From "The Left Just Got Crushed" by Damon Linker (The Week).
November 5, 2020
"So much for the Democratic fantasy — the one that seemingly never dies — of unobstructed rule."
"Democrats didn't just want to win and govern in the name of a deeply divided nation's fractured sense of the common good. No, they wanted to lead a moral revolution, to transform the country — not only enacting a long list of new policies, but making a series of institutional changes that would entrench their power far into the future. Pack the Supreme Court. Add left-leaning states. Break up others to give the left huge margins in the Senate. Get rid of the Electoral College. Abolish the police. Rewrite the nation's history, with white supremacy and racism placed 'at the very center.' Ensure 'equity' not just in opportunity but in outcomes. Hell, maybe they'd even establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.... Nothing from the toxic progressive-fantasy wishlist will come anywhere close to passing. Instead, we will have grinding, obstructive gridlock. Some will demand that Biden push through progressive priorities by executive order. But every time he does... the country will move closer to witnessing a conservative backlash that results in Republicans taking control of the House and increasing their margin in the Senate in November 2022, rendering the Biden administration even more fully dead in the water."
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The whole purpose of the 1619 project was to serve as a justification for the means they intended to use, since what weapon do you leave unused when fighting perfect evil?
He had me until this: "For four years Donald Trump has proven himself a corrupt, mendacious ignoramus utterly unfit for the position he holds.".
Mr. Linker writes : For four years Donald Trump has proven himself a corrupt, mendacious ignoramus utterly unfit for the position he holds. He's led the nation through a pandemic that has left nearly a quarter million dead, is currently surging unchecked across the country, and has devastated the economy.
Then finishes with, “ So please, Democrats, look in the mirror and show a little humility.”
Pure comedy gold, if it weren’t so tragic.
I hope he is right, but the pessimist/contrarian/conservative me worries that life will not work out that way.
They are trying to turn is “post Democratic” like the EU. Biden has already promised that if he wins, there will be no trade deal with the UK until they accept the EU’s terms. This might be payback for the EU covering for him by claiming, and there are only records of them claiming this after the prosecutor in Ukraine was fire, claiming the guy was corrupt.
We all know that Burisma was created by the self dealing of a government official who assigned energy leases to corporations he secretly controlled, but it was of utmost importance that this billionaire kleptocrat get off the hook and it was just a. coincidence all of the money he paid into the Biden crime family.
"So much for the Democratic fantasy — the one that seemingly never dies — of unobstructed rule."
As somebody quoted the IRA saying the other day, “Thatcher has to be lucky all of the time, they only have to be lucky once."
Why haven't GA and NC pres and senate races been called. Shows 100% counted on state websites?
That's a good paragraph outlining the leftists desires.
It's a great observation that leftist have no interests in responding to the desires of the electorate. Just transforming the system to assure their sinecures.
The Dems want to californicate the entire nation: Entrenched one party rule; an elite over class of technocrats and overpaid celebrities telling everyone else what to do; a bloated civil service which cannot tame its demands; ridiculous restrictions on business; no restrictions on immigration for both low and high paying jobs; giving the finger anything conservative...the list goes on and in.
What Linker paints is the genius of our nation's founding. Yes- every time the Dems overreach, which is to say, all the time, the reaction by the public will be to remove Democrats and put Republicans back in place.
If not for our media/entertainment complex owning the minds of so many Americans, Democrats would be a dying party.
By the way, the"Ensure 'equity' not just in opportunity but in outcomes." idea is straight out of Kamal Harris' mouth.
You want more communism. This is how you get more communism.
How to steal the Senate and the Presidency
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/watch-suitcases-coolers-rolled-detroit-voting-center-4-brought-secure-counting-area/
What is shocking is the brazenness.
If these elections turn out to be hopelessly flawed, I think that precedent from 2000 is that it goes to the state legislature to pick the electors.
we will have grinding, obstructive gridlock.
Just as the founders intended.
The message in the final paragraph sounds a lot like the exceedingly brief introspection some Democrats suggested after Trump got elected the first time. It would be nice if they actually thought about their own flaws and adapted, but I am pretty sure we will instead get more of the same—accusations that anyone opposing their grand vision is racist.
One other potential hamstring if Biden wins - the Supreme Court may decide that ruling by executive order is out of order now that the mix of the Court has changed and Trump is no longer there.
The Dems can't pack the Court without the Senate so they're stuck waiting for a vacancy or two from Republican appointees. The oldest Republican appointee is only 72 so it's by no means a guarantee they'd get a chance to do so.
I already told my fam. if they voted for Biden don't invite me over for the holidays.
Constitution 1, Dems 0 (and Trafalgar Rules!) "Ambition (Mitch) will check Ambition (Pelosi)."
