Patterico's Pontifications

10/30/2020

Donald Trump Turned Me Into a Mugwump

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:24 am



That is the title of a post I have up at The Dispatch today. I think the post is a little more effective if I don’t tell you what it’s about, so I’ll just give you the opening paragraphs:

Nobody could believe this disreputable nincompoop had actually won the Republican nomination for the presidency of the United States.

Seemingly everyone had assailed the candidate as dishonest and shady throughout the campaign, and as a result the intelligentsia agreed that he had no chance. All the newspapers, including the conservative ones, held the candidate in contempt—and they all backed up their denunciations with copious evidence and reasoned argument. The candidate was well-known, but had conducted his business affairs in a notoriously corrupt manner. His chances were so slim that the New York Times actually ran a headline that stated his nomination was “out of the question.”

But the candidate showed no contrition and angrily denounced his critics as insincere. He insisted that he had never done anything wrong. The tide began to turn.

Still, the news that this man would be the Republican nominee came as a shock to a group of steadfast Republican men playing pool at a writer’s house in Hartford, Connecticut.

The writer is someone you have heard of, and is someone worth reading. That’s all I can say. Go read it!

UPDATE: I think this is as good a place as any to say this. In the recent past, I have expressed a desire for the GOP to get walloped this year — not just tossed out of the Oval Office, but taught a lesson in the Senate for refusing to oust this corrupt man. But after I wrote my recent post gaming out what the next four years will be like, I have changed my mind, somewhat. I still think the GOP will lose the Senate, but I no longer want them to. Yes, the party needs to learn the lesson that Trumpism is a losing proposition. But it’s not like that lesson is going to resurrect the Shangri-La that classical liberals wish the party to be . . . and in the meantime, Joe Biden is going to want to do counterproductive things that need to be opposed.

So, while the emotional side of me still wants to see the political demise of those disreputable louts in the Senate who violated their oaths and voted to protect the criminal, the rational side of me isn’t so sure that would be a good thing. And I have to go with the rational side.

But if a Lindsey Graham should lose (possible!), or the GOP should lose the Senate (likely!), I won’t be shedding any tears. I’ll be here to say: next time don’t choose a Donald Trump, and if one gets in anyway, you should tell the truth about him.

224 Responses to “Donald Trump Turned Me Into a Mugwump”

  1. UPDATE: I think this is as good a place as any to say this. In the recent past, I have expressed a desire for the GOP to get walloped this year — not just tossed out of the Oval Office, but taught a lesson in the Senate for refusing to oust this corrupt man. But after I wrote my recent post gaming out what the next four years will be like, I have changed my mind, somewhat. I still think the GOP will lose the Senate, but I no longer want them to. Yes, the party needs to learn the lesson that Trumpism is a losing proposition. But it’s not like that lesson is going to resurrect the Shangri-La that classical liberals wish the party to be . . . and in the meantime, Joe Biden is going to want to do counterproductive things that need to be opposed.

    So, while the emotional side of me still wants to see the political demise of those disreputable louts in the Senate who violated their oaths and voted to protect the criminal, the rational side of me isn’t so sure that would be a good thing. And I have to go with the rational side.

    But if a Lindsey Graham should lose (possible!), or the GOP should lose the Senate (likely!), I won’t be shedding any tears. I’ll be here to say: next time don’t choose a Donald Trump, and if one gets in anyway, you should tell the truth about him.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  2. I am not a Mugwump, Patterico, but I stand with Samuel L. Clemens.

    Thank you for that essay, and the historical perspective.

    Simon Jester (2510cd)

  3. I can buy the argument from a conservative on why they can’t vote for Trump, and intend to vote 3rd party or not at all. But no conservative can vote Biden and call themselves a conservative any more and especially not one who supports the Rule of Law. Biden will implement many many many liberal polices and destroy conservatives policies. He will throw away the Rule of Law for the Rule of Injustice. Just be honest that when you vote for Biden that you are voting for his liberal polices, and care more about how a person talks than principles.

    PH2 (2f3b52)

  4. Good ‘un, Patterico!

    nk (1d9030)

  5. Just be honest that when you vote for Biden that you are voting for his liberal polices, and care more about how a person talks than principles.

    Which is it? Do people who say they’re voting for Biden because of Trump’s incompetence and corruption secretly care more about how a person talks? Or do they secretly want liberal policies.

    Time123 (53ef45)

  6. Patterico, Nice article. I enjoyed it. I think this election needs to show that there’s a limit to corruption and that if congresscritters don’t push back against a wildly corrupt president they will be help accountable. I think this takes priority over the crappy policies Biden will push. But YMMV.

    Time123 (69b2fc)

  7. Since neither Trump or Biden drink, I’m not voting for either one. Never trust a man who can’t handle alcohol.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  8. Great article, Patterico. A few years ago I would have agreed with PH2 (@3), but I have come to believe that Trump is SO corrupt that he simply must be gotten rid of, even if it means taking a chance with Biden (something I never imagined I would ever do).

    Roger (83ed7d)

  9. The ground is starting to shift the other way, but that might be Insta-world stroking itself in a shrinking bubble.

    If people were more likely to split tickets. I’d rather keep Trump and turn the Senate. This isn’t the case anymore, so vote accordingly.

    urbanleftbehind (fbb3ed)

  10. Just be honest that when you vote for Biden that you are voting for his liberal polices, and care more about how a person talks than principles.

    I care more for principles than I care about the difference between Republican* and Democrat policies, and my foremost principle right now is a world which has no place for Donald Trumps.

    *Like hell they’re conservative vs. liberal.

    nk (1d9030)

  11. Biden will push liberal policies like Protectionism, bailing out farmers and other businesses, and controlling what people can say on the internet. He’ll destroy the rule of law by personally profiting from his office and use out foreign policy to enrich himself. He might even try to use the FBI to harm is political enemies.

    Time123 (53ef45)

  12. Grats on getting published at the Dispatch – some very respected conservative pundits there, in whose company you definitely belong.

    Dave (1bb933)

  13. I love your Dispatch post. Excellent structure and very good job weaving together history, current events and your experiences with your Dad.

    DRJ (aede82)

  14. Very interesting article; I like learning history.

    Dave (1bb933)

  15. Nice to see Beldar in the comments on Patrick’s post at the Dispatch. I’d like to say hi to him, but $100 is a bit extravagant…

    So if you’re lurking here, Hi Beldar!

    Dave (1bb933)

  16. It’s a fine essay, indeed. And it’s nice to see Beldar running a good defense of the essay (over at The Dispatch).

    Dana (6995e0)

  17. I was hoping that “maybe elsewhere” was going to be The Dispatch. Welcome aboard!
    I recommend that all of the Patterico folks subscribe. The comment section has a wide variety of viewpoints and the civility level and substance are solidly high.
    In a not-so-humble brag, I told French and Jonah on Twitter a few weeks ago to bring you onboard, so I’m glad they listened!
    As for the election, I’ve wanted Trump and the House to get walloped, but I’ve always preferred a slim GOP Senate majority. We need divided government and a GOP majority that will put the brakes on Biden’s more out-there nominations.

    Paul Montagu (77c694)

  18. Very interesting article; I like learning history.

    Knock yourself out, Mr. Dave. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/president-clevelands-problem-child-100800/

    — Ma, ma, where’s my pa?
    — In the White House, ha, ha, ha!

    is something everybody should know.

    nk (1d9030)

  19. Large Shares of Voters Plan To Vote a Straight Party Ticket for President, Senate and House
    ……
    Only 4% of registered voters say they plan to vote for Biden and the Republican candidate for House in their district or Donald Trump and the Democratic House candidate. This is little changed from four years ago. It is more common for voters to say they plan to vote for a third-party candidate for president (or less commonly, for the House) and a major-party candidate for the other race. Still, only 6% of voters say they plan to cast their ballots this way.

    Similarly, among those living in states with Senate races, the largest share of voters say they plan to vote for both Biden and the Democratic Senate candidate (42%) or Trump and the Republican Senate candidate (38%) in their state. A recent analysis of U.S. Senate elections since 2012 shows how rare it is for a Senate race to go a different way from a state’s votes in presidential elections. In 139 regular and special elections for the Senate since 2012, 88% have been won by candidates from the same party that won that state’s most recent presidential contest.
    ……..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  20. Beldar commented there, which is nice to see. What a pleasure to see Beldar defend P’s essay from criticism so cogently. But he also said:

    Trump plus his Trumpkins are a cult. They are NOT “the GOP.”

    Wishful thinking, I think. Only time will tell us if that is true whether Trump wins or loses.

    CSpan did a special on Blaine in 2011. The historians described him as strong-willed, polarizing, charismatic and corrupt — but also as an intellectual. Not exactly like Trump but very similar.

    DRJ (aede82)

  21. I have come to believe that Trump is SO corrupt that he simply must be gotten rid of,

    It isn’t just the corruption. It’s also the self-absorption and cruelty and nuttiness. Trumpers claim that it’s merely “style” and “how he speaks,” having nothing to do with how he thinks and makes decisions — though they don’t seem to extend that rationale to anyone else.

    Former insiders have said that Trump is no better behind the scenes; that working in the White House was a constant battle to rein in his impulses; and that any successes have happened when officials could use their own judgment without interference.

    Trump suggested that we could nuke hurricanes. He wanted to gas or shoot or electrocute people coming across the southern border. He wanted really sharp spikes on the wall. The policy of separating children from parents was intended to cause suffering — and of course it’s the children who suffer most. He praised an extrajudicial execution of a U.S. citizen. He suggests that cops should handle people roughly.
    He has encouraged violence against reporters, whom he calls enemies of the people, to the extent that they don’t flatter him.

    He has openly claimed that an election he loses must be fraudulent, and has publicly stated false notions about election law.
    He has turned VoA into a platform for his political agenda, and has been changing the focus of the whole executive branch from serving the country to serving the personal interests of Donald Trump.

    He and his apologists are pushing the poisonous idea that loving America means loving Trump and exempting him from the standards of judgment that should be applied to every other politician.

    Radegunda (20775b)

  22. Over a hundred years later, nobody cares about the personal attributes of either man, nor can anyone remember what the mugwumps were worked up about. And, so it will be with NeverTrump.

    In contrast, the policies of Cleveland are still with us, and so it will be with Biden.

    beer ‘n pretzels (042d67)

  23. Beldar tries to argue that the state parties are somehow not beholden to Trump or willing accomplices for his misdeeds.

    In CA, the state republican party has tried setting up fake “official” ballot drop boxes in violation of the law and in furtherance of Trump’s voter-suppression narrative.

    In so doing, they lost my vote for the State Assembly, which I was prepared to give them.

    Dave (1bb933)

  24. Heh!

    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)1 hr
    TIL that there is a word for the “fortune-telling method that interprets patterns in tea leaves, coffee grounds, or wine sediments.” I suspect there is a separate word for doing the same from entrails, but I can’t bring myself to look it up.

    Roger Zelazny calls such a scrier a “scatologist” in Creatures of Light and Darkness, and I will take Roger Zelazny’s word on the subject above anybody’s else’s (although I would have coined “scatomancer/scatomancy” myself).

    nk (1d9030)

  25. nk, how do you think the Durbin-Wilson-Curran race is going to breakdown? I could see the winner squeaking by with 35 percent of the vote.

    urbanleftbehind (fbb3ed)

  26. 18. Also

    Blaine, Blaine. James G. Blaine
    The Continental Liar from the state of Maine

    and the accusation against the Democratic Party that was made by a speaker where and when Blaine was present.

    That it was the party of

    Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion

    Meaning it was against alcohol Prohibition, not anti-Catholic, and allied with ex-Confederates (rights for freed slaves were no longer a practical issue, so this was characterized merely as rebellion.)

    This was turned against Blaine.

    This election took place before the institution of the secret ballot. The parties also hadn’t yet quite settled into their positions as liberal or conservatives. Corruption, and the fact that the Republicans were more in power, tended to make the Republican Party favor the rich. The Democrats were generally white supremacist as well as pro-immigrant because they could get them to vote; the Republicans were anti-Catholic Church, but they ran urban machines in Pennsylvania.

    Sammy Finkelman (a69e24)

  27. 23. Dave (1bb933) — 10/30/2020 @ 10:36 am

    In CA, the state republican party has tried setting up fake “official” ballot drop boxes in violation of the law and in furtherance of Trump’s voter-suppression narrative.

    That;s a big nothing. That happened with only one of their private boxes, and the aim was not to steal and destroy Democrat votes, but to attract Republican ones.

    In so doing, they lost my vote for the State Assembly, which I was prepared to give them.

    That means you fell for a slander.

    Sammy Finkelman (a69e24)

  28. Mugwump became a term for any independent-minded voter who refused to kowtow to partisanship. We may not all remember the word but the idea is ingrained in American politics.

    DRJ (aede82)

  29. @19 The parties are too nationalized (look at all those R CA congress people who voted to increase taxes basically on only their own constituents a couple years ago), so people are voting for the party instead of “their guy”. “Their guy” isn’t voting for them any more, after all.

