Monthly Archives: September 2020

Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

With Donald Trump, it’s crooks, grifters, and scofflaws all the way down

“Louis was a national fundraiser for the Republican Party. He asked employees for money. We gave him the money, and then he reciprocated by giving us big bonuses,” said David Young, DeJoy’s longtime director of human resources, who had access to payroll records at New Breed from the late 1990s to 2013 and is now retired. “When we got our bonuses, let’s just say they were bigger, they exceeded expectations — and that covered the tax and everything else.” (“Louis DeJoy’s rise as GOP fundraiser was powered by contributions from company workers who were later reimbursed, former employees says,” Washington Post, by Aaron C. Davis, Amy Gardner and Steve Swaine)

That pattern violates federal and state laws and raises the question of how far Postmaster General DeJoy would go to deliberately delay mail delivery in order to sabotage tens or hundreds of thousands of votes from being cast or counted.

DeJoy’s spokesman suggested that he “encouraged employees and family members to be active in their communities, schools, civic groups, sporting events and the politics that governs our nation.” Furthermore, “Mr. DeJoy was never notified by the New Breed employees referenced by the Washington Post of any pressure they might have felt to make a political contribution, and he regrets if any employee felt uncomfortable for any reason.”

Images of our first Postmaster General.

I’ll venture the observation that you don’t become “a top Republican power broker in North Carolina,” if you feel squeamish about pressing people for cash. Especially if you know you’re going to pay them back. Nor do you get rewarded as head of the U.S. Postal Service, if you’re sensitive about pushing people past their comfort zones.

Last month Steven Bannon was charged with fraud by federal prosecutors. Before Bannon, there were: Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, and Michael Cohen.

Let’s hope Louis DeJoy will be joining that club in good time.

With Trump, the swamp is especially deep. And it’s not rocks or turtles, but shady characters of one sort or another, all the way down.

Donald Trump, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

The President of the United States, asked who pulls Biden’s strings, points to thugs on a plane

Landing on the following exchange, among so many others between Trump and Ingraham nearly a week ago, to illustrate how bizarre the President’s utterances have become, is virtually arbitrary. But it does cast doubt on the viability of Trump’s ‘strategy’ of portraying his Democratic opponent as mentally unfit.

Laura Ingraham interviews Donald Trump.

Ingraham: Who do you think is pulling Biden’s strings? Is it former Obama officials?

Trump: People that you’ve never heard of. People that are in the dark shadows. People that are –

What does that mean? That sounds like conspiracy theory? Dark shadows, what is that?

No. People that you haven’t heard of. They’re people that are on the streets. They are people that are controlling the streets.

We had somebody get on a plane from a certain city this weekend. And in the plane it was almost completely loaded with thugs. Wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear and this and that. They’re on a plane.

Where is — ?

I’ll tell you sometime. But it’s under investigation right now. But they came from a certain setting. And this person was coming to the Republican National Convention. And there were seven people on the plane like this person. And then a lot of people on the plane to do big damage. They were coming –

Planning for Washington?

Yes. This was all, this is all happening.

But the money is coming from somewhere?

The money is coming from –

How can it be tracked?

— from some very stupid rich people that have no idea that if their thing ever succeeded, which it won’t, they will be thrown to the wolves like [you’ve never seen before.]

NBC’s Ben Collins traces this ‘rumor’ back to June 1, with a baseless Facebook post, which prompted numerous Trump followers — alert to the peril — to swing into action, arming themselves and setting out to counter the threat.

They may have regarded themselves (in Richard Hofstadter’s words) as “capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public.”

More frightening is that Trump, to whom the United States Intelligence Community reports, appears to have been taken in by the ‘rumor’ as well.

2020 General Election, Democracy, Donald Trump

Plan B surfaces in Philadelphia for a free and fair election — and no red mirage — in 2020

Last month, election expert Richard Hasen assured us that “there is still time to keep the presidential election fair.” Of course time is not the limiting factor. Noting Donald Trump’s attacks on the integrity of voting and unsupported GOP claims of voting fraud, including a “particularly ludicrous” scenario that Bill Barr has raised repeatedly, Hasen offers several steps to ensure a free and fair election.

For Congress: offer funding for the states to cover the additional costs of running an election during a raging pandemic. “This should not be a partisan issue,” he writes, though of course it is. Congress could also provide oversight of the Postmaster General to ensure that no measures impair mail delivery prior to the election. But if Mitch McConnell is opposed, Congress will be stymied.

For the states:  implement procedural reforms to ensure a timely and transparent process. Again, a sticking point will be among Republicans in key states in position to block any procedural changes. Nonetheless, Democrats are in charge in some states, while in others, Republican officials are on board with free and fair elections.

For voters: request mail-in ballots soon and vote early.

For the media: educate the public that counting all ballots will take many days, that this is not evidence of fraud, and that no candidate can credibly declare victory before enough votes have been counted to determine a winner.

The media has begun to communicate this message. That’s good news and so are steps that several states have begun to take to streamline the process of voting and tabulating votes.

The bad news is that Congressional funding (and effective oversight of the post office) aren’t on the horizon. And, in some states, there will be few checks on Republicans who are willing to engage in mischief.

In a previous post, I suggested that the fiasco in Florida in 2000 could well be a less ugly version of election larceny headed our way in 2020. Thus, Democrats’ Plan A for voting — encouraging voters to vote by mail — was too vulnerable to the possibility of Republicans stealing another election.

