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You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Open Thread: Bob Bauer Legal Briefing

Open Thread: Bob Bauer Legal Briefing

by TaMara|  November 20, 202010:39 am| 213 Comments

This post is in: 2020 Elections, Biden-Harris 2020

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I’m generally unconcerned about the legal battles or the orange disease’s attempts to thwart democracy. But in my quiet moments, I think about a scene in the Thomas Crown Affair, when Catherine Banning realizes the “failed” theft attempt was really a distraction.

Catherine Banning: What makes you think they failed? Maybe it was a successful robbery. Maybe they were setup to fail.
Detective McCann: Why?
Catherine Banning: Diversion, make a lot of noise over there so over here in this room you can take a hundred million off the wall and waltz right out the front door. Oh that’s good.

So I needed to listen to Bauer today.

Open thread

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Reader Interactions

213Comments

  1. 1.

    Brachiator

    November 20, 2020 at 10:49 am

    But in my quiet moments, I think about a scene in the Thomas Crown Affair, when Catherine Banning realizes the “failed” theft attempt was really a distraction.

    Trump ain’t that smart.

    But I take your point.

  2. 2.

    West of the Rockies

    November 20, 2020 at 10:50 am

    I love that movie!  It’s an intelligent, sexy, stylish film for those over 35.

  3. 3.

    Elizabelle

    November 20, 2020 at 10:50 am

    Thanks TaMara.  Will give this a listen.

  4. 4.

    Omnes Omnibus

    November 20, 2020 at 10:52 am

    @West of the Rockies: Which one?

  5. 5.

    TaMara (HFG)

    November 20, 2020 at 10:55 am

    @Omnes Omnibus: Both.

  6. 6.

    Another Scott

    November 20, 2020 at 10:58 am

    Thanks for this.

    Started around 1056 AM ET.  Late to the party, I see.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  7. 7.

    Barbara

    November 20, 2020 at 11:01 am

    @Brachiator: CNN had an item making the point that the FBI has started asking more questions about Giuliani’s relationships with Russian intelligence. It wouldn’t surprise me if Powell has sketchy relationships of her own considering her connection to Flynn. So it could be Trump’s lawyers who are driving this train for their own self-interest

  8. 8.

    Omnes Omnibus

    November 20, 2020 at 11:01 am

    @TaMara (HFG): Hmmm….

  9. 9.

    TaMara (HFG)

    November 20, 2020 at 11:03 am

    @Another Scott: ???

    You can rewind the video, if that’s what you’re commenting about.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    November 20, 2020 at 11:04 am

    Thanks to Bob and everyone else fighting the good fight on the front lines.

  11. 11.

    zhena gogolia

    November 20, 2020 at 11:05 am

    @Baud:

    This is so great!

  12. 12.

    Bnad

    November 20, 2020 at 11:05 am

    Despite Bauer’s confidence I’m not confident at all that this election won’t get thrown to the House.  Pence will be presiding in the vote counting on Jan 6th and there are an infinite number of ways he can prevent the gears from turning in that joint session.  Even if a handful of R senators join with Ds to vote down objections, Lindsay Graham will second an infinite number of objections from House wingnuts and, after the joint session extends into the wee hours of Jan 7th, Pence’s declaration that the joint session is deadlocked and unable to count the electoral votes will sound reasonable to the casual observer.  Then the election gets thrown to the House.  Trump reelected.

    I really do think that is the endgame Trump is planning here.

  13. 13.

    Baud

    November 20, 2020 at 11:06 am

    @Bnad:

    Nothing you say holds up to reality.

  14. 14.

    natem

    November 20, 2020 at 11:08 am

    Really, too many people are panicking right now, but might I suggest instead have a good laugh at the clown show that is this farce of a “coup” by Trump and Giuliani. And then, when they’re done, go out and dare these Republicans to cross that line and find out what happens next.

  15. 15.

    Bnad

    November 20, 2020 at 11:09 am

    @Baud: I hope you’re right.

  16. 16.

    Gin & Tonic

    November 20, 2020 at 11:10 am

    Another R Senator starts searching for his spine.

    While the president has the right to legitimate legal challenges, responsible citizens cannot let the reckless actions by him and his legal team stand. Republicans have an obligation when the subject is of such importance to challenge demagoguery and patently false statements.
    — Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) November 20, 2020

  17. 17.

    natem

    November 20, 2020 at 11:10 am

    @Bnad: Under what scenario would a House under Nancy Pelosi elect Trump?

  18. 18.

    Emma from FL

    November 20, 2020 at 11:10 am

    @Bnad: this is the verbal equivalent of the famous cartoon of two scientists looking at an equation that has “and here a miracle happens” in the middle.

    Michigan is not going to overturn the vote. By law, they can’t. If the state GOP gets cute, the governor can summarily act to enforce the law. The officials of several other “close” states have already announced, basically, that the result it what it is.

    And the House would have to accept the charge. It. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen. All it would do is lead to “hello, President Pelosi.”

  19. 19.

    Omnes Omnibus

    November 20, 2020 at 11:13 am

    @Bnad: I don’t want to be credentialist here, but what are you going on besides fear?

  20. 20.

    Matt McIrvin

    November 20, 2020 at 11:14 am

    @natem: In the contingent election that happens if nobody has a majority, the vote is by states– each state delegation gets one vote, so Trump would win on a party line because the Republicans have more states.

    But that’s presuming it gets to that, which is really questionable in many many ways. The vote to decertify an elector, for instance, is not by states.

  21. 21.

    NotMax

    November 20, 2020 at 11:14 am

    @natem

    That would be the senile Rod Serling on the bad acid scenario.

    Maybe.

    //

  22. 22.

    TS (the original)

    November 20, 2020 at 11:17 am

    @Gin & Tonic:

    When I read Rick Scott’s message about covid

     I want to remind everyone to be careful and do the right things to protect yourselves and others. Wear a mask. Social distance. Quarantine if you come in contact with someone positive like I did,” Scott said. “As we approach Thanksgiving, we know this holiday will be different this year. But, listen to public health officials and follow their guidance. We will beat this together, but we all have to be responsible.

    my first thought was – they have seen the writing on the wall and are suddenly transforming into the band of solid respectable gentlemen who will hold this leftist president to account.

  23. 23.

    patrick II

    November 20, 2020 at 11:19 am

    @Brachiator:

    Don’t underestimate Trump’s low cunning.  He is unbound by principle and that is a bigger advantage than we give credit for.  He does things that we, whose imaginations of the possible are bound by law and decorum, too often don’t see coming.

  24. 24.

    natem

    November 20, 2020 at 11:20 am

    @Matt McIrvin:

    If it even got to that point she just wouldn’t swear in the GOP House members. I mean, the FTFNYT would tsk tsk her for it, but if the GOP is willing to go that far to salt the earth, I don’t see how she has any other choice.

  25. 25.

    Shalimar

    November 20, 2020 at 11:20 am

    @natem: The House vote would be one per state, not one per representative.   It is a legitimate fear if it gets that far, but it isn’t going to get that far.  Just one state legislature voting to send an alternate slate of electors would trigger protests on a level we have never seen before.

  26. 26.

    Brachiator

    November 20, 2020 at 11:20 am

    @Bnad:

    Despite Bauer’s confidence I’m not confident at all that this election won’t get thrown to the House.

    Not going to happen. Trump has no case. And Pelosi can block GOP engineered nonsense.

    Also, technically in some situations the election is thrown to the Congress. The Senate votes for vice president and the House votes for president.

    But again, Trump has no case. This is all a tiresome distraction.

  27. 27.

    danielx

    November 20, 2020 at 11:22 am

    @TS (the original):

    they have seen the writing on the wall and are suddenly transforming into the band of solid respectable gentlemen

    Never happen.

    Highlight of the morning: being treated to the inevitable chorus of lying meows about imminent starvation while making ham, cheddar, red onion and red pepper omelets.

  28. 28.

    TaMara (HFG)

    November 20, 2020 at 11:25 am

    JFC, some of you just want to baste in fear.

  29. 29.

    Gin & Tonic

    November 20, 2020 at 11:25 am

    Presenting the legal profession in its best light.

    OMG. The affidavit Sidney Powell and others are hyping when they say many precincts in Michigan have more votes than actual voters is …. based on data from Minnesota.https://t.co/0nBQDX4nOf
    — Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) November 20, 2020

    Apparently someone somewhere used “MI” for Minnesota and nobody checked.

  30. 30.

    Another Scott

    November 20, 2020 at 11:26 am

    @TaMara (HFG): I thought I was seeing it live, but it looks like I was about 30 minutes behind.

    He’s good.  Didn’t answer leading questions in a way to box in the Transition.  Laid out a clear and compelling case the way a good lawyer should.

    They’ve got this.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  31. 31.

    Chris Johnson

    November 20, 2020 at 11:27 am

    @Omnes Omnibus: Having a nym designed to look at first glance like familiar home team poster Baud?

  32. 32.

    Benw

    November 20, 2020 at 11:28 am

    Trump is too dumb to plan things. We did what we had to do, which was vote in historical, record-setting numbers so that all this dumbfuckery is well under the margins. We kicked his ass! He’s got 79M forks in him.

  33. 33.

    hueyplong

    November 20, 2020 at 11:29 am

    @Bnad: Several times it was announced that members of the audience should avoid the brown acid.

  34. 34.

    evap

    November 20, 2020 at 11:30 am

    Georgia SoS says Biden won and he is going to certify the vote today.

  35. 35.

    hedgehog the occasional commenter

    November 20, 2020 at 11:32 am

    Thanks for this, TaMara.  Good to see calm and reason again.  Agree that there is waaay to much “OMG NOTHING MATTERS WE’RE DOOMED” of late.  We have to keep an eye on the Rs–but screaming panic won’t help us.

  36. 36.

    Gin & Tonic

    November 20, 2020 at 11:33 am

    @evap: Too lazy to check – does GA plus all undisputed or already-certified states put Joe over 270, or does he still need one or two?

