;)
The Commentariat -- November 6, 2020
Afternoon Update:
CNN is reporting on-air that Joe Biden will give an address "in prime-time" Friday night.
Jonathan Lemire, et al., of the AP: "Democrat Joe Biden was on the cusp of winning the presidency on Friday as he opened up narrow leads over ... Donald Trump in the critical battlegrounds of Georgia and Pennsylvania. Those put Biden in a stronger position to capture the 270 Electoral College votes needed to take the White House. The winner will lead a country facing a historic set of challenges, including a surging pandemic and deep political polarization. The focus on Pennsylvania ... came as Americans entered a third full day after the election without knowing who will lead them for the next four years. The prolonged process added to the anxiety of a nation whose racial and cultural divides were inflamed during the heated campaign. Biden was at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, as the vote count continued and aides said he would address the nation in primetime. Trump remained in the White House residence as more results trickled in, expanding Biden's lead in must-win Pennsylvania."
Politico's live election updates are here: "Georgia's [Republican] secretary of state said Friday morning that there will be a recount of the state's presidential votes, as Joe Biden took a narrow lead of a few hundredths of a percentage point over ... Donald Trump.... Donald Trump's reelection campaign insisted on Friday that the presidential election is 'not over,' working to stave off defeat with baseless claims of voter fraud even as Democratic nominee Joe Biden pulled ahead in two states that would hand him the White House.... A handful of Republicans are beginning to speak out about ... Donald Trump's baseless claims of fraud in the presidential election, with GOP Sens. Susan Collins and Pat Toomey the latest to bat away Trump's rhetoric as the presidency slips away from him.... [But] some top Republicans such as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy have raced to defend Trump, illustrating his tight grip on the party and suggesting a GOP-led intervention isn't coming anytime soon."
From the New York Times' live updates Friday: "With Georgia's 16 electoral votes likely to be decided by a tiny margin, Democrats are urging voters there to fix absentee ballots that were rejected because of invalid or missing signatures before the deadline on Friday evening. Those who voted absentee -- a group that this year has been heavily Democratic -- can check online to see whether election officials have accepted or rejected their ballots.... The Postal Service found hundreds of ballots in Pennsylvania and North Carolina facilities on Thursday, according to data filed in federal court. Election rules in both states allow mail-in ballots received after Election Day to be counted."
Kevin Liptak & Kaitlan Collins of CNN: "Facing a disappearing pathway to victory..., Donald Trump offered little indication on Friday he was prepared to concede defeat, leading those around him to wonder who might be able to reckon with a leader who has given virtually no thought to leaving the White House.... Trump has not prepared a concession speech and in conversations with allies in recent days, he has said he has no intention of conceding the election, people familiar with the matter said. So far he has been bolstered in his stance by those closest to him, including his senior advisers and his adult sons, who have mounted an aggressive effort in the courts to challenge the results and have pressured other Republicans into defending him." Mrs. McC: Looks as if he still thinks Amy Covid Barrett & her new Supreme friends will bail him out, and who knows? Maybe they will.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Friday are here: "The United States recorded at least 121,000 new infections on Thursday, a day after hitting 100,000 for the first time since the pandemic began, and for many Americans, fatalism was the order of the day."
~~~ Thanks to PD Pepe for the link.
~~~~~~~~~~
Presidential Vote Count, Etc.
The New York Times' live election updates Friday are here. (Revised): "Joseph R. Biden Jr. stood on the cusp of the presidency on Friday, seizing a lead over President Trump in both Pennsylvania and Georgia and drawing ever closer to securing the 270 electoral votes needed to lay claim to the White House. Mr. Biden, who has 253 electoral votes, pulled ahead of Mr. Trump in Pennsylvania by about 5,600 votes on Friday morning. If his lead holds -- and it is expected to -- the state's 20 electoral votes would vault him past the threshold to win the election. Mr. Biden had already begun to project the image of a man preparing to assume the mantle of office, meeting on Thursday with his economic and health advisers to be briefed on the coronavirus pandemic.... Mr. Biden's appeal to let the process play out contrasted with that of Mr. Trump, who took the lectern in the White House briefing room to falsely claim that the election was riddled with fraud, as part of an elaborate coast-to-coast conspiracy by Democrats, the news media and Silicon Valley to deny him a second term."
