. Trump could easily just have them confirmed, but he never even bothered to put them up before the Senate. It's almost a parallel to all the vacancies he's failed to staff at all (on top of all the vacancies created by firing professionals or driving them out of public service), except actively illegal. Trying to damage the independent civil service is one thing, but trying to circumvent it by centralizing power outside legitimate frameworks is a step beyond.
If you think violation of the Vacancies Reform Act or circumvention of the Senate's constitutional prerogative to advise and consent sound relatively unimportant compared to the other things, you misunderstand fascism. The impunity and the outlawry are the point.
Pursuant to your previous post, don't underestimate how Republican politicians and voters:Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
1. Prioritize social reaction and White grievance.
2. Reject the idea of a common good.
3. Truly have a maximalist belief in their worldview and interpretation of reality.
But regarding the second one, it can get more complicated in that now there are some trad-cons and alt-righters who - in seeking to turn the clock back onto the 19th or 18th century - are inching toward criticizing the modern financial/capitalist system. I say regarding the second one because these types will claim they're looking out for their own version of the communal good (as opposed to the bog standard plutocratists who either ignore or reject the concept in any definition).
If that ideological conflict gains prominence, it would be a much bigger contradiction than anything that comes with existing in a party-coalition comprising moderate socialists down to Euro-style Liberals.
Seamus, I was trying to approbate your commitment to defeating Trump above. I'm sorry to have used opaque language.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
https://www.urbandictionary.com/defi...erm=red%20pill
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Based
I actually happened to look into this a while ago. It's a Matrix reference, obviously. It's supposed to mean taking a close look at the world and its wrongs around you, instead of burying your head in the sand. With incels and the alt-right, it means that all women are gold-digging whores because they don't want to have sex with you, blacks just want to steal your TV, and some other nonsense that takes minimal brainpower to think of. Mostly I remember the stuff about women. It's amazing how much people build their identity around being socially inept.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
Somehow with Republicans I typically manage to apprehend the shape of things to come, but inevitably find myself shocked by the dimensions. For example, I think I was pointing out a few months ago that by all evidence universal mail voting would not disadvantage either party in abstract; yet I didn't consider the effect of engineered partisan polarization over sub-universal mail voting. Some things are just overdetermined I guess.
The following should allow you to draw inferences about what November will look like. (First is Pew, second is Marquette (Wisconsin), third is ABC/WaPo.)
https://i.imgur.com/MNrsxRj.png
https://i.imgur.com/FUbW66n.png
https://i.imgur.com/8FR2A1f.png
https://i.imgur.com/hQocqCy.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/2w2f4vU.jpg
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donal...b6960c06723348
Quote:
President Donald Trump stunned even hardened observers when he admitted on national television Thursday morning that he would not agree to additional U.S. Postal Service funding because it would make mail-in balloting easier.
“Now they need that money in order to make the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” he said. “But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting.”
Later Thursday, Vice reported that the Postal Service is removing machines that sort mail ― including ballots ― from offices without an explanation, further raising alarms that Trump will degrade the post office to hurt mail-in voting.
But starving the Postal Service of funding is just one tool at the president’s disposal to slow or stop the counting of ballots sent by mail. Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are already engaged in litigation to prevent voters from easily casting absentee or mail-in ballots. In Pennsylvania, they are trying to block the implementation of ballot drop boxes ― curbside boxes where voters can drop their absentee ballots to be picked up by election officials. In California, the RNC tried to stop the mailing of ballots to all voters, but failed. And the Trump campaign is also challenging a new Nevada law that would mail ballots to all active voters.
Trump administration figures are also discussing potential executive actions that could curb mail-in balloting in an effort to undermine democratic elections, according to Politico. These include directing the Postal Service not to deliver mailed ballots and ordering state officials to stop counting absentee ballots on Election Day, even though the president doesn’t have legal authority to do either of these things.
The plot is simple: Trump hopes to emerge from Election Day with a slim lead, but with millions of absentee ballots still left to count. Then he will fight tooth and nail to stop those ballots, which he has long painted as “fraudulent,” from ever being counted.
Quote:
This means that Trump could come out ahead on Election Day with millions, or tens of millions, of absentee and provisional ballots still left to count.
Quote:
Trump can’t exactly wave a wand and stop absentee ballots from being counted. He would likely need to file lawsuits in each state that he wanted to challenge, and the suits would need to target some aspect of that state’s election laws that were theoretically being violated. While post-election litigation over ballots is a long-standing bipartisan affair, an effort like this would be unprecedented in scope — essentially a nationwide challenge to mailed or otherwise delayed ballots, seeking to either count or discount certain ballots.
Already, the Trump campaign is trying to preemptively hamper the mail-in balloting process.
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) signed legislation on Aug. 3 that would authorize the mailing of absentee ballots to all active Nevada voters. Trump called the bill’s passage “an illegal late night coup” in a tweet. The next day, Trump’s reelection campaign sued to overturn the new law. The lawsuit argued that mailing absentee ballots to voters would make fraud “inevitable,” and sought to overturn provisions, like the acceptance of ballots with unclear postmarks received up to three days after Election Day, that existed as Nevada law before the bill was enacted.
