A little more from the WaPo article on the Michigan Wayne County canvasser:
Palmer said she and Hartmann had been concerned since the primary vote last summer that a number of precincts were out of balance. She said she never believed that corrections, which were made in some precincts, would change the vote totals in the county or the state in a way that would upend the victory for Biden, who carried Michigan by nearly 150,000 votes.
As the judge in PA said to the Trump campaign who claimed they were prevented from witnessing the count even though they had a non-zero number of monitors in the counting room:
“I’m sorry, then what is the problem?”
If the clerical errors were easily fixable and not going to change the election results and Biden won Wayne County by a non-zero number of 150,000 votes, then why put your reputation on the line and refuse to certify the results in the first place?
I think Republicans are underestimating the degree to which voters are tired of Donald Trump’s temper tantrum, although death threats are never acceptable (but do we know who made them?).
Regardless, it is very, VERY inappropriate for the outgoing president who lost the election to make a phone call to a canvasser after she decided to change her vote to certify. Some would call that a conflict of interest and election interference, no matter what Donald Trump said to her. Some would say that. Probably no one on the Republican side of the aisle but some regular Americans would surely find it objectionable. Especially any voter in danger of having their legally cast mail in ballot cancelled by a Republican canvasser under pressure.
Yeah, just really stupid, Monica.
Is anyone else sick of Donald’s fit? Is it time we block his cell phone signal and make him use the White House switchboard?
Jeez, you can never turn your back on this party for even a second.
Filed under: General |
The Confluence 
Trump wins the election in 2016, even though he gets 2.8 million less votes. He wins PA, MI, and WI by a total of 77,000 votes. Hillary Clinton immediately concedes. Republicans chortle and celebrate what they call a landslide win. For four years they yell, “Elections have consequences!” every time that Trump violates the law or the norms, locks up children, extorts foreign leaders, steals money from appropriations for his own use.
In 2020, Biden is ahead by about 5.8 million votes, and 4%. Republicans say, “This cannot be right!” “Stop the steal!” They don’t like the results, so they contend that there is something wrong with them. They do not want to certify the vote totals. They want millions of votes thrown out because the totals are against them. Trump will never concede, he claims that he won. They envision a scenario where there is so much chaos that someone steps in and either hands them the election, or gets it into the hands of state delegations who will appoint pro-Trump electors or simply vote him in.
Al Gore had every right not to concede even after the Supreme Court decision. There were missing ballots in one county in Florida, about 14,000. The Republicans even screamed at Gore for withdrawing his election night concession, and then they and the media lauded him for giving up and letting Republicans win. And then for the next four years, they yelled, “Elections have consequences!” at Democrats. The Republicans have a simple metric: they win all the elections. Some body hands it to them, or overturns the votes, even if it is seven million more for the Democrats. Or the Democratic president is illegal because he was born in another country, so the Republicans win again. All the pathetic,lying fakery about democracy and the rule of law which emanates from them, is just misdirection, the man’s spiel. The media has let them get away with it, and now they think they can get away with anything. They will not lose, they will tear down every norm until they get their way. Move the pieces, knock down the board, anything to get what they want. They have no compunction or sense of hypocrisy about any of this, it is their essence now. It was always there, but really started becoming palpable in 1972, and then more so in 2000. Now it is pervasive. Throw out all the votes that are not for them. That’s what totalitarians do, and that is what they are. And they revel in it.
More precisely, they are feudalists.
They think power should be the personal property of its possessors, not a public trust. However, the higher-ranking ones do not want to be slaves of a totalitarian Dear Leader. They want to be the absolute masters of their own little fiefdoms.
They are the metaphorical descendants–and, I would guess in some cases, the literal descendants–of the Confederates. The Old South can be understood as an attempt to adapt the old feudal system into a form which could survive in the Early Modern world, with black slaves substituting for white serfs.
They are neither totalitarians nor small-d democrats; they are oligarchists.
Excellent description IMO… Too bad their serfs don’t rise up in revolt
I certainly count myself as one of those voters who are tired of Trump’s tantrums, but it appears there are at least 65+ million who are not, this will definitely not end quickly, the GOP will keep their 65M+ revved up.
Some of the details are historically inaccurate, but I enjoy this song, anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5mFsVCva04&ab_channel=67Katsa
😈
The American Right is an unholy alliance of a lumpen proletariat with a lumpen bourgeoisie, subsidized by a lumpen aristocracy.
Indeed, our current President is an illustrative example of a “lumpen aristocrat”.
😈
MEEP MEEP!