GET OUT: US politics November 2020

i think that is likely. his plan to cheat doesn't really make sense, especially because he is saying he is going to cheat.

xpost they haven't done that thus far! how many times has he railed at a federal judge for not ruling the way he wanted (read: a lot).

a judge doesn't give a shit once they're appointed. People Trump hires care because he can fire them. Judges, if they are loyal to Trump, it's because they actually like him and his ideals and they were broken to begin with.

to throw Trump a win with no legal basis, would basically be inviting daily harassment via phone and at home visits from angry liberal voters - p sure no judge wants that.

what the courts WILL do is help with disenfranchisement, by refusing to allow extensions to voting deadlines, or possibly voting to invalidate 'drive-in' votes (if that does happen though make no bones, I'll be furious)

We're moving into a phase where Trump's incompetency is largely irrelevant. This isn't about governance or legislation.

There's a whole machine with tremendous resources invested in stealing this thing if possible.

Trump always does his worst deeds without warning - when he tips his hand, he's doing it so his base will misremember and think he actually did it later.

that machine existed long before Trump. and there are legit fears to how this election can be tampered with, including that Texas judge who is going to rule on teh validity of 100,000+ drive-in ballots.

that machien does not include "arbitrarily deciding that only votes counted on Election Day count". that shit ain't gonna happen. there will be smaller cumulative other methods to chip away at the vote that Republicans and courts will utilize. that's what we have to be ready to fight in court.

My partner pointed out the reason he probably won’t do anything like announce pre-emptive victory or whatever: there’s not gonna be a crowd for him at the WH. He can’t effectively bullshit without an adoring crowd.

in any case, ain't worth giving yourself ulcers - the only thing I know for sure is Tuesday is going to go differently than any of us can imagine because we have a President with frontal lobe damage, a violent armed country, a fired up voter base, and a larger than usual vote-by-mail total. for all I know Jar Jar Binks will be elected

and if you guess right as to the shit that he's going to pull, there is exactly nobody who is going to high-five you for predicting it, and you'll still have your ulcers.

i suspect he WILL declare pre-emptive victory IF he is ahead at midnight. i don't think he will be ahead at that time, though. and even if he did declare victory before the votes were counted, i am skeptical he could actually get enough votes thrown out. it would need to be a close race for that to happen, like 2000.

Heads up, people.

"Trump will declare that the election is being stolen from him to justify trying to steal it himself. But this plot constitutes a bet on massive institutional failure by the news media to render that basic situation with total clarity." https://t.co/ojp04mnahM

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) November 2, 2020

There's a whole machine with tremendous resources invested in stealing this thing if possible.

Ah Parscale, what a Death Star you built.

The Trump website isn’t that effective at finding polling locations, it would appear from my experience. Their website couldn’t find my polling location, but the nonprofit the site says it’s powered by to find that information found it immediately. pic.twitter.com/rrKGDUoXRL

— Jessica Huseman (@JessicaHuseman) November 2, 2020

xxpost - To be clear, I don't mean "help him win the election" when I say "toss him a win", I'm talking about these smaller decisions that end up disenfranchising small groups of voters here and there. Some of these idiots are absolutely filled with conservative brain rot and will rule in ways that will end up helping Trump in small ways, and I think it's pretty naïve to pretend that they are all going to be high minded and always follow the rule of the law because they no longer feel in thrall to Trump. I argue that some of them absolutely do feel like they owe him something and will try to steer the smaller decisions in his way, should they get the chance. Enough to alter the course of the entire election? No. But c'mon. Let's not pretend every single Trump appointed judge is a paragon of virtue. That's ridiculous.

There's a whole machine with tremendous resources invested in stealing this thing if possible.

There’s really not but OK
― sound of scampo talk to me (El Tomboto), Monday, November 2, 2020 10:44 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Can you disagree or offer something to the contrary without being a complete cunt? wtf

What would you refer to the apparatus that has been funding the churning out of judges? I was respondinng to the contention above that Trump can't afford to litigate the results, which of course he can, he'll have plenty of help, it's already budgeted.
'

HOW would you refer to...

I mean, isn't the whole reason the GOP loves to pack the courts at every opportunity is because they want to fill the seats with judges that are even slightly more likely to swing a decision their way? To pretend they suddenly aren't going to do so just because there's a major election seems... weird.

Boom:

BREAKING: In the final tally, Democrats have overtaken Republicans in Miami-Dade Early voting:

Dems: 183,667
Reps: 183,264
NPA: 139,606
Other: 7,086#flapol #sayfie #election2020

— Dave Trotter (@DaNumbersGuy) November 2, 2020

good showing by the npas, aka the neil patrick affiliates

the NPA vote in Florida will be one-of-a-kind.

I don't believe it's likely Donald Trump can "steal" the election. I'm 100% certain he will try, and that in the event he fails it won't be due to a lack of resources, poor organization, too few lawyers, or too little outside help in general.

