They want three and a half trill — billion dollars for the mail-in votes. Okay, universal mail-in ballots. Three and a half trill — They want 25 billion dollars — billion — for the Post Office.
Now they need that money in order to have the Post Office work, so it can take all these millions and millions of ballots.
Now, in the meantime, they aren’t getting there. By the way, those are just two items. But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting. — Donald Trump on the phone with Fox Business Network.
It couldn’t be clearer.
“They” are the Democrats and “they need that money in order to have the Post Office work” — and Donald Trump doesn’t want the Post Office to work because it would permit “universal mail-in voting.”
Donald Trump — adopting a decades old Republican strategy — is focused on depressing voter turnout in the upcoming election. He realizes that — based on the best evidence we have right now — in a high turnout election he will be turned out of the White House.
Gutting the U.S. Postal Service — never mind the effects on the American public and our economy, both of which rely on prompt, reliable mail delivery — is an attempt to avoid being held accountable on November 3. This strategy has played out over the past three months:
In May, Louis DeJoy – a multi-million dollar contributor to the Republican Party – was appointed Postmaster General. Since that time he has imposed changes that have eliminated overtime for hundreds of thousands of postal workers; prohibited late trips to deliver mail; and ruled that, if a distribution center is running late, “they will keep the mail for the next day.”
He reassigned 23 top executives at the Postal Service, imposed a hiring freeze, and implemented “early retirement authority” for nonunion employees.
On Tuesday, Noel King at NPR interviewed Kimberly Karol, president of the Iowa Postal Workers Union. Among the things we learn from Ms. Karol is that the Postal Service has been removing mail sorting machines at facilities across the country. Another key fact: many of the changes circumvent rules that require public comment when closing offices or degrading delivery standards – but which have the same result.
Here is a brief exchange:
KAROL: Yes, we are beginning to see those changes and how it is impacting the mail. Mail is beginning to pile up in our offices, and we’re seeing equipment being removed. So we are beginning to see the impact of those changes.
KING: Curious – I hadn’t heard about this one – equipment being removed. What equipment?
KAROL: The sorting equipment that we use to process mail for delivery. In Iowa, we are losing machines. And they already in Waterloo were losing one of those machines. So that also hinders our ability to process mail in the way that we had in the past.
KING: Sure. Sounds like it would. You’ve been a postal worker for 30 years? How do you feel about Louis DeJoy?
KAROL: I am not a fan. I grew up in a culture of service, where every piece was to be delivered every day. And his policies, although they’ve only been in place for a few weeks, are now affecting the way that we do business and not allowing us to deliver every piece every day, as we’ve done in the past.
KING: Do you get the impression that your feelings about him are shared broadly among postal workers? Do people agree with you?
KAROL: Yes, all across the country. We are trying to activate people all across the country and notify the public because we will – my opinion is that the PMG is trying to circumvent the rules that have been set in place to safeguard the public by making changes that don’t require public comment but have the same impact as closing offices and/or changing delivery standards. And so this is a way to avoid that kind of public comment. And we’re trying to make sure that the public understands that they need to make comment.
It is remarkable that this attempt to sabotage democracy by crippling the Post Office is happening in plain sight.
In recent years the Republican Party has increasingly relied on sowing social division, on racial, ethnic, and religious cleavages, to win elections. And, as that ugly Us-vs.-Them narrative has proved unreliable — the GOP has won the popular vote in only one presidential election since 2000 — the fallback position, now in the foreground, is to attack democratic institutions that ensure majority rule.
And that’s not the half of it. It’s not just democratic practices and institutions that are threatened. Much more is at stake. The Republican Party is prepared to accept a stomach-turning level of collateral damage to stay in power. Early on, as Trump jumped to do Vladimir Putin’s bidding, Republicans accepted the damage to our national security and the destruction of alliances that have kept the peace. As the coronavirus has swept the country, Republicans have chosen to accept an enormous and still rising death toll, rather than break with Trump. Let’s grant, inflicting severe damage on the Post Office is small potatoes for these guys. They appear ready to do pretty much anything they can get away with to stay in power.
The decision Americans make on November 3 could hardly be more consequential.
