Thursday, November 5, 2020

Diatribes & Digressions About This General Election

 The diatribes I have concerning this election aren't just small or middling ones, but major ginormous rage reactions.   Instead of consuming at least three posts spelling them out,  let me confine attention to the top five:

1)   The cowardly twerp and sore loser Trump finding it necessary to interfere in ongoing close battleground state counts.   That includes filing lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan and demanding a recount in Wisconsin.  See e.g.

Trump campaign mounts legal barrage in three states

 As MSNBC's Ari Melber put it: "Only a losing candidate demands ballot counting be stopped when he's behind."

But this is Donald Trump, a graceless, classless and bombastic cretin who's lost over his whole miserable life - from lousy casino deals, to Trump University, and even a Trump Foundation charity (Trump paid $25 million to students of his Trump University to settle fraud accusations. His charitable foundation was shut down after the authorities found a “shocking pattern of illegality.”)

This time the jig is up early and Trump knows it which is why he's desperately trying to use "infantile" frivolous  lawsuits (in the words of  Nicole Wallace) to halt  ballot tabulation to try to delay the process enough to miss the certification deadline of December 14.  If he can do that he believes he can then pick his own state electors to squeeze him back into power.  Or, failing that, he thinks he can take one state (probably Pennsylvania) and make a case to the Supreme Court for a win.

2)   The entire abominable polling  process  - which once again misled observers and voters -  especially Dems expecting a huge blowout.   The polling approaching election day had Biden up by an average of 8-9 points nationally and at least 5-6 points in each battleground state.   But as the results rolled in Tuesday night it was clear these numbers amounted to a major misfire and poll models came under intense scrutiny and criticism.   

Just look at the Senate races and how the Dem candidates were often polling far ahead (e.g Cunningham over Thom Tillis by 10 pts in NC) but ended up losing.    The way it looks right now, the Dems probably won't retake the Senate despite hundred of millions being pumped  into key races, especially the $100 m into Jaime Harrison's South Carolina battle with Lindsey Graham.

 A possible cause of this national polling fiasco appeared in one NY Times op-ed over the weekend, quoting one Trumpkin who bragged: "We got all our under 45 year old guys either pranking the pollsters  or not picking up the phone at all, or giving misleading answers."

If that's true the next iteration of  election polling needs to somehow take such misdirection into account.   Either that, or people will no longer ascribe any credibility to polls, dismissing them all as "fake".  

3) Repuke goons and Trumpie renegades  mobbing election centers - as in Maricopa County, Arizona last night  as well as  targeting the TFC Center in Detroit -   and screaming epithets, like the "Brooks Brothers" mobsters during the Florida recount back in 2000.   Of course, these fools in their MAGA caps were turbo-charged by Trump's reckless claims of fraud in the ballot- counting process and prematurely claiming himself as the "winner" early yesterday morning.  This was at his ridiculous White House "victory party".  (He evidently "lost it" when he saw on a large screen that FOX News had called Arizona for Biden, demolishing his "victory" meme one time.)

All Trump did with his deranged nonsense is to make it more difficult for his cult to face reality when it arrives.  One journalist who's covered Central America, averred last night the shrieking mobs in Arizona, as well as Michigan, reminded him of what he observed in failed states in those other places - usually ruled by dictators.  We cannot allow these Trump-infected goons to close down post-election ballot counts in this country.  If they need to be removed at the point of a gun, so be it

4)  Democrats in Florida failing big time to craft coherent narratives to counter the anti-socialist claptrap spewed and circulated by Miami's Cubans.    I first learned about the right wing Cubans' tactics on Bill Maher's (October 17) Real Time show featuring actor John Leguizamo.    Leguizamo told Maher how he had been registering Columbian voters in Miami-Dade County and then found out their Whats App feeds were being blasted by anti-socialist screeds and propaganda.  He told Maher that he believed it affected up to 400,000 potential Latino Biden voters.  Well, as it turned out the Cubans clearly succeeded in their campaign to terrify Latinos - including Venezuelans, Puerto Ricans, Columbians - away from Biden and the Dems using the socialist bogey.  

Former RNC chair  Michael Steele -  interviewed on MSNBC Morning Joe yesterday -  laid much of the blame on Democrats for failing to craft  and circulate a counter narrative to offset the Cubans' influence.  Also on failing to mobilize a get out the vote Latino effort in time.  This, he said, is why Miami-Dade had 200,000 fewer votes for Democrats this time around including loss of a House seat.

