“He gets new information. He likes to talk that through out loud. And really have that dialogue. And so that’s what dialogue he was having.“ — Dr. Deborah Birx on Donald Trump’s suggestion at a public health briefing that injecting bleach could be a cure for COVID-19.
Yesterday:
▪ Donald Trump boohooed that he had lower approval ratings among Americans than Dr. Anthony Fauci:
He’s working with our administration. And for the most part we’ve done pretty much what he and others — Dr. Birx and others, who are terrific — recommended. And he’s got this high approval rating. So, why don’t I have a high approval rating with respect — and the administration — with respect to the virus?
▪ He downplayed the coronavirus and touted hydroxychloroquine as remedy, though the FDA revoked authorization for use of the drug for COVID-19 treatment “reports of serious heart rhythm problems and other safety issues, including blood and lymph system disorders, kidney injuries, and liver problems and failure.”
▪ And the President retweeted a video (since removed by Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, but not before 14 million viewings) with discredited claims from a Houston doctor/religious minister that she has successfully treated hundreds of coronavirus patients with hydroxychloroquine and that face masks are not necessary to stop the spread of the virus. Stella Immanuel has also claimed that gynecological problems are caused by having sex in ones dreams with demons and witches; that DNA from alien beings is being used in medicine today; and that “reptilions” and other aliens are embedded in our government.
▪ Donald Trump is still a fan: “There was a woman who was spectacular in her statements about it: that she’s had tremendous success with it.”
Just another day in the Trump presidency. So, when he tweets about delaying the election, is Trump simply riffing? Merely talking out loud about something he’s seen online or on cable TV? Is this nothing more than more idle talk from an uninformed, credulous individual?
Neither the Constitution, nor federal law grant this man, even though he sits in the Oval Office, the authority to change the date of the 2020 election. But it is well within his power to signal his view that something isn’t on the up and up. Something about the November 3 election is rotten. The Democrats are trying to cheat.
The President of the United States has sought for many months to delegitimize the 2020 election, much as he did in the run-up to the 2016 election, before winning it — and even afterwards.
Donald Trump has presided over a disastrous 2020. His failures — resulting in an unfolding tragedy that grows greater by the day — are unmistakable. Surveys of public opinion suggest a steeply uphill climb to reelection for the President.
As the prospect of losing has become more likely, Trump has waged a campaign against mail-in voting, insisting that “it doesn’t work out well for Republicans,” and even more dire that it will “lead to the end of our great Republican Party.”
He has continued to strike this theme throughout the year:
He has endorsed the unsubstantiated claim of Bill Barr that foreign governments might corrupt the election by printing and mailing counterfeit ballots
Election officials have discounted the President’s claims (“Trump claims without evidence that mail voting leads to cheating: A guide to facts on absentee ballots.”):
“We are not aware of any evidence supporting the claims made by President Trump,” the National Assn. of Secretaries of State said in a statement. “As always, we are open to learning more about the Administration’s concerns.”
So what’s Trump up to? Well, he’s revving up his base. For another thing, if Republican state legislatures and secretaries of state follow his lead, they will curtail, or refuse to expand, vote by mail options. That serves the venerable Republican strategy of voter suppression. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach are past all-stars in this game.
Even if vote by mail options exist, Trump’s campaign may serve to suppress the Democratic vote. An NBC report (“A Trump trap? He’s the one who could get a boost from mail voting glitches”) explains why:
The real danger is a perfect catastrophe of administrative overload, postal delays and voter error that could lead to millions of absentee ballots not counting. And this year, unlike the past, those ballots are likely to be overwhelmingly Democratic.
Mail-in ballots are much more likely to be rejected than ballots cast in person. If Trump’s base votes in person on election day, those votes are more likely to be counted than Democratic votes cast by mail-in ballots. Some estimates suggest that up to 4-percent of mail ballots were rejected in 2016 with no opportunity to remedy any problems (as one might do at a polling place). Furthermore, studies suggest that younger voters and people of color — predominantly Democratic — are more likely to have their ballots disqualified.
If a higher proportion of Democrats than Republicans vote by mail, Democrats will be disadvantaged because of procedural glitches that are apt to multiply this year as the number of mail-in ballots increase — overwhelming some jurisdictions. Add to this a multi-million dollar GOP donor just appointed as Postmaster General, who is imposing changes on the Postal Service that have created backlogs and late deliveries. As a result, there will likely be delays in sending ballots to voters and in receiving voters’ completed ballots in a timely way that ensures that votes are cast and counted.
But there’s more to it than that. Republicans probably can’t suppress enough votes to win in 2020. These tactics, even with an assist from the U.S. Supreme Court, failed in Wisconsin. These cries of fraud and rigged elections serve another purpose, as Richard Hasen has explained:
If most Republicans vote in person and most Democrats vote by mail, Hasen said, that could create a scenario well suited to Trump’s tendency to make unfounded accusations of wrongdoing.
“As Trump drives more and more of his supporters to vote in person and away from vote-by-mail, it’s quite likely that we’ll see Trump getting many more votes on election night, the votes that are counted on Election Day,” Hasen said in an interview on “The Long Game,” a Yahoo News podcast.
“Then, four or five days later, [if] Biden becomes the winner as the absentee ballots are counted in Philadelphia or Detroit, that’s a recipe, if it’s close, for a really ugly election scenario,” he said.
Election results for Philadelphia’s June 2 primary were not certified for nearly three weeks. The outcome of the June 23 primary in New York’s 6th CD, a victory by challenger Jamaal Bowman over Congressman Eliot Engel, was not clear for more than four weeks. It takes a long time to verify and count ballots received by mail. There will be tens of millions more votes cast in November than have been cast in primaries earlier this year.
The Brooks Brothers riot — in 2000 when Republican operatives from across the country created a mob scene in Miami-Dade County to stop officials from counting votes (after George W. Bush had established a small lead in the state) — is the template for creating chaos in November 2020 in any state where Trump has a slim lead and there are still thousands of ballots to be counted. Only this time the rioters (most of whom were not actually dressed in expensive suits) might be replaced by armed militias in camo. And multiply the rioting across a number of states.
Even if Trump trails in same day voting, if there are tens of thousands of uncounted votes in key states, he could still cry fraud.
Trump’s eruptions about voting by mail all serve as a setup for challenging his defeat in November. Whatever happens on November 3 and after, things have already become ugly.
This scenario is beyond abnormal. But rest assured this will not be Trump’s last off the rails maneuver between now and November 3.
There are 97 days to go.
(Image: from Five Thirty Eight’s average presidential approval July 30.