An idea has bubbled to top of mind among Democrats: This vote-by-mail thing is a trap.
Reporter question to Trump:
"Do you commit to make sure that there’s a peaceful transferal of power?”
Trump answer:
“Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation. . .. The ballots are out of control. I think this will end up in the Supreme Court. And I think it's very important that we have nine justices."
Reporter comment later:
"This is the most frightening answer I have ever received to any question I have ever asked."
Democrats are rethinking their message.
Trump is selling an idea, and selling it hard, doubling down even in the face of rising criticism. He says that Democrats are planning on stealing the election, so he will confound them by making this an election decided in the courts. This year the vote tallies, at least in the critical swing states with Republican state legislatures, will have no credibility, he says, if the vote includes ballots that have been mailed in. Only the election day in-person voting is real and legitimate.
Trump message of upcoming voter fraud has credibility with Republicans, according to a recent Pew poll. Click: Pew The real determinant is one's media habits. Pew found that 87% of Republicans who get their news primarily from Fox News and talk radio consider mail voting fraudulent. Among Republicans who don't watch Fox or listen to talk radio, only 23% are skeptical of mail voting. The core base for Republicans is Trump supporters who watch Fox News. It isn't a majority, but it is enough in the right place.
Democrats are generally more concerned about COVID than are Republicans. Polls show it, behavior demonstrates it. Trump voters and Fox viewers get a very mixed message regarding the virus, and are far more likely to dismiss it, and are far more likely to protest shutdown orders and are more interested in voting in person. Trump says it is the right way to vote.
Besides, maybe COVID is a hoax, maybe masks do no good, maybe it is all overblown, maybe people are dying of something other than COVID, maybe people should just take their chances. Trump said at a rally this week that COVID "affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems, other problems. . .. It affects virtually nobody, it's an amazing thing. Open your schools, everybody open your schools. [Crowd claps and cheers. Few wore masks.]" Click: YouTube
Democrats have had their own message, presented diffusively, that maybe voting in person is dangerous, since voting places are hotspots of infection. Democrats had a workaround, mail-in voting.
The two messages had an effect. The more a voter disapproves of Trump, the more likely is the voter to plan to vote by mail.
Democratic punditry has been gaming out "nightmare" scenarios for several weeks of Trump stealing the election by stopping the vote. Back in August Democrats had been concerned about the Postal Service and ballot delivery. Then the fear became that delivered ballots will be rejected. Significant numbers of ballots are uncounted because of signature mismatches and, in the single most likely tipping point state, Pennsylvania, the rule that ballots must be returned inside a secrecy envelope placed inside the outer envelope. Many Pennsylvania voters ignored the envelope-in-envelope instruction. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court just ruled that election officials could reject those ballots.
This week an Atlantic article created new fear amplified by Trump's comments yesterday. Trump only needs to convince compliant Republican legislators in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Michigan that the mass of mail-in ballots is questionable, and in politics anything can be questioned, and Trump is doing so loud and clear. State legislators don't need to accept their state's vote as determinative. They can choose the electors themselves, and since the vote is questionable, they should.
That would create outrage among Democrats, and protests on the street. Open theft, again! Disruption and opposition from Democrats are features, not bugs. The angrier he makes millions of people, the more likely the plan is to succeed. Without consent that the vote is legitimate--and Trump will never consent--amid disorder, people will look for another source of legitimacy to end the disruption, the Republican state legislature.
This would be the new iteration of hardball, power politics, of the kind that that works for Republicans in the Trump era. As with holding up the Merrick Garland nomination, pushing through a replacement to Justice Ginsburg, or ignoring subpoenas. If you have power--and a Republican legislature would--you exercise it. After all, the game is rigged, so play to win.
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| Pennsylvania Democrats plan to vote by mail, Republicans not. |
Votes in Pennsylvania will trickle in. On a party line vote, guided by the Trump campaign, Republican majorities in the Pennsylvania legislature made what may be a crucial decision. They forbade ballots mailed or delivered to the polling places to be opened prior to the close of in-person voting. (Most states allow delivered votes to be opened as they come in to be prepared for tallying along with in-person votes.) There will almost certainly be an early Trump lead. Democrats see the exposure. Trump has already said those later-counted votes are fraudulent. Pennsylvania Republican legislators have their excuse.
Democrats woke up and are backtracking on vote by mail. Vote early, really early, says former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, now candidate for U.S. Senate. Vote early any way you can, say Barack and Michelle Obama. Joe Biden's campaign is saying they have no particular preference for voting by mail; vote however you are comfortable.
It may be too late. Democratic messaging on vote by mail has been overwhelming that it is easy, safe, and the best way to vote. More Democrats than Republicans will vote by mail.
Democrats and the mainstream media hope shame Trump into agreeing to accepting the mailed votes as legitimate. Trump won't fall for that.
9 comments:
#Count the votes!
Think there is a litmus test for this Sup. Ct. pick? Who will ask the hypothetical question during the confirmation hearings - Kamala? Talk about a high impact reality show...
Don't be surprised to learn that hearings are customary, but not required.
Also, don't forget that the suggestions for several possible nominees to fill the RBG slot are all judges who have been confirmed in recent years.
These certainly are tumultuous times with plenty of room for speculation about what happens next.
It may sound alarming, but I think the potential for civil war exists. If the packed Supreme Court backed Trump’s fraudulent claims, chaos would ensue. I could not accept the take over of democracy. Hopefully the military would save the day.
Vote by Mail is Permission to Not Vote at All
"Voting Tuesday" in Black communities has long been a historic event. There was always excitement, car pools and parties planned, everybody asking each other “did you vote” as you might on Sunday “did you go to church”. When mail voting came to Oregon in 1998, and we no longer went down to Hoover Elementary to vote, I deeply felt the loss of the tradition. Voting was no longer an event, it was a just an envelope, a nagging procrastination. When brick and mortar voting ended in Oregon, so did most of our late night parties to watch the tally.
