SUPERTHREAD: 2020 United States Elections

[Darth Yan]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... se-losses/
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/11/dona ... y-election
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... ident.html (93% of all republicans went for Trump, so the "never trump" republicans the dems we're counting on amounted to nothing.)
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/0 ... ent-434170 (Florida raised minimum wage because voters on both sides supported it....yet Biden opposes raising minimum wage)
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/fox-exit ... s-liberal/

Hell the Jacobin article has these points

1.)
"Though a fair amount of revisionism will probably appear in the coming weeks, partisans for the Democrats’ chosen strategy were confidently predicting it would deliver a ’72-style blowout only days ago. “This may be the biggest landslide possible in this polarized country,” Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg told the Daily Beast on October 29. “This thing is not going to be close,” declared James Carville on MSNBC. Still more effusive about Democratic prospects, one October 21 New York Times report anticipated “an ambitious and rare electoral blowout.” Once again, Democrats quite zealously bet the house on a centrist campaign they insisted would deliver a victory of historic proportions. Once again, it failed to yield the promised results — bleeding terrifying numbers of nonwhite voters to the Republican Party in the process."

2.) "What we do know is that the standard Democratic playbook has come up short more times than it’s succeeded. Put in the plainest terms, there have only been two Democratic presidents in the past forty years and the more successful of the two ran as a populist outsider declaring himself the leader of a mass movement while pledging to take on Wall Street, dial back America’s involvement in foreign wars, and pursue a transformative course for the country. Biden, despite his close association with Barack Obama, played an active role in entrenching triangulation as the Democratic modus operandi during the 1980s and never wanted to run a campaign of that kind."

In short, the typical Democratic Playbook has done shit.

Republicans have used the "dems are socialist" nonsense for DECADES and would continue to do so if the progressive wing died. Yet the centrists honestly believe that if they play nice (which they've been doing) the repubs won't be mean to them.

[FireNexus]

So... your evidence is more people in opeds making the same point you make without actually really backing it up, and an exit poll whose results that really make you question whether messaging liberal priorities would matter.

From the daily dot article:

The poll found, specifically, that 72% favor switching to a government-run healthcare plan and 71% percent believe that the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade, which helped legalize abortion nationally, should remain as-is.

Look at those numbers. And note that just about 50% of people voted for Trump. Meaning 20-23% of the population answers that they agree with progressive policy priorities but also vote for nazis.

What would make you think you could win people who vote for Nazis whose policies they disagree with using logic and policies?

Of greater note:

Majorities of those polled similarly believe racism in both society generally and policing specifically are serious issues, are concerned about climate change, and support more government spending on green and renewable energy. They also heavily favor mask requirements.

Notice how this paragraph fails to mention what percentage these majorities consist of. Which is conspicuous given its willingness to be specific above. If we dug into the poll, how much would you bet that the majority in question is not more than... 3% higher than the majority that voted for Democrats?

Your contention, and the contention of the opinion writers whose opinions you clearly consider to be evidence, is that the thing keeping this big chunk of the population from voting Democrats is Democrats being insufficiently progreive. The more likely interpretation of the only actual piece of data you provided, to my mind, (Edit note: Your NY Times poll info is paywalled so I can’t see it. I didn’t really look closely enough to see that it was poll data on my first pass.) is that these people support a lot of broad democratic and even more progressive policy priorities but support sticking it to black people more. More than healthcare. More than abortion rights. More than climate change.

I think those numbers alone completely derail your whole argument and the argument you copied from Jacobin. And that of every oped you posted. In light of them, the narrative looks much more like “Democrats have been losing ground because Democrats have made black people the key part of their coalition and the system plus the racism of a big chunk of the population is structurally set up to punish them for that”. Add in the erosion of voting rights in the time period this has been going on, and you come to a theory of the case that the data actually supports.

Of course, I have no doubt that you’ll just accuse me of being immune to facts and evidence rather than accepting that I’m just honestly not convinced by your not-very-convincing evidence.

[FireNexus]

Also of note:

https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-bid ... rs-2020-10

Your contention that Biden opposes a minimum wage increase is either evidence that you’re stupid or a liar. I lean toward the former, given your inability to see patterns in data or even identify data. He was non-commital on a specific bill, but has specifically stated in public and in debates that he supports $15.

