It’s a little after 2 am, and the election still isn’t called. It could go either way. It looks fairly sure that Dems won’t retake the Senate (and if they do it’ll be by one Senator.)
Let’s put this in perspective, Donald Trump is clearly mentally defective, and he fumbled Covid-19, the result of which was to kill over 200K Americans and throw millions into poverty.
In other words, like 2016, this was an election Democrats should have won easily.
Trump out-campaigned Biden (ten rallies in the last two days of the election.) It’s going to come out that Democrats fumbled battleground states again, not putting enough resources into them, as Clinton did.
But the bottom line is that Democrats keep choosing bad candidates. Biden has no virtues other than a sort of sleazy but OK Uncle vibe. He’s carrying all the baggage of being a shitty neoliberal all his life, who voted for every war in sight and fucked the poor and middle class every chance he got. He’s senile (though no worse than Trump) and he doesn’t have Trump’s stamina.
Two men made this happen. Sanders was moving towards victory when Clyburn gave Biden the southern Black vote with his endorsement, and Obama leaned on all the other candidates to drop out. Boom! Biden wins the nomination.
Sanders is not in senile decline, polled better against Trump (yeah, the polls all underestimated Trump but he had more of a margin), and was able to pack arenas while maintaining a campaigning pace to equal Trump. Nor was he saddled with neoliberal baggage. He has crossover appeal to independents and even Republicans, the people you need to come out to win (Democrats alone cannot carry an election.)
Biden has done worse among everyone but white men than Clinton did. He’s just a bad candidate.
But this is the iron rule of oligarchy in motion. It is better for Democratic power-holders to lose with Biden than win with Sanders. We saw this in England, where we have emails proving that Labour operatives went so far as to actively work against Corbyn in 2017 (and where MPs sandbagged him all through his tenure.)
Biden, like Clinton, ran on “Trump sucks.” Trump ran on a lot of fear of Democrats, a lot of paranoia, but he also ran with MAGA—”I”m going to make things great!”
Although Biden had a relatively progressive platform, that was not the message everyone was hearing. It was “Trump is bad, let’s go back to the good old days.” The problem is that the good old days weren’t great for a lot of people, and pre-Covid polls showed that a majority of Americans felt they were better off than 3 year prior.
Worse, in a lot of states Trump has won the Covid debate: the belief is that it wasn’t fumbling Covid that was the problem, but that Covid is no big deal and if there had just been no closures at all, everything would have been fine. People believe that.
In short, Dems keep running people with bad track records who are responsible for the worse parts of America’s economy and history. Clinton was unlikable, Biden is senile, neither ran an energetic, aggressive campaign of hope.
Biden may still get in (by the time you read this, perhaps he will have) but he won’t have a huge mandate, and he’s unlikely to have a Senate he can work with. None of that need cripple his Presidency, IF he is willing to use executive power aggressively and coordinate with the House, but this is not a wave election.
Finally, if you believe this is all about racism (despite Obama winning handily twice) remember that “racism” is not a plan unless you know how to deactivate it enough to win. If the US is irredeemably racist, well, that doesn’t leave a lot of room.
On the other hand, perhaps running on popular policies like Medicare4All and a $15 (or higher) minimum wage (which passed in Florida even as Biden lost the state); offering a message of hope, not fear, with a candidate who is energetic, can command huge crowds and is not senile or unlikeable, might win it despite American’s racism. Worked for Obama (even if he lied about the hope part), and he was actually black.
So I’d suggest that while racism matters, it isn’t determinative. Having a good candidate with a good message is.
This election shouldn’t be this close. It is because of the Democratic party chose a terrible candidate and ran a bad campaign.
Update (10:26 Eastern): Looking like Biden, unless Trump gets the Supremes to overturn it.
Everything I write here is free, but rent isn’t, so if you value my writing, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
bruce wilder
Although Biden had a relatively progressive platform, that was not the message everyone was hearing.
It is hard to know what people were hearing. The media are amazingly siloed now. I spent the day with a Trump supporter a week ago and he was networking enthusiastically with other Trump supporters. One thing that struck me was that they were upset that Biden had said he would ban fracking; of course, in my silo, I had repeatedly heard that Biden had declared he would NOT ban fracking.
The media propaganda problem is tougher than having an appealing slogan or flagship promise. The problem is getting people to think, and to think in a semi-enlightened way that would let them agree to a policy without necessarily agreeing with their neighbors on cultural shibboleths. Democratic politics that furthers the interest of the great majority depends on being able to agree to disagree on many issues while still being able to move forward on policy. It is not impossible that a Christian and a secularist could agree on financial regulation to repress usury or a racist and an anti-racist to end a war. Just impossible in American politics.
metamars
“It is better for Democratic power-holders to lose with Biden than win with Sanders. ”
On Steve Bannon’s “War Room Pandemic” youtube channel, they had some old military dude on, Thomas McInerney, the day before, and the day of, the election.
McInerney said the US had a vote flipping system, which is only ‘supposed’ to be used against foreigners. Supposedly, even the name of the system was classified. (They refer to it as “hammer”, on the show.) It was attempted to be employed against Trump in 2016, but some good guys in the Deep State neutralized the baddies.
The baddies kept at it, and McInerney informed us that the bad hammer wielders had not been neutralized, even on Election Day morning.
Looks like the good guys figured it out just in the nick of time. (?)
What was also very interesting, and dismaying, is the claim that ‘hammer’ was successfully used to make Sanders a loser; and also just the fact that the ‘land of the free and brave’ interferes in other countries’ elections, at all.
I got the impression that McInerney improperly released the name, “hammer”. And he may have SAID that the bad guys were not, again, neutralized, as a disinformation lie.
anon
I’m sticking to my prediction last night that Trump will win. Biden needed to win handily and avoid a contested election. We all knew that if we ended up where we are now with Trump looking like he is winning battleground states by a few percentage points, Trump would have his lawyers on standby to fight this tooth and nail. And we know that Republicans are more eager to fight whereas Democrats are always the weaker party willing to throw in the towel. This is exactly why Trump has packed the courts for the last four years and rushed to put Amy Coney Barrett in the Supreme Court. Trump has his bases covered and is prepared to win. A handful of uncounted ballots won’t stop him from declaring victory.