The Washington Post's live election updates Friday are here. They are free to non-subscribers: "Dismay mounted Friday among America's allies as Trump stepped up his unsubstantiated attacks on the vote count and continued to falsely claim victory in the U.S. presidential election. Officials and newspapers around the world lamented the polarization and dysfunction in the world's oldest democracy as Biden's path to the White House widened."
Pennysylvania. Steve Kornacki of MSNBC reports at 8:55 am ET that Joe Biden has taken the lead in Pennsylvania, by 5,587 votes. That's all, folks. Update: Here is a Hill report.
Georgia. According to the New York Times' count, Joe Biden just (@7:30 am ET) passed Trump (by about 1,100 votes). If Biden's lead holds, Trump cannot get to 270 Electoral votes. The ballot dump that put Biden over the top may have come from Clayton County, which John Lewis -- one of the greatest heroes in the battle for voting rights -- represented for so many years. ~~~
~~~ Update. Greg Bluestein of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "It was Clayton, the south metro county that's also the bluest bastion in the state, that provided the decisive votes. The county long represented in Congress by U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the late civil rights icon who was one of the most vocal critics of Trump.... Biden's erasure of Trump's once-formidable lead in Georgia doesn't guarantee him the state's 16 electoral votes. With the contest so close, no national outlet will likely project a winner in Georgia until more of the absentee, provisional and other votes are tallied. And Trump could reclaim the lead. But top Democrats exuded confidence about their slim lead in Georgia, particularly with a trove of absentee ballots in left-leaning Gwinnett County set to be added to the tally on Friday."
Arizona. A 9 pm ET dump of about 60,000 Maricopa County, Arizona, votes favored Trump, who got 59% of those votes. If the votes continue with these percentages, Trump would overtake Biden.
Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: If all of the undeclared states hold as expected (and they may not), the final Electoral College tally will be Biden 306, Trump 232. That is exactly the number by which Trump prevailed in 2016, in what he called the greatest landslide victory in history.
The Washington Post's live updates Thursday, which are free to non-subscribers, are here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.): "Speaking publicly for the first time since Election Night, Trump repeated his baseless claims of voter fraud and vowed 'a lot of litigation' to challenge the vote counting process during a White House news conference where he didn't take any questions. Trump rattled off a long list of false claims and baseless allegations about the election and the vote counting process. Without evidence, he attacked the integrity of mail-in ballots, claimed media and tech companies had engaged in 'interference,' and accused local election officials of corruption. He attacked public polls that showed Biden ahead as suppression efforts. He also mischaracterized processes related to the tabulation of ballots, falsely suggesting that Republican observers were not present in some vote counting centers. ~~~
~~~ "The president also lamented that he had been ahead in key battleground states on election night, but had lost significant ground since, suggesting wrongly that this was due to something nefarious. Biden began to overtake Trump once mail-in ballots were counted. 'We were winning in all the key locations by a lot, actually, and then our numbers started miraculously getting whittled away in secret,' Trump said. 'And we're still ahead by a lot, but not as many because they're finding ballots. All of a sudden we have some mail in ballots. It's amazing how those mail in ballots are so one sided, too,' Trump added. The president spent the last several months sowing doubt in mail ballots and encouraging his voters to wait to cast ballots until Election Day. Trump also incorrectly stated that the 'election apparatus in Georgia is run by Democrats' and that 'officials overseeing the counting in Pennsylvania and other states are all part of a corrupt Democrat machine.'" ~~~
~~~ AND not a word about Covid-19.
