GET OUT: US politics November 2020

I've got to assume his lawyers have been working for Happy Meal coupons for the past several years, because no way can that guy afford all those billable hours. Maybe that's where the reelection war chest went.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/05/us/politics/trump-campaign-funds-legal-bills.html

Mr. Trump’s tendency to turn to the courts — and the legal issues that have stemmed from norm-breaking characteristics of his presidency — helps explain how he and his affiliated political entities have spent at least $58.4 million in donations on legal and compliance work since 2015, according to a tally by The New York Times and the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute.

it's so stupid that he is telegraphing his intentions this way

― treeship., Monday, November 2, 2020 9:22 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the point is to undermine faith in our democracy

I get that's the point but even with conservative judges it's kinda hard to win a case if you make it clear right away that your intention all along was to have a judge throw it your way

Not with judges he's appointed, he's all about the loyalty, as he's made abundantly clear.

“I think it’s terrible when we can’t know the results of an election the night of an election in a modern-day age of computers,” said Trump, before alleging that the Democratic governors of Pennsylvania and Nevada would somehow interfere with accurate counting.

yeah bruh, so much for caring about voter fraud. guess we can dispense with the whole "making sure signatures match" part, right?

fuckin' idiot. and a large part of the reason the count won't be finished are state laws, and Kavanaugh has already shown a reticence to overturn state laws, so ....sue all you want, dickhole.

xpost loyalty to whom? they have appointments for life, unlike other Trump stooges, they don't need to please him anymore because he can't fire them.

bullshit, he can't even afford to pay bus drivers for a full shift never mind lawyers in multiple states

oh, he can, he just chooses not to

the legal fees are already banked I'm sure

xpost their terrible rulings have more to do with the fact that their brains and thought processes are damaged of their own volition rather than any fealty to Trump. hence why Kavanaugh rejected the PA court challenge while overturning the extension of deadline for Wisconsin. he has it in his head that any rules that state legislatures set are the governing power, whereas no Federal or state judge, since they're 'unelected', should overturn that.

(nevermind the irony of that statement, htat's how he's voted)

and in PA, one of the reasons the ballots won't be counted on time = the state law doesn't allow them to start counting early like it does in FL. so good luck Trump. we've never had a full count on Tuesday.

besides, I bet the numbers don't look good for him tomorrow so he'll change his tune.

Not with judges he's appointed, he's all about the loyalty, as he's made abundantly clear.

― soaring skrrrtpeggios (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, November 2, 2020 10:32 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

"i appointed some wonderful corrupt judges and the purpose of them is to not enforce the law impartially and all of you should respect them for some reason otherwise you're being very unfair."

my brain just breaks with this stuff.

“I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait a long period of time after the election,” Trump said. “If people wanted to get their ballots in, they should have gotten their ballots long before. They could have put their ballots in a month ago.”

that wouldn't speed up the count moron

if you find yourself assuming Trump and his advisers are doing stuff competently, according to a well-thought-out plan, with resources set aside to execute each step along the way, just stop.

If you don't think at least a couple of these dipshit lower court Trump appointees aren't going to very deliberately throw him a win in exchange for the lifetime appointment free ride, I don't really know what to say.

big time bet this is one of those weird flexes of telegraphing to his base something he is going to do, proving he's going to 'fight', and then he will wilt and not do anything once he sees the bad results. he always does this.

i think that is likely. his plan to cheat doesn't really make sense, especially because he is saying he is going to cheat.

xpost they haven't done that thus far! how many times has he railed at a federal judge for not ruling the way he wanted (read: a lot).

a judge doesn't give a shit once they're appointed. People Trump hires care because he can fire them. Judges, if they are loyal to Trump, it's because they actually like him and his ideals and they were broken to begin with.

to throw Trump a win with no legal basis, would basically be inviting daily harassment via phone and at home visits from angry liberal voters - p sure no judge wants that.

what the courts WILL do is help with disenfranchisement, by refusing to allow extensions to voting deadlines, or possibly voting to invalidate 'drive-in' votes (if that does happen though make no bones, I'll be furious)

We're moving into a phase where Trump's incompetency is largely irrelevant. This isn't about governance or legislation.

There's a whole machine with tremendous resources invested in stealing this thing if possible.

Trump always does his worst deeds without warning - when he tips his hand, he's doing it so his base will misremember and think he actually did it later.

that machine existed long before Trump. and there are legit fears to how this election can be tampered with, including that Texas judge who is going to rule on teh validity of 100,000+ drive-in ballots.

that machien does not include "arbitrarily deciding that only votes counted on Election Day count". that shit ain't gonna happen. there will be smaller cumulative other methods to chip away at the vote that Republicans and courts will utilize. that's what we have to be ready to fight in court.

My partner pointed out the reason he probably won’t do anything like announce pre-emptive victory or whatever: there’s not gonna be a crowd for him at the WH. He can’t effectively bullshit without an adoring crowd.

in any case, ain't worth giving yourself ulcers - the only thing I know for sure is Tuesday is going to go differently than any of us can imagine because we have a President with frontal lobe damage, a violent armed country, a fired up voter base, and a larger than usual vote-by-mail total. for all I know Jar Jar Binks will be elected

and if you guess right as to the shit that he's going to pull, there is exactly nobody who is going to high-five you for predicting it, and you'll still have your ulcers.

i suspect he WILL declare pre-emptive victory IF he is ahead at midnight. i don't think he will be ahead at that time, though. and even if he did declare victory before the votes were counted, i am skeptical he could actually get enough votes thrown out. it would need to be a close race for that to happen, like 2000.

Heads up, people.