Plague Species
Because the Dems don’t play to win. Instead, they enjoy playing the part of a faux opposition party. They still win because their big donors reward them accordingly for playing the poodle to Republicans. And get this, they spend billions, nay a trillion, to Dem consultants to lose. What a gig if you’re a consultant. You’re paid to make your client look good losing. No gains in Congress and maybe even losses and Trump is reelected. Mission accomplished. Millions will die from COVFEFE-19. Millions will die early from not having access to affordable healthcare. All the while Dems and their consultants will be living it up with their Trump tax breaks.
js
My conclusion is Dems are as we know structurally disadvantaged to start out with (Biden will win the popular vote), and they can’t win or not readily without an incredibly CHARISMATIC candidate, which smooth talking Obama and slick Bill Clinton were. I’m not sure to what extent it’s policy that matters, when charisma explains the few wins more easily. But Republicans aren’t always all that charismatic, yes but again they have the structural advantage to start out with of small rural states being overweighted, Dems have to overcome with one hand tied behind their back, so they need it.
Ché Pasa
It’s in Trump’s and the R’s and the Infotainment Media’s joint interests to keep the charade going as long as possible. So we’ll be on a teeter totter over “who won” for a while yet. The Supreme Court may not issue a ruling deciding the outcome, as they did in 2000, but they’ll do what they must to enable a rightist and Trump victory.
When Trump’s people started their caravan harassments and the Dems essentially folded and canceled their events in the face of a physical threat or potential of a threat from the rightist mobs, I said uh-oh. That’s where this is going. Biden and the Dems will not stand up to the bullies.
This continued touching faith in electoral politics, media, and political personalities to take the US in a leftist direction really puzzles me. It’s not going to happen. Regardless of a Dem or R candidate, Dem or R senate, Dem or R leadership in the House, moving “Left” is an oxymoron. The last time the US government moved “left” was during the Lyndon Johnson administration. And it didn’t go well. Or rather, dismantling the Great Society (basically an attempt at fulfilling FDR’s promise of a Second Bill of Rights) has been a primary motivation of the Rs and rightists ever since.
Rs offer little but hardship, struggle and death for most Americans — and limited liability and smooth sailing for those at the top of the heap — and the Dems counter with ever greater complexity leading to the same outcome.
Out here where I live, a reliably R and Trumpist county, people figured this out a long time ago. Life is hard for most people out here most of the time, and adding layers of complexity to an already difficult life people are trying to live, which is what Dems do all the time, simply doesn’t work. Rs may not make things better — not for most people — but the other side of it is that unless they’re trying to steal something from you or regulate your female body, they stay out of your way.
For the ruling class, though, it’s all a game. None of the public politics means a damn thing. Their factions contend for a different set of prizes on a different plane altogether, most of which the rest of us can barely glimpse, and we the exploited and disposable masses are left to fight among ourselves for — ultimately — nothing. The political class serves the Overclass.
So why do we continue to serve them? Hope to be them one day?
js
“One thing that struck me was that they were upset that Biden had said he would ban fracking; of course, in my silo, I had repeatedly heard that Biden had declared he would NOT ban fracking.”
Well the not ban people have Bidens actual words on his side so it’s hard not to argue that they are more reality based, but they are free to believe he will ban it despite that if they like since one can weigh politicians promises however they like.
I think it goes like this: Reps that fear Biden will ban fracking despite his saying he won’t believe he’s secretly on board with taking action on climate change, secretly influenced by the left (AOC and Sanders etc.), or can somehow be pushed left by progressives activists (in their dreams), or by say the evidence of run-away climate change (as if there wasn’t enough already).
Dems who think Biden won’t ban fracking, well listen to his words, and some of them would not believe him EVEN IF he said he would ban it, because he has fossil fuel background with Hunter Biden, because he likely takes fossil fuel money – I’m not certain on this, because his record isn’t progressive, because Obama ramped up things like fracking, because we tend not to get real environmental policy from Dems (California has a Dem super-majority and a Dem governor and fracking is expanding there).
kråke
I know comrade Che prefers the cadre of chevistas and tribunals, and I don’t disagree, but let me be the first to say, je prefer le remede du medecin français.
Plague Species
Also, once again, the polls didn’t work as intended. They were intended to deliver a decisive Biden victory and what we have is far from that. Polls do not reflect reality, but instead are meant to shape reality. They’re not informative and instructive about an existing reality, but instead are persuasive and instructional about a reality they intend to influence and shape into existence. The polls had Biden winning in a landslide for the most part, yet here we are. Again. Just like 2016 or even worse. When do people finally say f*ck the polls? Maybe people have already said that by and large and because the media is bought and sold by its paymasters, they are compelled, ordered really, to cover the polls regardless.
All this 24/7 ad nauseum messaging about voting and once again, the next generation is despoiled when they vote and this is as good as it gets. They now realize, what’s the point. Nothing can and will change until you kill the rich and that’s not hyperbole, it’s fact and you know it.
Even if Biden still wins, squeaks this out by a hair, it’s not a win for the unwashed. As I have said, he is a Republican through and through and now he will have a Republican-controlled Congress. A perfect combination if you’re a Republican. If you’re a Progressive Dem, you were always screwed either way and if you;re a member of the unwashed, and 99% of us are, you’re also screwed either way.
someofparts
“Democratic politics that furthers the interest of the great majority depends on being able to agree to disagree on many issues while still being able to move forward on policy. It is not impossible that a Christian and a secularist could agree on financial regulation to repress usury or a racist and an anti-racist to end a war. Just impossible in American politics.”
This is why I watch Krystal and Sagaar. It looks to me as if they are trying to breathe new life back into precisely this process. They have me, a diehard socialist, thinking that Marco Rubio is someone to watch, someone who, to use your example, might very well cross the isle to get some anti-usury laws on the books.
Plague Species
It’s increasingly looking like Michigan will decide this and you can be sure a case will be brought by Michigan to the Supreme Court that will ultimately decide a contested election. Arizona went blue and it looks like Nevada will too. Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania will remain red and Michigan, despite 90% reporting, is too close to call at this time. So, it’s Michigan, The Militia State, that will decide how many die from COVFEFE-19 and how many die, including themselves, from lack of access to affordable healthcare because they emphatically voted for it — their demise that is. Not that we know for certain Biden would remdedy any of that, but we know for certain Trump hasn’t and won’t.
Plague Species
The Hill’s sole purpose is to gather disenchanted Progressives and train them to vote for Trump as the burn-down-the-house candidate. Apparently, that’s Jimmy Dore’s purpose as well and also Greenwald’s purpose. Water Carryers, all of them.
bruce wilder
Well the not ban people have Bidens actual words on his side so it’s hard not to argue that they are more reality based
They had a YouTube.
Of course, you would think you are more “reality-based” — everyone does.
Stirling S Newberry
The election that was polled was different from the election that has been counted so far. The American election now runs like the old South or Chicago. Corrupt beyond redemption.
