Thank you for sending congratulations to President Elect Joe Biden.
Trudeau tweeted, "Congratulations Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Our two countries are close friends, partners and allies. We share a relationship that's unique on the world stage. I'm really looking forward to working together and building on that with you both.
He was the first world leader to send congratulations.
Fox rang the chime, put up the Alert! graphic, and made the announcement:
"The Fox News Decision Desk can now project that former Vice President will win Pensylvania and Nevada, putting him over the 270 electoral votes he needs to become the 46th President of the United States."
It was Bret Baier's voice. Fox's announcement came just minutes after the others. Fox was the most important, because Fox could have been the voice of intractable obstruction.
Humans understand reality by picking signals that we weave into a narrative that makes sense to us. Those congratulations were signals to Americans that we should believe the vote counts, not our president. Confirmatory signals from partisans of the opposition have special credibility. Bebe Netanyahu's congratulations had weight, because Israel had positioned itself as an ally of the GOP and had been flagrantly disrespectful to Obama. If Fox and Bebe have thrown in the towel, then Trump lost. Trump can be a litigant, a crybaby, a man magnanimous in defeat, whatever he chooses, but he lost.
College classmate Sandy Borins is an Emeritus Professor of Public Management at the University of Toronto. He studies the information that creates the narratives that cause citizens to decide whether we are looking at a good guy or a bad guy, an embattled truth teller or a charlatan, a hero or a sore loser.
Sanford Borins has a political blog that is academic in nature, but fully accessible to a non-academic audience. He posted this today and readers can get it by going directly to his website or by signing up to receive it by email: www.sandfordborins.com
Guest Post by Sandford Borins
"Now that the US election results are known and the suspense is over, I have four takeaways, two of which derive from my Canadian perspective.
Different Types of Mobilization
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| Sandford Borins and son Alex, voting |
When all votes are counted, the total presidential vote will be close to 150 million, representing a turnout rate of close to 70 percent, which is substantially higher than the turnout rate of 60 percent in 2016 and indeed the turnout rate in any election since 1900. Trump’s vote increased from 63 million in 2016 to 71 million plus, a gain of at least 8 million votes. But Biden’s 75 million plus votes topped Hillary Clinton’s 66 million by at least 9 million votes.
The Trump campaign mobilized by using traditional methods such as large rallies to generate enthusiasm and lists of names and in-person canvassing to get the vote out. The Biden campaign, taking precautions against Covid – 19 by dispensing with rallies and in-person canvassing, resorted to telephone and online contact and providing tools to support mail-in voting. Many observers, by focusing on polling errors regarding the Trump vote (my next point), have overlooked the fact that the Biden campaign was, if anything, more successful than the Trump campaign in getting the vote out.
Surprised Pollsters
It has been ruefully observed by many pollsters – especially the ones whose forecasts led to the averages constructed by fivethirtyeight.com – that they overestimated Biden’s margin both nationally and in many states because they underestimated Trump’s share of the vote. The reason for this error seems not to be that Trump voters were shy and lied about their intentions, but that they were contemptuous of pollsters and refused in droves to participate. However much pollsters tried to correct for the under-representation of likely Trump voters such as whites without college degrees, it wasn’t enough.
In posts on October 26 and November 1, I discussed the frenetic, even frenzied, social media activity by Trump supporters in terms of visits to Trump’s YouTube channel as evidence of the strength of Trump’s support. Anthropological observation of Trump Nation led my college classmate and friend Peter Sage to a similar conclusion.
Public opinion research is based on the assumption that there are sufficient would-be interviewees in the population who are willing to trust the researcher enough to reveal their politics. That trust is breaking down in the US on the part of Trump Nation. It may also be breaking down on the part of populist groups in other countries (Nacion Bolsonaro, etc.). Public opinion researchers will have to find other ways to reach that segment of the population.
My suggestion would be studying social media activity. If I were doing public opinion research on politics I would use observation of social media to triangulate with survey results. This will not be easy, and will require conceptual and methodological advances, but I expect it will happen.
America’s Allies Speak
After the major US networks declared Joe Biden President-elect late Saturday morning, I wondered how long it would take for Prime Minister Trudeau to congratulate him. Canadians are a cautious people and our governments are reluctant to poke the bear. I was pleasantly surprised when Trudeau issued a statement 45 minutes after the networks. Most of the US’s major democratic allies quickly followed Trudeau.
On reflection, it seems to me that Trudeau and his close advisers were carefully considering when to go public with their recognition of the Biden Administration and that Canada and what we refer to as “like-minded nations” were contemplated coordinated action.
There were two reasons for quick recognition: the opprobrium among America’s traditional allies the Trump has brought upon himself and, similar to the sending of election observers to fragile democracies, an attempt to nudge an imperiled democracy towards renewal.
