2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Judge Matthew Brann dismissed the lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign, that Giuliani took over to such awful affect. A few excerpts from his decision:

Plaintiffs ask this Court to disenfranchise almost seven million voters. This Court has been unable to find any case in which a plaintiff has sought such a drastic remedy in the contest of an election, in terms of the sheer volume of votes asked to be invalidated.

One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption, such that this Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed injunctive relief despite the impact it would have on such a large group of citizens. That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence.

In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more. At bottom, Plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.

[RoseMorninStar]

With all due respect to both of you (and all the others, like the Daily Kos, who have said similar things), I find this to be as fact-free -- indeed, as anti-fact -- as Giuliani's rants. The facts say that before they met with Trump, they both said that they were going to follow the law and grant the electors to the candidate that one the most votes, and after they met with Trump they said the same thing, and that they had not seen anything to suggest that the election was rigged. The facts further say that they at least say that they asked Trump for more help with the pandemic. There are zero facts that suggest that they are "up to something". Now, is it possible that they will turn around and do the opposite of what they have repeatedly said that they would do? Sure. But until there are actual facts that support that I'm not going to support such an allegation. That is a very slippery slope.

Edited to add: But there are people who are "up to something" in Michigan, namely The Republican National Committee and Michigan Republican Party and failed Senate candidate John James, who are demanding that the Michigan Board of State Canvassers fail to follow the law and delay certifying the election on Monday. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... d=msedgntp

In my defense, I am not familiar with the particular persons being discussed and my 'Of course they are' comment was aimed more at the situation at large. I should have been more careful with my reply. I'm more than a little fed up with the insanity.

As for the Pennsylvania Judge's response.. good for him. I'm watching what's going on in Milwaukee and Dane Counties.

[Dave_LF]

I have no idea what the Daily Kos said or didn't, but I remain suspicious of sudden changes of heart in those who've never shown signs of possessing them. Best case scenario is they're trying to bilk a doomed president who's deluded about his chances out of some federal aid on his way out. We can only hope.

[River]

Dismissed with prejudice. That should do it for Rudy's attempted courtroom come back.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Presumably, they will try to appeal.

[N.E. Brigand]

On the other hand, those Michigan Republicans spent pretty extravagantly at the Trump Hotel in D.C. last night, which at the very least appears unseemly.

They're up to something. I don't know what, but there's no way the gerrymandering anti-maskers in charge of the MI legislature decided overnight that they suddenly care about COVID and the law and standing up to Trump.

I do think they were up to something, and it's the same thing that most powerful people who spend a lot of money at Trump's Washington hotel are up to, and I think they *wanted* their business there to be reported in the press.

Why do people spend money at Trump's hotel? So that he'll do them a favor. Sometimes that favor may just be for him to do his job.

In this case, the favor presumably would be supporting Covid relief for Michigan.

So their Trump patronage could be considered noble, in a way.

But still, as I said, unseemly.

- - - - - - - - - -

(I do think they're going to do the right thing and not interfere in their state's electoral process. But their statement Friday night, though heartening, was vague, and they didn't respond to reqeusts from the Washington Post to say explicitly that they're going to stay out of it.)


- - - - - - - - - -

(One other possibility is that Trump comped them the Dom Perignon, and they just decided to enjoy themselves at his expense without any intention of rewarding him for it.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Judge Matthew Brann dismissed the lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign, that Giuliani took over to such awful affect. A few excerpts from his decision:

Plaintiffs ask this Court to disenfranchise almost seven million voters. This Court has been unable to find any case in which a plaintiff has sought such a drastic remedy in the contest of an election, in terms of the sheer volume of votes asked to be invalidated.

One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption, such that this Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed injunctive relief despite the impact it would have on such a large group of citizens. That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence.

In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more. At bottom, Plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.

I appreciated the judge's explanation about how Pennysylvania's secretretary of state gave counties the discretion to choose to allow voters whose ballots were deemed invalid the option to "cure" them. Some counties chose to do so. Some counties did not. The Trump campaign found two voters from counties that did not allow this option who had their ballots invalidated. But they didn't sue those counties. They sued other counties (with more Democratic voters) and the secretary of state.

It's also worth emphasizing a point you cite from the judge's argument: instead of those two voters seeking the relief of having sheir votes count, they asked the court to throw out seven million other votes. Or in his words: "Plaintiffs do not ask to level up. Rather, they seek to level down".

(The judge was appointed by Barack Obama, but he's a Republican.)

Pennsylvania's junior senator, Pat Toomey, a Republican, says that with this ruling, Trump has exhausted his options, and so Toomey congratulated Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on winning the election. Perhaps just as importantly, Toomey refers to "the apparent attempt by President Trump to thwart the will of Michigan voters and select an illegitimate slate of electoral college electors."

(However, I've already seen a number of conservatives online claiming that this loss was a necessary step toward getting the case to the Supreme Court. Edit: not just online. Rudy Giuliani says the decision will "help us in our strategy to get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court.")

[N.E. Brigand]

One recurring theme in Trumpworld has been that they accuse others of what they themselves have done.

So every time they launch a new outlandish claim about the Biden campaign, I see something the Trump campaign needs to be investigated for later.

For instance, tonight Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell said on Newsmax that voting machines in the 2016 primary contests were rigged for Hillary Clinton, that Bernie Sanders was the actual winner, and that Democrats have been paying Sanders to keep quiet about it.

That makes me wonder about the 2016 Republican pimary.

