HOW TO STEAL AN ELECTION

 

As Donald Trump continues his flailing, borderline incoherent attempts to overturn an election he clearly lost, it might be a good time to remember a past election that was, in my opinion, stolen successfully. 

 In the year two thousand, Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W Bush were running neck and neck in the presidential election.  Gore's years as Vice President under Bill Clinton had seen the country experience enormous peace and prosperity.  But Clinton had also been impeached by the House of Representatives and had suffered withering attacks on his character (some reasonable, some not) from the Republican Party.  George W Bush, meanwhile, was seen as an amiable dimwit who was lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family with a political legacy.  And there was a viable third party candidate, Ralph Nader running on the Green Party ticket, that was siphoning votes away from Gore.  (And whom I voted for, a vote I would later deeply regret).

An election as close as that one was, was sure to come down to the wire.  In fact, it was a mess, as it all wound up in the state of Florida, which veered from one candidate to another as the election night wore on.  At one point Gore called Bush to concede, and then called back to rescind the first call!  

While there was all kinds of craziness going on in the recounts in that state, from confusing "butterfly" ballots that may have gotten voters to vote for the wrong candidate to election officials surveying ballots to try and discern the voter's intent, it was far from America's finest hour of democracy.  As we all know, the supreme court stepped in and essentially gave the presidency to Bush by halting all the recounts.  But was he really the candidate who won, or was it just close enough for him to steal it?  I certainly think that  it was stolen.

Why?  Because,  beyond the insanity, one chilling fact emerged after it was too late to do anything about it: many African American voters said that when they went to vote, they were told that their names were not on the voting list and they were turned away.  While we don't know how many voters were wrongfully turned away, considering that the final vote count for George W Bush was a miniscule five hundred and thirty seven more than Al Gore's shows how easily the election could have turned to Gore.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People eventually sued the state, and during the investigation it was discovered that, because Florida did not let felons vote, a list of felons had to be sent to election officials to remove from the voting rolls.  And the company that made that list, Database Technologies, overshot the list, putting names on that shouldn't have been for a variety of reasons.  Edward Hailes, who was then the acting general counsel of the US Civil Rights Commission, said that the number of disenfranchised African American voters was in the thousands, and added that “We did think it was outcome-determinative.” 

While these findings did lead to changes in the Florida voting process, it was, or course, too late to do anything about the outcome of the election.  Putting it simply, the election was close enough for Bush to steal it in a state in which, it should be remembered, his own brother was governor of.  And he was aided by a supreme court that had two members that had been put there by his father.   It was almost a third world dictatorship level of corruption.  

Not only would Bush prove to be a disastrous president, the legacy of the Florida debacle would live on in the Republican Party's repeated attempts to suppress the voting rights of non white voters (especially African Americans).  From wildly overblown charges of voter fraud to Gerrymandering, the GOP will use almost any means possible to disenfranchise voters unlikely to vote for them.

And the legacy of voter suppression lives on now in Trump's wild rantings; along with crazy charges of rigged voting machines and lost ballots, he and his legal team have focused on trying to get votes thrown out of cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia.  Cities that have, naturally, high African American populations.  While there is virtually no chance that Trump and his legal team will prevail, the sad reality is that another stolen election could be on the horizon.  There is simply no reason for the Republican Party to abandon their attempts at voter suppression when they have often proven successful; really, it's just the logical extension of the Southern Strategy that the party has been using to get blue collar white voters to vote for them for decades.   Although I like to think that someday there will be a reckoning for the Republican Party's extremism that will cause them to have to be more open to compromise and move towards the center politically, given their ability to game the system for power, that day may not be for a while.

UM...FINALLY

This is the second time I've used the word "finally" in the title of a blog post regarding Donald Trump.  The first time I used it was way back in September of twenty sixteen when then candidate Trump held a press conference in which he announced that he no longer believed that President Barack Obama was lying about his birthplace.  And now, four years later, I'm using that word again to describe him admitting something that the vast majority of the world knows to be true: that he lost the election to Joe Biden.

