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Mr Hinderaker, I Demur*
*Why Trump is right and you are not (although understandably so).
John Hinderaker, on Power Line blog, is critical of what he calls being “obsessed with righting the alleged (and to some extent imaginary) wrongs that Donald Trump suffered in 2020.” His occasion for these observations is President Trump’s remarks about removing his endorsement of Mo Brooks —
Last year I endorsed Mo Brooks for the U.S. Senate because I thought he was a Fighter, especially when it came to the Rigged and Stolen Presidential Election of 2020. The evidence is irrefutable. Then, out of nowhere, and for seemingly no reason, Mo backtracked and made a big mistake by going Woke at our massive Cullman, Alabama Rally. Instead of denouncing the Voter Fraud in the Election, Mo lectured the crowd of 63,000 people saying, “Put that behind you, put that behind you,” meaning that, in effect, forget the Rigged Election and go on to the future.
The problem is, if you do that, it will happen again. Also, why do Republicans allow Democrats to get away with rigging and stealing elections?
Mr. Hinderaker’s stance is that is not forward-looking and risks being mired in the past for President Trump’s vindication.
That is a respectable position if you take President Trump literally. But as Salena Zito remarked back in 2016–
Sorry to remind you, but a lot of people seem to have lost their President Trump decoder ring. It’s not entirely their fault. President Trump’s personality is such that it is easy to think it is all about him, even when it decidedly isn’t.
It’s about us and the needed electoral integrity for us to be a self-governing society. Hinderaker relies on the Hugh Hewitt formulation that “if it’s not close, they can’t cheat.” But there is evidence that 2020 wasn’t all that close, but they cheated anyway. But it will never be proved with forensic science because we did not require that our elections be auditable.
Hinderaker in his piece essentially accepts there to be cheating and only wants to limit, not eliminate, it. President Trump says it must be eliminated. And the only way it is going to be eliminated is if the truth about 2020 is laid bare. That is not the GOPe position, but it is patently true.
Half the nation gets this; half the nation doesn’t; few politicians are interested in truly buttoning up our electoral process. No, President Trump is not pushing 2020 for personal aggrandizement even though it would certainly personally vindicate him. Just as in 2016, he sees something wrong and he pounds on it. His pounding doesn’t make what he’s pounding about wrong. And some things just don’t get done without a pounding.
Published in General
Without the monitoring, you have less evidence to prove fraud.
Poll watchers/election monitors in several places were illegally blocked, and lawyers were similarly blocked in many courts.
And, why should individual candidates need to figure THEY have to be the ones to prevent voter fraud?
A perfect hiding place for a lawyer.
What I remember is mostly from after the election. Before the election I remember concerns about election fraud, but I personally never thought they would turn off the counting at midnight and manufacture ballots (as it is reported that the videos show).
If memory serves (and it easily doesn’t) after the election I read that all attempts before the election to ensure election integrity were rebuffed by the courts. I’m not sure what following Marc Elias around would have done, or even if that was possible.
And also after the election, the courts ruled that there was no evidence of effectual fraud (as if sufficient evidence could have been found on such short notice) and precautions should have been taken beforehand.
Also Bill Barr may or may not have had jurisdictional authority to directly investigate state elections (I don’t know) but if he didn’t he shouldn’t have said anything — including that they found no effectual fraud within just couple of weeks — and if he did have jurisdiction he shouldn’t have said anything other than that there was an on-going investigation. As it was he made an oil-on-the-water statement that certainly I at the time took to be BS (that there was no effectual fraud found). He wasn’t looking for it, he had apparently no authority to look for it, and he didn’t have the time to find any.
So I’m still not sure, what Trump could have done that he didn’t do either before or after the election.
Which may be the very trap they laid for him, and for us.
Mayor Pete is running as a generational candidate.
The bureaucracies of most countries, including their welfare bureaucracies, were modeled on military organization. This is according to Bruce D. Porter in his 1994 book, War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Modern Politics. I just finished reading it an hour ago.
This explains why my emphasis in this thread has been on the need for state and local authorities and political party representatives to address election integrity. They may not be very effective or competent but at least the authority lies there. The effort that culminated in the Jan6 debacle served a valid purpose and need to ascertain whether or not there was any legal avenue by which the Vice-President could cause the states’ elector certifications to be recalled for further examination by state authorities and resubmission. I supported that and the conclusion was no. The intrusion and behavior at the Capitol coupled all this together and we have a bad outcome largely as a result of inappropriate motives by Pelosi, District of Columbia government, Capitol Police, some elected Republicans, the Democrat Party and maybe the FBI. These bad actors have no interest in election voting integrity.
Yes we do, and yes it is.
See 2000 Mules.
Maybe you could turn these points into a post. I agree with most everything in your comment and the point about being able to prove the cheating is almost beside the point because there won’t be any legal punishment. Future election vote integrity is the key.
I have been an election integrity activist since 2004-2005.
The one thing that stands out is that the top leaders of both parties – with the exception of Donald Trump – have an almost complete disinterest in having honest elections. Complete disinterest in having auditable elections. Dislike for ensuring that each voter can verify that the ballot they submitted is one that has been recorded.
Also it is difficult to change things. When I complained about the ballot drop boxes that were installed in Calif a month before the Primary election on June 7th, people explained that the ballot drop boxes would have oversight.
I have no idea what this means. The people telling me this go on to say that with such oversight, then there is no way for anyone to mistrust the drop box process.
How is each drop box watched over 24/7 for one full month? The oversight is provided by unpaid volunteers, and no one has yet explained if they did have continual oversight for each box from the moment it is installed until it is collected by the local Registrar of Voters’ office after polls close on Election Day.