  37. 37.

    trollhattan

    November 20, 2020 at 11:34 am

    Four years behind schedule, but I’ll take it: NPR on the top of the hour news used the “L” word to describe Trump’s election claims.

    Anybody else concerned about Pompeo’s shenanigans in Israel? We’ve been greenlighting any and everything Bibi and the ultra orthodox settlers want to do four years running and I don’t see any of that being reversed. Long game, I think Pompeo is endearing himself with our fundies for a 2024 run, because they lurve themselves some good old fashioned hegemony in the Holy Land.

    Pence running doesn’t worry me, but Pompeo does. He’s deeply dangerous.

  38. 38.

    ArchTeryx

    November 20, 2020 at 11:34 am

    @Omnes Omnibus: To reply to you on the dead thread, BJ has respite posts, travel posts, pet posts.  I’ve seen BJ get into serious doom cycles but NOTHING like the full time gloom on LGM or Daily Kos (at least on the rec list).  LGM especially looks like an unholy cross between Chicken Little and Eeyore runs the joint.

  39. 39.

    JPL

    November 20, 2020 at 11:34 am

    @TaMara (HFG): Just trying to prepare ourselves.      (kidding)

    Rudy provided evidence of over votes in Michigan by using information from Minnesota.    hmmm

    And once again, I’m late to the party.  Gin and Tonic beat me, but still kinda funny.

  40. 40.

    Baud

    November 20, 2020 at 11:34 am

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I think he still needs PA and MI, which I believe comes on Monday or Tuesday.

    After which, I expect people will take a firmer line on these games.

  41. 41.

    O. Felix Culpa

    November 20, 2020 at 11:35 am

    @Bnad: He is.

  42. 42.

    Kay

    November 20, 2020 at 11:36 am

    Sen. Lamar Alexander
    @SenAlexander
    ·1h
    My statement on the presidential election.

    Weak and full of weasel words. Still coddling the cult leader.
    It’s too late anyway. The Republican Party joined many of the sleazy Trump team’s lawsuits seeking to throw millions of votes in the trash and seat their cult leader. That’s on the record.
    It was never just Trump. The Republican Party has been endorsing, promoting and joining in this every step of the way.
    In Pennsylvania, Trump and the Republican Party wanted to throw out 600k legally cast ballots and disenfranchise 600k Pennsylvania citizens, by fiat. The Republican Senator of Pennsylvania? He was on board for that.
    They won’t even defend their constituents let alone the rest of the country.

  43. 43.

    Citizen Alan

    November 20, 2020 at 11:37 am

    @TaMara (HFG): It is an unavoidable side effect of living in Trump’s America, which is like being trapped in an episode of The Walking Dead, except the zombies are just smart enough to pass for human so they can vote against measures to halt the zombie apocalypse.

    I’m 51, and for the first time in my life, I’m thinking of buying a gun. Not because I want to join in any future leftist revolution, but because I live in Mississippi, and I am genuinely worried that I might be assaulted by a Trumpist if I were in a public place and somehow revealed that I was a liberal Democrat.

  44. 44.

    O. Felix Culpa

    November 20, 2020 at 11:37 am

    @TaMara (HFG): LOL. Hopefully at least a well-seasoned baste.

  45. 45.

    Baud

    November 20, 2020 at 11:37 am

    @trollhattan:

    They have a lot of dangerous people. But I don’t see anyone who can match Trump’s populist style.

  46. 46.

    Loviatar

    November 20, 2020 at 11:37 am

    The Magician’s right hand.

    I have a friend when younger used to work as a magician’s assistant. She told me when you go to a magic show if you want to figure out the tricks, do not watch the Magician’s right hand, do not watch the assistant, do not become distracted by the patter or anything the magician says or does to take your focus off the left hand. That is the hand he uses to lift your wallet, that is the hand he uses to take your watch, that is the hand he use to slip a card into your pocket. That is the hand that performs the trick. She said most good magicians are almost ambidextrous.

    Trump was for 4 years the Republican’s right hand. Trump has distracted the American people and the world while McConnell, Republican and right wingers around the world (Putin, Erdoğan, Likud) stole America’s wallet, standing and reputation. Trump blustered, yelled and tweeted and while he did so, America, Europe and those who wanted a better world lost more than we realize.

    Suggestion, don’t let the Magician’s right hand (Trump) continue to be a distraction, focus on the left hand (McConnell). Defeating him in Georgia would be a start.

  47. 47.

    randy khan

    November 20, 2020 at 11:38 am

    @Bnad:

    I think you should calm down.  If they’re deadlocked it doesn’t go to the House; it’s President Pelosi.  You only go to the House if there is an actual tie among the EVs cast (with two candidates who get EVs, which is the case here).

  48. 48.

    raven

    November 20, 2020 at 11:38 am

    @NotMax: what does this mean?

     

    //

  49. 49.

    Brachiator

    November 20, 2020 at 11:38 am

    @patrick II:

    Don’t underestimate Trump’s low cunning.

    This is a good point, but I don’t underestimate Trump at all. He exhibits all the low cunning and brutality of a low level mobster.  He is unimaginative and often telegraphs his moves in his tweets and at his rallies. If stymied, he just tries again.

    And he only succeeds because he has a compliant GOP leadership behind him.

    There’s another factor that helps him, related to issues you note. There are people who think that Trump could not possibly be bad, because he is white or a successful businessman, or because a president not named Obama must clearly be honorable.

    And of course there are people as lacking in principle as Trump who are happy to get what they want anyway they can.

  50. 50.

    Subcommandante Yakbreath

    November 20, 2020 at 11:40 am

    @Bnad: Are you the Mirror Universe Baud? If so, do you have an Evil Goatee?  : )

  51. 51.

    Kay

    November 20, 2020 at 11:41 am

    Keep in mind too- one term failed President Donald Trump is very, very unpopular in many, many areas of this country but there is no where where he doesn’t get at least 1%.

    The Republican Party also would have thrown out Republican votes, if it meant they could install their cult leader for a lifetime term.

    They’ll throw anyone’s vote out. It’s risky to let them anywhere near a polling place, as we have learned.

  52. 52.

    Omnes Omnibus

    November 20, 2020 at 11:41 am

    @Chris Johnson: That poster has been here before in case you are making a veiled suggestion of skullduggery.

  53. 53.

    O. Felix Culpa

    November 20, 2020 at 11:41 am

    @Subcommandante Yakbreath: And does “he” disappear if he says his name backwards?

  54. 54.

    Gin & Tonic

    November 20, 2020 at 11:41 am

    @raven: I think it’s intended to mean sarcasm.

  55. 55.

    randy khan

    November 20, 2020 at 11:43 am

    @Matt McIrvin:

    You only get to that if nobody has a majority of the EVs actually cast.  It doesn’t happen if the House and Senate can’t agree on the number of EVs for each candidate.

  56. 56.

    patrick II

    November 20, 2020 at 11:43 am

    Andrew Giuliani, Rudy’s 34 year-old son who works at the White House, tests positive.  Andrew attended Rudy’s press conference yesterday.

  57. 57.

    TaMara (HFG)

    November 20, 2020 at 11:44 am

    This thread is worth a read. I’m inclined to agree with his assessments.

    I’m no political pundit but I grew up w a dad who was a federal prosecutor & he taught me a lot & I’ve also sat a fair amount of poker w serious players & l’ll say this: I do not think Trump is trying to ‘make his base happy’ or ‘laying the groundwork for his own network’…

    — Edward Norton (@EdwardNorton) November 20, 2020

  58. 58.

    TaMara (HFG)

    November 20, 2020 at 11:45 am

    @O. Felix Culpa: It damn well better be, because I’m not coming up with a better recipe for them. LOL

  59. 59.

    Geoduck

    November 20, 2020 at 11:45 am

    @trollhattan: His politics are horrible, yes, but In terms of being popular and having any charisma, how is Pompeo any more dangerous than Pence?

  60. 60.

    Mary G

    November 20, 2020 at 11:46 am

    @Gin & Tonic:

    The lawyers President Trump has been sending to court to challenge the election results have made elementary errors, including misspelling “poll” as “pole,” forgetting a judge’s name and misfiling a Michigan lawsuit. https://t.co/Gsk51lywM6— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) November 20, 2020

  61. 61.

    Peale

    November 20, 2020 at 11:47 am

    @Gin & Tonic: Unfortunately, the counts of the already certified states is nowhere close to 270 for him. California doesn’t certify until December 11.

  62. 62.

    raven

    November 20, 2020 at 11:48 am

    @Gin & Tonic: Thx

  63. 63.

    Subcommandante Yakbreath

    November 20, 2020 at 11:48 am

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    It may be prohibited by the Rules For Jackals.

  64. 64.

    The Thin Black Duke

    November 20, 2020 at 11:48 am

    @TaMara (HFG): What do you think he’s saying?

  65. 65.

    Bnad

    November 20, 2020 at 11:49 am

    After reading these comments I feel better at least about Trump not being able to steal the election.

  66. 66.

    Brachiator

    November 20, 2020 at 11:49 am

    @randy khan:

    You only go to the House if there is an actual tie among the EVs cast (with two candidates who get EVs, which is the case here).

    I thought the election goes to Congress if no candidate gets a majority of 538 electoral votes, which could happen if you had a strong third party candidate in the mix. Not just ties.

  67. 67.

    MomSense

    November 20, 2020 at 11:49 am

    @TaMara (HFG):

    Trump definitely has criminal exposure, but I’m hesitant to buy in to the Trump is doing x but he’s really trying to accomplish y. Trump said he wouldn’t accept the results if he didn’t win.  He has said he wants not just two terms but he’s owed a third at least for the time wasted on Russia Russia Russia.  He told us what he would do.  He told us why.  He’s doing it.  The fact that he is really bad at his coup attempt doesn’t mean it isn’t a coup attempt.

