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The Least Surprising News Story of the Day
A college friend of mine from Bernardsville, NJ, messaged me on Facebook yesterday about the victory of the truck driver (Edward Durr) over the president of the New Jersey State Senate (Steve Sweeney). He said something like, “Ha! So elections are fixed, huh? Where are your Republican conspiracy theories now, Mr. Tinfoil Hat?!”
I responded that yes, I was surprised that Mr. Durr had won. And yes, I was surprised that the NJ Democrats hadn’t cheated to keep the Senate seat. I told him that I figured that they would just keep counting until they got the result they wanted, or they would find some new ballots under the couch cushions, or whatever. But that hadn’t happened. And yes, that was surprising to me.
When the news came out this morning that Mr. Sweeney had not conceded, and that New Jersey’s election commission had found thousands of new votes and was in the process of ‘counting’ them, I messaged my friend again:
Me: How about that? NJ just found thousands of new votes. Or at least, that’s what it said in the newspaper. Not sure if it’s true. Could be just another conspiracy theory…”
Friend: Yeah, looks a little weird I guess, but these things happen. Not surprising, considering all the different polling centers and all. It’s good that they’re doing their best to make sure that every vote is counted.
Me: Looks like it won’t matter. The New York Times just Tweeted that a majority of the new votes are going for the Republican. So it looks like he’ll win by an even larger margin of victory than he already had.
She doesn’t seem surprised, either.
Friend: WHAT?!
Me: Just kidding, of course. No one is saying how those votes are falling. Because everybody knows. Including you, apparently.
Friend: Very funny. You really can be an [expletive]. I just want them to count every vote, and then we’ll let the chips fall where they may.
Me: Of course…
We’ve been friends for years (gosh – decades), so some name-calling is not as mean as it sounds. He’s from New Jersey, and he likes giving people a hard time.
But what gets me about our exchange is what is surprising, and what is not.
I was surprised that New Jersey had not put adequate effort into cheating to be sure that the Democrat kept his Senate seat. I mean, I was really surprised. I think my friend was too, although he didn’t say that, so I don’t know.
Perhaps they presumed this would be a slam-dunk re-election for the Democrat, and they didn’t bother to cheat. Until they realized that they had to. Or maybe not – I don’t know, obviously. But regardless of how this happened, I was surprised when the Republican won the election.
Neither of us was surprised when they found thousands of new ballots after the election was over.
My friend was extremely surprised when I told him that the new ballots were going mostly for the Republican. And he was not surprised when I told him that I was kidding.
I’m a Republican, and he’s a Democrat, and we both presumed that the Democrats would cheat to win an election. Or at least try.
And to be clear, we don’t really know if they are cheating. Perhaps they really did find thousands of new votes that had previously been overlooked. And perhaps those new votes really will go Republican. Neither one of those is impossible.
But my friend and I would both be surprised if either was true. So would Mr. Sweeney and Mr. Durr, I suspect. So would Joe Biden and Donald Trump, I suspect.
Some people will feel that this is not proof of anything. Others will feel that this is evidence of fraud. A lot of people will have a lot of different opinions about all this.
But no one will be surprised.
Published in General
Your friend tipped his hand.
It is right and proper to steal an election if it means the Republican loses.
The lords work will be done.
This is why I generally avoid morality discussions with democrats. Their moral compass always points south.
Just to balance things out, I grew up in a county where the Republicans cheated. Of course, once they were backed into a corner and couldn’t get away with it anymore, the state went Democrat, since all our county was doing was balancing out Cook County’s cheating.
They are prepared well in advance and only deployed when they can make a difference.
Virginia’s elections will not be certified until Nov. 15.
What is truly sad is that no one knows what to believe or whom to believe anymore. What makes anything true? I have no idea. And that’s the truth.
They were caught off guard like they were with Donald Trump in 2016. Sometimes their arrogance works in our favor. But I didn’t think they would let this one stand. It was too humiliating. While I think that the Virginia election got too much national press for them to reverse it now, I know they are comfortable with stealing this one and it will rate barely a ripple in the MSM. Just business as usual. “I just want every vote to be counted” is simply code for “Let’s figure out ways to only count Democrat ballots”. Mollie Hemingway’s book outlines how they do that right under our noses.
Assuming found ballots would go a certain way. Why is that?