But as another post here suggests, the left may only read this exactly wrong and call for more of what they've now been told no one wants. Moderate Democrats remain utterly voiceless and cowed, like my tepid Elissa Slotkin over here in Michigan who squeaked through while others did not. Meanwhile Cori Bush, worse than Tlaib and AOC, won out in Missouri. A party of moths to the (leftist) flame? We shall see.
Unobstructed rule sounds a lot like the dream of some Progressives and New Dealers of the past. Those dreams account for much of the current conservative sentiment that all the bad things started with Woodrow Wilson (if not the Roosevelts). But the dream has never been realized - or only for short periods of time - so the story about the evils of the old time progressives doesn't wholly convince a larger audience. The people and the political system have let a lot of bad things happen and bad practices develop, but they don't allow unobstructed rule for more than a brief time.
Admit: Tank breathed a huge sigh of relief learning that Repub's had held the Senate. Of course, they're likely to sell out on amnesty/immigration. That said, without the Senate much of the left's wish list becomes more difficult.
If (when?) DT loses, we cannot lose a seat in the Senate until we take the house in 2022. Mitch Mcconnell health watch starts now - someone get him an apple a day.
"Nothing from the toxic progressive-fantasy wishlist will come anywhere close to passing."
Why? Republican opposition is tenuous.
"Instead, we will have grinding, obstructive gridlock."
Best-case scenario. But not clear at all.
"Some will demand that Biden push through progressive priorities by executive order. But every time he does... the country will move closer to witnessing a conservative backlash that results in Republicans taking control of the House and increasing their margin in the Senate in November 2022, rendering the Biden administration even more fully dead in the water."
This assumes the Californication of the country will stop.
From "The Left Just Got Crushed""
No. The left got a small victory, which they will exploit to the max. Just not as much as they wanted. A luta continua. At some point, the "backlashes" will stop.
Yes, the Left did get crushed. But we deny the premise that Biden likely wins. Currently, DJT is up 150K votes in Penn. Hard to stuff ballots while the world is watching.
Who is this "Biden" the author discusses? President Trump will win the remaining states and be reinaugurated on Jan 20. Or President Harris will be the frustrated one.
Are we moving on here to President Biden? Trump lost and it's all over but the shouting? A lot of weight on that side of the scale: just relax into Joe. The media knows it. Inertia will get rid of the Orange Man.
From his mouth to God's ear
"demand that Biden push through"
How will we know that "Biden" does anything?
Will his handlers be calling lids at the White House by noon?
4 years of lies from the corrupt left and now they are stealing it any way they can.
Th democrat party is the party of the mob. no that's not quite it. The democrat party IS the mob.
If there is a Biden Administration, it will soon become a Harris Administration, and then we are really in for a treat.
Prediction: Nancy Pelosi will not be Speaker of the House in January, 2023.
Actually, it would be wayyyyy more fun to have Pres Trump running for President for four years (2024) just screwing with the Dems minds, and having the Senate tell Biden "No" everday. Take back the House in 2022 and impeach Biden with the House AND Senate. Convict him and the go after Harris. More fun than a cell full of Democrats in prison.
Progressives/Democrats are intrinsically dishonest. They must not be permitted to win
If Trump can only win this, and this is a fight to the death for our democracy, if he can win this, and expose the corrupt puss of our electoral system, reform might be possible and the Democrats may be forced back towards the center again, rather than relying on subterfuge and electorate re-engineering, like letting in millions of new voters they think are likely to vote Democrat.
I know more than a couple Mexicans here, and they are hard working, God fearing people; natural Republicans. Haitians and Jamaicans too, BTW. Remember Garret Morris’s bit about the Jamaican who had “seventeen jobs”? It’s easier for conservatives to move a little left on economics than it is for the left to move to the right on social issues.
I don’t know about IQ difference between races, but there is probably a significant one between economic classes, and if you believe this, then there is a responsibility for the government to take care of people at the bottom, even as they work at jobs they can do. Paying people to do nothing is a recipe for disaster, though. This is why controlling the labor market at the bottom by restricting illicit workers who have no protections is really important. Working is how you get ahead in America. Harris believes exactly the opposite.
Lefties look at America as a giant game of Jenga, one where you can keep removing pieces of the American incentive structure, and assume that the edifice will never collapse because they have “faith in America”
I have faith in America too, which means I have faith in the economic incentive structure that makes it great. There is nothing magical about the name and the flag that prevents economic disaster such as struck the Soviet Union and drove it to fascism, or struck Communist China and drove it to fascism. If Harris gets her way, its the primrose path to fascism.