~~~ Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: "President Trump's statement in the White House briefing room on Thursday evening was a litany of falsehoods and grievance, with some baseless conspiracy theories thrown in for good measure. Here's a quick roundup of Trump's off-base claims." ~~~
~~~ Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "Well into a presidency defined by disinformation and falsehoods, President Trump managed something remarkable on Thursday evening. Speaking to reporters in the White House briefing room, he offered the most thoroughly dishonest comments of his tenure.... Trump has for months telegraphed [his] backup plan in the event of a loss in the presidential contest.... With polling showing him trailing, everyone expected Trump to claim victory and to try to stop votes from being counted, which is what happened.... Trump's allies go along with all of this because it preserves their power. Trump's base goes along with it because they believe him." ~~~
~~~ Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "Trailing Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the unresolved presidential contest, Trump is pulling out a playbook perfected by Russian President Vladimir Putin and other authoritarians. It relies on sowing doubt about the institutions of law and government, spreading misinformation or outright lies that serve a leader's political ends, and relying on a cadre of loyal supporters to believe what they are told, Putin scholars said. Trump's attempts to brand legal election practices as fraud and to use the courts -- one pillar in the nation's democratic architecture -- to intervene in the counting of votes -- another pillar -- are the latest examples of what has long been his malleable view of the democratic system." ~~~
~~~ Annals of Journalism, Ctd. Michael Grynbaum & Tiffany Hsu of the New York Times: "The three big broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS and NBC -- cut away from President Trump's news conference at the White House on Thursday as the president lobbed false claims about the integrity of the election. Mr. Trump timed his appearance to air during the networks' evening newscasts, which draw the biggest collective audience in TV news. But the anchors broke in after a few minutes to correct some of his falsehoods." ~~~
~~~ Kim Lyons of the Verge: "Cable networks, broadcast networks and Twitter cut short their broadcasts of ... Donald Trump's speech from the White House briefing room Thursday; some outlets fact-checked the president's unproven statements rather than carry them live.... MSNBC, ABC, CBS, CNBC, and NBC cut away from his speech." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: What's equally amazing about this clip is that you can see Trump is reading -- in his child-like way -- from a script. He planned to tell these bald-faced lies & somebody wrote them down for him to say.
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: So far, the only verified voter fraud has been perpetrated by the Trump campaign: ~~~
~~~ ** Mary Spicuzza & Bruce Vielmetti of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "... Donald Trump's campaign in Wisconsin has desperately sought volunteers to call Pennsylvanians and urge them to mail in absentee ballots by Friday -- even as the president himself rails against late votes and the ongoing vote count. Only votes cast by Nov. 3 are legal according to Pennsylvania and federal election laws. Trump himself has described any effort to vote after Tuesday as clear election fraud.... The Trump campaign is trying to take advantage of an effort by Pennsylvania to count all absentee votes mailed by Nov. 3 even if received up to three days later.... An email obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sent at 5:19 p.m. Thursday by Kenosha for Trump ... reads: 'Trump Victory urgently needs volunteers to make phone calls to Pennsylvania Trump supporters to return their absentee ballots. These phone calls will help President Trump win the election!'... A pair of field directors listed in the email..., Riley Pella and Joshua Williams, are paid staffers for the Republican Party of Wisconsin.... Dozens of Republican staffers in Wisconsin were involved in the operation to recruit volunteers to contact Trump supporters in Pennsylvania, according to one person familiar with the effort." ~~~
~~~ CBS Philadelphia: "Two heavily armed men found outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center were taken into police custody late Thursday night. This comes as votes are currently being counted inside of the center. Philadelphia police say they were notified of a threat of an attack around 10 p.m. Thursday. According to police, the threat involved a group of individuals from out of state, driving in a silver Hummer ... with Virginia tags.... Authorities say they found multiple guns inside of the vehicle."
President-elect Joe Biden made a brief statement late Thursday afternoon:
~~~ Biden began his remarks by announcing that he & Sen. Harris had just attended a Covid-19 briefing.
Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "The Secret Service is sending reinforcements to Wilmington, Del., starting Friday to help protect former vice president Joe Biden as his campaign prepares for the possibility he may soon claim victory in his bid for the White House, according to two people familiar with the plans. The Secret Service summoned a squad of agents to add to the protective bubble around Biden after his campaign told the agency that the Democratic nominee would continue utilizing a Wilmington convention center at least another day and could make a major speech as early as Friday, according to the people.... The additional security for Biden that is expected to begin Friday doesn't give him a full protective detail that accompanies a president-elect, but it moves closer in that direction."