The Trump campaign and the RNC are suing every county election office in Pennsylvania to stop them from allowing voters to return absentee ballots to drop boxes. Ballot drop boxes are exactly what they sound like: secure, sealed mailboxes solely to be used by voters dropping off their ballots. Those ballots are then collected by election officials and sorted and counted. Approximately 16% of voters used drop boxes in the 2018 election, mostly in states like Oregon and Utah that conduct their elections solely through the mail. The judge overseeing the case ordered the Trump campaign on Thursday to produce any evidence it has of voter fraud linked to drop boxes. (There is no existing evidence linking drop boxes to fraud.) In California, the RNC withdrew its lawsuit challenging Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s May 8 executive order to mail every active voter in the state an absentee ballot after the Legislature passed a bill that did the same thing as Newsom’s order.
Harris record as a AG says more about the American justice system as a whole than it does anything about her individually. It is an unyielding meat grinder. If any of you ever find yourselves arrested the only words out of your mouth should be your name and your lawyers (or a request for one).
I understand why the more leftist, younger crowd is upset. This is not really a dream ticket by any means. I will offer my thoughts as Harris was my orginal pick for nominee. She knows exactly how the system works and can pull the exact right levers to enact lasting change. There is value in that.
I am wary of any concern trolling the Harris pick considering Trump has literal unmarked vans rolling around the pacific northwest. I understand that a candidate has to earn ones vote but sill
This Dem ticket would lose to any number of Conservative or Moderate/conservative tickets. Against this incumbent they have a great chance.
This ticket would have been competitive against Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz. Would have struggled against Marco Rubio or Chris Christie.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
Is it really any surprise? We've already know that the base shifts at the slightest hint that Trump decides a certain idea or policy is no longer in his best interest.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
Were you thinking that this would be the lone case that the hard truth convinces Republicans that mail-in voting has never hurt either political party?
Anything to own the libs man. As soon as Trump says something is bad, Republicans will immediately disavow it and anyone who says otherwise.
The trope that politicians need to "earn" votes is a narcissistic one. Politicians are tools toward our political objectives, which it is our civic duty to rationally contemplate and contextualize. This isn't like finding a restaurant on Yelp.
On the Biden platform for the first weeks of his term, if anyone cares to know. Aspirationally Reaganite in a good way. The bigger the Congressional majorities, the more that gets done. Vive la disjonction.
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/pol...cession-harris
Seamus' feeling is difficult to assess, but this is straight unsubstantiated. Yet, the 2016 primary process demonstrated that the once-rising stars Cruz and Rubio just aren't well-received by the Republican base. That's the data we do have.Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
Republicans would never nominate Jeb Bush or Chris Christie to anything.
Not surprising, but shocking.Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
To develop what we discussed privately, by the morning of November 4th almost no states will have counted their absentee ballots (most will not even have begun), therefore most states will remain uncalled, countless millions of ballots will remain outstanding, based on in-person returns alone Trump will appear to lead Biden by Lukashenko margins, and he will declare victory on the spot and litigate everything up to the Supreme Court to prevent counting of mail ballots.
If Roberts calls the election for Trump and/or the rest of the Republican slate, we launch the national liberation front and watch the Joint Chiefs's response.
Seamus's scenario could only take place in an alternate reality where Trump didn't win. When does anyone see the GOP returning back to the middle against Trumpism?Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
IF Trump wasn't in the race, Jeb had a chance. Christie not so much. I think Rubio would have overtaken the pack if it wasn't for the whole Christie dismantling him moment.Quote:
Republicans would never nominate Jeb Bush or Chris Christie to anything.
If SCOTUS rules another election, this country falls apart into chaotic violence. There is no national organization to mobilize the public unless the Democratic Party quickly takes on a leadership role as the democratic resistance to the political coup.Quote:
Not surprising, but shocking.
To develop what we discussed privately, by the morning of November 4th almost no states will have counted their absentee ballots (most will not even have begun), therefore most states will remain uncalled, countless millions of ballots will remain outstanding, based on in-person returns alone Trump will appear to lead Biden by Lukashenko margins, and he will declare victory on the spot and litigate everything up to the Supreme Court to prevent counting of mail ballots.
If Roberts calls the election for Trump and/or the rest of the Republican slate, we launch the national liberation front and watch the Joint Chiefs's response.
Per our previous convo, only a national strike would work to facilitate change in the absence of democratic channels in politics.
Exactly this. I think the Never Trumper's fantasy of "reclaiming the party" from the trumpists is just that, a fantasy. I dont know how anyone who can look at the cult of personality around Trump and still think that these people are going to go back to your garden-variety republican. My prediction is that every GOP presidential candidate for the foreseeable future is going to be a flavor of Trump and potentially more dangerous. We got lucky that Trump is a total moron, but we might not get that lucky again.Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
I think ACIN is on track as to how the tickets he noted would fare in a general election against this Dem ticket. I was noting that this Dem ticket was pretty "stock" in many ways.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
As 2016 demonstrated, and as you rightly assert, however, the GOP of 2016 through the present would not nominate such a ticket as none of those named are they kinds of leaders who want victory without negotiation and aggression across the board against anything labeled as "liberal." Inculcated by Limbaugh and Hannity with the mantra that compromise means the liberals won, this GOP base sees any form of negotiation over substance as anathema.
We will get a smarter Trump, but even a smarter Trump will be 'less bad' in a practical way. Much of the damage Trump has caused has come at his own incompetence and inability to achieve his goals in a productive manner.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
A smart fascist would have seen the pandemic for the PR opportunity it was and jumped on it. Democracy would have been for the worse, but we wouldn't have 170,000 dead at this point.
