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Mail in voting and the election day train wreck

Newsflash, they said that in 2018 too and he got curbstomped in his midterms.

How do you guys see this stuff playing out? My neighbor is a Trump fanatic but I share beers with him all the time. Is he going to change his mind and start shooting up neighborhoods? The civil war had clear lines (an idiotic move by the founders, fudge those guys), where are the lines here? There's opposing signs all across the state. Where does the shooting start?
Outside of a few Kyle Rittenhouse type nutjobs I dont see GoP voters getting violent. Isolated violence only reflects negatively on a party so I see any crackpots using their 2A to oppose Biden pushing support his way. I mourn any lives lost but those are 100% on Trump's shoulders.

Hopefully you can get enough beers into your neighbor to incapacitate him.

I'm kidding.

I suspect that you are right and your neighbor is harmless. I think you are right that the majority of Trumpists will just drown their sorrows and cry in their beers. 90%? 95%? 98%? The difference is that I am more concerned about the damage that a few can do. Shooting up neighborhoods isn't a problem, except for the people in the neighborhood. But the level of dependence on infrastructure really is never overestimated. You are underestimating it by far. It only takes a small fraction of Trumpists going full whackjob to unwind the delicate structures we all rely on.
 
https://www.theolympian.com/news/local/crime/article245495910.html



One witness claims this is how that killing went down:



There are conflicting accounts, so I would not consider this anything like certain. But, I did say "maybe Bill Barr."



I can't give you proof the extreme will happen. I am not sure what actually will happen. All I can do is show you the pattern of increasingly extreme things and ask why you believe the pattern will not continue.
gross, but not a call for treason.
 
gross, but not a call for treason.

The US Attorney General possibly ordering an extrajudicial murder for political reasons may not technically count as "treason" but I never said it was treason, only that you may have to ask Barr when the shooting starts.

I don't have a gun, so I don't know when it will start.
 
gross, but not a call for treason.

How about this...

"The only way I can lose is if the election is rigged by the Democrats. If I lose it is a fraud and a sham."

Is that a call for treason, or an accusation of it?

When the GOP gets curbstomped in November and your friend is sitting there with you having a beer and acknowledging what you and I will recognize as the legit outcome of the election, will he not be a traitor?
 
Hopefully you can get enough beers into your neighbor to incapacitate him.

I'm kidding.

I suspect that you are right and your neighbor is harmless. I think you are right that the majority of Trumpists will just drown their sorrows and cry in their beers. 90%? 95%? 98%? The difference is that I am more concerned about the damage that a few can do. Shooting up neighborhoods isn't a problem, except for the people in the neighborhood. But the level of dependence on infrastructure really is never overestimated. You are underestimating it by far. It only takes a small fraction of Trumpists going full whackjob to unwind the delicate structures we all rely on.
I agree with the idea that a select few will cause trouble. I mourn any lives lost. The system (one I frequently rail against) will carry on.

In this respect you might have been right in arguing for Biden over Bernie. Biden's election will absolutely have less backlash, specifically because he isnt going to do horsehockey.
 
How about this...

"The only way I can lose is if the election is rigged by the Democrats. If I lose it is a fraud and a sham."

Is that a call for treason, or an accusation of it?

When the GOP gets curbstomped in November and your friend is sitting there with you having a beer and acknowledging what you and I will recognize as the legit outcome of the election, will he not be a traitor?
He wont. He voted for Obama. His own admission. Neither wi my dad, my uncle, my cousins, etc. In fact I have a cousin from Iowa that lamented the fact that Joe didn't run in 2016 but is a hard core Trump supporter.

Look, like I said, you're describing the extreme. At bare minimum find examples of militias forming to oppose Biden or something.

I hate Biden and I'm arguing this ffs.
 
He wont. He voted for Obama. His own admission. Neither wi my dad, my uncle, my cousins, etc. In fact I have a cousin from Iowa that lamented the fact that Joe didn't run in 2016 but is a hard core Trump supporter.

Look, like I said, you're describing the extreme. At bare minimum find examples of militias forming to oppose Biden or something.

I hate Biden and I'm arguing this ffs.

How are we supposed to find such examples? The government certainly isn't going to bother keeping track of them - not keeping tabs on far-right terrorism has been a Republican issue since at least 2009. That's of course assuming the government isn't going to actively collaborate with them.

But a prediction found in a 2009 report, titled “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” ignited the rage of conservative and veterans groups across the country. The DHS study warned that returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, traumatized abroad and underserved at home, would pose a particular threat to law enforcement while those two wars scaled down, in part by being drawn to radicalized movements inside the country.

“We were looking at the precursors to terrorism, precursors to criminality, which we call radicalization,” says Daryl Johnson, the unit’s former chief. “If the unit was still functioning today, we would definitely be on top of what’s going on—issuing a threat advisory, talking to law enforcement about how there’s a new emergence of violent groups.”

Johnson’s 2009 report, which was classified only for the eyes of law enforcement, leaked almost immediately, and became the first scandal, real or imagined, of the Obama presidency. It was also the moment when the political career of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano abruptly ground to a halt. “There was a backlash to it by the Republican establishment, as well as Fox News,” says Johnson, who today works in private security consulting that focuses on domestic terrorism. “The day after that thing was leaked, all of our work stopped.”
 
He wont. He voted for Obama. His own admission. Neither wi my dad, my uncle, my cousins, etc. In fact I have a cousin from Iowa that lamented the fact that Joe didn't run in 2016 but is a hard core Trump supporter.

