GET OUT: US politics November 2020

xpost

I just hope no one on the left takes this hapless and doomed effort lightly. It's a look ahead. Next election will have better lawyers with better cases, and probably some carefully ginned up scandals to make it look like the vote really can't be trusted.

xpost holy shit, he dropped Bull Connor and George Wallace in there. jugular.

More breaking news from Grassley:

Windsor Heights Dairy Queen is good place for u kno what

— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) November 3, 2014

it's def a pretext for GOP state legislatures to create some truly psychopathic voting restrictions in the next four years

I just hope no one on the left takes this hapless and doomed effort lightly. It's a look ahead. Next election will have better lawyers with better cases, and probably some carefully ginned up scandals to make it look like the vote really can't be trusted.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, November 17, 2020 10:30 PM bookmarkflaglink

I mean, they already pulled off a swindle in 2000, they have the taste for it. one advantage in our favor is that a large portion of this so-called "legal challenge" having the legs it does in the public sphere (in lieu of any actual success) is because the candidate in question is basically a demagogue. Republican voters usually coalesce behind their Presidential candidate, who usually emerges as the slight favorite from a packed field. they don't usually, like, LOVE their candidate to the alarming degree Trump voters love Trump.

but....I agree that this is why it's important to win these legal battles, to try and set legal precedent to squash any similar uprisings in the future.

Same energyhttps://t.co/yIjHgBVzV5

— Matthew Lane (@MattCameronLane) November 18, 2020

So it appears public shaming worked in Wayne County tonight?

Yeah, they reached a fig-leaf compromise that there can still be an audit.

i enjoyed this maybe u will too

https://defector.com/these-people-are-morons/

some excerpts for non-subscribers

What (the record of history) should be is that a society fitfully engaged in the long-term pursuit of equity and, at the very least, a certain disappointing boardroom diversity elected and then re-elected a black president. Then, in a spasm of reactionary grievance, a coalition of white bigots set out on a mission not only to restore an avatar of white manhood to the White House, but to prove to itself that it could elect the single most venal, most worthless, most flagrantly unqualified shit-for-brains failson imaginable to the highest possible office in the land. It needed to prove that it could not only elect him but then sneeringly, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, insist not only on his personal greatness, but that he was succeeding and winning at all times.
This outcome would only deliver the desired fix if he were just an absolute shit-pile, if the only credible explanation for his election were that the arbitrary will of reactionary white people, alone, in the total absence of any justifying qualities of his person or his record, had selected him for no good reason at all. If he could be, in every conceivable way, the opposite of what a standard-issue milquetoast liberal meritocrat would look for in a president, and in no way anything else. He would have to be a fucking moron, is the thing, and surrounded by fucking morons. That way his ascendancy to the White House could not be attributed to him, but rather and entirely to the cross-section of white-identity voters who’d organized for the purpose of demonstrating their supremacy to themselves.

...When it came time to execute precisely the invalidation of the electoral process for which the right had spent months preparing, it amounted to Trump’s campaign manager, son-in-law, and various inept lawyers crying that it’s not faaaaaair to say that somebody else has more votes than Donald Trump.

I have been having a series of “Oh, right, these people are morons” realizations since this past Tuesday. Or a more acute series of them, amid a longer one stretching back to 2016. These are, after all, the people whose early attempts at legislating via executive order collapsed when it became clear that their Dark Lord of Strategy, Steve Bannon, had no idea how to write a legally upstanding executive order; whose attempts at repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, a key campaign promise for literally every Republican, collapsed after a little over two weeks of negotiating with a then-friendly House and Senate; who airballed point-blank layups on infrastructure and pandemic relief; who are now living through the second COVID-19 outbreak inside the White House just in the past six weeks. They’re malign, sure, but they are not special in their malignity. They are special in their incompetence.

With each passing day of this lockjam I become more convinced that this ends with Trump's brain splattered all over the Oval Office.

I'm kind of allergic to the tone of that article but this is a good insight:

It’s important to note that all of this is happening within systems designed by and for men broadly like these. Their ineptitude and amateurism is astounding, even relative to their dopey inbred class.

That said, they ARE good at enriching themselves, despite what the article says. Trump may be 'broke' but he has access to unimaginable luxury. Etc. This has been discussed before.

xp if you mean by suicide, then it's very unlikely - narcissists don't kill themselves.

Good morning!

non consensual assisted suicide , preferably a pact with Mitch

Biden nationwide lead now 3.73%; seems likely to pass Obama's margin of victory over Romney (3.86%) in the next day or two, as the CA/NJ/NY counts continue.

Irrelevant, I know; if this meant anything, the campaigns would be entirely different, leading to different outcomes, but still. Ultimately, the only states where Trump gained may turn out to be NY and FL (there are a handful of narrow underperformances elsewhere by Biden wrt Clinton '16, but they may disappear). How nice for him.

Serious iNquiries only done by one half of the team taht does Opening Arguments did a comparison to the last 2 election cyucle results earlier and was saying thgat the big factor this year was teh major amount of Republican turn out. Which meant that some seats taht had gone from being comfortable GOP and had turned blue partially due to lack of GOP turnout competition in 2018 went back to GOP.
Which does show that things can be swung at l;east and hope they are going to head back that way.
~Am worried about Texas gerrymandering meaning that getting this close may not be rerpeated but did hear taht Austin is now lot more blue than GOP thought it would be, sounded like taht ahd some sevcere border tinkering too but was overtaken by a blue swing anyway.