KT Chong
Kamala Harris is a Clinton surrogate. Before she had announced her primary campaign, she went to Hillary to bend the knee, kiss Hillary’s ring, and asked for Hillary’s blessing. Kamala’s campaign staff was consist almost entirely of Hillary’s people. My guess is, the Clintons must have pulled lots of strings behind the scene in the DNC to maneuver Kamala into Biden’s running mate position, which will ensure the Clintons will hold on to power in a Biden presidency.
I suspect people in the Rust Belt are aware of who and what Kamala is, and they still DESPISE the Clintons.
Ché Pasa
@krake
Eh, moi non plus…
KT Chong
I still maintained the the BLM protests/riots have HURT Democrats. I actually got banned in multiple “liberal” Reddit forums for saying the BLM protests would hurt Biden and Democrats, because all those woke identitarians just did not want to hear about it.
I said BLM would end up hurting Biden and Dems from my personal observations on the grounds.
Dems and the media keep blaming Trump and his rallies for being “coronavirus super-spreader” events, (and those rallies were super-spreader events;) yet Dems and the media have NEVER criticized or even uttered a word about the BLM protests. Everyone knew those protests spread COVID 19. However, no one was allowed to point it out, criticize the BLM protests for spreading the coronavirus and endangering public health, or just tell the BLM: “You guys need to go home because you are actually making the pandemic worse and longer.” That was just common sense. Yet, if you dared to point out the obvious, you would get “canceled” right away. There were definitely HYPOCRISIES between how the Dems and media treat Trump rallies and BLM protests.
I know a lot of Asian business owners who own restaurants, massage parlous, nail salons, and other businesses that have been most impacted by the COVID 19 shutdown orders. The states have forced them to shut down and eventually lose their businesses, yet allowed the BLM protests to continue without interferences. Imagine those people, who were suffering and losing their businesses due to the shutdown orders, watching all the BLM protests on television or YouTube: “So, the state and governor has ordered me to shut down my business, and now I am going to lose my business, but all those Black people can keep protesting and spreading the virus, and no one is gonna say a damned word about them?” That hypocrisy infuriated them—and pushed them towards voting for Trump.
I imagine a lot of White and Hispanic business owners are also in same position as Asian business owners. I checked the number at the New York Times earlier: Biden has lost 6-point urban support from Hillary’s in 2016, and 12-point Hispanic support from 2016. TWELVE POINTS. Those losses are fatal.
KT Chong
“Although Biden had a relatively progressive platform, that was not the message everyone was hearing. ”
Or just people do not trust Biden due to his track records.
KT Chong
Now that Michigan has started counting mail-in ballots, Biden has overtaken Trump and is slowly pulling ahead and away.
Pennsylvania gave vote counters the night off and have just started counting mail-in ballots. WTF. PA needs to double on counting those mail-in ballots before Trump’s Supreme Court stop the state from continue counting. (FYI: PA has MORE mail-in ballots than election-day ballots.)
Ché Pasa
Y’all remember “deaths from despair” right? The premise being that economic uncertainty/hardship, largely in the Rust Belt but not solely there, driven by neoliberal policies, and enhanced during the Obama Administration, led to many tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths from alcoholism, drug overdoses, and suicide.
I read the Case-Deaton study and found it deeply flawed, so deeply flawed that its conclusions were essentially worthless for anything but fostering and promoting a narrative, and that’s the way it was used. Despite its flaws, however, the study did highlight a real phenomenon and problem: Americans were under sometimes extreme economic and emotional stress, and some were dying from causes they might not otherwise experience.
Attributing all or most of those deaths to “despair” was not warranted by the evidence in the study, a study which entirely left out many of the factors — including deliberate decisions by doctors, pharmacies, and policy makers — to enable many of the deaths attributed to “despair.”
But now we’re facing a situation in which hospitals and medical personnel are triaging COVID patients, deciding for them who will live and die, mostly sacrificing the older, browner, poorer, and sicker. That’s not going to change any time soon regardless of who sits on the throne. Most are unnecessary deaths which wouldn’t happen if there were a comprehensive, population preserving and responsible public health policy in place to deal with the pandemic. There wasn’t and there isn’t and there won’t be. We’re stuck in a cycle of uncontrolled spread, and whatever happens, happens. If you can afford to, you probably will get through it. If you can’t, bye-bye!
Not so much deaths of despair as deliberate culling of useless eaters. Thrilling to the Libertarian black hearts.
But deaths of despair will happen too, of people despairing over the political situation, people whose jobs will never come back, public employees losing their livelihoods, economic contraction for the majority, extravagant economic advantage to the highest of the mighty. Declining life expectancy, spikes in suicides are all but guaranteed, no matter who sits on the throne.
It’s all baked in now.
S Brennan
I knew when they “stopped counting ballots” the color revolution was on…where it goes nobody knows but the history of these things is quite bad.
Enjoy…and remember this color revolution, like all it’s foreign predecessors under Obama, was brought you by “liberals” working with “lefties” working with “Democrats” working with the 3-letter agencies.
Stirling S Newberry
Little people won’t get money. That means they can’t pay bigger people. And so on. This only works as long the fed says it does. Problem: rich people want a profit.
anon
If it wasn’t for the DNC, Bernie would likely be celebrating winning a second term right now. You’re right that the DNC would rather lose or win by a narrow margin than potentially win big with a progressive candidate. The Democrats will learn nothing from this experience and will lose in 2024.
Hugh
It is a strange experience to see a country, my country, the United States commit suicide. The choice between Trump and Biden was not a good one, but neither was it a difficult. With Biden, we would get shuffling at the cliff’s edge. With Trump, it was a running leap off it. Either the cliff didn’t exist or just flap your arms a few times to fly. Moving away from the cliff was an not option on the table. I used to think there was some space, and time, between all our bad decisions and feeling their full effect. I don’t feel that anymore. In the last few years, I have gone from thinking that in the next 20 years, the US had a 90% of coming through climate change and overpopulation not unchanged but intact. Now I give it a 20% of existing at all and if it does only as a hollowed out husk.
There are consequences for bad choices. We are already beginning to experience these, and they are going to get exponentially worse. And nature doesn’t care how immature and irresponsible we are. If we pull a wall down ourselves, the wall doesn’t care if it is standing or on the ground. It doesn’t care if we are under it. It doesn’t care.
I guess what I am trying to say is I wasn’t any great fan of Biden, in a lot of ways, win or lose, he is irrelevant, but looking at the country today, this is the day that hope died in me.
Hugh
S Brennan, are you able to walk down a short, straight street or do you get lost in your paranoid fantasies even there?
Chicago Clubs
>With Biden, we would get shuffling at the cliff’s edge.
Nah, more like slowly edging the tips of our feet out over the edge while saying, “Look, I know nobody really likes the idea of falling off this cliff, but it’s the only realistic choice.”