The use of the word "finally" is crucial both times, because they both indicate just how much Trump has lowered the office of the presidency since he first decided to run back in twenty fifteen.  The first time it seemed appalling to me that someone who was spreading vile conspiracies about the president could possibly win the Republican nomination for president (boy was I naive!).  And it must be remembered that even as Trump admitted that birtherism was wrong, he also said that it was started by the Hillary Clinton campaign back in two thousand and eight (it wasn't) and that Trump himself was the one who ended it (actually, he had kept it going for years).  In other words, even when he was right about something, he was still dishonest.

Which is why, even though I'm glad that Trump has conceded, the reluctance he has shows illustrates the damage he has done to our country and the world, and it in no way makes me feel better about a man like him ever being in the White House in the first place.  Remember that his concesion comes over two weeks after the election was officially called on November the seventh, and only after his legal team flooded the courts with challenges in swing states, almost all of which were swiftly and summarily thrown out.  The fact of the matter is that this election wasn't even close, with Biden getting over six million more popular votes and winning in the Electoral College by three hundred and six votes to Trump's two hundred and thirty two.  Only the most cult like follower of Trump could possibly believe that over six million votes were stolen, which would be an electoral fraud of epic proportions. 

It would appear that the straw that finally broke Trump's back was that fact that even business leaders who supported his reelection told him to step down for the good of the country.  There was also talk of Republican donors refusing to support the party as long as he kept fighting.  Sadly, like so many other things in this country, it all came down to money.

And in typical Trumpian fashion, even his concession tweets don't really sound like a real concession:  

"I want to thank Emily Murphy at GSA for her steadfast dedication and loyalty to our Country. She has been harassed, threatened, and abused – and I do not want to see this happen to her, her family, or employees of GSA. Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good.....fight, and I believe we will prevail! Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same."

Yeah, it's hardly a statement of contrition, but I'll take it just to get rid of him.  Now I hope that once he's out of the White House the various legal charges against him will proceed, keeping him from running again in twenty twenty four. We'll see.

EVEN FOX NEWS?

Donald Trump may be having his John Birch Society moment.  Although it's now a shadow of its former self, back in the nineteen fifties and sixties, that far right political group had an enormous influence on right wing, cold war politics.  At first, William F Buckley, conservative intellectual and founder of the right wing magazine The National Review, embraced the organization. But then it was discovered that Birch Society founder Robert W. Welch Jr. had once written a political statement accusing then President Dwight D Eisenhower of being a Communist.  The absurd notion that a Republican president and war hero could be a red was too much for Buckley, who openly denounced the extreme group.  It's hard to believe that there was ever a right wing movement to the right of Buckley, but there was.  Sadly, unlike Buckley, the Republican Party is not doing the right thing and turning on Trump, even as he distorts reality.

In the past few days, Donald Trump has been publicly turning on Fox News, the Roger Aisles founded network that somehow isn't conservative enough for him.  Although no other large news organization has more openly defended and cheered Trump, he still has lashed out against it in his tweets.  Why?  Because, despite what the right wing opinion shows on the station are saying, the more news oriented programs on the network have accepted the reality of Joe Biden defeating Trump.  To add insult to injury, during the election, Fox was the first network to call the state of Arizona for Biden.  So now Trump has started touting other even more extreme (but far less popular) right wing networks  like the  One America News Network or Newsmax, which claim that there is still a chance that Trump will win the election through his (baseless) legal actions.  

So here we have a prime example of the damage Trump has done to not only the nation but to his chosen political party as well.  It isn't enough for him that the commentary shows on Fox are still hyping his "stolen election" narrative, he still feels betrayed by Fox because their reality based news anchors won't fall in line behind him.  In his world, if he says the sky is purple, the right wing news media had better agree.