  68. 68.

    trollhattan

    November 20, 2020 at 11:51 am

    @Baud:

    He certainly doesn’t have Trump’s comic stylings but has plenty of Trumpian bluster while being an order of magnitude smarter. He also shares Trump’s contempt for the half+ of America who didn’t vote for them and for the media (recalling the blank map gotcha). Despite whatever they taught him at the Point, he rejects constitutional order.

    If I were going to the sports book today, he’d get my money as the ’24 nominee. The head pile of goo won’t be their pick–I can’t imagine what he’s going to be like healthwise in four years, presuming he’s not dirt farming.

  69. 69.

    Amir Khalid

    November 20, 2020 at 11:51 am

    @patrick II:

    I would fear neither Trump’s low cunning nor his lack of scruple. They don’t work on people unafraid of him or his celebrity, and his imminent defenestration has emboldened people against him. Also too, he’s been regularly shooting himself in the foot at least since September, e.g. by appointing Rudy Giuliani to lead his post-election lawsuit campaign.

  70. 70.

    trollhattan

    November 20, 2020 at 11:53 am

    @Geoduck:

    Just think Pence is too stupid to run a successful campaign. He’s not quite Gohmert-dumb but he’s really thick.

  71. 71.

    TaMara (HFG)

    November 20, 2020 at 11:53 am

    @The Thin Black Duke: That this is all about holding democracy hostage to get a better deal for all his crimes and to eliminate evidence (which has been a theory on why he decapitated the DOD).

    i.e. I’ll concede if I get a full pardon, etc…

  72. 72.

    Matt McIrvin

    November 20, 2020 at 11:54 am

    @Brachiator: Right, but it’s if no candidate gets a majority of electors appointed, which is 538 only if they’re all appointed.

    The distinction is important because one story that’s been going around lately, as supposedly the actual preferred strategy of Rudy’s team, is that they prevent anyone from getting 270 by preventing electors from getting seated at all, triggering the contingent election.

    But that won’t work, because what you really need isn’t 270, it’s a majority of electors appointed. For Trump to get that by just knocking out swing states, he’d have to take out ALL SIX of the states under contention.

  73. 73.

    Baud

    November 20, 2020 at 11:56 am

    @TaMara (HFG):

    We don’t need him to concede. The only thing we need is for GSA to certify the transition process. We’re not going to promise a pardon for that.

  74. 74.

    Peale

    November 20, 2020 at 11:56 am

    @Gin & Tonic: Does he then go on to tell anyone what the patentently false statements are? If so, its kind of worthless.  “Yeah, I’m against lying just like I’m against pushing old ladies down staircases for walking too slowly.  The president is lying when he says he won the popular vote, but that spiel about George Soros and Chavez is also false, and I’ll say so, even if I know that 80% of my voters think that.”

  75. 75.

    trollhattan

    November 20, 2020 at 11:56 am

    @TaMara (HFG):

    Heh

    I will allow that he’s also a whiny, sulky, petulant, Grinchy, vindictive little 10-ply-super-soft bitch who no doubt is just throwing a wicked pout fest & trying to give a tiny-hand middle finger to the whole country for pure spite, without a single thought for the dead & dying

    Had to double-check whether this was “the” Edward Norton. This is the sort of coastal elitism I can definitely support.

  76. 76.

    Mike in NC

    November 20, 2020 at 11:57 am

    As long as Fat Bastard is still breathing, he’s not going to allow any of his henchmen like Pompeo to muse about replacing him in 2024. He is highly unlikely to be in any condition to run himself. He’s been hiding not just his tax returns and every other type of record, but his health is problematic.

  77. 77.

    TaMara (HFG)

    November 20, 2020 at 11:57 am

    @Baud: That’s exactly what Norton says.  No retreat, no surrender. We basically throw every charge at him we can. So that someone else thinks twice about trying to corrupt our democracy.

  78. 78.

    TaMara (HFG)

    November 20, 2020 at 11:58 am

    @trollhattan: You mean the actor? It is.

  79. 79.

    trollhattan

    November 20, 2020 at 11:58 am

    @TaMara (HFG):

    Like Sheriff Bart holding himself hostage in front of the people of Rock Ridge?

    “I think he means it.”

  80. 80.

    Shalimar

    November 20, 2020 at 12:03 pm

    @Geoduck: Pompeo is smart and shameless and pretty clearly a sociopath.   Listen to Pence’s bullshit.  His shtick is to give a long-winded, rehearsed answer to every question with no regard to what he is asked.  He isn’t bright at all.  He doesn’t bother to think about anything.  He doesn’t actually answer questions, so he doesn’t need to know anything.

    Pompeo could run a dictatorship or a brutal gestapo.  Pence was born to be an ineffective lackey.

  81. 81.

    Ksmiami

    November 20, 2020 at 12:03 pm

    @TaMara (HFG): put the fear back in these numbnuts. I’m tired of funding a government that is actively harming half the country

  82. 82.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    November 20, 2020 at 12:04 pm

    @Baud:

    They have a lot of dangerous people. But I don’t see anyone who can match Trump’s populist style.

    I agree. I also think we underestimate the “he’s a businessman” appeal because it’s such transparent nonsense. But a lot voters are really fucking dumb, and all trump’s flashy vulgarity– not just the game show, but the plane, the helicopter, the signs on buildings owned by other people, the garish McMansion in Florida, even the dumb bragging– reads to a lot of people a lot more like success than actual success in business did for Mitt Romney or Ross Perot.

    I’m not an MBA, but if you really wanted to run the country like a business, wouldn’t you shut down Alabama and Mississipi as inefficient operations, merge Idaho and Montana into Washington state, Wyoming into Colorado and fold both Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas and Iowa into a single subsidiary run out of the Chicago office? Not that I’m trying to push any red state buttons, or anything.

  83. 83.

    randy khan

    November 20, 2020 at 12:07 pm

    @Baud:

    It depends on how you’re counting.  (I know, I know.)

    If the EVs simply don’t get counted, Biden is up now by 76 EVs, and the supposedly disputed states total 79.  So take any one state off the table, and Biden would have the most votes even if the other states don’t cast votes.

    If all the states cast EVs, then Biden can lose any two of the supposedly disputed states (and can lose three if it’s Arizona, Nevada and either Georgia or Michigan) and still win.

  84. 84.

    Mary G

    November 20, 2020 at 12:08 pm

    OMG. Trump's lawyers filed an affidavit claiming statistical irregularities proving election fraud because they *confused Michigan for Minnesota*They thought "MI" = Minnesota (it's MN), and then compared a bunch of results in Minnesota to Michigan population statistics. https://t.co/nu9FMgSuqY— Isaac Saul (@Ike_Saul) November 20, 2020

  85. 85.

    Barbara

    November 20, 2020 at 12:08 pm

    Notwithstanding my comment above about the potential ulterior motives for players like Giuliani (as in, not being investigated as a Russian asset), it does seem to me that the most likely explanation for this assault on the electoral process is Trump thinking this is like every other transaction in his life, where he just takes what he can get away with and he really doesn’t care if he transgresses ethical, contractual, regulatory or other lines that are supposed to apply under the circumstances.

  86. 86.

    zzyzx

    November 20, 2020 at 12:08 pm

    I get the occasional gloom and doom. We’re in a bad place as a country and I don’t see an easy way out of it to where we have a conservative party that I disagree with on gun control and taxes but is out to win by convincing people.

    On the other hand, one lesson of this month is that we don’t have the brown shirts. Every time they’ve tried to present a show of force, their numbers have been insanely small. There are a few people that we need to watch out for, but it’s not nearly as bad as I feared.

  87. 87.

    patroclus

    November 20, 2020 at 12:10 pm

    @TaMara (HFG): I heard somewhere that the first rule about Edward Norton tweets was not to talk about Edward Norton tweets.

    On topic, Presidential elections always “go to Congress” in that they have to approve the results.  In 1876, even after the impasse and the creation of the Electoral Commission and the Hayes-Tilden Compromise, it still had to be approved by Congress, including the Democratic House.  Then, Speaker Randall deliberately overcame all dilatory tactics to get House approval, even though Tilden was declared the loser.  Now, Speaker Pelosi would not do that.  The result will be President Pelosi.  There is a zero chance that Trump will ever be approved by the House for another term.

  88. 88.

    zzyzx

    November 20, 2020 at 12:10 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: the celebrity culture means a lot. Trump has become a pop culture shorthand for “successful businessman,” and that gave him some stupid advantages that can’t be easily replicated. It’s like how a large percent of the population probably assumes that Alex Trebek was an expert on everything because we internalized him always having the right answ… errr question in his hand.

  89. 89.

    Jamie

    November 20, 2020 at 12:11 pm

    @ArchTeryx: Yeah, that’s why I stopped reading LGM a few years back.

  90. 90.

    randy khan

    November 20, 2020 at 12:11 pm

    @Brachiator:

    Hence the parenthetical about having only 2 candidates with EVs.  If there are three or more, then you go to the House if the leading candidate doesn’t have a majority.

  91. 91.

    zhena gogolia

    November 20, 2020 at 12:12 pm

    @TaMara (HFG):

    Yeah, that’s good.

  92. 92.

    Mo MacArbie

    November 20, 2020 at 12:13 pm

    @evap: Anyone else look too quickly and read “Georgia SoS” as “George Soros”? Man, I gotta get back to doing something else.

  93. 93.

    zhena gogolia

    November 20, 2020 at 12:13 pm

    @trollhattan:

    I don’t think Pompeo is at all smart. Maybe smarter than Trump, but not “orders of magnitude.” And Pence’s charisma completely escapes me, but he is “orders of magnitude” more charming than Pompeo.

  94. 94.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    November 20, 2020 at 12:14 pm

    meanwhile, this seems like an unwonted loss of Grifterella’s oh-so-studied composure

    Ivanka Trump @IvankaTrump 15h
    This is harassment pure and simple. This ‘inquiry’ by NYC democrats is 100% motivated by politics, publicity and rage. They know very well that there’s nothing here and that there was no tax benefit whatsoever. These politicians are simply ruthless.