Absolutely impossible to have a conservative backlash with mail in voting. Have you been paying attention, Althouse with what is going on with this election, or do you just think that you didn't vote for either Presidential candidates, so none of this matters to you?
"I already told my fam. if they voted for Biden don't invite me over for the holidays.”
I told my dad the same thing, if he voted for Biden, I won’t be visiting his grave grave anymore.
Consider this possibility. Trump ain't going away. He starts his new media organization, a pro-America organization. He's given indications over the years. It will be immediately successful. Those who voted for Trump are so anxious to support something that'll punch back at the leftist media which really are an enemy of the people. And when the 2023 election season begins, Trump'll be tanned, rested, and ready.
"Why haven't GA and NC pres and senate races been called. Shows 100% counted on state websites?”
To ask it is to answer it.
They have had this election war-gamed for some time, from their quickly executed plan to deal with any email leaks, to their handling of contested election. Who is doing this war gaming? We don’t deserve to know! Sometimes I wonder if Biden even knows who will be running the country.
Maybe not. There is Georgia. Georgia Democrats learned a lesson from Stacey Abrams who is still bitter because they couldn’t cheat her into the governor’s chair. It seems likely that “late” mail order ballots may not only give Biden the Presidency, but will put two Senate seats up for grabs.
It’s a familiar pattern. The Republican is leading. It looks like it is over. Then, from out of nowhere, in urban precincts frequently overwhelmingly black, ballots appear. 75%, or more, of them are Democrat votes, just enough to put their candidate over the top. Sometimes the votes exceed the number of registered voter as may have happened in Milwaukee this year. (https://mkecitywire.com/stories/564495243-analysis-seven-milwaukee-wards-report-more-2020-presidential-votes-than-registered-voters-biden-nets-146k-votes-in-city.) We only see the fraud when somebody screws up.
Everything, EVERYTHING Democrats do or resist relating to voting reform facilitates fraud: motor voters, voter ID, open borders, census restrictions, restoring felons to voter rolls, mail order voting, etc. This is no secret. Trump is simply the first Republican to refuse to put up with it. Expect him to lose and expect “late” returns to flip the Senate. The stakes are high for the swamp in 2020. All the stops are out. The Dem “fantasy” will prevail. Nothing can be done about it or it’s consequences other than to thank Trump for his courage, pray and buy ammunition.
TiFnV said...
I told my dad the same thing, if he voted for Biden, I won’t be visiting his grave grave anymore.
okay Tim, i have to admit.... That Was Funny :)
"Consider this possibility. Trump ain't going away. He starts his new media organization, a pro-America organization. “
SCOTUS said in 2000 that if the state legislatures without input from the governor, BTW, decide that an election is hopelessly compromised, they can send their own slate of electors. Trump should win this. He has the cards in the long run. If it then goes to Congress:
In a concession to small states concerned their voices would be marginalized if the House was called upon to choose the president, the founders gave only one vote to each state. House delegations from each state meet to decide how to cast their single vote.
Trump wins.
All Trump has to do, and he will have to fight the media hammer and tongs, is to make the case that these elections stink like rotting corpses.
"Transform the country" = turn it into Venezuela del Norte.
The most “corruption” they have come up with against Trump is that he made a request for some information regarding foreign election interference, interference which plainly happened and anybody can see, from a foreign leader, while he was being investigated by a partisan Congress who were basically covering their own tracks regarding their own solicitation of election interference from that same country.
Is there anything else, lefties?
The dirty reality of the Democratic transformation is the American urban disaster. The country is littered with dead and dying cities ruled by Democrats.
The problem with this political dynamic, which has been in place my whole life, is that the extreme policies Democrats enact during these 2 year power grabs (LBJ's Great Society initiatives, Obamacare, Biden's open borders) are quickly embedded in the economic and political system. Republicans merely reform them at the margins, but never can repeal them.
The parasitic burden they impose on the middle class gradually pushes it to the margins, even as they supply the societal glue (work ethic, law and order, tax revenue) that makes the socialism seem workable in the short run. Now, even these values are under explicit assault fro Progressives, as embodiment of "White Supremacy."
What we are witnessing in these Democrat cities--Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Raleigh-Durham-- is an outright theft of the election, aided and abetted by the MSM. At some point, the middle class--business owners and police particularly -- needs to stop rescuing the Democrat urban elites and underclass that so openly loathe them. Give them what they say they want. Like sick forests overgrown with parasites, let them burn.
I told my dad the same thing, if he voted for Biden, I won’t be visiting his grave grave anymore.
This morning you can still check to see if your favorite dead person voted in Michigan.
Expect teh website to be 'down' later today...
T in V @ 8:oh 3 - that is classic. LOL!