I guess thats one way to look at it, if you aren't a POC or immigrant of course.Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
If anyone had any doubts about the direction of Trump's GOP, infamous alt-right troll Laura Loomer won the GOP nomination for Florida's 21st district election. Of course, Trump tweeted his support for her. Thankfully its a very safe Dem seat so she wont be coming to Congress anytime soon. Same can't be said though of Qanon conspiracist Marjorie Taylor Greene who is unfortunately very likely be elected as she is in a very republican district (dammit Georgia). Assuming that the House stays in Dem control, Im not really sure how someone like Greene can be contained from further spreading her bat:daisy: views but in a more official capacity especially as GOP leadership has shown zero willingness to stifle such nuttery. I just have no hope anymore for a GOP thats even slightly resembling a passably sane party. With Trump refusing to criticize Qanon and going after Goodyear Tire today and no Republican speaking against it, theres nothing left of what the party was even four years ago.
POC's are the worst hit by this pandemic.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
Problem with having someone this fucking dumb is that burning everything down due to sheer ignorance also hurts POC and immigrants just as much as a Ted Cruz in office.
Ben Sasse is a term used for cats.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...tion-forecast/
Leaving this here.
I dont disagree, just pointing out that for vulnerable groups, the difference between Cruz and Trump is like being shot or set on fire. Both do harm even though arguably one might hurt less. Though this point is now moot as Cruz is among the worst of the Trump toadies.Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
He did speak out against Trump's comments today but considering he's helped enabled Trump for most of the past 3.5 years I dont buy it.Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
Bannon being nicked by the post office - really put me in a good mood. This is hopefully the start of the collapse of the trumpian world.
It certainly was a great way to start the day, but I am super skeptical that anything will come of it as I think Trump will end up giving out more pardons before too long.
Right-wing leaders have not had a good record on pandemic response this year. The classic fascists themselves actually ran their countries awfully - they were incompetent administrators. I think a fascist who has what it takes to gain and hold control of a nation cannot achieve technocratic success by the nature of the attributes that delivered him to power. One factor is that authoritarianism in itself is incompatible with the observance or iteration of scientific or evidence-based policymaking.Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
Trump is a particularly harsh case because he is both a narcissist and a lackwit, but you see the same sorts of impulses in less psychologically-deviant rulers.
The alt right puppet masters are experts at peddling dreams. They understand the system. Then when they're elected, they run all sorts under the umbrella of democracy. Unfortunately, democracy doesn't solve everything. For instance, when reality has to be faced, no amount of appealing to a democratic mandate will change reality.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
However, you lot have at least woken up and look set to turf out your set of alt righters. Over on our side of the water, our alt righters are still going strong.
On net hardly anyone's woken up in this sense, though in the sense of the Great Awokening many people who were already liberals... many Republicans have admittedly been swayed to a degree by the tide of social liberalism, but that doesn't seem to affect their preferences in Republican politicians.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pannonian
George W. Bush's approval rating moved in a range from ~90% to ~25% (65). Obama's range was within ~60% to ~40% (20). Trump's range has been within 46% to 36% (10). Trump has basically never been below 40% since the Republicans passed their tax bill at the end of 2017. His current approval rating is about where he was a year ago - despite, you know, everything.
It is possible that Trump as a personality commands uniquely stronger loyalty from the Republican base than a generic Republican would even now, but that's not testable for a long time, and the fact remains that around 40% of the electorate are unshakable partisans of a death cult, and these people will still exist come January. There is no reason to think they won't continue to degenerate, indeed, along the same monotonic trend of many years.
If anyone hasn't watched Biden's acceptance speech from tonight, I'd highly recommend people watch it. Its really superb. Even Republicans are saying its a great speech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSpHLq2STvY
As far as I know, this was Biden's best ever.
Firstly, I just wanted to say that the level of the discussion here is probably one of the highest in the Internet sphere. The difference in quality becomes even starker, when compared to the usual alt-right troll fests that some of the forums (including TWC's mudpit) have devolved into.
Secondly, just my personal thoughts on the possible implications of mail voting, time delays, legal challenges, polarisation and the rest. I don't think that the republican institutions are at any risk, despite the recent decline of the political discourse, social cohesion and income equality. They are rooted deeply enough to easily resist the relatively minor crisis the pandemic, the unbalanced recovery since 2008 and Donald represent.
In my opinion, what Trump and his staff are trying to achieve is the construction of a post-election narrative that will keep safe the myth of his invincibility. We didn't lose the approval of the absolute majority, no, we were defeated, because the establishment, media, Chinese and the rest conspired against us. He had tried something similar in 2016, although in the end Hillary managed to get stomped by one of the most unpopular candidates in history, which rendered Trump's strategy redundant.
Thirdly, the paranoid part: If he loses the 2020 elections, provided he establishes a convincing stab-at-the-back myth, he could use it to nominate himself successfully in 2024. After all, given the solidity of his base, his presidential past and his vulgar rhetoric, he can easily dominate the Republican primaries. So, focusing on 2020 but aiming at 2024?
I'm a bit skeptical that Trump would try to run again if he loses in November. I just dont see what he would gain from putting himself out there again when he can run his own news channel and be able to rant all day every day. Probably super lucrative too. I could definitely imagine that he could become the new "party boss" that anoints the next GOP nominee by the virtue of endorsing candidates. Assuming he loses in November and doesnt run in 2024 (and is still alive), there is no way that the nominee becomes the nominee without the approval of Trump himself.
I'm betting he'll have to do that from jail.Quote:
when he can run his own news channel and be able to rant all day every day. Probably super lucrative too. I could definitely imagine that he could become the new "party boss" that anoints the next GOP nominee by the virtue of endorsing candidates.