Unsurprisingly, though, Trump’s soul-brothers – Putin, Xi, Bolsonaro, Erdogan, Kim – have still maintained their silence, which speaks volumes.
Better Election Practices
We Canadians speak modestly about building a better Canada. Our American neighbors quote the Constitution’s ambitious objective of building a more perfect union. Whatever terminology is used, the US could do much to improve its election practices.
In Canada we have concluded that the best way to conduct elections is to give the responsibility to independent agencies such as Elections Canada and Elections Ontario and we support the objective of making it as easy as possible for citizens 18 years or older to vote.
On US election day and after, we watched dedicated front-line election workers struggling to cope with difficult situations created for them by their political leadership, such as legislatively-mandated restrictions on counting mail-in ballots in advance. And we Canadians must remember that American ballots are always more complicated than those in parliamentary elections, and especially so in a presidential election year.
In the US, voting has always been a much more contentious issue than in Canada. It was a path to better lives for newly enfranchised Blacks following the Civil War, but the suppression of their voting rights was a powerful tool in the hands of white supremacists. Even now, Trump’s Republican Party continues to find ways to suppress the vote, while Democrats try to expand it. And this conflict will play out in the Republicans’ court challenges in the next few weeks.
Under the Elections Clause of the Constitution, the federal government has the power to intervene in the conduct and regulation of elections. In my view, the Biden Administration could bring about better and fairer elections through the creation of a non-partisan national elections commission tasked with objectives such as making it easier for qualified citizens to vote and ending the gerrymandering of electoral districts for the House of Representatives. I don’t underestimate the difficulty of doing this, especially if after the two senatorial runoff elections in Georgia, Republicans control the Senate. Electoral reform will also complete with a long list of other priorities for the Biden Administration. But even a purely advisory commission established by executive order that did nothing more than create league tables assessing electoral practices in the fifty states and advocate best practices would be a step forward."
5 comments:
Curt Ankerberg actually WON the election for City Council, but the County Clerk in Jackson County cheated Curt. There is a huge political "market" for people like Curt who don't mind breaking rules, cheating the tax man, pretending he is disabled, making wild claims, and bullying women. Curt is Medford's version of Trump. It takes a guy who ignores rules to really change anything.
Like Trump, the media hates him and focuses on Curt's tax problems, anger problems, and vulgarities, instead of his good points, which is that he hates the Chamber of Commerce and says that it is filled with cronies who make each other rich with public money.
Medford citizens need to quit thinking about Curt Ankerberg's bad temperament and character and see him for the valuable Republican attack dog that he is. Curt will say things about all Democrats and bad Republicans that no one else will say. Curt has no filter. no judgement, and that is what makes him useful. Curt Ankerberg is the new face of the Republican Party in southern Oregon.
Peter, I dare you to print this. You write about the hidden messages in things. The hidden message for Medford is that GOP voters LIKE people like Curt. They don't want respectable and normal. They want to shake things up with a crazy man and who better than someone with a claim of water on the brain and bug eyes.
The problem with proposing electoral changes like this is there would have to be a political consensus for them to happen. Right now we are very polarized and a consensus like that is impossible.
The polarization needs to be fixed first. I hope Biden takes that seriously and does something competent about it.
Among the many good points noted here is the observation that Republican voter suppression, including gerrymandering, which is the outlining of districts by ethnicity and income, is how they manipulate the system to maintain power. Outside of the racism of this practice, it shows their awareness that they cannot win fair elections in many parts of the country.
So it is no surprise that they now are obstructing an election they fairly lost, which is unprecedented in our history.
Every Republican should feel shame that their leaders have sunk to this level, to undermine the foundations of our Republic in order to cling to power. It's pathetic, petty, undemocratic and shows their fundamental disdain for every single American, including those in their own party.
Shame...
Note to readers of Comments:
By Peter Sage:
I allowed a comment regarding Curt Ankerberg because it is in praise of him. Mostly I delete comments that are anonymous, and nearly always ones that deride fellow commenters in an un-civil way.
I will delete the Ankerberg comment if it turns out to start of discussion about him in this comment section about his various crimes, insults, whatever. Curt is a nuisance that Medford has to deal with, like mosquitoes, but I would prefer a discussion of Curt primarily to take place on Facebook or on a social media site of his own. When I see comments about Curt or likely by him, my practice will be to delete them. But if commenters want to associate Curt with the Republican Party, which has not in fact disavowed him, then I am inclined to let the comment stand. Let the local GOP tell me that they disavow Curt, if they do.
Peter Sage
Weis, at least now we know why Curt runs against all those money grabbing politicians in Medford. He wants in on the action.
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