Until Thusday evening, Trump was in his hideyhole & had not been seen since his early-morning crazy-rant Wednesday. Occasionally he limbered up his Twitter thumbs & emits plaints like "STOP THE COUNT!" & "STOP THE FRAUD!" Very presidential.
Nancy Cook of Politico: "... Donald Trump has struggled to convince the country he already won the election. So he's just going to do the next best thing: Act like he's starting his second term early. Trump and his aides have settled on a plan for him to take full advantage of his existing perch at the White House to look as presidential as possible, according to three people briefed on the strategy ... even if, during the final months of his campaign, Trump repeatedly failed to lay out any agenda for another four years.... He may fire a few Cabinet members and top aides, including FBI Director Christopher Wray and Defense Secretary Mark Esper. He could sign a slew of base-pleasing executive orders. He might even resume his travel schedule. Meanwhile, Trump's team is planning to mount even more legal challenges and cast evidence-deficient aspersions on the integrity of ballots." Mrs. McC: So Trump's idea of "looking presidential" is firing top aides, signing executive orders that President Biden will likely reverse & traveling around the country on our dime. Pathetic.
The New York Times' live election updates Thursday are here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.): "As results trickled in from the remaining undecided states Mr. Biden increased his lead in Nevada by about 4,000 votes and was eroding Mr. Trump's leads in Georgia and Pennsylvania, while holding on to his modest lead in Arizona.... Mr. Trump issued a written statement on Thursday afternoon through his campaign in which he made baseless claims that there could be fraud in the late votes and then repeated many of them at his news conference. The statement, which was written in all capital letters, resembled one of his tweets -- but by issuing it through the campaign, the president avoided getting a warning label from Twitter, which has flagged many of his recent tweets as potentially misleading."
Amy Gardner, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump and his allies pressed their claims Thursday that election officials have allowed ballot fraud to infect the counting process in the battleground states poised to decide the presidency, but they offered no evidence of irregularities and met with two immediate defeats in court. In Georgia, a local judge in Chatham County, home of Savannah, denied the Trump campaign's effort to disqualify about 50 ballots that a Republican poll watcher claimed may have arrived after the 7 p.m. deadline on Election Day. In court, the poll watcher offered no evidence that the ballots had arrived late, and county election officials testified that they had arrived on time. And in Michigan, a Court of Claims judge said she would deny the campaign's request for an emergency halt to the counting of votes in the state. She noted that the request made little sense, given that the counting has essentially been finished in the state, with former vice president Joe Biden ahead by about 150,000 votes. He has been declared the winner of the state by national news organizations. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel's office described Trump's request as an 'attempt to unring a bell.'" The article is free to non-subscribers.
Ashley Parker & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "Huddled with family members and advisers [Tuesday night] -- including Kellyanne Conway, campaign adviser Corey Lewandowski, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, among others -- first in the White House residence and then in the Map Room, Trump became increasingly agitated as the evening wore on.... Trump began complaining about voter fraud and the election being stolen, and by the time he appeared in the East Wing around 2 a.m. Wednesday to make remarks, he was determined to declare victory, even though his prepared notes did not say that.... By Wednesday evening, however, Trump had begun telling allies he believed he could lose -- but only because the election was being 'stolen from him,' a campaign official said. And when he woke up Thursday, he was angry again and eager to take a more defiant tone, advisers said.... The president was eager to speak publicly Thursday about the election -- arguing that his rightful victory was being stolen, and that states were conspiring against him.... On Thursday evening, the president appeared in front of reporters at the White House around 6:45, seeming subdued and deflated, and made unproven claims about voter fraud and vowing to continue the fight through legal channels." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Funny, we are reading any stories headlined, "Biden Goes Bonkers."