    Nic (896fdf)

  30. Four years of Donald Trump are enough of an object lesson for anyone in the party. I’m not sure that there are enough showers that the GOP Senators can take to get the sleaze off of them.

    Yes, Cruz and Graham got their judges, Perry got his energy policies, others got their Education or ACA changes they wanted. A lot of transactional support for Trump. But the long-term cost in respect will be hard to recover. Many who tried (Mattis, Kelly, Tillerson, Coats, etc) soured on the whole idea but perhaps got out without great damage.

    But the party itself will be dealing with this nightmare for some time to come, probably longer than Trump himself lives. I see no reason to actively punish it — helping it to recover is a better plan. One Day at at Time.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  31. The only Grover Cleveland policy or law still with us is the Interstate Commerce Act. He was chiefly known for opposing special favors.

    DRJ (aede82)

  32. Just seems to me that a vote for Biden is a vote for HARRIS’s policy, experience, expertise and affiliations. Joe is stumbling and it’s difficult to imagine him finishing a full term.

    pouncer (b0e023)

  33. If I vote for Biden, it will be because I want Biden. And I don’t. I just don’t want Trump. To demonstrate those two points simultaneously, I need to vote for a minor party, hoping that others will too. If so, their increased support will demonstrate something that would be lost in Biden’s numbers.

    Of course, if you feel that your vote will turn the election, rather than simply protest the jerk your nominal party nominated, then sure, vote for the other guy. But in California, I doubt that’s the case.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  34. @31: Cleveland was the first Democrat elected after the Civil War and his administration emboldened segregationists in the South.

    beer ‘n pretzels (042d67)

  35. The Libertarians had their shot in 2016 to run a serious campaign with two serious experienced politicians. They were quite disappointing….not just because of Johnson’s Aleppo moment and general weirdness…and their repeated annoying praise of Hillary as being a “noble public servant”…..but because they could not make the simple case for administering competent ethical governance…an argument that could have won votes rather than purity. All the other 3rd party candidates were unqualified…for local mayor…let alone for President. So I wrote in….and slept peacefully.

    This year it is looking the same. As Trump wears out advisors and that barrel is being scraped (yeah I’m looking at you Barr), eventually some truly goofy idea will slip through. If CoViD has taught us anything, this is not the man for a crisis or a momentous event….and our democracy needs to be treated better. Biden was unexceptional in his prime and mostly wrong on the big issues of our time. Now he’s even less appealing and will usher in a shadow presidency of ex-Obama and Clinton advisors who I tend to disagree with about…well….everything. So I’ll vote a decent normal conservative or conservativish write-in.

    Personally, we survived 8 years of Obama….and sure there were bad nominees and policies…but ultimately conservatism somehow works better as a brake than an accelerator. The GOP soared opposing Obamacare then crashed and burned when they had the opportunity to actually do something of substance about it. I am not hopeful about a quick GOP turn about…rediscovering why walls, trade wars, and paranoia are not the answer…but begin we must….

    AJ_Liberty (ec7f74)

  36. In CA, the state republican party has tried setting up fake “official” ballot drop boxes in violation of the law and in furtherance of Trump’s voter-suppression narrative.

    In so doing, they lost my vote for the State Assembly, which I was prepared to give them.

    Dave, you’re just casting about to justify what you were going to do anyway, like a “Kasich Republican” I know who has never actually voted Republican — he always has a reason why he cannot.

    THe Democrats wrote a law last time to allow them to surprise everyone with ballot harvesting. This time the GOP decided to test the limits of that terrible law, since many in their party did not trust the “official” (Democrat-controlled) drop boxes, let alone ballot harvesters. That the Democrats sued to stop this interference with their monopoly is not surprising. That doesn’t make it right.

    As I say, you are just rationalizing a decision you’ve hidden from yourself.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  37. The Republican party is currently an openly anti-democratic party determined to cling to power based on all the counter majoritarian elements of the constitution, and thus in the face of popular majorities, whose plan for continuing in power in the future is to double down on all possible vote suppression methods.

    There’s been a lot of litigation around elections in the last few months. I don’t know of any in which the Republican party wasn’t on the side of making it more difficult to vote, and advocating for invalidating as many mail in ballots as possible.

    America needs two healthy parties. It would help if both were committed to the idea of competing for votes as opposed to one of them dedicated to engineering shrinking the voting population.

    Victor (00af29)

  38. Cleveland was the first Democrat elected after the Civil War and his administration emboldened segregationists in the South.

    It should be noted that of the 22 justices nominated before Plessy 18 were appointed by Republicans, including 5 of the majority. All 5 of the justices who supported the execrable Cruikshank were appointed by Republican (the Democrat hold-over from before the War wrote the dissent).

    The compromise of 1876 pretty much gutted the Radical Republican support for the formerly enslaved.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  39. The Republican party is currently an openly anti-democratic party determined to cling to power based on all the counter majoritarian elements of the constitution

    What a pile of rot. DOn’t like the Constitution, change it. But calling adherence to the Constitution “voter suppression” is just risible crap.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  40. A vote for Biden is a vote for Biden. All votes are subject to the fact that it’s not a continuum — you will have to pick the least worst. In my state that’s the Libertarians, which have a stronger position here than in any other state.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  41. nk, how do you think the Durbin-Wilson-Curran race is going to breakdown? I could see the winner squeaking by with 35 percent of the vote.

    I don’t know, urbanleftbehind. Until you made me think about it, just now, I was under the impression that Durbin was going to run away with 70% statewide like Jesse White.

    nk (1d9030)

  42. A recent tweet from our president:

    If Sleepy Joe Biden is actually elected President, the 4 Justices (plus1) that helped make such a ridiculous win possible would be relegated to sitting on not only a heavily PACKED COURT, but probably a REVOLVING COURT as well. At least the many new Justices will be Radical Left!

    IOW: if Trump loses, it could only be a result of corruption, including a “ridiculous” decision by the Supreme Court. Therefore Trump must openly strong-arm the Court to decide in his favor.

    On the other hand, Biden said that if he loses, it means “I was a terrible candidate.”

    Biden, for all his faults, is a normal human being. Trump is a sociopath.

    Radegunda (20775b)

  43. Biden, for all his faults, is a normal human being. Trump is a sociopath.

    Yes.

    nk (1d9030)

  44. “THe Democrats wrote a law last time to allow them to surprise everyone with ballot harvesting. This time the GOP decided to test the limits of that terrible law, since many in their party did not trust the “official” (Democrat-controlled) drop boxes, let alone ballot harvesters. That the Democrats sued to stop this interference with their monopoly is not surprising. That doesn’t make it right.”

    Unofficial ballot boxes aren’t lawful under that “terrible law.”

    Davethulhu (f83b2a)

  45. What a pile of rot. DOn’t like the Constitution, change it.

    What about Victor’s points re: the GOP efforts to make voting more difficult, in ways that go beyond preventing fraud? e.g., there’s the absurd policy in Texas to have only one ballot drop-of box per county. (I have one an easy walk away and a few other options that are not too inconvenient.)

    It would help if both were committed to the idea of competing for votes as opposed to one of them dedicated to engineering shrinking the voting population.

    Yes. Right now, the GOP appears less interested in appealing to a broad part of the electorate, than to hoping that people who favor the Dams won’t vote.

    Radegunda (20775b)

  46. Biden, for all his faults, is a normal human being.

    I wouldn’t go that far for any prominent political figure with the possible exception of Mitt Romney. Our abusively toxic political environment drives out normal human beings in quick fashion; Biden may be more relatable, but there’s still something a little off for him to be subjecting himself to this crap when he could be enjoying retirement.

    (Not That) Bill O'Reilly (6bb12a)

  47. @45: The Dems would let illegals and prisoners vote if they could.

    Before Trump, what was your position on voter ID?

    beer ‘n pretzels (042d67)

  48. @47 They might or might not let prisoners vote, but saying they’d let illegals vote is ridiculous and you know it. A tiny minority of crazy people out there somewhere saying something is not “The Democrats.” If you are going to make unserious arguments, people are going to treat you like you are unserious.

    Nic (896fdf)

  49. I get that you can’t stand Trump because he’s a flaming asshole. In most respects he is. Still, too often I find you wishing to burn down the entire house when you know the flaming asshole guest will be gone soon enough and the alternatives are far worse. I voted for Eugene McCarthy in 1976 (a shameful vote but at least it prevented me from voting for Carter) and for a libertarian candidate I don’t even remember in 1980. Unlike now, I couldn’t stand Reagan at the time and concluded that not voting for one of the two possible winners was a waste and not voting at all or for a third party was voting for the candidate I hated more. This is your blog and you have full editorial control as you should. If you can’t support Trump, which I mostly understand, I wish your comments didn’t help the other side and most of the time I think they do.

    Lazlo Toth (ea6f05)

  50. Off-topic: My complete argument on the unconstitutionality of Court Packing, by M. Todd Henderson, in Newsweek of all places:

    Intent matters, as the courts have recently held in several recent cases in which they declared federal policies unconstitutional based on the alleged bad intent divined from President Trump’s tweets or other statements. The Democrats’ intent is to pack the Court for political reasons, plain and simple. This would be unprecedented in our history. And, the intent to destroy the third branch—the one that ensures the other two comply with the Constitution—is sufficient to find it illegal.

    But read the whole thing.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  51. Maine and Vermont let prisoners vote. At the same time, Vermont never had gun control — zero, zip, zilch, nada, except as imposed by the feds. Don’t know about Maine’s gun control and don’t care. Red herrings smell.

    nk (1d9030)

  52. Before Trump, what was your position on voter ID?

    My position on voter ID has not changed because of Trump. I do not tailor my views according to whether something helps or hurts Donald Trump.

    Radegunda (20775b)

  53. I get that you can’t stand Trump because he’s a flaming asshole.

    I’m actually fine with that. I can’t stand him because he’s incompetent and corrupt.

    Time123 (ae9d89)

  54. Yes, the party needs to learn the lesson that Trumpism is a losing proposition.

    Except it won. The lesson learned- the hard way- is the sound rejection of the ideologues; the rigid, myopic conservatism grown staid and hollow. Clearing out that deadwood was long overdue.

    It’s more or less the return of party control to what was once essentially known as ‘Rockefeller Republicanism.’ Welcome to 1964.

    It’s Trump’s party now.

    Glorious.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  55. No, I think it could go 1/3 a 1/3 and a 1/3. Durbin could lose a big chunk of black vote to Wilson and key will be if a lot of white Wilson supporters (e.g FOP,TurningPointers, religious) are merely virtue signaling. Curran needs only to reach Topinka/Rauner level numbers (40% max) to possibly pull it off.

    urbanleftbehind (fbb3ed)

  56. KM @50-
    The author is incorrect when he says:

    The Constitution’s plain language seems to give Congress the power to strip the Court of its ability to hear constitutional questions. No one proposes such legislation and no one doubts that the Court would not permit such jurisdiction-stripping.

    As long as Congress changes the law—as opposed to directing a court to reach a specified result under old law—Congress does not impinge upon the judicial power. The Supreme Court has likewise concluded that Congress possesses largely “plenary” authority to determine what sorts of cases the federal courts may and may not hear—even though preventing courts from hearing certain classes of cases on jurisdictional grounds will necessarily cause plaintiffs who bring those cases to lose.

    Jurisdiction Stripping: When May Congress Prohibit the Courts from Hearing a Case?

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  57. It’s quaint 78 year old Plagiarist JoeyBee, trying for his first term as POTUS, likes to compare himself to FDR. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died at the start of his fourth term in office, was Joe Biden’s age today– he’d been dead 15 years.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  58. ‘I can’t stand him [Trump] because he’s incompetent and corrupt.’

    But entertaining.

    And the 47 year Swamp Monster caught plagiarizing and faking his professional credentials, etc., etc.,… not so much.

    “That’s some damn choice, Bob.”- Robert Kennedy [Martin Sheen] ‘The Missiles of October’ ABC TV, 1974

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  59. I miss Beldar, too. Notice his comments on Patterico’s essay. Clean, well reasoned, interesting, and informative.

    Simon Jester (2510cd)

  60. Dave, you’re just casting about to justify what you were going to do anyway, like a “Kasich Republican” I know who has never actually voted Republican — he always has a reason why he cannot.

    It is insulting for you to tell me what I was and wasn’t going to do.

    I had no complaint with the state party before. Now I do.

    I voted for them in 2018 when I left the US House ballot blank. I voted for them in 2016 when I wrote in McMullin.

    THe Democrats wrote a law last time to allow them to surprise everyone with ballot harvesting. This time the GOP decided to test the limits of that terrible law, since many in their party did not trust the “official” (Democrat-controlled) drop boxes, let alone ballot harvesters. That the Democrats sued to stop this interference with their monopoly is not surprising. That doesn’t make it right.