It appears there are substantial "unexpected" votes in Wisconsin and Michigan. Trump should be able to force a pair of recounts in those states. If so, there will be a recount process that requires evidence of the address and signature of each voter to determine the number of actual votes cast. That process will expose the fraud, but will likely fail to establish which (secret) ballots are valid or invalid. Given the magnitude of the fraud this will create a crisis.
It will take a lot of time to sort this out. The Democrats will seek to drag the process out and force states to certify their votes using fraudulent vote counts.
This will be ugly and devisive. Trump should not back down.
T In V 8:01 - you are on fire this morning.
It's amusing watching the media's befuddlement over the black/Latino vote. The Democrat's leftward lurch on racial issues was almost entirely driven by college-educated white liberals, and it pretty much only appeals to them. Pushing wokeness was a disaster for Dems in 2016, and incredibly they doubled down for 2020, despite the fact that the Bernie Bros were not driven by wokeness, and the most woke candidates in the primary performed poorly. Black women were decisive in Biden's nomination.
Blogger tim in vermont said...
"I already told my fam. if they voted for Biden don't invite me over for the holidays.”
"I told my dad the same thing, if he voted for Biden, I won’t be visiting his grave grave anymore."
You think you're being funny, but I'm from Chicago. In 1982 65 people were indicted for vote fraud in Chicago.
"So much for the Democratic fantasy — the one that seemingly never dies — of unobstructed rule."
I think they proved tues. it's no fantasy. They get to count the votes. They own this country and by extension you.
"Some will demand that Biden push through progressive priorities by executive order."
If Biden attempts to usurp the Presidency, he and his supporters should be arrested and held in Guantanamo until it is convenient to try them.
Teh new Logo for the Democrat party
Trump is doing the right thing by exposing and fighting the fraud.
These Democrat cities are not only the instrument for voter fraud, they are sucking the life out of our country in so many other ways: crime, corruption, sanctuary, unionized public service, poor education, riots, looting, drugs.
I'm not sure how the democrat's rule without legitimacy at the ballot box. Even my liberal friends think the election is sketch because of mail in voting. Happy with the result but leery of how it will be seen by millions of people who voted for Trump and what happens next.
The media has discredited itself beyond repair so its attempts of papering over this mess will just make it worse. A robust recount in every disputed state is the only way out of this and that may prove impossible as the democrats are in charge of counting. Oh well, it was a nice republic, too bad we couldn't have kept it.
Rachael Maddow realizes last night that Trump is likely to win AZ despite the fraud there.
https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1324185491277815809
Does anyone know who is in charge of printing ballots?
I had never thought much about it. I just assumed that they were printed by regular commercial printers. Probably with govt supervision as to count and so on.
I never thought of them as hard to counterfeit. That the protections against fraud are in how they are entered into the ballot box, counted and otherwise handled.
The Puerto Rico paper ballots certainly never seemed to have any protection against counterfeiting. I wish I had paid more attention to the new scannable ballots we used this year.
This morning I am reading that all US ballots were printed by the Department of Homeland Security.
Does anyone know anything about this? All I can find are blog posts and I don't know how reliable they are.
I am also reading that, when DHS printed the ballots, anti-counterfeiting security measures were incorporated.
Specifically I am reading that non-radioactive isotope taggants were incorporated into the ballot. In the ink, I assume but it could have been in the paper.
15-20 years ago I had some expertise in anti-counterfeiting technologies. There are a number of taggants that companies use including isotopes, plastic micro-chips of various types, DNA strands, UV ink that flouresces at a specific wavelength and more.
These are kept highly secret. They are only used when a company needs to prove something is counterfeit. US paper currency has about 30 different anti-counterfeiting technologies. Some known to the public like microprinting and the embedded strip. Some, like UV codes and reactive starches, hidden but widely known. Others kept top secret.
So the ability to tag every ballot with a unique, uncounterfeitable taggant, is certainly feasible. Even with technology 20 years ago.
So if the DHS controlled the did they print a taggant? If so, it will be a somewhat trivial matter to identify which ballots are real and which, the sacks that showed up Wed morning for example, are fake.
I felt bad all day yesterday. But then I realized that I need to trust Trump. Sometimes what he does makes no sense at the time. Then it turns out he was right.
So, call it naivete, call it faith, I am going to choose to believe until Biden is sworn in in January. I choose to believe that this will not happen.
John Henry
President Trump has known for 4 years that something like this would happen. Does anyone think he did not prepare for it?
One prep might be the secure ballots I mentioned above. There are a number of other things he could have done and probably has done.
Could this be a massive trap? Let's say he can expose the corruption of the system in a way that is so obvious that even demmies can't deny it. Might this lead to national secure election laws in federal elections? Things like secure ballots, no electronics, federal poll watchers and so on.
