Here’s Paul Waldman at The Post, riffing off The Times’ coverage today about a Republican program to field 50,000 (possibly armed) thugs to “monitor polling places” in November:
Voter suppression is at the very heart of Republican electoral strategy, and, as the New York Times reports Monday, they plan to go all-out in November:
The Republican program, which has gained steam in recent weeks, envisions recruiting up to 50,000 volunteers in 15 key states to monitor polling places and challenge ballots and voters deemed suspicious. That is part of a $20 million plan that also allots millions to challenge lawsuits by Democrats and voting-rights advocates seeking to loosen state restrictions on balloting. The party and its allies also intend to use advertising, the internet and President Trump’s command of the airwaves to cast Democrats as agents of election theft.
The efforts are bolstered by a 2018 federal court ruling that for the first time in nearly four decades allows the national Republican Party to mount campaigns against purported voter fraud without court approval. The court ban on Republican Party voter-fraud operations was imposed in 1982, and then modified in 1986 and again in 1990, each time after courts found instances of Republicans intimidating or working to exclude minority voters in the name of preventing fraud. The party was found to have violated it yet again in 2004.
“Voters deemed suspicious” by the GOP is a category that includes black people, Latinos, students, black people, and also black people.
I’m guessing Fox News won’t run clips of thousands of Trump Brown Shirts on endless loop like they did when a pair of “New Black Panthers” were hanging around a polling place in 2012. I should note the assumption that the Brown Shirts will be armed is mine, but I think it’s a reasonable one since these puling infants are now carrying anti-tank weapons onto government property to protest the closure of barber shops and nail salons for public safety reasons.
Waldman points out that the last big effort at GOP voter suppression failed spectacularly by creating backlash in Wisconsin:
The lesson is that in that kind of a context — with a dramatic, high-profile fight over Republican voter suppression efforts — the Republican effort produced a backlash. As Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler said afterward, “Voter suppression might not be as clever as Republicans think it is. It can backfire by pissing voters off.”
The more attention is given to GOP voter suppression efforts, the more voter suppression itself becomes a campaign issue, one that can boost turnout among Democrats. However you might feel about Joe Biden, it becomes more important to exercise your right to vote if you think someone is trying to take it away.
That last point is true, and I’ve been waiting for the backlash to happen at scale for a decade and a half as Republican voter suppression methods grew more brazen. Maybe the Trump Brown Shirts will finally be the tipping point.
In the meantime, we’ve won the war on vote-by-mail in the swing states (AZ, FL, NC, WI, MI and PA) already, unless Trump manages to pull the plug on the USPS by November. That seems unlikely but not impossible in this Bizarro World we’re living in.
Open thread.
Pandemic Reading – BGinCHI and More
rikyrah
Ain’t nobody playing with these muthaphuckas ???
Nobody.
They want to get into it.
Don’t start none. Won’t be none.
—Ancient African -American proverb
randy khan
They are terrible people.
But I’m hopeful that enough voters have had enough of them to show them the door.
PenAndKey
In case anyone was confused why the GOP seems hell-bent on destroying the USPS here we are. They’re almost to the point of saying this quiet part out loud.
WereBear
I believe they might have picked the wrong goddamn rec room to break into by openly going Brown Shirt.
rikyrah
rikyrah
Baud
If the spent the entire $20 million on thugs, that’s $400/thug with 50,000 thugs. I don’t think they can find 50,000 thugs at that price. Extremely serious and dangerous, but a lot of this is also about rhetoric designed to scare our voters away. Hopefully, it will drive them to mail-in ballots instead (especially with the rona).
Kent
I can’t even conceive of a world without the USPS. It’s in the FUCKING CONSTITUTION for fuck’s sake. the only government agency that actually is.
Here in WA we only really depend on the USPS to receive our ballots. We can drop them off at ballot drop-boxes all over the city if we want to. Which is actually what I always do. I expect it is similar in most other states that do mail-in balloting.
Dorothy A. Winsor
The return of hydroxychloroquine. Holy cow. The president is an asshole.
rikyrah
The Newscorp lawyers must have talked to the on- air talent.
Cacti
I’ve said before that something like this is coming.
Are you ready to fight for your right to vote in the literal, not metaphorical sense?
If not, you’d better be.
Baud
Via Reddit, heh.
dmsilev
@rikyrah: The people I really feel sorry for are the ones who actually need hydroxychloroquine and can’t get it because all of the Trumpies have all of sudden started hoarding the stuff. For the idiots, I have rather less sympathy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rikyrah: stipulating that I have no idea how the White House medical procedures work, how the President gets meds…. reading between the lines of a couple of Obama WH memoirs (Dan Pfeiffer’s, Alyssa Mastromonaco’s) and their comments when Ronnie Jackson got pushed out, it sounds like he was pretty free with the prescription pad, and I wouldn’t put it past trump to send Hope Hicks, or Fredo, out to the nearest Walgreen’s. On the other hand:
jeffreyw
Elizabelle
@Baud: Is that Bojack??
