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You are here: Home / Open Threads / We stopped them.

We stopped them.

by | 310 Comments

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I was neither surprised nor alarmed when Trump refused to concede the election and blubbered lies about election fraud when Biden won. Trump is a malignant narcissist, so his entire being is centered on collecting adulation and avoiding shame. He had to have an offramp when he submitted himself to a process whereby other people render a verdict because shame is an existential threat.

Anticipating a loss, Trump did the same thing during the 2016 campaign. He predicted in advance he’d be cheated out of a win. We all got a nasty surprise, including Trump.

In 2020, Trump telegraphed his strategy: 1) convince the mouth-breathers not to use mail-in ballots in the middle of a pandemic so as to delegitimize results that come in after Election Day, 2) tout Election Day results as a glorious victory, and 3) cry foul when his lead vanishes as mail-in ballots are counted.

It would all be a meaningless clown show but for one thing: the complicity of elected Republicans and Trump administration officials. They’ve demonstrated repeatedly that they’ll destroy this country to hang onto power, and hanging onto power requires appeasing Trump and his cult.

The Republicans who aren’t openly lying about the election along with Trump are indulging the liars by making anodyne mouth noises that leave open the possibility that the result is ambiguous. It is not. Biden won, and Trump lost.

Given the above, the behavior of elected Republicans like Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, etc., is disgraceful, conniving, destructive and cowardly but not surprising. The only meaningful question is, is it part of a larger effort that could be effective, i.e., could Republican officials conspire to steal this election?

I sure didn’t think so, given that vacating the election results would involve invalidating about a quarter of a million votes in multiple states, including those run by Republican governors and secretaries of state. But I’ll admit I was alarmed when Barr stuck his big fat thumb on the scale yesterday.

On the one hand, Barr’s move could be interpreted as a Durham investigation maneuver, i.e., the corrupt AG equivalent of sticking a pacifier in his degenerate boss’s gob. But:

Richard Pilger, director of the elections crimes branch in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, told colleagues in an email that the attorney general was issuing “an important new policy abrogating the forty-year-old Non-Interference Policy for ballot fraud investigations in the period prior to elections becoming certified and uncontested.” Pilger also forwarded the memo to colleagues in his resignation letter.

Is Pilger warning of an ongoing danger to the election results, or is he calling our attention to an outrageous impropriety perpetrated by the corrupt Barr that undermines democracy in a way that is similar to what elected Republicans are doing? I don’t know. Pilger deserves our gratitude in either case.

But I felt better after reading this summary of where the attempt to steal the election stands; it was posted on Twitter by Mark Stern, legal scholar at Slate:

Republicans are helping Trump create a harrowing atmosphere of very real, deep fear that he might stage a coup. I feel it, too. But there is no substance behind his theatrics. There are no remotely plausible scenarios in which he will prevail. He will leave office on Jan. 20.

I am intensely pessimistic about everything related to Trump. But none of his lawsuits stand a chance of overturning the outcome of this election. Yes, even with THIS Supreme Court. Trump’s delegitimization of the election may have horrific consequences. But he will leave office.

And to be clear, I absolutely believe there were scenarios in which Trump could steal the election. I wrote about them! But we are not in one. We aren’t even close. The recent actions of Trump and the GOP are truly odious—banana republic stuff. But they won’t work. He will leave.

I am very worried about the consequences of Trump and Republicans convincing their voters that Democrats rig elections through mass voters fraud! I’m worried about future elections that are within stealing distance for the GOP. But I am not worried that Trump will steal this one.

I offer this because it makes me feel more confident, so maybe it’ll make you feel less anxious too, if you’re worried. IMO, it’s not crazy at all to be worried since we’re dealing with a would-be autocrat and utterly corrupt, amoral henchmen who’ve infested every level and branch of government. As Stern implies, if the election had been closer, they might have been able to pull off a heist. But together, we stopped them.

 

Reader Interactions

310Comments

  2. 2.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    Trump voters in 2020 can’t claim that they didn’t know what they were voting for.

    IMO, they’ve forfeited their oxygen license. BAG ‘EM!

  3. 3.

    Baud

    FWIW, I read that Pilger didn’t resign from DOJ, but from his leadership post.  So he’s sending a signal but it’s not a foghorn.

  5. 5.

    J.

    I wasn’t worried, until I read this. (I’ve kind of been avoiding the news, only checking to see how much Biden’s lead has grown.)

    The spouse and I became Florida residents so we could help vote out Trump and his sycophants. We don’t really want to stay here (we come from a Blue state), but if it means getting rid of Rubio and DeSantis in 2022, we will.

  6. 6.

    The Moar You Know

    Not worried.  These fuckers are paying lip service to The Loser because they’re hoping he will graciously extend them a pardon for their many crimes before he departs January 20th.

    SPOILER:  there will be no pardons for anyone not named “Trump”

  8. 8.

    Yarrow

    Also, Trump isn’t competent so he’ll tell everyone the strategy ahead of time and we’ll have a better chance to do something about it.

  9. 9.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Speaking of Slate, I am inclined to this articles assertion; this is all just another grift from Trump.

    https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/trump-election-fraud-raise-money-fundraising-emails-rnc.html

    Despite losing the election, President Donald Trump is assailing the structural integrity of the U.S. electoral system, filing frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit, and pecking out ominous tweets that he was robbed. Part of this approach to losing is Trump’s own personal style, which is to push conspiracy theories while obliterating everything within reach. Will a protracted meltdown win Trump the presidency? Almost certainly not. But it’s increasingly clear what it will do is allow Trump to raise money.

    It’s always been a grift since day one with Trump.

  10. 10.

    Omnes Omnibus

    FWIW I tend to regard Stern as panicky and overwrought. So if he isn’t panicking, that is a really good sign.

  11. 11.

    cope

    I can’t help but feel trump himself is just putting on a show and will, ultimately, be gone.  I don’t think he will have to be ejected from the WH, I think that he will leave for the holidays and just never come back.

    As for the complicit rest of them, they are happy to play along as well, probably in an attempt to keep the deplorables riled up enough to prevent two losses in Georgia in January.

    I expect a good final result but will not be taking my eye off the ball.

  12. 12.

    WereBear

    As Stern implies, if the election had been closer, they might have been able to pull off a heist. But together, we stopped them.

    That worked as we were told, so thanks for this update.

  13. 13.

    CaseyL

    I think one of the ways we stopped them was, ironically, because the pandemic made mail-in voting nearly universal. One of the usual ways the GOP uses to suppress voting – lack of polling access in key Democratic areas – was a non-factor this year in most states. (Not Texas, obviously.)

    Since we haven’t yet taken the Senate, I do see this election as a holding action at best.  Without the Senate, Biden can’t push through the reforms we desperately need to overcome the RW authoritarianism seeded through the Courts.  He can’t get tax policies passed to reverse oligarchy.  He might not even get the Cabinet he wants.

    So, another four, maybe eight, years of treading water up to our noses.

  14. 14.

    Matt McIrvin

    In Michigan they’re literally trying to get the legislature to reverse a 150,000 – vote lead on the grounds that ALL THE MAIL VOTES, obviously already cast in good faith by real voters, are somehow “illegal”. The scale of it is breathtaking.

    (And, yes, I was warning people about this and getting dinged for being hysterical before Election Day.)

  16. 16.

    mad citizen

    I think we’re all exhausted.  I was looking at my gmail where I get NextDoor emails (have so far refused to install that app anywhere), and saw a political thread from Oct. 23.  One guy posted about why he was voting for trump; the usual reasons–religion, constitution, white men, whatever.  Then there was this gem: “I am voting for the Electoral College to remain in place so that a few populated centers don’t control the elections.”

    I just can’t stop hitting on the EC, and think the Dems should go after it relentlessly.  It is so undemocratic, rendering the votes of so many millions (on both sides depending on where you live and how you vote) moot each and every presidential election. (not to mention the stupid state by state results/projections/media call etc.).

    I have a suggestion for us over the next couple months: items we think Biden should put in his inauguration address.  I have two: mention the EC as undemocratic; and a hunk addressing whiteness/white supremacy/however you want to say it.  Biden should lay out the demographic facts of how whites will become (if not already–can’t recall), the “minority majority” of the nation; and go further to talk some about our diversity across so many characteristics and so many geographical areas.  These backward whites have got to start getting the message they aren’t the only ones living in the country, and the country is not just for them.

    (rant off).

  17. 17.

    WereBear

    @Matt McIrvin:

    (And, yes, I was warning people about this and getting dinged for being hysterical before Election Day.)

     
    As someone who suffers from this ridiculously often, I’ve come to see other people’s hysteria as a sign I’M RIGHT.

  21. 21.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Zelma: It’s not done then. It’s only done when Congress certifies those votes on January 6, without some kind of drama about how some other clowns are the real electors.

  22. 22.

    Leto

    I am very worried about the consequences of Trump and Republicans convincing their voters that Democrats rig elections through mass voters fraud!

    Pretty sure they’ve been doing this since Goldwater. But I do love the fact they gutted the VRA, implemented stringent voter ID, gerrymandered the fuck out of most R controlled districts, voter roll purges in mostly blue/BIPOC areas… and still want to claim that there’s voter fraud going on. Motherfuckers…

  23. 23.

    Walker

    Here is my current worry.  The Senate will filibuster every single appointment, making it impossible to make deals with the “sane” portion of the Senate.  Biden cannot do the “Acting” trick that Trump did, because that relies on a technicality — that the person was Senate approved for another position.  If no one is approved for anything, there is no way to make anyone acting.

  26. 26.

    Betty Cracker

    @Matt McIrvin: FWIW, I think it’s hard to overstate the danger these goons pose because they’ll stop at nothing. There are people who overreact. There are people who underreact. And then there’s me, who arrives at exactly the right level of alarm via geometric logic. ;-)

    @J.: Yes! Help us get rid of those mofos! ;-)

  27. 27.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    In Michigan they’re literally trying to get the legislature to reverse a 150,000 – vote lead

    We’ve been trying to get universal health care for a century. Trying don’t mean shit.

  28. 28.

    Humdog

    @mad citizen: I think reallocating representation in the House could help diminish the EC. If we can pass a bill, not an amendment like abolishing the EC, to increase the House above 435, the small states’ overweighting will be reduced.

    of course, Manchin supporting the filibuster makes this moot, and we’d have to have the Senate help pass a bill so cannot happen with Majority Leader turtle

  29. 29.

    Yarrow

    @Zelma:  I will not relax until Biden is sworn in. I am not overly worried but I’m paying attention and know they’ll do anything they can to hold onto power because their own lives are at stake.

  30. 30.

    Mary G

    I’m on my phone with cats on me, so I can’t get the actual tweet, but somebody asked Preet Bharara whether we should be scared or annoyed by this nonsense. He said annoyed. For now.

  31. 31.

    CaseyL

    Re the EC:  I saw a comment that some states have passed laws that their Electors must reflect the results of the popular vote, also known as proportional representation.  Democrats have fought this over the years, because we do well with winner-take-all states (California, e.g.) but it is an end run around the EC without having to amend the Constitution.