    This could make things awkward if Vanky and Kellyanne run into each other in the hallway

    George Conway @gtconway3d ·14h
    So please tell us what consulting you did that was legitimately worth $747,622 to the family company you already worked for. If this is “harassment, pure and simple,” that should be pretty easy to explain.

    Ragnarok Lobster @eclecticbrotha
     Is she scurred? I think she scurred.

  95. 95.

    The Moar You Know

    November 20, 2020 at 12:15 pm

    JFC, some of you just want to baste in fear.

    @TaMara (HFG):  So far on this thread, just one.  A new user, quelle surprise.

  96. 96.

    yellowdog

    November 20, 2020 at 12:16 pm

    @natem: tThey vote by delegation and the maj of delegations are GOP.

  97. 97.

    zhena gogolia

    November 20, 2020 at 12:17 pm

    @The Moar You Know:

    He’s not new.

  98. 98.

    zhena gogolia

    November 20, 2020 at 12:18 pm

    Thank you again for this Bob Bauer briefing. I watched the whole thing and it was balm for my soul. I wasn’t even irritated by Michael Fucking Shear, and it was nice to hear Jennifer Rubin. Much better than the questions Biden got yesterday.

  99. 99.

    jonas

    November 20, 2020 at 12:18 pm

    @Bnad: Then the election gets thrown to the House.  Trump reelected.

    I’ve detected a slight flaw in your reasoning there…

  100. 100.

    zhena gogolia

    November 20, 2020 at 12:20 pm

    Biden tapped Marcella Nunez-Smith, an expert on health care inequality, to help lead his COVID advisory board. That puts the fight against the virus in devastated Black, Latino and Native American communities smack in the center of his pandemic response. https://t.co/orQkXqUMlp— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 20, 2020

  101. 101.

    Another Scott

    November 20, 2020 at 12:21 pm

    @Chris Johnson: Wouldn’t he go for “pnɐꓭ” as a ‘nym if that were the intent???

    (via https://www.messletters.com/en/mirrored/)

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (“Who was just looking for an excuse…”)

  102. 102.

    Kay

    November 20, 2020 at 12:21 pm

    southpaw
    @nycsouthpaw
    1h
    Giuliani’s son — a public employee — endorses the effort to steal the election and destroy American democracy in his bio

    It’s really such a pleasure to contemplate no longer having to pay the low quality hires for the no-show jobs.
    These are the best jobs any of these people will ever get. They’re unemployable without the incredibly low standards of the Trump Administration and the GOP.
    No one should hire them, either. They won’t leave even after they get fired. Who wants or needs employees like this? They do nothing for the salary and then stalk you when you fire them.

  103. 103.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    November 20, 2020 at 12:22 pm

    n Catherine Banning realizes the “failed” theft attempt was really a distraction.

    The looting of the public treasury was already done. I am more than a little convinced the Senate is balking at a second stimulus because Trump and his spawn embezzled so much of the first.

    The current theft is Rudy Oozliune and Bannon scamming Trump of the money Trump scammed from his base.

  104. 104.

    jonas

    November 20, 2020 at 12:23 pm

    @zhena gogolia: Oh, Pompeo’s no dummy. First in his class at West Point, Harvard Law, etc. But he’s a greasy, self-righteous, fundamentalist thug who I’m sure has posters of Pinochet and Franco plastered all over his man cave at home and dreams of ruining the world so as to bring on the rapture quicker.

  105. 105.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    November 20, 2020 at 12:23 pm

    @Barbara:So it could be Trump’s lawyers who are driving this train for their own self-interest

    $20K an hour is a lot of self interest.

  106. 106.

    The Moar You Know

    November 20, 2020 at 12:23 pm

    I’m 51, and for the first time in my life, I’m thinking of buying a gun. Not because I want to join in any future leftist revolution, but because I live in Mississippi, and I am genuinely worried that I might be assaulted by a Trumpist if I were in a public place and somehow revealed that I was a liberal Democrat.

    @Citizen Alan: Have you ever owned or shot a gun before?  If not, I think this is a really poor idea NOW.  You need to train up on how to shoot, not just get one, cram some bullets in it and think you’re good to go.  You’ll be far more of a danger to yourself than any aggressor.

    If you have owned or shot one before, get your ass to the gun range and rent a few and spend some time shooting them before you get one.  I recommend a revolver, they don’t jam.  They’re also very safe to carry on your person if you leave it on an empty chamber.

    If you haven’t, well, do the same thing.  Go to a range that offers rentals, get in a basic firearms class, and start learning.  If anyone asks why you’re there (they won’t) just say you’re terrified of socialists.  Don’t purchase anything for a while.

    Don’t bring one of those into your home without a very complete understanding of how they work and how to use them SAFELY.

  107. 107.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    November 20, 2020 at 12:25 pm

    @Kay: Giuliani’s son also has The Bug

    Tim O’Brien @TimOBrien 57m
    Life comes at you fast.
    And Andrew attended Rudy’s crowded, mask-free — and sweaty — presser yesterday.

    Andrew H. Giuliani @AndrewHGiuliani · 1h
    This morning, I tested positive for COVID-19. I am experiencing mild symptoms, and am following all appropriate protocols, including being in quarantine and conducting contact tracing.

    my schadenfreude can only go higher for this pair of goons

  108. 108.

    patroclus

    November 20, 2020 at 12:25 pm

    @yellowdog: No they don’t.  They go to the special one-vote-per-state rules only after a motion to proceed to that is passed by majority vote.  And, technically, they don’t have a motion to proceed motion unless a specific House Rule providing for that is passed by the Rules Committee; otherwise it would take a 2/3rd’s vote.  The House Parliamentarian would probably allow Minority Leader McCarthy to present a “privileged” motion taking that down to a majority vote, but, then again, it would require a majority vote.  If, however, Speaker Pelosi merely refuses to convene the House or if she entertains multiple adjournment motions for days leading up to 1/20, it could also “not proceed” to the Special Rules.  And then, even if they actually get to the Special one-vote-per-state Rules, the House still has to approve the results by majority vote.

    Georgia just certified Biden’s W!!!!

  109. 109.

    schrodingers_cat

    November 20, 2020 at 12:26 pm

    Doom posters predicting a victory for the Orange loser need to kindly fuck off. OMG if X happens Evil Clown wins posts are getting tired

  110. 110.

    Kay

    November 20, 2020 at 12:27 pm

    Lauren Windsor
    @lawindsor
    ·57m
    This morning, I asked
    @SenMikeShirkey
    if he would honor the will of Michigan voters in his meeting with Trump today. He responded by singing a hymn about being persecuted:

    They’ll happily throw out the votes of their own constituents if it means complying with the demands of Donald Trump.
    Your vote is never safe with these people again. They’ll throw out anyones on orders from a sleazy real estate developer and cult leader. No free will, no independent thought, no agency. He barks an order, they jump.
    He won’t defend the people of Michigan. Too scary.

  111. 111.

    Peale

    November 20, 2020 at 12:27 pm

    @Kay: Ugh. This news makes me feel old. I can remember feeling sorry for that kid when Rudi and his mom were going through their divorce and he basically wanted nothing to do with his children and was very publicly shunning them.  Great. I want backsies on my emotions 20 years ago.

  112. 112.

    JanieM

    November 20, 2020 at 12:27 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I also think we underestimate the “he’s a businessman” appeal because it’s such transparent nonsense.

    Agreed. My mother wasn’t dumb (she died last spring at 96), but she also wasn’t astute politically, or very well informed, especially in her later years. She said to me sometime in 2016, “Well, maybe he’ll do a good job, because he’s a businessman.” I went on a rant like you wouldn’t believe, partly because I knew that someone else close to her must have said that, and I was furious about that. Besides the fact that he wasn’t a good businessman, the government isn’t a business. Not to mention that Clickbait is so vile that if my mother had ever really understood who/what he was, she would have run in the other direction so fast you wouldn’t have seen her going.

  113. 113.

    Gin & Tonic

    November 20, 2020 at 12:29 pm

    @Barbara:

    as in, not being investigated as a Russian asset

    Rudy may be getting investigated, but I doubt for that. Too many skeletons in too many closets. I think the FBI’s NY Field Office is completely corrupt, and I think Giuliani has been in the Bratva’s pocket for decades. His enthusiasm for eradicating the Italian Mafia in NY somehow paralleled the rise of the Bratva. And while Putin may shy away from wetwork on Americans in America, those guys just don’t care.

    I hope I live long enough for this to all be unearthed like the John Connolly/Whitey Bulger connection. But I am not optimistic.

  114. 114.

    TaMara (HFG)

    November 20, 2020 at 12:29 pm

    @patroclus: You win.

  115. 115.

    M31

    November 20, 2020 at 12:30 pm

    @zhena gogolia: well, to fair, you could be orders of magnitude smarter than Trump and still be pretty stupid

  116. 116.

    The Moar You Know

    November 20, 2020 at 12:31 pm

     

    Pence was born to be an ineffective lackey.

    @Shalimar:  Damn.  I laughed because it’s true, but that’s an insult with some sting.  Gonna try to remember that one.

  117. 117.

    Kay

    November 20, 2020 at 12:31 pm

    Manu Raju
    @mkraju
    ·1h
    Rep. Kay Granger, a senior Texas Republican, told me this when asked about Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results.
    “I have great concerns about it,” she said. “I think that it’s time to move on.”

    But she won’t do anything about it, because she is fundamentally a person who takes orders from any sleazy, half ass dictator who happens to wander on by. A weak person. A person who was ripe for the plucking by an authoritarian, even a comically inept one who was just soundly rejected by the American people.

  118. 118.

    SiubhanDuinne

    November 20, 2020 at 12:32 pm

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Well, in fairness, the two-letter state abbreviations can be confusing to the uninitiated:

    AL stands for Alabama

    Oh. I thought AL was for Alaska.