Plague rats. LOL.
dmsilev
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
SiubhanDuinne
Apparently Trump has decided to dose himself with hydroxychloroquine. I guess that balances out the whole not-wearing-a-mask thing.
Elizabelle
I would really love to hear what Dr. Fauci, and the Surgeon General, think about Trump’s hitting the hydroxy …
Although. Maybe it will kill him, and that alone would save lives. Hmmmm….
debbie
Yet another reason to vote by mail, no?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Elizabelle: Trump is the antichrist. He can’t die by normal means.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
You’re assuming he’s telling the truth this time? Pffh.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: He lies about everything, why not this.
dmsilev
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Or thinks he’s taking said dangerous drug, but is actually just getting a sugar pill in a mis-labeled bottle, because his personal physician decided that lying to him was much easier than arguing with him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
If we had a functioning Senate, I’d say trump just threw Pompeo under the bus
also, I really hate his first-namification and the not-unrelated personalization of government: “Mike” is the State Department, the State Department is “Mike”, and L’état, c’est lui.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
I expect he still has a direct line to Dr. Feelgood in NYC, what’s-his-name, Bornstein? With the long greasy hair?
JustRuss
Since the thread be open: RIP Ken Osmond. I was never a huge Beaver fan, but Eddie Haskell was awesome.
sdhays
I think it’s a very good idea to get to the bottom of what doctor prescribed this to Dump because he could definitely be lying, but I also think it’s very plausible that the Preznit is, in fact, being treated by a full-blown irresponsible quack because that’s exactly the sort of doctor Donny Dump would look to to save him from the demon virus.
I hope he is taking it. And by the jug.
Baud
As a matter of principle, I have steadfastly refused to learn how to pronounce hydroxychloroquine.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I suspect he’s lying — always a good default assumption with Trump — but who knows? I do think every medical professional who works at the White House or is on the task force will be hounded with questions about it. Good.
Lacuna Synecdoche
Betty Cracker @ Top:
Trump will wait to pull the plug on USPS until it’s too late for anyone to prevent it, respond to it, or fix it. So, figure that, if it happens, it’ll happen sometime in late October. Just in time to throw mail service in disarray and prevent ballots from reaching their destination in time.
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I tried cutting back on my dosage so I would have a cushion when it came time for a refill, but failed miserably. Then I was told people had stopped hoarding, so I went back to my regular dosage. Now the hoarding will probably start up again. Sigh.
Elizabelle
I am kind of hoping that, in connection with all the other weird drugs Trump takes, the hydroxy … causes his dick to fall off. Not like it’s of any interest to anyone besides himself.
I would like that.
Baud
@Lacuna Synecdoche: There’s no pulling the plug on USPS. It either gets funding from Congress or it doesn’t. It’s not in Trump’s hands aside from the funding.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
They claim these are going to be volunteers. The KKK never had to pay people to show up for their rallies, and I have no trouble believing the contemporary Republican party can find 50,000 people who would happily volunteer to strap a piece and go to the polls to intimidate a bunch of uppity n****rs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Republicans looked for a way to charge people for the opportunity.
Cheryl Rofer
As I recall from working the polls a few years back, New Mexico law is that pollwatchers have to report to the election judge and do as s/he says. They can observe, and if they have a concern, they report it to the judge. They are not allowed to interact directly with voters. We had one, and we were in a gym, so he sat way back on the bleachers. He brought up one or two things, but he worked them out with the judge.
I don’t know how the court ruling affects New Mexico laws, but it looks to me like it shouldn’t.
bluehill
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Maybe is this the republican party’s exit strategy. Here you go. Take as much as you need.
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Blame it on Pompeo, when the actual reason might be news of arms sales to Saudis could come spilling out.
I don’t see the press letting up on that thread. Or Democrats in the House.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dmsilev: someone may have done it, but I would put that quote in with the one where he tells people to drink Clorox and huff Lysol. I’d add in the one where he says, “she never had the disease, then somehow she tested positive…” and the “if we didn’t test people, we wouldn’t have any cases”, but I’m not convinced the stupidity there is clear enough for anyone whose vote is actually up for grabs
debbie
@Baud:
C’mon. There are rich recruiting grounds at the State Capitols in every blue state. They’d probably jump at the chance to serve and wouldn’t even charge for it. //
The Lodger
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m putting a quarter on Rush Limbaugh’s oxy supplier being involved.
Baud
@Roger Moore: I actually don’t think they can find 50,000 volunteers. The vast majority of his base likes to talk tough but are lazy and frankly not that brave or dedicated.