5) White suburban women in several Ohio counties going 54% for Trump after being influenced by his "law and order" BS, e.g. "I'm trying to protect you women in those suburbs"  etc.   Just enough of these women were  probably affected to toss Ohio into the 'red' column.  Later exit polls showed college educated white women broke almost evenly for Trump and Biden. This marked a 7 points loss from what Hillary garnered in 2016.  What happened?  Assuming they are as much against pussy grabbing now as they were then, we must deduce they fell for Trump's law and order scare tactics - especially after seeing the scenes of looting in the cities over the summer.  So much for critical thinking in college education!

Digressions:

1)   Ok, no more $100 million infusions into any single Senate campaign.  I applauded Jaime Harrison and his bold push to oust the slimy weasel Lindsey Graham - but I made one donation to that end.   He ended up with nearly $100 million in moola and got blown out by    56.1% to   42.6%   How much did I contribute to this futile effort?  One donation of 10 bucks. What I once put down in a Vegas Sports Book for the Packers to beat the Niners several years back - and lost.

2)  Many progressive voters (including Janice) are fretting over how a Biden administration will get anything passed  assuming there is another McConnell -ruled Senate.  As I told her,  I am hopeful there will be less Reep obstruction with Trump out of the picture,  s0 no longer holding GOP Senators hostage. But if that is not the case a President Biden would  have no choice except to govern - like Obama had to  - by issuing executive orders.  And his first item of business must be to kill all Trump's executive orders.  After that,  he has to replace Bill Barr at the DOJ.  Even if that means using a temporary appointment - if any Republican Senate prevents a Biden nominee confirmation.  (There is a remote chance we could win two runoff races in GA and control the Senate with a Biden win. )

Fortunately, as the FT's Edward Luce observed in a recent essay, U.S. Presidents have almost unilateral power in foreign relations.  So Biden can bring the U.S. back into the global community of nations,, beginning with re-entering the Paris Climate Accord, then repairing relations with NATO, and also the World Health Organization - which Dotard threatened to leave.  The delirious FT op-ed nabob Janan Ganesh has recently whined ('A Fickle U.S. Cannot Lead The World') that it would be sad if U.S. foreign policy changes again, say on the Iranian nuclear deal and other issues, because this gives the image of a  "fickle" American state,  hostage to whoever is president.  Well, sorry, Janan, but that's the way it is!  We can't have the policies of a criminal resident like Donald Trump being the last word!

Biden will also be able to return all those scientists to their various agencies (NOAA, EPA etc.) that Trump marginalized or expelled. So it's not like he's totally impotent or a "lame duck".

3) About the only option left now for the Right's media is to keep bragging about how Trump "increased his base, his supporters".  Yeah, he did, to about 69 million (from 63 million) which is a damned disgrace.  But these nabobs fail to also observe how Biden and the Democrats increased their popular vote support to the largest ever, over 71 million. 

4) It's clear Biden is close to an electoral college win without Ohio.  So let's hear no more pundit babble about "As Ohio goes so goes the nation...."  Yadda Yadda.

5)  When all the post-election hubbub and protests die down it will be clear that democracy in this country isn't all it's cracked up to be  - and remains on life support - even given a Biden administration.  Biden vows to unite all Americans, red and blue states - into the United States.  That's a noble aspiration but don't look for it to manifest in this riven nation anytime soon.

No thanks to Trump!  

See Also:

by Will Bunch | November 5, 2020 - 8:07am | permalink

by Heather Cox Richardson | November 5, 2020 - 7:51am | permalink

— from BillMoyers.com

And:

by William Rivers Pitt | November 5, 2020 - 7:24am | permalink

— from Truthout

Excerpt:

The final results of the 2020 presidential and congressional elections remain unresolved this morning. Even absent an outcome, there are many in the U.S. and around the world who will call Tuesday’s closer-than-expected election a disaster, an abject national humiliation, and a punch in the throat to every medical professional who waded into Donald Trump’s pandemic wearing trash bags and masks dipped in Lysol so they could help save lives...

Many devoutly believed Trump needed to be thoroughly and unquestionably routed last night, and not just to avoid a protracted and messy legal battle that could wind up before a badly compromised Supreme Court. More than that, the hope for a full Trump routing last night was also a hope that the entire grotesquerie that is Trumpism itself might be torn down, burned and buried under salted earth before the watching eyes of the whole wide world.

Well, after a huge turnout, that did not happen. Instead, an election that many expected to be a Democratic “Blue Wave” has become a nip and tuck affair that has seen Democrats actually lose seats in the House of Representatives. Democrats still hold the majority in that chamber, but it is a slimmer one today, and the GOP minority will surely be emboldened after outstripping expectations. Dreams of a Democratic Senate majority are slowly but surely falling to dust.

Ah, yes. Expectations, otherwise known as “polls,” form an entire industry that has once again proven itself unequal to the task it claims expertise in. I’m not one to casually quote neoconservative fiends like John Podhoretz, but in this specific instance, he cuts it right down to the bone.

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