Category Archives: Republicans

Donald Trump, Republicans

Bill Barr is an abject GOP partisan; hence, he is publicly contradicting Donald Trump

To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election. . . .

There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that. — Attorney General William Barr

Much is being made of Bill Barr’s public comments that reject Trump’s whining that Joe Biden won only because of election fraud. Which raises questions.

Has Barr had a change of heart? Is he trying to resuscitate his tattered reputation? Has he belatedly decided to act as a principled attorney general?

None of the above. Bill Barr is carrying water for the Republican Party, as he has consistently done throughout his tenure in the Trump administration (and in previous Republican administrations).

Donald Trump is traveling to Georgia this weekend to campaign for two Republican senators. If Democrats win both races, Mitch McConnell is no longer majority leader. The party desperately needs Donald Trump to gin up the base so Georgia Republicans turn out to vote. Too much bellyaching about a fraudulent election by the narcissist-in-chief could discourage Trump’s legions and keep them at home.

Republicans, who have played along for weeks with Trump’s refusal to concede his defeat and his complaints of being cheated (because of fear of what their mercurial leader may do or say), are concerned about how these bizarre hysterics will affect the Georgia election. Someone needs to nudge the President nearer the real world so he doesn’t sandbag the GOP this weekend.

Bill Barr is bold enough to deliver a reality check to the President when partisan duty summons. The message has four days to sink in (and perhaps other GOP partisans will join the chorus).

(Image: The AG at May 13, 2019 candlelight vigil via Wikimedia Commons.)

2020 General Election, Democracy, Republicans

No Courage of their convictions? Or no convictions to uphold democratic governance?

In a letter today, Emily Murphy informed Joe Biden that the General Services Administration would permit the formal transition process to begin. After experiencing widespread criticism for the unprecedented delay, as Donald Trump has refused against all evidence to admit that he lost the election and has raged that he was cheated, Ms. Murphy insisted that no one had pressured her to slow walk the approval; rather, she had difficulty determining what to do because the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, as amended, “provides no procedures or standards for this process.”

Her missive resembled a defensive and obstinate, ‘Excuse me.’

There have been no reasonable doubts raised about the election’s outcome, notwithstanding Trump’s hurt feelings, his campaign’s frenzied maelstrom of litigation, or conservative media’s carnival of disinformation.

Joe Biden beat Donald Trump handily. By roughly six million votes. And, though some states were relatively close, by convincing margins that delivered a 306 to 232 Electoral College victory.

It is safe to say that few United States senators harbor any doubts about this — even Republican senators. Yet with Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey’s statement on Saturday, he became only the fifth Republican in the upper chamber (if we allow Marsha Blackburn a do-over) to acknowledge Biden’s victory. Ohio’s Rob Portman followed today, getting us up to six (out of fifty).

Why the playacting or silence by GOP leaders? They were mollifying an angry Donald Trump. And why not? As one Republican official explained:

“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change.”

The downsides are to the institutions that sustain democratic government, to respect for the people’s vote and the outcome of the election, to the sanctity of a peaceful transfer of power.

And — of course — to the winning candidate. Of the opposing party. That is to say: there is a downside to President-elect Joe Biden.

Let’s acknowledge: that’s an advantage to Republicans. Crippling the Biden presidency is a goal of Donald Trump, of Mitch McConnell, and of every Republican partisan who views Democrats as an enemy tribe.

Judging by his actions, Trump appears to have a motive other than overturning the election. He is determined to cripple Biden’s presidency even before it becomes official. No defeated president has ever undertaken such an audacious and anti-democratic act. There are short-term and longer-term consequences that could deeply affect Biden’s ability to govern.

. . .

This assault on the system, the government, the integrity of elections, the institutions of democracy, and on the truth, means Biden will take the oath of office with perhaps a third or more of the electorate viewing him as illegitimate. No amount of wooing will bring them around, however genuine Biden is in his outreach. — Dan Balz, “A vindictive Trump seeks to undermine Biden’s presidency”

Republican senators, who know full well who won the election, also know full well what Trump is up to. They understand that when playing along with Trump, they are also crippling the president-elect. 