  32. 32.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Matt McIrvin:

    In Michigan they’re literally trying to get the legislature to reverse a 150,000 – vote lead on the grounds that ALL THE MAIL VOTES, obviously already cast in good faith by real voters, are somehow “illegal”. The scale of it is breathtaking.

    GOP-controlled legislatures in states (PA, MI, WI, AZ, GA) that Biden won are the dangerous actors here, not the Supreme Court.

    However, the Supreme Court would decide whether or not the state legislatures could get away with this heist.  And at least a few of them have indicated that they’d buy the argument that they can.

  33. 33.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Walker: do they have to have been approved by the current Senate? I am usually the sworn enemy of “One Weird Trick” politics, so this is just an example: could Biden threaten them with Acting SoS Hillary Clinton?

  34. 34.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Walker: Actually, in this case the “acting” title falls to existing civil servants. Who are mostly decent people.

    McConnell will confirm appointments, though. He might decide not to confirm anyone not sufficiently “centrist”, but he’ll still confirm some of them even in the worst case.

  35. 35.

    Yarrow

    I know there’s been discussion about Never Trumpers and the LP folks and how sincere they are. I think Stuart Stevens, who wrote a book about the Republican party called “It Was All A Lie,” might be done with Republicans for good. I’ve really enjoyed his Twitter feed over the last few days. He sounds like he could be a commenter here:

    This country would be better off if we took 90+% of Republicans in Washington down to the Mexican border and traded them for the next aspiring immigrant in line. Except Mexico won’t allow Americans because these same Republicans have failed so badly. https://t.co/IzyXpaofaQ
    — stuart stevens (@stuartpstevens) November 9, 2020

    The entire Republican vote “fraud” message is just an extension of Jim Crow voter suppression. What Trump, Kemp, McConnell are saying is that Black votes are suspect and likely illegal. https://t.co/CIEZeUqFb6
    — stuart stevens (@stuartpstevens) November 10, 2020

  37. 37.

    Benw

    Word is bond, Betty.

    I suddenly realized that only two people ever have assumed the Presidency after the US was effectively ruled by a possibly-syphilitic madman controlled by a foreign power: George Washington and Joe freakin Biden!

  38. 38.

    debbie

    I skimmed the thread very quickly, but I apologize if this has already been brought up: Trump’s mind is telling him the results are a fraud because he schemed to stop mail-in ballots from being counted by fucking with the USPS. His mind tells him he never fails, so the mail-in ballots cannot possibly be geniune.

    He’ll leave in January, but this will never die. He will use this for the rest of time to rile up his base.

  39. 39.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Totally agree, Betty. The Secretaries of State are standing firm, and the Biden margins are in the tens of thousands. They aren’t going to be overturned by any recounts, if they are done. And I’ve seen a couple of SOS comments saying “Don’t even bother.”

    There’s less worrying about a coup, although that word is reaching people who should know better on Twitter. Trump blew the first act of a would-be autocrat: He alienated the military. His shenanigans with the march to the church were a final straw for many. And the military ballots are coming in on Biden’s side. That’s why the Republicans are trying to get them thrown out in Nevada.

    In any case, the military brass still feel, correctly, that this election furore is none of their business.

    At best, Barr might be able to put some of his prison goons on the streets, but what would they do then?

    Oh, and it looks to me like Barr’s instructions are ambiguous enough to give him space to defend himself in the trials later. He is a lawyer, after all.

  40. 40.

    Felanius Kootea

    The thing that gets me is they saw the level of jubilation across the country at the Biden win, the pot banging and spontaneous dance parties.  How do they think those voters will react if tens of thousands of perfectly valid votes are somehow invalidated by Republican-led state legislatures? It’s weird dealing with a delusional group of people who also hold office.

  41. 41.

    MisterForkbeard

    @CaseyL:

    Democrats have fought this over the years, because we do well with winner-take-all states (California, e.g.) but it is an end run around the EC without having to amend the Constitution.

    Actually, Democrats have fought this because it’s usually Republican legislatures who want this to happen in just the blue states, leaving Red States winner take all. If it was across the country at once, I don’t think Dems have a problem with it.

  42. 42.

    patrick II

    I am very worried about the consequences of Trump and Republicans convincing their voters that Democrats rig elections through mass voters fraud! I’m worried about future elections that are within stealing distance for the GOP.

    We have already seen them steal a close one in 2020, and if the Supreme Court gambit hadn”t worked, the Florida legislator was preparing itself to select its own electors in the case of a Gore recount win.
    So, we have to win, but also win big enough to be cheat proof with rules and electoral college that favors the opponents, and a Supreme Court that will do anything to help them.
    I certainly hope we have seriously strong candidates, ground game, and add a few SC justices in the future.

  44. 44.

    BR

    @Yarrow:

    Yeah, Stuart Stevens seems most sincere of the lot.  Frum, Schmidt, Nichols, and Kristol seem done with the current GOP but willing to support a future GOP. Wilson seems like a political schemer who saw an opportunity here but will flip back on a moment’s notice.

  45. 45.

    Humdog

    @Felanius Kootea: I wonder if thoughts of punishing the celebrating crowds are encouraging to those who want the election overturned. Another gas and wallop the crowds incident gives those folks the warm fuzzies.

  47. 47.

    balconesfault

    @lowtechcyclist:

    My nightmare scenario.

    NC and Arizona both end up in Trump’s column. That gives him 240.

    Lawsuits in GA, PA, MI, WI continue into early December. Legislatures for those states meet and decide to “compromise” – since “nobody can really know who won” in their states, they will apportion EC votes based on percentage of votes in their states:

    WI – 5/5 (Biden/Trump)
    PA – 10/10
    GA – 8/8
    MI – 9/7

    That takes Trump to 270 with AZ and NC.

    And the Supremes have already signaled that they will defer to State Legislatures on electoral decisions.

  48. 48.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MisterForkbeard:

    Actually, Democrats have fought this because it’s usually Republican legislatures who want this to happen in just the blue states, leaving Red States winner take all. If it was across the country at once, I don’t think Dems have a problem with it.

    There was a time, not so long ago, when I’m pretty sure winner-take-all nationwide was a net gain for Democrats, roughly canceling out the small-state advantage for the Republicans. The biggest states tended to be more Democratic, and winner-take-all meant the urban blue vote would effectively disenfranchise their rural red regions.

    But it’s not a net Democratic advantage any more. The reason is the Big Sort and other demographic changes. Some former big swing states (Ohio, Florida) have come to lean weakly Republican, and Texas seems to get more and more weakly Republican, while the coastal blue states get more intensely Democratic. So more Democratic votes are “wasted” by being above the 50% threshold for a state

    The small-state bonus is actually a relatively minor issue by comparison.

  52. 52.

    thebewilderness

    After months of Trump claiming that the votes delivered by the USPS are compromised and should not be counted I am curious to see if there is a Republican Legislature willing to believe him and take the obvious necessary action. I don’t think there is.

  53. 53.

    The Moar You Know

    n Michigan they’re literally trying to get the legislature to reverse a 150,000 – vote lead on the grounds that ALL THE MAIL VOTES, obviously already cast in good faith by real voters, are somehow “illegal”. The scale of it is breathtaking.

    @Matt McIrvin: I’ve been trying to fuck Jennifer Lawrence for four solid years on the grounds that I’m the only man that should be legally allowed to, and the scale of the restraining orders is breathtaking.

    Your hysteria and doomposting is tiresome.

  54. 54.

    Hoodie

    Over the last few weeks I’ve experienced these distinct vignettes that bring home that half the country has been living in Triumph of the Will while the rest of us – including liberals and conservatives – have been stuck in a Veggie Tales version of constitutional history that renders us helpless in dealing with pure evil.  For example, I was talking with a liberal acquaintance the other morning and mentioned what a joke the Senate is in a country where a state with 44 million people has the same representation as one predominantly populated by jackrabbits and sage brush.  Not to rag on her, but her reaction was an honest “I hadn’t thought about that,” which gives some sense of the way a huge number of otherwise well-intentioned people unconsciously operate under all these ridiculous myths, giving room for careerist asswipes like Amy Coney Barrett to spout scholastic nonsense like originalism with a straight face.

  55. 55.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @BR: they’re different in that their pundits, not campaign operatives, but Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot also seem quite sincere. Boot has said he’s embarrassed he was blind to the racism in the GOP because Russian anti-Semitism was one of the biggest reasons his parents left Russia in the 70s.

  56. 56.

    Jeffro

    @mad citizen: I just can’t stop hitting on the EC, and think the Dems should go after it relentlessly. It is so undemocratic, rendering the votes of so many millions (on both sides depending on where you live and how you vote) moot each and every presidential election. (not to mention the stupid state by state results/projections/media call etc.).

    I agree.  I know it’s a tough, nearly impossible slog to get rid of it, but ya gotta start someplace.  Remind the Rs that the minute we get one more vote in Texas than they do, they’ll feel the same way.

  57. 57.

    BR

    @Matt McIrvin:

    There could be an impending mass migration out of California, especially Northern California, as a result of the fires and also because tech companies are allowing people to work from home permanently. These are folks who are in 80-20 Dem counties and probably will roughly continue to vote that way no matter where they land.

  60. 60.

    balconesfault

    @BR:  It’s possible … but unlikely, fortunately.

    Most recent update shows Trump needing to win 63.8% of votes to be counted in AZ.

    The last 3 batches of votes have come in 85.8%, 61.4%, and 51.1% for Trump.

    I would like to feel as sure that that door has slammed shut as you seem to be.

  61. 61.

    Baud

    @Jeffro:

    For all the talk about our struggles with Latinos in the Rio Grande Valley, Biden actually inched closer in Texas than Hillary, who herself did better than Obama.

  62. 62.

    Brachiator

    The recent actions of Trump and the GOP are truly odious—banana republic stuff. But they won’t work. He will leave.

    I totally agree with this. But this makes the complicity of the GOP leadership more puzzling and despicable. I have said before that they are happy to go down in flames with Trump. But the problem is that Trump’s base has grown and is even more determined to be there for him. And so, sadly, Trumpism may continue long after the Orange Beast himself finally leaves office.

    It is also troubling to see some Republican pundits and institutions sign on to the voter fraud lie. This has always been nonsense, from the second that Trump broached it. And conservatives know it is nonsense. And yet here they are, not only validating bullshit, but endorsing a list cause.

    Equally puzzling is Trump firing people in order to replace them with loyalists who will do his bidding. What mischief is he planning?

    Trump is going. There is little doubt about that. But he seems determined to make his last weeks hell for the rest of us. And again, the bad thing isn’t just Trump’s antics, but the degree to which the Republican leadership will lend their support.

    We will get through this. But it is a pain that we have to deal with this at all.

  63. 63.

