I might ramble a little bit here. I'm not sad because of the election at least not directly. Watching the news and seeing the huge crowds of people screaming and shouting because the major news outlets declared Joe Biden had won the presidency. This is the sign of a sick society, politics while important is not cause for dancing in the streets. Many of these celebrants will no longer talk to parents and other family members who differ with them politically. Do they now put more faith in government,maybe I don't know maybe their just immature what I do know is that that is sad state of affairs.
Strange how in the past we would see celebrations not in the streets with hundreds if not thousands but in a ballroom or campaign headquarters with the candidate and his closest supporters. These were celebrations of a hard fought campaign that was finally over, sometimes just being done campaigning win or lose was reason enough to celebrate. Now I know that somebody somewhere must like maybe even love Joe Biden but that is not what we saw in these street celebrations the signs were Dump Trump and various other ugly statements. This is not very promising for a so called return to normalcy and unity, Joe rode the ugliness to victory but I doubt he can rein it in.
The covid plague is a huge reason why Trump lost. Nobody planted it to oust Trump but it was a huge part of Biden's campaign rhetoric, how he could control the plague. Yesterday we saw why that was a whole lot of nonsense supposedly Trump led his followers to disregard safety protocols and that was the problem. We saw again why this was BS because the left doesn't want to follow protocols either. Just like the so called protests ( riots) this summer you didn't see a whole lot of masks in these giant gatherings. You see when Trump held rallies the first thing out of the news coverage was this was super spreader event not a word about the plague for riots or Biden events. You see the inconsistencies were not just Trumps they came from the Dems,health officials,and the news media as well.
Truly the biggest reason it is a sad day in America is we elected a president not on who he is or what he stands for but because he isn't Trump.
I disagree in my perspective, which won't surprise you ;) What I heard from biden during the campaign was a unity message, in large part because he wanted to appeal to disaffected anti-trump Republicans like those involved in the Lincoln Project. That he criticized trump's response to Covid-19 was a part of his campaign, but trump's task force hasn't even been meeting. Biden said that he'd gather relevant folks together for his task force and then would listen to their advice. He's talked about a more consistent national response. Science. We'll see what it looks like. I don't know enough about the people on the task force to judge the choices so far. The large gatherings were unwise, I'll agree, but protests are different than political campaign rallies. When I saw the protests masks were more in evidence while they were rare at the trump rallies. And now they are rare at the "stop the count" rallies. It's not unusual for voters to be more "anti" the other guy than "pro" their own *cough*Obama*cough*
ReplyDeleteIt's good to see your post and read your thoughts.
All I can go by is what I saw at the celebrations upon the press calling the election. the signage and rhetoric of those who were interviewed was far more focused on Trump than Biden . The only place you really heard anything concerning Biden was from the talking heads from the news media.
DeleteIf Biden wanted to appeal to the middle he would have chose a different V.P. than Harris, the only way she looks moderate is if you stand her next to AOC
I'm not denying anti-trump was a big part of it. And I'm not claiming Harris is a moderate but that Biden is.
DeleteI'm disturbed by the current firings and Trump's rhetoric. I agree with McConnell that Trump has every right to sue in court. I disagree that it's at all a good idea to whip his base up into a frenzy insisting there was widespread fraud he has no evidence of. Mike Pompeo's stunt from the Secretary of State podium was inexcusable.
My question would be what constitutes wide spread voter fraud. We have several states where sworn affidavits have been filed claiming dead people voted In Michigan they were back dating post marks to increase ballots. There have been several anomaly across battleground states and the anomolies are almost exclusively to Biden's favor. I can't say weather its fraud or not but these are question that should be looked into before we rush to give Biden the victory.
DeleteThey _are_ looking into it, but the courts have thrown out every one of his cases so far. There's no evidence of the fraud alleged. That postal worker who alleged that some backdated postmarks may have been added to some late mail-in ballots recanted didn't he when formally interviewed, though he's now back out there _not_ under oath ;) recanting the recant. Isn't Biden up by over 100,000 votes in Michigan? The possible random few cases there might be of fraud (that I haven't seen evidence of yet) won't be enough to overcome this lead. And no, there have been no dead voters' ballots counted. Seriously. I can't find any reports of dead people's votes being counted. They catch these things before they count the vote. Here's an Associated Press report on the dead people voting thing:
Deletehttps://apnews.com/article/ap-fact-check-election-dead-voter-claims-fc7ba254fd37059f63ea764c18c2a4cb
I remember in the 2016 election when the margins were small and Hillary won the popular vote by 3,000,000. There was a lot of pressure on her to concede, and that's when the calls of "He won, get over it, move on" began. Ah, good times lol
It's awful hard to believe anything that comes across from the news when they have been openly boosting Biden the whole election cycle. When news media becomes so bias everything becomes suspect. All that being said I don't believe they will find enough to change the outcome. Personally I think Biden should be pushing for thorough independent investigations in all the the battleground states. It is evident that there was fraud during this election, how much is the question. In the past pundits and newscasters would say there is no evidence of fraud, now they say no evidence of wide spread fraud. It is his only chance for any kind of unification of the country or any success for his administration.