** Jacob Bogate & Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: "More than 150,000 ballots were caught in U.S. Postal Service processing facilities and not delivered by Election Day, agency data shows, including more than 12,000 in five of the states that have yet to be called for either President Trump or Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. Despite assurances from Postal Service leaders that agency officials were conducting daily sweeps for misplaced ballots, the mail service acknowledged in a court filing Thursday that thousands of ballots had not been processed in time, and that more ballots were processed Wednesday than on Election Day. The number of mailed ballots the Postal Service did not deliver by Election Day is expected to grow as more data is released in the coming days.... Under Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Trump financier who took over the agency in June, first-class mail delivery rates have steadily declined, especially in urban areas that are bastions of Democratic voters."
Simon Romero, et al., of the New York Times: "In a year defined by protests ... the presidential election brought even more demonstrators to the streets across America this week as days passed without a clear winner.... Protests broke out in hotly contested areas including Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Phoenix, where demonstrators said they were convinced the election was being stolen -- a baseless claim that has circulated fiercely on social media, including on the Twitter feed of President Trump. Protests also took place in areas where the results were settled, like New York, Portland, Washington and Miami, where the organizers -- Latino Republican groups --offered a warning on a Facebook page called Stop the Steal: 'They're trying to steal this election from the President Donald J. Trump and we're not going to let it happen.'... [The page] mushroomed to more than 360,000 members within hours, before it was shut down by Facebook." And so forth.
Carly Johnson, et al., of the AP: "An Associated Press analysis reveals that in 376 counties with the highest number of new [Covid-19] cases per capita, the overwhelming majority -- 93% of those counties -- went for Trump, a rate above other less severely hit areas. Most were rural counties in Montana, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Wisconsin -- the kinds of areas that often have lower rates of adherence to social distancing, mask-wearing and other public health measures, according to AP VoteCast.... Thirty-six percent of Trump voters described the pandemic as completely or mostly under control, and another 47% said it was somewhat under control.... Meanwhile, 82% of Biden voters said the pandemic is not at all under control."
Luke Broadwater & Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: “Democrats wept, cursed and traded blame on Thursday during an extraordinary party confab to dissect the disappointing results of this week’s elections, agreeing on little except that they needed a 'deep dive' into how they had ended up with painful losses that weakened their House majority instead of the big gains they had boldly predicted. In a caucus meeting held by telephone that was their first group conversation since Election Day, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois, who led the party's campaign arm, defended their efforts. Democrats expressed frustration over the loss of eight of their members -- and a net loss of six seats, with 36 races still undecided -- that had left them with a slimmer margin of control.... During the call, which lasted three hours and previewed divisions among Democrats over how to wield their power and define their message, Ms. Bustos conceded that things had gone badly awry. She said she was 'gutted' and 'heartbroken' by the losses."
SharpieGate II. Geneva Sands, et al., of CNN: "False claims that using Sharpie pens could invalidate ballots in Arizona prompted a top Department of Homeland Security official on Thursday to urge people to stop spreading disinformation online connected to the so-called "#SharpieGate" rumors[.] Those rumors fueled outrage among protesters Wednesday night, and prompted a lawsuit -- joined by the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee -- filed against Maricopa County election officials. Rumors began to spread on social media Wednesday that voters in the battleground state of Arizona who used Sharpie pens on their ballots wouldn't have their votes counted. That confusion prompted state officials, election monitors and a top Trump administration official to push back on'#SharpieGate' rumors."
David Ingram of NBC News (at 8:13 pm ET): "Twitter banned an account associated with Steve Bannon on Thursday and YouTube removed one of his videos after the former Trump adviser called for the beheadings of two federal officials. Bannon, in a video for his podcast recording, had said he wanted to behead FBI Director Christopher Wray and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious diseases expert. Bannon said he would 'put the heads on pikes' as a 'warning to federal bureaucrats,' referencing Tudor-era England."