    No. Alaska is AK.

    It is? I always thought AK stood for Arkansas.

    Unh-unh. Arkansas is AR.

    Hmm. I thought Arizona was AR.

    Nope. Arizona is AZ.

    Okay.

    No. That’s Oklahoma.

  119. 119.

    zzyzx

    November 20, 2020 at 12:33 pm

    @randy khan:

    So Trump would have to agree to have someone take away one of his votes in order to execute a long term strategy. I think I see the flaw in that plan.

  120. 120.

    danielx

    November 20, 2020 at 12:33 pm

    @jonas:

    Not to mention possessing all the charisma of a bag of potatoes, to which he bears a more than passing resemblance.

  121. 121.

    danielx

    November 20, 2020 at 12:35 pm

    @The Moar You Know:

    “The worst sounds in the world are click when you expect to hear boom and boom when you expect to hear click”.

  122. 122.

    zzyzx

    November 20, 2020 at 12:35 pm

    @Kay: even speaking out against it in tepid terms helps. The only danger was Trump building momentum and having everyone go along. The longer it takes without him getting wins, the fewer and fewer allies he has, and the easier it is for people to peel off and be, “Trump? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that person before.”

  123. 123.

    Kay

    November 20, 2020 at 12:35 pm

    @Peale:

    he basically wanted nothing to do with his children and was very publicly shunning them

    No, you can easily reconcile that. The fact that these people are the worst parents in the world is directly related to the kind of people they raise. So it is and was tragic.
    But no longer our problem. They’ll have to sort out their fucked up families without a fat government salary and fake “position” like the rest of us do.
    Rudy’s many, many, many family problems are no longer our problems.

  124. 124.

    patrick II

    November 20, 2020 at 12:36 pm

    @Brachiator:

    He is unimaginative and often telegraphs his moves in his tweets and at his rallies.

    And people don’t believe it’s going to happen anyhow. I watch some MSNBC shows at night and for at least the first two years the experts, who have all of the knowledge of law and government in the world, would tell us “This can’t happen because of [fill in the appropriate law or authority] will prevent that. It is difficult to believe the choices of an insane person, nor the power of the presidency and sheer bullying to carry those choices out. If we have a functioning democracy, his erratic behavior only works in the short term, but it has been a closer call than we like to admit, and damage done does not bode well.

  125. 125.

    danielx

    November 20, 2020 at 12:37 pm

    @patroclus:

    WWTDD?

  126. 126.

    trollhattan

    November 20, 2020 at 12:38 pm

    @jonas:

    Pretty much my take, and I think that combo is just what Republicans have come to love. Imagine if Ted Cruz had been trained to kill.

    IOW don’t take eyes off him after he’s out of office.

  127. 127.

    zzyzx

    November 20, 2020 at 12:38 pm

    Georgia just certified. That takes an important piece off of any possible attempt. Trump is fighting mainly for MI/WI but GA/AZ/PA/NV is plenty.

  128. 128.

    Kay

    November 20, 2020 at 12:40 pm

    @Peale:

    It DOES explain a lot of the clinging and frankly stalker-like behavior of these people though- this is it for them. This is as good as it gets. From here get some shitty fake job at one of the thousands of Right wing grift operations. He’ll be begging for 2 dollar donations from Trump supporters the rest of his adult life.

    “800% Matching!”  That’s his next career.

    I still think we should tow their cars. Probably behind on payments anyway.

  129. 129.

    Kay

    November 20, 2020 at 12:40 pm

    @Peale:

    It DOES explain a lot of the clinging and frankly stalker-like behavior of these people though- this is it for them. This is as good as it gets. From here get some shitty fake job at one of the thousands of Right wing grift operations. He’ll be begging for 2 dollar donations from Trump supporters the rest of his adult life.

    “800% Matching!”  That’s his next career.

    I still think we should tow their cars. Probably behind on payments anyway.

  130. 130.

    Another Scott

    November 20, 2020 at 12:41 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: :-D

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  131. 131.

    Ramiah Ariya

    November 20, 2020 at 12:43 pm

    I think the Biden team may be missing the larger freakout about this. Amy Klobuchar and Bob Bauer seem to be focused on what this circus means for Biden alone.

    However, that is not the only issue here – the issue here is that the Republican party seems to be inventing ways to overturn the vote, and have already identified major gaps in the process – gaps that again seem to rely on norms than anything. Along with the media’s coverage of this, to an outside person it seems like Trump has actually found actual paths, legitimate paths by which he can keep power.

    I am not just talking about Fox News – the front page of WaPo today has a long article about the President using his power to remain in office – but reading through that article the tenor seems to be that all this always existed, and the Trump team is actually just doing something normal. By relying on “historians” to warn about this, the media acts as if this coup attempt talk is just hysteria by the pointy heads.

    I think Democrats should chuck this talk about “undermining people’s confidence in democracy” – the average Republican party voter could care less, and it is very, very wrong of the media and Democratic politicians to not talk about THAT development. Similarly the lines written about how the world’s dictators will be emboldened and so in is just BS. These have no relevance or appeal in an argument – the Republican party is now willing to remain in power forever if a coup is what it takes, and that, to them, is the LOGICAL culmination of where politics has been going for the past several decades. They, again, could care less about what effect this has on authoritarians elsewhere.

    Without attacking Republican voters and their behavior, and by focusing on the narrow issue of Biden taking over, Democrats are missing the big picture.

  132. 132.

    trollhattan

    November 20, 2020 at 12:43 pm

    And in COVID news, stores are wiped clean of toilet paper [sorry] and sheriffs are climbing over one another to loudly proclaim they will not be enforcing the 10-5 curfew, because freedom, and how do these not-law abiding fuckers keep getting reelected?

    That’s it from Liberal California.

  133. 133.

    The Moar You Know

    November 20, 2020 at 12:43 pm

    “The worst sounds in the world are click when you expect to hear boom and boom when you expect to hear click”.

    @danielx: Precisely.  I have had the first happen (broken firing pin) but never the second.  You don’t even want to hear the second.  That means YOU fucked up really bad.  And that’s on your training, your attention to details under stressful situations (count your fucking shots) and your preparation.

  134. 134.

    patrick II

    November 20, 2020 at 12:44 pm

    @Amir Khalid:

    A thing we don’t really talk about when talking about people’s courage is mortgages.  Most of these civil servants, even the high ranking ones, have mortgages, families, and children.  They are deeply invested in a life and family outside of their government jobs and did not expect to sacrifice it all to simply do their jobs — to tell the scientific truth about a disease, or global warming, or a Alabama hurricane drawn with a Sharpie.

    I wish they would stand up to him more, but they shouldn’t have to take back a hurricane warning or lose their jobs.

  135. 135.

    Uncle Cosmo

    November 20, 2020 at 12:44 pm

    @Bnad: In the words of Attorney Doucette, whose video on this subject I watched on John Scalzi’s site, you are an idiot.

    ETA: You are cordially invited to crawl into a closet, curl up into a semblance of a fetal position, and whine your arse off. Just make sure to close the door so you don’t bother anyone else.

  136. 136.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    November 20, 2020 at 12:44 pm

    I just watched/listened to the Bob Bauer video at the top. Thanks for the link. It was very soothing

  137. 137.

    West of the Rockies

    November 20, 2020 at 12:46 pm

    OT, but is Andrea Mitchell seeming  a bit off, slow, befuddled?

  138. 138.

    dmsilev

    November 20, 2020 at 12:46 pm

    In other news, Georgia just officially certified Biden as the winner there. Trump can request a recount, but they’ll just run the same ballots through the same scanning machines, so it won’t change anything.

  139. 139.

    Kay

    November 20, 2020 at 12:50 pm

    Manu Raju
    @mkraju
    ·4h
    Many Rs back Trump’s effort to delay state certifications. Asked if his state should delay certifying the election, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar said: “I believe it should.” And when asked if he supports state legislature naming own electors, he said: “I do.”

    Just amazing. The Republican Party supports installing a President who wasn’t elected.

    The next question to ask them is if they now no longer recognize term limits. If they don’t comply with elections why would they comply with finite terms? Why would anyone bother having another election if the Republican Party can just throw out the results?
    Have they thought through this new dictatorship plank of the GOP platform? It effectively ends elections.

  140. 140.

    Ken

    November 20, 2020 at 12:50 pm

    @patrick II: Andrew Giuliani, Rudy’s 34 year-old son who works at the White House,

    What, he can’t get a real job?  Maybe that landscaping place is hiring.

  141. 141.

    Uncle Cosmo

    November 20, 2020 at 12:51 pm

    @Gin & Tonic: Truly “The Gang That Couldn’t Sue Straight” (I forget which pundit came up with that…)

  142. 142.

    patroclus

    November 20, 2020 at 12:51 pm

    @Ramiah Ariya: Fox News has actually been pushing back against Trump’s efforts to steal the election; it’s really only been NewsMax and OAN that have joined in.  Even Tucker Carlson called out Sidney Powell last night – he said that he offered her a full hour to actually provide the evidence about her Hugo Chavez theory that Dominion is owned and operated by the Venezuelans and George Soros (which she has refused to do) and she declined, tweeting today that he was rude and arrogant and insulting.  He even said that he’d give her a week’s worth of broadcasts to lay out the evidence about her conspiracy theories.

    I disagree with your thesis – the Dems are playing this right and they’ve even got Tucker Carlson to agree.

  143. 143.

    Kay

    November 20, 2020 at 12:54 pm

    @Ken:

    They’ll never get real jobs. They were raised to believe they were entitled to these jobs. Hence the screaming hissy fits and stalking the US public insisting we have to continue to employ and pay them.

  144. 144.

    AWOL

    November 20, 2020 at 12:54 pm

    @West of the Rockies: Yes, she seems ill. No timbre in her voice; looks exhausted.

  145. 145.