DeleteI don't watch much of what passes for news these days, as the "local" news is filled with odd stories from some far-away state and national network news has too much human interest stories to suit me. I admit I enjoy some of the political commentary when I can get it, but that's not news.
DeleteThe margins are too large to make any difference in this election. "Widespread fraud" is what's being alleged. Voter fraud is extremely rare. That it sometimes happens is almost always due to people who aren't eligible trying to vote by mistake, and that gets caught before their vote gets counted. I'm thinking of a particular case where a convicted felon tried to vote, not realizing that once her sentence was served there was a process to go through before her voting rights were restored. There was a case this year where a woman sent in her dead mother's ballot because her mother's dying wish had been to vote for trump again. These are fraud, yes, but rare and never enough to make a difference in an election.
"It was evident that there was fraud during this election"? There's a rare chance of fraud in _any_ election. If you're suggesting that there was more than that in _this_ one then any evidence at all would be a good thing. The Trump lawsuits haven't provided any, and in PA when specifically asked if fraud was being alleged the Trump lawyer said no.
GA is doing a hand recount in all counties. Even if the recount yields enough error to overcome biden's current lead (and that's highly unlikely), biden still has enough electoral college votes to win. This posturing by trump is disappointing, but it's his whipping up of his base, his insistence on cheating without providing any evidence to support it, his tweets in all caps, that's what's standing in the way of us coming together and moving forward. This behavior is unheard of but hardly surprising from him.
Fraud is pretty hard to find if your predisposed to say everything is okay nothing to see here. I'll agree that it's a long shot that they find enough to reverse course. That being said if Trump conceded the investigations would stop and would leave doubts in many peoples minds.
DeleteThey're looking for fraud all along. They look at each ballot and vet it. They check ids and compare signatures. They _do_ look. They look as a matter of regular routine. And we have folks looking at the larger issues to protect election integrity.
ReplyDeleteThis assumption that there's widespread or systemic fraud of some kind with no evidence whatsoever is what's leaving doubts. It's Trump's behavior that is leaving doubts in some people's minds. If he had any evidence his lawyer's would be presenting it in court.
Where's the evidence? Nowhere. Trump just can't believe he lost.
Trump just won one of his legal challenges in Pennsylvania,and while that ruling isn't directly fraud it's pretty close. Part of the problems is allowing each state to do what ever they want in regards to an election national elections should have uniform rules across the board. This should include rules on in person or absentee voting identification and time frames. I don't know what they would come up with but we would all be playing with the same rules. Personally I think all voting except extreme circumstances should require an I.D. and be done in person and on election day.
DeleteLocal and state elections come on the same ballots as the national elections. States' rights are tricky. It'd be hard to have a same size fits all approach nation-wide. Elections have always been overseen by states, and I'm not sure how you could change that.
DeleteThere are, I think, about 17 Trump legal challenges in PA. Are you talking about the case where a number of mail-in ballots were disqualified for first-time voters who were unable to confirm their identification by the originally set date? Those ballots had been segregated waiting for a ruling and were never included in the count. I'd not call it a fraud issue but an interpretation of the date needed to comply with election law and an issue of the secretary of state's authority. It was ruled the PA Secretary of State didn't have authority to change that 11/9 deadline.
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DeleteChanging the election rules would probably take a constitutional amendment and we would end up with unpaid mandates. Perfect world, one can dream right.
DeleteIt sounds like the same case but I'm losing track, so many cases. In any case change rules in the closing days for perceived advantage is not a good look.
It wasn't to advantage a particular candidate but to better enable voter access during the coronavirus. Turns out it didn't involve many votes so wasn't an aid to voters generally anyway. The huge majority of voters got the requirements met before the original deadline.
ReplyDeleteI wish I'd quit making new comments when my intention is to post in reply to yours *sigh*
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