Sadly, this all just a part of how completely the Republican party has become a cult around Trump.  Just look at their party platform at the last convention, which was nothing more than a statement that Trump speaks for the party on all things. Think about how the party that once pushed Jimmy Carter into selling his peanut farm after  he was elected president because it was a conflict of interest was fine with Trump running a hotel that bore his name in Washington DC while he was president.  The party that denounced Bill Clinton for "immorality" when he was president ignored twenty six different women charging Trump with sexual assault or rape.  The party that celebrated Ronald Reagan even as he granted amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants, later supported a man who wanted to build a wall on the border and called Mexican immigrants "rapists".  And now they're so cowed by him and his popularity in the party that only a handful of elected Republican officials are willing to admit that he lost.  There's a feeling in the party that Trump just needs some time and  space to deal with his feelings about losing, as if the president were a screaming child throwing his toys around, instead of a grown man. 

So, even though Trump is destined to leave the White House on January twentieth (perhaps kicking and screaming all the way), his influence on the party will continue.  Just how will that influence will express itself?  Perhaps he will join with Newsmax or OANN to create his own right wing mediasphere in which his every tweet will be regarded as words from the lord on high.  Or he may run again in twenty twenty four, striking fear into the hearts of other Republican candidates(and any decent American for that matter).  In any event, his stamp of xenophobia, bigotry and outright corruption will brand the party for years to come, and, hopefully, someday it will pay a steep price for every supporting a man like him in the first place.

DONALD TRUMP AND THE DANGERS OF CELEBRITY WORSHIP

As Donald Trump continues to flail vainly at the outcome of the election, and his political career looks like it will soon be in the rear view mirror, it might be a good time to consider just how America elected such a man in the first place.   While there are a number of factors that led to his election, from white resentment to the Comey memo, one factor that is rarely talked about is Trump's image as a celebrity.

Before that, let's look at the reelection of Barack Obama in two thousand and twelve.  After his victory, the Republican Party went through a lot of soul searching.  When he had won the first time in two thousand and eight, they rationalized that fall out from the disastrous Iraq war and the terrible economy meant that no Republican could win that year.  But Obama's second victory was different, as it was a straight up battle between Republican and Democratic priorities, and  Obama's win seemed to show a definite shift in attitudes in the American public.  The Republican party realized that if they didn't find a way to appeal to younger, non white voters, their days in the White House coming to an end.  And yet, four years later they would embrace a candidate who seemed to have zero to say to anyone but white older voters.  And he improbably won.

It's amazing to remember now what a joke Trump's campaign looked like back in twenty fifteen.  Most of the media dismissed him as a silly sideshow, a TV star in over his head, making racist comments in his opening speech and lying and bragging constantly.  But he kept winning, despite the fact that he broke every rule of being a successful politician (not to mention every rule of common decency).  After openly criticizing the war record of Senator John McCain, many Republican politicians thought that his political career was over.  But he just kept steamrolling.

While much of his popularity in the Republican party seemed to stem from his channeling of the angers, fears and hatreds of older, white Americans, his appeal went beyond the limits of his party.  When he won the twenty sixteen election, he was able to also get enough  independent (and even Democratic!) votes to push him over the finish line.  Surely not all of his support was based on pure racism.  After all, analysis by the UVA Center for Politics after the election found that millions of voters switched from Obama to Trump.  So race was not the only deciding factor in his twenty sixteen win.

So what else was it?  What could possibly make people who voted for Obama vote for a man who repeatedly said that Obama was not a legitimate president?  Well, I think one answer can be found in an interview I heard with one of those voters, a pro choice,  woman  who supported gay marriage, and yet  switched from Obama to Trump.  When asked why, she replied that "He's a successful businessman, he knows how the economy works."  This to me maybe the key to Trump's political success: he's never been a politician, he's a celebrity, one with a strong image burned into the minds of the American public.