They have made a deliberate choice. It may be possible to look past (if not excuse) the blunt, clumsy shenanigans of a GSA administrator trying to please her superiors.  She can’t do much more damage than she’s already done.

It is tougher to stomach the undemocratic stratagems of U.S. senators — leaders of the Republican Party — who lack the courage of their convictions, or simply the convictions, to uphold democratic values.

Richard Hasen observes (“Trump’s Legal Farce Is Having Tragic Results”):

By the time President-elect Biden takes the oath of office, millions of people will wrongly believe he stole the election. At least 300 times since Election Day, Mr. Trump has gone straight to his followers on social media to declare the election rigged or stolen and to claim, despite all evidence to the contrary, himself as the real victor. Mr. Trump’s false claims will delegitimize a Biden presidency among his supporters. It should go without saying that a democracy requires the losers of an election to accept the results as legitimate and agree to fight another day; Republican leaders echoing Mr. Trump’s failure to support a peaceful transition of power undermine the foundation of our democracy. It’s not only the fact that we have had to say this, but that we keep having to repeat it, that shows the depths that we have reached.

E.J. Dionne notes that “Joe Biden’s victory offered the cheerful prospect that we might begin to detoxify our politics.” Biden pledged “to be the president of all Americans and honored the dignity of voters who had supported Trump in the past by expressing an understanding of their discontents.”

And the GOP’s response to the outreach? With just a handful of exceptions, abject refusal to stand up against the anti-democratic lunacy of Trump’s efforts to nullify the results of a fair election.

Dionne suggests that we are confronted with “a form of conservatism that openly disdains democracy.” I am on board with Dionne regarding the antipathy of the Republican Party for the democratic tradition:

Those who lack the conviction to sustain that tradition by defending rationality and the democratic rules of engagement forfeit their standing to ask the rest of us to believe that they are operating in good faith.

(Image: Thomas Paine via Wikimedia Commons.)

Democracy, Off the Rails, Republicans

Lies, gaffes, inconsistencies, silence, and hiding from the media: the GOP and the election

From this morning’s Los Angeles Times:

To U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the general election was a resounding success for his party.

“Not one Republican incumbent lost,” McCarthy said during a news conference last week.

Except, of course, President Trump.

Now, more than two weeks after the election and several failed attempts to overturn it, the Bakersfield Republican still refuses to accept Trump’s defeat. — Maya Lau and Laura J. Nelson, “California Republican leaders go all in on Trump’s election subterfuge, but some are more vocal than others”

Not a single California Republican headed to Congress in January has broken ranks from this duplicitous playacting. None have pushed back against the narrative that denies the results of a free and fair election, obstructs the peaceful transition of power, and wounds the incoming president. None have acknowledged Biden as the winner.

Republicans from the Golden State are not outliers. The same pattern is true nationally, where just four United States Senators in the Republican caucus have acknowledged Joe Biden as president-elect: Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Ben Sasse, and Susan Collins. 

Until yesterday when Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn did so.  “I have not spoken with the president-elect. We did have… the vice president-elect come to the floor this week to cast a vote.” 

Oops! The Nashville Tennessean reports that following the live interview, the Senator took it back:

Later Friday night, a spokesperson for Blackburn said the comment was a mistake and that Blackburn had “been very clear” on her position about the election outcome. 

“She simply misspoke — it’s nothing more,” said Abigail Sigler, a campaign spokesperson for Blackburn. Blackburn’s Senate staff did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Sigler emailed to clarify after this story published. — Natalie Allison, “Staff of U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn says she misspoke by calling Biden ‘president-elect'”

Of course Senator Blackburn knows perfectly well that Joe Biden was elected president, as do (at least most of) the four dozen Republican Senators (and dozens more Republicans in the House) who are playing along with the reckless man whom they fear. 

They are creating doubts among the GOP base that the Democratic candidate won the election; they are justifying Donald Trump’s attempts to sabotage the incoming president; and they are creating a narrative for the next four years that Joe Biden found his way into the White House illegitimately. 

Senator Blackburn had, in speaking truthfully, committed the classic Michael Kinsley gaffe: she spoke a truth that she wanted to hide. 

When lying (or playacting as though you believe something that you know perfectly well is false), you have to keep your guard up. 