He's done once he is no longer president, too many enemies in New York. This is a total fight for his survival. If he loses, watch him attempt to pardon himself sometime Jan 2021 so that he doesn't have to fight off Biden's DOJ.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crandar
Interesting weigh-ins by legal counsel:Quote:
If he loses, watch him attempt to pardon himself sometime Jan 2021
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/04/here...n-himself.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...imself/578074/
Re: Biden speech, in Eric Levitz' words, "Joe Biden is a normal human who knows what he’s doing. This was the core message of the final night of the Democratic National Convention... [T]he Democratic nominee has now set a standard that his rival can’t possibly meet."
Preface: Much of the functioning and integrity of institutions is psychological and normative. A president spending years attacking their legitimacy and taking steps to degrade their administration and operation is always injurious to these aspects, even if their total usurpation or subversion has not yet been achieved. It makes it harder for individuals who actually constitute these institutions as organizations to have a sense of 'doing the right thing' and following the rules, especially if they are punished for doing so. Our institutions are almost certainly more resilient and better-developed than those in Belarus or Mali, for example, but the damage sustained is already deep and durable. Much of Biden's task will be trying to start cleaning up Trump's mess within the government, re-recruiting/replacing thousands purged or driven away by Trump, purging hundreds emplaced by Trump, and trying to restore a measure of accountability and legitimacy to the civil service. If Trump remains in power, then the institutions we have already observed not to be exceptionalistic or invincible will continue to be corroded in both measurable and intangible ways. As Bernie Sanders said in his DNC address this week, "the price of failure is too high to imagine."Quote:
Originally Posted by Crandar
Prologue: Almost all states do not begin counting mail ballots until at least the day after election day, in general not for days after, and they take longer to complete. Mail ballots are therefore not reflected in the ongoing vote counts we have always been familiar with. Usually this is not a problem because mail ballots have not typically been decisive to the outcome of elections at any level (see the 2019 New York District Attorney race for an election that hinged on mail ballots). The 2020 election promises to be one in which the number of mail ballots submitted is at least an order of magnitude higher than ever before due to the expansion of eligibility and the incentives of a human environment conditioned by high disease risk. It will not be possible to certify results for many states accurately without having these counted, which could take weeks (see the debacle of the New York 2020 Democratic primary, which occurred June 23 but was not certified until August). The President has relentlessly eroded public confidence in the legitimacy of the election in general, and in the particulars of the mail voting method (though he insists on a distinction between the bad fraudulent mail voting and the good absentee voting, by mail, that has sometimes been favored by Republican voters.) Polling is strongly suggestive as to a bifurcation in expected voting behavior (see my earlier post):
The majority of Democrats will vote by mail and the majority of Republicans will vote in-person.* There is a significant chance that the vote count opens with a Lukashenko-sized lead for Trump over Biden that will diminish and eventually flip in a stepwise manner under normal circumstances.
So. Trump is by his own admission, and with years of his own priming, attempting to potentiate rejection of an outcome where he loses, that much is indisputable and well-known among political observers. There is a certain sense in which your intuition about our institutions's resilience is narrowly correct, or presumably so. We can identify the relevant institutions here to start:
Electoral - tabulating, assembling, counting, votes. These systems are unique for all the states and is subject to minimal/nonexistent central control and oversight. Because there are so many battleground states, many of which have put their electoral infrastructure under the control of Democrats, it's still a somewhat sound assumption that the process will not be outright subverted in any of the battleground states (although in the midterms Republicans in one House district in North Carolina, currently a battleground state, were formally found to have engaged in the electoral fraud of misappropriating mail ballots; the election was court-ordered to be redone!). NOTE: Due to hundreds of billions in 2020 budget shortfalls, states and counties will have a harder time ensuring the timely administration of electoral functions even absent criminal interference. Aid to states and municipalities is one of the impasses preventing the implementation of a new pandemic relief program; Republicans don't want it.
Postal - facilitates movement of mail applications and mail ballots between voters and election officials. Due to billions in budgetary shortfalls and statutory liabilities, the postal service is already having a hard time carrying out its normal operations even absent criminal interference, 2 months before the election. Funding for the post office is one of the impasses preventing the implementation of a new pandemic relief program; Republicans don't want it. But there is interference on top of this, as the Trump-loyalist administration of the postal service has been limiting its operations in a way that is apt to produce delays, especially in such a high-volume situation as the presidential election. Delays in the timely delivery of mail ballots to election officials will result in the invalidation of many, perhaps millions, of ballots. AFAIK none of the battleground states accept the delivery of ballots past election day, even if the ballots are postmarked.
Supreme Court - mediates legal and constitutional disputes predicated on harm. On November 4th, the day after the election, if Trump maintains large but inconclusive majorities in many states, and the counting of mail ballots threatens this status, then by all presentation he would be prepared to sue for their counting to be declared improper or fraudulent, or at least delayed fatally. There could be a Supreme Court case as to whether real or imagined irregularities should prompt states to halt or discard their counts. And if that means a critical number of states are certified for Trump, well...
So the crux of the election comes down to this: will the Republican-controlled Supreme Court seize an opportunity to extra-legally hand deliver the presidency to Donald Trump? There is precedent for this in the notorious case of the 2000 election, where the Republican-controlled Supreme Court halted vote tallying in Florida and gave Bush the state, tipping him into victory. That decision was explicitly rendered as somehow being non-precedential (which didn't stop the Trump admin from citing it in their case against Nevada voting laws this month, see my earlier post), but the very fact that it happened at all and the polity accepted it as valid means the only question of whether or not it could happen again is one of power.