Remember, Trump is truly a unique figure in presidential politics; never before had someone moved so quickly from celebrity to president.  Yes, Ronald Reagan had been a movie star, but by the time he ran in nineteen eighty, he hadn't been in a movie in many years.  Trump, on the other hand, was still a television star the day he declared.  So Trump is still to this day a celebrity first and a politician second, and that has played well for him because the public holds celebrities to a different standard than politicians.  For example, way back in nineteen eighty eight, then Senator Joe Biden had to drop out of the presidential race, just because he plagiarized a speech.  Trump obviously did far worse than that in his campaign, but it didn't matter, because, as he himself put it on the infamous Access Hollywood tape:  "When you're a star they just let you do it, you can do anything."  People have always forgiven, and even encouraged, bad behavior in our celebrities.  From The Rolling Stones openly using drugs to Hugh Grant getting busted for soliciting a prostitute, famous people are almost never punished for the things they do.  This helps explain why Trump's offensive statements and lies have rarely hurt him politically.    

Also, another important thing to think about is the persona that celebrities build around themselves.  Look at John Wayne, a star who for years personified the swaggering, manly man in movie after movie.  Did it hurt his image that he chose not to serve in the military during World War Two?  (He was too old to be drafted, but was young enough to have served voluntarily if he had wanted to).  No.  He had branded his image as a tough guy in so many movies that it didn't matter.  He was still the ultimate cowboy.  And so it is with Trump, who has spent most of his life promoting himself as the ultimate successful tycoon.  Just look at the opening credits of his television show The Apprentice, which depicts him as almost godlike, as he goes from flying in a private helicopter, to riding in a limo to entering a skyscraper that bears his name.  To million of viewers, there was no question that he was a great businessman and dealer.  The fact that he inherited his father's already very profitable business, or that he declared bankruptcy five times, didn't matter.  His image of a wealthy, self made man was more powerful than the truth.  Given this, even his terrible treatment of women can be excused; that's just how powerful men are.  They take what they want because they can.

Twice now, Trump has beaten the polls, which pegged him to lose to Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen and to lose by a bigger margin to Biden than he eventually did.  But there is still some  good news for the future here.  I think that the Trump presidency will be seen as a once in a lifetime phenomenon.  Currently,  there are no other right wing media figures out there who could bring his combination of celebrityhood, extreme self confidence and image of success into the political arena the way he did.  What that means is that the Republican party got very lucky in twenty sixteen, and that they are still going to have to find a way to appeal beyond their old, white base if they want any more national success in the future.  But then again, Trump could run in twenty twenty four...

ONE LAST TANTRUM

 

Donald Trump lost.  There is no question.  The election went smoothly, without violence or strife.  The votes have been counted and at this point Joe Biden received over seventy five million votes and Trump  over seventy one million.  In the Electoral College, Biden currently holds two hundred and ninety votes to Trump's two hundred and fourteen.  With three more states yet to finish counting, it is likely the final tally will be three hundred and six votes for Biden and two hundred and thirty two votes for Trump.  Although the time it took to finalize the vote counting in some states gave a few of us Biden supporters nightmares, in the end it wasn't that close an election.  Sure, Trump outperformed the polls (again), but a Biden victory was predicted months ago, and it was delivered Saturday when Pennsylvania was called for him.

For months leading up to the election, Trump has been saying that mail in voting is open to massive fraud and that he will contest the results.  And so that has come to pass. Without a word of concession, he has started legal proceedings in several states, led by his ghoul-like lawyer Rudy Giuliani.   

The chances of any of his legal arguments actually succeeding are virtually none.  If voting fraud did take place, that would have to mean that the Democratic party manipulated millions of votes in several different states, which would be the largest election scandal ever.  And that while  they were doing this, somehow they forgot  to defeat other Republican candidates, like Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell.  Devious and dumb at the same time!  While the Trump team seems to be holding onto the precedent set the last time there was a highly contested election (Bush Vs Gore in the year two thousand), it must be pointed out that that was an extremely close election (only half a million votes separated the two candidates) that all came down to a razor thin margin of around five hundred votes in one state.  Nothing in this contest compares.  For Trump to prevail he would have to somehow flip more than one state that he lost, and that's really impossible.  Not even a Supreme Court with three of his appointments can do that. 

The sad thing is that many Republican leaders, like Graham and McConnell, are either saying nothing or encouraging Trump's legal actions.  So, far, only four Republican Senators have publicly endorsed Biden's victory.  I imagine that this has more to do with elected Republicans fearing to cross Trump and his vice like hold on the Republican voters than it does any actual belief that he will prevail.  To Republican officials, supporting Trump even  as he says foolish or awful things has become reflexive in the past four years.  Siding with him yet again is nothing new for them.