"Trump will declare that the election is being stolen from him to justify trying to steal it himself. But this plot constitutes a bet on massive institutional failure by the news media to render that basic situation with total clarity." https://t.co/ojp04mnahM

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) November 2, 2020

There's a whole machine with tremendous resources invested in stealing this thing if possible.

Ah Parscale, what a Death Star you built.

The Trump website isn’t that effective at finding polling locations, it would appear from my experience. Their website couldn’t find my polling location, but the nonprofit the site says it’s powered by to find that information found it immediately. pic.twitter.com/rrKGDUoXRL

— Jessica Huseman (@JessicaHuseman) November 2, 2020

xxpost - To be clear, I don't mean "help him win the election" when I say "toss him a win", I'm talking about these smaller decisions that end up disenfranchising small groups of voters here and there. Some of these idiots are absolutely filled with conservative brain rot and will rule in ways that will end up helping Trump in small ways, and I think it's pretty naïve to pretend that they are all going to be high minded and always follow the rule of the law because they no longer feel in thrall to Trump. I argue that some of them absolutely do feel like they owe him something and will try to steer the smaller decisions in his way, should they get the chance. Enough to alter the course of the entire election? No. But c'mon. Let's not pretend every single Trump appointed judge is a paragon of virtue. That's ridiculous.

There's a whole machine with tremendous resources invested in stealing this thing if possible.

There’s really not but OK
― sound of scampo talk to me (El Tomboto), Monday, November 2, 2020 10:44 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Can you disagree or offer something to the contrary without being a complete cunt? wtf

What would you refer to the apparatus that has been funding the churning out of judges? I was respondinng to the contention above that Trump can't afford to litigate the results, which of course he can, he'll have plenty of help, it's already budgeted.
'

HOW would you refer to...

I mean, isn't the whole reason the GOP loves to pack the courts at every opportunity is because they want to fill the seats with judges that are even slightly more likely to swing a decision their way? To pretend they suddenly aren't going to do so just because there's a major election seems... weird.

Boom:

BREAKING: In the final tally, Democrats have overtaken Republicans in Miami-Dade Early voting:

Dems: 183,667
Reps: 183,264
NPA: 139,606
Other: 7,086#flapol #sayfie #election2020

— Dave Trotter (@DaNumbersGuy) November 2, 2020

good showing by the npas, aka the neil patrick affiliates

the NPA vote in Florida will be one-of-a-kind.

I don't believe it's likely Donald Trump can "steal" the election. I'm 100% certain he will try, and that in the event he fails it won't be due to a lack of resources, poor organization, too few lawyers, or too little outside help in general.

That NPA number is crazy!

you assume:

1. the judges are all bought (they’re not)
2. they actually have money set aside to pay lawyers (no reason to believe his campaign can do this since they can’t afford buses atm)
3. the lawyers will be capable of mounting serious arguments (nothing about the campaign or his other non-DOJ attorneys so far suggests this)
4. they have analyzed the situation strategically and are poised to strike in the states and precincts where the numbers will be close (there is no indication whatsoever that this campaign is even remotely equipped to accomplish such a thing)

There’s been a bunch of stuff about the republicans leading in ground game stuff (registration, canvassing, door knocking) mainly because they don’t care about covid. This is a good story with that in mind.

If I were a Republican this story would be a flashing red alert siren for me https://t.co/xlN25lMue7

— Aaron (@BobbyBigWheel) November 2, 2020

NPA is good for Biden right? feel like a big chunk of that is young people who don't register under a certain party

2. they actually have money set aside to pay lawyers (no reason to believe his campaign can do this since they can’t afford buses atm)

c'mon now, they can easily afford busses they just see no benefit in doing so

they stopped all their ad buys in how many battlegrounds? they’re completely strapped for cash.

NPA is good for Biden right? feel like a big chunk of that is young people who don't register under a certain party

― frogbs,

Yep. I need to find the stats showing Florida voters under 30 support Biden overwhelmingly but don't wanna be Democrats.

1. the judges are all bought (they’re not)

Yeah, they don't need to be "bribed." A significant number are ideologues on a mission. What country have you been watching?

2. they actually have money set aside to pay lawyers (no reason to believe his campaign can do this since they can’t afford buses atm)

They will absolutely find the resources to litigate these results, it's just naive to think this will come down to a lack of money.

3. the lawyers will be capable of mounting serious arguments (nothing about the campaign or his other non-DOJ attorneys so far suggests this)

This has absolutely nothing to do with filing paperwork and creating delays. Again, have you met the Republican party?

I mean I guess you could say there is a “machine” ready to steal the election for Trump, in the sense that a 1985 Yugo is a machine.

Nobody said anything about "serious arguments."

The Republican Party is a machine. This is a weird thing to get hung up on.

This Machine Doesn't Kill Lawyers

TOMBOT knows the federal bureaucracy and the processes of a political party, so I tend to side with him in these arguments.

Further to Tombot's point: isn't it patently obvious by now that Trump's on the last bit of the bully defense, the great bluff? There's barely any there there. That various toadies and lickspittles are trying things isn't a surprise but there's hardly a grand scale of it. Consider Texas -- so, obviously, lots of back and forth in past weeks, clearly bullshit on Abbott's part, etc. But this last punt re the Harris County drive-throughs -- already shot down separately by the state Supreme Court, all Republican -- is the work of, what, Allen West, who Abbott seems to have little love for, and a disgruntled GOP rep? As for Trump himself, he's grasping at the last straws he can, the 'shitposting' as Kilgore Trout puts it on Twitter, and that's all he has and all he's been doing, even today.