SiubhanDuinne
My wish for today is that Sarah Cooper will create a “How to Hydroxychloroquine” video.
hueyplong
I want it to be true that Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine.
But because he said he is doing so, I’m 99.44% sure it’s not true.
But the next best thing is for him to tell the 27% who believe him just how great it is to take it even if they are asymptomatic, as is Dear Leader.
This is all starting to remind me of Little Big Man’s back-and-forth with General Custer late in the movie.
laura
so I tried leaving a message at the Leonard Leo protect the vote with shenanigans website this morning in an earlier thread. Seems as though it rejects messages that included the f word. I was asked to try and comment later. I might. If I do, all the necessary f’s will be included.
Leonard Leo, judge selector Leonard Leo. Champion of right wing judges and super fan boy of the virgin mayor of keg city justice Boof Kavanaugh.
Leonard Leo of the Federalist society. Can someone please tell me who funds the Federalist Society because I’d wager a shiny nickel they also fund election suppression 2020.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Elizabelle
Also, I think the GOP program is psy ops, to a large extent.
We can sure come up with a lot of election monitors and attorneys on our own. And would guess the majority of voting will be by mail.
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s PIRIN.
Top secret drug.
laura
@Elizabelle: causes his dick to fall off. How would he or anyone know or notice?
Baud
I wonder if the president has free access to any drug. Like weed or ecstasy.
I should have tried harder.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@hueyplong: It’s starting to remind me of Jonestown.
Baud
I wish a reporter would ask Trump if he has any concerns that his doctor may be part of the deep state.
Elizabelle
@laura: We will only know because it unnerves him so much.
Or he’d start tweeting about … even stranger stuff than now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I know a lot of people here hate Josh Barro, and maybe Dave Weigel, but he, and Weigel, are right here, I think
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh, I don’t believe him in the least?
Amir Khalid
@laura:
I suppose he might notice that if he used a mirror.
WaterGirl
I just watched Slay the Dragon, the film about how we can fight gerrymandering, and how some states have won the fight. It’s angering – not in the helpless rage of “there’s nothing we can do about this” – but in the “damn, we need to fight this what can I do to help” sort of way.
I was able to watch it for free because I was one of the first 250 to response to a Vote Save American email message. but you can stream it from a bunch of different places.
It was really inspirational. No matter how much the deck was stacked against them, they persisted, and they won at the state level.
Elizabelle
WaPost on Trump and his drug-taking. There’s a longer article, too.
Kay
Democrats HAD a very robust voter protection effort in Ohio primarily in ’08 but also in ’12 (to a lesser extent). I was very involved in it, personally filed as a in-person observer (you have to “enter” in Ohio and take an oath). It was really pretty slick- very well-organized and professional. I think it was probably the best run volunteer effort I have ever been involved in. They streamlined it too, between ’08 and ’12. By 2012 we didn’t even have to prepare our own entries- they sent them to us.
So you file your entry and then walk into your designated polling place. The pollworkers administer an oath and you observe. I only one had one instance where I had to intervene and rather than confronting the offending poll worker I called the Board of Elections office and just had the supervisor speak with the pollworker directly, on my own cell phone. The thing is you’re ensuring compliance with rules, so if you know the rules you can just be polite and firm because the Board of Elections will back you up.
Anyway- we can do that again.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I like the Rothman gif.
Biden has been good about not chasing the latest fashion.
dmsilev
Maybe we can get Trump to also start taking colloidal silver like some of the stupider libertarians (and yes, I’m aware that the competition there is fierce) and we could see what the combination of orange makeup and a blue undertone looks like.
Baud
Jeffro
@?BillinGlendaleCA: “starting to”??
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Meh. Jonestown II would give us President Pelosi, so I’m not going to sweat it.
dmsilev
@Baud: Now I’m picturing Don Jr. and Jared holding down a struggling Mike Pence while Ivanka pours in a dose of Clorox.
You know, happy thoughts.
Elizabelle
Earlier WaPost story:
Drug promoted by Trump as coronavirus ‘game changer’ increasingly linked to deaths
WRT COVID patient deaths from hydroxy — that is somewhat to be expected, isn’t it, because the drug is administered pretty much as a Hail Mary? Still, if it can rid us of Trump … or give him a good swift kick in the pants, if he is taking it …
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
I’m not so sure there isn’t a licensed doctor who would prescribe that. shitforbrains® can make stupid and insane things happen. Anything good, he hasn’t got that but stupid – insane? That’s right up his alley.
@rikyrah:
The only downside I can see here is that someone who actually needs this can’t get it. His supporters doing stupid crap that kills them because he told them to? Sorry but I don’t see this as an issue. I hate to be like that but no one is making them and far smarter people than shitforbrains have warned them repeatedly. Even on faux news.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
just switched on MSNBC and heard Katie Tur say Joe Biden had made a progressive move on health care, anybody know what she’s talking about ?