KT Chong
I propose the US institute the gulag… but only for pollsters. We should arrest all the pollsters and throw them into re-education camps, re-educate them to do something else and never allow them to take another poll again!
Feral Finster
@JS: the only reason Bill Clinton won in 1992 (and probably 1996) was because of Perot.
Anyway: Since Biden appears to have won Arizona, Trump is going to have to run the table in WI, PA and MI to win. Possible but far from a sure thing. Then there’s recounts, protests, and possibly wrangling over ballots such as in Florida in 2000. Good times, good times (if you’re an election lawyer in one of those states).
That said – the polls were way off this time, even more than in 2016. Moreover, even if Biden wins, the smug and triumphant crowing of certain Team D cultists prophesying a Team D blowout of epic, historic proportions are surely and sorely premature. That, after the COVID fiasco, a string of high-profile endorsements from the AMA to Cynthia McCain, a obscene fundraising advantage (Team D had a fundraising advantage almost as large as all 2016 presidential fundraising in 2016 combined), and a MSM that didn’t even bother trying to pretend to be objective, Big Tech openly trying to influence the election, and still, the most that Team D can hope for is to eke out a win, gasping and staggering, should be one hell of a wakeup call for Team D. Don’t bet on it.
Of course, the fact that Team D insisted on foisting a dementia patient on us, a man whose best days are not only past, but who also has a lot of depressing baggage cropping up from that past, that surely played no role whatsoever, right? No doubt Team D will learn a lesson from this, but that lesson may not be what you might think. Also, if Trump does pull out a win, expect flaky conspiracy theories to pop up like mushrooms after a spring rain.
This also throws a serious spanner in the works for those who were hoping to return Team R to its traditional role as the Party of Jeb! Clones.
js
I think this election represents a shift of the country to the right. It’s morning in America all over again. I mean one $15 an hour initiative may have passed but on balance? So many progressive initiatives seem to have failed, people don’t want to raise taxes to pay for things, people vote the interest of the corporations over reforms etc..
Hugh
The lack of an immediate, overwhelming victory by Biden is tailor-made for Trump who can beat on his chest and accuse everyone of that fascist favorite the Dolchstoss (stab in the back). In Trump’s narcissistic fog, he can not lose. Therefore, he the biggest cheater on the planet must have been cheated against. Achtung! Stop counting those votes! What do you think this is? an election?
Stirling S Newberry
‘To lose one may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness.’
Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest
Four years ago American media election machine started up its nightly election report and had some explaining to do when a candidate who was widely favored, lost. It did not matter that the candidate was widely heeded by many people in the country, even though she was widely admired by her fans. It did not matter that the president-elect had no experience of running a profitable company. It was the eight-year itch that needed scratching. But that was before the incompetence was clearly displayed and announced on one’s Twitter feed. By 4 years even many conservatives knew that the time was right to elect a conservative Democrat and wait for a more quiescent Republican president.
But that is not how it played out, because the president liked having a free pass to plunder the country and point reactionary justices to the supreme court. The power that came with the office was just simply too addictive and, more importantly, he was a criminal and needed the protection of the presidency to continue functioning. So he and his associates decided to steal another election.
“To lose one may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness.” Now the media has to decide whether it will explain the 2nd loss as their own fault, or decide that the president needs to go. I see the media because the electorate did its job: it showed up and voted the clown in the office out, and what stands in their way our justices, appointed by the clown in office, saying that the votes that they cast do not need to be counted. This is more than the usual corruption which occurs in any election and is simply put, part of the machine which declares whichever candidate owns the party says is the winner. Think of the deep South or Chicago in its old days as precedents for the kind of corruption we are talking, sometimes even honorable men became ensnared as President Truman did in the Pendergast machine.
This is a time for free election official who is in any way responsible for counting ballots to ask: “do I want to be one who points a criminal in chief back to the White House?” When a pandemic is striking down an individual when the stock market is not in any way correlated to the economy. When antiscience thinking dominates how we lubricate the machine that keeps us all going – because climate change is not on the ballot. It responds to other forces such as the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Not someone else, but you, personally, are going to say that the most powerful nation in the world does not need to be responsive to 1 of the crucial aspects of our dominance: because science and democracy are key to getting money from poor people so that we, the Corporate United States of America, can remain supreme over the entire globe. In other words, if you handle ballots are you willing to allow in unscientific antidemocratic fool for more years to lead America? If you are, then there is nothing that anyone can do to stop you. But things come back to bite you, in this case, global warming and Atlantic hurricane seasons are 2 of them, as is the disintegration of glaciers which flood Florida. You might think that these are hypothetical situations with distant results. Let me introduce you to the 2020 Atlantic tropical storm system which has produced as many tropical storms as any other year and produce them sooner. It is the Democratic thing to do.
If you are in the media, now is the time to stand up and say that this is not the way elections should be run. Farhad Manjoo has said this in the New York Times, so there is no reason for you not to join in and say that several things wrong, and they must be fixed. The problem with the United States Constitution is that there are flaws, we have always known this, and each time one has become too large to ignore we have fixed the problem. Now we must do so again. And you, as a member of the media, have a duty to say so, in print, and with no hesitation as to what America needs to do. It is the responsible thing to do.
If you are in the financial sector, based in New York, you must say that the last 4 years of the government has been a disaster because time is the most precious thing in the universe, and 4 years have been wasted in doing the necessary things to move off of fossil fuel waste and on to other forms of energy. This is what you do, you spend money on things that are valuable and release things that do not work in the real world. In other words, you should care about science more than money because science, in the end, produces money, money that you and your financial brethren spend on yourselves. It is the capitalist thing to do.
Or you can the last dregs and hope you have some exit. But it will take a great deal more than USD30 million to do that. If you do not have that much, realize either you or your progeny will be trapped with the rest of us. And the rest of us are not going to be so willing to forgive. Just a thought. Back to with violence that you do not want to know how easy it is to do. Because I am just a writer, many of the people behind me are not good with words but are good with fisticuffs. They have not been treated well and have been promised money that they will not receive.
Hugh
“people don’t want to raise taxes to pay for things”
I once calculated that if the US paid as much on healthcare as Australia, a country with an excellent Medicare4All system, did as a percent of GDP. It would save us $1.4 trillion a year. Everyone would have healthcare, could use it, couldn’t lose it, and they would live longer, healthier lives. But since we wouldn’t be calling the money we paid out premiums, co-pays, and deductibles but taxes, that automatically made it a bad thing.