    Yarrow

    @Hoodie:

    I was talking with a liberal acquaintance the other morning and mentioned what a joke the Senate is in a country where a state with 44 million people has the same representation as one predominantly populated by jackrabbits and sage brush. Not to rag on her, but her reaction was an honest “I hadn’t thought about that,”

    I think this is a really important point. Most people don’t think about government and how it works all that much. It’s incumbent upon those of us that do to find simple, clear ways of talking about how our current system isn’t really fair and how that in turn hurts all of us.

  64. 64.

    balconesfault

    @raven: My point is that the legislatures don’t need to “reverse” the will of the voters.

    They just have to claim that they’re splitting the baby.

    This is much more likely to be upheld by the Supremes than any of the states simply deciding to award all their EC votes to Trump.

  65. 65.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @lowtechcyclist:

    They can’t simply change the rules after the election. The electors of the winner of the pop vote in those states are the only ones that can be approved. It would be blatantly illegal. There’s federal laws against this shit

  66. 66.

    Another Scott

    Someone on “On Point” on NPR yesterday (I think that was the show) was saying something like “one lesson from 50:50 elections is that it’s very dangerous to Democracy”, or something like that.

    That got me wondering – someone should spend 15 minutes and look at the 20th and 21st century popular vote totals in the USA and put last week’s results in context (once the quasi-final numbers are in). It’s been rare that elections are 60/40 blowouts or more. Very rare.

    Even the most recent one, Reagan/Mondale in 1984:

    Popular vote 54,455,472 37,577,352 (-16.88M)
    Percentage 58.8% 40.6%

    vs. Carter/Ford in 1976:

    Popular vote 40,831,881 39,148,634
    Percentage 50.1% 48.0%

    and 1968 Nixon/Humphrey/Wallace:

    Popular vote 31,783,783 31,271,839 9,901,118
    Percentage 43.4% 42.7% 13.5%

    and Kennedy/Nixon in 1960:

    Popular vote 34,220,984 34,108,157
    Percentage 49.72% 49.55%

    Fairly close elections are not that unusual, and this one will not be especially close. The country didn’t end when Carter (and Nixon) won.

    tl;dr – Trump and his enablers are the problem.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  67. 67.

    BR

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Yeah, they seem to be on conserva-Dem land these days — like they’re going to openly support Dems as a party (and continue to advocate for more conservative policies, but still within the tent).

    Of the lot Nichols seems the most intellectually honest in that he is very clear about his political views but that he is going to actively argue against the GOP at least through the 2022 midterms.

  68. 68.

    Jeffro

    @Walker: what about ‘acting’-acting? ;)

    If the GOP obstructs even Cabinet appointments, Biden & Co strike me as a tough enough bunch to tell them, “too bad, we’re appointing Mr. Smith and Ms. Jones anyway”.  And run relentlessly against that for the 2022 midterms.

    Related side note:  if the Senate GOP engages in that kind of epic obstruction right off the bat, it would sort of flip-flop the usual productivity in a president’s first term.  Normally, everything gets done in the first two years and then not much in the second two years.  Here, we might see Biden/Harris not able to get very much done in 2021-2022, crush the GOP in the midterms, and then step on the gas in 2023-2024.

  70. 70.

    Jeffro

    @CaseyL: if proportional representation happens only in ‘blue’ states and not others, we’re screwed.

    Yet another reason to just get rid of the EC

    eta: I see Mister Forkbeard got there first

  71. 71.

    chopper

    here’s hoping that, as it turns out, an underpants gnomes-level plan combined with the absolute dumbest lawyers in the country were not enough to steal the election for trump.

  73. 73.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @balconesfault:

    Blatantly illegal. There’s already laws on the books about the winner of the pop vote getting the state’s EC votes. There’s federal laws against changing election rules retroactively to alter a result. They can’t just simply go back like that because they don’t like the result.

    And besides, the House could simply refuse to certify the election until the correct electors are approved

  74. 74.

    Princess

    @Matt McIrvin: And that’s the day after the GA run-off election.

    I maintain that all of this is theatre, designed to keep an angry Trump base that is furious with the GOP onside until the runoff. It’s also probably designed to stop Trump from raising money for 2024 until they have finished raising money for Loeffler and Perdue. The tell is Loeffler and Perdue getting in on the act with the GA GOP SoS. They’ll have the run-off, confirm Biden’s win and that will be the end of it.

    And if it helps anyone, I am on the side of panicky and doom-fearing and I am not panicky and doom-fearing abut this.

    Shameful though of the GOP to put our system of elections in question because they can’t control the monster they have created with trump and their voters any other way. It will do further long-term damage to the country.

  75. 75.

    balconesfault

    @Goku (Amerikan Baka): That is the point of the lawsuits – to run the clock right up to December 8 with votes still being challenged in unresolved court cases.

    Opening the window for State Legislatures to step in and declare that the December 8 timeline has forced them to make a decision and since “nobody knows for sure who won …”.

  77. 77.

    mad citizen

    @Baud: Thanks for this link.  So 16 jurisdictions have voted for it (assume that means states).  I don’t think the red states will ever go for it, but it would be great if all the states did–an easier way to get there than an amendment.

    I can’t find a list (and am too lazy to look at the bio of each first lady), but Jill Biden was born in Jersey, worked in Ocean City at 15 as a waitress, and I think from a puff piece I saw on CBS Sunday Morning identifies somewhat as a “Jersey Girl” (even though it seems she lived a lot in the Philly area).  Will she be the first “Jersey Girl” First Lady, I wonder?

  79. 79.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @balconesfault:

    My understanding was it was just a footnote in one of Kavanaugh’s opinions, so it’s not actually “official” doctrine yet.

    The real point though is that state legislatures already decided how elections were to be run by passing laws dictating how EC votes are to be allocated. They can’t simply retroactively change them because they don’t like the outcome

  80. 80.

    Baud

    @balconesfault: It can’t succeed unless they find a wingnut judge who is willing to enjoin the SoS of the state from certifying the results, and they have failed miserably so far.  Even if they find such a judge, I think the SoS will tell the judge to pound sand.

  81. 81.

    Jeffro

    @Brachiator: Equally puzzling is Trump firing people in order to replace them with loyalists who will do his bidding. What mischief is he planning?

    I think he’s putting in loyalists who will shred all the evidence of the past four years’ crimes, and/or making sure that there’s no one competent or willing (or both) to ‘liase’ with the Biden/Harris transition team.

  82. 82.

    patrick II

    @Baud:

    I just filled out that form and added two cents of my own.  I will forward all of the emails I get in response to you if you want to tell me your email address.

    As an aside, a Wyoming vote is currently worth 3.7  California votes in a presidential election.

  83. 83.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @balconesfault:

    Opening the window for State Legislatures to step in and declare that the December 8 timeline has forced them to make a decision and since “nobody knows for sure who won …”.

    Which, again, would be illegal. They would be violating the state’s own election laws about how EC votes are allocated. The House would then play hardball and refuse to certify the election until the correct electors are approved

  84. 84.

    Princess

    @Baud: I think so too. But if they do decide to push it to the edge, the GA election and Congress certification gives us a clear set of dates. I mean, even Erdogan has congratulated Biden. Even NPR is taking a clear line that Biden is presdent-elect. Even NPR.

  85. 85.

    Another Scott

    @Jeffro: I think Donnie is just rage tweeting with things like Esper’s firing.  He’s punishing people who were “unfair” to him.  Nothing more than that.  He doesn’t care what happens to the US Government after January 20.  He’s just getting revenge on people who did him wrong.

    We’ll see.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  86. 86.

    balconesfault

    @Baud: There is hope there – given Dem SOS’s, and even Georgia’s Republican SOS seeming to be unwilling to go along with Trump’s BS.

    Thanks

  87. 87.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud:

    Exactly. PA, AZ, WI, and MI all have Dem SOS. They all say, “The court has made it’s decision. Now let them enforce it.”

    Same thing with the Dem House

  89. 89.

    Matt McIrvin

    @balconesfault: Here’s where I get to play the voice of sanity: They haven’t said that exactly. Even that Kavanaugh footnote was talking about interpretation of an actual codified state law, not rogue legislators claiming the prerogative of violating state law at will.

  90. 90.

    balconesfault

    @Goku (Amerikan Baka):

    “The House would then play hardball and refuse to certify the election until the correct electors are approved”

    Hmmm … I can see the right wing uprising as “President Nancy” is about to be sworn in given an absence of an EC victory for either candidate …

  91. 91.

    Princess

    @Jeffro: The odd thing about that is (speaking as someone who has shredded documents during a shift in government), the person who was in charge is the person with the best feel for exactly what needs to be shredded. I’m inclined the firings are mostly Trumpian spite. (“If you’re a good boy until the election Donnie, we’ll let you fire anyone you like.”)

  92. 92.

    Yarrow

    ??? “The president’s eldest son and his girlfriend.” The whole thing is just one giant grift for the Trump family. And yep, as predicted Trump will turn on Republicans who he thinks “didn’t do enough for me.” That’s how it works with narcissists.

    The president’s eldest son and his girlfriend have made it clear to campaign and WH officials they are unhappy with RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who they view as not having done enough to win a close race.
    — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) November 10, 2020

  93. 93.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Benw:

    Historical trivia – President Washington’s top Army general was a paid Spanish agent , and he engaged in intrigues designed to consign western areas of the new country to Spain.

  94. 94.

    Yarrow

    @Another Scott:

    He’s punishing people who were “unfair” to him. Nothing more than that.

    Yep. That’s how it works with him. Someone is either for Trump or against him. Things are good for him or bad for him. It’s pretty simple to figure him out once you understand that part.

    Now his minions, henchmen and the traitor tots are in different categories. Some of them, like the tots, are desperate to stay on daddy’s good side so they’re fairly easy to figure out. Some of the minions and henchmen are realizing they have to take care of themselves so they’ll be the ones shredding documents, making the transition difficult, or pushing to get people fired to protect their interests.

  97. 97.

    The Moar You Know

    The president’s eldest son and his girlfriend have made it clear to campaign and WH officials they are unhappy with RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who they view as not having done enough to win a close race.

    @Yarrow:  The whole story is WAY better:

    “Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle could seek leadership roles at the RNC to position the committee for a comeback run for the President in 2024, the sources said.”

    The Trumps want to take over the entire RNC.  Griftopia.

  98. 98.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    OT: Andrea Mitchell asks Xavier Becerra if he would accept a nomination to replace Harris in the Senate, and he does not say no. “It would be an honor to be called to serve….” I thought I had read he wasn’t interested because he wanted to be Governor

  99. 99.

    Brachiator

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Oh, and it looks to me like Barr’s instructions are ambiguous enough to give him space to defend himself in the trials later. He is a lawyer, after all.

    That’s good. Barr is definitely a quisling, but nonetheless he has crafted an escape route.

  100. 100.

    Frank Wilhoit

    @Cheryl Rofer: “…that this election furore is none of their business….”

    Narrowly so, but zoom out a li’l’, by reading “political” for “election”, and it is very much their business, because it impacts — already or soon — many core aspects of doing their job, from recruitment to procurement to compliance to credibility.  This is not peripheral and it is not small ball.  They are going to have to figure something out to ameliorate it; they might perhaps prefer to simply insulate themselves from it, but…how?