The Trumpidemic, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Thursday are here: "For the second day in a row, the United States on Thursday recorded over 100,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day as daily records were broken across the country. The country burst across the 100,000 threshold of reported cases a day earlier, the first time it had done so since the pandemic began. The total count of new infections Wednesday was at least 107,000, according to a New York Times database. By Thursday evening, the count in the U.S. had hit more than 108,000. Twenty-three states have recorded more cases in the past week than in any other seven-day stretch. [NBC News is reporting the number of new cases Thursday was 120,000.] ~~~
~~~ "A quarter of a million coronavirus infections have been reported at colleges and universities across the United States, according to a New York Times survey, as schools across the nation struggle to keep outbreaks in check. The bulk of the cases have occurred since students returned for the fall semester, with more than 38,000 new cases reported in the last two weeks alone. And the numbers are almost certainly an undercount."
Share Article 
Reader Comments (17)
How third party idiots fuck the country.
Back in 2016, the so-called Libertarian and Green Party candidates picked up about 4% of the votes. In places where Trump won by a few thousand, this was significant. And yes, there’s no way to say that Clinton would have been the second choice, but even if she had received a little more than half of those votes, we might have been spared four years of fascist anarchy.
Today, at this hour, a Libertarian candidate in Georgia, Jo Jorgensen, has 61,000 votes. The difference between Biden and the fascist is only a couple of thousand.
Sure, Trump would likely get some of those votes, but the presence of third party candidates who have no chance of doing anything, in a razor thin race, especially given the stakes, seems outrageous.
And there’s no arguing that the Decider would not have been elected in 2000 except for the ego driven candidacy of Ralph Nader. (Greens are gonna vote for environment killing R’s? Please.)
And don’t forget. Fatty and the traitors surrounding him were eager to encourage a mentally disturbed man to enter the race (Kanye West) in hopes that his presence might pull votes away from Biden.
Just sayin’.
Even if Biden is declared the winner, this thing is not over, not by a long shot. Fatty and the Party of Traitors have an army of confederate shysters and pettifoggers ready to descend on all the recounts that are sure to come. I’ve lived through one of these and the stuff cagey lawyers can pull to get ballots disqualified would curl your hair. Even if you’re bald. It would grow your hair back, curl it, then cause it to fall out again. And then there’s the Fatty Court...
Maybe I’m being overly dramatic here, but I take nothing for granted with this fat, slithering viper. Besides, he simply has to demand recounts in order to pretend that he didn’t LOSE. You know, like a LOSER. The election was stolen from him.
He will never do anything so noble as to throw in the towel for the good of the country. The only good that matters to him is what’s good for Trump. Country be damned, as he’s proven time and again. Meanwhile, almost a quarter million new Covid cases in the last two days. Courtesy of Donald J. Trump, faux president, and maybe a million more by next week. How’s that for the good of the country?
As fraught as this count is for us, it's far worse for Trump. For one thing, probably none of us will go to jail if Trump & his cronies steal the election. But more important, because part of Trump's steal-this-election scheme was to urge legislators in key states to insist mail-in votes could not be counted before election day (so he could declare victory, as he did), we have all watched Biden cutting into Trump's lead. Had state legislators not pulled this very unproductive stunt, Biden quickly would have racked up what looked like state wins, but as the in-person votes came in, votes for Trump would have built steadily.
All-in-all, I'd rather be in a bad situation that was getting better than in looking at the count through a "blue mirage" that faded like the halo on a hot road as the car drew nearer.
As to how bad I feel about Trump's distress, let me just say I'm just as empathetic as Trump is.
PETTIFOGGERS? That Akhilleus, shoots out words like a toy gun from Walmart. Not being familiar with said word I looked it up (see below) and by jimminy, if that ain't one of the coolest words for shysters and their antics. Thanks, Ak., for enriching our vocabulary in these trying times when we run out of names for these miscreants.
If we don't get the senate back ( I'm assuming here that there is a Biden win) we are in for some rough rumbles. The senate is set up undemocratically –-and needs to be changed–-it is skewed toward Republicans and has unequal representation. But before we can address this the Turtle still sits at the head and unless Biden can work his magic "getting along with both sides" I don't have a whole lot of hope for major changes. There are glimmers–-two senate seats will have run-offs and that has promise.