KT Chong
So, just found out: PA has been counting the mail-in ballots but decided to NOT announce or update the minute-by-minute result until all the mail-in ballots are counted. Which is a smart decision because if Trump sees that Biden is gaining as PA keeps counting the mail-in ballots, he is gonna demand the Supreme Court immediate stop PA from counting.
Chicago Dyke
Saying the plain truth is actually pretty easy for most people. it’s damn hard when you’re paid, a lot, not to, not ever in fact. therein lies the problem with the majority of those in positions to make decisions for the party as a whole, and for many of the more important races and issues on the ballot, pretty much every year.
these people can’t speak plainly about what could work, what would work, or what has worked in other places and times. to do so would be to discredit not only themselves, but the people who pay them, and the entities that give them their elaborate, comfortable lifestyles. those are the good jobs!
what is hardest for me is that many of the most direct and effective programs we could have are just not presented in media-vision as enticing enough for most americans to become protective and agitated about, at times like these. people are very conditioned to accept filtered reality, fact-lite, and interpretive kabuki news coverage, and deny things in front of their own eyes. so it’s a two-pronged pitchfork prodding this along.
but it was a bad idea, just like 2016 was a time when a lot of bad ideas, to run this campaign, this candidate, at this time. you’re not wrong; the other side did a good job at keeping a simple message of more than just racism, but also energy. he may be a buffoon, but he knows how to command the attention of his peers in the media, and many of the consumers of that product, which is a boatload of people.
including nice liberals who work in the Village, and who just know that it’s Wrong to bring up boring old numbers that prove simple solutions to major problems are available. nevermind that the republicans can spawn a lincoln group out of thin air just for S&G, the democrats are completely incapable of hiring people who know how to fight and win. they don’t want to, not this bunch. and they continually do anything they can to squash people who do want to fight back.
here are the results of such. cottoning to stupidity, craven impulse, and mediocrity in a time when real live fascists are abroad and kicking? no, i’m not surprised it didn’t work.
KT Chong
Biden has already won with 270 electoral votes, with comfortable enough margins in the three battleground states that has just flipped from Trump to Biden after counting mail-in ballots, (i.e., Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin.)
Biden’s leads/margins are comfortable enough that Trump should not be able to use the Supreme Court to overturn the results; but who knows, the Republican super-majority-controlled may just go full fascist and just throw out all the mail-in ballots in all three states, and anoint Trump for a second term.
Biden does not need Pennsylvania, but IMO he is likely to get PA when the final vote count is announced. With PA, he will have +20 = 290 electoral votes, which will also reduce the chances of Supreme Court chicanery.
anon
js – The country is not shifting to the right. The Democratic Party needs to choose an effective messenger who genuinely wants to give Americans universal health care and a $15 minimum wage. The exit polls show that the majority of voters in red states want these things. The Democrats need to offer voters something tangible. Otherwise, it is much easier for Americans to choose a rightwing candidate who peddles patriotism and nationalism.
KT Chong
If the result is close, then the Supreme Court will look for an excuse to throw out the mail-in ballots of maybe ONE state. However, if the SCOTUS throws out more than one state to obviously let Trump win, then it will completely destroy its own credibility and invite civil unrest. So let’s hope Biden will win PA to seal the deal.
Plague Species
Hugh, he refuses to believe they are counting already cast votes and instead believes, and I believe he believes it, they are still allowing people to vote. This is the moron nearly half the voters voted for because they believe Biden the Republican is a Communist and Putin the Communist is a Capitalist. It’s bad enough Trump’s a criminal narcissist, but he’s also an imbecile to boot. He and his supporters want to turn America into a version of WALL-E or Idiocracy, American style.
There are two Trump signs in my neighborhood in two different yards. This morning while walking our Siberian Husky around the neighborhood I made sure to holler at the top of my lungs, and I can holler pretty damn loud, “yeah baby, grab that pussy for another four years! Hail to the Criminal In Chief! Hail to the Mass Murderer In Chief! Hail to the Orange Douchebag In Chief.!” I’m ready to get it on with these motherf*ckers. I hope they give me the pretext to turn their faces to ground meat.
That pickup truck trying to force the Biden bus off the road. It should be easy enough to identify the owner and take care of business, don’t you think? Turn him into a paraplegic? At that point, I’m sure the cowardly, moronic, noxious turd blossom would gladly welcome socialism, otherwise, no healthcare and no wheelchair for you, as**ole.
Plague Species
This is case in point, a clear example, of the valid claim the Dems are playing to lose and are happy being a faux opposition party and compliant ankle-biting poodles to Trump and the Republicans.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/2020-election-florida-miami-dade-cuban-latino-vote-1085830/
This is not an isolated case and example. It’s par for the Dem course.
NL
Ha ha ha… blame poor Biden, how convenient.
It is obviously because neither of the oligarchic groupings has anything to offer to the populace. Nothing. Nada. In fact, voting is going on as the virus is spreading. Let them eat voting. The elites fiddle with voting as the country is burning.
From El Erian: “The 2020 election has confirmed that the US remains a deeply divided country… Despite a collective wake-up call in the form of a severe health and economic crisis, the country seems both unwilling and unable to embark on the decisive measures needed.”
https://www.ft.com/content/bad0c75d-24dc-4d3a-9f19-6cecfef4fb50
By division he means the divided oligarchy, which squabbles and prevaricates unwilling and unable to govern and reform. Read the rest of the article: the end result is poverty and irrelevance for all involved, not only for the masses. The commentary on this blog confirms El-Erian observations of the inability to recognize the problem and deal with it. Same old, same old… boring, have some imagination.
Can’t say this situation was not predictable, but seeing it unfolding in real life is spectacular.
Zachary Smith
In a nation without no-verify electronic voting machines, I believe they would have won easily in a landslide, despite having a worthless candidate. That’s because the useless Biden was running against a person recognized by most of the nation as a total disaster.
I was a fool – not for believing the poll numbers were real, but for imagining they meant anything in the “real world”.
We-the-people have lost control of the US of A, and until we return to hand-marked paper ballots counted by humans, we won’t be getting it back.
Hugh
Plague Species, the DNC has more important priorities. For example, how are their political consultants going to afford expensive colleges for their kids? And vacation homes don’t build themselves.
NL
Russian experts in staging fake elections see familiar patterns of fake election in the US:
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/6301109.html
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/6300838.html
Use chrome and do “translate to English” or just look at the graphics, their self-explanatory. In the second post, the poster asks a question:
“Could only 138,000 votes be added at a time for one candidate and not a single vote for another?”
Thomas Golladay
Trump is challenging Wisconsin and Michigan Votes, alleging fraud. This is it folks. Regardless of outcome, fighting is already breaking out. Low Key, but its building.
different clue
I offer a new phrase with a catchy acronym for the Goldman-Sachs Feminist Clintonite filth vomit sewage which continues to pollute and impurify the Democratic Party through next-generation agents like Kamala Harris.