I think this could be justified under the protections offered to citizens by the 14th Amendment. Similar justification to enforcing fair voting laws in the south in the 60's.
And perhaps lots and lots of people going to jail for fraud. Wictor speculates, without providing evidence, that PDJT had people planted inside, pretending to go along with the fraud but, in reality, collecting evidence.
It won't be the first time that Demmie plans have boomeranged.
John Henry
Perhaps, though I fear we may be at the end of the road. I'm very happy that the GOP increased its representation in the House and kept its majority in the Senate, but:
The GOP will be defending 22 Senate seats in 2022, while the Democrats will be defending only 12 Senate seats.
I'm not someone who normally has apocalyptic visions of our elections, but I really do think that the country is on the precipice of "fundamental transformation" if the Dems take the Senate in 2022 while holding the House and the presidency.
Unless the GOP figures out how to consolidate the gains made in the last few years and to build on them, I fear that California is our future.
You think you're being funny, but I'm from Chicago. In 1982 65 people were indicted for vote fraud in Chicago.
Not sure which is the more amazing fact in that statement, Rusty.
That 65 people were indicted in Chicago.
Or that 65 people were indicted in Chicago.
John Henry
"Democrats didn't just want to win and govern in the name of a deeply divided nation's fractured sense of the common good. No, they wanted to lead a moral revolution, to transform the country — not only enacting a long list of new policies, but making a series of institutional changes that would entrench their power far into the future....”
I think that there was very much a time when the Democrats could, and tried to, rule for the good of the country and its people. I don’t know the dividing line was LBJ or the Clintons - I still believe I the inherent goodness of Carter (misguided, of course, but good in his heart). LBJ and the Clintons were in it for the money and the power, but not actively hostile to American interests. It wasn’t until Obama (and it turns out Biden) that we elected (and then re-elected) someone whose loyalty wasn’t primarily to the United States.
In 2008, we elected someone whose career started out in the living room of a pair of domestic terrorists, who had killed in order to advance their war against this country (but were too well connected to have ever done the time in prison for their crimes). His father was a radical communist, He grew up for awhile as Muslim in a Muslim majority country. And he spent 20 years in the pews listening to America hating, White hating, Rev Wright. To this day, we really have little idea who put him .in the White House, or who he really is. His past was carefully hidden, and it stays that way. His way was greased, with his Senate seat run greased by two separate illegal exposures of divorce records. He presided over the most corrupt Administration in our history, and was unapologetically anti-American, repeatedly taking interests adverse to ours, including entering into treaties and international agreements that greatly disadvantaged our country, as well as promoting the Muslim Brotherhood (parent organization to pretty much every Sunni terrorist group in the world) and Iran, which of course, spent the billions that he gave them to promote terrorism throughout the Middle East. They destroyed both Libya and Syria, with people dying to this day in those countries as a result. They coddle the ChiComs, his VP indirectly taking billions from them, traded for their advantage over us, at every turn. His first two years, until te Dems lost Congress as a result, showed them to be monumentally craven, as well as economically ignorant, while our medical system, envy of the world, was scheduled for destruction, and Dem cronies and foreign interests were paid off, by raiding our national treasury. All covered by the weaponization of the federal government for partisan political advantage. Obama and the Dems seemed determined to turn this country into a Venezuela, that was a client state of the Red Chinese, as fast as they could, before being stopped by the Republicans in the election ten years ago this week.
It is scary to me that they have come as close as they have to retaking control this election. They spent huge piles of money trying to buy the Senate and the Presidency. Much of that money is probably from rich Democrats here in the country. But I think it very imply that we will ultimately find, if enough rocks are turned over,that there was a lot of corporate and, yes, foreign, money involved too. What must be remembered is that esp the tech billionaires who pulled out all the stops for the Dems, while mostly American, and their businesses are tokenly American, are really internationalists, with more of their businesses outside this country. So the Chinese can lean on them, and they can substantially censor the communications of Trump and the Republicans. Their interests are not ours. They haven’t been for some time. They will destroy this country, and all it means, if they stand to make enough money as a result, even if it means destroying their American market.
I really don’t like where they have gone:
- openly running a candidate whose family has traded the power of his political office to our biggest geopolitical enemies for tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. A candidate whom everyone knows is grossly incompetent to run the country, or probably even know who would be doing so in his name.
- openly blowing up our campaign finance system
- openly violating election norms and laws to steal the election, purporting to do so to protecting us from COVID-19, a pandemic tat they have purposely overreacted to in order to impose authoritarian controls over us, as well as perpetuate voter fraud. Think about it a minute - Kids are not going to school, everyone wears masks indoors, millions of people became unemployed, hundreds of thousands of small businesses were destroyed, etc, all so that the Dems could steal this election. They don’t care. There is far too much money and power at stake for them to care.