They didn’t think they would need to. And Sweeney isn’t really friends with Murphy (God complex v. God Complex).
But we expect others to come back just as hard. People who are too nice weird me out sometimes. I guess it’s a Jersey thing.
I was born there. I’ve traveled many miles to many places since then. I’ve learned the best course of action: keep that between us natives.
Should we be surprised if they cheated electronically?
I reckon that depends on whether electronic cheating is plausible.
And dang it. It is.
https://ricochet.com/1033553/g-k-chestertons-take-on-electronic-voting-systems/
I don’t want them to count every vote. The legitimate ones, yes, but not the others.
It is breathtaking when you pause to reflect: nothing is to be believed. Nothing. As the Russian collusion hoax proved, at the highest levels, it is impossible to dis-integrate
* The federal government (e.g. Rosenstein, McCabe, Comey, Brennan, Clapper);
* The Democrat Party (Hillary Clinton funded the DNC in 2016); and
* The mainstream media (Glenn Simpson, founder of Fusion GPS, hired by Hillary Clinton).
They will lie about anything. Just ask Carter Page, George Pappadopoulos, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, . . .
They will lie about race, whether it’s “hands up, don’t shoot” or NASCAR garage door pulls.
They will lie about what is a boy and what is a girl.
They will lie about their own daughters being raped in their high school bathrooms.
They will lie about anything. Literally – about anything.
Nothing is to be believed.
It’s funny. Opinions are being formed and views expressed, and rightly so, though we will probably never have any hard evidence that the new ballots were legitimately cast (like seals dated, signed and signatures verified by both parties). The only evidence we’ll ever have is experience and a knowledge of human nature.
It’s pretty sad when an election’s results can only be evaluated by what is sometimes dismissively called confirmation bias.
The one thing no one could ever say is that New Jersey people are too nice.
I grew up in Pennsylvania and we used to note: it’s free to cross the bridges into New Jersey, but you have to pay to leave. It’s worth it.
One Twitter wag asked if the found ballots had fallen off a truck.
It was something of a tradition in Chicago that the ballots would be found in the truck of the car of an election judge. They’d just forget about them, I guess.
The last story I saw claimed 12,000 vote has been ‘found’.
How many were there before 12K were found?
Not enough.
Although I did read that the pre-12K number was 3% higher than the previous election
Same is true on the NY side.
From Ballotpedia
Durr – 32,742
Sweeney – 30,444
Total: 63,186
Newly “found” ballots – 12,000
Seriously? 1 county “lost” then “found” close to 1/5 of votes “cast” in the entire election?
And they were so lost that we can’t even figure out which county had them?
We shouldn’t be suspicious that hiding the name of the county for now is necessary in order to give time for the tracks to be covered up and bodies stored safely away, should we?
P.S. imgflip.com’s “watermark” is far less conspicuous.
Yes. Stop being suspicious, you conspiracy theorist. Didn’t you read the Facebook notice about how the elections are ok?
Actually, I missed that particular notice. But I don’t use Facebook the way Facebook wants it to be used, so maybe that’s why I miss out on these things.
You have to put on the special helmet, to link up with the brain implant.
I left that terrible place months ago.
A few weeks back I woke up and was relieved to realize being back on Fb had only been a nightmare.
Does anyone have further information about the 12,000 votes reportedly found in some New Jersey county? Which county? Was it one of the counties involved in the Durr-Sweeney race?
I did follow the link in the OP, and did a further quick search, but did not find anything helpful right away.
“Facebook today confirmed the Steal of yet another election and its role in the same by censoring facts and evidence supporting the claim in a condescending and deprecatory manner. Prosecutors noted that, since the matter has now been publicly settled, the taxpayers need not be burdened with the expense of a public trial and the loser will have a permanent right to claim his win was stolen and be denounced as a sore loser. Now on to sports…”
Of course there will be cheating, even Republicans would cheat more if they were better at it. Still, I don’t think the Dems thought they’d have to cheat so much to win Va. and NJ, so they’ll cheat everywhere no matter how secure the seat. The real question is whether they think they’re already in position to just dispense with honest elections entirely, or are they still willing to lose if it requires more than they can muster. If they’re willing to steal the next two elections, even when they know there are crooked Republicans always willing to help them out, it’s over unless we do something drastic, like take Republican states to a new Republic.