“One of the problems of successful lying is that it’s hard work,” says psychologist Michael Lewis. “You have to be very consistent in doing it.”

In this instance, the lie is far-fetched. There is no evidence to support it (as revealed in courtrooms across the country). The results of the election are clear. Whenever the insecure, vindictive man in the White House isn’t in the forefront of your mind, you might slip — relying on what you take for granted — and speak truthfully. Then you have to send your press secretary out to clean up your mess.

This would be humorous if it weren’t so dangerous. The cynical calculation that runs throughout for every Republican official is this:

“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change.”

As noted above, there are significant downsides to democratic government, to public trust, to the national interest. The question the Republican official is actually asking is: What’s the downside for me and for the Republican Party?

And when we focus on party, not country, the question answers itself. That’s why Kevin McCarthy, Marsha Blackburn, and very nearly all their colleagues in both houses of Congress, are humoring Donald Trump.

(Image: Marsha Blackburn via Wikidmedia Commons.)

Democracy, Donald Trump, Republicans

President Donald Trump is brazenly attempting to subvert a democratic election in plain sight

The President of the United States is trying to steal the 2020 election, which he lost decisively to Joe Biden. He is doing so in plain sight, while the leaders of the Republican party either egg him on, play along with the dishonest charade, or remain mute.

President Trump has invited the leaders of Michigan’s Republican-controlled state legislature to meet him in Washington on Friday, according to a person familiar with those plans, as the president and his allies continue an extraordinary campaign to overturn the results of an election he lost.

Trump’s campaign has suffered defeats in courtrooms across the country in its efforts to allege irregularities with the ballot-counting process, and has failed to muster any evidence of the widespread fraud that the president continues to claim tainted the 2020 election.

Trump lost Michigan by a wide margin: At present, he trails President-Elect Joe Biden in the state by 157,000 votes. Earlier this week, the state’s Republican Senate majority leader said an effort to have legislators throw out election results was “not going to happen.”

But the president now appears to be using the full weight of his office to challenge the election results, as he and his allies reach out personally to state and local officials in an intensifying effort to halt the certification of the vote in key battleground states.

In an incendiary news conference in Washington, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor who is now serving as Trump’s lead attorney, made baseless claims that Biden had orchestrated a national conspiracy to rig the vote.

Trump’s team appear to be increasingly focused on Michigan as a place where Republican officials — on the state’s Board of Canvassers and in the legislature — might be persuaded to overturn the results. — Tom Hamburger, Kayla Ruble, David A. Fahrenthold, and Josh Dawsey (“Trump invites Michigan Republican leaders to meet him at White House as he escalates attempts to overturn election results”). [Emphasis added.]

Rick Hasen, among the foremost authorities on election law, said this: “It’s easy to joke about this, and Rudy has become the butt of…jokes. On the other hand, this is deadly serious stuff. They’re talking about trying to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of people, and take the election away from the winner and hand it to the loser.”

There are sixty-two days until the inauguration of Joe Biden. Donald Trump — whose public schedule has been virtually empty for the past two weeks — is virtually bunkered down in the White House. His attention is not on a raging coronavirus, which is infecting, hospitalizing, and killing an unprecedented number of Americans, but on how to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters — mostly Black — so he can claim a victory that is not his.

And Republican leaders offer no objection. Professor Hasen has a message for them: “If you are in a position of power and you are wondering if now is the time to show some courage, the answer is unequivocally yes.”

While these efforts — of a flailing wannabe autocrat and his inept accomplices — appear to be playing out like a ridiculous farce, this is serious stuff. A presidential election and a peaceful transition of power in the United States of America are in the balance.

Even Trump’s critics, who have warned about the erosion of our democratic institutions, might have expected — after Biden’s substantial win seemed to put Trump beyond cheating distance — that by this time the leadership of the Republican Party would have pushed back against this reckless, lawless rampage.

But, these are the men and women who saw nothing in Trump’s shakedown of a foreign leader to warrant impeachment (or censure or even a slap on the wrist), the same folks who have watched as hundreds of thousands of Americans have died, as the White House shunned accountability, … and so on and so on and so on — for four years.

The leadership of the Republican Party is beneath contempt.

