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A new fault line
Simple question: will the question of a “stolen election” by nefarious means – D malfeasance on the local level, top-down fraud efforts, Dominion manipulation, all of the above – divide the conservative side in the year to come? I get the feeling sometimes that if you’re not on board with the idea that Donald Trump actually won, full stop, you’re a cuck-shill Tapper-fluffer (cruise ship icon) RINO eager to buff your cocktail-party credentials.
Published in General
The bottom line is that tweets like Sarah Hucklebee’s aren’t going to be viewed favorably in state or federal court.
So, to some extent, it might be better to stay tuned and see how successful Trump’s legal team is in their various legal challenges.
John Yoo, in his Zoom discussion with Peter Robinson yesterday, sounded extremely skeptical about Trump’s ability to prevail. Karl Rove made similar statements in a written piece.
But maybe it’s better if Trump’s legal team goes through with this and they lose in court. Then perhaps some percentage of Trump supporters will conclude that Trump was full of hot air or at the very least vastly overstated their case in front of the cameras and microphones.
HW, I don’t know whether your figures are accurate, but as a litigation lawyer, I’m not surprised at a lack of success in the early period.
I haven’t reviewed the individual cases, but given the early stage of the voting process, I would expect that the Trump team is seeking some sort of early or provisional relief — for example, something like a preliminary injunction to temporarily halt counting, while measures to combat fraud are put in place. Generally speaking, it is quite difficult to get a preliminary injunction or other early, provisional relief. It is quite common for a party to fail to get such early relief, but nevertheless prevail in the litigation in the long run, after full development of the case and a trial.
Since November 4th, I’ve called for investigations and recounts in states where anomalies have surfaced and where observers have signed sworn affidavits with claims that they’ve witnessed. Even a well-known attorney that perhaps yoo know didn’t put much stock in these sworn affidavit claims even though lying on a sworn affidavit in these battleground states invites the penalty for perjury. I’m pretty sure I haven’t called anyone a traitor.
The vote transfer issue is most troubling particularly since the Democrat election officials in Antrim County, Michigan admitted and agreed with GOP officials that 6,000 votes had indeed been transferred electronically from Trump to Biden. Some Republican or self-avowed conservative commentators haven’t bothered to even address this which is telling and may reveal a smidge or elitism or arrogance or a desire to just move on and conduct business in D.C. as usual.
When it comes to who owns Dominion, to paraphrase Rhett Butler, “Frankly, I don’t give a damn.” Investigate the vote transfers specifically (I’m looking at you AG Barr). That may be where tens of thousands of votes were transferred illegally. See also my latest post on the Member Feed for further compelling evidence of vote transfers in 3 other Michigan counties.
What say you regarding John Yoo saying that Trump’s chances of succeeding are extremely small and Karl Rove saying that this election will not be overturned?
I think it is very hard to track down every rumor that someone has found on the internet. So, someone on the internet says, “They transferred 6,000 votes from Trump to Biden. Massive voter fraud.” But on the internet you have millions of people saying millions of things, most of them with little relationship with the truth.
If someone says, “We should look into fraud allegations, but the margins are too big. Hate to say it but Biden won.” Then I do not see any problem with that position.
However, if a person who spent four years saying, “Russia, Russia, Russia,” now says, “Election fraud? That never happens,” well that is a different situation. Am I suggesting that such a person should be mocked, ridiculed, and hung from their locker by an atomic wedgie with their Avennati 2020 shirt pulled up over their head? Yes . . . 100 times Yes.
That is where I am.
I think there was massive fraud, maybe enough to tip things, but I don’t think there will ever be proof of enough fraud for that.
What I don’t like is being told that because I want to understand what actually happened I am being a “sore loser” or that I am part of a cult.
This is much like 2015, when I made a post asking that Pro and Anti Trump forces calm down. It was warmly received by the Pro Trump people, and somehow clearly put me in the “nut” camp for the antiTrump people.
