POTUS/General Election Thread 2020 + Aftermath

[Montmorency]

Essential resource on how long vote counts will take by state. Florida should mercifully give us a result Nov. 3 or 4, but a lot of states will take weeks to count all their ballots (some don't start until a week after E-day with their mail ballots!).
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...esults-timing/

As you can see, Pennsylvania will be rat central. Hopefully enough states flip to Biden that Republicans' (also hopefully ineffective) methods will be moot.

https://twitter.com/AmyEGardner/stat...79010915373058

Background RNC call on legal challenges and accusations that the GOP is making it harder to vote: "We don't like the construct of that narrative."

The US sanctions regime against Iran, such of it as was engaged post-JCPOA, is an illegitimate violation of a consensus international accord and a reckless act of aggression. Nevertheless, those sanctions are American law; Donald Trump has emphasized sanctions one of his central planks in prosecuting his 'successful' containment operation against our foe Iran. The obverse of his rhetoric being the alleged failure and appeasement of previous administrations in obtaining the advantages (of some capacity) he claims to have secured for America.

Nevertheless, Donald Trump took a request from Turkey's Erdogan to squelch federal investigation of the highly politically-connected Turkish state bank Halkbank, investigation over billions in sanctions-violating transfers into Iran. Trump of course had previously sold out our Kurdish partners in Syria to tender Turkish loving just a year ago. The only question is whether Trump has had his Turkish business interests in mind or whether there are more direct kickbacks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/u...-halkbank.html

Weighting for how much we still don't know, the Trump administration has probably also distinguished itself by becoming the most licentiously-corrupt in American history.

With Lissu’s campaign on hold, and the opposition still negotiating about forging a united front, the next steps in this high-stakes vote are unclear. Some observers fear that a second term for Magufuli would further erode Tanzania’s democratic norms and institutions. Already, the speaker of the National Assembly, Chama Cha Mapinduzi’s Job Ndugai, has stated he will move to abolish presidential terms limits if Magufuli wins reelection.

Tanzania, once a beacon of stability and democratic aspirations in East Africa, has become increasingly autocratic since Magufuli was elected president in 2015. Nicknamed “the bulldozer” during his days as the minister of public works, Magufuli won support among Tanzanians by promising to nationalize the country’s mining sector and spur infrastructure projects. As president, he has been ruthless in his suppression of dissent.

...Magufuli portrays support for his economic agenda as a key part of Tanzania’s national identity. “Anyone who is critical of his resource nationalism approach is seen as anti-state [and] not patriotic enough,” Jacob told WPR. The ruling party uses similar tactics to tar its critics, including journalists.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

At a jubilant rally one recent evening in the town of Geita, in northwestern Tanzania, Tundu Lissu sang along to Bob Marley’s “One Love” as he looked out on the sun setting over a sea of cheering supporters. The opposition firebrand is running to replace incumbent President John Magufuli in a general election later this month; he has been on the campaign trail since late August, drawing massive crowds at each stop.

“Everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve looked people in the eye,” Lissu told World Politics Review in an interview. “Everywhere I’ve gone, people are so happy. It’s unbelievable, and it’s uplifting.” He returned home this summer after three years in exile, part of which was spent recovering after unidentified gunmen shot him 16 times in 2017, in what he suspects was an assassination attempt.

Last Friday, however, the National Electoral Commission suspended his campaign for seven days, accusing Lissu of using “seditious language” and violating election rules. It’s the latest blow to the opposition, with the Oct. 28 elections fast approaching.

Magufuli, of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party, appears determined to curtail his opponents’ ability to participate in a free and fair vote. Dozens of opposition hopefuls at the municipal and parliamentary level were disqualified from this year’s race by the National Electoral Commission in August, leaving the ruling party running unopposed in certain areas of the country.

“The harassment is continuous, it is meticulous, it is down to the smallest detail,” said Robert Amsterdam, a lawyer for Lissu, who also defends the popstar-turned-presidential-candidate Bobi Wine in Uganda.