"In its earliest English uses, "pettifogger" was two separate words: "pettie fogger." "Pettie" was a variant spelling of "petty," a reasonable inclusion in a word for someone who is disreputable and small-minded. But why "fogger"? It may come from "Fugger," the name of a successful family of 15th- and 16th-century German merchants and financiers. Germanic variations of "fugger" were used for the wealthy and avaricious, as well as for hucksters. In English, a "pettie fogger" was originally a small-time operator of a shady business. We're not sure why the word came to be applied specifically to lawyers, but it appears to have initially referred to lower-status attorneys who argued the smaller, less important cases."
Given the amount of voter suppression, the many roadblocks thrown up in red states (I would have had an easier time opening a bank account than voting in my state), the lies, chaos, the Russian, Chinese, and confederate social media ratfucking, the screaming super spreader Trump rallies, the constant bellowing about Hunter Biden and the “Biden Crime Family” (the last, being pushed by caporegime Junior, one of the purest examples of projection you’re ever likely to see), the threats of violence at the polls, the bullying, the misinformation, the kneecapping of the postal service by a Trump crony in hopes of stymying mail-in voting, it’s a testament to the intrepid nature of American voters who decided enough is enough, that they persisted through all of that, including being forced, in heavily Democratic areas, to wait in the usual long lines enforced by confederate haters of democracy, to come this close to ousting an authoritarian criminal.
Just think of what this election might have been like without all those impediments to democracy.
And I admit that the slow burn advance of Biden’s march to victory has been a great pleasure to observe, especially considering the agita, stomach churning, and sleeplessness after election night results came in.
For the fat fascist, this may perhaps be the only time in his life where he couldn’t buy, bully or bluster his way to some kind of “win”. Oh, he’ll still try his usual ploy of trying to sue his way out of the shithole, but the pain of loserdom will still hover over that orange rug thing on his fat head.
Just read Krugman's "Is America Becoming a Failed State?" and he addresses my concerns re: McConnell whom he says may make the nation ungovernable plus he flushes out how unrepresentative the senate is.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/opinion/joe-biden-senate-mitch-mcconnell.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
An exchange between my son David and his neighbor Claudia ( a male) while bicycling this morning. (in Germany)
David: Just learned that Biden has taken the lead in Georgia–-thats huge!
Claudia: Yeah! (big smiles)
D: We might be able to drink champagne in the garden this weekend.
C: I've already told the liquor store to stand back and stand by!
D: Excellent! We'll use the good glasses.
Akhilleus asks: What would this election have been like without all those impediments thrown in the way of democracy?
Good question. Plenty to think about, which we can chew on for the next four years. What effect(s) does all that suppression and deception have?
My initial thought. While this election is unfolding at a painfully slow pace because of Covid and some of those Republican make it as hard as possible to vote rules Akhilleus and Bea have mentioned (and because of the sheer numbers), I don't think the voter suppression, the lies and the assistance of foreign propagandists will end up making all that much difference.
Certainly not in the deeply red states. There, the Pretender's votes were baked in. Because they are reliably red, Republicans have no interest in suppressing votes in those middle states that divide the country, and for all the reasons we haven't fully identified, they are already a willing and appreciative audience for the lies, foreign and domestic.the Right dishes out. They don't need no convincing.
Any difference will be, as it always is, at the margins, in this case the purple states. The swingers. And in those states it's hard to identify the effects. Voter suppression reportedly had one in Wisconsin in 2016, but this year? Don't know. Would also think HRC was a much easier propaganda target than Sleepy Joe turned out to be....(tho' should the Pretender attend Joe's inauguration, I'd like to see the new president enact a prolonged yawn in the President's face.)
Taken as a whole, I don't see that much change between 2016 and now. In fact, tho' inverted, a I think we'll end up with a near duplicate (see Bea's projection above) of the 2016 results. An election determined by a relatively few votes in a few states, likely more this time than the paltry number than gave the Pretender the greatest victory of all time, but still a very small slice of the national pie.