    Dan B

    November 20, 2020 at 12:55 pm

    @TaMara (HFG): Fascinating hypothesis.  This desperate gamble on fooling American citizens ties up  some loose ends.  It also suggests why Trump is bunkered in the White House instead of making plans to sneak of the country from Mar A Lago.

  146. 146.

    Peale

    November 20, 2020 at 12:56 pm

    @Kay: The next step is to do the same for Senate candidates, I’m sure.  Just declare that the normal errors that are found in any election make it impossible to elect Governors and Senators. Throw out Tammy Baldwin and just put in your own GOP Senator from Wisconsin.

  147. 147.

    Matt McIrvin

    November 20, 2020 at 12:57 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: If you wanted to run the country like a business, you’d shut down or sell off the non-producing parts to create a leaner, more profitable organization. That’s not a strategy I’m really fond of, though.

  148. 148.

    Another Scott

    November 20, 2020 at 12:58 pm

    @The Moar You Know: A couple of quick stories (I’ve related before):

    My life-member-of-the-NRA uncle was cleaning several of his rifles one day and on one particular rifle the cleaning brush didn’t go in as far as it should.  Hmm…  Pressed harder, bang.  Luckily, it only grazed his finger.

    He took us out in the country to a friend’s house to fire his collection of pistols (with hearing protectors) at a backstop.  We were maybe 20 feet away, firing .44s, .45s, etc.  Once a mangled slug ended up at our feet after bouncing back from the backstop.  We backed up another 6 feet or so…

    At that same shooting trip, I pulled the trigger, no boom.  I pulled it again, no boom.  My uncle very carefully took the gun away from me, fired it another couple of times with no boom, then carefully unloaded the bullet.  We carefully buried it.  (It seemed like an inadequate solution to me, but what are you gonna do?)

    Guns are dangerous.  Even people who have been around them for decades make mistakes* (the cleaning).  Even when you don’t make a mistake, bad things can happen (the dud bullet could decide to go off later, a weird ricochet could get you).  They’re a bad idea to have at home.

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    * – Yes, he did things wrong (gun should have been unloaded, he should have checked that it was unloaded).  But humans do things wrong – they’re human.

  149. 149.

    Frankensteinbeck

    November 20, 2020 at 12:59 pm

    Trump is Trump.  He is acting like himself, the way he was always going to act.  Don’t overthink it.  He is going to try every way he can think of to cheat and overturn the election.  All of them.  It’s not a strategy, or a plan, or even a sign of desperation, not in the ways we think of it.  (He is desperate, but that’s a separate issue.)  To Trump, this is common sense levels of obvious.  Of course you refuse to concede, file every lawsuit you can think of, try to convince officials to stop the vote or substitute electors.  Of course you try to directly ask the Supreme Court to overturn the election results.  I’m sure he intends to try bribing electors.  He’ll ask Mitch McConnell to overturn the election by parliamentarian trick.  I’m sure he has already asked for a military coup and will ask for one again.  He does not grasp the idea of ethics and morals are for suckers.  He doesn’t even feel the need to hide most of it, because it’s so obvious to him that anyone with half a brain would try every option, and equally obvious that he deserves to win.  He’s already asked Barr to arrest Biden twice, and Barr couldn’t come up with anything.  These aren’t schemes, they’re just obvious things to try when you have no moral limiters.  He has probably floated the idea of assassination and been disappointed when no one would bite.

    Trump didn’t invent this stuff, either.  Extreme, Democrats-are-never-legitimate level sore loser tactics have been ongoing.  Refusing to concede and challenging results is a thing they do.  What is different about Trump is that he’s stupider about it than any Republican until now.  Trump is going to lose.  He is going to try every single possible way of overturning the election, and they will turn to shit just like his law suits have.  Just like every elected Republican could have told him it would go, if they weren’t scared of the Republican voting base’s favorite hobby of anonymous death threat phone messages.

    This isn’t the beginning of a new phase of American politics where Republicans refuse to concede.  It’s a demonstration of why Republicans don’t drag it out nearly this far, because it won’t get Trump anywhere and might put him and his team in greater legal jeopardy.

    I submit one thing in particular to consider:  Who is in charge of Trump’s legal operations now?  Rudy Giuliani.  This is not a step in anyone’s diabolical plan.  The only justification for putting Rudy in charge is when you’re so stupid you don’t have the slightest clue what does or does not work, but you like to hear someone whine on your behalf.

    As for 2024… four years is a loooooong time in politics.  We’ll see.

  150. 150.

    cwmoss

    November 20, 2020 at 1:00 pm

    @West of the Rockies: And the other one is an intelligent, stylish film for those over 65!

  151. 151.

    patrick II

    November 20, 2020 at 1:04 pm

    @Ken:

    He earns $95,000 as a sports liaison. He sits next to Barr’s kid in a schoolroom desk.

  152. 152.

    trollhattan

    November 20, 2020 at 1:04 pm

    @West of the Rockies:

    Still thunderstruck at hubby’s voicing support for Biden? “Who are you?”

  153. 153.

    catclub

    November 20, 2020 at 1:04 pm

    @Brachiator: And he only succeeds because he has a compliant GOP leadership behind him.

     

    AND he has a large fraction of his followers who believe any lie he tells.

    If Obama had said he had handled the economy better than ever before, when unemployment was still 8%, he would get laughed at by his own side.

    Trump gets believers saying he handled the pandemic better than anyone else COULD have.

  154. 154.

    Matt McIrvin

    November 20, 2020 at 1:05 pm

    @ArchTeryx: Like I said, over on LGM, I’m one of the optimists who talks people off the ledge. Read the comments from, say, DamnYankeesLGM or Lukeh4, and it’s really more doom than you can possibly imagine. Loomis and Campos are amazingly doomy front-pagers (Loomis combines it with a hectoring moral contempt for the reader that can really be a thing to see), the others less so.

    My personal problem is that I have an unhealthy fascination with really bizarre disaster scenarios, like a programmer chasing down the bugs in some gnarly piece of code that will pop 0.01% of the time. I can forget sometimes that a lot of people around here just find these unnecessarily irritating, if they’re not probable.

    And as a computer guy, I can also forget what lawyers say about the law, that it’s not really code running on a CPU–it’s typically interpreted and executed by human beings who try to take intent into account. Though Republican-appointed wingnut judges can really try that faith.

  155. 155.

    Dan B

    November 20, 2020 at 1:06 pm

    @MomSense:  I would not be surprised if Trump believes in his Swiss cheese of his mind that he can bully and bluff his way into being pardoned of all crimes but it’s a game that works in unscrupulous business but not in government.

    I wonder if he believes that Letitia James can be boxed in because 1. Black / inferior, 2. Woman / inferior.  Or the reverse order.  He probably fails to comprehend that this makes him appear 1. Inferior, 2. Short on human decency.

  156. 156.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    November 20, 2020 at 1:06 pm

    @West of the Rockies:

    OT, but is Andrea Mitchell seeming a bit off, slow, befuddled?

    Mrs Greenspan has been that way for a decade +.

  157. 157.

    Raoul Paste

    November 20, 2020 at 1:06 pm

    • @TaMara (HFG):   Edward Norton is superbly analytical, terrifyingly smart, and extremely well spoken.  He wrote and starred in the movie Motherless in Brooklyn (I think I have the name right), which I’d recommend
  158. 158.

    catclub

    November 20, 2020 at 1:08 pm

    @Matt McIrvin: you’d shut down or sell off the non-producing parts

     

    after all, soylent green IS people.

  159. 159.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    November 20, 2020 at 1:12 pm

    For those still worried the House will vote state by state and install Trump, I recommend this lengthy video that was on Scalzi’s blog this morning. The guy goes through scenarios one by one and in the worst case wind up with President Pelosi. The House can block that state by state vote scenario.

  160. 160.

    randy khan

    November 20, 2020 at 1:14 pm

    @dmsilev:

    The official Trump campaign statement last night tried to move the goalposts by insisting that a recount has to include revisiting the signature matches for the absentee/mail ballots.  Of course, the envelopes are intentionally separated from the ballots to maintain the voters’ secret ballots, so that’s impossible, and I presume they know it.

  161. 161.

    Miss Bianca

    November 20, 2020 at 1:16 pm

    @Bnad: We live to serve. : )

  162. 162.

    jonas

    November 20, 2020 at 1:22 pm

    @trollhattan:  that combo is just what Republicans have come to love

    Pretty much. They’ve basically embraced Nazism in all but name — the rabid ethno-nationalism and hatred of religious or cultural pluralism, the Führerprinzip/cult of personality, one-party rule, the idea that liberal democracy is decadent and failed, conspiratorial thinking…

  163. 163.

    Dan B

    November 20, 2020 at 1:24 pm

    @The Moar You Know: Seconded.  Having a gun makes you a target.  And we’ve got 40% of the country itching for an excuse to lock up “criminal” liberals.  A lot of those folks are in well armed police departments.  The security guy who defended his friend in Portland was gunned down by police in “liberal” western Washington.  We need to find allies and organize.  Time spent at a gun range puts you in proximity to some nasty characters.

  164. 164.

    SiubhanDuinne

    November 20, 2020 at 1:25 pm

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    True, but it’s getting more pronounced recently. A year ago I could have MSNBC on in the background, listening but not watching, and I always knew what she was saying. Since summer, though, I’ve found it difficult to understand many of her words. In fact, I mostly assumed she was speaking through a heavy mask, but that’s not the case. She just always sounds … I guess muffled is the right word. For a while I thought my hearing was rapidly deteriorating, but I don’t think one loses one’s otic acuity for just one person’s speech.

  165. 165.

    AWOL

    November 20, 2020 at 1:26 pm

    @Raoul Paste: “Motherless Brooklyn.” Norton was also an acolyte of Edward Albee and has managed an off-Broadway theatre dedicated to Albee and independent/minority playwrights. Saw “The Zoo Story” a few years ago—second-row center for about $35 on a Saturday night—which was an incredible deal.