Pink KKK Democrats. That stands for Pink Kitty Kap Klintonite Democrats. In honor of the millions of vile Color Revolution Pink Kitty Kap Filth who held their vile filthy “not my President!” protests.
If you are a Pink KKK Democrat, God Damn you each. God Damn you all. God Damn you, every one.
NL
“Trump is challenging Wisconsin and Michigan Votes, alleging fraud. ”
And he is right to do so — see my post above on weird patterns in vote counting: 130,000 votes for Biden and none for Trump in the same period time (well documented life on TV). Calculate those odds even for a “heavily” democratic districts — they are impossible.
Anthony K Wikrent
As a Democratic Party activist, I can say unambiguously that having Biden and Harris at the top of the ticket absolutely destroyed any enthusiasm I might have had. The more Biden and Harris made noises to try and mate with former Republicans (which didn’t work, btw), the more I thought they were the worst possible candidates the Party could have selected.
Ian’s commentary, as usual, is spot on.
In addition, I think David Dayen’s post at https://prospect.org/politics/unsanitized-election-edition-nobody-knows-anything/ is also excellent.
The results of down ballot races are a disaster, especially here in North Carolina. I’m shocked and mortified at how badly Prop 22 in California lost. On the other hand, in Florida, which fell into Trump’s totals, a $15 minimum wage won a supermajority; and in Arizona, voters approved a referendum to tax the rich to increase funding for education. And Dayen does not mention that The Squad is now doubled in size.
I have been reading Christian Parenti’s Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons From a Misunderstood Founder (Verso, 2020). I think the intellectual rot of the American left is clearly evinced by the people, like Matt Stoller (who I otherwise think does GREAT work), who cling to the caricature of Hamilton as an elitist who favored financiers and hated democracy. One of Hamilton’s beliefs that leftists usually point to is that in the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton wanted to eradicate the states, and divide them into election districts. Parenti writes (p. 133): “Hamilton disliked the states… because he feared their competing claims of sovereignty would destroy the larger national project…. In retrospect, the abolition of states would have avoided some rather major problems, such as the Civil War. Without state governments, their fragmented micro-sovereignties and their gray-clad militias, Southern secession would have been far more difficult. Without states, there would be no state control of elections, thus no Electoral College, thus no minority rule by presidents by George W. Bush and Donald Trump, men who lost the popular vote yet won majorities in the Electoral College.”
And the clear winner of the popular vote of the 2020 election would have been declared a victor some time last night after the West Coast reported its results.
NL
The masses want a benevolent and carrying tyrant, like FDR, Putin or Xi Jinping, to lead them out of the economic and pandemic calamity and protect them against the oligarchy. The oligarchy is incapable of reforming itself and the political economy, because it would mean giving back to the citizenry the wealth the oligarchy collected from each and every one of us as an individual and from us as a group constituting the body politics. Here’s a singular most important moment for Trump. He either rises to the occasion, embraces the role of the tyrant and calls on the masses to organizer around him or remains one of the squabbling oligarchs. I am guessing it will the latter.
Of course, after the federal seat of the government is discredited, the center of power will shift to states and agglomerations of states. Looking forward to that.
NL
“And the clear winner of the popular vote of the 2020 election would have been declared a victor some time last night after the West Coast reported its results.”
That assumes that the campaigns would be run the same as now. Under a different districting, election campaigns would be run in a different way. I am pretty sure that CA has groups – even among the minorities (as FL shows) – to whom Trump could easily appeal. It’s just writing off CA made sense under the present political system.
Hugh
NL, why not calculate the odds of someone thinking they can add 130,000 votes to a total without being noticed?
Because the election was closer than expected, Trump was going to allege fraud or criminal cockatoos, whichever got more people to disbelieve the result. I always wonder why Ian is so blessed that he always gets someone delivering the most recent rightwing claptrap.
Put simply, if Republicans win by a single vote, or not even, then that is a landslide with an unlimited mandate. If Democrats win, no matter what, no matter by how many, there’s got to be something dubious about the victory.
Better conspiracies, or at least more interesting ones, please.
different clue
@Anthony K Wikrent,
You need a new party to activize for. How to design one and name it and brand it so it is close enough to the current Democrats to attract millions of defectors. But different enough to really BE different.
What might such a party be called? I will offer for free and at no charge the name Real Democrat Party. That name sounds familiar but indicates its rejection of the Democratic Party.
If it stood for A Few Real Things, it might attract millions of defectors from the Pink KKK Mainstream Democratic Party of today.
metamars
Rudy Giuliani in Philly, explaining Democrat controlled vote counting of mail-in ballots. The Democrats’ interpretation of “observed” is most peculiar, because it’s quite useless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIs4y4ryDJ0
AFAIK, not even Tulsi Gabbard has called out the Biden Crime Family corruption. Will she keep her mouth shut about corrupt machine politics, which may well steal the election? Is there any Democrat, in all of Congress, who isn’t a dirtbag?
For that matter, how many Republicans in Congress have called out what’s going down in Philadelphia?
Dirtbagism is bipartisan!
Thomas Golladay
https://dailycaller.com/2020/11/04/michigan-wisconsin-elections-officials-refuse-explain-sudden-joe-biden-vote-influx/
Yep, given the efforts to kick GOP Poll Watchers out and stopping and restarting counting and counting when no observers were present, Trump has solid ground to claim fraud and with the escalating violence in Detroit, its boiling over.
RNC, however, is turning on Trump though. They never wanted him, voters forced him on them. They could never openly oppose him due to his base, which would and did punish them. They can work with Joe but despise Kamala and know she would be actually in charge. So I’m guessing they are going to force a 12 Amendment situation, by de-certifying the votes. They then will collude with Democrats to produce a null vote in the house, and put Pence in the White House via the Senate. But that will fracture the Republican Party.
Frankly, both parties are going to fracture one way or the other in the 12 Amendment Scenario. Frankly that might be for the best.
S Brennan
Mr. Wikrent;
You say you despise the DNC’s selection of Biden/[Harris-Hillary]. And I believe you, yet, you did/do shill[ed] for the DNC weekly…and probably voted for Biden/[Harris-Hillary]. May I suggest, if you kicked the DNC’s ass rather than kissed the DNC’s ass you’d get a different result? Maybe the DNC wouldn’t humiliate you every election if you ever stood up for yourself? Trump is…millions of US Citizens giving their middle finger to the DNC’s endless prevarications.