(Image: Rudy Giuliani’s theatre of the absurd press conference from The Guardian video.)

Donald Trump, Republicans

GOP deliberately chooses political advantage over national security and American lives

There is widespread alarm among congressional Republicans at how President Trump this week abruptly replaced Pentagon leaders with political allies, and sent signals he might do the same in the intelligence community, but for now lawmakers are refraining from overtly criticizing the moves for fear doing so could harm the party’s chances of holding on to its two Senate seats in Georgia. 

That report from this morning’s Washington Post (“Republicans muzzle anger over Trump’s Pentagon culling, afraid antagonizing him could imperil Georgia runoff,” by Karoun Demirjian) portrays Republicans as concerned with the President’s actions, but unwilling to go beyond offering “praise for Esper’s tenure and little else.”

Congressional aides say the anodyne public expressions represent a concerted attempt to self-muzzle, as the political party that prides itself on being strong on national security grapples with its fear of antagonizing an erratic and impulsive lame-duck president while battling to keep control of the Senate.

Further:

GOP aides described the sudden change in leadership as an “unwise” move that could cause “chaos” within the U.S. national security establishment as the country already is vulnerable to threats. Multiple GOP aides also surmised that the shake-up would hamper the incoming Biden administration if Trump’s newly chosen leaders and senior staff withhold information from his opponent’s transition team while the president contests the election outcome.

While Republicans regard themselves as a “political party that prides itself on being strong on national security,” they are unwilling to place national security above an upcoming election in Georgia. By now this is a familiar pattern — going back most dramatically to Trump’s deference, on the international stage, to an adversary by taking Vladimir Putin’s word over that of the Intelligence Community of the United States. The party’s unwillingness (with the exception of a single Senator) to hold their party’s leader accountable when he sought to extort the Ukrainian President to provide dirt on Joe Biden underscored the GOP’s priorities.

In another era, neither the leadership, nor the caucus of the Republican Party would have chosen to place partisan interests over national security concerns. By now, the habit is as well established as a sacred ritual.

Republicans recognized before Trump’s election in 2016 his unfitness for office. Through his actions, he has confirmed their judgment many times over. No matter what misdeed or malfeasance they witness, Republicans chose to either offer praise, meaningless murmurs of discomfort or gentle dissents, or silence. It is not politically advantageous to push back. No matter what the consequences to the nation or to Americans, partisan political advantage rules the day.

For the contemporary Republican Party, the choice is clear. And the indelible pattern extends beyond issues most closely associated with international relations and intelligence.

Yesterday, November 11, 1,565 people died of COVID in the United States. Overall deaths from the virus in this country exceed 242,000. Coronavirus hospitalizations nationwide exceed 60,000. Many states are approaching hospital capacity, yet even more concerning is the lack of qualified medical personnel to attend to the increasing numbers of sick patients. The rate of infection continues to grow. And yet — there is no national plan to defeat the coronavirus, not to amp up testing, to supply PPE, or to bring down the rate of infection. States, cities, and counties are on their own. The disastrous results are clear for all to see.

The President of the United States — as far as we can tell — is indifferent to this rising toll. There is no evidence that he has given a thought, since losing the election, to saving American lives from this scourge.

Furthermore — judging by its silence and inaction — the national Republican Party is willing to overlook this ongoing tragedy, which has flourished on Donald Trump’s watch.

Based on the 71 million votes cast for Trump, rank and file Republican voters embrace the indifference of the President and accept the deaths of family members, friends, and neighbors, as well as Americans with whom they have no direct connection.

This acceptance by the base, and the refusal to hold the President accountable, explains the calculation that Washington Republicans have made. If there is a line this party, its leaders, and its voters are unwilling to cross in support of Donald Trump, if there is a bridge too far, we haven’t yet reached it.

(Image: The first two items in Donald Trump’s twitter feed this afternoon. The top tweet is a fraudulent claim about voter fraud; the second is a complaint about Fox News. Trump’s concerns, and matters of indifference to him, are plain for all to see.)

2020 General Election, Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans

Are Trump’s shocking, reckless outbursts not “the tirades of a tyrant, but the tantrums of a toddler”?