  101. 101.

    Kattails

    You know I honestly believed I could get back to not waking up every day wondering what  idiotic disaster might have occurred while I was sleeping; not run to grab coffee and go online to reassure myself that the country was OK.

    I did manage to lock on yesterday to something, (which someone else may have brought up on another thread & I just missed it). That is, our vice-president elect was the actual attorney general for a very large state; our former President Barack Obama was a professor of constitutional law for 8 years at the University of Chicago (plus four as lecturer). I think we have a number of powerhouse people working on this.

  102. 102.

    scav

    @Another Scott: The other thing is, Dumpty does seem to rather believe that chaos (and uncertainty / competition) produces  better results.  Bang on the refrigerator harder, that’ll fix it,  Always got the jukebox working for the Fonz.

  104. 104.

    Frank Wilhoit

    @balconesfault: “…the Supremes have already signaled that they will defer to State Legislatures…”

    No, they haven’t; or, perhaps better said, they have also signalled the opposite, depending upon which party stands to gain.

  106. 106.

    Quiltingfool

    I’m writing this before I read the comments – but just had to jump in.  I got a pedicure today (everybody masked!  Only 4 people in the shop!).  Now, when I go home, I always see a big Trump Pence 2020 sign.  Sign has been up for the last year or so.  Today the sign said Trump 2024.  I snickered.

    Somebody needs to tell Trump his sign people have moved on!

  107. 107.

    Yarrow

    @The Moar You Know:  It’s really excellent news for Dems. If Trump/his family takes over the RNC they will direct a lot of the money to their incompetent enterprises.. That leaves less money for things that would actually help Republicans get elected.

  108. 108.

    Another Scott

    I just got a fundraising e-mail from Al Gross in AK that points out that Alaska is just beginning to count its absentee ballots today – https://www.elections.alaska.gov/Core/alaskavotecountingsystems.php

    Absentee Ballots (By-Mail, By Electronic
    Transmission, Absentee In-Person, Special Needs and
    Federal Write-In Absentee Ballots)

    Regional elections offices begin counting absentee ballots seven days after Election Day. All absentee ballots must be counted no later than 10 days after the date of the primary election and 15 days after the general election and all other state conducted elections.

    Poor, poor Donnie – the process grinds on. And President-Elect Biden will be victorious.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  110. 110.

    Hoodie

    @balconesfault: The same thing constrains GOP legislators, e.g., they don’t want the statehouse in Madison in flames.  The parade of horribles you’re envisioning is not going to happen, this is mostly about keeping intensity up for the GA runoffs, generally delegitimatizing the Biden admin, and setting up new voter suppression tactics.   People are going to want to keep vote by mail even without the pandemic.  If you’re increasingly relying on a fervent base to win elections, however, you want to make voting as big a hassle as possible, especially when 2020 tells you that your supporters will turn out without vote by mail. Hence, you amp up the crazy rhetoric about voter fraud to put obstacles in front of normal people and keep your own supporters strung out like meth addicts.

  111. 111.

    Brachiator

    @The Moar You Know:

    The Trumps want to take over the entire RNC.  Griftopia.

    Trump Jr is even more insufferable than his daddy. And maybe twice as delusional.

    I note, however that I have no idea what the right wing nutcase base think about Trump the Lesser.

  112. 112.

    patrick II

    It bothers me that while Joe is all “let’s come together” McConnell, Barr, Graham, etc. are all planning to fuck over Joe as much as possible.  They don’t expect to win the court cases but to set up the fact that he didn’t win legitimately, is not a legitamite president, and should got no cooperation from the Republican Senate as they drive the country as close to hell as they can while blaming Biden.

    I hope Joe keeps smiling.

  115. 115.

    randal m sexton

    @Baud: Thanks for putting up the link to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact — I am always amazed at how ‘stealthy’ this effort is, and how many people are unaware of it.

  117. 117.

    Kent

    @Walker:Here is my current worry.  The Senate will filibuster every single appointment, making it impossible to make deals with the “sane” portion of the Senate.  Biden cannot do the “Acting” trick that Trump did, because that relies on a technicality — that the person was Senate approved for another position.  If no one is approved for anything, there is no way to make anyone acting.

    This is wrong.  There is always someone in authority at every moment in time in every agency of the government.  You just keep going down the chain of command until you find the next person in line.

    What Trump was trying to do is insert his own people into the chain of command where they had no authority because the existing civil service folks were not likely to support his illegal acts.  That’s something entirely different.

    Biden will have ironclad control over the executive branch regardless of whether or not a single cabinet secretary gets confirmed.  Count on it.  Especially because most of the rank and file civil service and the senior executives in each agency will support what he is doing.

    The business of government doesn’t come to a halt without a leader at the top of the agency.  It doesn’t even slow down.  Most of it happens in sub-cabinet agencies anyway.  It’s like the military.  If you take out a general, the next person in the chain of command is instantly in charge.  There is never not someone in command.

  119. 119.

    germy

    @Quiltingfool:   Today the sign said Trump 2024.

    Was it a hand made sign, or did it look like it came from the Trump org?

    I’m curious if he’s selling those to his fans yet.

  120. 120.

    Yarrow

    @The Moar You Know:  The RNC spent a lot of money buying Jr’s book to turn it into a “bestseller.” That’ll be small beans compared to what they’ll do if/when they run the place. Republicans have had plenty of chances to stand up to these grifters and they’ve chosen not to. They deserve everything that’s coming.

  121. 121.

    catclub

    @Yarrow: yes, the senate is just ONE of the mechanisms of our government designed to slow progess. It is roadblocks all the way down, up, and sideways.

  122. 122.

    BC in Illinois

    @Yarrow:

    . . . what a joke the Senate is in a country where a state with 44 million people has the same representation as one predominantly populated by jackrabbits and sage brush.

    My example is my my own location.

    • St Louis County — population 998,684 (2018)
    • State of Wyoming — population 578,759 (2019)

    Wyoming deserves 60% of the national spotlight given to St Louis County, Missouri

  123. 123.

    Yarrow

    @germy:  He hasn’t officially declared he’s running for 2024 because he’s still arguing he’s won 2020. Once the dust is settled on 2020 he’ll announce for 2024 and begin fleecing the rubes.

  126. 126.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Yarrow:

    I think this is a really important point. Most people don’t think about government and how it works all that much. It’s incumbent upon those of us that do to find simple, clear ways of talking about how our current system isn’t really fair and how that in turn hurts all of us.

    Even those of us who do follow politics and government pretty closely have areas of ignorance — not because we don’t care, but because they simply never came across our radar screens, until they did.

    As just one small example out of many, I didn’t know until two days ago that the Administrator of the GSA must write a “letter of ascertainment” in order to release funds, facilities, and other resources to a presidential transition team. Simply never occurred to me.

  127. 127.

    Kattails

    @Yarrow: I have had this same frustrating conversation with a couple of Democrats and gotten “well that’s the way it is and we’ll never change it”.  So as patrick II mentioned at #82, , a Wyoming vote is worth 3.7 California votes.  I totally agree with you.

    We need framing, solid, simple framing that lays out, for example, a map of the country showing those margins. It would be damned interesting. You could frame it as a base #– whose votes are worth exactly one, and then put it as “someone in this state’s vote is worth + 3 and someone in this state is worth -2.  Map or bar graph or both.  How do you run those numbers?

  128. 128.

    Brachiator

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Historical trivia – President Washington’s top Army general was a paid Spanish agent , and he engaged in intrigues designed to consign western areas of the new country to Spain.

    James Wilkinson.  Holy shit. This guy’s life is an amazing story.

    Did not know anything about this. Now I have another book on my reading list.

  129. 129.

    Jeffro

    @Yarrow: “Hey Republicans!  How do you feel about Donnie Jr and Lap Dance taking over your whole party’s operation, and turning it into a high-skim moneymaker for the trumpov family?”

    LOLOL

    They think they went broke quickly this election cycle, whew, wait until 2022!

    Although I can see the GOP’s response would be to start sending money directly to candidates, PACs, etc and avoid having half of it skimmed off by the trump trash.  Junior and Lap Dance would be sitting there like the Maytag repairman, waiting eternally for the (cash) phone to ring.

    Too funny!

  130. 130.

    Hoodie

    @BC in Illinois: Wyoming population has actually declined over the last few years.  I do wonder if we are going to reach a phase where states like CA, TX, FL, etc. threaten to leave simply because they’re getting such a crappy deal for their federal tax dollars.  I’ve heard people proposing having folks move from places like CA to places like Wyoming but, as much as parts of Wyoming are breathtakingly beautiful, it’s largely a windswept moonscape with no jobs.

  132. 132.

    Brachiator

    @Kent:

    What Trump was trying to do is insert his own people into the chain of command where they had no authority because the existing civil service folks were not likely to support his illegal acts.  That’s something entirely different.

    Great point. The Republicans didn’t seem to believe in an effective federal government and Trump often appointed people whose opposed the goals of the agency they headed.

    Biden just has to let these people do the jobs they were hired to do.

    And maybe weed out a few bad apples.

  133. 133.

    kindness

    The mistake too often made is that Republican’s in Congress love the country.  They don’t.  What they love is Republican control of the country.  The country itself can go to hell in a handbasket as they have amply expressed with their actions over the last couple decades.

  134. 134.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    It would all be a meaningless clown show but for one thing: the complicity of elected Republicans and Trump administration officials. They’ve demonstrated repeatedly that they’ll destroy this country to hang onto power, and hanging onto power requires appeasing Trump and his cult.

    The Republicans who aren’t openly lying about the election along with Trump are indulging the liars by making anodyne mouth noises that leave open the possibility that the result is ambiguous. It is not. Biden won, and Trump lost.

    In point of fact, this has been the Republican strategy for a long time.

    If the entire Republican caucus – and here I mean elected officials, staffers, “thought” leaders/pundits etc. – is willing to lie, or at least not respond to the lie, it becomes a worthy discussion point.

    For example, the Republicans blame Obama for ISIS. See, he is the one who withdrew troops from Iraq… after Bush’s botched invasion, and his failure to get a status of forces agreement. Reporters will quote someone claiming that (I believe I saw one such quotation from Lindsey Graham or some other common lackey), because they hear it from plenty of other Republicans, which makes it automatically “reasonable”. After all, *this many* Republicans, all of whom seem fairly reasonable, wouldn’t believe in an outlandish lie, would they?

    More importantly, as long as rightwing news sources will *also* repeat the lie as a reasonable position to take, the real story – that the Republicans are in lockstep, over a transparent lie, blaming Obama for Bush’s failure – will seem viciously, outlandishly partisan, except to those who are versed in critical thinking, and willing to apply it. These days, most such people are not Republicans.

    This is the real war we have to win. The real disaster wasn’t/isn’t Trump; it’s the ability of a Trump (or a W, for that matter) to fumble along, screwing things up, from incompetence, indifference, or malice, and still get praised as a great person, because they’re a Republican, by a large section of the news media (and a larger section of the noise machine).