That NPA number is crazy!

you assume:

1. the judges are all bought (they’re not)
2. they actually have money set aside to pay lawyers (no reason to believe his campaign can do this since they can’t afford buses atm)
3. the lawyers will be capable of mounting serious arguments (nothing about the campaign or his other non-DOJ attorneys so far suggests this)
4. they have analyzed the situation strategically and are poised to strike in the states and precincts where the numbers will be close (there is no indication whatsoever that this campaign is even remotely equipped to accomplish such a thing)

There’s been a bunch of stuff about the republicans leading in ground game stuff (registration, canvassing, door knocking) mainly because they don’t care about covid. This is a good story with that in mind.

If I were a Republican this story would be a flashing red alert siren for me https://t.co/xlN25lMue7

— Aaron (@BobbyBigWheel) November 2, 2020

NPA is good for Biden right? feel like a big chunk of that is young people who don't register under a certain party

2. they actually have money set aside to pay lawyers (no reason to believe his campaign can do this since they can’t afford buses atm)

c'mon now, they can easily afford busses they just see no benefit in doing so

they stopped all their ad buys in how many battlegrounds? they’re completely strapped for cash.

NPA is good for Biden right? feel like a big chunk of that is young people who don't register under a certain party

― frogbs,

Yep. I need to find the stats showing Florida voters under 30 support Biden overwhelmingly but don't wanna be Democrats.

1. the judges are all bought (they’re not)

Yeah, they don't need to be "bribed." A significant number are ideologues on a mission. What country have you been watching?

2. they actually have money set aside to pay lawyers (no reason to believe his campaign can do this since they can’t afford buses atm)

They will absolutely find the resources to litigate these results, it's just naive to think this will come down to a lack of money.

3. the lawyers will be capable of mounting serious arguments (nothing about the campaign or his other non-DOJ attorneys so far suggests this)

This has absolutely nothing to do with filing paperwork and creating delays. Again, have you met the Republican party?

I mean I guess you could say there is a “machine” ready to steal the election for Trump, in the sense that a 1985 Yugo is a machine.

Nobody said anything about "serious arguments."

The Republican Party is a machine. This is a weird thing to get hung up on.

This Machine Doesn't Kill Lawyers

TOMBOT knows the federal bureaucracy and the processes of a political party, so I tend to side with him in these arguments.

Further to Tombot's point: isn't it patently obvious by now that Trump's on the last bit of the bully defense, the great bluff? There's barely any there there. That various toadies and lickspittles are trying things isn't a surprise but there's hardly a grand scale of it. Consider Texas -- so, obviously, lots of back and forth in past weeks, clearly bullshit on Abbott's part, etc. But this last punt re the Harris County drive-throughs -- already shot down separately by the state Supreme Court, all Republican -- is the work of, what, Allen West, who Abbott seems to have little love for, and a disgruntled GOP rep? As for Trump himself, he's grasping at the last straws he can, the 'shitposting' as Kilgore Trout puts it on Twitter, and that's all he has and all he's been doing, even today.

xp And the Brook Brothers rioters were unpaid volunteers

Brooks

The Republican Party is a machine. This is a weird thing to get hung up on.

I don't believe that the smacking down of several absurd lawsuits speaks even remotely to the likelihood of more such lawsuits. This is what happens when the strategy is to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.

The PA results at least will be litigated.

I tend to agree with Tombot too. He's about the only one speaking from a place of knowledge and reason rather than shellshocked fear.

Hi-tech GOP operative at work:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_845ywsAF1Oc/R14KltELALI/AAAAAAAAAF0/hG8T6VV0uy4/s1600-h/jonah_goldberg_in_car.jpg

xp no but this kind of typically flip, condescending shit is

There’s really not but OK

The national strategy of disqualifying as many votes as possible is not a Trump hail Mary, it is the primary republican approach going forward. Their lock on the courts is what makes it possible because they have their judges in place who are ready and willing to side with voter suppression regardless of whether the law or logic is on their side.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_845ywsAF1Oc/R14KltELALI/AAAAAAAAAF0/hG8T6VV0uy4/s1600-h/jonah_goldberg_in_car.jpg

🚨 DK Election Pool Alert: With over 350K entries, a majority of people in every state besides Colorado predict that @realdonaldtrump will be the winner of tomorrow’s election. pic.twitter.com/zUF0uZZtwK

— DraftKings (@DraftKings) November 2, 2020

one thing that's absolutely gonna be fun to watch (if there does not happen to be a catastrophic nationwide polling error) is the subsequent meltdown from Republicans, the majority of whom legitimately think Trump is going to win tomorrow.

dammit

If by fun you mean watching armed militias take to the streets to terrorize people, then yeah, I agree.

Can someone among you characterize the forces by which Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to the Supreme Court, having nothing whatever to do with Donald J. Trump, and explain how that same apparatus is supposed to be incapable of mounting a case (however nonserious or unlikely to succeed?) against, for instance, the PA results?

These are the worst sore losers I've ever seen, it won't be pretty.

Hadrian, I'm with you.

Also, I'm just going to say it: I find gambling so distasteful that that Draft Kings graphic made me more viscerally angry than I've been in a day or two.

This is very high-stakes for the same people, for the same reasons, with the additional motivation of prosecutorial immunity for a host of crimes.