    I’ve read the law, and it’s clear. The CA GOP decided to play along with Trump and “pwn the libs” by sowing fear, uncertainty and doubt about absentee voting at the very moment he was pointedly refusing to commit to peaceful transition and ranting about “getting rid of the ballots”. So they broke the law and acted like immature idiots at a time when the situation in our country demands responsibility.

    The so-called “Democrat” (one could also say: “legal”) drop boxes have a documented chain of custody and other safeguards mandated by law. Like Trump, the CA GOP apparently thinks any law they don’t like can simply be ignored.

    As I say, you are just rationalizing a decision you’ve hidden from yourself.

    Bless your heart.

    Dave (1bb933)

  61. Kevin M – the law in question explicitly requires that the people *collecting* the ballot *also* sign the outside of the envelope and provide contact information to the voter.

    I signed the outside of one of my housemate’s ballots when I returned it for him.

    The ballot drop boxes set up by the party do not comply with that requirement.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  62. but there’s still something a little off for him to be subjecting himself to this crap when he could be enjoying retirement.

    Point taken. But how many of us could not be described as a bit abnormal in one way or another?

    Trump’s deviation from normal is more comprehensive and conspicuous than the average politician’s. But it is disturbing how many people in his base (or “intellectuals” claiming to speak for his base) say that he sounds a lot like the average guy, and therefore average guys (and gals) love him. That strikes me as representing a dim estimation of “ordinary Americans” on the whole.

    I grew up very ordinary and remain disappointingly ordinary (though abnormal in my own way). There are plenty of average Americans who don’t think that being ordinary means being selfish, callous, vindictive, and routinely dishonest. In fact, some average people see Trump’s personality as more in line with unaccountable privilege and entitled arrogance. Often it’s the most fortunate people who can most easily trample on norms and manners, with no harm to themselves as a result. (A British acquaintance once told me about how a mutual acquaintance and his brothers could get away with a lot because of their posh accent.)

    Conservatives used to understand that. Now a lot of them have chosen to forget it. To see Trump being repeatedly rewarded and lionized — and empowered — for trashing rules that others must follow is dismaying, and doubly so when it’s done in the name of Christian values or true American patriotism, and with the insistence that such a person is uniquely capable of saving America.

    Radegunda (20775b)

  63. >What a pile of rot. DOn’t like the Constitution, change it. But calling adherence to the Constitution “voter suppression” is just risible crap.

    Let’s look at a few examples.

    Many states have adopted rules that allow absentee ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by election day and received by a subsequent date certain. The constitution does not prohibit that.

    Republicans in many states have opposed those rules. They aren’t just fighting for the constitution, they are fighting for a *choice* they have made about what rules to allow as a policy matter.

    We can reasonably hold them responsible for those choices.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  64. > wishing to burn down the entire house when you know the flaming asshole guest will be gone soon enough and the alternatives are far worse.

    in fairly significant ways, the flaming asshole guest is burning down the house for us. getting rid of him is the only way we can put out the fire.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  65. I get that you can’t stand Trump because he’s a flaming asshole. In most respects he is.

    I commend to you the Kevin Williamson piece I linked earlier this week, which directly refutes the straw man argument that Trump critics dislike him only for his breach of etiquette:

    This also brings me to a lie that needs to be addressed — and it is not a misunderstanding but a lie, circulated with malice aforethought: that the conservative objection to Trump is only a matter of style, his boorishness bumptiousness and boobishness on Twitter, his gooftastical manner of speaking, his preening, his vanity, his habitual and often dishonest boasting in matters both small and great, etc. These things matter, of course, because manners and morals matter, and they matter more in a free society than they do in an unfree one, because free men govern themselves.

    Trump’s low character is not only an abstract ethical concern but a public menace that has introduced elements of chaos and unpredictability in U.S. government activity ranging from national defense to managing the coronavirus epidemic. Trump’s character problems are practical concerns, not metaphysical ones. Trump is frequently wrong on important policy questions (including trade, foreign policy, entitlements, health care, and many others) and frequently incompetent even when trying to advance a good policy. His vanity and paranoia have made it very difficult for him to keep good people in top positions, and this imposes real costs both politically and as a matter of practical governance. Trump’s problem is not etiquette: It is dishonesty, stupidity, and incompetence, magnified by the self-dealing and cowardice of the cabal of enablers and sycophants who have a stake in pretending that this unsalted s*** sandwich is filet mignon.

    I don’t call you a liar, of course, but I do think you’re quite wrong to believe I dislike Trump only because he is an asshole.

    Still, too often I find you wishing to burn down the entire house when you know the flaming asshole guest will be gone soon enough and the alternatives are far worse.

    I commend to you my update to this very post.

    This is your blog and you have full editorial control as you should. If you can’t support Trump, which I mostly understand, I wish your comments didn’t help the other side and most of the time I think they do.

    Once Biden is in office, I plan to criticize him fairly relentlessly, although when he does well I will note that. I don’t plan to toe the partisan Republican line in my criticism, which I think I was somewhat too prone to accept at points in the past, but you’ll certainly like the content, even if you (as I expect many will) insist on holding me Personally Responsible for a Biden presidency due to my wholly irrelevant California vote for him.

    As for the notion, if this is your argument, that criticizing Trump helps the other side (if that is what you mean by bemoaning my helping the other side), what can I say? I call them as I see them, here I stand I can do no other, and all of that.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  66. I too miss Beldar and was thrilled to see his commentary at The Dispatch and have the opportunity to interact with him again.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  67. The Democrats’ intent is to pack the Court for political reasons, plain and simple.

    No, they have another idea.

    I think this = the revolving court mentioned in Donald Trump’s tweet quoted by Radegunda @42:

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/27/opinion/supreme-court-reform.html

    …Don’t Let the Court Choose Its Cases
    By Melody Wang

    Ms. Wang is a student at Yale Law School.

    ….The certiorari process means that, unlike lower courts that may merely “call balls and strikes,” in Justice Roberts’s memorable framing, the Supreme Court controls who’s at bat. Through this power, justices can promote their own agendas by choosing cases that operate as tools to bend the law to their preferences.

    Taking away this power — to determine the issues it decides and on what terms it decides them — is America’s best option to curb the court’s activism, and restore its legitimacy…

    ….The court couldn’t always do this. For the first 100-odd years of the Republic, the court had to review every case that litigants appealed. Only with the Judiciary Act of 1925 did the court begin to exercise vast discretion over its docket.

    Just as Congress granted this power, so can Congress take it away. Removing the court’s docket-control power — and instead allowing randomly selected panels of appellate judges to select cases — would restrain judicial activism by taking the Supreme Court out of the driver’s seat. While the court may still have self-aggrandizing incentives, it could no longer direct the progression of the law because another body would decide which cases it hears.

    Lower-court panels could ensure that the agenda-setting power remains dispersed. With a constantly changing membership, they cannot pursue an ideological agenda.

    Interposing random appellate panels as gatekeepers would also deter opportunistic litigants from ramming through changes whenever they find a sympathetic composition of justices and from fashioning cases to appeal to justices’ idiosyncrasies. The random panels would instead encourage parties to develop sound legal arguments with broad appeal, serving to promote the rule of law.

    I see.

    Take the power of certorari away from the Supreme Court and vest it in a rotating panel of appellate court judges, who would not judge the cases they select.

    Lawyers could, of course, game the system, but left wing activist lawyers are better at planning this kind of thing than people on the other side. A genuine change along these lines would allow the panels to add, say, up to 25 cases to the Supreme Court docket.

    Or maybe this revolving court idea idea is something else

    We also have:

    Create a New Court
    By Kent Greenfield

    Mr. Greenfield is a professor at Boston College Law School.

    …The United States should join scores of other nations, including Germany and France, and create a specialized court to decide constitutional questions. The most contentious and important legal issues — whether states can ban abortion, or whether the president can refuse subpoenas or mandate travel bans — should be shifted from the Supreme Court to a new court created to decide such issues.

    Creating a United States Constitutional Court is the big idea that has evaded Democrats looking for possible cures to the court’s politicization.

    This court would be made up of judges from other federal courts, selected by the president from a slate generated by a bipartisan commission to create legitimacy and balance. The judges would serve limited terms, then return to their previous courts. Staggered terms would guarantee each president several appointments.

    The one thing is, nobody should pretend any of this is bipartisan.

    The only thing that is bipartisan, the only way to be bipartisan, is to get significant votes from members of both parties in Congress.

    Sammy Finkelman (a69e24)

  68. This is the rotating idea as Biden describes it:

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/joe-biden-move-justices-supreme-court

    Former Vice President Joe Biden indicated on Monday that he might be open to shifting Supreme Court justices to lower courts if elected president, noting that he hadn’t made any “judgement” yet on the issue.

    “There is some literature among constitutional scholars about the possibility of going from one court to another court, not just always staying the whole time in the Supreme Court but I have made no judgement,” Biden said at a campaign stop in Chester, Pennsylvania.

    He went on to say that “there are just a group of serious constitutional scholars, have a number of ideas how we should proceed from this point on.”

    “That’s what we’re going to be doing. We’re going to give them 180 days God-willing if I’m elected, from the time I’m sworn in to be able to make such a recommendation.”

    Sammy Finkelman (a69e24)

  69. What about Victor’s points re: the GOP efforts to make voting more difficult

    Why do I have to respond to points that are prefaced by utter BS?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  70. States can let anybody vote, and have different qualifications for different elections, but they can’t grant citizenship.

    New York City, when it had low turnout. low information, ranked choice school board elections (usually won by people allied with school employees) allowed non citizens to vote in these elections, if they were the parent of a child in the public school system. They were called parent voters and were specially registered. These elections were always held separately and we voted by paper ballot.

    The parent voters might have included people who were not even legally present in the United States because it was not a disqualification, to my knowledge, and not checked for.

    Sammy Finkelman (a69e24)

  71. Biden, for all his faults, is a normal human being. Trump is a sociopath.

    Irish-Catholics normal? Human?

    Trump’s a Presbyterian. 😉

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  72. Trump critics dislike him only for his breach of etiquette

    Well, no, but policy differences they might have (e.g. tariffs) are easier set aside with a man who wasn’t so personally objectionable. W put tariffs in place on steel, and while he was criticized for it, it did not cause a breach. Most politicians spend their political capital on policy matters, Trump burned all his in Twitter dumpster fires.

    So, while his critics have issues other than his boorish behavior and abject stpudity, those issues cannot be looked at independently.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  73. States can let anybody vote, and have different qualifications for different elections, but they can’t grant citizenship.

    Are you saying they can let 11-year-olds vote in a presidential election? I don’t think they can. And if they could, thank GOD for the electoral college.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  74. Irish-Catholics normal? Human?

    A Blaine voter.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  75. here I stand I can do no other

    I think there’s a lot of that here.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  76. He went on to say that “there are just a group of serious constitutional scholars, have a number of ideas how we should proceed from this point on.”

    There’s always Gingrich’s idea of eliminating entire circuits, thereby making judges redundant. I think it’s equally suspect.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  77. But read the whole thing.

    “Unconstitutional because I say so.”

    I think it’s a terrible idea. But his terrible argument rests on not a single word in the constitution itself.

    Dave (1bb933)

  78. Better to examine who Trump beat- the GOP weenies and the pants-suited fireplug- rather than how he won. There in lay the why: Swamp Stink.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  79. in fairly significant ways, the flaming asshole guest is burning down the house for us.

    “Blow the while thing up” and “burn the place to the ground” were battle cries of Trumpists in 2015-16, and they didn’t mean just Dems, but the whole “GOPe,” and the DC bureaucracy.

    Jared Kushner proudly described what his father-in-law did as a “hostile takeover” of the GOP.

    They got their wish to shred the GOP, and now they excoriate their critics as reckless nihilists.

    Radegunda (20775b)

  80. @74. Cathedral Cult. 😉

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  81. There in lay the why: Swamp Stink.

    There’s almost nothing funnier than the idea that Trump is a champion of honest government and a crusader against corruption.

    Radegunda (20775b)

  82. Many states have adopted rules that allow absentee ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by election day and received by a subsequent date certain. The constitution does not prohibit that.

    Republicans in many states have opposed those rules.

    When those “rules” are adopted by legislatures, and particularly when they are adopted well before the election, the GOP should abide. When they are promulgated by some judge in the backwoods, why should they not contest it?

    The problem of ballots that arrive after the election should be clear — there is an increased opportunity (and incentive) for fraud. Postmarks don’t mean much, really; they are hardly credentials. If the rule, printed on each ballot is “mail these within X days to ensure they arrive by election day” then I don’t see the oppression alleged when someone doesn’t do that.

    MY wife has not yet mailed back her ballot and intends to “drop it off” on election day. If she forgets, or tries to mail it Monday, that’s her lookout, not the state’s.

    If I had my way, we;d all troop to the polls on Tuesday like the Good Lord intended.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  83. Are you saying they can let 11-year-olds vote in a presidential election? I don’t think they can.