  136. 136.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kent:

    Biden will have ironclad control over the executive branch regardless of whether or not a single cabinet secretary gets confirmed.  Count on it.  Especially because most of the rank and file civil service and the senior executives in each agency will support what he is doing.

    Yeah, this is something I don’t worry about. The big difference between Trump and Biden is that Biden is actually in favor of the civil service doing their jobs. And Trump hasn’t been competent enough to orchestrate a lot of political “burrowing” in the civil service like what happened at the end of the Bush/Cheney administration.

  137. 137.

    catclub

    @LongHairedWeirdo: screwing things up, from incompetence, indifference, or malice, and still get praised as a great person, because they’re a Republican,

     

    I was stunned to learn that Trump’s vote went up in some places because of how well he handled coronavirus. These people are completely disconnected from my reality.

  138. 138.

    Matt McIrvin

    @catclub: Biden’s not quite getting the percentages he needs to flip NC, but it’s close enough to be tantalizing. Kind of AZ in reverse. Probably won’t flip but you never know.

  139. 139.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @mad citizen:

    A very quick google tells me that the only other First Lady to have been from New Jersey was Anna Harrison (1775-1864), wife of William Henry Harrison. When she was born, NJ wasn’t yet, of course, part of the United States.

    Her husband died only one month into his presidency, and she never lived in the White House. At the age of 65 years during her husband’s presidential term, she is the oldest woman ever to become First Lady, as well as having the distinction of holding the title for the shortest length of time, and the first person to be widowed while holding the title. She was the last First Lady to have been born in British America.

  140. 140.

    Bluegirlfromwyo

    @Hoodie: This. Why do you think I’m Bluegirlfromwyo? I don’t live there now and neither do a big chunk of my high school classmates.

  141. 141.

    Brachiator

    @patrick II:

    It bothers me that while Joe is all “let’s come together” McConnell, Barr, Graham, etc. are all planning to fuck over Joe as much as possible.

    Biden talks about being conciliatory. But it’s pretty clear that he plans to govern and had a pretty clear agenda.

    McConnell’s obstructionism may come back to haunt him if he gets in the way of Biden’s efforts to restore the economy.

  142. 142.

    patroclus

    @balconesfault: That’s the key point.  The best endgame outcome for Trump and the Republicans is to gum up the works so that the electoral votes can’t be cast – and that means that we’re staring at President Pelosi.  This happened in 1876 and they ended up forming a special Commission (prior to 3/4/77 – they had more time) that ultimately came to the compromise that the Union troops would leave the South and Hayes would be elected by one electoral vote.  We don’t really have time for that and it would end in a fiasco anyway, so the Republicans are ultimately facing either a President Biden or a President Pelosi.  They’ll realize this at some point and choose President Biden.

    The salient point is that there is no way Trump ever gets to 270.  Not happening.

  144. 144.

    NickM

    This was a balm, as this site generally has been lately (at least the front pagers!).  Thank you!

  145. 145.

    Hoodie

    @LongHairedWeirdo:  Yep, Republicans have been doing this since before the McCarthy era.  The difference now is they have a self-contained media ecosystem that keeps their supporters in The Matrix.  The mainstream media, while annoying with its bothsiderism, is not really the problem because these folks don’t watch the mainstream media, much like they don’t respond to polling.   Because of that, we can look forward to another four years of endless conspiracy mongering, a continuation of the one that started with the Iraq War (remember all the WMDs they found on Fox?) and took off with Trump’s birtherism.

  147. 147.

    Quiltingfool

    @germy: A professional sign – made in a sign shop I would imagine.  Looks just like the Trump Pence signs the campaign distributed.

  148. 148.

    Ruckus

    @mad citizen:

    A big issue with the EC is that a lot of people don’t normally vote. It has less of an effect when everyone votes. Of course you are right that it is undemocratic in any event, that is the entire reason it exists.

  150. 150.

    catclub

    @Brachiator: McConnell’s obstructionism may come back to haunt him if he gets in the way of Biden’s efforts to restore the economy.

     

    He will only regret it if the media constantly points out that he (with  the rest of the Senate republicans)  is sabotaging the economy.  How did that work out in 2010 elections?

     

    Maybe it will be different this time. But I has my doubts.

  151. 151.

    Miss Bianca

    @Betty Cracker:

    There are people who overreact. There are people who underreact. And then there’s me, who arrives at exactly the right level of alarm via geometric logic.

    Betty, I hope you don’t mind, but I am absolutely swiping this line. I desperately need a new email tag. (Hallowed be thy Nym! To which it shall be properly attributed.)

  152. 152.

    Brachiator

    @Yarrow:

    The president’s eldest son and his girlfriend

    And this is the woman who was formerly married to California governor Newsom? Yikes!

  153. 153.

    mad citizen

    @SiubhanDuinne: Thanks for this.  Well Jill Biden will take the oldest record, she is 69.  I was so impressed by her that she teaches immigrants to the U.S. and I read/heard plans to continue doing so.

  154. 154.

    TriassicSands

    I’m surprised that Republicans haven’t discovered a key fact about this election. Biden’s margin of victory in CA exceeds his total margin of victory in the election (at this time). Therefore, since CA is on the coast and, thus, not a legitimate state, Trump has actually won the popular vote as well as his huge EC victory, which will be revealed just as soon as the SCOTUS invalidates tens, possibly even hundreds, of thousands of Biden votes and crowns Trump Emperor for another four years (or forever, whichever comes sooner or later, who knows).

  155. 155.

    patrick II

    How do you run those numbers?

    California has 68 times the population of Wyoming, (39,512,000 vs. 579,000) and 18 times as many electoral votes (55 vs. 3) If we were going stricktly by population and Wyoming has 3 electoral votes, then Cali should have 68×3 or 204 electors, but California has 68 electors and divided by 18 from Wyoming is 3.7777.
    In the House, California has 52 members, Wyoming one, so the disparity is only 1.3 Wyoming votes for each Cali Vote. In the Senate, each have two representatives, so 1 Wyoming vote is worth 68 California votes.

  156. 156.

    Miss Bianca

    @MisterForkbeard:

    McConnell will confirm appointments, though. He might decide not to confirm anyone not sufficiently “centrist”, but he’ll still confirm some of them even in the worst case.

    You sound a lot more sanguine than I feel.

  158. 158.

    artem1s

    @Leto:

    I am very worried about the consequences of Trump and Republicans convincing their voters that Democrats rig elections through mass voters fraud!

    I’m pretty sure they’ve been doing it since Cook County swung the 1960 election for JFK.

    We should be worried about continued disinformation that casts democratic election in a poor light.  But I think the GOP does it primarily for another reason, not just to discredit the Democratic Party.  They do it so they have an excuse to keep trying to cheat on elections themselves.  Everything they do is justified by saying ‘both sides’ cheat.  Problem for them is we are figuring out how to counter their usual tricks and they are having a hard time coming up with new ways to gerrymander the vote as we become a less segregated country. And our most powerful counter measure isn’t cheating.  It’s GOTV and counting every vote.  Their divisive tricks are starting to hurt them now and they can’t conceive of how to win an election legitimately anymore. When you have lost the heart of the Jim Crow south, you have lost your most powerful bullet – division via racism.  We are truly seeing a party that can only see a way forward if they find new and improved ways to cheat – and some of those are going to end up biting them in the end.

  159. 159.

    zhena gogolia

    Is no one alarmed by the Secretary of State saying there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration?

  160. 160.

    Jeffro

    @Hoodie: Give it a few more years and the last 10 people in Wyoming will still have 2 senators representing them.  Just like the 60 million residents of California.

    THAT makes a lot of sense, right America?

    Let’s get creative, people: can we outright bribe Wyoming and Idaho residents to merge their states (and therefore only have two Senators where they once had four)?  Or go the other direction and have California convert itself into seven states/14 Senators?

  161. 161.

    Mallard Filmore

    @The Moar You Know:

     

    there will be no pardons for anyone not named “Trump”

    There will be a pardon for everyone in the chain that is involved in writing up Trump’s pardon.

  162. 162.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    @catclub: Yes. For me, the magic moment was in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Condeleeza Rice said Iraq got aluminum tubes meant to make centrifuges (to enrich uranium). The IAEA (who, in point of fact, was the organization that spotted Saddam’s cheating in the Clinton years) said, no, they weren’t usable for centrifuges, and they were, in fact, used for reverse engineering rockets.

    Now, here’s the thing: it’s reasonable to say “Rice might have data the IAEA doesn’t have.” However, the IAEA actually had it cold. The primary argument for centrifuges was, the tolerances on the cylinders were *really* tight. Well, Iraq had tried reverse engineering, with looser tolerances, and it hadn’t worked – they had documentary evidence showing this.

    It wasn’t until after the invasion that we learned the truth: Rice had lied. Not been mistaken; she had all the information the IAEA had, all of which said “rockets, not centrifuges” and I respect her intellect far too much to believe she’d be snowed from science and engineering by, well, anything that isn’t “better science/engineering”.

    It’s still considered a terrible, terrible thing to say that the Bush administration lied us into Iraq, even though it’s objectively true.

  163. 163.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Frank Wilhoit: I’m not following what you’re saying.

    I’m talking about a coup and why the military won’t support one.

    I think you are talking about the politics of military funding? Or public perception of the military, which ISTM is enhanced by their firmly taking the traditional stand of civilian control and duty to nation?

  165. 165.

    Brachiator

    @patroclus:

    The best endgame outcome for Trump and the Republicans is to gum up the works so that the electoral votes can’t be cast – and that means that we’re staring at President Pelosi.

    I don’t think this is how it works now that we have had an election. I think Congress would get to decide the contest, and this might slightly favor Trump.

    But I don’t think this will happen. Right now, Trump and his enablers are only delaying the inevitable and making themselves miserable.

  166. 166.

    Miss Bianca

    @Yarrow: It’s fucking depressing when the right-wing autocratic leaders in *other countries* who were allegedly political besties with Trump are quicker than GOP Senators to congratulate Biden.

    Kay’s right – we need better (or at least, smarter) elites.//

  168. 168.

    Jeffro

    @patrick II: expand the House!  that should be a given and is (relatively) easy to do

    still doesn’t solve the EC problem but at least we’d have better representation across the country

  169. 169.

    mrmoshpotato

    @cope:

    I can’t help but feel trump himself is just putting on a show 

    Yes.  The bastards will still wreck as much as they can going out the door because the Rethuglicans are a pile of shit party that hates democracy.

    But as for the Soviet shitpile mobster conman, his lifeblood as a narcissist is attention, and the firings/chaos get him that attention that he’ll lose after January 20.

    (Well, state AGs will love paying attention to him, but that’s just to prescribe legal asskickings to be carried out by Lady Justice.  SAD!)

  171. 171.

    Brachiator

    @Jeffro:

    Let’s get creative, people: can we outright bribe Wyoming and Idaho residents to merge their states (and therefore only have two Senators where they once had four)?  Or go the other direction and have California convert itself into seven states/14 Senators?