Eli Lake offers a commentary on Trump’s firing Secretary of Defense Mark Esper (who publicly disagreed with Trump about the wisdom of using the nation’s military to scatter peaceful demonstrators so the President could stroll to Lafayette Square for a photo op). Lake criticizes Donald Trump’s score-settling as “shocking, but predictable.” He suggests that, if Trump fires CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Christopher Wrey, this “would again be shocking, but not surprising.”

It appears now that he will leave office in the manner in which he has governed: recklessly. The difference is that, now that he has lost his bid for re-election, his outbursts are not the tirades of a tyrant, but the tantrums of a toddler. Trump could have accepted defeat and focused on the fact that his presidency has remade both the Republican Party and the American political map. If he wished to run in 2024, he could start making that argument now.

By pronouncing Trump’s eruptions this week as “the tantrums of a toddler,” rather than “the tirades of a tyrant,” Lake diminishes their significance. A reckless president is capable of doing ample damage in the next two months. Furthermore, this is unconvincing:

… Trump did not prove himself to be the authoritarian menace that his opposition claims. Trump could have fired Esper then and there. Instead he waited and seethed, sounding like a dictator but not acting like one. Only now, when he actually is a lame duck, is Trump choosing to settle scores.

A tyrant isn’t defanged simply because he chooses when to retaliate.

Moreover, something more consequential goes unmentioned: the compliance — whether eager or reluctant, over four years of erratic “outbursts” — of the Republican Party with the wannabe autocrat. That compliance, coming again and again, has ensured that the ongoing damage to our national interests and security is altogether predictable. If not for their willingness to countenance Trump’s off the rails words and deeds, Republican leaders might have kept him in check.

Instead, Republicans have folded. While Trump is still subject in some measure to institutional constraints, we can expect to see more unsurprising, reckless conduct over the next two months because Republicans are content to play along.

The elephant in the room

“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time?” asked a Republican about playacting while Trump refuses to admit that he lost the election. This is identical to the calculation Republicans have made regarding the bluster, bullying, and incoherence throughout Trump’s entire term in office.

Today in Washington, Republican officials — in particular those who foresee a possible Republican primary in their future — are rallying around Trump. They’re either all-in with the nonsense about voting irregularities and fraud, or they pretend that his lies, delusions, complaints, and resistance are standard procedure after a presidential election. What they won’t do is push back. With this refusal, they enable.

Eli Lake credits Donald Trump with these accomplishments: “his presidency has remade both the Republican Party and the American political map.”

Lake doesn’t acknowledge that Trump’s remaking of the Republican Party has placed the United States in peril. The most significant threat to a wise, prudent foreign policy (as well as to wise, prudent domestic policies) from January 2016 through January 2021 is the servility of the Republican Party to an insecure, vengeful president and a base willing to do his bidding. It is disappointing that Lake hasn’t noticed this pattern.

(Photograph by Doug Mills of the New York Times.)

2020 General Election, Donald Trump, Republicans

News Quiz: Which Washington Post headline isn’t like the others?

The first six headlines as I scrolled the Washington Post on my phone this evening (the evening of November 11 in California, but already November 12 in D.C.) all appear on the webpage:

  • “More Republicans back legal push to contest Biden’s victory”
  • “Despite lack of evidence, GOP forms ranks around Trump”
  • “Barr clears Justice Dept. to investigate alleged voting irregularities as  Trump makes unfounded fraud claims”
  • “Biden behaves as the incoming president, even as Trump balks at giving up power”
  • “White House, escalating tensions, orders agencies to rebuff Biden transition team”
  • “Long-standing ties between Biden and McConnell could shape early agenda”

Here’s a hint: Five headlines share a theme — that the outcome of the election is in doubt. Voting irregularities and fraud render the results illegitimate, which explains lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and investigations launched by the Justice Department, and make ushering in a democratic transition of power out of the question.

As Republicans rally ’round an angry president in denial, recall Donald Trump’s leadership role in promulgating the birther theory, which sought to delegitimize the Obama presidency. With the cries of fraud in 2020, Republicans seek to delegitimze the Biden presidency before the transition has begun.

Oh, yeah, and then there’s the headline that suggests that because Biden and McConnell have long-standing ties, perhaps they’ll have a smooth working relationship beginning on January 20, 2021.