[Darth Yan]

While the "support progressive policies but also supporting racism" is legitimate you ignore other points that were made.

1.) The argument that Pelosi and the others are making is that the mere presence of the more progressive wing is what allowed republicans to tar them; given how republicans have thrown that shit around for decades that's rather silly. They would have been smeared regardless; hell Biden WAS smeared even though he's moderate.

2.) The centrist dems weren't actually tarred by association as much as you think. Hell one thing thing Washington Post pointed out was that

"In 2018, in the year of a Democratic sweep, Spanberger unseated tea partyer Dave Brat by 1.9 percentage points. This year — a presidential year in which turnout was much higher across the board — Spanberger won by 1.2 points. Which means that she did about as well as you would have expected. She wasn’t actually dragged down by association with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) or Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) or some other Democrat from somewhere else in the country."

3.) Given the fact that some of the seats dems lost in 2020 after gaining in 2018 were narrow gains in a year where turnout was lower losses were inevitable.

"For instance, Rep. Anthony Brindisi is losing in New York’s 22nd district — but Trump won there in 2016 by 15.5 points. Of course Brindisi was going to lose in a presidential year. Rep. Kendra Horn is losing in her Oklahoma district — where Trump won by 13.4 points in 2016. Xochitl Torres Small is losing in her New Mexico district — where Trump won by 10.2 points in 2016. None of these results should surprise anyone."

4.) Since most republicans went to Trump, the "republican wave" that was promised failed to materialize. Kaisch didn't give us Ohio despite Centrists saying that he would. As such, a lot of the "oh we should court republicans" or "try to revive Bipartisanship" suggestions are idiotic.

The Washington Post Article actually sums things up best.

"Let me be clear: I’m not saying that the best strategy for every Democrat everywhere is to embrace maximally progressive positions to produce higher turnout among the base. Representatives like Spanberger or Conor Lamb (Pa.) are successful because their moderate ideology is a good fit for their districts.
But they shouldn’t insist that every Democrat everywhere, even those who represent more progressive districts, should act as though they’re running in a Republican district. Nor should they delude themselves into thinking any Democrat can determine what nasty things Republicans will say about them.
And most of all, they shouldn’t react to utterly predictable election results by saying, “This proves that everyone in this diverse party should take exactly the policy positions that I do.” It’s always tempting to believe that, but it just isn’t true."

Not every democrat is running in a republican district, and no matter how moderate many dems are they will ALWAYS be accused of being communists.

What I object to is that you seem to think Centrist policies are the way to go, that we should stick to what the Dems have done since the 90s and scorn any attempt to innovate or change tactics. You're reluctant to give progressives ANY credit and even your hatred of Sanders causes you to paint him as the devil incarnate

[FireNexus]

While the "support progressive policies but also supporting racism" is legitimate you ignore other points that were made.

1.) The argument that Pelosi and the others are making is that the mere presence of the more progressive wing is what allowed republicans to tar them; given how republicans have thrown that shit around for decades that's rather silly. They would have been smeared regardless; hell Biden WAS smeared even though he's moderate.

I’m not making that argument. I’m arguing that it is a more logical reading of the available data than “Centrist Democrats being insufficiently progressive is what caused the losses” because the previous examples provided as proof of that reading all fall during times you would otherwise expect Democrats to lose ground, such as the 2010 midterms.

But, Nancy Pelosi being possibly mostly wrong about how damaging the progressive wing is not relevant to the discussion we’re having, because it does not serve as proof of the main contention from the left that the centrism of the establishment is the problem. That contention is so poorly supported that even AOC has switched gears to “the oldness and lack of tech savvy of the establishment is the problem”. The claim actually works better because it switches to a more logically defensible position (progressive policies don’t really hurt) that may or may not actually be true.

Certainly feels like a repositioning designed to split the difference between her whole antiestablishment shtick and a dawning realization that the great progressive political revolution is not forthcoming.