    Isn’t there a chance that you would end up with more Republican senators from California?

  172. 172.

    Barbara

    Pennsylvania is about to pass the point of no return for Trump.  The current margin is around 47,500, with just under 52,000 votes to be counted.  He needs 96.5% of the remaining ballots, and he is averaging just under 33%.

  174. 174.

    Baud

    @zhena gogolia:

    The U.S. Secretary of State has no role to play in the election or the transition.  Juicers have more credibility than Pompeo, and we all say Biden is inevitable.

  175. 175.

    Kent

    @kindness:The mistake too often made is that Republican’s in Congress love the country.  They don’t.  What they love is Republican control of the country.  The country itself can go to hell in a handbasket as they have amply expressed with their actions over the last couple decades.

    It’s not even that.  What they love (Republican voters) is a certain Republican image of the country.   A modern Normal Rockwell image of a white America that never existed and certainly doesn’t exist today.  And they want to elevate that through minority rule because the majority doesn’t share the same image or values.

    Republican elites, on the other hand, just want power and the ability to hoard wealth and opportunity.  So they are happy to use the Republican electorate as a tool to achieve the latter.

  179. 179.

    Jinchi

    Apparently Mike Pence has decided to cash in his vacation days before his job ends in 2 months.

    Probably a smart move for a man who works at a pandemic superspreader site, but not really what you’d expect of someone expecting to still have a job come February.

  180. 180.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Zelma:

    I don’t think I’ll relax until the Electoral College meets and declares Biden president. 

    Oh great.  A second cheering in the streets.  What’s gonna happen at 12:02PM on January 20 – a worldwide party?

  182. 182.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    @zhena gogolia: Not yet. There’s just too much stuff that has to happen to make a second Trump administration occur, and right now, there aren’t enough people who will be hurt by a Biden administration to expect they’ll play along.

    Trump would love to have state legislatures name a new slate of electors; but that’s a huge risk for people who have little to gain, and much to lose.

    My biggest concern is a literal conspiracy “theory”, except it’s not a theory, it’s a worry (hence, the quotes). The worry is, if Trump can take enough people down with him, and he’s in enough peril, there could be enough powerful people who can put the squeeze on enough lower people to at least cast doubt on the ultimate outcome.

    At that point, well, Vox.com had an article about “how do you write about a coup” – that is, an attempt to overthrow the lawful government-to-be – “…when it’s happening here?” And of course the important thing is, to view it *as* a coup, as an attempt to seize power by means other than winning elections.

  183. 183.

    Jesse

    @CaseyL: Many R senators are up for re-election in two years. If we can make a dent in 2022, we can make some progress. No need to wait 4 (or 8) years.

  187. 187.

    yellowdog

    All of these court cases are NOT aimed at trying to win a court case. The aim is to cause confusion and legal delay so that some electors cannot be seated to vote. The date they must vote is in the Constitution so it cannot be changed. Therefore the election goes to the House. Then the shitgibbon is installed for life. Barr is playing the long game.

  188. 188.

    zzyzx

    Last time I looked, the Secretary of State doesn’t have the power to decide elections. He’s being an asshole but that makes me want to mock him, not run in terror.

  189. 189.

    Matt McIrvin

    @RedDirtGirl: You might have noticed I backed off completely from the site (and political blog commenting in general) for Election Night and a day or two after, because I knew that unless it was a Biden landslide, there were going to be “red mirages” that would make it hard for me to say anything intelligent. So it fell to other people to be the big doom posters around here.

    Trump is a typical abuser, it was obvious that he wasn’t going to concede and would insist he was robbed. What’s giving me hives is just the way almost the entire Republican establishment has lined up behind him. People who weren’t supposed to be abuser shitlords.

    And then there are all these winking anonymous interviews where Republicans basically say, “c’mon, we’re just funnin’, humoring the old man,” and they don’t seem to realize they’re playing with fire and threatening the survival of democracy. Unless they do and that’s exactly what they intend.

    This is presumably going to be the standard going forward. Every single election we win, we’re going to have to fight off a huge PR/legal offensive afterward to insist that it was stolen through moon rays or adrenochrome or something.

  190. 190.

    Miss Bianca

    @Yarrow: Well, good to know that they are actually still on board with us to target their actual constituency – wavering Republicans.

    Despite what AOC thinks about it, I persist in believing that LP actually has a legitimate function in that mission. Plus, the more they are fucking with Republicans, the less they are fucking with Democrats. That’s a win for Democrats.

    I wish more actual Democrats – or lefties in general – would absorb that moral.

  193. 193.

    Kent

    @LongHairedWeirdo:My biggest concern is a literal conspiracy “theory”, except it’s not a theory, it’s a worry (hence, the quotes). The worry is, if Trump can take enough people down with him, and he’s in enough peril, there could be enough powerful people who can put the squeeze on enough lower people to at least cast doubt on the ultimate outcome.

    I’m really not that worried about this frankly.  When have elites ever been accountable for their actions?  Most of Trump’s crew will slide gently into pillow-soft landings in lobbying firms and GOP-friendly corporations where they will double or triple their salaries.  And get tanned and rested for 2022 and 2024.  That’s the American way.

    If this were Soviet Russia or some other dictatorship where political losers get the firing squad or gulag we would have a lot more dead enders fighting to the end in the fuher-bunker.  This is actually a moment where the greased revolving door of American politics will play to our advantage.

    To the extent that you see appointees making public announcements about the election, I’m guessing that is mostly for the consumption of one.  Not because they really believe it.

    At least that’s my hope and expectation.

  194. 194.

    Sab

    @Barbara: My brother the oligarch wannabe RWNJ thinks Pompeo is wonderful and brilliant. Can’t believe we grew up in the same household. Either it’s white male privilege or the trauma of being the only boy with lots of sisters.

  195. 195.

    yellowdog

    @Brachiator: If the House decides then the vote is by delegation and the majority  of delegations are majority GOP. No question it goes for Trump. THIS is their goal, not winning an absurd court case. I believe they have always planned for the vote to be settled by the House. It is a certain win, versus a court case where there is a chance some judge might develop morals and a conscience.

  197. 197.

    WaterGirl

    @Walker: I say Biden appoints Hillary Clinton to the most critical cabinet seat until they approve Biden’s top candidate.  Then, once they do that, Hillary goes to the next most critical cabinet seat.

    Rinse, repeat.

  198. 198.

    WaterGirl

    @pamelabrown53: Do you love CatCake as much as I do?  :-)

    I don’t have anyone pied, but i have come close in the last few days.  There’s not sticking your head in the sand, and being aware of the dangers, and then there’s the equivalent of scary campfire stories.

    Not a fan of the latter.

  199. 199.

    Kent

    @balconesfault:

    @lowtechcyclist:

    My nightmare scenario.

    NC and Arizona both end up in Trump’s column. That gives him 240.

    Lawsuits in GA, PA, MI, WI continue into early December. Legislatures for those states meet and decide to “compromise” – since “nobody can really know who won” in their states, they will apportion EC votes based on percentage of votes in their states:

    WI – 5/5 (Biden/Trump)
    PA – 10/10
    GA – 8/8
    MI – 9/7

    That takes Trump to 270 with AZ and NC.

    And the Supremes have already signaled that they will defer to State Legislatures on electoral decisions.

    Not going to happen.  Take PA as just one example.  The legislative session ends on Thanksgiving in PA and doesn’t reconvene until the new legislature is sworn in in January.

    There is no legal process for the GOP leadership in the legislature to call itself back into special session in December.  Under the PA constitution, only the governor (who is a Democrat) can call a special session of the legislature.  And you know that ain’t happening.

    In any event, these sorts of coup plotters wouldn’t just be facing electoral defeat in the future.  They would be painting giant targets on their backs for any crazy with a gun from any state to hunt them down.  They are ordinary people for the most with ordinary families and don’t live inside a secret service bubble.  Online hackers would dox every detail of their lives and make it all public, painting a massive target on them for any left wing revolutionary crazies to hunt them down.  I don’t think they want to live the rest of their lives in hiding or in exile.

    Same thing goes for electors who might be thinking they can flip the election.  Their lives would be over too.

  200. 200.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @mad citizen:

    New Jersey: Providing the country with the oldest First Ladies since 1841!

    I’m a big Jill Biden fan, and I love knowing that she plans to keep working at her profession. So many glass barriers being broken this time around!

  201. 201.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Brachiator: It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that the imbalance in legislative representation affects the EC travesty too, since the number of EC votes is based on the number of congressional reps the state has.

  202. 202.

    Miss Bianca

    @Bluegirlfromwyo: Oh, you’re so “fromwyo” in the same way that I would be Miss Bianca “fromMI”. Or as we say out here in Colorado, where you can’t throw a rock without hitting someone from my home state: “Michigan! It’s a great place to be *from*!”

  203. 203.

    TriassicSands

    It would all be a meaningless clown show but for one thing: the complicity of elected Republicans and Trump administration officials.

    And, I think, the nagging uncertainty about just how corrupt the Republican justices are. People who say they would never throw the election to Trump because that would destroy the Court’s credibility may be ignoring other recent decisions that were only saved by Roberts, who no longer has the deciding vote.

    i don’t believe the Court would do it, but I wouldn’t ever bet on them putting democracy before agenda.

  204. 204.

    Brachiator

    @catclub:

    He will only regret it if the media constantly points out that he (with  the rest of the Senate republicans)  is sabotaging the economy.  How did that work out in 2010 elections?

    I don’t know. The economy is in worse shape now. And people don’t need the media explaining things if they feel pain and their pockets are empty.

  205. 205.

    Hoodie

    @Matt McIrvin: Yes, increasingly they have to do crap like this to keep their supporters motivated.  Remember, a lot of Trump voters are people who were previously not voting and (presumably) not paying attention to politics before Fox and Facebook hooked them with entertaining conspiracies and hatefests.   The GOP is now an entertainment business that specializes in tax cuts.  They do not govern.  The universal characteristic of their supporters is they’re incredibly fucking ignorant and/or juvenile.

  206. 206.

    schrodingers_cat

    Don’t feed the troll in the WH. He has lost. Scaremongering is all he has left.

    Jennifer Rubin

    Trump’s “coup” isn’t a coup. It’s a temper tantrum without a vehicle. There is no theory, let alone facts, that would justify overturning an election Biden won w/ 300 electoral votes and margin of 5 million or more popular votes.

  209. 209.

    Citizen Alan

    @Kent:

    A modern Normal Rockwell image of a white America that never existed and certainly doesn’t exist today.

    Which is particularly ironic considering how much contempt these assholes have for the ideas represented in Rockwell works such as Four Freedoms and The Problem We All Live With.

  211. 211.

    mrmoshpotato

    Loser.com redirects to the Soviet shitpile’s Wikipedia page.  (Not linking because you’ll see Dump’s disgusting, fascist face.)

  213. 213.