 In many ways, Trump's refusal to accept the election results is laughable, as he continues to think that the world works only by his rules.  But it is important to consider just how despicable he is being here.   No president in the history of this country has attacked a perfectly legitimate election result before.  Nixon's corruption didn't even come close. His actions are an insult to the entire idea of democracy, not to mention the constitution. Trump is calling for nothing less than a coup. Even if it is a failed one. it's still simply terrible that our nation has a president trying something so extreme.  Hopefully, America will never sink to the level of Trump ever again.

2020, THE GOOD AND THE BAD

 

It is official's now:  Joe Biden has won the state of Pennsylvania, earning him the presidency.  Current President Donald Trump, who absurdly tried to claim victory before all the votes were counted two days ago, can scream and try to sue, but there is no path to victory for him.  Already the  legal challenges he has tried to make are  failing in different courts. Put simply, this election wasn't close enough for him to cheat.   Despite his  party's attempts to suppress the vote, or his attempt  to sabotage the post office to gum up mail in votes, there was just too much voter turnout, both in person and by mail, for him to pull off another upset.

First, the good news.  Despite the fears of many Americans, this election went as smoothly as possible.  There were no riots or violent confrontations, no Proud Boys intimidating voters of color.  The feared Civil War didn't arrive. And, despite the pandemic, the turnout was historically large, with over one hundred and fifty million votes cast.  That puts the turnout rate at around sixty six percent, the largest number since the year nineteen hundred.

And, of course, by rejecting Trump the country has rejected the corruption, lies and bigotry that he has displayed in the last four years.  Trump now enters the list of one term presidents, the first to lose since nineteen ninety two.  If he had won another term, American democracy as we know it would have been seriously changed for the worse; instead we have a return to normalcy, with a president who is a decent, good natured man.  And of course, with Vice President Kamala Harris the country will have its first female vice president who is also a person of color.   

But this election wasn't perfect; first of all, Donald Trump outperformed all the polls and came closer to winning than was predicted.  In fact, he got more votes this time than he did in the last election, coming in at around seventy million votes.  (Biden came in at around seventy four).   And all the things that drove his unlikely campaign to victory four years ago, the racism and xenophobia,  are still driving forces for many of those seventy million people.

And it appears that the Democrats will not win a majority in the Senate and lose a few seats in the House of Representatives.  Without the Senate, the Republican party will be able to do to Biden what they did to Barack Obama, which is to filibuster and block nearly every part of his agenda.  This will become a real uphill battle for President Biden in the next four years.  But there is still much that the president can do without congress, and so Biden will be able to reverse many of the terrible things that Trump has done in the past four years.  Like I said, there will be battles once Biden is inaugurated, but right now I'm too happy to care.  This is a great moment for the country and the world, and I want to savour it. 

A NAIL BITER

 I always knew that there was a possibility that Donald Trump could win reelection; that despite his horrible response to the pandemic and his brutish behavior during the first debate, he could pull off another Electoral College win.  And here we are, at four AM PST with no winner yet declared.

Every poll seemed to show that there was a blue wave coming, with Biden  leading in both national and swing states polls.  But the wave seems to have dried up; Florida went for Trump, along with South Carolina.  And Texas,  the prize that Democrats have been wishing for in the past few cycles, stayed red again.

Still, this is not to say that Biden doesn't have a chance, he's currently leading in the Electoral College, with millions of votes to be counted in Nevada, Arizona,Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. It's just depressing that the race is close at all.  Once again, Trump's ability to channel the angers and fears of millions of white voters seems to be working. 

Even if Trump does win, he will become the first president in history to lose the popular vote twice (he's currently down in the popular vote by around two million, with little to no chance of his making that number up), displaying what an absolute joke of a democracy our country has become.  And it may get worse, with a conservative Supreme Court sure to uphold whatever voting limitations Republicans put it place in the future.