But, hold on! If you were, say, the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, would you be willing to work with a man put into office illegitimately, a usurper who cheated his way into the White House? Wouldn’t you be justified in obstructing that man at every turn? Wouldn’t your base expect that? (That’s what McConnell and Graham and Cruz and Barr and McCarthy and others are signalling to the base now, isn’t it? That they shouldn’t expect to see cooperation because the other side is illegitimate.)

2020 General Election, Democrats, Republicans

Fox News reveals that most Americans have liberal views on the issues. That’s not Fox’s problem.

Folks on the left had fun on Tuesday night posting images on Twitter of the results of polling by Fox News Channel. Most Americans, the survey found, are decidedly liberal on a host of issues.

Changing to a government-run health care plan: 39% strongly favor; 33% somewhat favor; 14% somewhat oppose; 15% strongly oppose.

Supreme Court action on Roe v. Wade: 71% leave as is; 29% overturn it.

U.S. gun laws should be: 55% more strict; 12% less strict; 33% kept as is.

What should happen to illegal immigrants in the U.S.? 72% pathway to citizenship; 28% deportation.

Increasing government spending on green & renewable energy: 37% strongly favor; 33% somewhat favor; 16% somewhat oppose; 15% strongly oppose.

Donald Trump’s approach to Russia: 4% too tough; 58% not tough enough; 38% about right.

And so on. What Fox (and viewers) discovered is a phenomenon that’s goes back decades. Here’s how Matthew Grossmann and David A. Hopkins described it in Asymmetric Politics:

The American electorate consistently holds collectively left-of-center views on most policy issues even as it leans to the right on more general measures of ideology—as Lloyd A. Free and Hadley Cantril observed nearly five decades ago, the public is simultaneously operationally liberal and symbolically conservative.

Operationally liberal: when asked their opinions about political issues, majorities consistently take the liberal side (as did the folks FNC polled). In other words, when confronted with specific issues, they approve of public policies that actively address or remedy the situation (and they do so even if, in the abstract, they embrace small government or rugged individualism — symbolically conservative positions).

Symbolically conservative: when asked to characterize their ideology or philosophical outlook, more Americans say they are ‘Conservative’ than ‘Liberal’ — that’s how they view themselves. They embrace traditional American values, which the GOP has branded as its own (and runs with year after year, rather than emphasizing its unpopular policies).

Huge numbers of Republican voters and Trump supporters are operationally liberal and symbolically conservative. They vote for the party that opposes their views and interests. There’s nothing new here. It’s the starting point of Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas?

Unfortunately for Democrats, adopting positions on a range of issues that most Americans are in agreement with hardly guarantees support at the polls. As Grossmann and Hopkins explain: the pendulum swings back and forth (with Democrats winning one cycle, Republicans another) with an electorate that sometimes makes a decision based on specific Democratic issues (in 2018 healthcare was critical), sometimes based on abstract Republican messaging (often, as negative polarization has increased, in broad strokes that demean their opponents: socialists, radicals, elitists).

The level of negative partisanship is so high now, it is harder than ever to break through to the other side to make ones case. That’s a huge problem for the Democratic Party, which Alex Pareene addresses with a question, ‘What if it barely matters what Democrats “talk about” or “campaign on”?‘ His answer isn’t encouraging:

It seems possible … that voters no longer believe that the Democratic Party represents a coalition that includes the working class, and that even if the party puts forward Democratic candidates who support pro-worker policy, it simply will not suffice to reach or convince voters.

It’s inevitable that the FNC mix of propaganda and actual news will clash from time to time. While amusing, that’s not really a problem for the network. What Tuesday night’s polling results show, however, is something that Democrats must grapple with, if the party is ever to regain the White House while enjoying majorities in both houses of Congress. With such a closely divided nation, a constitutional structure that advantages vast stretches of land rather than people, and an opposition party bent on obstruction and paralysis, Democrats have to figure out how to gain the support of folks from red states, who would actually benefit from Democratic policies.

2020 General Election, Donald Trump, Republicans

“Stop The Count! Stop The Count! Stop The Count!” “Count The Votes! Count The Votes! Count the Votes!”