Look, like I said, you're describing the extreme. At bare minimum find examples of militias forming to oppose Biden or something.

I hate Biden and I'm arguing this ffs.

You are ignoring the critical difference here. The Republicans hated losing the election to Obama. But they never (to my knowledge and I was a volunteer on the McCain campaign) questioned the fact that they lost. Rejecting the black man may have occurred to some of them as a 'preservation of the race' issue. All sorts of inane things may have and probably did cross their minds. But there was no one telling them that rejecting the outcome of the election could be, and even should be, couched in terms of a patriotic duty.

This is the first US election where a significant portion of the population is going to come away from it doubting its authenticity rather than just hating the outcome.
 
This is the first US election where a significant portion of the population is going to come away from it doubting its authenticity rather than just hating the outcome.

Ehhhhh. I can think of two that may have been worse: 1824, and 1876. But the first one in modern US history, yes.
 
Ehhhhh. I can think of two that may have been worse: 1824, and 1876. But the first one in modern US history, yes.

Maybe. I think what will put this one over the top is the lame duck aspect. The prospect of the sitting president publicly and repeatedly claiming that the election results are fraudulent is new.
 
Maybe. I think what will put this one over the top is the lame duck aspect. The prospect of the sitting president publicly and repeatedly claiming that the election results are fraudulent is new.

Yeah, I don't think any of the Presidents we've had have been actual megalomaniacs. Most of them have been quite evil of course but Trump brings something new and unprecedented to the table.
But, both of those elections were characterized by widespread accusations of fraud, on both sides in the case of 1876. And they weren't wrong: the Democrats really did rig the 1876 election across most of the former Confederacy.

But that's a story for another thread.
 
The primaries and caucuses and whatnot were/are getting rigged way later.
 
I think you got that wrong. Laschet's job was not on the line in any way. The only exception would have been a resignation in case of a crushing defeat, but 2.5% would not have made any difference there. The only thing that mattered beyond the local scope was how believably he could claim victory in support for his bid to become chancellor next year.

Local elections are notoriously hard to poll. I am even surprised that there were exit polls at all.

You are of course totally right. I tend to simplify things when explaining and sometimes get carried away. I should have phrased it like you did. I am sorry. It was however presented in the media as a referendum on his handling of the Corona-pandemic, so that‘s where I came from.

The important thing is there are elections happening everywhere in the world: The pollsters could use them to refine their predictions. But will they? And will it be enough to make them precise even though Corona? And more importantly: It‘s time to look outside the US as a political commentator if you want to make comments because this is what you can do (and primaries of course).
 
The important thing is there are elections happening everywhere in the world: The pollsters could use them to refine their predictions. But will they? And will it be enough to make them precise even though Corona? And more importantly: It‘s time to look outside the US as a political commentator if you want to make comments because this is what you can do (and primaries of course).

The question is how much is transferable to the US. I think the degree to which vote by mail has been politicized is quite unique.

You would need to know the skew of the votes by mail compared to the votes in person and I do not think that results from other countries would help much regarding the D/R split of votes in the US.

What could help would be the election organizers to look at other countries to get ideas how to efficiently organize an election. In Bavaria we had the local runoff elections in March which were switched to being entirely held by mail with a lead time of just two weeks with only minor issues. So it can be done, if there is some political will to hold fair elections. Unfortunately the will to hold fair elections is exactly what seems to be missing in the USA.
 
Trump is actually not just "lying as always." The pressures of the campaign have pushed him to new heights and he recently established a new benchmark by lying four times in a single sentence.

Congratulations to President Trump, and Republicans everywhere.
I think there's a fifth falsehood in that tweet, by the way. Can you spot it? The so called "royal you," I mean, not just Tim.
 
I think there's a fifth falsehood in that tweet, by the way. Can you spot it? The so called "royal you," I mean, not just Tim.

Well, he ends it with "just askin'" to falsely present it as a question when it is in fact a (grossly misleading) political statement.
 
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding--we have a winner.

And this one matters at least as much as the other four, I think. It's his version of the old "When did you stop hitting your wife?" If you take his question up as a question, you've already bought into the premise that McCabe should be paying someone back.

And there's one more thing. And it may be the most important of all.

Who would do this "forcing"?

Trump's tweets often gesture toward some obscure power that could do one thing or another. Independent of the actual mechanisms of our government or justice system. Tweets like this quietly pre-imagine an autocratic state.
 
From the California AG:

As our lawsuit continues, now, in a new mailer sent to Californians, the Trump administration is reportedly informing voters that mail-in ballots must “be requested” and to “add postage to the return envelope if needed.”

Both statements could lead to voter confusion. In California, mail-in ballots will be sent automatically to registered voters1 starting October 5th — and postage is not needed to return your ballot in our state.2
 
On the "be careful what you wish for" front, was recently reminded how many times I say along with:

Oh Lord
Are there really people starving still?
Look out beyond the walls at them
How long will their needs go unfilled?
I want to say right now I'm going to be around
When the walls and towers are tumbling down
And I will tune my spirit to the gentle sound
Of the waters lapping on a higher ground

And here we are.
 
They aren't chanting "build the wall," but at this point I think it is almost universally accepted among Republicans that the Democrats, while they are a majority, have to be stopped by whatever means necessary; including the abandonment of the democracy experiment.
And while they do it, they will shout as loudly as they can that it was in fact the Democrats who abandoned the democracy experiment.
 
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