The current Supreme Court is stocked with 5 reactionaries, all of whom have a record of being hostile to voting rights and friendly to Republican interests. Chief Justice John Roberts is the more moderate of the group, making him the likeliest candidate for swing vote toward the 4 liberal justices. Roberts' jurisprudence is marked by, besides hostility to voting rights and market regulation, a concern for the legitimacy of the SCOTUS in public image (see his negotiation with liberal justices in 2013 over which provisions of Obamacare to spare and which to declare unconstitutional), and a tendency to be more considerate of long-term consequences and peripheral matters than his copartisans (see his spate of centrist major decisions this summer, joining the liberals in the midst of unprecedented national protests). He has been known to reject at least some Trump administration arguments that are nakedly pretextual power grabs, such as when Trump illegally attempted to impose a citizenship question onto the census last year for the purpose of driving immigrants into hiding and reducing the formal representation of the Democratic states in national government.
If Donald Trump comes to the Supreme Court demanding that they stay or order halted counting in key states - say, with the effect of freezing counts such that Trump is ahead of Biden - would he have 5 votes for his argument? Based on what is relayed above on John Roberts' mentality and record, I do not believe he will side with Trump. If he does not side with Trump, the counts will go on, with the overwhelming eventual likelihood of a Biden majority or plurality in enough states to award him with an Electoral College majority - and thus the presidency. For Roberts to do otherwise would genuinely push the country to the brink of civil rupture, as Republicans would have no choice but to ride full steam ahead on the fascism train, Joe Biden would reject the decision and absolutely refuse to concede, tens of millions would flood the streets of American cities, the paramilitaries would be emboldened in response, and this country would look a lot like Lebanon, Belarus, Mali have this summer. Whereas if Roberts declines to rescue Trump (in the short-term), a contentious election would galvanize the Republican electorate, demoralize Democrats and centrists, and hopefully (from Republicans' perspective) sufficiently weaken or cripple the Biden government/Congress to the point where they cannot govern effectively, with the result that a neutered Democratic government would be rejected by feckless voters in 2022 and 2024 without Trump as a locus of popular rage.
It all comes down to the character of John Roberts, and I think we know enough about him to come to a prospective conclusion.
So my perspective ultimately aligns with yours, or runs into the same direction, but I think it's clear that there will be a lot of institutional and social damage along the way. There will be physical violence here and there. The chaos will be protracted over weeks at least. There is even a possibility that the election will be thrown to the House, who are empowered constitutionally to select the President if the Electoral College cannot produce one; this might occur if counts are so protracted that the deadline for convening the Electoral College (in late November) is passed and no one has been assigned a majority of EC votes. This election is set to be the most institutionally and constitutionally challenging in our entire history, even if hypothetically crazier shit has happened at other times in other countries. Moreover, millions of ballots lost or invalidated through shenanigans and delays could have consequences in down-ballot races, reducing the size of Biden's ultimate working majorities in Congress, even if he himself skirts by. If Biden doesn't have strong working majorities, he will deliver no results on his progressive manifesto or even on basic pandemic relief (overly-conservative economic stimulus in 2009 is one of the things that, among other effects, damaged Democrats electorally all through 2016). If Biden cannot govern in 2021, the Republicans will have their revenge in 2022 and 2024, this time even more unified against liberal democracy and multiculturalism, and even more rabidly unhinged in their epistemology.
But yes, unless the entire Republican Party decides to unify around Trump as the front of a coup against the Republic, he will ultimately leave office in January 2021.
*I expect whatever cohort of late-deciding voters there are to swing heavily Democratic, and to the extent these are voting by mail, their ballots are at a very elevated risk of being discarded consequent to aforementioned issues of timing and delivery.
We've touched upon this in the thread as a potentially-overdetermined consequence of this cycle and his character, but if Trump is planning for it he's been doing a very bad job in developing a political base of patronage among the constantly-rotating pool of lackeys in the White House he always betrays, or a convincing link between himself and the Republican elites he can never seem to coordinate well with (e.g. almost all productive negotiations on pandemic response since March have been between Congressional Democrats and the White House, bypassing McConnell's Senate majority). It's unclear what he can count on from any allies in the context of a private citizen being hunted by state and federal justice after his term. Now, just because he's bad at something doesn't have to mean he isn't planning it, but it's hard to imagine because Trump never seems to plan anything ahead of time. The simplest explanation is that he reacts impulsively to assuage the blows to his ego (e.g. tweeting in all-caps about Biden and Obama during Obama's DNC speech condemning Trump) and since he's a narcissist he will always have the inclination to devalue anything that doesn't further his own self-importance or personalistic authority. "Planning" also implies he's either been planning to destroy his chances of winning this election, or his behavior now is somehow rational but it wasn't in the past, he having acquired some peculiar rationality only in the past months. He really kind of just does the same shit all the time and pushes it further when he sees his base likes it; it's a conditioning loop. The strongest argument against a Trump in cognitive decline, really, is that Trump in 2020 is the same as Trump 2016, just intensified to be more egregious, entitled, and paranoid.Quote:
Thirdly, the paranoid part: If he loses the 2020 elections, provided he establishes a convincing stab-at-the-back myth, he could use it to nominate himself successfully in 2024. After all, given the solidity of his base, his presidential past and his vulgar rhetoric, he can easily dominate the Republican primaries. So, focusing on 2020 but aiming at 2024?
It will certainly be interesting, however, to see how the reception of Trump the man evolves among the Republican base, and to what extent his supporters may have only rallied around him while he has been the formal standard bearer of their movement and in an actual position to deliver them the psychological wages they demand. Trump is a whiny loser, but it's a lot easier to see him that way even if you like him if he's been pushed out of office by "Sleepy Joe."