  166. 166.

    Kent

    November 20, 2020 at 1:29 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:@Jim, Foolish Literalist: If you wanted to run the country like a business, you’d shut down or sell off the non-producing parts to create a leaner, more profitable organization. That’s not a strategy I’m really fond of, though.

    The first thing you would do is kill Medicare for the olds.  Because it is the biggest money loser in the government.

  167. 167.

    catclub

    November 20, 2020 at 1:30 pm

    @TS (the original): No.  This is only AFTER he was infected, too. When only little, other people, were at risk, he did not bother to send this message.

    These people have Zero empathy and  very small amounts of sympathy.

  168. 168.

    Steve in the ATL

    November 20, 2020 at 1:33 pm

    @natem:

     

    Really, too many people are panicking right now, but might I suggest instead have a good laugh at the clown show that is this farce of a “coup” by Trump and Giuliani.

    I thought we were required to post “TRIGGER WARNING” for Omnes before any clown reference

  169. 169.

    ByRookorbyCrook

    November 20, 2020 at 1:34 pm

    The GOP will continue to push their idiotic defilement of democratic norms for another week. Once we are past Thanksgiving and into December, the reality will be impossible to ignore. Their court cases are going nowhere. Their pathetic bully boy pressure at all levels of certification is too little too late. There is already mealy-mouthed defection among some of the Goopers about Dump having the right to challenge and then how the challenge is bad for the country. Orangymandias is losing popularity as his loser stink grows. Once we hit the anniversary of Bush v Gore, the rest will fold. Two weeks.

  170. 170.

    Steve in the ATL

    November 20, 2020 at 1:35 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne:

     

    otic acuity

    The name of your new choral group?

  171. 171.

    Miss Bianca

    November 20, 2020 at 1:36 pm

    @Matt McIrvin: I’ve pretty much given up on LGM. Not even Loomis’s “American Grave” posts can tempt me back. (He is an insufferable prick, but even so, the history buff in me salutes the history buff in him.)

    Honestly, I feel like the joint just lost something irreplaceable when SEK died. An ineffable touch of whimsy that elevated the tone. Still miss him and his tales of Old Man Cat. RIP

  172. 172.

    catclub

    November 20, 2020 at 1:36 pm

    @Kent: I beat ya to it. check out  soylent green

  173. 173.

    HinTN

    November 20, 2020 at 1:37 pm

    @Gin & Tonic: Only after retirement.

  174. 174.

    Dan B

    November 20, 2020 at 1:39 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:  Mt feeling is that a lot of posts that are “doom logic” are people believing they have expertise and logic.  They should be asking questions and reading the many coherent comments.  I learn a lot from the patient explanations of commenters like Brachiator.  The Bob Bauer piece sounds like a good way to spend ones time for the very reason that we should pay attention to the henchmen sneaking about avoiding exposure.

    Did I say Mnuchin – tank economy?  I want journalists and influencers to shine a spotlight on his monstrous plans.

  175. 175.

    West of the Rockies

    November 20, 2020 at 1:40 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I agree.  Mitchell speaks now in a halted fashion and seems to be searching  for words or losing the thread.

  176. 176.

    Kay

    November 20, 2020 at 1:41 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    What concerns me with minimizing what is going on is it implies acceptance, and this shouldn’t be accepted. We know what happens when they’re given an inch- they take a yard.

    I don’t want to confuse “every single fail safe has not yet collapsed” with “the system is working”

    We can have higher standards than that. Indeed we must or this behavior becomes normalized.

    I get it, I really do, we all want this to happen because it not happening is unthinkable, but I want to stop moving the goalposts. It doesn’t matter if Biden has “back up states” for 270, which (sadly) a lot of people are saying. Even saying that contemplates that they are going to throw out ballots and that would be acceptable because it’s not fatal. They may not throw out ballots. Any. That’s our position.

    There’s already been a subtle moving of goalposts since the election, where one week goes by and then two and then we all accept that Republicans won’t do anything so we’ll all just patiently wait until January 20th and that means the system worked. That is not what it means. What THAT means is we dodged this by a hair. We can demand better than that.

  177. 177.

    Steve in the ATL

    November 20, 2020 at 1:42 pm

    @Miss Bianca:

     

    He is an insufferable prick

    QFT, though I also enjoyed his labor history posts, back when I could tolerate dropping in there

  178. 178.

    Citizen Alan

    November 20, 2020 at 1:46 pm

    @The Moar You Know:  I will, of course, make sure that I’m fully trained in gun use if I end up getting one. I’m not an idiot or a Republican, but I repeat myself. Thank you for the recommendations though.

  179. 179.

    Sebastian

    November 20, 2020 at 1:46 pm

    @Baud:

    Tucker Carlson.

    I am warning you all (again) not to underestimate him!

  180. 180.

    Kay

    November 20, 2020 at 1:47 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Americans already made a concession to the Trump Administration. We have allowed them to block an orderly transition. That harms the country. So they have already won a round. They hit us and we didn’t hit back. You know the lesson bullies take from that, and they took the lesson and have run with it.

    Nothing else. Every day they stonewall is a new injury. No patience with this, no compliant acceptance, no minimizing and accepting a lower standard. That’s what they rely on. Every damn bit of this is outrageous and if we manage to get thru it good for us, but it can never, ever happen again and if we accept it IT WILL happen again and it will be worse.

  181. 181.

    SiubhanDuinne

    November 20, 2020 at 1:50 pm

    @Steve in the ATL:

    otic acuity

    The name of your new choral group?

    Close. The name of my new choral group is Chaotic Vacuity.

  182. 182.

    Elie

    November 20, 2020 at 1:56 pm

    @Kay:

     

    Amen sister.  Amen

  183. 183.

    Kay

    November 20, 2020 at 2:01 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    A congressional reporter tweeted last night that he assumed House R’s were doing this for political reasons, to protect Trump, fear of Trump, whatever, all the excuses they’re giving that we’re accepting for some reason. Except that isn’t what they say when he asked them. Some of them, I don’t know how many, think he won. 

    And that shouldn’t surprise anyone who follows voting right. These are people who been making bullshit voter fraud claims for decades. It would not surprise me at all if 30 or 40 House R’s believe it.

    They believe their own bullshit, the dumber ones. That’s always been true. They went into this believing the most insane fantasies about voter fraud. Every single fucking election for the last decade they have claimed that “white vans” bring unlawful voters to polling places. They have an entire legal theory built around the idea that millions of voters commit fraud by impersonating other voters. That wasn’t on Breitbart. It was in the Wall Street Journal. It’s mainstream on the Right and has been for decades.

  184. 184.

    Uncle Cosmo

    November 20, 2020 at 2:02 pm

    @Raoul Paste: Fun fact: Norton is a 1987 graduate of Wilde Lake HS (Columbia, MD), a distinction he shares with my niece and nephews. (He is the grandson of Jim Rouse, the founder of the planned city of Columbia.) The Wilde Cats’ school colors are the same (green & gold) as those of the Dundalk HS Owls (Dundalk, MD), from which their father & uncle graduated a generation earlier.

  185. 185.

    O. Felix Culpa

    November 20, 2020 at 2:05 pm

    @Miss Bianca: Oh, I miss SEK so. I rarely venture to LGM these days.

  186. 186.

    Brachiator

    November 20, 2020 at 2:05 pm

    @randy khan:

    Hence the parenthetical about having only 2 candidates with EVs.  If there are three or more, then you go to the House if the leading candidate doesn’t have a majority

    Point noted. And again, it’s Congress, not just the House. People keep forgetting about the election of the vice president, which would happen in the Senate.

    But this is not even theoretical. Trump has no case. He never had a case.

  187. 187.

    Kay

    November 20, 2020 at 2:11 pm

    @Elie:

    No one, no one, should think this is fine. It’s not. They took a pound of flesh already. Americans will DIE needlessly because we allowed them stonewall an orderly transition.

    No more concessions to Donald Trump and the sleazy, disreputable Trump Family. No more lowering standards so they can slither under. As they have their entire lives, they will view that as permission to take more.

  188. 188.

    Dan B

    November 20, 2020 at 2:11 pm

    @Kay: This seems like a role that the progressive caucus could assume if they’d get off their fools errand, “Fight the rich!!!”  They could provide a voice to maintaining ethics and standards.  The Ship of State is being inched towards the rapids instead they point to goals 100 steps down the line.  Although they do some decent pushback it feels like they keep going utopian and lose the strategic messaging.

  189. 189.

    zhena gogolia

    November 20, 2020 at 2:19 pm

    @cwmoss:

    Hahaha.

    I prefer the remake, actually.

  190. 190.

    Matt McIrvin

    November 20, 2020 at 2:20 pm

    @Kay:

    Every single fucking election for the last decade they have claimed that “white vans” bring unlawful voters to polling places. They have an entire legal theory built around the idea that millions of voters commit fraud by impersonating other voters. That wasn’t on Breitbart. It was in the Wall Street Journal. It’s mainstream on the Right and has been for decades.

    I remember hearing this from a conservative friend of mine back in the early 2000s–he was utterly convinced that voter-impersonation fraud was far more rampant than any mainstream source was willing to admit and that it was key to Democratic victories. Also complained that Democrats all seemed to be in favor of undocumented immigrants voting. So the field has been prepared.

  191. 191.

    Kay

    November 20, 2020 at 2:23 pm

    @Dan B:

    I agree. I don’t know if this is your experience with Lefties, but it is mine. They’re really invested in being “cool”. I just find it incredibly annoying and more so as I get older and they will never, ever admit it but they have these rigid social rules – a kind of code- that I almost get a kick out of ignoring.

    So I knew they wouldn’t think paying attention to this is savvy and sophisticated and I don’t give a shit. I already got lectured by one who assured me coups operate with military precision which seems like bullshit to me. I bet most coups are full of incompetents and a big fucking mess because life is not actually a movie and won’t be compressed down to an hour and 45 minutes. They cut out all the boring waiting and flailing around, but I suspect there’s plenty of bush league fuckery in every collapse of a republic so I don’t find that comforting.