- meanwhile, they have unleashed their Brown Shirts, their Sturmabteilung, on the inner cities across the country, I order to terrorize the peasantry into supporting their own destruction at the hands of the Democrats. They don’t care. They have armed guards. And if Biden wins, no one will ever be held responsible. Not the foot soldiers. Not the organizers. And esp not the funders, like billionaire George Soros.
tim in vermont said...Sometimes I wonder if Biden even knows who will be running the country.
The plan was to have the DNC run things while Jill tends to Joe and Kamala is prepped to become POTUS in 2024.
"So much for the Democratic fantasy — the one that seemingly never dies — of unobstructed rule."
Rusty said..."I think they proved tues. it's no fantasy. They get to count the votes. They own this country and by extension you."
I think Rusty is correct. I'm old enough to remember when places like NJ and CT were competitive swing states, with strong GOP parties at the state and local levels, and it wasn't all that long ago. Lose a couple of elections in a row, though, and it all falls apart.
I sincerely hope I'm wrong, but unless a new generation of conservatives can step up and lead, I fear we may be at the high water mark for contested two-party rule in this country.
Think of the American Constitutional separation of powers as a girl named Lucy and unobstructed rule as a football.
Denver protesters are shouting, "No borders, no walls, no USA at all". They are showing their true colors. Denver
I wish Linker were right in that the implication is that they've lost and will retrench. I don't think all that "norm destroying" stuff they floated was actually the plan for the next 4-8 years. It's all about shifting the Overton window: manipulating the discourse so that what was once left and fringey becomes mainstream, with the idea that they are shifting the discourse, and therefore reality, to their liking. The problem is they don't control the discourse like they used to, and even if they did, it's not as effective in the digital age at impacting life beyond the discourse. So we have that going for us.
the country will move closer to witnessing a conservative backlash
A return to American conservativism: Pro-Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, an opportunity to mitigate progress of diversity, exclusion, and the adversity it normalizes.
John Henry (1008am and 1019am) speculates on ballot security and a possible Trump trap.
I don't think Trump is that . . . foresighted. And even if he was, the key is DHS--one of the organs of state security least likely to be honest with the voters. About anything.
Narr
Wholly owned, LOL
schweikart suggests that the state legislatures in those three states, send a clean slate of electors to challenge the governor's selections,
“ SCOTUS said in 2000 that if the state legislatures without input from the governor, BTW, decide that an election is hopelessly compromised, they can send their own slate of electors. Trump should win this. He has the cards in the long run. If it then goes to Congress:”
Not my memory at all, which is that they held that state legislatures set out the rules, and everyone has to follow them. Certainly not the state Supreme Court, which had tried to fudge the election laws after the fact. That was not their prerogative. Plus there was a 14th Amdt hook of unequal treatment based on biased recounts. They may have said more, but it was very likely dicta.
Which makes the suggestion that Trump plays 5D chess (or, just gets inside their OODA loop with inside information) interesting. One key here is newly robed Justice Barrett. Many have suggested that CJ Roberts has somehow been compromised. Possibly being blackmailed. The thing is here that the 2001 precedent seems to strongly support Trump’s case, esp in PA, MI, and WI, but maybe even here in AZ. Every state has election laws on the books. And those laws were violated, at one level or another, by executive fiat. Was fraud prone mail in balloting justified based on the supposed (but likely not actual) danger of COVID-19? Which under Bush v Gore can be read to mean whether the legislature gave those exercising that executive power (Governor on down to the precinct level) that discretion? Did PA law give the Philly election officials the discretion to exclude Republican poll watchers for that reason?
I think that with Justice Barrett there is now a solid 5 vote majority that Bush v Gore controls, that the Constitution has the state legislatures making these determinations, and the executive decisions that facilitated the voter fraud were ultra vires. Roberts has the power to control the writing of decisions of whichever side he votes with and that means that he very likely will vote with the five, making it at least 6-3, and possibly 7-2 with Justice Breyer, because he very likely doesn’t want Justice Thomas (as the senior member of that 5 vote block) writing the decision. Thomas writes with a broad brush, and that means that he could potentially write that voter fraud violates One Man/One Vote, and thus the 14th Amdt. Dems have been claiming (almost nonexistent) disenfranchisement for years, and that justifies loosening anti-fraud voting provisions. This time, there appear to have been hundreds of thousands of illegal Dem votes, and that effect on the votes of legitimate voters is far worse. If Thomas writes the decision it is very possible that that argument could be DOA, and voting laws, and their enforcement will, henceforth be primarily viewed in terms of election integrity and not possible disenfranchisement. I don’t think that Roberts will risk that.