I agree with your post completely. The delay for counting mail-in ballots is part of the reason why I think Trump has a good chance of winning re-election. Wouldnt matter who was the Dem candidate- Biden, Bernie, Kamala, Yang, whoever. All would have this same fundamental issue. If he does win due to stopping counting ballots, there will be violence like we have never seen. I just cant see it ending in any other way. With early voting beginning in just a couple weeks or so in some places, the Biden campaign absolutely needs to start emphasizing to go out and vote in person early. And I dont mean putting out little ads on Instagram or Facebook posts, I mean concentrated tv and radio ads plastering the airwaves in all 50 states, or at least the battleground states. Or, and this is harsh, we just have to take the risk and encourage people to stand in the voting lines on election day. Take that risk for the sake of our democracy.
Edit: Boris Shcherbina's speech to the Chernobyl workers in the HBO miniseries is surprisingly relevant.
Except instead of going into that water, its standing in line to vote for potentially hours during a pandemic.Quote:
You'll do it because it must be done. You'll do it because nobody else can. And if you don't, millions will die. If you tell me that's not enough, I won't believe you. This is what has always set our people apart. A thousand years of sacrifice in our veins. And every generation must know its own suffering. I spit on the people who did this, and I curse the price I have to pay. But I'm making my peace with it, now you make yours. And go into that water. Because it must be done.
I think the Wisconsin spring elections show that people are willing to do just that...:shrug:Quote:
Or, and this is harsh, we just have to take the risk and encourage people to stand in the voting lines on election day. Take that risk for the sake of our democracy.
This election's results will be finalized in court just before the college meets.
In February one would have had to be a freaking visionary to see this whole scenario playing out like it has. Even on Super Tuesday I still had some latent expectation that we would kind of, you know, handle the pandemic. And without a raging pandemic, mail voting isn't a flashpoint or major factor.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
The Obamas and IIRC other DNC speakers did mention voting early.
An addendum to my post on the election and mail voting: I can't believe I overlooked this earlier, but due to the strict and complicated rules of the process, mail ballots are frequently invalidated even in the best of times (unrelated to delivery time)! Granted that nullifying a million votes in New York and California wouldn't affect the presidential race (it could matter a lot in House or local races upstate!), but for the swing states the baseline attrition rate alone on mail ballots would be of major concern even if electoral administration were on the level and the postal service were up to the task.
That alone is bad, but of course it gets worse. A massive partisan imbalance in mail voting just when mail voting becomes a major, if not majority, component of a national election, is an unmitigated disaster-in-waiting regardless of the circumstances surrounding it. But the circumstances make this the most important election of our lives (so far)! Promoting the absentee alternative seemed to make sense in the spring, but logistics and bureaucratic hurdles AND partisan imbalance make it a fool's errand. This is where the hard-left critiques of the Democratic establishment's constitutional mildness and understatement may prove meritorious, if Dem leaders don't go apeshit on this point right about now. Like this sort of thing, but much more:
https://i.imgur.com/TcuUPdo.jpg
I'm not going to bother with mail voting again until we transition to proper all-mail elections like some of the Western states. My polling place is a damn 15-minute walk from my home. Why go to *extra* trouble and delay just to have the opportunity of doing something wrong or the administrators doing something wrong and having your vote rubbished (like mine probably was in July)? Having time to review and research the ballot is nice, but you can usually get the full slate for your locality ahead of time on various resource websites. If a normal person needs a nerd reviewing their ballot and envelope to guarantee they're up to standard, just vote in-person. If you do vote by mail, you can do so early and you can torture your county officials into looking up whether your ballot was received, but they can't divine beforehand if your ballot has any defects that will lead to its nullification.
And I also forgot to mention that the baseline of voter suppression in states under Republicans, that old standby, is going to be elevated as well. Voter rolls, polling locations... forget about access or early voting for AAs in North Carolina or Georgia.
We're facing a lot of problems.
According to CNN, "Over four days, roughly 122 million people watched the [Democratic National] convention – including 85.1 million on television and 35.5 million livestream views." That's more than I expected. But it doesn't matter. Over the past year my greatest misfire of political analysis was in watching the Democratic primaries. I overlooked the fundamentals of the electorate as apparent from the outset, and focused too much on the weft and slew of the process over time. Biden beat Sanders because his floor of support was similarly high but his ceiling was higher, and the number of people who preferred Sanders was always less than the number of people who preferred someone other than Sanders. Knock together any sort of optimality model with these facts, and to the extent they don't change significantly - they didn't - then the model would announce a Biden victory over all other competitors was always the most plausible outcome from April 2019. Personalistic speculation has to justify itself against fundamentals. (Though on that count, many on the left overlooked that while Biden isn't a good leader, he's a good politician.)Quote:
The Republican Embrace of QAnon Goes Far Beyond Trump
Late last month, as the Texas Republican Party was shifting into campaign mode, it unveiled a new slogan, lifting a rallying cry straight from a once-unthinkable source: the internet-driven conspiracy theory known as QAnon. The new catchphrase, “We Are the Storm,” is an unsubtle cue to a group that the F.B.I. has labeled a potential domestic terrorist threat. It is instantly recognizable among QAnon adherents, signaling what they claim is a coming conflagration between President Trump and what they allege, falsely, is a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile Democrats who seek to dominate America and the world. The slogan can be found all over social media posts by QAnon followers, and now, too, in emails from the Texas Republican Party and on the T-shirts, hats and sweatshirts that it sells. It has even worked its way into the party’s text message system — a recent email from the party urged readers to “Text STORM2020” for updates. The Texas Republicans are an unusually visible example of the Republican Party’s dalliance with QAnon, but they are hardly unique. A small but growing number of Republicans — including a heavily favored Republican congressional candidate in Georgia — are donning the QAnon mantle, ushering its adherents in from the troll-infested fringes of the internet and potentially transforming the wild conspiracy theory into an offline political movement, with supporters running for Congress and flexing their political muscle at the state and local levels.