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Trump’s next statement was that people, esp. Dems, were making far too much of it. It was basically no big deal that Pompeo had turned an employee into an errand boy for him and his wife.
hueyplong
Retired Judge Gleeson is asking for a June 10 date to file his brief in the matter of the DOJ’s motion to dismiss charges against Flynn. He also wants to make oral argument.
Presumably, the DOJ (and Flynn’s lawyers, to the extent that’s not now redundant) will probably want to file responses to Gleeson’s filing.
Oral argument sometime in mid-late July?
Looking forward to reading Gleeson’s submission. Guessing we’ll see that Barr has picked a bigger fight than he wants.
Kay
All active Democrats talk about the Obama campaigns as these amazingly well organized operations in this wistful way like….we will never see the likes of that again :)
That is perhaps the wrong way to look at it though. Seems like we could replicate some of this stuff. It was like meetings and calling people. Not magic.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: We have BJ peeps who can no longer get their prescriptions. it’s maddening.
debbie
@dmsilev:
Scintillation writ large!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
as is so often the case, if you invented him for for a novel or a movie, people would say the satire was too ham-fisted to be funny
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Free hydroxychloroquine?
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Kay:
I think people who say this can’t happen are reacting to the inability of Biden to run a decent campaign, which, frankly, he hasn’t. Obama ran a top-notch campaign but Biden was a passenger on that train.
Frankensteinbeck
I’ve heard this plan before. Repeatedly. I have no reason to believe it will happen this time, either. Republicans are lazy and cowardly. Chickenshit bluster while they sit on their ass is the movement’s definition of strength. Their demonstrations are few, involve very few people, those are usually bussed in nationwide, and they’ve stopped doing it if there’s any chance at all they’ll be outnumbered by counterprotesters. They haven’t got the numbers or the balls to do a mass polling place intimidation campaign.
@rikyrah:
I fear that as a ‘Ronald McDonald white’ white man I would look like a dumbass saying that myself, but I love it.
@Cacti:
And like all the other times, it’s not coming. We have many dangers facing us. An organized, violent brownshirt brigade is not one of them.
@schrodingers_cat:
Pretty much. Listening to anything that comes out of Trump’s mouth is a fool’s errand.
hueyplong
Maybe his advisors told Trump that today he could do one of two things: (1) Praise Ivanka for the x million jobs she’s created during the months since their last brag on that point; or (2) tell the public he’s taking hydroxycholorquine.
So he had no choice but to go with pimping the hydroxy.
Jeffro
@dmsilev: win
I’m going to sleep like a baby tonight!
Mike in NC
@dmsilev:
Of course, we all know that no doctor anywhere ever said such a ridiculous thing to Fat Bastard.
Ruckus
@Baud:
I wonder what one of them would do if they accosted my mother when she was 85-90 yrs old, a life long proud democrat, and she told them to get the fuck out of her way or lose every appendage in their pants. And the look on their faces when they realized they were bleeding to death because her time from speaking to action were maybe 2 seconds.
Now that is some speculation sure, but mom was not easily intimidated and really, really did not like to be told she couldn’t do what she had the right to do. I imagine she wouldn’t be the only person like that.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
Joe Biden’s campaign has actually been pretty effective, no? He beat a dozen+ competing Dems in the primary, and has been consistently running ahead of Trump in the swing states.
But Biden’s campaign is not up to your standards… huh…
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle: LOL. One of my favourite scenes from one of my favourite movies!
CliosFanBoy
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Rasputin was poisoned, bludgeoned, stabbed, shot, and finally drowned. Just sayin.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: as I forget who said, nothing Biden does as a candidate or (please god) as President will ever satisfy the emo-needs certain quarters of the internet left. They want performed righteousness that makes right-wingers as angry as they are with trump. True of a lot of the Eternally Disappointed with Obama, too.
West of the Cascades
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “Idiocracy” looks like a David Attenborough documentary by comparison.
Omnes Omnibus
@download my app in the app store mistermix: FFS!
Juju
@Baud: Buy stamps.
gbbalto
@download my app in the app store mistermix: Bless your heart.
Mai naem mobile
I think the New Black Panthers should just hang out at some primarily red voting sites. Especially in gun toting states. In full regalia with a AK47s because,well, they’re legal and you gotta protect your rights. Just make sure they’re wearing kevlar vests underneath.
Cacti
Trump supporters have already shown that they’re willing to commit violence and even kill for their ideology. If you don’t think this is going to ramp up when the cult leader’s job is on the line, you’re living in a fantasy.
Bonnie
Another reason to have all mail-in voting as my state does.