    The constitution allows states to choose their electors by having monkeys fling poo at pictures of the candidates, if they so decide.

    And if they could, thank GOD for the electoral college.

    Remind me why electors chosen by 11-year olds (or monkey poo) are OK?

    Dave (1bb933)

  84. There’s almost nothing funnier than the idea that Trump is a champion of honest government and a crusader against corruption.

    Perhaps not. Certainly there is no truth in the notion. Then again, I’d say that about very few politicians; at best some stay bought.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  85. Remind me why electors chosen by 11-year olds (or monkey poo) are OK?

    Not OK, just better than counting them as plain old votes, like the national vote compact would. The EC limits the silliness to the individual state, and if the voters there don’t like it, THEY are the ones to change it.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  86. The Electoral College limits and contains the scoundrels and fools in any given state. This works for Mississippi as well as Oregon. As for fraud, all a crooked state government can do is change the margin by which they win the same number of EVs. The rest of their tally is just counting coup.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  87. There’s almost nothing funnier than the idea that Trump is a champion of honest government and a crusader against corruption.

    Yep. Sitcoms have been known to have long runs with great ratings.

    Cheers!

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  88. aphrael,

    My state requires absentee ballots to be returned by election day, by statue, either by mail or by drop-off at the polling place.

    Let’s say that, this Saturday, a state judge in Las Cruces rules that Doña Ana County registrars must accept votes delivered as much as two weeks late, so long as they are postmarked by poll-closing on election day.

    This is contrary to state law, but is done, says the judge, in the interest of “fairness.”

    Are you saying that the GOP, in opposing such an order is suppressing votes?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  89. Yep. Sitcoms have been known to have long runs with great ratings.

    Ratings are, of course, what Donald J. Trump really cares about — not whether a majority of the electorate actually approves of him (it never has), but whether he can find, or invent, some numbers to put in a public boast about his personal superiority over all others.

    Radegunda (20775b)

  90. America needs two healthy parties. It would help if both were committed to the idea of competing for votes as opposed to one of them dedicated to engineering shrinking the voting population.

    I guess you missed Gore’s efforts in 2000 to get late-arriving military ballots thrown out despite the state’s obligation to accept them as per several consent decrees.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  91. Yes, of course. Don Jr. says of COVID deaths, “the number is almost nothing”.

    Clearly, that nut didn’t fall far from the Trump trunk.

    noel (9fead1)

  92. @67: So, rather than pack the Court, they would overturn Marbury v. Madison by statute? Bet you that gets slapped down 9-0. Or even 11-0.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  93. Are you saying that the GOP, in opposing such an order is suppressing votes?

    “Suppressing” might not be the most apt word in that scenario, but let’s not kid ourselves that the GOP’s primary reason for seeking to reverse such an order would be that it suspects the affected votes will be for Biden.

    (Not That) Bill O'Reilly (6bb12a)

  94. Someone ought to tell Donald that his resignation speech would get massive audience share. Then again, they should have mentioned that last March.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  95. “Suppressing” might not be the most apt word in that scenario, but let’s not kid ourselves that the GOP’s primary reason for seeking to reverse such an order would be that it suspects the affected votes will be for Biden.

    No more than the judge’s order would be for the same reason. My giving Biden’s supporters extra opportunities to vote, you are effectively suppressing lawfully cast GOP votes.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  96. MY By

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  97. @95 except you aren’t “giving Biden’s supporters extra opportunities to vote.” You are giving all voters a better chance to get their one vote counted.

    Nic (896fdf)

  98. [B]y giving Biden’s supporters extra opportunities to vote, you are effectively suppressing lawfully cast GOP votes.

    “By giving women the right to vote, you are effectively suppressing the vote of men.”

    There are plenty of perfectly valid reasons to enact and enforce reasonable voting procedures to facilitate a smooth and timely process. But this ain’t it, chief.

    (Not That) Bill O'Reilly (6bb12a)

  99. Unions are planning a general strike if trump steals election. I talked to several women at a gathering who have trump derangement syndrome who sincerely believe trump will put them in a concentration camp along with other democrats if he is re-elected. They believe trump will have the police go around shooting black men. Just reported in detroit voter turnout expected to be under 50%. Minority men are voting for trump in larger numbers then 2016 making the situation worse in detroit.

    asset (37abdf)

  100. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/30/2020 @ 1:11 pm

    Are you saying they can let 11-year-olds vote in a presidential election?

    Yes, of course. Although nobody is proposing it. Allowing 16 years olds to vote has been bruited about. Iran does it, although that shouldn’t be much of a recommendation.

    The 26th amendment sets a lower minimum limit not an upper one.

    The only specifications in the United States constitution for voting is that the electors for members of the House of Representatives must have the qualifications needed to vote for the most numerous branch of the state legislature.

    As for choosing electors, states, by legislation, can do whatever they want. Whatever they want.

    They could have the electors chosen by the stockholders of electric utility companies. Members of the Teamsters Union. Public school kindergarten teachers. They just can’t discriminate by race etc.

    I don’t think they can. And if they could, thank GOD for the electoral college.

    Well, to get rid of the Electoral College requires amending the constotution and the amendment might deal a little bit with that.

    The electoral vote compact? States can do whatever they want. They just have to do it before the Election Day set by Congress. If they fail to select electors then, though. they can do it up to the day Electors vote. Or six days before, says Congress.

    They can’t make it a treaty but they can al do that one by one. Now figuring out who won might be another thing.

    Sammy Finkelman (a69e24)

  101. The Electoral College limits and contains the scoundrels and fools in any given state. This works for Mississippi as well as Oregon. As for fraud, all a crooked state government can do is change the margin by which they win the same number of EVs. The rest of their tally is just counting coup.

    In 2016, each presidential elector from California represented 257,847 actual votes.

    Each presidential elector from Wyoming represented 76,797.3 actual votes.

    That’s a factor of 3.36 difference. (Normalizing to total population or registered voters doesn’t make much difference)

    Do you suppose any state could somehow – through fraud – inflate it’s popular vote totals by a similar factor of more than 3?

    If the huge disparity worked against the party you generally support rather than the one you generally oppose, would it alter your attitude at all?

    Dave (1bb933)

  102. @99 If that is what is going on in the rest of the country, maybe everyone should quit calling CA the homeland of liberal craziness.

    Nic (896fdf)

  103. @102 the liberal media is planning to promote civil insurrection if biden doesn’t win. Media motto same as Malcolm X “By any means necessary!” Media is planing stores about John Brown’s civil insurrection to show democrats how to fight back using abortion and obama care as the new dred scott decision

    asset (37abdf)

  104. Trump Claims at Rally Doctors Lie About Virus Deaths for Money

    President Donald Trump claimed without substantiation that U.S. doctors are lying about the number of Americans who’ve died from Covid-19, saying they inflate the figure because they are paid more money for deaths attributed to the virus.

    There’s no evidence for the president’s claim, and physician groups have castigated him for maligning their profession.

    “Our doctors get more money if someone dies from Covid. You know that, right?” Trump told a rally audience in Waterford Township, Michigan, on Friday.

    Every accusation by Trump is a confession.

    Dave (1bb933)

  105. Giuliani talking on the Ben Shapiro show.

    Sammy Finkelman (a69e24)

  106. You vote for Biden, you own him.

    No excuses or yes, buts.

    You vote for Trump; ditto.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  107. 99.Unions are planning a general strike if trump steals election

    Air traffic controllers, perhaps? 😉

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  108. asset (37abdf) — 10/30/2020 @ 2:14 pm

    They’re covering up the adrenochrome smuggling rings too, aren’t they?

    Dave (1bb933)

  109. He says that Shokin raided Burisma offices on Feb 1, 2016. (this raid’s existence has been denied – Giuliani says he has documents proving it took place)

    He wants to see Joe Biden got any money from Hunter by seeing who paid for his houses.

    The hard drive is full of Hunter complaining someone appointed by Joe was pntrolling his money – this to Rudy means Hunter was holding money for Joe.

    Sammy Finkelman (a69e24)

  110. There’s evidence that corona deaths have been underestimated, by about one third.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/health/coronavirus-excess-deaths.html

    Sammy Finkelman (a69e24)

  111. The Electoral College limits and contains the scoundrels and fools in any given state. This works for Mississippi as well as Oregon. As for fraud, all a crooked state government can do is change the margin by which they win the same number of EVs.

    Not sure this oft-repeated argument (which I’ve used in the past) really makes sense either. If the national election hinges on the electoral votes of a state with a very narrow margin, like FL in 2000, it only requires a few hundred votes worth of chicanery to steal the entire (national) election.

    Dave (1bb933)

  112. Kevin,

    I am late getting back and I realize there’s a number of arguments you’ve had against my original post, that I am probably missing at this point but I am always happy to relitigate 2000, so as to the “military ballot” issue of 2000, this seems like a good summary from Politico:

    During any election (let alone a contested one), the two major-party campaigns try to spin every development to their advantage. But the surprising thing about the PR battles fought during the 2000 recount was that they weren’t just about winning hearts and minds—they actually had a concrete, measurable impact on the vote totals as they evolved after Election Day.

    The clearest example might be the fight over overseas absentee ballots—or as the GOP started calling them, “military ballots.” Republicans argued that incomplete absentee ballots sent by active-duty military voters (who were expected to favor Bush) should be counted even if they were missing postmarks. That wasn’t consistent with the legal arguments they were making about not-quite-perfect ballots from Democratic-leaning counties, which the Bush campaign wanted to subject to strict scrutiny. But the apparent contradiction didn’t matter. The all-out media blitz persuaded six Florida counties to accept unpostmarked overseas absentee ballots, yielding Bush an extra 288 accepted ballots without a single court having to rule in his favor. Add that to Gore’s uncounted Palm Beach votes, and you’re getting close to Democratic counter-history.

    https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/28/how-unpredictable-could-this-election-be-five-lessons-from-the-florida-recount-432855

    So if Democratic party litigants today are arguing for counting late absentee ballots with incomplete information, then yes they are inconsistent with their lawyers 20 years ago. My larger point though is that at this point all of the Republican tactics are in the direction of making voting more difficult and invalidating ballots, even ones cast by people who are citizens and voted before the election or on election day. You can claim it’s following the constitution, but since the Constitution has nothing particular to say about when ballots are counted, it actually is pretty clear part of an anti-democratic agenda.

    Which at least now some Republican politicians are willing to state openly. They don’t really think the majority of people should decide who are the leaders of the country. Because apparently their concept of a Republic not a Democracy is taken from Venice or ancient Rome.

    Victor (00af29)

  113. Oh and as for the idea that changing the number of people on the court is unconstitutional because of bad intent, where “bad intent” means changing the tenor of the decisions:

    Intent matters, as the courts have recently held in several recent cases in which they declared federal policies unconstitutional based on the alleged bad intent divined from President Trump’s tweets or other statements. The Democrats’ intent is to pack the Court for political reasons, plain and simple. This would be unprecedented in our history. And, the intent to destroy the third branch—the one that ensures the other two comply with the Constitution—is sufficient to find it illegal.

    I did read the whole thing and note the author pretty much avoids talking about the transition from the Adams presidency to Jefferson’s, which included changing the number of justices twice and also shutting down the Supreme Court term for a year. And yes, the reasons were political.

    Victor (00af29)

  114. Unions are planning a general strike if trump steals election.

    I don’t believe there has ever been a general strike across the entire United States. What we would be more likely to see is another round of marches of high-strung progressives wearing whimsical homemade headwear.

    JVW (ee64e4)

  115. Donald Trump Turned Me Into a Mugwump

    A Mugwump?

    I got better.

    frosty (3fa0df)

  116. @103 Can’t tell if Poe. Serious or Poe?

    Nic (896fdf)

  117. JVW #114: that made me laugh out loud. So very true. And I can’t wait to hear the explanation for all of that to their grandchildren. Marching with MLK for Civil Rights? There is something to tell your grandchildren.

    It all comes back to “The Clerisy” and their “Vision of the Anointed,” as Thomas Sowell pointed out.

    Simon Jester (2510cd)

  118. “I have changed my mind, somewhat. I still think the GOP will lose the Senate, but I no longer want them to.”
    __

    lol
    _

    harkin (e4086b)

  119. And for further explanation of why I think the Republican’s concern is not with the Constitution but with keeping every possible Democratic Vote out of the election there’s the recent 8th Circuit decision from Minnesota. The ostensible and newly urgent Constitutional Crisis is whether a state legislature or some other branch of state government makes decisions regarding election law. But as noted in a thorough analysis of a crap decision:

    (1) The consent decree at issue in the case hasn’t been challenged by anyone in the Minnesota state government! This case doesn’t involve a federal court adjudicating a dispute between elements of state’s legal system regarding the application of state law. The consent decree entered into by the Secretary of State isn’t being challenged by the legislature, which means that every element of the Minnesota legal system: the legislature, the executive (via the Secretary of State), and the courts (via the consent decree) had agreed to change the election rules temporarily, to accept absentee ballots postmarked by election day but received up to a week later.

    https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/10/purge-the-courts

    Also the legislature specifically designated the executive to deal with crises during elections.