[...]
Fearful of inviting similar blowback, few other elected Republicans have been willing to speak out publicly. Mostly, they avoid questions about it, demonstrating the thin line some officials are trying to walk between extreme elements among their base who adore Mr. Trump and the moderate voters they need to win over.
By the same tokens, Trump almost always loses on paper because the fundamentals are stacked against him; more people are always against him than are for him, and he's only ever bled support on net. But in this race the process takes on a hardly-imaginable importance. That it would come to matter so much is... I'm just slow to put pieces together, though I'm far from alone. I didn't think the confluence of terribles could get this bad!
Levitz' line on Biden speech. LOL
Yes. The GOP that Trump has enacted over the past 4 or so years, following the long efforts of Limbaugh and Hannity in shaping the mindscape of the non-"country club" republicans, is a party that considers conspiracy theories as something that need to be seriously considered and according them the same mental "weight" as hard-won intelligence and confirmed facts.
Just one of the reasons that the house-cleaning needs to be so thorough (though I fear it will not be thorough enough).
Ehhh, you folks might want to redo this a bit:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/u...-platform.html
Quote:
“The survival of the internet as we know it is at risk,” the platform reads. “Its gravest peril originates in the White House, the current occupant of which has launched a campaign, both at home and internationally, to subjugate it to agents of government.”
:bounce:Quote:
“The Middle East is more dangerous now than at any time since the Second World War,” the platform reads. “Whatever their disagreements, presidents of both parties had always prioritized America’s national interests, the trust of friendly governments, and the security of Israel. That sound consensus was replaced with impotent grandstanding on the part of the current President and his Secretaries of State. The results have been ruinous for all parties except Islamic terrorists and their Iranian and other sponsors.”
I'd already heard two months ago that the RNC would formally adopt no (new) platform, other than the greatness of Trump I guess.
Cool new idiom I learned: "The game is not worth the candle."
Still trying to figure out if it was done out of laziness, an actual sworn fealty to Trump, or perhaps just waiting to see where the wind blows to leave open the potential of starting from scratch in 2024. I'm guessing a mix of all three.
An interesting take on the real GOP platform:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...ianism/615640/
Quote:
The challenge for Republicans in the week ahead is to hope that President Trump can remember, night after night, to speak only the things he’s supposed to speak—not to blurt the things his party wants its supporters to absorb unspoken.
Well the RNC is going roughly as well as expected.
https://imgur.com/SuekLPahttps://imgur.com/mtTZy75.jpgQuote:
A speaker for the Republican National Convention retweeted an anti-Semitic screed on Tuesday morning, the same day she was slated to take the stage to praise President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies.
A person familiar with the matter confirmed to POLITICO on Tuesday evening that the speaker, Mary Ann Mendoza, was no longer appearing at the RNC.
An article which goes into some of what Monty mentioned earlier, and how mass voting by mail is a trap.
If the Biden camp keeps publicly pushing for voting by mail by those who do not absolutely need it, then I think theres a good chance Trump gets a second term, Id say in the 75% range. Especially since the latest round of riots have given Trump more ammunition and may push the needle towards him in a really key state.Quote:
For a moment, imagine a swing state where 42 percent of ballots are cast by mail and Biden carries them 80 percent to 20 percent, while Trump carries all other ballots 70 percent to 30 percent. If every ballot were to count, Biden would win the state 51 percent to 49 percent. But if 8 percent of absentees were ruled invalid for various reasons - and the invalidated votes were reflective of the overall absentee pool — Trump would prevail by two hundredths of 1 percent.
This scenario explains why both sides are pouring tens of millions of dollars into litigating states' mail-in ballot rules and procedures this year.
Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias, who represented Franken in the 2008 Minnesota recount, is quarterbacking Democrats' efforts to prevent mail-in votes from being rejected. Elias is actively engaged in lawsuits in 18 states on everything from witness requirements and signature matching protocol to drop-off boxes and postmark/return deadlines — all of which differ by state.
"The rejection rates we've seen in the primaries have almost uniformly been above historic ranges," Elias said, pointing to Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as particular litigation hot spots. "I take Republicans at face value, that they don't want people to vote by mail."
Quote:
In Kenosha County, where the president won by fewer than 250 votes in 2016, those who already supported Mr. Trump said in interviews that the events of the past few days have simply reinforced their conviction that he is the man for the job. But some voters who were less sure of their choice said the chaos in their city and the inability of elected leaders to stop it were currently nudging them toward the Republicans.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai
https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...vention-400039Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
How many times do we need them to tell us who they are? This isn't new information.Quote:
“Owning the libs and pissing off the media,” shrugs Brendan Buck, a longtime senior congressional aide and imperturbable party veteran if ever there was one. “That’s what we believe in now. There’s really not much more to it.”
War against Humanity.Quote:
With Election Day just a few months away, I was genuinely surprised, in the course of recent conversations with a great many Republicans, at their inability to articulate a purpose, a designation, a raison d'être for their party.