Even campaign posters have been weaponized by the government, which recently enacted a new tax on posting promotional materials, making it too expensive for the opposition to print and share posters, placards and fliers. “A political party should not be subjected to paying taxes on posters,” said Zitto Kabwe, head of the opposition Alliance for Change and Transparency party, or ACT-Wazalendo. “Posters are a public service, where citizens get a chance to know the candidates.”

Kabwe’s party has not been spared in the recent crackdown. Three ACT-Wazalendo members were arrested last month, and while two have since been released, the party’s social media officer, Dotto Rangimoto, remains in police custody for allegedly committing cybercrimes. And according to Human Rights Watch, more than a dozen government critics have been arrested since mid-June.

Violence has also increased as elections draw closer. Police teargassed Lissu’s convoy as he traveled to a rally last week, firing chemicals into the crowd for some 15 minutes. And a disturbing video shared on social media shows people bleeding after apparently having been beaten with sticks in clashes with security forces.

Neither Magufuli’s office nor the electoral commission responded to emails from World Politics Review requesting comment on irregularities in the campaign process, and restrictions imposed on the opposition.

Undeterred by recent attacks, Lissu’s CHADEMA party and ACT-Wazalendo are currently in talks to unite behind Lissu ahead of Election Day. CHADEMA has already endorsed ACT-Wazalendo’s Seif Shariff Hamad, who is running for president of the semi-autonomous Zanzibar archipelago in a concurrent election. But authorities say these efforts could violate the rules. In a recent statement to the press, the deputy registrar for political parties, Sisty Nyahoza, said the law forbids political parties from forming coalitions this late in the election season.

The repressive environment also makes it difficult to hold the government accountable for its response to COVID-19. Since late April, Magufuli’s administration has not released any data about the spread of the coronavirus in Tanzania, maintaining that the country has rid itself of COVID-19 though prayer. It’s hard to challenge that official line for fear of retribution, and newspapers and television stations have been sanctioned for sharing warnings about the virus.

“I grew up in a fairly peaceful country,” said Mwanahamisi Singano, a Tanzanian women’s rights advocate. “I took that for granted,” she added. “Every time you feel this possibly won’t get worse, it gets worse.”

With fears of a rigged vote looming, U.S. Rep. Karen Bass, a Democrat from California, last week introduced a resolution in Congress calling for free and fair elections in Tanzania. “This is a critical moment in history and democratic backsliding must be called out wherever we see it,” she said in a statement. Sen. James Risch, an Idaho Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also condemned the suspension of Lissu’s campaign.

“I fear more police violence in the days and weeks ahead,” Lissu said. “The fear of violence in this election is much greater than in previous elections, and the reason is simple. We are winning. They know it and we know it.”

President Maga was reelected this week with 84% of the vote.




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Good thing the federal executive in the United States doesn't administer national elections, I - guess?

The same frustration with the state that Trump's tapped into could just as easily been tapped into by syndicalist leftists if the conditions were right.

"[I]f the conditions were right" is doing an unsupportable amount of work here. Mesoamerica could have colonized Europe if the conditions were right.

Many people who voted for Trump in 2016 liked Bernie as well, that only can be reconciled by understanding the policies were inconsequential, it was a movement to defer against the status quo and our system of state endorsed winners and losers.

Not really. Bernie Sanders is wildly unpopular among Trump's base, and to the extent some of his supporter's "like" him it was out of a sense of respect for his perceived probity. His policies have no traction among that set except perhaps as nice things we can't have because of all the spooks and spics. It would be an interesting thought experiment, if Sanders could do better as a Republican nationally than John Kasich, but I doubt even that. To be a Republican is to prioritize sexism, racism, grievance culture, and performative cruelty to an extent that precludes policy-driven pitches.

Now, after 4 years of indoctrination many probably stick with Trump because Clinton and Hunter Biden are eating babies in a pizza parlor somewhere in Ukraine... but depending on how the votes turn out it seems like a non-negligible portion of 2016 Trump voters are/have moved to Biden.

Will be interesting to see the analysis of turnout vs. persuasion post-election, though we should also keep in mind that both parties -more so Republicans - have undergone a sorting spurt under Trump, meaning they have permanently lost some fraction of their base (who therefore can no longer be counted as swing voters). We saw some of this in 2018, which appears to really have been spurred by the durable defection of white suburban moderates.