    Quiltingfool

    After I saw the Trump 2024 sign this morning, I got to thinking about the potential shitshow for the Republican Party Presidential hopefuls.  Trump declaring he will run in 2024 really fucks with Cotton and Hawley  – and Pompeo for that matter.  Those boys are itching to run for President, and Trump running is going to put a serious dent in their aspirations.  Like, how are they going to compete with Trump?  They don’t have anywhere near the malignant charisma of Trump.  I would think that maybe they are leaning hard into Trump overturning election results may have to do with their own hopes to run in 2024.  Of course, I’m probably overthinking this, but I do like that they may be feeling a wee bit unhappy about the possibility of competing against Trump.

  214. 214.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @taumaturgo: we’re all waiting for you to go to Wyoming and get them to support a Constitutional amendment that reforms the Senate. You can “say” lots of big, bold things that will persuade them. I have faith in you. Report back to us on just how successful you are in Laramie before you move on to Idaho.

    Safe travels, be well, don’t keep in touch.

  218. 218.

    Hoodie

    @Miss Bianca: That may be the new branding campaign, lots of fraud (so the Dems are cheaters), but not enough to make it worth dying for.  It will give them something to flog for the next 2 years at least, so expect a refresh and re-animation of the fraud allegations in 2022.  This is probably a permanent feature of GOP marketing going forward, an oldie but goodie harkening back to Kennedy in ’60 but refreshed by Trump using pure racism.  Remember, the ’60s style fraud was by white, union-connected dudes like Bill Daley.

  219. 219.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @zhena gogolia:

    Is no one alarmed by the Secretary of State saying there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration?

    I expect that when he’s called on it, he’ll claim he was joking.

    MR SECRETARY, YOU GODDAMNED MOTHERFUCKING LARDASS PIECE OF SHIT, IT’S NOT A JOKING MATTER!!

  221. 221.

    opiejeanne

    @Jeffro: Let’s stop talking about splitting California; it is not a blue monolith. They currently have 2 Democratic Senators. If the state splits into many smaller states, the majority of those will be Republican, and the Rs in the state will make sure of that. A new form of gerrymandering that affects the Senate.

  222. 222.

    Brachiator

    In the extremely unlikely situation that Congress has to decide the election, this is how it would work. I think.

    If neither candidate gets a majority of the 538 electoral votes, the election for President is decided in the House of Representatives, with each state delegation having one vote. A majority of states (26) is needed to win. Senators would elect the Vice-President, with each Senator having a vote. A majority of Senators (51) is needed to win….

    Note that the newly elected 117th Congress will be sworn in on January 3rd, 2021. It is that new Congress that would take on this responsibility.

  223. 223.

    Kent

    @Hoodie:@Miss Bianca: That may be the new branding campaign, lots of fraud (so the Dems are cheaters), but not enough to make it worth dying for.  It will give them something to flog for the next 2 years at least, so expect a refresh and re-animation of the fraud allegations in 2022.  This is probably a permanent feature of GOP marketing going forward, an oldie but goodie harkening back to Kennedy in ’60 but refreshed by Trump using pure racism.  Remember, the ’60s style fraud was by white, union-connected dudes like Bill Daley.

    Honestly, Dems did the same thing in 2000 and 2016 after those elections.  There was lots of noise about how fraud, voter suppression and the like put Bush and Trump into power against the will of the people.  Many here probably still believe that both of those two elections were tainted.

    Did it taint their presidencies?  Not in any meaningful sense when it came to the exercise of power.  Both of them wielded unitary power without the slightest bit of hesitation or compromise.

    Biden and Dems need to take the same “Don’t give a fuck” attitude when it comes to implementing their mandates.

  227. 227.

    Miss Bianca

    @Hoodie: Ah. I see. Just as with Second Amendment absolutists, I was paying more attention to the second part of his statement than the first.

  231. 231.

    Kent

    @opiejeanne:@Jeffro: Let’s stop talking about splitting California; it is not a blue monolith. They currently have 2 Democratic Senators. If the state splits into many smaller states, the majority of those will be Republican, and the Rs in the state will make sure of that. A new form of gerrymandering that affects the Senate.

    If you want to pipe dream, the better solution would be to reform the Senate to give it more proportional representation.  For example, assign one Senator to every state to start regardless of size.  Then an additional Senator for every 4 Congressional seats, all elected state-wide for 6 year staggered terms.  So maybe CA gets 9 senators and 3 come up for re-election every 2 years.   Something like that.

  232. 232.

    H-Bob

    @Hoodie: Cheyenne is only 90 miles from Denver (~50 from Ft. Collins).  If Californians moved there and got jobs in the Colorado Front Range, they would have shorter commutes.

    If Trump refuses to leave the White House, take a tip from retailers, who play classical music to disperse the vagrants!

  233. 233.

    topclimber

    @artem1s: Well if they get to exclude California we get to exclude Texas, and Biden still wins the popular vote. Fair-minded as they are, Republicants will surely agree.

  234. 234.

    Brachiator

    @Hoodie:

    The universal characteristic of their supporters is they’re incredibly fucking ignorant and/or juvenile.

    Thing is, the ignorant get a vote, just like anybody else.

  236. 236.

    Immanentize

    @SiubhanDuinne: I like the Robyn Hitchcock version in “She Doesn’t Exist Anymore:”

    I tell myself it would be different now
    I wouldn’t treat her that way
    I wouldn’t be me if she wasn’t her
    And it’s far too late anyway

    Off to my next class!

  240. 240.

    Steve in the ATL

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    A very quick google tells me that the only other First Lady to have been from New Jersey was Anna Harrison (1775-1864), wife of William Henry Harrison. When she was born, NJ wasn’t yet, of course, part of the United States.

    The question posed was whether Jill Biden will be the first “Jersey girl” to be FLOTUS. To determine whether Anna Harrison qualifies as such, we will need to know (a) how big her hair was, (b) how much gum she chewed, and (c) whether she referred to “the beach” as “the shore.”

    Be a lamb and keep researching, please!

    @catclub:

     

    speaking of batch sizes

    We’ve been over this before, people: Balloon Juice After Dark doesn’t start until 10 pm Eastern….

  245. 245.

    OGLiberal

    @Yarrow: This is what they are good at – not going after the masses but very targeted stuff…like making Trump turn on Parscale and having Parscale lose his shit.  They’ll shame the shit out of these people and scare aware current and prospective clients.

  251. 251.

    TriassicSands

    @Brachiator: McConnell’s obstructionism may come back to haunt him if he gets in the way of Biden’s efforts to restore the economy.

    The Obama years would argue against McConnell paying any price for obstruction — economic or otherwise. So, that remains an open question without much, if any, comforting support.

    People have been arguing that the GOP was going to pay a price for X, Y, or Z for years. But they keep winning. After losing big in 2018, they make gains in 2020 in the House and are likely to hold onto the Senate. (Which reminds me I have to send money to Georgia for the run offs.)

  253. 253.

    LuciaMia

    Funny thing is, if we get to Jan. 20 and noone has been certified, Nancy Pelosi is President! ;-)

  254. 254.

    patroclus

    @Brachiator: No, that is how it would work.  Or, rather, how it would not work.  The Constitution provides that if no candidate receives a majority of the electoral college votes, then the selection of the President goes to the House (with those weird rules where each state’s delegation gets one vote).  What the Republicans are trying to do is muck up the process such that either SoS’s are enjoined from certifying the election results or that competing slates of electors would vie for certification.  In which case there would be no candidate reaching a majority.

    But the next step is that Congress must certify the electoral votes validly cast.  If Speaker Pelosi knows that that would result in the weird rules giving Trump an advantage, she simply won’t allow the House to certify those results.  Which would result in an impasse.  Which would result in either President Pelosi or a compromise.  This is what happened in 1876-77 – an impasse – and this is what would happen now.

  255. 255.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    @Kent: Well, that’s my point – I agree with you that they would take the cushy landing, rather than fight to the bitter end… *unless* Trump losing means a lot of bad stuff is going to go down.

    Once he leaves office, he’s open to indictment; and if he’s indicted, he’s going to think he was betrayed, that people were supposed to protect him. Well, how much does he have to spill? If he has enough, on enough people, all of whom have far too much to lose, *then* they might fight to the bitter end.

    I really don’t think that could happen. I think there’s a lot of ugly, skeevy, nasty stuff in the Republican Party, but I don’t think there’s enough broad, and deep, criminal exposure to have them fight very long, especially if their polls start to shift.

    I still can’t help but worry, just a bit.

  257. 257.

    Jinchi

    @TriassicSands: The Obama years would argue against McConnell paying any price for obstruction —

    Yeah, Republicans shut down the government 2 years ago for a couple of months. All to try to shake down Pelosi for money for Trump’s wall.

    Then Trump just stole the money from the military when he didn’t get his way. It was barely a blip in terms of the scandals of the Trump administration.

  260. 260.

    patrick II

    @WaterGirl:

    Eventually, I would like to see Hillary as ambassador to Germany. She knows her business at State, knows Europe, understands the Russian threat, gets along well with Merkel, and a finger in Putin’s eye.

    Ambassadorships can be seen as minor posts, but not in this case. There is much work to be done with our European allies.

  261. 261.

    Miss Bianca

    @mrmoshpotato: OK, funniest thing for me is that CO picked my favorite side (yay, mashed potatoes!) while next-door KS picked my least favorite (OMG, cream corn, really?! Not since I was about five have I found it palatable!).

    ETA: I guess there’s a reason I live in CO and not KS!

  263. 263.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @Gravenstone:

    No, the vote would be by state delegations, not members. At the moment, the GOP has the majority control of state delegations (26)

    I don’t think it would come to that, and I think what happened in 1876-1877 would be the likeliest scenario

  264. 264.

    Kent

    @Brachiator:

    If neither candidate gets a majority of the 538 electoral votes, the election for President is decided in the House of Representatives, with each state delegation having one vote. A majority of states (26) is needed to win. Senators would elect the Vice-President, with each Senator having a vote. A majority of Senators (51) is needed to win….

    Note that the newly elected 117th Congress will be sworn in on January 3rd, 2021. It is that new Congress that would take on this responsibility.

    This assumes that the Dem-controlled House would go along.  If we are that far off the rails due to a coup attempt in GOP state legislatures, then there are trivially easy things that Pelosi can do to manipulate enough state delegations in the House to give the Dems a 26 vote majority.  On simple majority votes using trumped up charges she can expel enough GOP House members in GOP-majority states to achieve a Dem voting majority.  Everything in the House happens by majority vote.  All that 2/3rds stuff only applies in the Senate.  If a coup attempt to overturn the election makes it all the way to the House of Representatives then Pelosi will put an end to it in short order.  And there will be no higher authority to stop her.  Not even SCOTUS can seat legislators that the House has chosen to expel or suspend.

  266. 266.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Hoodie:

    Remember, the ’60s style fraud was by white, union-connected dudes like Bill Daley.

    I think the old man went by Dick in private. His son Bill is I think more connected to management

  267. 267.