If the cited recent study finding four percent total attrition of mail ballots in the 2016 election is correct, that's significantly higher than the 1% (for 2016) commonly referenced. Volume, first-time mail voters, and any postal service delays could easily be expected to push that up considerably. Interactions with individual state baselines are unpredictable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
Conservatively assuming a partisan imbalance of only 33% of Republicans voting by mail against 50% of Democrats, and granting an elevated and uniform attrition rate for in-person ballots (say 1%), then even a 5% uniform attrition rate for mail ballots knocks about 0.6% off the Democrat's vote share in a given two-way race. A more extreme partisan imbalance in mail modality of 25(R)-75(D), with a staggering 10% attrition rate, would ceteris paribus reduce the Democrat's vote share by 4.5%. In terms of the winning margin in a two-way contest, then in the former case a 50-50 race would go 50.15:49.84, and in the latter case a 50-50 race would go 51.2-48.9.
Taking those sets of parameters on partisan split in voting modality and attrition rate of the modalities as upper and lower bounds, we would expect Democrats to see a penalty of between 0.3 and 2.4 points relative to Republicans in a typical race (not taking other variables into account, such as voter suppression). Anyone can naturally recognize that a worst-case penalty of more than 2 points from the final margin* for Democrats could be fatal in a close race. In 2018, for example, 21 of 435 House races had a margin of victory within 2.3%, 14 of which changed parties, 13 of which were Democratic flips. The Democratic capture of the Arizona Senate seat in 2018 was by a 2.34% margin. The Republican victories in Florida's Senate and gubernatorial races were within a 0.5% margin. And of course, there were 6 states within 1.5% margins in 2016, though 4 were won by Trump.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
One practical consequence is that you can kiss Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio goodbye as EC contenders this cycle. Arizona and Florida might still be in play (both due to size of margins and better historical experience with mail voting), but shoring up the heavy Biden leads in the basic frontline states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania (all currently under Democratic leadership) should be the priority.
It's not the end of the world if even 10 gettable/Dem-lean House seats flip to Republicans on net, but we could easily whiff on a couple of Senate seats, which would dramatically stymie Biden's entrance.
I'm still astonished these fellows haven't been criminally charged in 3 years of wacky crime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVodAUh9kL0
Many, many years ago, when life was simple, the only messages people received were from a few major broadcasters, the USA was a beacon that people in other countries looked up to and in many cases were inspired at what humanity could achieve.
Now, the message is somewhat more nuanced. It is a warning as to what can happen in democracies in a short time (1930's Germany is too long ago). It is a reminder that reality and what was shown on the News rarely are the same - the USA was, is and and shows no sign of changing from being a very racist, semi-apartheid state; the American Dream and Values were at best a form of Cold War propaganda. Finally it is a signal lesson that almost unfettered neoliberalism will concentrate all money in the hands of those who can buy off the handlers.
When Biden is the best hope for a brighter tomorrow, we truly realise how dark it has become.
~:smoking:
See what's happening over here with Cummings and his puppets.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
It's supposed to be a stepping stone, not the final answer. The overall problem is the general laziness/apathy of the populace. I know a lot of people, particularly those under the age of 30, that do not vote because "it doesn't matter" or they are "too busy". You need to have a follow up. If you buy tools but don't do anything with them, the job is never going to be finished or started. It takes constant work.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
It was annoying to hear, during the first year of the Trump presidency, to hear journalists complaining about how "demeaning" and difficult it was to deal with the predictable problems associated with Trump being in office.
No one wants to do their job.
Sounds like one of the more useful books by Republican wiseguys, but I can't recommend it as I don't know anything else about its contents. Hopefully it properly educates the public about what the Republican Party is and has been.
It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump by Stuart Stevens
Quote:
Stuart Stevens spent decades electing Republicans at every level, from presidents to senators to local officials. He knows the GOP as intimately as anyone in America, and in this new book he offers a devastating portrait of a party that has lost its moral and political compass.
This is not a book about how Donald J. Trump hijacked the Republican Party and changed it into something else. Stevens shows how Trump is in fact the natural outcome of five decades of hypocrisy and self-delusion, dating all the way back to the civil rights legislation of the early 1960s. Stevens shows how racism has always lurked in the modern GOP's DNA, from Goldwater's opposition to desegregation to Ronald Reagan's welfare queens and states' rights rhetoric. He gives an insider's account of the rank hypocrisy of the party's claims to embody "family values," and shows how the party's vaunted commitment to fiscal responsibility has been a charade since the 1980s. When a party stands for nothing, he argues, it is only natural that it will be taken over by the loudest and angriest voices in the room.
It Was All a Lie is not just an indictment of the Republican Party, but a candid and often lacerating mea culpa. Stevens is not asking for pity or forgiveness; he is simply telling us what he has seen firsthand. He helped to create the modern party that kneels before a morally bankrupt con man and now he wants nothing more than to see what it has become burned to the ground.
Many years ago, when life was superficially simple, the US was an actual apartheid state. It is today more and more successfully multiethnic than any European country. With the troublesome face of white supremacy set against us, but American whites are more racially liberal than whites almost anywhere else in the world, including the UK. I would say the same about American POC. Biden is not our great hope - the sacred, enduring fury of the American people is our hope. Only the People, in sufficient numbers and with appropriate zeal and commitment over years, can take the first step by making Trump a Carter and Biden a Reagan (in the structurally-disjunctive sense). It would be useful for the British and Europeans to model good government for us, so that it might eventually roll over the map like a tidal wave, but I understand; if not us first, then who?Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
For God's sake, don't forget that we're all in this together, in a more-than-trivial way. Don't act like our fates are so dissociable.