    So what the Republicans are now really demanding is that the federal courts they have been so eager to fill with party hacks and reliable Federalist Society ideologues will now be the first and decisive courts to interpret state statute, regardless of what state courts might say.

    Yay federalism.

    Victor (00af29)

  120. “I’ll be here to say: next time don’t choose a Donald Trump…….“
    __

    One of the more predictable things about a Biden/Harris administration (if it happens) will be conservative Biden voters saying it’s all Trump’s fault.
    __

    and if one gets in anyway, you should tell the truth about him.”
    __

    Yep, exactly like they’ve been telling the truth about Biden.
    _

    harkin (e4086b)

  121. As an example of the stupid things that are going on which could and should have been prevented:

    * coworker of a cousin of mine (in Texas) contracted covid
    * coworker called the county elections office to find out what they should do
    * elections office said “go to the early voting center and ask for curbside voting”
    * early voting center said “no, you can only do that if you’re disabled, even though you have covid and are currently symptomatic you can only vote in person by standing in line and voting”
    * coworker stood in line and voted, while symptomatic and presumptively infectious

    this is insane. first, the elections office and the polling place should hav e been on the same page, and training failed horribly at either the election office or among the poll workers.

    second — it’s utterly ridiculous to not allow curbside voting for an *actively symptomatic voter who cannot vote absentee*. making them stand in line and vote in person poses a risk to everyone who was standing in line near them.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  122. > When those “rules” are adopted by legislatures, and particularly when they are adopted well before the election, the GOP should abide. When they are promulgated by some judge in the backwoods, why should they not contest it?

    When Republicans are *in* legislatures and refuse to support such rules, they aren’t simply defending the constitution. They are making an active bad policy choice.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  123. @108 You’re crossing the streams. It’s the Q-crew who go in for the adrenochrome and the D-crew who think Trump will round up norse-latinx trans vegans.

    frosty (3fa0df)

  124. Kevin M, at 88: no, i’m saying that the Republicans in legislatures who oppose such a rule are acting to suppress votes.

    I’m also making a more general claim that the legal reasoning being propounded by the people opposing the court orders is very, very, very dangerous.

    The argument these people are making is that, even in an emergency situation, even in states where legislation or the state constitution explicitly give the judiciary or the executive power to deal with such emergencies, they cannot do so if what they do contradicts what the legislature has said.

    Imagine this in the worst case California context. 9 am on election day an earthquake takes out a dozen polling places in Los Angeles County. There’s no provision in the election code for dealing with this, but the election code does require you to vote in your assigned polling place.

    The arguments being put forward in various court filings would hold that under such circumstances, none of the federal courts, the california courts, the secretary of state’s office, the governor’s office, or the county election’s office could remedy the situation by allowing the voters to vote in different polling places.

    They’re promulgating a cure that’s way, way, way worse than the disease. And they’re doing it for short-term partisan motivation.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  125. Prayers for Americas Anchorman, El Rushbo.

    mg (8cbc69)

  126. > No more than the judge’s order would be for the same reason

    this is a telling argument, I think.

    My sense is that most of the judges are motivated by a desire to ensure that every legitimate vote is counted, and an understanding that the emergency nature of the pandemic makes it harder to legitimately cast votes and that it’s necessary to introduce more flexibility into the system to combat that.

    That is, I don’t see them as motivated by *partisan* reasoning — who the people in question will vote for is not relevant to the decision making.

    But I see the republican legislators and activists who oppose this sort of thing being motivated by partisan reasoning.

    Why the difference in interpretation for ne? Largely because Republican politicians are attacking as fraudulent, unconstitutional, or problematic practices which have *long been used in other states with bipartisan support and minimal problems*. This makes the objections appear disengenuous at best.

    I mean, I posted an example earlier of my cousin’s coworker who was required to stand in line *while symptomatic with covid symptoms*. The state of Texas could easily have fixed that and prevented that outcome but the Texas legislature chose not to. Why?

    I was talking yesterday with someone about how most rejected votes are rejected for signature mismatch. Some states require voters to be notified and allowed to cure; Republicans in numerous states have objected to adopting such rules. Why?

    Consistently and across the board, Republican politicians this year have opposed attempts to make it easier to vote and to introduce pandemic-response flexibility into the system. An instance here and there would be one thing, but the uniformity really admits of very little explanation other than “Republicans don’t want more people to vote”.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  127. Dave, at 104: the thing which pisses me off about that is that so many people will believe it because Trump said it. He is actively harming the country by saying things like this.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  128. > first and decisive courts to interpret state statute, regardless of what state courts might say.

    apparently the conservative legal movement no longer believes state courts have the authority to interpret state law, and now insist that federal courts must interpret state law because state courts might get it wrong.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  129. @120 That article seems very loosely connected to reality. Arguing against Marbury based on “most developed legal systems” should be a red flag.

    frosty (3fa0df)

  130. Hard to believe this site is seldom seen at Hot Air…

    mg (8cbc69)

  131. @95 except you aren’t “giving Biden’s supporters extra opportunities to vote.” You are giving all voters a better chance to get their one vote counted.

    And there you try to have it both ways. Either stopping this is “suppressing Biden votes” or it is “suppressing everyone equally.” If the latter then what’s the issue?

    Except that the whole idea of “suppression” is a base lie. Requiring voters to vote according to the law is not suppression, it’s following the law that was agreed to ahead of time. What you want is Calvinball.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  132. I’m also making a more general claim that the legal reasoning being propounded by the people opposing the court orders is very, very, very dangerous.

    That is insane. Literally insane. Changing the rules to gain advantage in an election — as all these orders are intended to do — is corrupt, wrong, terrible and indefensible. Saying “NO, we have a law and we should follow it” is none of those things.

    You cannot at the one hand say “Those opposing these orders just want to disadvantage Democrats” while at the other hand deny the orders were intended to advantage Democrats. Not and be believed.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  133. > Requiring voters to vote according to the law is not suppression, it’s following the law that was agreed to ahead of time. What you want is Calvinball.

    No, what I want is for the legislatures to make reasonable choices and for the people who opposed making reasonable choices to be held accountable.

    > If the latter then what’s the issue?

    You don’t see why someone would have an issue with suppressing everyone equally? Voter suppression is bad full stop. Discriminatory voter suppression may be worse, but voter suppression doesn’t magically become ok if it’s non-discriminatory.

    Going back to Texas again: TX only allows one drop box per county. Loving County, with a population of 169, has the same number of drop boxes as Harris County, with a population of 4.7 million. This is theoretically equal application of the law, but it creates huge lines in Harris County and no line in Loving County.

    A legislature, or an executive, which cared about making sure every voter had an equal barrier to voting would never have designed the system this way.

    But Texas *did* design its system this way.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  134. Hard to believe this site is seldom seen at Hot Air…

    What do you suppose they’ll talk about there after Trump loses?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  135. > Changing the rules to gain advantage in an election — as all these orders are intended to do

    That’s not what “all these orders are intended to do”.

    A lot of the orders are designed to deal with an unprecedented-in-modern-times emergency situation, just like the example I gave of an earthquake in LA.

    The reasoning propounded in the concurrence two days ago would *clearly* encompass the LA earthquake situation.

    If my polling place is destroyed in an earthquake, should I simply not be allowed to vote? Should a court or the county be allowed to issue an emergency order providing me a way to vote?

    > You cannot at the one hand say “Those opposing these orders just want to disadvantage Democrats” while at the other hand deny the orders were intended to advantage Democrats. Not and be believed.

    Why not? I think it is clearly true from the behavior of Republican legislators, like those in Texas, that they are constructing systems deliberately to advantage favored voters and disadvantage disfavored voters. I also think it’s clearly true from the behavior of the courts and executives in question that they’re trying to increase general ability to vote and system flexibility during a public health crisis.

    When the data indicate that different groups are behaving differently, the correct response is not to reject the data as obviously false, the proper behavior is to reassess your evaluation of the groups in question.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  136. Well, it’s Friday, and this pols ‘n’ polls pie is ready to go into the oven.

    What’s the temperature – that is, the weather– forecasts for key states on Tuesday?

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  137. Sorry. I needed to read on.

    The argument these people are making is that, even in an emergency situation, even in states where legislation or the state constitution explicitly give the judiciary or the executive power to deal with such emergencies, they cannot do so if what they do contradicts what the legislature has said.

    And I believe that higher courts are basing their decision on what legislatures allow as far as “emergency actions.” That some lawyers make wild claims in the hopes that some judge will buy it (and this works both ways btw) does not mean that all orders or arguments are valid, or invalid. Just that lawyers make wild claims at times. I wish there was a fix for that.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  138. > You cannot at the one hand say “Those opposing these orders just want to disadvantage Democrats” while at the other hand deny the orders were intended to advantage Democrats. Not and be believed.

    Why one and not the other? Why are soft-hearted Democrat judges to be accepted at face value, but mean-spirited Rebpublican thugs not as much?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  139. Victor (00af29) — 10/30/2020 @ 2:44 pm

    The ironic thing about 2000 was that if Gore had immediately accepted Bush’s recount proposal he would have been President, as a flat statewide recount would have turned it around. But he wanted to cherry-pick.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  140. FWIW, I dumped my mutual funds today. They were near their highs, but I don’t want to be in the market for the next couple of weeks. Markets hate turmoil, and I expect turmoil. The Florida 2000 thing coincided with a huge market drop.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  141. @132 “if it’s the latter” the issue is that we shouldn’t be suppressing anyone’s votes. The perception is that it’s Biden votes, but the reality is that it’s everyone’s and, if we think voting is important, we shouldn’t be suppressing people’s votes.

    Nic (896fdf)

  142. we shouldn’t be suppressing people’s votes.

    Should we allow people to vote outside of the established rules because they forgot that there was a pandemic on? If someone forgot to drop their ballot off Tuesday, is it “suppression” to say they can’t drop it off Wednesday?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  143. Very good article.

    I was a big conservative blog reader back in the early to mid 2000s, and took a break for over a decade. I came back to find that most of the bloggers I used to follow have turned into loons. I’m glad to find that there are still a few people fighting the good fight.

    AtomicAmish (a84ece)


  144. Eddie Zipperer
    @EddieZipperer

    BIDEN: “I’ll lead an effective strategy to mobilize trunalimunumaprzure.”

    https://pjmedia.com/election/matt-margolis/2020/10/30/yikes-can-you-translate-bidens-latest-gibberish-n1109634
    _

    harkin (e4086b)

  145. What do you suppose they’ll talk about [at HotAir] after Trump loses?

    With the exception of Allahpundit, the bloggers at HotAir are all MAGA to one degree or another.

    Captain Ed is fairly honest and will occasionally criticize Trump, but he makes plenty of excuses too.

    The rest are straight-up shills.

    Dave (1bb933)

  146. Media Recount: Bush Won the 2000 Election

    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/media-jan-june01-recount_04-03
    _

    harkin (e4086b)

  147. @143. That’s a nice fantasy hypothetical. It isn’t what’s happening anywhere.

    Nic (896fdf)

  148. oh and another example of changing the number of justices on the Court for political reasons, adding the 10th Justice during the Civil War in part to counter the possibility the Court would find blockading the Southern Ports illegal.

    Really, if doing something otherwise in the constitutional power of the Senate for political reasons was unconstitutional than that would certainly apply to blocking Garland.

    REally Newsweek has not much of a reputation anymore, do they? They’ll print any stupid thing.

    Victor (00af29)

  149. Ah, yes, PJMedia. I heard Salem bought it for … you won’t believe the amount … $0.1 million. For $0.07 million more, they could have gotten a spanking from Stormy Daniels. They should have gone for the spanking.

    nk (1d9030)

  150. > And I believe that higher courts are basing their decision on what legislatures allow as far as “emergency actions.”

    I would have thought that prior to this week’s Supreme Court decisions, in which three justices signed on to a dissent from the denial of cert (on a 5-3 or 4-4 basis) on the grounds that federal courts are required to review state court interpretation of state election law, and insert the federal court’s judgment, full stop. Roberts has been resisting this, but it’s not clear he has the votes once Barrett is fully participating.

    > Why are soft-hearted Democrat judges to be accepted at face value, but mean-spirited Rebpublican thugs not as much?

    Because they’re arguing things that make it clear that their real goal is to make it harder for people to vote, or at least to resist making it easier.

    Look to New Jersey, for example, where the legislature passed and the governor signed legislation that requires that absentees postmarked by tuesday be counted if they are received by close of business Thursday, and which allows incoming absentees to be counted starting last week so that the count is available on election night. The state Republican party sued, arguing that this is a brazen power grab. Their argument was transparently in bad faith.

    Or look to Nevada, where the legislature passed and the governor signed a bill requiring absentee ballots to be automatically sent to all voters (a system that’s been in place in WA and OR for years). Republicans sued to stop it, alleging it allowed vote dilution by means of fraud so a court should intervene and prevent it.

