POTUS/General Election Thread 2020 + Aftermath

[Hooahguy]

So Trump is going to try to drag this out as long as possible it seems.

President Trump plans to brandish obituaries of people who supposedly voted but are dead — plus hold campaign-style rallies — in an effort to prolong his fight against apparent insurmountable election results.

Also I kinda resent the pundits who are saying that we now need to play nice with Trumpists. Like yeah we shouldn't needlessly antagonize them but for four years they were all "cry more libtards" and now we are supposed to pretend none of that has happened?

[a completely inoffensive name]

now we are supposed to pretend none of that has happened?

Yes. We need to de-program millions of people and the first step is by at the minimum engaging on an ostensibly equal level.

Or we can race to tear down rules that disadvantage us and build up obstacles for Republicans to keep them at bay, but I am not sure where that will end up.

[Hooahguy]

I'd argue that you cant de-program when the proponents of Trumpism are still going strong, minus their figurehead. Trumpism doesnt die when Trump leaves office, it will just find new figureheads. While the actual denazification program after WW2 saw mixed results at best, it was only possible to consider such a program because the Nazi regime was completely dismantled. We can engage with them without waiving away the fact that they gleefully supported an authoritarian wannabe.

[Montmorency]

The Republican Party is a fascist junta and a criminal conspiracy to seize power. They are not a legitimate partner in democratic governance. Their voters do not recognize an American polity.

Moving on from a man is easy for elites. While significant elements of the GOP are currently semi-actively assisting Trump in his autocratic attempt against the Republic, most are so far detached. The plausible explanation is that the institutional party are very eager to milk Trump's pathetic failure in order to further polarize the country and reinforce their grip on the base by denying the legitimacy of the Democratic Party's scions or of the electoral process (which is, again, a mere intensification of their generational posture).

For a pithier formulation:
https://twitter.com/MarkHarrisNYC/st...84336838684672

Disputing the election isn't, for the GOP, about reversing the result. It's about crystallizing for their voters the idea that if they don't get what they want in the world, it can only be because someone else unfairly took it from them. It is a central tenet of the party. Most of the GOP establishment, except for his most slavering lickspittles, loathes Trump and will be glad when he goes. But they need the sense of grievance of his voters; that's what they're fighting to preserve. When they think that's safe, they'll cut Trump loose with a shrug.

Actually that's the same length, but still a good complement.

...

We have one profound buffer, hypothetically, in our favor. The fact that so many voters were energized by Trump's WORST features suggests that a more "competent" - in whatever capacity - fascist candidate wouldn't be able to draw the same numbers. That is to say, the voters such a candidate could win by being less like Trump would be insufficient to compensate for those demobilized by the absence of what we correctly recognize as Trump's most damaging attributes.

What fucked-up people.

Hey Hooah, I hear that signing a lease (for even $1) in Georgia 30 or more days before an election confers eligibility to vote there. Just saying!


Also, a correction: I hedged above that this may have been the first election in which the split-district system used by Maine and Nebraska produced a split in the electoral vote there, but that wasn't right. This is the first year in which both Nebraska and Maine saw a split, but in Maine the very first split for the system appears to have been in 2016, when Trump first won CD-2.

Yes. We need to de-program millions of people and the first step is by at the minimum engaging on an ostensibly equal level.

Or we can race to tear down rules that disadvantage us and build up obstacles for Republicans to keep them at bay, but I am not sure where that will end up.

If the Nazis fail to make gains in the 1933 election with only 33% of the vote, that gives us room to breathe, not capacity to deprogram.

[Hooahguy]

Hey Hooah, I hear that signing a lease (for even $1) in Georgia 30 or more days before an election confers eligibility to vote there. Just saying!

I just checked my registration in GA and it says Im inactive which Im not really sure what it means since I was told I would be kicked off the voter rolls last year but if Im inactive it shouldnt take much to reactivate in time for the runoff! Guess its time to hit up that Fair Fight website and understand whats going on because Im registered in DC now so I realllllllllllly dont want to be accused of voter fraud (understandably).
Edit: looks like I cant reactive without a GA driver's license. Oh well, bummer.

In transition news, we are seeing the first examples of Trumpists doing damage to the Biden administration:

A Trump administration appointee is refusing to sign a letter allowing President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team to formally begin its work this week, in another sign the incumbent president has not acknowledged Biden’s victory and could disrupt the transfer of power.
The administrator of the General Services Administration, the low-profile agency in charge of federal buildings, has a little-known role when a new president is elected: to sign paperwork officially turning over millions of dollars, as well as give access to government officials, office space in agencies and equipment authorized for the taxpayer-funded transition teams of the winner.

It amounts to a formal declaration by the federal government, outside of the media, of the winner of the presidential race.

But by Sunday evening, almost 36 hours after media outlets projected Biden as the winner, GSA Administrator Emily Murphy had written no such letter. And the Trump administration, in keeping with the president’s failure to concede the election, has no immediate plans to sign one. This could lead to the first transition delay in modern history, except in 2000, when the Supreme Court decided a recount dispute between Al Gore and George W. Bush in December.

“An ascertainment has not yet been made,” Pamela Pennington, a spokeswoman for GSA, said in an email, “and its Administrator will continue to abide by, and fulfill, all requirements under the law.”

The GSA statement left experts on federal transitions to wonder when the White House expects the handoff from one administration to the next to begin — when the president has exhausted his legal avenues to fight the results, or the formal vote of the electoral college on Dec. 14? There are 74 days, as of Sunday, until the Biden inauguration on Jan. 20.

“No agency head is going to get out in front of the president on transition issues right now,” said one senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. The official predicted that agency heads will be told not to talk to the Biden team.

The decision has turned attention to Murphy, whose four-year tenure has been marked by several controversies involving the president, an unusually high profile for an agency little known outside of Washington.

“Her action now has to be condemned,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), who leads a House oversight panel on federal operations. “It’s behavior that is consistent with her subservience to wishes of the president himself, and it is clearly harmful to the orderly transition of power.”

The delay has implications both practical and symbolic.

By declaring the “apparent winner” of a presidential election, the GSA administrator releases computer systems and money for salaries and administrative support for the mammoth undertaking of setting up a new government — $9.9 million this year.

Transition officials get government email addresses. They get office space at every federal agency. They can begin to work with the Office of Government Ethics to process financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest forms for their nominees.

And they get access to senior officials, both political appointees of the outgoing administration and career civil servants, who relay an agency’s ongoing priorities and projects, upcoming deadlines, problem areas and risks. The federal government is a $4.5 trillion operation, and while the Biden team is not new to government, the access is critical, experts said.

This is all on hold for now.