If Ginsberg hadn’t died, Roberts could have joined the 4 Dems, writing a mealy mouthed decision that essentially allowed the cheating. With her gone, and Barrett not confirmed, he could join the 3 Dems and that wouldn’t overturn state Supreme Court decisions approving the actions. But with Barrett, Trump has appointed 3 of the 5 conservatives. And the other two votes are safe, esp having been voted in the majority in Bush v Gore. This is why you wonder sometimes if Trump is actually playing several moves ahead of his opponents - because he and McConnell rammed her nomination through the Senate in record time (and he selected a woman, who couldn’t be falsely tarred with imaginary sexual improprieties, and couldn’t be attacked on her religion without alienating a lot of Hispanic voters).
Bid news - probably ignored by our corrupt hack D press.
" It turns out, the vote dump was the result of an alleged typo, an extra zero that had been tacked onto Biden’s vote total in Shiawassee County, Michigan. It seems the error was discovered only because Davis and other Twitter users noted how insane and suspicious the vote totals looked, and demanded an investigation that uncovered what was either a typo or an incredibly clumsy attempt to boost Biden’s vote count.
There was also something suspicious about the vote reporting in Antrim County, Michigan, where Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 30 points in 2016. Initial vote totals there showed Biden ahead of Trump by 29 points, a result that can’t possibly be accurate, as plenty of journalists noted.
After the strange results caught national attention, election officials in Antrim County said they were investigating what they called “skewed” results, working with the company that provides their election software to see what went wrong. The county clerk said they plan to have an answer by Wednesday afternoon.
Then another mysterious all-Biden vote dump happened in Wisconsin. Biden miraculously overcame a 4.1-point Trump lead in the middle of the night thanks to vote dumps in which he got—you guessed it—100 percent of the votes and Trump got zero."
Slovenia recognizes Donald Trump as the head of the legitimate government of the US.
https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/world-all-news/139137/slovenian-pm-congratulates-donald-trump-for-winning-election-janez-jansa-viktor-orban-electoral-system/
These kinds of things matter when you live in a banana republic like ours.
Narr,
Donald trump has certainly proven to be farsighted, thinking well into the future. There is a 1986 article from the NY Times in which he talks about the presidency and what he would do if he had a chance. 34 years of farsightedness there.
And shorter term, he certainly seems to think well into the future. It is in his blood. Real estate, especially the kind of real estate he was involved with, requires a long term outlook. It's not a series of short hits.
As for DHS, yes, they are deep state and may be compromised. IF they were doing the ballot printing and IF they were using taggants, would the demmies be able to get the ink with those taggants to print fake ballots? If they could, we are screwed.
As an aside: There are two purposes to anti-counterfeit measures. One is to assure the user and other interested parties that the product is genuine.
The other, every bit as important, is to allow the product owner, the US in the case of ballots, to prove that it is NOT genuine. Most people never think about the second factor.
Back when I was working with this there was a case where a vanload of high end ($200/pr) designer jeans was seized by US customs as counterfeit.
The brand owner was not able to prove, to a court's satisfaction, that the jeans were actually counterfeit. The court wound up having to release the jeans to the importer to be sold in the US because nobody could prove what everyone knew, that the jeans were counterfeit.
I had nothing to do with this case and know nothing more than what I read at the time. 2002-2005 or so.
John Henry
>"So much for the Democratic fantasy — the one that seemingly never dies — of unobstructed rule."
The Democrats did, of course, have unobstructed rule during the Obama Presidency. For those that don't remember, they simultaneously held the Presidency, the House, a filibuster-proof(!!) majority in the Senate.
They spent that window mostly arguing amongst themselves on how to best split up the spoils of their victory, and amusingly, ending up with only Obamacare.
Like so many here, I find Mr Linker curiously blind to Mr Trump’s virtues. Is he a Brit? Has he taken a hard look at what is happening in the UK and Europe? It makes Trump look good.
MAGA.
tim in vermont said...
Lefties look at America as a giant game of Jenga, one where you can keep removing pieces of the American incentive structure, and assume that the edifice will never collapse because they have “faith in America”
--
Great analogy. Not sure about the faith in America.
Steve Deace
@SteveDeaceShow
Doubt they do any soul-searching at all. It won. Their main objective was making sure an outlier who would even think of rallying a base to challenge their long march through the institutions would be taken out, and made an example out of. They'll be incentivized.
Quote Tweet
Erielle Davidson
@politicalelle
· 2h
Soul-searching will take place. But it will be taking place on the Left. Either that, or they double-down on the racial determinism and lose elections.
"So much for the Democratic fantasy — the one that seemingly never dies — of unobstructed rule."