    These lawsuits are not about fidelity to the constitutional process. They’re about trying to induce the courts to make it more difficult for people to vote *despite* the legislature having chosen a different policy.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  151. I agree that if every ballot had been counted in Florida in 2000 and the question was, who did that person want to be president? was the guiding principle for evaluating, then Gore would have been president.

    And there wouldn’t have been a war in Iraq, but I guess that qualifies as liberal retro fantasy.

    Victor (00af29)

  152. Kevin M – nobody is using legal reasoning that would result in the outcome you ponder at #143, and nobody is proposing that as a policy matter.

    The closest we’ve gotten is that some states, New Jersey included, allow counting of unpostmarked ballots received after the deadline, under the assumption that the post office just didn’t postmark them (as is a common thing, unfortunately), using the rationale that a voter shouldn’t be penalized by having their vote disqualified due to the actions of the post office.

    The hypothetical i’ve proposed, on the other hand, is the logical outcome of reasoning that three supreme court justices are on record as having endorsed.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  153. Disappointing to see Beldar and others who should know better repeat nonsense like this over at The Dispatch:

    You’re right that Bush-43 increased spending like crazy.

    Here is a graph of federal spending.

    In FY02, the first Bush budget, spending was 18.4% of GDP. That this is slightly higher than FY01(17.6%) is hardly surprising in light of the mild recession that year and the anti-terrorism measures necessary in the wake of 9/11

    In FY07, spending was 18.9% of GDP. Hardly “spending like crazy”.

    In FY08, the economic crisis resulted in emergency spending, and outlays went up (the largest single increase over FY07 was for “Income security”, which means unemployment benefits).

    Dave (1bb933)

  154. Really, if doing something otherwise in the constitutional power of the Senate for political reasons was unconstitutional than that would certainly apply to blocking Garland.

    Considering that all but one instance of the Garland situation (last year of a term and the other side holds the Senate) resulted in the nomination being ignored, I can’t see the leg you are standing on. Sometimes it wasn’t even the election year. Poor John Tyler had TWO open seats he could not get a vote on.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  155. Knock yourself out, Mr. Dave.

    Thank you, Herr Doktor-Professor.

    Last week I bought a subscription to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary (the *full* 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary…).

    As a result, I have words. In fact, I have the best words.

    A variation of “mugwump” first appears in English in 1635, in the form “mugquomp”; a borrowing from the Massachusett indigenous tribe. It meant something like “officer”, “captain” or “duke”.

    It appears to have entered more colloquial use around 1830 in New England, as a humorous title meaning “[a]n important person, a leader, a boss.” It was used by some fraternities and societies as one of their leadership ranks.

    The political sense of “[a] person who remains aloof from party politics, professing political disinterest; (U.S. History) a Republican who in 1884 refused to support the Republican Party nominee for president,” originated in the spring of that year. A headline in the New York Sun is cited as the first known usage.

    There is a related but somewhat different meaning: “a person who changes political parties, esp. with a view to personal advancement,” which runs contrary to the idea of a principled decision used in Patrick’s article.

    Despite its strongly American origins, the word has found its way into British literature: George Bernard Shaw’s play Man and Superman (1903) and a collection of poems by WH Auden in 1945.

    Dave (1bb933)

  156. Shorter 155: Advise and Consent does not mandate consent. Or even advice. “GFY” is an adequate and constitutional response.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  157. CONNIE’S CORNER
    @CorneredCRRJA5
    ·
    Twitter backs down and unlocks @nypost account after two-week standoff over Hunter Biden posts

    In a series of tweets Friday evening, Twitter Safety announced New York Post’s account would no longer be restricted
    __ _

    Undercover Huber
    @JohnWHuber
    ·
    So the NY Post didn’t violate the original policy, or the updated policy, or the non-policies you invented on the fly. And the Ayatollah can still tweet calls for genocide but Biden is the precious. Glad you cleared that up
    __ _

    TheBlaze
    @theblaze
    ·
    Censorship backfire: NY Post has gained nearly 200K Twitter followers since the platform locked its account

    __ _

    Lol thinking this ‘backfired’.

    They accomplished exactly what they wanted. Squashed a negative story about the Dem candidate and his son.
    __

    ‘Way to stand up for press freedom’! Proud journalist Jake Tapper is ‘just suggesting’ that the NY Post bend the knee to Twitter; UPDATE: Tapper keeps digging

    https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2020/10/30/way-to-stand-up-for-press-freedom-proud-journalist-jake-tapper-is-just-suggesting-that-the-ny-post-bend-the-knee-to-twitter/amp/
    _

    There were even people in here saying the Post’s Twitter acct should be banned.
    _

    harkin (e4086b)

  158. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/30/2020 @ 4:55 pm

    If someone forgot to drop their ballot off Tuesday, is it “suppression” to say they can’t drop it off Wednesday?

    You’re leaving out the details that say whether this is suppression or not. Is this someone a likely D voter? Is this a leans D district? Is this district a few votes shy of a D win? If yes then yes this is suppression.

    frosty (f27e97)

  159. Dems think voter ID is suppression, so it’s just another word they’ve dumbed down.

    beer ‘n pretzels (042d67)

  160. If Mr. President Donald Trump, who gets paid extra by Putin for every American who dies of Covid (double for soldiers), had not done everything in his power to handicap the Post Office and to otherwise create uncertainty, confusion, distrust, and covfefe in the election, we would not even be talking about all this. We’d just be voting and waiting for the counting. He is a corrupt, criminal traitor who is damaging our democracy just by running. Let’s flush the mother-figure!

    nk (1d9030)

  161. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/30/2020 @ 4:55 pm

    If someone forgot to drop their ballot off Tuesday, is it “suppression” to say they can’t drop it off Wednesday?

    You’re leaving out the details that say whether this is suppression or not. Is this someone a likely D voter? Is this a leans D district? Is this district a few votes shy of a D win? If yes then yes this is suppression.

    frosty (f27e97) — 10/30/2020 @ 6:58 pm

    Point to me the Democrats arguing that people can vote after Election day. The only question is to what extend votes mailed or cast on or before Election day are going to be counted.

    Victor (00af29)

  162. Really, if doing something otherwise in the constitutional power of the Senate for political reasons was unconstitutional than that would certainly apply to blocking Garland.

    Considering that all but one instance of the Garland situation (last year of a term and the other side holds the Senate) resulted in the nomination being ignored, I can’t see the leg you are standing on. Sometimes it wasn’t even the election year. Poor John Tyler had TWO open seats he could not get a vote on.

    You miss the point. Your claim, above, based on a really badly written article in Newsweek, is that adding more Justices to the Court would be unconstitutional because politically motivated.

    I pointed out that, in addition to the fact there are multiple instances of the Court’s numbers being adjusted for political purposes, the idea that something the Senate has the power to do being unconstitutional because of bad intent is daft. And I pointed to Garland as the example. The Senate had the power not to hold any hearing or take up the nomination. It didn’t, for political purposes (though pretending otherwise).

    Do you really not understand this comparison or are you being deliberately obtuse?

    Victor (00af29)

  163. You miss the point. Your claim, above, based on a really badly written article in Newsweek, is that adding more Justices to the Court would be unconstitutional because politically motivated.

    The flip side of the politicization of the courts is the insistence – often on the flimsiest of grounds – that any policy or outcome one disagrees with is “unconstitutional”.

    Of course, some policies and outcomes are unconstitutional under the plain wording of the constitution.

    But in this case, we have Kevin – who purports to be an originalist – trying to argue that because something would have undesirable effects, the courts must invent a rationale hinted at nowhere in the constitution to prevent the elected (and accountable) branches of government from doing it.

    This is precisely this urge to do an end-run around democracy through the courts that Republicans tut-tut about, even as they focus on confirming like-minded judges and justices so they can do it themselves when necessary.

    Every bad policy doesn’t need to be unconstitutional.

    Dave (1bb933)

  164. In just 21 days, Sleepy & Hollowed Joe Biden turns 78 years old.

    Happy Halloween . 😉

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  165. So here’s a case from the other side: in NY state, Rockland County has been ordered to keep its early voting locations open for longer hours because they weren’t abiding by the state’s regulations requiring county boards to ensure that voters don’t have to wait for more than 30 minutes, and to provide accomodations for disabled voters.

    the allegation is that the county election board is ignoring the state mandate.

    should state courts have the power to hear this case? Three Supreme Court Justices are saying that if state courts *do* hear this case, their decision should be reviewed by the feds. Why?

    aphrael (4c4719)

  166. 126.Prayers for Americas Anchorman, El Rushbo.

    Hard lesson for him discovering ‘assuming room temperature’ isn’t quite as witty a barb– when it’s somebody else, is it. Helluva marketer, though; just a sad fade to black.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  167. should state courts have the power to hear this case?

    Who else?

    Three Supreme Court Justices are saying that if state courts *do* hear this case, their decision should be reviewed by the feds. Why?

    If the state court’s ruling decides a question of federal law.

    nk (1d9030)

  168. It’s been 38 years since my bar exam, and I don’t have my textbooks handy. I remember Bell v. Hood (1946) which held that federal courts have jurisdiction if the litigants raise an issue of federal law and it is not entirely frivolous and made for the sole purpose of obtaining federal jurisdiction. I’m sure there are more recent cases on point.

    nk (1d9030)

  169. “Dems think voter ID is suppression, so it’s just another word they’ve dumbed down.”

    It often is:

    Gov. Robert Bentley denied there was any racist intent behind the closure of 31 driver license offices in 2015, but an investigation by the United States Department of Transportation found they adversely impacted majority African-American counties.

    https://www.al.com/opinion/2017/01/as_it_turns_out_bentleys_drive.html

    Davethulhu (5954b2)

  170. Nk, the argument is that *by definition* a state court interpretation of state law is a federal issue if the law in question regulates a federal election. The Elections Clause gives that authority to the *state legislatures*, so any state court interpretation is potentially a federally unconstitutional power grab, meaning that any state court interpretation of state election law must be reviewed by a federal court to ensure that the state court’s interpretation was correct.

    This is the most blatant attempted power grab by the federal judiciary in decades.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  171. Voter ID *in theory* is not suppression. But in practice it often turns out to be executed in a way that suppresses votes.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  172. Lauren Chen
    @TheLaurenChen

    Justin Trudeau on the beheading of the French teacher who showed cartoons of Mohammed:

    “Freedom of expression is not without limits. In a pluralistic, diverse society… we must be aware of the impact of our words and actions on others”
    __ _

    Jonathan K
    @jonny_k34
    ·
    This is exactly like saying “yes of course its was wrong that she was raped, but her dress and actions do have consequences.” There is literally no difference at all.
    __ _

    D_fens
    @D_fens
    ·
    The dueling brilliant arguments on Twitter this week:

    “Cops shouldn’t execute someone with mental illness just because they are walking towards them with a knife”
    And
    “Of course it’s understandable that you’ll get your head chopped off for offending certain groups.”

    _

    harkin (e4086b)

  173. Just saw bondo barrs picture on a 1/2 gallon of chobani oat milk.

    mg (8cbc69)

  174. This is the most blatant attempted power grab by the federal judiciary in decades.

    Well, sure. Trump is strictly a Freudian case, but most of those nabobs are Adlerians. Desire for power forms their character and, as much they tell us how overworked (ha!) they are, they are very mindful that power not used is power lost. That’s why they’re always finding in favor of jurisdiction and standing, and not only in election cases.

    nk (1d9030)

  175. RIP Sean Connery

    Dave (1bb933)

  176. Patterico isn’t the only conservative voting for Biden.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/10/30/reject-trump-vote-biden-preserve-american-moral-core-column/6069337002/

    Over 86 million people have already voted, either by mail or early in person. That’s roughly two-thirds of the total number of ballots cast in 2016. The majority were cast by Democrats, because Republicans tend to vote in person on election day. This year may see the highest turnout in history. People are standing in lines for hours to vote early, and many, especially seniors, are voting by mail because of the pandemic.

    Texas and Florida are both in play. If Trump loses one or both, his odds of being reelected become increasingly small. Biden could lose both and still win in the electoral college. Everyone keeps talking about Pennsylvania. It’s in play as well, but Trump could win the state and still lose the electoral college. It’s the Great Lake states that will be determinative, which is why Biden is campaigning in these states, not repeating Clinton’s mistake.

    California, Oregon and New York are clearly voting Democratic. So might Colorado, Arizona and Nevada, among several others. I’m not predicting a blue wave election, but it could very well be. If the Democrats gain seats in the House, take over the Senate and win the White House, plus governorships and state legislatures, I don’t think they will overreach. They will want to maintain their majority, and going hard left is not the way to do that as it would cost them the midterm elections.

    However, I would like to see Trumpism wholly repudiated. This nationalist, populist crap has to go.

    Patterico asked the other day what the post-Trump GOP would look like. Hopefully, more conservative.