Trump supporters crowded outside a voting center in Michigan were chanting to stop the count, while Trump supporters across the country in Arizona were chanting to count the votes.

The Trump strategy to steal the election, thus far, seems as well thought out as Trump’s plans to replace the ACA with something even better. More a favorite talking point than an actual plan.

As I noted on September 28, a successful effort to steal the election would rely on Republican operatives, with Trump simply giving signals: ‘The linchpin: “if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them.” ‘

Most Republicans aren’t playing along at this stage, in stark contrast to the successful effort to “Stop the count” in Florida in 2000. As Rachel Maddow observed in a 2009 look back at the Brooks Brothers riot to intimidate officials to stop counting ballots in Miami-Dade, the ruckus was well planned. New York State Chairman of the Republican Party, Brendan Quinn, and New York Republican Congressman John Sweeney organized the the effort.

As Maddow explained, “The mob that the GOP sent to stop that count in Miami was billed at the time as a spontaneous, grassroots uprising …,” but it consisted of national Republican operatives — none from Miami — at least a half dozen who were paid for their services. Maddow identifies several of them by name and position — 1 though 10 — in the photo above.

“Many of these Brooks Brothers rioters went on to pretty good jobs in the Bush-Cheney administration,” Maddow reports. “That mob scene they participated in became something that Republicans put on their resumes.”

The Brooks Brothers riot occurred in early December, a month after the election. So there’s plenty of time for mischief in 2020 — and well into January 2021 for that matter. But thus far, it appears that Trump is flailing away without much effective, organized support. And — as I wrote on Wednesday — many Washington Republicans (even those, I suggest, who — as reported today — believe that Trump’s campaign carried them to reelection this week) almost certainly welcome a Biden White House after four years of Trump. There are distinct advantages to escaping from Trump’s craziness, while gaining an unalloyed partisan enemy (whom I’m sure McConnell believes will likely serve a single term) at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

2020 General Election, Democracy, Republicans

The happiest man in America today may be Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

Assuming (at 11:00 a.m. PT) that when the votes are all counted Joe Biden is elected president and the Republican Senate majority is secure, what could be a better outcome for the senior senator from Kentucky?

The erratic, irrational, self-destructive leader of his party is about to be sidelined and there will be a clear, unambiguous villain in the White House. Republicans, and Fox News Channel, can give voice to lies and slander that will be more strategically calculated than the prodigious liar in the White House ever managed. And it’ll be easier for Republicans to keep the racial antagonism and xenophobia at a lower pitch than Trump has done. This won’t be a setback for any essential Republican policy objectives or campaign strategies.

McConnell, who has no interest in legislating, can go back to what he does best: obstruction. There will be no hurry to approve any Biden executive branch appointments. And, since the courts are packed full, perhaps we can have a pause for a couple of years.

Meanwhile, Republicans can let go of foreign policies that undermine our allies and give succor to Putin and other bad actors who wish ill of the U.S. Biden can be counted on to restore some normalcy to American foreign policy, which most Republicans — no matter what the lies and the party-line — will welcome, though not acknowledge. There will still be relentless attacks and investigations.

On Sunday I wrote, “Mitch McConnell (and the GOP caucuses in both the Senate and the House) often strategically opt for dysfunction, gridlock, and paralysis rather than cutting a deal, if they think they can shun accountability and win the next election — or the cycle or two after that.” His gamble paid off. The Senate ignored the pandemic and the economic crisis and McConnell didn’t even lose a cycle. And, if all goes well, Senate Republicans may be better positioned in the next off-year elections to increase their majority (which would be unlikely if Trump were in his second term).

This is not the country I thought (before November 2016) I was living in. Nor the one I thought (after November 2018) I was living in.

With November 2020 comes another reality check — and a discordant clash with nearly half the country. Even with a pandemic — with more than 200,000 dead and, by year’s end, perhaps 200,000 more — the Republican base voted heavily to return Trump to office along with red state senators. Fox News Channel, negative polarization, and fiercely partisan identities have profoundly shaped the reality that the Republican base perceives.

Yep. Mitch McConnell is sitting pretty.

(Image: Mitch McConnell 2016 official photo via wikipedia.)