2.) The centrist dems weren't actually tarred by association as much as you think. Hell one thing thing Washington Post pointed out was that

"In 2018, in the year of a Democratic sweep, Spanberger unseated tea partyer Dave Brat by 1.9 percentage points. This year — a presidential year in which turnout was much higher across the board — Spanberger won by 1.2 points. Which means that she did about as well as you would have expected. She wasn’t actually dragged down by association with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) or Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) or some other Democrat from somewhere else in the country."

The only specific policy I have mentioned as having probably been very bad for Democrats this time around is “defund the police”. I think that because it has the features of something that would be uniquely motivating to Nazis in a way that even “black lives matter” is not. Given the spread of support percentages for the different policies and the other side of the ticket, I don’t know think it’s An unfair read.

As far as the other policies go, I doubt they hurt the Democrats too much. But the unwillingness of the progressive left to waffle on policies (more like slogans) as transparently stupid as “defund the police” is a real weakness. Like... you couldn’t design a less helpful way to frame the protests than that.

3.) Given the fact that some of the seats dems lost in 2020 after gaining in 2018 were narrow gains in a year where turnout was lower losses were inevitable.

"For instance, Rep. Anthony Brindisi is losing in New York’s 22nd district — but Trump won there in 2016 by 15.5 points. Of course Brindisi was going to lose in a presidential year. Rep. Kendra Horn is losing in her Oklahoma district — where Trump won by 13.4 points in 2016. Xochitl Torres Small is losing in her New Mexico district — where Trump won by 10.2 points in 2016. None of these results should surprise anyone."

That supports my actual position on the issue pretty well. It does not, however, support the position that the Democratic establishment being insufficiently progressive is the reason they lost seats. You can either say “these losses are inevitable” in defense of your team or “these losses were preventable” to attack the other. When you say both depending on context, you look pretty full of shit.

4.) Since most republicans went to Trump, the "republican wave" that was promised failed to materialize. Kaisch didn't give us Ohio despite Centrists saying that he would. As such, a lot of the "oh we should court republicans" or "try to revive Bipartisanship" suggestions are idiotic.

Ok. So?

The Washington Post Article actually sums things up best.

"Let me be clear: I’m not saying that the best strategy for every Democrat everywhere is to embrace maximally progressive positions to produce higher turnout among the base. Representatives like Spanberger or Conor Lamb (Pa.) are successful because their moderate ideology is a good fit for their districts.
But they shouldn’t insist that every Democrat everywhere, even those who represent more progressive districts, should act as though they’re running in a Republican district. Nor should they delude themselves into thinking any Democrat can determine what nasty things Republicans will say about them.
And most of all, they shouldn’t react to utterly predictable election results by saying, “This proves that everyone in this diverse party should take exactly the policy positions that I do.” It’s always tempting to believe that, but it just isn’t true."

Here’s the problem: Democrats in the very progressive are sort of right now coming around to the idea that the problem is more fundamental than the centrism of the establishment. And they have thus far completely unwilling to calibrate their message for the impact on the national environment. It could have been better designed to energize Republican crazies, and fucking something caused them to have historically high turnout.

Not every democrat is running in a republican district, and no matter how moderate many dems are they will ALWAYS be accused of being communists.

I would still say every Democrat should be careful not to run on policies that are very unpopular and appear almost designed to be the worst possible one for GOP turnout nationally.

What I object to is that you seem to think Centrist policies are the way to go, that we should stick to what the Dems have done since the 90s and scorn any attempt to innovate or change tactics. You're reluctant to give progressives ANY credit and even your hatred of Sanders causes you to paint him as the devil incarnate

With one specific exception, I have been saying that the argument that Centrist policies are poison is unfounded. As a corollary, I have been saying that the argument that progressive policies are Definitely Winners is largely demonstrably false. When asked to provide evidence for the idea that the problem is centrism and progressivism is a Winner, you proved progressive policies don’t actually win even when popular. Then shifted the goal posts to “those seats were gone to start with” which you would never allow the centrists to claim via a vis the 2010 midterms, for instance. Even though there is much better historical precedent for that loss being nobody’s fault in particular.

[FireNexus]

Posted in error when editing.

[Darth Yan]

The centrists are spending more time courting republicans and attempting to get them to shift their votes than they are trying to work with progressives. They are doing so out of a desire to return to the 80s and 90s, and because their views are diet republican.