Pennsylvania is a key battleground with a history of voting breakdowns, as Politico reports:

With concerns about an Election Day debacle rising in this critical swing state, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf privately convened a group of Philadelphia Democrats recently to underscore the consequences of another vote-counting fiasco like the one that took place in the June primary.

The city took more than two weeks to count all of its votes due to a massive surge in mail voting amid the coronavirus pandemic — and a repeat performance might make it unclear who won the presidential election in the key battleground state long past Nov. 3.

The fear: if an Electoral College victory hinges on Pennsylvania, and there are hundreds of thousands of ballots yet to be counted, Donald Trump could cry fraud and claim victory. We’ve seen this coming for months. Trump has sought to delegitimize vote by mail, making it more likely that his supporters will vote in person on election day, while Democrats — taking heed of the raging coronavirus — have urged their voters to cast ballots by mail. This raises the possibility that Trump could be ahead in the count in the early morning hours of November 4, while Biden’s winning votes have yet to be totaled. That’s the red mirage [see definition at Chidi’s Corner], which we could see in a number of states across the country.

Even if Trump is behind, he and Fox News Channel will be free to raise a ruckus if votes are being tallied many days later. And of course even if Biden wins and takes office, the outrage and chaos manufactured by Trump and company could be a Trumpian GOP theme throughout the Democratic president’s tenure in the White House.

Hasen has endorsed legislative changes to streamline voting and counting votes. And called on Congress to help fund such efforts. Republicans, who control the Pennsylvania General Assembly, have resisted Democratic Governor Tom Wolf’s proposals to do so. Nor has Congress acted.

Fortunately, a first step of Plan B — free of Republican obstruction — has surfaced in Philadelphia. The nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life has awarded the city a $10 million grant

to help fund upgraded equipment, satellite offices, personal protective equipment and other materials. Wolf has also raised more than $5 million to help municipalities implement mail-in voting and educate voters about their options, said Jeff Sheridan, his political adviser.

City election officials said the additional money puts them in a vastly better position than they were in June. They expect to open at least 800 polling places in Philadelphia in November, compared to fewer than 200 during the primary. Most of the $10 million in nonprofit funding is going toward costly equipment that will enable them to print, sort and scan ballots more quickly, according to the city’s grant agreement.

That’s good news. Here’s hoping funding for free and fair elections surfaces in other states across the country.

(Image from Center for Tech and Civic Life award letter.)

Donald Trump, Republicans

Why the Republican base isn’t budging from Donald Trump — no matter what havoc he creates

“To understand the corruption, chaos, and general insanity that is continuing to engulf the Trump campaign and much of the Republican Party right now, it helps to understand the predicate embraced by many Trump supporters: If Joseph R. Biden Jr. wins the presidency, America dies.” – Peter Wehner

As Mike Pence put it at the RNC: “It’s not so much whether America will be more conservative or more liberal, more Republican or more Democrat. The choice in this election is whether America remains America.”

Joe Biden (and any other Democrat who might have been nominated), Democrats/liberals, and the broad, diverse coalition the Democratic Party represents – all pose an existential threat to the United States of America in the minds of the Trump base. Opposing the Democrats is the raison d’être of the Republican Party and the glue that sticks Trump’s base to Trump.

When asked what the contemporary Republican Party stands for, a senior GOP aid replied:

“Owning the libs and pissing off the media. That’s what we believe in now.” – Brendan Buck

David French, former National Review writer, quotes Buck and then adds [emphasis added]:

I can boil it down into three words—“fighting the left.”

You don’t need a platform to accomplish that goal. You don’t even need to succeed in governing the nation. Your pandemic response can fail. You can watch cities start to burn. Unemployment can soar. But behind it all is a bedrock animosity so strong that any success (such as the excellent diplomatic achievement of an Israeli/United Arab Emirates peace deal) is something your opponent could not possibly achieve and any failure would be orders of magnitude worse under an opposing regime. 

And note how these beliefs are fundamentally unfalsifiable. How can you “prove” a Democrat would have achieved the same success as a Republican? How can you “prove” that their failures would have been worse?

Negative polarization is utterly futile and destructive as a governing philosophy.

Wehner writes [emphasis added]:

I know plenty of Trump supporters, and I know many of them to be people of integrity in important areas of their lives. Indeed, some are friends I cherish. But if there is a line Donald Trump could cross that would forfeit the loyalty of his core supporters—including, and in some respects especially, white evangelical Christians—I can’t imagine what it would be.

Consider Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, a spectacular failure as illustrated by comparing the U.S. (which leads the world in cases and deaths, and where COVID-19 is still out of control) with other countries confronting the pandemic:

Chart from Johns Hopkins.

Yet any erosion of support among Trump’s base has been barely detectable:

Chart from Five Thirty Eight.

“Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

Seen through the prism of a worldview embraced by Congressional Republicans and Fox News Channel, the possibility of a Democrat in the White House threatens the very fabric of America. The base accepts Trump at his word when he says, “… I alone can fix it,” whatever it may be — all evidence to the contrary.

That’s a consequence of negative partisanship (which FNC and the conservative media universe create and sustain). That’s owning the libs and defying the reality-based news media.

But that’s not all that’s going on here. The white folks who embrace Trump most tightly would also appear to fear a democracy in which increasing numbers of people of color, especially Black people; Muslims and other people of faith, apart from Christians ; and dark-skinned immigrants all have a say in governing our nation.

I’ll explore that issue and white identity politics in a future post.

(Image: PBS NewsHour.)