It was not a fantasy and they will come close, even if perhaps a Senate seat short. Perhaps.
"Democrats didn't just want to win and govern in the name of a deeply divided nation's fractured sense of the common good. No, they wanted to lead a moral revolution, to transform the country."
Well, they will keep transforming the country, morally or not, regardless of "divisions" and "fractures." It's just evil deplorables on the other side. They deserve to be crushed.
Anyone who knows anything about western Michigan knows that the only counties that might go for Biden are Muskegon, Kalamazoo, and maybe Kent. I see Biden is leading in Leelanaw, which is full of rich retirees from Detroit, Chicago, and St Louis. Maybe Antrim flipped, but it went 60% for Trump last time. Also, lots of rich people from Chicago are switching their residences to Michigan to escape the coming financial disaster in Illinois. They are probably bringing their disgusting virtue signaling politics with them.
It's not so much the fraud that bothers me. It was expected.
It's the fact half the country - the asshole left - supports and encourages it.
Ballot box or ammo box, leftists.
It appears you've made your choice.
I hope this takes a bit of wind out of Herr Robert Reich's hopes for a re-education Derpstapo.
@John Henry1236pm--
I won't deny that Trump is farsighted in business (I don't know enough to argue, but let's stipulate it), I just don't think he could have envisioned the sort of political or policy trap you outline and have it work inside the belly of the beast itself. If I'm wrong I'll be the first to cheer the good news and congratulate him and you!
Narr
If he's that smart, I feel even better about voting for him
John Henry @ 10:08; thanks for that bit of insight. That same thought occurred to me as well as the question of the oversight of distribution; who is that assures that there isn't a "stockpile" of ballots.
I don't know about other states, but in Texas our ballots have an ordinary printer, and back when we used a lot of paper ones (with scanners), we could xerox them if need be. They were converted into something that was hard to counterfeit by the election judge in the precinct signing them on the back in red ink that wouldn't trigger the scanners.
The Democrats did, of course, have unobstructed rule during the Obama Presidency. For those that don't remember, they simultaneously held the Presidency, the House, a filibuster-proof(!!) majority in the Senate.
I was reliably promised Sharia Socialism but somehow it failed to materialize. It’s almost as though our Constitution was designed to thwart ambitious ideological projects and unobstructed power.
Hey... Robert Reich toss starts at 5PM tomorrow in Berkeley, Ca.
Craft beer and appetizers will be provided. Details posted ASAP...
I have seen a lot of this Pollyanna argument.
Its stupid.
The only thing that matters at this point is executive power. Your constitution was not designed to deal in procedural, legal, "normal" terms with overwhelming power outside of its scope, such as a foreign invasion, an out of control state apparatus, or massive entities with total control of communications.
As I have said very often, words on paper are weak if there is no actual power behind them. So much for constitutional law.
The Roman system likewise could not deal with, say, dictators who impolitely misused their powers and defied the Senate. The Romans only recourse was civil wars, with or without a mandated counter-dictator. These things also undermined their constitution.
I read about the taggants on Bryan Cate's Draw and Strike Twitter feed.
He's been a daily read of mine for a year or so now. I've found him to be reasonably trustworthy.
OTOH, the only other place I could find anything about this is other Tweeters and bloggers.
Now Bryan has been banned from Twitter as of a couple hours ago. Not suspended but banned. A couple hundred thousand followers just went Poof!
He says Twitter told him he was banned specifically for that tweetthread on the taggants.
Carlos OSweda didn't say anything about taggants but had been talking fairly reasonably about the election and what tools PDJT has to fight with. He just, in the past 3-4 hours, got banned from Twitter too.
Bryan is apparently now on Parler. I need to find my password and check later.
Careful Ann. Google might ban you for allowing me to post the previous comments about the taggants.
John Henry
Hmmm, something about "combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary powers" something something.
Narr
Nah, that stuff never happens
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Blogger Earnest Prole said..."...The Democrats did, of course, have unobstructed rule during the Obama Presidency. For those that don't remember, they simultaneously held the Presidency, the House, a filibuster-proof(!!) majority in the Senate..." 11/5/20, 3:59 PM
Your conclusion is bunk - let me help you! During Obama's turn at one-party rule we got the most disaster economic impact called Obamacare. The result, the Democratic Party got crushed during the Obama Presidency. So his legacy also includes one huge failure: a diminished Democratic Party. When Obama took office, there were 60 Democratic senators; then it dropped to 46. The number of House seats held by Democrats (then) has shrunk from 257 to 188. Finally, the real 'coup de grâce' voters elected Donald Trump - a complete repudiation of Obama's philosophy and legacy.
That my friend happens when you ignore the vast majority of the American Electorate!
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