In that regard (trying to work with republicans, not really pushing a message) yes centrism is poison. A lot of the policies they endorse (fracking, tax cuts, mindless support for Israel despite the fact that they’re shamelessly committing ethnic cleansing) are actively harmful to both the planet and people in general.

According to scientists if we don’t reverse carbon emissions by 2030 we are in for one hell of a beating. Fracking is part of the problem and yet centrist Dems endorse it. Israel is actively committing ethnic cleansing and other war crimes and yet Chuck Schumer defends their actions.

A lot of centrist policies are objectively bad

[Rogue 9]

But, Nancy Pelosi being possibly mostly wrong about how damaging the progressive wing is not relevant to the discussion we’re having, because it does not serve as proof of the main contention from the left that the centrism of the establishment is the problem. That contention is so poorly supported that even AOC has switched gears to “the oldness and lack of tech savvy of the establishment is the problem”. The claim actually works better because it switches to a more logically defensible position (progressive policies don’t really hurt) that may or may not actually be true.

That actually did happen, though. Not necessarily the age of the establishment, but the DCCC did in fact blackball the best left-wing digital advertising firms in the country for the crime of working for primary challengers and consequentially ran an essentially nonexistent campaign in the digital and social media space. Would doing so have helped them? Probably. Bluntly, broadcast TV ads aren't going to reach most of the younger set.

[Elheru Aran]

Bluntly, broadcast TV ads aren't going to reach most of the younger set.

This. Mailers are likely to get filed in the trash immediately. Nobody much under the age of 30-something watches broadcast TV anymore, it's all strictly streaming or cable. I suppose you can get some ads on cable, but not a whole lot. The truth of the matter is you have to communicate the same way as the market you're hoping to capture, and that means digital these days. Dismissing that is... well, 'stupid' is almost too gentle a word.

[Solauren]

From the New York Times....

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/us/p ... ket-newtab

News Analysis
Trump’s Attempts to Overturn the Election Are Unparalleled in U.S. History

The president’s push to prevent states from certifying electors and get legislators to override voters’ choice eclipses even the bitter 1876 election as an audacious use of brute political force.

By David E. Sanger
Nov. 19, 2020

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election are unprecedented in American history and an even more audacious use of brute political force to gain the White House than when Congress gave Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency during Reconstruction.

Mr. Trump’s chances of succeeding are somewhere between remote and impossible, and a sign of his desperation after President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. won by nearly six million popular votes and counting, as well as a clear Electoral College margin. Yet the fact that Mr. Trump is even trying has set off widespread alarms, not least in Mr. Biden’s camp.

“I’m confident he knows he hasn’t won,” Mr. Biden said at a news conference in Wilmington, Del., on Thursday, before adding, “It’s just outrageous what he’s doing.” Although Mr. Biden dismissed Mr. Trump’s behavior as embarrassing, he acknowledged that “incredibly damaging messages are being sent to the rest of the world about how democracy functions.”

Mr. Trump has only weeks to make his last-ditch effort work: Most of the states he needs to strip Mr. Biden of votes are scheduled to certify their electors by the beginning of next week. The electors cast their ballots on Dec. 14, and Congress opens them in a joint session on Jan. 6.

Even if Mr. Trump somehow pulled off his electoral vote switch, there are other safeguards in place, assuming people in power do not simply bend to the president’s will.

The first test will be Michigan, where Mr. Trump is trying to get the State Legislature to overturn Mr. Biden’s 157,000-vote margin of victory. He has taken the extraordinary step of inviting a delegation of state Republican leaders to the White House, hoping to persuade them to ignore the popular vote outcome.


“That’s not going to happen,” Mike Shirkey, the Republican leader of the Michigan State Senate, said on Tuesday. “We are going to follow the law and follow the process.”
(Related Link: "That's not going to happen"; https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/us/m ... ctory.html)

Beyond that, Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, could send Congress a competing electoral slate, based on the election vote, arguing that the proper procedures were ignored. That dispute would create just enough confusion, in Mr. Trump’s Hail Mary calculus, that the House and Senate together would have to resolve it in ways untested in modern times.

Federal law dating to 1887, passed in reaction to the Hayes election, provides the framework, but not specifics, of how it would be done. Edward B. Foley, a constitutional law and election law expert at Ohio State University, noted that the law only required Congress to consider all submissions “purporting to be the valid electoral votes.”