  192. 192.

    Steve in the ATL

    November 20, 2020 at 2:27 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: exceptionally well played.  This is why you are considered a top-1000 poster at B-J!

  193. 193.

    misterpuff

    November 20, 2020 at 2:28 pm

    @trollhattan: Pompeo couldn’t even get a positive vibe in his home state for Senate. He is an irritating nothingburger.

  194. 194.

    Just One More Canuck

    November 20, 2020 at 2:36 pm

    @Uncle Cosmo: Firm, but fair

  195. 195.

    Captain C

    November 20, 2020 at 2:37 pm

    @zzyzx:

    Trump has become a pop culture shorthand for “successful businessman,”

    Which is funny, because he only played a successful businessman on TV, while in reality, pretty much every enterprise he had anything to do with turned to shit.  I never figured out why the Clinton campaign didn’t make this a centerpiece of their message, to wit:  “Trump bankrupted multiple casinos and ran an entire football league into the ground.  This is America.  If you can’t make money on gambling and football, you are an epically [shitty] businessman.”

  196. 196.

    SiubhanDuinne

    November 20, 2020 at 2:39 pm

    @Steve in the ATL:

    ?

  197. 197.

    Captain C

    November 20, 2020 at 3:03 pm

    @Kay: I remember, back when the Tea Party was starting to have its heyday, reading an article which pointed out that in 1994, when Gingrich started his Contract on America/demonize the opposition bullshit, most sitting congresscritters knew that such language was for show, that you still had to cut deals and actually make at least some effort at governing.  But by 2010 or so, most GOPers in Congress had arrived after 1994, and had no idea either how to cooperate with the other side for everyone’s benefit, or even that it was sometimes the better thing to do for them.  I think we’re seeing the next 10 years of growth of that, with the GOP now huffing their own farts at the expense of obvious reality.  It doesn’t help that they’ve also been moving in a one-party authoritarian direction since at least 1964.

  198. 198.

    Brachiator

    November 20, 2020 at 3:06 pm

    @Captain C:

    Trump has become a pop culture shorthand for “successful businessman,”

    Which is funny, because he only played a successful businessman on TV, while in reality, pretty much every enterprise he had anything to do with turned to shit.  I never figured out why the Clinton campaign didn’t make this a centerpiece of their message, to wit:  “Trump bankrupted multiple casinos and ran an entire football league into the ground.  This is America.  If you can’t make money on gambling and football, you are an epically [shitty] businessman.”

    Late reply: The legend of Trump became larger than the reality of Trump.  See the movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” as a great cinematic reference.

    Also, broke ass Trump running from creditors still had more wealth than a lot of his supporters. They rehabilitated him in their fantasies.

  199. 199.

    Miss Bianca

    November 20, 2020 at 3:24 pm

    @Kay:

    I don’t know if this is your experience with Lefties, but it is mine. They’re really invested in being “cool”. I just find it incredibly annoying and more so as I get older

    Yep. Hell to the yeah. I mean, I too went through my “don’t vote, it only encourages them” phase as a youth, but even a coddled Grosse Pointe Marxist like myself actually DID vote when the pedal came down to the metal.

    Now when I hear people I knew in my teens and twenties *still* sounding the same old blasts against “Corporate Democrats!” and “Fuck Da Stablishment, man, BOTH SIDES!” it doesn’t sound like speaking truth to power to me, it just sounds like willfully naive wanking off. It makes me tired. And angry.

  200. 200.

    Omnes Omnibus

    November 20, 2020 at 3:29 pm

    @Kay: Okay, how do you define not accepting it?  What should be done that is not being done?

  201. 201.

    Geminid

    November 20, 2020 at 4:06 pm

    The comments about doom-posting in this thread made me think of one of the simple but astute things that political scientist Rachel Bitecofer said recently: “There is a big market for fear now.”  Bitecofer was referring specifically to the effectiveness of right wing social media propaganda, but the idea has a broader application.

    Bitecofer’s informative twitter stream is worth following. Her longer analytical pieces are dynamite. Published first by the Wason Center, then by the Niskanen Center, and now by The Cycle, her new website. “Hate is on the Ballot.” an article in the Feb. 2020 New Republic, is a very good introduction to her concept of electoral analysis.

  202. 202.

    Matt McIrvin

    November 20, 2020 at 4:11 pm

    @Miss Bianca: Loomis is great when he’s posting about history, especially labor history, which is his actual area of expertise.

  203. 203.

    Matt McIrvin

    November 20, 2020 at 4:16 pm

    @Kay: I was a bit bothered in the last days of the campaign when people started talking up flipping Texas and/or Florida as a way to get an “early night”, because it felt a little like we were doing Trump’s work for him–implying that if Biden didn’t win by a lot, it wouldn’t really be good enough.

    And I knew perfectly well that that was a very live possibility. What did happen was well within the range of reasonable possibilities projected by 538, and even pretty close to Sam Wang’s “Trump overperforms by 3%” scenario. It looked worse on Election Night, but we already knew that if this happened it would look worse on Election Night.

    If we’re in a world were Democrats have to score a landslide to really win, it’s not sustainable.

  204. 204.

    Gvg

    November 20, 2020 at 4:44 pm

    @Matt McIrvin: ok, look, losing would be really dire, people had a lot to lose, so they fear any chance.

    Another thing is liberals have been losing ground since 1980. My childhood felt like things were getting better. Since Reagan, it feels like we lose too much, especially at the state level (Florida)

    we have actually gotten better on some things like gay rights, race I am not sure how to describe as some things are better, some things seem worse and the reactionaries have been in charge lately.

    but the liberal politicians have been losing. my candidates have lost too often. After awhile that affects people. We’d be stupid not to notice. And we know about the gerrymandering plus voting restrictions so it’s a fact that we did know factually that we needed a big win.

  205. 205.

    BruceFromOhio

    November 20, 2020 at 4:51 pm

    @jonas: Underpants gnomes!

    1 Steal election.

    2 …

    3 Profit!

  206. 206.

    WaterGirl

    November 20, 2020 at 4:54 pm

    @Baud: Not to mention that he stole all the letters of your name, too!  :-)

  207. 207.

    BruceFromOhio

    November 20, 2020 at 4:58 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: but but but Dominion purple sweater monkey dishwasher! Venezuelan super-computer programmed by George Soros buses of anitfa! DEAR GAIA CAN’T YOU SEEEEE WHAT IS HAPPENINGGGGGG argle bargle!

    sheesh, that is taxing. How do humans sustain that for any period of time?

    Time for a nap before cocktail hour. Cheerio, fellow citizens!

  208. 208.

    Viva BrisVegas

    November 20, 2020 at 5:32 pm

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I watched that video and as far as I can make out it says that Trump cannot stage his soft coup without a compliant House.

    Which kind of indicates that he could have succeeded with the House as it was before the 2018 midterms.

    So was the 2020 Presidential election actually won in 2018?

  209. 209.

    artem1s

    November 20, 2020 at 6:05 pm

    It was so wonderful to listen to this today. I had it on in the background while I was working and honestly I only half heard the actual words he was saying.  It says a lot about GOPers that they only can ‘hear’ a certain loud, strident, whinging, sourgrapes sort of tone.  They only pay attention when the ‘preacher’ or authoritarian, military voice is speaking.  What happens to these people’s brains when they are growing up that makes them hear someone like Bauer and think ‘fake’ then hear someone like Rudy and think ‘stable genius’?  Anyway, It’s so nice to have someone speaking who actually knows what they are talking about again.  I believe how much I’ve missed this.

  210. 210.

    J R in WV

    November 20, 2020 at 6:56 pm

    @patrick II:

    …I wish they would stand up to him more, but they shouldn’t have to take back a hurricane warning or lose their jobs.

    The very day Trump made up crap like that, that’s when they should have looked for a job doing anything else. Quit to be a janitor.

  211. 211.

    J R in WV

    November 20, 2020 at 7:01 pm

    @Kay:

    Have they thought through this new dictatorship plank of the GOP platform? It effectively ends elections Democracy.

    Which is OK with the Republican party, as long as they’re still on power AFTER Democracy is over with.

  212. 212.

    J R in WV

    November 20, 2020 at 7:15 pm

    @Another Scott:

    I had a great co-worker whose husband was a city cop. She walked with a limp when the weather changed, was a fit person. So one day I asked her what caused that limp.

    Her husband was cleaning a .357 magnum revolver at the kitchen table one evening, and it went off, and hit her in the thigh. She lived, and kept her limb, but it was a near run thing.

    I target shoot often, was taught to shoot by my grandmother, who was taught by her father way back in the early 1900s, when many young women were taught to shoot to be able to protect themselves. Guns are really dangerous.

    I don’t keep a gun with the chamber loaded. I have to work the automatic’s slide or cock the revolver for it to be possible to fire the weapon.

    I was on a murder jury years ago which involved a lot of “ballistics” testimony. One of the ballistics experts was asked on the witness stand, under oath, if he “had ever been in a police ready room that didn’t have signs of “unintentional discharges” on the walls, floor or ceiling?” After a long pause where he obviously thought about his answer, he said “No, I don’t think so.”

    These are people who are trained and shoot regularly under supervision. It is part of their work! And they still fire their weapons by accident, only not wounding or killing co-workers by sheer luck.

    Get training, practice a lot, be careful, know that the gun is always loaded, always cocked.

  213. 213.

    J R in WV

    November 20, 2020 at 7:47 pm

    @Kent:

    The first thing you would do is kill Medicare for the olds. Because it is the biggest money loser in the government.

    Wait just a moment here — what about Social Security? Doesn’t that cost a lot more than Medicare?? Let those old people starve alone, quietly, in the dark~!~ Right?!?  /s

    I am an old, and won’t go quietly in the dark!

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