Not quite getting this with georgia, if it was won for the Dems now does taht remain and the seantors potentialy change or is the whole state up for grabs in the run offs. Kemp was the senator and therefore not the head of state running the election in the state this time, yeah? Did he get to interfere much?

Irrelevant, I know; if this meant anything, the campaigns would be entirely different, leading to different outcomes, but still. Ultimately, the only states where Trump gained may turn out to be NY and FL (there are a handful of narrow underperformances elsewhere by Biden wrt Clinton '16, but they may disappear). How nice for him.

― Michael Jones, Wednesday, November 18, 2020 6:21 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

trump overall got 10 million more votes than he did in 2016 though, showing his support grew in real terms. it's just that the opposition to him grew by an even larger margin.

Some fun with GA spreadsheets (not entirely clear if the audit corrections are being folded into these documents on the GA-SoS site):
Trump won Nov 3: 60-38 (20% of votes cast)
Trump lost absentee: 34-65 (27% of votes cast)
Trump won early: 53-46 (53% of votes cast)
Trump lost provisional: 35-63 (<0.3% of votes cast)

the u.s. voter age population also grew as a whole

“Oh, right, these people are morons”

the u.s. voter age population also grew as a whole

And it was a record-high turnout election (highest in 120 years). We need to keep that in mind as we read the tea leaves on this election. A high-turnout election will have different dynamics than a lower-turnout election.

Lots of people normally don't vote; lots of people don't closely follow politics beyond a vague tribal affiliation - "which group seems like 'my people'?" - unless circumstances thrust their noses into it.

Y'know, circumstantial factors like:
- Extremely consequential events that make normally-arcane political topics relevant. Things like, oh I dunno, pandemics, economic catastrophe.
- A telegenic / controversial celebrity candidate
- High stakes (stoked by media coverage that amplifies the loudest voices and the most apocalyptic messages)
- A background of social unrest that heightens contrasts and deepens tribal divisions

I question whether the demographics of the electorate of the future are the same as in this election (with its historically high turnout and unusual circumstances).

Every election has different dynamics. What I can’t stand is hearing democrats promising that demographics favor them going forward. You always have to behave as though they don’t if you want to win. Democrats underperform their advantage and act like it’s a win.

I weep for her

NEW: People who have spoken to GSA Admin Emily Murphy say she's struggling with the weight of the election on her shoulders, feeling like she's in a no-win situation trying to follow what she sees as precedent to wait to ascertain, w/ @KristenhCNN https://t.co/bpVaQ1c8py

— Jeremy Herb (@jeremyherb) November 18, 2020

Ugh I'm so exhausted by the sympathetic takes for the absolute ghouls. Fuck them for all eternity.

Tbh after reading the Edsall piece in the Times today, I'm ever more convinced that it's either a third party of actual left-leaning politicians emerges or the US is doomed, because centrist Dems have no interest in crafting policy around their constituents and will continue to throw any actual chance at social or economic change out with the bathwater.

You can't build a party around certain populations and then give them the finger at every available turn. At least the Repubs cloak their loathing of their constituents in gaining ground on the social issues their constituents care about. The Dems can't even do that.

GSA Emily just struggling to do the right thing. Short of doing the right thing, of course. Doing the wrong thing despite knowing you should be doing the right thing must be exhausting!

Serial killer really feeling the weight of all the killing, struggling to continue with his trade

Good grief

Last night the newly nominated Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs parachuted into my DM’s because I commented on a thread where he was telling critics to say things “to his face.” If you want to be in the arena you better have thick skin. He doesn’t pic.twitter.com/clotgU5dzk

— Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) November 18, 2020

A buncha crybabies for being such tough guys.

that CNN/GSA article is infuriating and NOT NORMAL

File "normal" alongside "facts" at this point.

Very glad the Staebler speech was posted here, it is super great

yeah watched that 3 times last night so great

I hate that we are in a place where Lindsey Graham won't even see a figurative slap on the wrist.

A literal slap on his wrist would probably break it

(Morbs would’ve done this joke better)

I'm appreciating the effort on his behalf.

He probably will but it will be in the privacy of a motel room he put on a gift card

while dressed as Blanche Dubois

never in high June!

Trump is still tweeting that Michigan is unable to certify their results, apparently missing last night's reversal

Also missing that it wasn’t all of Michigan, it was Wayne County

But we all know he is very meticulous with his words

Meanwhile in the snakepit

Infighting and an attempted 'coup': Trump team erupts into chaos as Giuliani takes over legal efforts - ABC News via @ABC - https://t.co/JmRP4riQTw

— Zev Shalev (@ZevShalev) November 17, 2020

Boy, was that ever a beautiful read. May all these useless shitbags devour one another.

god the "I win Michigan!" shit is so pathetic and sad

I think the Defector piece really nails it, because for years I've had the view where I could understand why people might be drawn into conservative politics but I could never understand how anyone with a remotely functioning brain could think of Donald Trump as a capable leader in any way, shape, or form. The man has never once in his life displayed anything more than a surface level understanding of a single topic other than TV and there's something sick about painting him as the last bastion of American values...I mean, yeah, in a way I guess he is, but at the same time, he fucking HATES this country. He doesn't give a shit about laws or the Constitution and actively loathes nearly everyone who lives here. But I think I've misunderstood what conservative politics are really all about.

They both threatened to call the president to settle who he wanted to be in charge, sources said.

lmao, real “i’m gonna tell dad!!!” shit

apparent yesterday's PA appearance was the first time Giuliani has actually argued a case in 28 years

It was the first time he'd left the Shire in 10

But I think I've misunderstood what conservative politics are really all about.