But Michigan alone would not be enough for Mr. Trump. He would also need at least two other states to fold to his pressure. The most likely candidates are Georgia and Arizona, which both went for Mr. Trump in 2016 and have Republican-controlled legislatures and Republican governors.

Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona has said he will accept the state election results, although only after all the campaign lawsuits are resolved. Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, where a hand recount reaffirmed Mr. Biden’s victory on Thursday, has not publicly said one way or another who won his state.
(Related Link: George hand Recount confirms Biden"; https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/19 ... ns-victory

Mr. Trump has said little in public apart from tweets endorsing wild conspiracy theories about how he was denied victory. Yet his strategy, if it can be called that, has become clear over two days of increasingly frenetic action by a president 62 days from losing power.

In just that time, Mr. Trump has fired the federal election official who has challenged his false claims of fraud, tried to halt the vote-certification process in Detroit to disenfranchise an overwhelmingly Black electorate that voted against him, and now is misusing the powers of his office in his effort to take Michigan’s 16 electoral votes away from Mr. Biden.
Fired Federal Official; https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/us/p ... krebs.html

In many ways it is even more of an attempted power grab than the one in 1876. At the time, Hayes was governor of Ohio, not president of the United States. Ulysses S. Grant was, and when Hayes won — also by wrenching the vote around in three states — he became known as “His Fraudulency.”

“But this is far worse,” said Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian and author of “Presidents of War.” “In the case of Hayes, both sides agreed that the outcome in at least three states was in dispute. In this case, no serious person thinks enough votes are in dispute that Donald Trump could have been elected on Election Day.”

“This is a manufactured crisis. It is a president abusing his huge powers in order to stay in office after the voters clearly rejected him for re-election.”

He added: “This is what many of the founders dreaded.”

Mr. Trump telegraphed this strategy during the campaign. He told voters at a rally in Middletown, Pa., in September that he would win at the polls, or in the Supreme Court, or in the House — where, under the 12th Amendment, every state delegation gets one vote in choosing the president. (There are 26 delegations of 50 dominated by Republicans, even though the House is in the hands of the Democrats.)

“I don’t want to end up in the Supreme Court, and I don’t want to go back to Congress, even though we have an advantage if we go back to Congress,” he said then. “Does everyone understand that?”

Now that is clearly the Plan B, after the failure of Plan A, an improvisational legal strategy to overturn election results by invalidating ballots in key states. In state after state, the president’s lawyers have been laughed out of court, unable to provide evidence to back up his claims that mail-in ballots were falsified, or that glitches on voting machines with software from Dominion Voting Systems might, just might, have changed or deleted 2.7 million votes.

Those theories figured in a rambling news conference that Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, held with other members of his legal team on Thursday. The group threw out a series of disconnected arguments to try to make the case that Mr. Trump really won. The arguments included blaming mail-in ballots that they said were prone to fraud as well as Dominion, which they suggested was tied to former President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela (who died seven years ago), and had vague connections to the Clinton Foundation and George Soros, the philanthropist and billionaire Democratic fund-raiser.

“That press conference was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history,” Christopher Krebs, who was fired Tuesday night by Mr. Trump as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of the Department of Homeland Security, tweeted Thursday afternoon.

“And possibly the craziest,” he went on. “If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re lucky.”

Mr. Krebs has often noted that the purpose of a reliable election system is to convince those who lost elections that they have, indeed, lost.

Even some of Mr. Trump’s onetime enthusiasts and former top aides have abandoned him on his claims, often with sarcastic derision. “Their basic argument is this was a conspiracy so vast and so successful that there’s no evidence of it,” said John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s third national security adviser, who was ousted last year.

“Now if that’s true, I really want to know who the people are who pulled this off,” he said on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “We need to hire them at the C.I.A.”

Wow.

Looking at this now, it honestly looks like how Trump has dealt with problems in the past. He drags people to court and fights them until they run out of money and lose by default, or tries to convince people backing one side of an argument to instead back him

That might work in smaller courts, or in business cases, but not here.