    Frank Wilhoit

    @Cheryl Rofer: What I am saying is that the political situation in the country promises very soon, if not already, to impact adversely the ability of the armed forces to recruit and train human capital, and to procure and maintain equipment.  These things threaten the mission, and they are getting quickly worse.  Every other industry is in the same position, but the stakes are not the same.  Something will have to be done — and, almost by definition, something unforeseeable.

  269. 269.

    patroclus

    @Kent: Indeed, the Constitution was applied in both 1800 and 1824 and the House tried to pick the President.  In 1800, it took a “deal” between Jefferson and Adams regarding certain commitments Jefferson made to get the necessary votes to triumph over Burr.  In 1824, it took a similar “deal” between Quincy Adams and Clay.  In 1876, despite the Constitution, it didn’t go to the House but to the 15-member Commission which worked out the Hayes-Tilden “deal.”  Just assuming Speaker Pelosi is going to go along with certifying members and electoral vote counts (after they have already been manipulated by Republican chicanery) and go along with Trump being elected is nonsense.

    It’ll either be President Pelosi or President Biden.  The Republicans will realize this eventually.

  270. 270.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @Kent:

    But if it got to the point of Pelosi having to expel entire Republican delegations from the House to stop a coup attempt, wouldn’t that just result in the country tearing itself apart? I mean, I guess the same thing would happen if the House Republicans voted to install Trump in a second term anyway

  273. 273.

    mad citizen

    Loving the writing from Jeva Lange of The Week, as seen on yahoo news:

    “According to the Federal Aviation Administration, Pence is scheduled to travel to Sanibel, Florida, Tuesday through Saturday,” The Associated Press added Monday. Once there, he will presumably knock back a few virgin margaritas while continuing his habit of being conspicuously absent when things are going off-the-rails, a skill he honed while heading the White House coronavirus task force.

  274. 274.

    opiejeanne

    @Kent: What I remember from HS civics was that each state got two Senators so that the little states wouldn’t be completely overwhelmed by the more populous states, as they would in the House. The problem is that the Senate has more prestige than the House, and the House is out of proportion.

  275. 275.

    patroclus

    @Goku (Amerikan Baka): It wouldn’t be a matter of “expulsion;” it would simply be a matter of the House not certifying the electoral college result; thereby making it impossible to determine anything.  The House would merely have to delay doing anything for 14-15 days and then President Pelosi occurs.  To force any vote on anything in the House absent a Rule would take a 2/3rd’s majority.  Inaction would result in a President Pelosi unless the Republicans cave in some way.

  278. 278.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Goku (Amerikan Baka): I agree, this idea of selecting a slate afterwards is a load of malarkey.

    Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution:

    Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

    From what I’ve read, every state legislature has passed a law specifying that the winner of the popular vote receives the state’s electoral votes.  So, the state legislatures have done the ” in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct” by passing a statute.   Laws in every state are passed by both houses of their legislature(unless they’re unicameral) and signed by the governor.  The state legislature CANNOT change the law by itself.

  279. 279.

    Brachiator

    @patroclus:

    If Speaker Pelosi knows that that would result in the weird rules giving Trump an advantage, she simply won’t allow the House to certify those results.  Which would result in an impasse.  Which would result in either President Pelosi or a compromise.  This is what happened in 1876-77 – an impasse – and this is what would happen now.

    I agree that there would be a compromise, but you would never get a President Pelosi here. Not anything against the Speaker. But the people have voted, and the president and VP should come from the choices made by the voters. It would be even more undemocratic for the Speaker to become president as a result of Trump’s antics.

  280. 280.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steve in the ATL:

    The question posed was whether Jill Biden will be the first “Jersey girl” to be FLOTUS. To determine whether Anna Harrison qualifies as such, we will need to know (a) how big her hair was, (b) how much gum she chewed, and (c) whether she referred to “the beach” as “the shore.”

    (a) Her hair was huuuuge! Well, actually, there was no hair showing at all in the portrait I saw, but there was an awful lot of ruffly fabric, in many curly layers. So maybe? (b) From the looks of her, she probably didn’t chew gum, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn of “Anna’s snuff habit.” (c) Although she was born in Joisey (“shore”), she spent most of her childhood on Lawn Guyland (“beach”). The jury is out.

    In her favour is the fact that she eloped with William Henry, in defiance of her father’s wishes.

    I also think her dates — 1775-1864 — are interesting. Her first several years, and her last, were all during times of great, nation-defining conflict. Now I need to find out more about her than Wikipedia provides.

    Be a lamb and keep researching, please!

    [Hums The Whiffenpoof Song and gambols off.]

  282. 282.

    Steve in the ATL

    @SiubhanDuinne:

     

    In her favour is the fact that she eloped with William Henry, in defiance of her father’s wishes.

    If wikipedia confirms that she loved Bruce Springsteen, and that her favorite Bruce song was “Rosalita”, then we have our answer!

  284. 284.

    patroclus

    @Brachiator: Probably not because the Republicans will eventually cave.  But if they don’t that’s what will happen.

    I should add that Minority Leader McCarthy would be probably allowed by the parliamentarian to present a privileged resolution in order to move to the House selection of the President, but even that would require a majority vote.  More likely, Speaker Pelosi would simply refuse to convene the House after its formation until the matter is resolved or she becomes President.

  287. 287.

    Kent

    @Matt McIrvin:

    In Michigan they’re literally trying to get the legislature to reverse a 150,000 – vote lead on the grounds that ALL THE MAIL VOTES, obviously already cast in good faith by real voters, are somehow “illegal”. The scale of it is breathtaking.

    (And, yes, I was warning people about this and getting dinged for being hysterical before Election Day.)

    Several states including WA, OR, UT, and CO vote ENTIRELY by mail and have done so for years.

    Mail ballots are not going to be thrown out.  Relax.

  288. 288.

    Kent

    @Brachiator:I agree that there would be a compromise, but you would never get a President Pelosi here. Not anything against the Speaker. But the people have voted, and the president and VP should come from the choices made by the voters. It would be even more undemocratic for the Speaker to become president as a result of Trump’s antics.

    And the 1877 compromise wasn’t really about the election anyway.  It was extortion by the southern states to end reconstruction.   An entirely different scenario from today.  The compromise wasn’t about picking a compromise president.  It was about pulling Federal troops out of the south in exchange for letting the lawfully elected president take office.

  289. 289.

    Another Scott

    @zhena gogolia:  TheHill:

    Pompeo appeared to smirk after delivering the line about a “second Trump administration,” though it was unclear from his remarks themselves whether he was joking. The State Department did not immediately respond to an inquiry about his comments.

    He’s a clown. He doesn’t deserve any attention from us.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  291. 291.

    Ruckus

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Well if they don’t count our votes, we shouldn’t pay them any taxes. Fair is fair. All goods landing in our ports will of course require a fee to be paid before unloading and forwarding. All of the trucks coming into CA to pick up cargo will have to also have a CA license. All food stuffs leaving CA will have an export fee payable before loading. Oh, and I’m just getting started….

  292. 292.

    Brachiator

    @Kent:

    And the 1877 compromise wasn’t really about the election anyway. It was extortion by the southern states to end reconstruction. An entirely different scenario from today. The compromise wasn’t about picking a compromise president. It was about pulling Federal troops out of the south in exchange for letting the lawfully elected president take office.

    Yep. A sad betrayal of black people in the South.

  293. 293.

    J R in WV

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    OT: Andrea Mitchell asks Xavier Becerra if he would accept a nomination to replace Harris in the Senate, and he does not say no. “It would be an honor to be called to serve….”

    That’s a great political answer, neither “No!” nor “Yes!”

    Note that he does not say yes at all, but merely speaks of “an honor to be called…”

  294. 294.

    patroclus

    And even then, the Democratic House of Representatives had to approve the Commission’s recommendation by majority vote.  From their viewpoint, the lawfully elected President (Tilden) was allowed to be thrown out in exchange for Grant and then Hayes agreeing to withdraw federal troops and ending opposition to Redeemer state governments.

  296. 296.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Jeffro:

    Or go the other direction and have California convert itself into seven states/14 Senators?

    Ah, no. “Whiskey’s for drinking water’s for fighting”

    Also, many parts of California are as red as Alabama.  The Speaker is from California, but so is the House Majority Leader.

  297. 297.

    Ruckus

    @Another Scott:

    Agreed. But.

    The real problem is that our political issues are not of degree, they are of basic concepts of governance.
    One concept is democracy and the other is a combination of concepts, which include theft of taxes owed, no spending of any public money on citizens, totally restricted laws, police/prosecutions under the auspices of the wealthy…..  Sounds a bit like the way communist countries actually work……

  298. 298.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Yarrow: I hope that Wilson and the Lincoln Project go after their intellectual property clients as well. After all, as the joke goes, the far right doesn’t believe in intellectuals…

  304. 304.

    the pollyanna from hell

    @Hoodie: Hey, Cheyenne has a world class children’s garden in the botanic gardens. Not that I’ve ever been anywhere else, but I just think so. And is the nation’s leader in summer hailstorms.

  306. 306.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @balconesfault: …as “President Nancy” is about to be sworn in given an absence of an EC victory for either candidate…

    Unpossible. If no Presidential candidate has a majority in the EC, the determination of the winner falls to the House (with each state having one vote). US Constitution, Article II Section 1, language largely confirmed by the 12th Amendment. Go look it up.

    IMO the Thugs’ most plausible way forward is to argue that the Constitution gives them the sole responsibility of selecting the electors, and then refuse to confirm any electors in states where they control the legislature (AZ, GA, PA, WI, maybe MI). Sounds like the Democratic SoS’s (WI, PA, where else?) would confirm the winner of the popular vote in their states and send the names of his electors to Congress. Whereupon the Thugs would appeal all the way to the Extreme Court on Constitutional grounds. No way to be sure how that would pan out…but if the Fascist Five were to uphold the legislatures, no one would end up with 270 EVs and the issue would go before Congress.

  307. 307.

    J R in WV

    @zhena gogolia:

    Is no one alarmed by the Secretary of State saying there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration?

    No, because a) Pompeo is an ignorant ass, and b) the Sec of state has less than nothing to do with election outcomes, and not much more to do with transition.

    Biden knows more about how our government works than anyone in the Trump administration. Even the experienced R pols only think they know how the Federal government works, the way they wish it worked for them.

  308. 308.

    J R in WV

    @Goku (Amerikan Baka):

    Where does it say that in the Constitution that it MUST go to the House in that case?

    Why do you continue to ask people this kind of question?

    Can’t you spell Google, or DuckDuckGo, or Wikipedia?

    The constitution isn’t a long book, it’s a relatively short document. Just go read the part about electing the President for yourself. Just a couple of paragraphs. Then you will know from the source document, instead of a blogger’s opinion.

    Come on, Man!!!

  309. 309.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Barbara: Pompeo wants to run for something — governor or senate, most likely — in Kansas.

    Fucker should be running for the nearest border of a nation without an extradition treaty with the US. And from the looks of that 18-wheeler spare he’s carrying under his shirtfront, he should plan to start running very soon.

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