    Gawain's Ghost (b25cd1)

  177. Sunny and warm in Wisconsin on Tuesday, high 57. And don’t anybody let the long lines at early voting sites scare you. It’s because there are so few of them, like the Abbott Boxes in Texas. There will be several hundred times as many regular polling sites on Election Day, each serving only several hundred registered voters from that precinct a dozen at a time.

    nk (1d9030)

  178. I’m looking forward to Gorsuch’s literalist construction of “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”, Art. IV, Sec. 4 of the Constitution.

    nk (1d9030)

  179. Patterico isn’t a conservative. Is he?

    rcocean (fcc23e)

  180. I can’t answer for Patterico, but I’m pretty sure I am not. I have never paid a hooker $130,000 for spanking me with a magazine and then taken her to court for a refund.

    nk (1d9030)

  181. If you can’t support Trump, which I mostly understand, I wish your comments didn’t help the other side and most of the time I think they do.

    But whose fault is this? Who is sitting in the Oval Office? The problem isn’t with Patterico’s criticism. The problem is that Trump continually provides him with so much to work with. So if criticism of Trump helps the other side, then Trump is directly to blame for providing the behavior that sparks the criticism. I think that we should be applauding any equal-opportunity critic of our elected officials, no matter which party they belong to. Being loyal to none allows one to criticize elected officials from both parties with equal gusto. And after all, one of the GOP’s biggest complaints is about media bias. Not so with our host.

    Dana (6995e0)

  182. @171 adverse impact doesn’t establish intent.

    Before I go read an opinion piece is there a better quote that might link it to your premise.

    frosty (f27e97)

  183. Gawain’s Ghost (b25cd1) — 10/31/2020 @ 6:36 am

    Patterico asked the other day what the post-Trump GOP would look like. Hopefully, more conservative.

    I’m still not sure how the people telling us to vote for a big government left leaning party think that’s going to result in more conservatism. It might result in a GOP that is more to their liking but that party won’t be stronger or more able to accomplish it’s stated goals. It will only be good for making principled stands as the loyal opposition.

    This is why you hear so many “I could vote Republican if X” where X is some form of “they were Democrat”.

    frosty (f27e97)

  184. Disappointing to see Beldar and others who should know better repeat nonsense like this over at The Dispatch:

    You’re right that Bush-43 increased spending like crazy.

    Here is a graph of federal spending.

    In FY02, the first Bush budget, spending was 18.4% of GDP. That this is slightly higher than FY01(17.6%) is hardly surprising in light of the mild recession that year and the anti-terrorism measures necessary in the wake of 9/11

    In FY07, spending was 18.9% of GDP. Hardly “spending like crazy”.

    In FY08, the economic crisis resulted in emergency spending, and outlays went up (the largest single increase over FY07 was for “Income security”, which means unemployment benefits).

    Bush nearly doubled the debt in eight years. Obama doubled it again in another eight years. I agree with Beldar that Bush was spending like crazy.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  185. Patterico isn’t a conservative. Is he?

    I don’t know what that word means any more. I am a classical liberal, which I predict you will equate with “librul” even though it means the opposite. But, just like being a “Republican” used to mean something, and being a “conservative” used to mean something related but different, they both seem to mean “support Trump” these days. By that definition, no, I’m not. Rather than fight over what the increasingly meaningless label means, I’ll simply say I am a classical liberal.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  186. How is Trump leading to more conservative government, frosty? He governs as an authoritarian except when he happens to listen to others on judges.* How do you know what Trump will do if he is re-elected President and his only choices are sign executive orders or agree to Democratic legislation?

    * We still don’t know if his judges will actually be conservative. There were warnings about Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

    DRJ (aede82)

  187. Obama campaigning w/Plagiarist JoeyBee ‘in, like, Flint,’ Michigan.

    Honestly, a truly pathetic scene to televise, dripping w/desperation.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  188. nk, it will be fascinating to see how any court acting on the guaranty clause explains how their decision is consistent with Luther v Borden.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  189. > I’ll simply say I am a classical liberal.

    so you’re a libertarian? *duck*

    aphrael (4c4719)

  190. We still don’t know if his judges will actually be conservative. There were warnings about Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

    If those two don’t pan out, they’re *his* judges.

    If they do, they’re back to being The Federalist’s and Cruz’s judges.

    beer ‘n pretzels (042d67)

  191. Just like Souter was Bush 41’s judge, O’Connor was Reagan’s, and John Roberts was Bush 43’s. The buck stops with the President because it was his call. As for Cruz, he did not recommend Gorsuch or Kavanaugh but thanks for proving you don’t bother to read links.

    DRJ (aede82)

  192. DRJ (aede82) — 10/31/2020 @ 10:52 am

    How is Trump leading to more conservative government, frosty?

    Independent of what he’s doing I know the D’s are moving in exactly the opposite direction from conservative principles which was my point.

    He governs as an authoritarian except when he happens to listen to others on judges.*

    This is utter and complete horse****. A lot of complaints about his covid response is that he isn’t authoritarian enough and Biden’s solutions definitely lean authoritarian. If he was the authoritarian everyone claims he’d have been heavy handed with the riots but in every case he’s maintained that local authorities have to request help.

    How do you know what Trump will do if he is re-elected President and his only choices are sign executive orders or agree to Democratic legislation?

    I don’t. But it’s reasonable to think that version of things will be more conservative than Biden and a D congress. Or Biden and an R congress. Or Biden and a split congress.

    * We still don’t know if his judges will actually be conservative.

    We never do and this is a different conversation. Even the most conservative judges won’t legislate from the bench in the same way as liberal judges. But I know D appointed judges will generally be liberal. Voting in D’s is guaranteed to ensure we won’t get more conservative judges.

    My basic point was voting for the opposite of conservatives won’t magically create a more conservative government. You’re point that Trump is by some measure also not conservative doesn’t refute my point. Complaining about Trump doesn’t support the point that voting D’s into power will lead to more conservatism.

    frosty (f27e97)

  193. Go Trump. js

    Jesse (8c8429)

  194. nk, it will be fascinating to see how any court acting on the guaranty clause explains how their decision is consistent with Luther v Borden.

    I was funning Gorsuch’s “literalism” with “Republican”, aphrael. The other parties might as well close up shop — they’re unconstitutional.

    nk (1d9030)

  195. If our future were only the next four years then I would agree with you, but the next 4 years leads to the next and the next and the next. Each Administration governs during its time but also prepares and influences its Party leaders of the future. Trump is not molding future conservatives. He is molding government to serve him because he is an authoritarian and wannabe dictator who admires dictators. Trump himself has wondered at why he admires dictators so much more than other leaders.

    DRJ (aede82)

  196. But you already called my position “utter and complete horse****” so I don’t plan to read your response, if any.

    DRJ (aede82)

  197. I’ll simply say I am a classical liberal.

    Classic liberals don’t vote for modern liberals. They are literally the opposite. It’s like someone saying “I’m a capitalist and I’m voting for Stalin”.

    Vote for JoJo if you must. But not Biden. It’s illogical.

    PH2 (2f3b52)

  198. Let’s cut to the chase; Biden’s been a taker in government 47 years and what the hell has he ever given to me?

    Nothing.

    Trump at least sent me a check.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  199. Trump at least sent me a check.

    Are you allowed to say that under your NDA, DCSCA?

    nk (1d9030)

  200. Classic liberals don’t vote for modern liberals. They are literally the opposite. It’s like someone saying “I’m a capitalist and I’m voting for Stalin”.

    Vote for JoJo if you must. But not Biden. It’s illogical.

    PH2 (2f3b52) — 10/31/2020 @ 7:30 pm

    A lot of the commenters here, who came of age during the early 70s-early 90s don’t seem to understand that there’s a political realignment taking place. It doesn’t matter what they label themselves at this point, because they’re going to eventually pick a side, one way or another.
    nk’s right about one thing–it’s not “conservative” vs. “liberal” anymore. That’s a paradigm that began percolating during the Wilson administration and was cemented during the Great Depression, and it’s rapidly coming to an end.

    Going forward, the paradigm is going to be somewhat similar to the one that emerged after the Civil War, but in reverse: the Republicans are going to be “populist/nationalist” and the Democrats are going to be “corporatist/globalist.” The former are going to be mostly lower-middle-class to upper-middle-class voters who tend to be from the white blue collar, rural, and exurban demographics. The latter will continue to be supported by the lower-class vote, but be largely dominated by upper-middle-class to upper-class, white-collar professionals–technocrats who network between academia, mass media, Big Tech, corporate workplaces, government offices, and the non-profit sector, especially in the DC-NY and SF-LA corridors and urban centers of the Red states. The suburbs, Republican-leaning for decades, will be a swing demographic due to the overlap of middle- and upper-middle-class voters.

    Both sides will continue fighting over marginal gains in the minority vote like they’ve been doing for the last 80 years–and this is where a lot of the political conflict will likely center, because while white liberals are the only political demographic in this country that has a negative in-group ethnic preference, as Antifa has shown, that perspective whipsaws when a minority doesn’t fall in line, leading to the spewing of ethnic slurs and stereotypes that would make a KKK member say, “hey, maybe you should calm down.” LBGTQ individuals will almost certainly continue to dominate in support of the Democrats because the vast majority of them are part of the technocrat class. Legislation is going to be crafted based not on compromise and helping as many people as possible, but helping allies and hurting enemies.

    Being a “classical liberal” doesn’t apply in this kind of political paradigm.

    Factory Working Orphan (f2abc6)

  201. It’s more like statist and free. If you are for increasing the power of government it doesn’t really matter why you want to do it, the act itself is harmful. That doesn’t mean we don’t need government, we do — I want zoning laws that prevent someone opening a fertilizer depot next door to me — but we probably need less than we have now, and we need it closer to, and more responsive to, the people involved — I also don’t want someone in DC doing the zoning.

    I think Obama’s Life of Julia is the litmus test. Do you find this appealing?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  202. I think Obama’s Life of Julia is the litmus test. Do you find this appealing?

    No, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find much substantive difference with the 2020 GOP platform. (“Whatever Trump wants, we’re for it.”)

    Trumpism is simply promising a different set of people that the government is going to pull strings and write checks to help them get ahead when they won’t do it themselves.

    Like raising tariffs to create 6,000 unsustainable jobs for steel workers while sending 75,000 workers in related manufacturing industries to the bread line. Or making American consumers pay higher taxes on goods and services so he can brag about writing checks to farmers to make up for the export revenue he cost them.

    Democrats and their promises are too clever by half, while the Trump party takes its marching orders from an aggressively ignorant halfwit.

    Dave (1bb933)

  203. It doesn’t matter whether your beliefs are liberal, conservative, classical liberal, corporatist, globalist, or populist. It is still politics and it is still corruption.

    DRJ (aede82)

  204. If corruption is your #1 issue, you should be voting Trump.

    Are his ethics sketchy at best? Absolutely! But we know whatever he tries, the media will dig and dig and dig in order to root it out.

    We already have seen how the media will serve as Biden’s protection racket: banning any talk about potential corruption.
    No one will investigate.
    No one will report.
    No one will criticize.
    And if anyone dare does, they’ll be deplatformed and ostracized so fast, your head will spin. They will once again sell the “scandal free” lie and demand you lap it up.

    Sorry, no.
    I’m voting for transparency.
    I’m voting for rugged fact-checking.
    I’m voting for a press that will shine a flashlight in all the dark corners.
    I’m voting for Trump.

    SaveFarris (1bfd6d)

  205. If corruption is your #1 issue, you should be voting Trump.

    HA!!

    Paul Montagu (77c694)

  206. One of the cringey aspects of recent stimuli maybe the food giveaways…I am convinced that it was done primarily as part of helping farmers and food packaging makers. Hence my shrug about Mitch walking home with the ball.

    urbanleftbehind (32ae21)

  207. Ferris, if people split their tickets i.e. the Senate, I could live with a bottled up Trump, the same way people in live in WI, KY and LA with their bottled-up Dem governors.

    urbanleftbehind (32ae21)

  208. mr. president drumpfy mcdrumpfelschnitzel, whose friends of the fancy persuasions don’t admit that it’s part of the scene, does not care if he is found out

    he is brazen in his corruption

    cas me outside he says

    he could perform an unnatural act with a pickup truck on fifth avenue and call it fake news

    and his chicken-pluckers will applaud him

    nk (1d9030)

  209. It’s more like statist and free.

    That’s a libertarian pretense which doesn’t take reality into account. If it was going in this direction, you’d see larger rumblings to get rid of whole government departments like DHS and Education. That’s not happening.

    I think Obama’s Life of Julia is the litmus test. Do you find this appealing?

    No, but ultimately it doesn’t matter because Life of Julia is an exercise in political question-begging and bad-faith arguments. It also falls under the old liberal/conservative paradigm. Like I said, that’s coming to an end. If it wasn’t, the Republican base wouldn’t have demanded that a 1980s Democrat with multiple affairs to his name be the party nominee, nor would they be doing massive car/boat parades and going to rallies for him in support of his re-election.