You know, when Trump was elected, I told a friend of mine I hoped Trump ran the United States, he'd run it like one of his businesses.
This was before I found out how crappy a business man he actually is. (I never paid Trump any attention until he was elected into office.)

[bilateralrope]

If Trump somehow pulls this off, it would mean that everyone would get to see the US deciding to overrule the clear wishes of the voters. That peaceful change in the US is impossible. The possibilities of what happens next should scare Trump and anyone supporting his attempt to overrule the voters.

Luckily for everyone, the US election system appears robust enough to withstand his attempts.

[Lord Revan]

Well we'll see that in January, though if Trump stays in the White House, I'm looking for another planet to settle on as there's no place remote enough on this place to be safe on.

EDIT:That said it does seem like Trump is just being the textbook example of sore looser atm.

[bilateralrope]

No need to wait until January. Once the electoral college votes, you should quickly be able to see how it will play out. Just look to see how many people are still arguing that Trump should get a second term after the EC has the final say on the matter.

[Ralin]

Part of me is really curious to know what Secret Service agents are saying to each other in private right about now.

[Darth Yan]

They're probably looking forwards to throwing his ass out. If he refuses to leave then he will be dragged out kicking and screaming.

[Lost Soal]

2021, the unofficial punishment detail will be protecting Trump.

[Lord Revan]

No need to wait until January. Once the electoral college votes, you should quickly be able to see how it will play out. Just look to see how many people are still arguing that Trump should get a second term after the EC has the final say on the matter.

Honestly it wouldn't surprise me at all if Trump tried to order the military to give him a second term if the Elector Collage doesn't. He does quite unwilling to admit defeat. That said it doesn't mean anyone will obey him but he might try anyway.

Though realistically speaking there's really no realistic chance that Donald Trump will get a second term if the Elector Collage doesn't totally disregard the popular vote.

As for Secret Service I think at moment they're more worried about protecting Biden and Harris to be thinking about kicking Trump out of the White House (IIRC Secret Service is in charge of protecting president who have been elected but not yet taken office and obviously the Vice President as well).

[Lost Soal]

It turns out a lot of the transition activities require the White House to authorise and currently the Biden camp is being stonewalled so this may depend on how much autonomy the Secret Service still has.

[Lord Revan]

It turns out a lot of the transition activities require the White House to authorise and currently the Biden camp is being stonewalled so this may depend on how much autonomy the Secret Service still has.

from what I've gathered is that while Trump cannot prevent the transition, he stall it until the last possible moment so that Biden has to spend the first months of his term getting up to speed on things that he should have been briefed before the term started. Among those things is the COVID situation in the US so I don't need to tell you why that's a bad thing.

[Raw Shark]

from what I've gathered is that while Trump cannot prevent the transition, he stall it until the last possible moment so that Biden has to spend the first months of his term getting up to speed on things that he should have been briefed before the term started. Among those things is the COVID situation in the US so I don't need to tell you why that's a bad thing.

"Sleepy Joe took took SEVERAL MONTHS to get up to speed on things after STEALING THE ELECTION. MILLIONS DIED. All his fault." [/2023 Campaign Tweet]

[bilateralrope]

US Election: President-elect Joe Biden is designated winner, allowing formal transition to White House

14:25, Nov 24 2020

The General Services Administration has formally designated President-elect Joe Biden as the “apparent winner'' of the November 3 US election and the agency has cleared the way for cooperation on a transition of power.

The move allows Biden to coordinate with US federal agencies on plans for taking over on January 20. Trump, who had refused to concede the election, said in a tweet that he is directing his team to cooperate on the formal transition but is vowing to keep up the fight.

The move came after President Donald Trump suffered yet more legal and procedural defeats in his futile effort to overturn the election with baseless claims of fraud.

Trump's effort to stave off the inevitable - formal recognition of his defeat -is facing increasingly stiff resistance from the courts and fellow Republicans with just three weeks to go until the Electoral College meets to certify Biden's victory.

Time and again, Trump's challenges and baseless allegations of widespread conspiracy and fraud have been met with rejection as states move forward with confirming their results.

An official said Administrator Emily Murphy made the determination after Trump efforts to subvert the vote failed across battleground states, most recently in Michigan, which certified Biden's victory on Monday (local time).