So, just stop with the hand-wringing, YOU are the problem, you are voter that complains that the DNC treats like trash and then…and then you do EXACTLY what the DNC tells you to do. You broadcast that they can humiliate you and they do, the DNC is like any schoolyard bully.
Hugh
Thomas, your Führer is on the ropes and acting increasingly whack. And he’s acting whacko , at least for him, precisely because he knows he lost.
Trump is a third-rate carney. If you are going to believe in someone, why can’t you set the bar a little higher? Or is it some kind of true believer thing?
Thomas Golladay
@Hugh
I voted Howie Hawkins. A pox on both parties. Whoever ultimately wins, we lose. And the Democrats are being so blatantly obvious in their vote rigging, and the RNC blatantly setting the stage to put Pence in and ditch Trump, we are looking at an all out free for all.
So be it. Let the Elites kill each other, whoever is left standing, haul to jail.
NL
In Mr. Wikrent’s defense — kicking would make little difference. The political system is not responsive to the needs of the citizenry. We hear non-stop how voting matters, but it does not, and we know that too. Just look at the first page of Naked Capitalism:
“Affluent Authoritarianism: New Evidence on Public Opinion and Policy
New research shows once again that it’s large firms and the 1%—not the “median voter”—who drive U.S. policy.”
And then two posts down:
“Voting Turnout: Three Simple Ways to Get Out the Vote”
One may wonder why go out voting in general and especially during a raging pandemic when voting does not ‘drive US policy” and just stop wasting time and effort. But we don’t. So, seems like we hold two hardly compatible notions in our heads at the same.
Hugh
I love those vacuous claims like “blatantly obvious” to cover for the absence of any real evidence. You cheer Trump and then say a pox on both their houses. Sorry, it doesn’t jibe.
NL
“to cover for the absence of any real evidence. ”
Evidence is here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/El_J916XgAAt-OF?format=jpg&
NL
Please delete & in the end of the link for the figure to be loaded.
Hugh
A vast electoral conspiracy or just a simple inputting error? I was looking at figures from a couple of different sources last night and saw numbers bouncing around all evening. Color me unimpressed.
Ché Pasa
The oligarch factions are clearly contending right now over which geezer should be allowed to ascend to the presidency. The whack dodder or the doddering dodder? Wait. No they aren’t. As far as they’re concerned all this angst and drama over the “election” is entertainment for the unwashed. They have other things to do, and the oligarchs can string this out for “us” just as long as they want.
I wouldn’t be surprised if neither Trump nor Biden goes forth and becomes president by the time this drama is over. Which could be sometime in January or even later.
I asked some time ago if Trump had lost the Mandate of Heaven, but in truth he never had it, and results so far indicate he will not have it no matter how much fuss he makes over the election. I’m seeing an awful lot of blank stares when he has his tantrums. Even here in Trump Country.
S Brennan
Oh for chuck’s sake;
Biden’s email corruption leads to impeachment in 2022 [with Hillary’s help…and ain’t her first rodeo (see Nixon)], Harris ascends the throne and the Clintons are back in the quisling business..collecting shekels for selling their country out.
And all the little minions of DC are happily ever after..just like Rome [circa 395 AD].
NR
NL: That claim of over 100k votes being added for Biden has already been debunked:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rumor-alert-biden-michigan-votes/
It was a typo that was quickly corrected, and the error wasn’t even made by the state, but rather by a third party reporting on the count.
NR
Oh and by the way, the guy who posted that image admitted it was just a typo and deleted the tweet. You guys are really grasping at straws.
Thomas Golladay
@NR and Hugh
Believe what you want, its irrelevant. The entire system has now been utterly exposed as rotten to the core and the knives are out.
We’re a failed state, have been since 2000, and the bills are now due. Do what you will. I’m out.
NL
NR: That claim of over 100k votes being added for Biden has already been debunked
Fat finger, right? Well, I would expect nothing else, would you? I mean, after a higher-up called the lower-down and screamed at the screw-up to add the votes in smaller increments, so it would not be so obvious.
I wonder why the error was on the Biden’s side and not on the side Trump’s side.
I hear that a similar ‘mistake’ took place in Michigan at around the same time.
There is no reason to trust anyone.
NL
Here’s the Michigan one:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/El-0E2sVgAA7wNt?format=jpg
Trinity
Here we are again, pretending there is any significant difference between the R’s and the D’s. There isn’t, at least not from the perspective of the unwashed.
This extended non-decision is great for the only thing that really matters: your attention paid to the ads they serve every time you reload the page to get the updates. Or do a new search. Or search Twitter, looking for some kind of reassurance about the future.
Here in the middle latitudes near other seats of power™, fall continues hanging on, Biden is hanging in, and network traffic has been worse than beltway traffic.
Winter is coming.
(Tony Wikrent: thank you for doing what you do. You may never know all the good that comes out of your efforts, it may even be far in the future. Just wanted you to know, here and now, your efforts are appreciated. You, too, Ian.)
Thomas Golladay
@Trinity
Best case scenario is the RNC and DNC collude to force a 12th Amendment Scenario, then put Pence on the Throne and call for unity.
Instead both parties fragment as the base says fuck this shit and go to war.
The rot is so deep and entrenched, only a thorough purging can break the stalemate just as the US Civil War broke the stalemate on slavery.
But given how divided the nation is, this will quickly devolve into a Syrian Style Free for All. This is why the Regular Military is openly saying they aren’t getting involved. They know full well that if they actually deploy, entire units will turn on each other. But events will force their hand and they will quickly lose control. And that is probably for the best as it will break the MIC’s stranglehold quickly.
Millions will die, but at this point, we brought it upon ourselves by not updating our constitution and getting involved in WW1 which we should have stayed out of.
NR
All the Trumpers have left is QAnon-level conspiracy theories, supported by absolutely zero actual evidence of course.
It’s pathetic.
NL
Saying “It’s pathetic.” does not make it so. You seem to protest a lot and vehemently.
But none of this matters in the end analysis, as I mention above.
NR
It being pathetic makes it pathetic.
And you’re the one clinging to QAnon conspiracy theories, so don’t talk to me about protesting vehemently.
Thomas Golladay
NYPD is now moving in force and cracking down on protestors with brute force.
https://twitter.com/sydneyp1234/status/1324177812400590848
https://twitter.com/GL0BALSETT/status/1324208665059090432
Bear in mind New York Stat is okay with this.
And more fuel to the fire: https://twitter.com/KAGWAR2020/status/1324064583355494400
Truth is no longer possible, narratives are the new reality. Both parties are playing us for suckers while they throw gasoline on the fires.