    It doesn’t matter whether your beliefs are liberal, conservative, classical liberal, corporatist, globalist, or populist. It is still politics and it is still corruption.

    You’re right, it doesn’t matter in that sense because politics has been inherently corrupt going back to the ancient Sumerians. But most people are still going to pick a side in politically dualistic system.

    he could perform an unnatural act with a pickup truck on fifth avenue and call it fake news

    and his chicken-pluckers will applaud him

    So, the corporatist/globalist side for you, then? Because anyone who legitimately believes that the neocons and Lincoln Project-types, or the “classical liberals” who eagerly accepted massive expansions of government and wars in the Middle East over the last 30 years, are going to waltz back in and be “welcomed as liberators” to the Republicans if Trump loses, are deluding themselves. The Republican base sees them as Democrats (trying to get Democrats elected out of spite will create that impression), and aren’t interested in what they have to say anymore.

    Factory Working Orphan (f2abc6)

  210. aphrael @61

    Kevin M – the law in question explicitly requires that the people *collecting* the ballot *also* sign the outside of the envelope and provide contact information to the voter.

    I signed the outside of one of my housemate’s ballots when I returned it for him.

    The ballot drop boxes set up by the party do not comply with that requirement.

    That detail didn’t make it into what I read, but news stories often never capture crucial facts. What I read was a Republican defense that only one of their dropboxes was marked official and only for a time. The Democratic charge, as it made it onto this board, seemed to be that Republicans were trying to capture and discard likely Democratic votes, and a news story seemed to indicate that they were placed in Republican leaning areas. Nothing about having to give what amounts to a receipt with contact information, and for the first person who took it from the voter needing to sign their own name on the ballot.

    The Washington Post had this:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/12/california-illegal-ballot-boxes

    Nothing about why exactly they are illegal until way way down in the article, but nothing about a receipt (in fact it sounds almost like the distinction between a bank teller and an ATM machine) , and the California Attorney General tried to imply that the Republicans were trying to lose people’s votes, although if you read it carefully you see it was advertised on social media that leaned Republican. They were trying to bring in extra votes – and because California is such an overwhelmingly Democratic states, this was with local races in mind.

    Furthermore they allowed the Republicans to cure the problem by providing the “names, addresses and birth dates of people who have already dropped ballots into the unauthorized boxes” – how would they know that? Names and addresses might be on the ballots, but asking for dates of birth, either means they want the Republicans to look up records of registered voter, or means the voter has to wrte that on the envelope or it’s preprinted, and saying that the “election officials” would then “contact them and verify their ballots.”

    That sounds like if they are not “verified,” those voters are going to lose their votes. (In some counties they might be able to vote in person by affidavit – if they know of the problem.)

    Sounds like it is the California Democrats who are trying to disqualify likely Republican voters on the grounds of preventing voter fraud. Where it is unlikely. While trying to make it sound like they are doing the opposite.

    “There is nothing more precious or fundamental in a real democracy than the vote,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) said in a statement Monday. “Anyone who tampers with the vote is tampering with free and fair elections. We will do all that’s necessary under law to protect Californians’ right to vote.”

    The letter gives GOP chapters a Thursday deadline to provide the secretary of state’s office with the names, addresses and birth dates of people who have already dropped ballots into the unauthorized boxes, so that election officials can contact them and verify their ballots. Those ballots must also be returned to election officials by Thursday.

    If the Republican Party chapters do not comply, state officials said they are “prepared to take action to enforce state law, should it become necessary.”

    The metal boxes have popped up around Southern California in recent weeks, from churches to gun stores to gyms. On the front, an authoritative-looking sign beckons to voters: “Official ballot drop-off box.” [Republicans claimed only one box had the word official on it]

    The California GOP has pushed voters to pop their mail-in ballots inside. Social media posts have advertised their locations, and one regional field director posted a photo to Twitter on Friday showing him holding a ballot in front of one of the boxes.

    “Doing my part and voting early,” Jordan Tygh wrote in the now-deleted tweet, which was reviewed by The Washington Post before it was removed. “DM me for convenient locations to drop your ballot off at!”

    But those containers, which were first reported by the Orange County Register and KCAL, are not county-authorized ballot drop-off sites. In fact, the unofficial boxes are against the law, state officials said Sunday.

    “Operating unofficial ballot drop boxes — especially those misrepresented as official drop boxes — is not just misleading to voters, it’s a violation of state law,” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a Democrat, told The Post in an email. “My office is coordinating with local officials to address the multiple reports of unauthorized ballot drop boxes. Californians should only use official ballot drop boxes that have been deployed and secured by their county elections office.”

    ….Official ballot return locations are listed on the secretary of state’s website. But Republican leaders are encouraging voters to bring their completed ballots to unlisted sites equipped with the unofficial green boxes, at locations including smog checks and gas stations.

    The GOP said it was using a 2016 law, passed by Democrats, that the party argues legalized a practice called “ballot harvesting.”

    ….The California law allows people to hand their ballots over to any designated person, who then delivers the ballot. Under that law, California Democrats have held “ballot parties” where attendees fill out their mail-in ballots and leave them with volunteers who return the ballots en masse. But Republicans in the state often decry ballot harvesting, and the California GOP sued Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) this year over the practice.

    Now, the party is using the same law to justify the unofficial ballot boxes, arguing that its boxes are akin to volunteers who collect ballots from voters. “This procedure has been in place since 2016 — not sure why people are all of a sudden surprised,” the California GOP tweeted.

    The National Republican Congressional Committee also defended the unofficial ballot boxes, suggesting in a tweet that California Democrats were “only ok with ballot harvesting when it’s the Democrats ballot harvesting.”

    But Padilla’s office said on Sunday that the boxes are not legal under the 2016 law, because that statute requires a voter to designate a “person” to return the ballot, and there is no person present at the unofficial drop-off boxes. Official drop-off boxes, meanwhile, must satisfy a long list of requirements to secure the boxes and ensure ballots cannot be tampered with. The GOP’s containers do not meet those requirements, Padilla said.

    At least one chapter of the California Republican Party has said it is deploying its own ballot drop-off sites because of concerns over “security,” despite scant evidence that mail-in voting leads to fraud.

    “CONSERVATIVE VOTER ALERT!” the Fresno GOP said in an introduction to its list of unofficial ballot return locations. “President Trump is very concerned about the lack of security with mail in ballots. Don’t take a chance that your vote will not be counted. Once your ballot arrives in the mail, mark your ballot completely and then walk it in, as soon as possible, to one of the secure locations listed below. Make sure your vote counts!”

    The Fresno GOP deleted the list of ballot box locations on Monday, but an archived version was captured on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

    ….

    And some mailed ballots are rejected because of errors or because the voter returned the ballot too late.

    Some? Something like 10% or 20%

    https://nypost.com/2020/08/05/84000-mail-in-ballots-disqualified-in-nyc-primary-election

    The city BOE received 403,103 mail-in ballots for the June 23 Democratic presidential primary.

    But the certified results released Wednesday revealed that only 318,995 mail-in ballots were counted.

    That means 84,108 ballots were not counted or invalidated — 21 percent of the total.

    One out of four mail-in ballots were disqualified for arriving late, lacking a postmark or failing to include a voter’s signature, or other defects. The Post reported Tuesday that roughly 30,000 mail-in ballots were invalidated in Brooklyn alone.

    In Pennsylvania, they estimate 10%

    Some states give people more ways to go wrong than others.

    Sammy Finkelman (125d6f)

  211. Меня не интересует мнение путинских трусиков, товарищ VPN.

    nk (1d9030)

  212. Возможно, вас не интересуют трусики Путина, но трусики Путина очень заинтересованы в ВАС.

    Dave (1bb933)

  213. There were even people in here saying the Post’s Twitter acct should be banned.

    Forget it, harkin, it’s PattericoTown…

    Colonel Haiku (951ecf)

  214. @206. That’s very Ed Rooney of you. He got a computer instead of a car for graduation, too.

    He just doesn’t know how to use it– and left his wallet on the kitchen floor. 😉

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  215. @209. He’ll blow with the prevailing wind once he’s re-upped. And feed the righties SCOTUS buns and tea.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  216. A lot of the commenters here, who came of age during the early 70s-early 90s don’t seem to understand that there’s a political realignment taking place. It doesn’t matter what they label themselves at this point, because they’re going to eventually pick a side, one way or another.

    Welcome to 1964. 😉

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  217. Aloha Col.

    mg (8cbc69)

  218. The Mugwamps gave the US Grover Cleveland. yay [golf clap]
    https://millercenter.org/president/cleveland/impact-and-legacy.

    steveg (43b7a5)

  219. Welcome to 1964. 😉

    I’d say 1968, but I’m pretty sure we’re looking through the same window regardless.

    Factory Working Orphan (f2abc6)

  220. Victor at 149:

    Newsweek has stayed the same for over 27 years, through numerous changes in ownership. In 1993 they ran a cover story about false allegations about sexual abuse of children 0 then six weeks later ran another saying that that had been going on in the Branch Davidian cult – based on the same kid of evidence.

    Friend of Bill Jay William Buford, head of the Bureau of alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Little Rock and one of the three leaders of the raid, had been responsible for adding (legally irrelevant) allegations of that nature to the Waco search warrant in January, 1993, after Bill Clinton;s election as president, but before his inauguration.

    Sammy Finkelman (125d6f)

  221. 125. aphrael (4c4719) — 10/30/2020 @ 4:09 pm

    Imagine this in the worst case California context. 9 am on election day an earthquake takes out a dozen polling places in Los Angeles County. There’s no provision in the election code for dealing with this, but the election code does require you to vote in your assigned polling place.

    They might want to cancel the entire election, because a lot of people will be busy doing other things during the remainder of the day.

    That’s what happened on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. It was New York City primary election day – nothing federal, nothing state. Some people who worked in the Wall Street area had already voted (polls open at 6 am in New York) but obviously some intended to vote later. Of those who arrived by 8:48, most I would guess had not voted because they had until 9 p.m. that night to vote.

    The Board of Elections told us (very far away) to close the polls at about 12:30 pm, and we recorded the votes just like on Election Night, assuming that maybe the election would be resumed where it left off.

    I am not sure what authority was used to end the election, but I think the sate legislature passed a law scheduling a new date for primary and the runoff.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/11/national/thousands-feared-dead-as-world-trade-center-is-toppled.html

    New York City officials called off voting in the primary elections for Democratic and Republican candidates for mayor, City Council and other offices. Mr. Pataki said the primary was postponed in part because several schools that doubled as polling places had been closed after the attacks.

    That doesn;t make clear the legal basis for this.

    Rescheduling is clearer:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/14/us/after-attacks-election-primary-rescheduled-for-sept-25-with-runoff-if-necessary.html

    The change in date, which applies to all primaries across New York, including one for county executive in Nassau County, was approved by the State Legislature during a special session in Albany.

    …The Board of Elections began to collect election machines from around the city yesterday, except in the area south of 14th Street. The machines will be reset and none of the votes that were cast on Tuesday will be counted. The board’s spokeswoman, Naomi Bernstein, said the election was being started as if Primary Day never happened.

    The same thing would probably happen in California in the event of an earthquake in Los Angeles.

    The difference here is that it is a federal presidential election, and only Congress can change the dates, and there’s a political division as to whether any changes should be made.

    If there was a bipartisan consensus that the rules needed to be changed they would be, By whoevver had the authority to do so, usually the state legislature.

    There are good reasons, in many cases

    A) They weren’t very good in the first place, but the problem was ignored because not too many people were affected and it wouldn’t affect the outcome of many elections.

    And

    B) Postal mail delivery is about 1 or 2 days slower than it used to be.

    And

    C) Many more people are voting absentee

    It wouldn’t be such a big deal for the Governor to call the legislature into special session and pass a few bills.

    If there was a bipartisan consensus.

    The arguments being put forward in various court filings would hold that under such circumstances, none of the federal courts, the california courts, the secretary of state’s office, the governor’s office, or the county election’s office could remedy the situation by allowing the voters to vote in different polling places.

    Not a problem, any more than it was a problem in New York after September 11, 2001 because there was political agreement

    They’re promulgating a cure that’s way, way, way worse than the disease. And they’re doing it for short-term partisan motivation.

    That’s the only reason, they need to go to the courts, or the Governor’s office or the Secretary of States office, rather than have the state legislature fix this.

    Sammy Finkelman (125d6f)

  222. Democrats decided on a cargo-cult Trump, in order to win, and then install the one who couldn’t make it on her own. To pretend Biden isn’t corrupt and demented times over his opponent is neither reasonable nort realistic. I don’t like Trump, but I don’t intend to have democrats use him as a Trojan horse to install policies that will attack liberty, free speech, freedom of religion and free enterprise, and utterly gut the American experiment. Four (or fewer) years of Trump means Trump in the way of those designs and it’s reason enough for me to pray for his winning now.

    God help us all.

    SarahW (08f5d7)


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