And how does a person know the person doing the oversight is not part of the Corrupt Party’s side of things? I learned back in 2004 that someone’s “party label” means little. Wolves in sheep’s clothing can be in on the game, counting on those around them being naive.
I think this is correct. The seasoned, established politicians follow this pattern with a few exceptions. That’s why it was so critical to make sure the federal government didn’t get to be in charge of all election matters.
Which can be ignored as blithely and without repercussion as they were in swing states in 2020. Even if you can’t get a conviction against the perpetrators, bring the charges, Even if you can’t get a charge against the perpetrators, publish the evidence. For example, the Dominion user guide reveals a software system designed not to secure a legitimate result, but to provide a wide array of tools to suborn the result. Texas has expressed some thoughts in this regard in their formal consideration of Dominion Systems products.
I remember when we were told Dubya was selected not elected. (He wasn’t. He won the 2000 election outright.) I also remember when there were (false) claims about fraud concerning the Deibold voting machines in Ohio during the 2004 election. Then there were Hillary’s bs claims about 2016. And then we had to endure Stacy Abrams’ idiot fantasies about the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race. Did any of those manufactured controversies contribute anything positive? Hillary did real harm by her inability to gracefully concede the election she lost.
Today we have Trump doing his best impersonation of all those sore losers. We have some awfully serious problems staring us in the face. Why is anyone indulging him?
There’s plenty of evidence for 2020 fraud. If there was any such evidence for 2016 or 2018 fraud, why didn’t they produce it? Well, it’s because the left wants to win by assertions and claims, not facts and evidence.
When Republicans win, the might of the leftist establishment persuades half the country that fraud (or Russia) is a real issue, without any real evidence.
After Biden won, the evidence persuaded half the country, against the full might of the establishment’s opposition, that fraud was a real issue in 2020.
The reason why some people are indulging in this “Biden didn’t beat Trump in 2020. Biden cheated” argument is because it is easier to accuse your opponent of cheating than it is to admit that your opponent beat you in a bare knuckle brawl.
Bill Barr told Trump long before election day that he needed to assemble a team of election lawyers to fight the Biden legal team tooth and nail in situations where Biden’s legal team attempted to expand mail in voting and ballot harvesting.
But Trump didn’t listen to Barr and then, once the election was over Trump started complaining about how unfair the whole election was.
That’s exactly why Bill Barr told Trump to assembly a good legal team.
It’s typical Trump. Trump makes all kinds of blunders and then when he has to pay the price for those blunders, Trump blames others, not himself for the result.
Fact check: False. And really, even “people like you” point to Trump “losing” court cases BEFORE THE ELECTION. How could that have happened, if Trump didn’t make those challenges before the election like you say he should have?
The reality is that, for whatever reason – judges too wrapped up in “law” to be able to make any sense, or judges who didn’t want to have BLM/Antifa showing up at THEIR homes like they have with Kavanaugh and others, or maybe outright corruption (they also wanted Trump to lose and didn’t care how) – they rarely if ever looked at actual evidence, and used tricks such as “standing” (which doesn’t exist in the Constitution) to dismiss cases before the election, and “laches” or “moot” to dismiss cases after the election.
When the Biden legal team started attempting to expand mail in voting and drop box voting (ballot harvesting), Trump’s legal team could have challenged those attempted expansions in court if Trump had assembled a competent legal team.
Instead, mail in voting got expanded, ballot harvesting got expanded because Trump sat on his fat apathy and didn’t do what Bill Barr recommended Trump to do.
Trump and his supporters can complain about how unfair all of this is, but if he had listened to Bill Barr and followed his advice, he could have assembled a legal team that would have prevented the expansion of mail in voting and ballot harvesting.
I would expect judges to recognize that what Biden was asking for was illegal/unconstitutional and would not require a counter-argument from another interested party.
The 1960 election was a lot closer. The probability that fraud changed the outcome of that election was much higher. It was the height of the Cold War. Nixon conceded for the good of the nation. Nixon’s character was superior to Trump’s character.
The ONLY important thing right now (certainly apart from whether Trump is too old, or can’t muster the votes to win — which is I think a dubious prognostication) is election integrity — meaning that legal votes are counted correctly. I sincerely doubt that this will ever happen again, but I hold out hope that I’m wrong.
(And without enforcement, no law has any meaning.)
Apparently you aren’t familiar with Left Wing judges.
Not every state or federal judge is a clone of Antonin Scalia.
I thought as you do now. But as I’ve considered it, I don’t think he’s complaining in order to be belatedly installed as president; nor do I think it’s a matter of ego for him. I think he correctly sees election integrity as the one single important issue confronting our republic.
Is it possible that Trump really won? People smarter and more diligent that I say — yes. If it happened once, can it happen again, and from now on? I think — yes. Can our republic stand as a republic without honest elections? I say, no.
What’s with the this-is-all-about-Trump’s-ego and Trump’s-a-sore-loser schtick?
Or Biden’s character was worse than Kennedy’s/Johnson’s because he was willing to push the fraud much farther.
Sure, but that makes my argument, not yours. Why would you think left-wing judges would have ruled correctly even if Trump had been there himself to point to the laws they were violating?
Because when presented with evidence they resort to name-calling.
Trump’s ego won’t let him admit that he lost an election.
Trump couldn’t admit that he lost to Ted Cruz in Iowa. Why would we expect that Trump could admit that he lost to Joe Biden in Georgia?
Trump has the maturity of a 6 year old. That isn’t going to change.
Well that puts him at least a year ahead of Biden.