In typical Trump fashion, he has already claimed that he has won and the vote counting should end.  This is, of course, insane, but nearly every public statement this man has made in the past four years is either dishonest or crazy, so that's no surprise.  The good news is that there appears to be no way that Trump can just end the vote counting, even by going to the Supreme Court.

Still, I feel utterly ashamed and embarrassed that Trump didn't lose in a blowout last night.  I am just completely incapable of understanding how anyone could vote for such a corrupt bigot.  I recently wrote that our president's terrible handling of the pandemic made me ashamed to be an American.  Even if Joe Biden does prevail, last night's vote counts still fill me with shame.  

THE NATION'S FUTURE

I hate to be hyperbolic, but the next two days could be completely game changing for the future of our country.  While every presidential election is, of course, important, this one is especially significant.  The best case scenario is obvious: Joe Biden wins the presidency by a wide margin, with most of the swing states going his way.  President Trump would almost definitely try to cry foul, but if Biden's victory is a landslide, even the Republican party that has meekly supported or ignored every insane tweet or statement the President has made in the past four years would have to concede.  And then, on January twentieth Trump would step down and Biden would begin the job of repairing the country's image.  And while the danger of violence on the part of some of Trump's supporters is possible, I think for the most part they would just retreat back into the corner they held during the Obama years. Sanity would return, and Biden would be a safe, dull president.

It's the other alternatives to a Biden landslide that get frightening: although Biden's lead looks strong, it's entirely possible that Trump could still eke out a victory.   While it appears that Trump can't possibly win the popular vote, he could once again get just the right number of votes in the right number of states to pull out a win in the Electoral College.  If that proves to be the case, he would be the first president in history to lose the popular vote twice and still serve two terms.  Even worse, it would be a slap to the face once again to the majority of voters.  It would somehow mean that the Republican party, who have had only one presidential candidate win the popular vote in this century (George W Bush in two thousand and four), would hold the White House for another term.  Even worse, it would mean an extension of the extremist policies of the past four years, with the revitalized Trump administration going even harder against immigration and environmental degradation.  In out deeply divided country, there is often talk of some kind of division, with states splitting off somehow from the rest of the country.  While most of this seems crazy, if Donald Trump does pull off another win tomorrow, it is understandable that the people who live in a blue state like California might wonder why it needs to be anchored to a country that constantly seems at odds with their values.  While I don't see such a separation happening, I am sympathetic to the appeal of it to people who see a corrupt, extremist right wing president hold power despite being opposed by a majority of the voters.

Another nightmare scenario is that Biden at first appears to be losing in swing states, and then starts to pull ahead as mail in votes are counted.  Trump has repeatedly made unfounded claims of possible widespread voter fraud going against him from mail in voting.  It is entirely possible that he may declare an early victory in those states before the votes are all counted, and then scream fraud when those late votes go against him.  This could lead to lawsuits and counter lawsuits on whether those votes should be counted.  The ensuing legal mess could wind up at the Supreme Court (three of whom are Trump appointees), which could result in Trump winning a completely corrupt  election entirely through legal machinations.  This would essentially bring an  end to democracy in this country, making us no better than a third world dictatorship.   Trump would become the full on fascist leader that he's always wanted to be, and knowing him, would start working on appointing himself leader for life.  The upswell of anger from the people at this could result in real violence, with both the right and the left energized and enraged.  While I think a full on civil war is highly unlikely in such a scenario, the fury at the utter corruption that Trump may bring to maintain power means that it is possible.

Donald Trump has spent the last four years basically testing the limits of the presidency seeing how much he can get away with: from refusing to release his taxes, to running businesses while in office, from appointing unqualified family members to important positions of power, to pardoning former campaign advisor Roger Stone for crimes that Stone committed on Trump's behalf (a move that the New York Times said pushed him beyond Richard Nixon's level of corruption).  And time and time again he has gotten away with things no modern president has ever dared to try.  Stealing a close election would just be the icing on the cake for an egotistical psychopath like our president.  Here's hoping that he can't.