Meanwhile the rest of the world watches and realizes we aren’t coming back and best to move on.
different clue
Here is something that puzzles me about the ” pickup truck drivers boxing in a campaign bus driver on the highway”. Aren’t these campaign buses the same kind of bus as big luxury-coach tour buses? Isn’t a bus so much bigger and heavier and more powerful and more tire-traction-on-the-road than a pickup truck that if a pickup driver gets in front of a 60mph bus and tries slowing down to 20mph, that the bus can just keep going 60 and run over the pickup driver?
How can a pickup truck run a bus off the road? Doesn’t a bus have the reserves of size and strength and power to run the pickup truck off the road? If that is the game being played?
Now . . . if the bus driver was concerned that the Typhoid MAGA pickuptards were all armed and ready to shoot, then I can understand the driver not being willing to take that chance by using his bus as a counter-weapon against these weaponised pickup trucks.
Maybe in future, campaign buses need to be made bulletproof and be supplied with a machine-gunner riding along in an armored turret on the top of the bus.
NL
NR
I could have a flippant come-back and pester you me, but what’s the point.
Let’s agree to disagree. I am concerned that the votes are counted properly, you seem to trust the system. Case closed.
Bogging down in these minutiae of the oligarchy’s quarrels is pointless. People want a benevolent ruler to get the country in order and lead it in the next century. That’s more important. That’s what we should look to.
metamars
@NL
Where are these images from? https://pbs.twimg.com/ , just by itself, won’t resolve. Are the from PBS? Url of the containing page?
Of course, people often have no serious interest in evidence, if they’re emotionally invested in a narrative that the evidence contradicts.
Willy
The number of eligible Latino voters in America is 32 million.
Trumps secret weapon was using Spanish speaking operatives to penetrate and con Latino communities into believing that Biden is a marxist. Anybody want to agree, that Biden is a marxist?
Others were convinced that Biden was just another corporate insider who cares nothing about them or their jobs. Maybe a bit closer to the truth. Still, how could those two beliefs be reconciled? Maybe the strategy was to keep those communities apart. Or maybe the strategists knew that some people really are that bad at doing their homework.
Whatever. It worked. Twice as many Latinos voted for Trump in 2020 as they did in 2016.
I’d be convinced that Latinos didn’t want competition for their jobs coming over the border, except that Trump never built his wall, and the deportation count under him is the lowest under a president in decades. Despite all the infamous strongman bravado. Maybe the promise of culturally similar low wage brethren-employees was considered.
Somehow, twice as many Latinos were convinced that Trump was better for their communities than Biden. Shouldn’t these strange voter dynamics be studied?
Plague Species
And this, in a nutshell, is a large part of why America is not a democracy and never could be. It’s not even democratic and never could be and never will be. Because ignoramuses like this can so easily be convinced of obvious, with just a slight bit of research, falsehoods. An uneducated or miseducated, misinformed and uncritically thinking citizenry does not a democracy make.
I know it’s not just the Batista Cubans in Miami but as well the second and third generation of Hispanics in Texas who have ascended and are now firmly part of the middle class and a few part of the upper class. They apparently would like to see America devolve into the banana republics their countries of origin are, meaning they are at least in part responsible for the predicament of their countries of origin considering they would support such slime.
Because of first hand experience with these f*cking corrupt, criminal bastards that are the Batista Cubans in Miami, I have particular animus and disdain for them. I feel they should be deported back to Cuba because they have never assimilated and do not care to assimilate as the Irish and Polish and Italians have done. They preferred instead to set up a Batista Cuba in Miami and run it the same crooked way Batista ran Cuba. Boot these motherf*ckers out of this country now. These are the as**oles who should be deported, not poor desperate hispanic parents and children seeking asylum at the Southwest border who don’t have a penny to their name.
Plague Species
If any party is cheating the vote, it’s the Trump Party. No way this cretin has received nearly 70 million votes. Right? Well, on second thought, maybe so all things considered.
Also, he who cries first and loudest is usually the guilty party of what he decries. As Stirling has said, elections are corrupt as hell but it’s always the the Republicans who cry cheating and never the Dems who claim the Republicans are cheating. Why is that? Because the Dems are happy for the Republicans to win because that’s what lap poodles do.
Can nearly 70 million people be this morally reprehensible and this moronic to vote for such a malevolent beast as McDonald Trump? Possibly, and I don’t doubt it, but part of me also considers that the Trump Party has cheated the vote and if so, what a bunch of bumbling, stumbling buffoons considering they can’t even cheat their way to a victory.
Bottom line, if there is any cheating, it’s more likely the Trump Party are the greater and more egregious cheaters, not the Dems. Common sense says so if there is such a thing as common sense any longer.
Dan
I was sad to see that Kanye conceded. A voice we dearly need. No words.
Buzzard
While I am in full agreement that Biden was a weak, feckless candidate and that the DNC’s campaign left a lot to be desired, Biden couldn’t really hold rallies like Trump due to Covid (and Sanders would have been boxed in that way as well). Biden might still squeak in, which at least gives us a couple of extra years to make arrangements to get out.
That said, while Biden did chase after a small handful of anti-Trump Republicans at the expense of the Dems’ base, I don’t know how much stock to put in those exit polls. Many, many Dems voted early and by mail — how do you exit-poll those voters? (Though Biden’s uptick with white males by that metric might have been the effect of the Lincoln Project.)
NR
” I am concerned that the votes are counted properly, you seem to trust the system.”
No. I am saying that if you are going to claim that if there is vote fraud happening, you need to provide evidence for that claim. You have none. You posted an image of a single reporting error by a single third-party reporter, which was later admitted to have just been an error by the guy who provided the image, and acted like that was proof that the Democrats were stealing the election. Which is patently ridiculous.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You have no extraordinary evidence. You have no evidence at all.
NL
NR
” which was later admitted to have just been an error by the guy ”
So, it is enough for you for the guy to say ‘my bad” and you trust him. That’s Ok, you are a trusting person. I guess I have had a more interesting life than yours, so for me trust needs to be earned. And I may be more thorough. Let think of this in terms of conflict of interest. As you may know the best policy is to report any potential conflict of interest and a still better policy is to avoid real or even PERCEIVED conflict of interest so as to maintain credibility and legitimacy of the processes. In this case, it seems Democratic districts and states count democratic and Republican votes for days. I am sorry – scream at me all you want – but I just can’t help myself thinking about conflict of interest.
different clue
@Plague Species,
I am one of the morally reprehensible morons who voted for Trump the last time, because I considered PitchMon Don to be a safer choice for President than the Pink KKK Democrat Clinton and the anti-russianitic racist anti-russianites who supported her. And I was right.
This time I voted for Hunter Joe and the Kamalabeast because I have become tired of the Trump Show and I wanted to change the channel.