As Patrick defined our divided country yesterday,
"Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask, rather, what your country can do for you."
or something like that.
Glad to hear that champagne in the good glasses is imminent in Germany. In Russia, they’re having a big sad. Putin’s fat puppet might be consigned to the Broken Toys box. Wah-wah. But, as is often the case, Trump is a two-fer for Putin and the Russians. First, and most importantly, he has diminished the standing of the United States to laughingstock material throughout much of the rest of the world.
He sticks it to allies and cozies up to the dictators. Plus he has substantially weakened NATO.
For Putin, all of this has been extremely useful because he can pursue all manner of schemes with no worries of interference from a country once to be feared and respected. No longer. Putin pulls down his zipper, Trump is at the ready.
But the chaos promoted by the fat fascist provides Russian pundits with plenty of evidence with which to bash American democracy as a failed system beset by crazies and incompetents.
On the other hand, some commentators are not so secretly happy that Russia will be able, once again, to have cogent discussions with an American president without worrying about running out of shiny objects with which to distract the three year old. That, and being able to count on a president’s word without worrying that he’ll forget everything they talked about while tweeting nonsense on the plane home counts for a lot.
Even Disney characters get into the game; this is good!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltjBT_TuUVA&feature=youtu.be
So if Trump is booted come January and then gets his just rewards from his business dealings and taxes, does the secret service provide protection in the slammer?
@Bobby Lee: Good question! I'd say the answer is yes, because if all those prison movies I watched are in any way depictions of real conditions in prisons, all the boys in the playground would beat the stuffings out of the Prisoner-in-Chief every day. And we can't have that.
Hahaha... this is great. A winger pol declares that Muslims can’t be elected officials because the Bible, something, something. Jake Tapper asks him a simple question and the just blanks.
https://mobile.twitter.com/whateva691/status/1324318118433337344
@Akhilleus: Ha ha. I didn't even have to wait for the denouement to figure out that guy was related to Ralph Kramden.
Of course the Pretender won't concede.
That would make him a loser, as ordinary as eveyone else.
Too much cognitive dissonance for a narcissist who has never admitted to the public, or likely to himself, that he's ever come in second or lost at anything at all.
No grace under pressure here.
Instead, it will be fascinating, not to mention very satisfying, to watch his head explode on the national stage.
We may see Article 25 at work yet.
Ken,
No confederate, least of all the sycophantic, ass kissing little half-pence, has the stones, never mind the constitutional spine, to even bring up the 25th amendment, never mind invoke it.
They are a sad, mean, soulless collection of cowardly con artists who will hang on to the tiny trumpy ball sack as long as they believe his vicious supporters will grace them with their greasy ballots.
Once he goes down, however, there will be plenty of self serving sniffing about how they were for democracy all along, but, um, a thing happened.
You're right, of course, Akhilleus.
'Twas but a dream.
Still, my mean self looks forward to watching the bully deflate, lashing out and sniveling, as he displays his increasingly obvious pathologies and physical deterioration over the next three months.
When you watch the networks and see gigantic swaths of red, areas that voted for an authoritarian mook, and then see what appears to be insignificant enclaves of blue covering far smaller areas, remember that five giant western states painted garish red on a voting map don’t have half the people of Los Angeles county.
Yes, you might see the state of Kansas all in red, but if you boil it down to the populated areas, the redness disappears quickly and can’t compete with the metro Milwaukee area in population.
Land doesn’t vote for presidents; people do.
The history of maps has always been rife with inaccuracies designed to privilege one group or political idea over others. If you look at the massive red state of Montana, with its 147,000 sq. miles, it makes the metro Boston area, at 48 sq. miles, look ridiculous. But that 48 sq. miles has almost 5 million people. Montana? About a fifth of that.
Wingers are always tapping about transparency and accuracy (not that they could stand it). Let’s have more of that.
https://mobile.twitter.com/raykwong/status/1324330586215911426?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1324330586215911426%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdigbysblog.net%2F