Trump understands vote by mail more than any politician alive except perhaps Stacy Abrahams. Her fabulous new documentary “All In: The Fight for Democracy” (free on Amazon right now) which was finished in pre-production form before Covid-19, is filled with exciting footage about the Southern Black tradition of “getting dressed for voting day”. When you watch it, you will fully realize Democrats have subverted a tradition critical to our success.
This week the mail ballots started going out in Florida. My Black next door neighbor and I retrieved our mail at the same time yesterday. “You didn’t get one of these”, she asked holding up her large ballot envelope? After explaining I vote in Seattle she said “you want mine?” As I chuckled no, she tore it in half. It took my breath away. “That’s how a Black person votes against Biden— we just don’t vote”, she said. I knew she was disaffected by “those good for nothings burning down the cities”, but her act of withholding her vote from Biden was so stark I will never forget it. I asked myself if pre-Covid get out the vote organizers had come to her door, would she have gone with them? Is this Covid-19 isolation speaking, just one more social interaction the virus had robbed her of, she lives alone just like me. Vote by mail gave her permission to not vote at all.
Trump understands the need to keep the American tradition of voting day alive for the GOP, and the benefit of helping Democrats destroy it and themselves with it. This also means that if you are seen at the polls on November 3rd, you might be misidentified as a Trump supporter. We Democrats vote by mail, “was that you we saw last night at the school with all those Trump supporters in line?” You may nervously mutter, “no, it's just that I never sent in the ballot and wanted to make sure my vote for Biden got counted.” Hmm, we wonder.
The media fecklessly dances to Trump’s tune. “He won’t commit to the peaceful transfer of power”, they shout in shrill idiocy. Everyone knows Trump did not say any such words, he made crystal clear that he intends to legally challenge mailed ballots and to install a ninth justice at the ready for Bush v. Gore II, aka “Trump v. Biden”. What goofballs MSNBC and CNN talking heads are to completely miss that Trump is not against vote by mail, he is counting on it to serve the modern day purpose of the notorious “hanging chad”. He is all for mail voting because it guarantees a big electoral mess just like the Democratic primaries did in Iowa and New York.
Trump is softening the target. He is getting us all used to the expectation that November 3rd will see giant GOP turn out at the polling places, followed by days and weeks of mail ballot anomalies, an epidemic of court battles, and in the end an exhausted electorate just wanting it to be over.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around all the distrust that Herr Trump has regurgitated to his loyal idiots. The FBI, CIA, Pentagon, The Treasury, The Elections. I'm sure there are more. ALL AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS ARE RIGGED!!! A DISASTER!!!!
This, coming from a very stable genius with not a hint of Russian collusion What could go wrong?
For the first time in my life I'm experiencing a profound sense of sadness for our country. I'm just two generations removed from immigrate relatives - my mother's mother from England and my mother's father from Germany. Both of my maternal grandparents (first generation immigrants) participated in the richness of the American Dream. At the core of that participation was the understanding that our form of government required the active participation of the citizen to vote. My grandmother turned 21 in 1920 and was among the first women to go to the polls in Portland. What is happening now is far worse than poll tax, stealing ballot boxes, or intimidating voters who are attempting to vote. It is an attack on the very idea that the vote means anything. Going further with the idea, the very sense that the vote is meaningless and should automatically thrown out. If that is true than it follows that all our norms and governmental practices are baseless. A move towards saying the Constitution itself is unconstitutional and requires a rewrite to get rid of all those pesky checks and balances that, in fact, those words are turning out to be merely words on paper if those in the positions to use them - don't. The idea now that there is such a thing is American exceptionalism is laughable. There is, in my mind, a strong belief that the Republic will fail come November Third. The headstone will read: Here lies The United States of America, July 4, 1776 - January 20, 2021 RIP My God Save All
Thad said: "The media fecklessly dances to Trump’s tune. “He won’t commit to the peaceful transfer of power”, they shout in shrill idiocy. Everyone knows Trump did not say any such words, he made crystal clear that he intends to legally challenge mailed ballots and to install a ninth justice at the ready for Bush v. Gore II, aka “Trump v. Biden”. What goofballs MSNBC and CNN talking heads are to completely miss that Trump is not against vote by mail, he is counting on it to serve the modern day purpose of the notorious “hanging chad”. He is all for mail voting because it guarantees a big electoral mess just like the Democratic primaries did in Iowa and New York."
Spot on.
The Dems don't get that, despite all of his lies, Trump is quite transparent about his plans; he pre-empts everything with a well thought out incrementalism. He's a modern "Johnny Appleseed," but the seeds he plants are those that will bloom authoritarianism, fascism, neo-feudalism, oligarchy...call it what you like but it all means that all wealth and power ultimately rests in the hands of a blatant ruling class.
Andy Seles
Hi Peter,
At this point I can only conclude that you are not willing to respond to my earlier two sends regarding your personal accusations. If so, I'd say that's pretty undemocratic of you and in violation of your own commitment to a "real post," but again, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I'll give you until the weekend to respond at which point I will assume that you are avoiding taking any responsibility for your hurtful words.
Andy Seles
Andy Seles thinks he is entitled to something, Peter. He even set a deadline for you. His grandkids may even demand reparations for the day you used hurtful words. Darn your hurtful words. You should kowtow to his lack of a famous blog by coddling, of course. You risk being labeled irresponsible by his standards.
Also, Andy, you don't have a Democracy. You have a Republic, if you can keep it. Whoever keeps throwing around the Democracy word is playing a head game. Take a civics course before you start demanding stuff from a partisan academic.
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