(Also on Newsmax tonight, they were repeating a charge I've seen elsewhere: that the Biden campaign "created a fake office, the 'Office of the President-Elect': sounds great, but it's not real." In fact, it's pretty easy to find pictures of Donald Trump in late 2016 speaking from a lectern which bears that very title!)

(Wait, something more from Powell: she says that Georgia's governor, Brian Kemp, a Republican, took bribes from Dominion, the company that sold the state its election machines, to throw the race for Biden.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Here's a play-by-play account of the recount underway in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.

Republican observers have filed objections to huge swaths of ballots on spurious grounds, and they seem to be most focused on ballots from the city of Milwaukee itself. The county clerk says that some of the observers are objecting to every single ballot as it is counted.

One weird item in that reporting is how the recount for the village of Bayside disccovered that one ballot envelope (out of about 3,000) was missing a return address and so the envelope and ballot should have been thrown out when it arrived -- but it wasn't. And there's no way to match that envelope to the ballot it contained. (That's the whole point of having *secret* ballots.) So the county election board ruled that the only way to solve that problem was to randomly pick one ballot and throw it out. That makes it almost certain that some voter who did everything right had his or her ballot tossed.

[RoseMorninStar]

Here's a play-by-play from the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel.

This from the AP: Wisconsin officials: Trump observers obstructing recount.

At least one Trump observer was escorted out of the building by sheriff’s deputies Saturday after pushing an election official who had lifted her coat from an observer chair. Another Trump observer was removed Friday for not wearing a face mask properly as required.

Among other disturbances.

Ex-Sherrif David Clark invited the Proud Boys to Milwaukee/MAGA Rally so they are roaming around toting their big guns. Kyle RIttenhouse (shooter charged with killing 2 at the Kenosha, WI unrest) was bailed out yesterday. ugh.

[Frelga]

Loeffler self-isolates after positive Covid test

Loeffler’s campaign events have come under scrutiny for not adhering to CDC guidelines. Specifically, the senator has held indoor, largely mask-less events, including one last week with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

[Dave_LF]

They've as much as said now that their plan is to argue something along the lines of "all mail-in ballots should be invalidated" before the Supreme Court. What are their chances of getting a case there before January 20? What happens if they do? And what happens if the case gets there *after* inauguration?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

They've as much as said now that their plan is to argue something along the lines of "all mail-in ballots should be invalidated" before the Supreme Court. What are their chances of getting a case there before January 20?

In theory, it is possible that an individual case like the the Pennsylvania one could be expediated through appeals through the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court by then. But, 1) there is no way that the court is going to rule to invalidate the mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania; and 2) even if they did, that would not apply to any other state unless they ruled that mail-in ballots, which have been used for decades, has somehow always been invalid and no one noticed before. The justices on the SCOTUS won't say that any more than the Trump-appointed judges that have rejected challenges throughout the country have.

What happens if they do? And what happens if the case gets there *after* inauguration?

Chaos, that fortunately has somewhat less than 0% chance of happening.

[Dave_LF]

Good; I'll take your word for it. I have enough expertise in biology and medicine that I can usually tell when someone's COVID opinion is just scaremongering, but I lack that sort of immunity where law and politics are concerned.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Here is an interesting article with descriptions about how what is going on in the United States is seen around the world.

What The U.S. Election Meltdown Looks Like to Other Countries

[River]

Good; I'll take your word for it. I have enough expertise in biology and medicine that I can usually tell when someone's COVID opinion is just scaremongering, but I lack that sort of immunity where law and politics are concerned.

Something that has ended up paying unexpected dividends for me was helping my husband study for the citizenship exam. It's fairly basic civics, but in a situation like this it's sort of like being armed with some fairly basic biology in the face of COVID: you can already smell the utter b.s. coming and you have a good foundation for leveling up if you choose or need to.

It also helped that, in high school, we went over the US Constitution line by line. We had these packets with the text, but there was a missing word in every single sentence. Bit by bit, we completed the sentences and discussed. It was high school level stuff, mind, but it was highly instructive. Maybe try to replicate that? I'll warn you, it was not exactly painless.

[Frelga]

Powell said Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp is 'in on the Dominion scam.' Accused Kemp and GA Secretary of State of accepting financial benefits in conspiracy to defeat Trump. Evidence? 'I can't give you any more details.,' she said. From @newsmax 2/2 End.

One might very nearly feel sorry for Kemp.

20201122_111937.jpg (179.92 KiB) Viewed 1931 times

[RoseMorninStar]

Where does this madness end? How low can we go? Russia & China have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams of taking us down without firing a shot. With a little manipulation and the right madman at the helm we're destroying ourselves.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Which sparked a reaction from Chris Christie of all people.

Chris Christie calls Trump's legal team a 'national embarrassment'

x-posted with Rose.

[N.E. Brigand]

(Wait, something more from Powell: she says that Georgia's governor, Brian Kemp, a Republican, took bribes from Dominion, the company that sold the state its election machines, to throw the race for Biden.)

Just a month ago, Rudy Giuliani and his associates were claiming that they had come into possession of a laptop with damning evidence about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.

The response from serious conservatives was: Joe Biden needs to answer questions about this.

Now, Rudy Giuliani and his associates claim that a Republican governor has taken bribes to give the election to Biden.

Is this the breaking point? Will mainstream conservatives demand criminal investigation into Brian Kemp? Or is this finally too crazy for them to accept?

And if so, will they ever admit that the Hunter Biden nonsense was just as ridiculous?