“Please know that I came to my decision independently, based on the law and available facts. I was never directly or indirectly pressured by any Executive Branch official_including those who work at the White House or GSA - with regard to the substance or timing of my decision,'' Murphy wrote in a letter to Biden.

Trump tweeted shortly after her letter was made public: “Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good... fight, and I believe we will prevail! Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same.''

Yohannes Abraham, the executive director of the Biden transition, said in a statement that the decision “is a needed step to begin tackling the challenges facing our nation, including getting the pandemic under control and our economy back on track.”

He added: “In the days ahead, transition officials will begin meeting with federal officials to discuss the pandemic response, have a full accounting of our national security interests, and gain complete understanding of the Trump administration's efforts to hollow out government agencies.”

Michigan vote certification closed door on Trump moves
Michigan election officials on Monday certified Biden's 154,000-vote victory in the state, with the Board of State Canvassers, which has two Republicans and two Democrats, confirming the state results on a 3-0 vote with one Republican abstention.

Trump and his allies had hoped to block the vote to allow time for an audit of ballots in Wayne County, where Trump has claimed without evidence that he was the victim of fraud.

Biden crushed the president by more than 330,000 votes there.

Under Michigan law, Biden got all 16 electoral votes. Biden won the state by 2.8 percentage points - a larger margin than in other states where Trump was contesting the results like Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

“The board's duty today is very clear,'' said Aaron Van Langevelde, the Republican vice chair.

“We have a duty to certify this election based on these returns. That is very clear.”

Some Trump allies had expressed hope that state lawmakers could intervene in selecting Republican electors in states that do not certify. That long shot and legally dubious bid was no longer possible in Michigan.

The state's Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, said in a statement after the vote that it was “time to put this election behind us.”

“President-elect Biden won the State of Michigan by more than 154,000 votes, and he will be our next president on January 20th.”

Separately, more than 100 Republican former national security officials - including former Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte - had earlier said in a statement that Trump's refusal to concede and allow for an orderly transition "constitutes a serious threat" to America's democratic process.

Emily Murphy has been refusing to declare Biden the apparent winner since the press called it. Even though she seems to have started looking for a new job about a week ago. So her refusal to declare Biden the apparent winner didn't look honest. I guess Michigan certifying the results was the point where she started to worry about personal consequences if she kept it up. Even if it's only potential employers deciding that they didn't want to employ someone who got into the news for not doing her job.


It also sounds like Trump's attempts to convince state governments to ignore the voters and send Republican electors to the EC when the state voted for Biden have failed. The courts have been unconvinced by his arguments so far and I can't see that changing now that Giuliani is in charge of the lawsuits. The only possibly legal option left for Trump is to convince enough Democrat electors to be faithless when the EC votes.

[Darth Yan]

I still expect Trump to damage the system as much as possible as a fuck you. The guy's facing a lot of problems and his debts are coming due. And it's looking like no one is willing to lend him money.

Even if he's not jailed he'll be looking at financial ruin.

[Lost Soal]

Well he's illegally pulling out of the Open Skies treaty and ordering the planes used for it to be scrapped so Biden can't reverse it.

[Gandalf]

Makes sense. Biden's absurd call for unity means that it's a fair bet there won't be charges, so he's got some freedom there. Maybe it'll even spur people on to fix the system a bit.

[Tribble]

The Republican's plan is obvious at this point:

Delegitimize Biden's win as much as possible (turns out they are not quite ready for a coop... this time).
Use that to delegitimize all his actions and whip Republican's base into a frenzy.
Scorch Earth as much as they can get away with, maximising the mess that Biden has to fix.
Hold control of the Senate / Courts to block as much of Biden's agenda as possible. The less Biden is able to do, the better.
Blame Biden for everything that goes wrong and for getting nothing done, especially when they block him.
Use Biden's failures (including the ones they deliberately caused) as the platform for their next election campaign.

IMO the lesson Republicans will learn from this election won't be that they pushed to far to the right and the need to reset... it'll be that Trump wasn't quite smart, ruthless and far-right enough. They'll be looking for a candidate who can ensure they can seize the office regardless of actual outcome.

Hopefully I'm wrong, but I get the sense that unless things change a lot the next election or two will be even worse.