NeverTrump has been the aggressors. They have looked down on the anger of the ignored voters and shown their utter contempt. I am not a fan of the C-word. It is a clear expression of the rage that many GOP voters feel at constantly being sold out by their “betters”.
America continues to have half the votes with no real voice in DC other than Trump. I fully understand a lot of people don’t like him. But the elites should not think that somehow, by silencing Trump, that they can suddenly go back to ignore the rage of half the voters in the nation and have business as normal. The Massive and spontaneous Trump rallies show that there is energy there.
The true divide on the right today is between those people who think the same old same old will work, and those who are tired of being ignored. They are not going to go away.
And yet one country hand counted their ballots and the count changed by 6000.
Hmmm…
A lot of the problems in this country are due to accepting conventions over actual constitutional processes, which have allowed open sores to fester and lead to systemic problems.
They probably will be unsuccessful. I agree that once the ballot is counted, it is very difficult to uncount it. You have to prove it was fraudulent. That’s difficult to do when your pollwatchers were prevented from watching the count.
What did Rove/Yoo say about the reports of Republican poll watchers being prevented from watching vote counts? Or the other indications of vote fraud? Do they think all the affadavits are false, e.g. the ones indicating backdating of mailed in votes?
I think it depends on how it is dealt with. I see a few options presenting itself and they tend to break down along the Never-Trump to Always-Trump spectrum.
There are people out there that are ready to accept the election results and move on. Not all were Never-Trumper (and I’m using a broad definition of those, not the Jen Rubins of the world, but the David French and Rob Longs).
Then we have, the majority IMO, of people who would be supportive of Trump if he won, but they aren’t necessarily convinced that he lost, but, know that there can be no way to prove this. Move on, yes…but, can we clean up the process so that we have real confidence in the process? Could we get a grand compromise to move on, to not #resistance, and in return make elections more transparent and make everyone believe in their integrity?
Lastly we have those that know that there was fraud, the numbers are too weird. Biden outperforming Obama by 50% in some counties in WI and other oddities in GA and PA just beggar the imagination. The behavior in Detroit and Philadelphia are red flags that indicate fraud and the fix was in. Not necessarily a grand conspiracy, but seeing Trump leading by large margins that disappeared from these urban Democratic strongholds that Always report late and seem to swing elections points to fraud and everyone should yell STOP because if allow the fraud to happen, it will just get worse.
Which group is right? Honestly all three. It is time to move on because if w lose confidence in the Ballot Box, the next step we Really don’t want. See my prior post on the topic. We really do need to fix the system because ask anyone and they say there is ALWAYS fraud, it’s just never enough to matter. But allowing that fraud encourages more fraud so we need to take it more seriously.
What is the consequence of ignoring that last group? The crazy Trump supporters who are doing deep statistical analysis of voting, who are reading the Dominion user manuals, who are being shut down by Social Media…what happens if they get ignored or marginalized? Well, it’s not likely they will go to the Cartridge Box in large part because most of them were never strong Republicans in the first place. They saw Trump as a way to clean up both parties and the anti-Trump Republicans just make them less loyal to the next candidate. In a large way, they won the 16 election while the Bush security Moms stayed home or voted Democrat in 16 and more so in 20. Which group is larger? Which group is easier to align with the party? Which aligns more with conservative ideas? Can both be in the tent together? Those are the questions we need to answer because getting to wrong spells disaster.
Apparently you need to learn that this is a “loser attitude”, and that any indications of vote fraud should be ignored, now and going forward. It’s better not to fight at all unless you are sure you will win the fight.
It’s like going into a marriage with the expectation of failure. You can’t think like that when you jump in. If you think its a possibility, than why the hell are you getting married? The expectation should be this is for life. Could it fail? Reality of human nature says yes. Should you entertain such fatalistic thinking? No. Because fatalistic thinking conditions you to accept it’s inevitability and decreases your will to fight for it.
Forgive the example as it applies to Trump, but Trump thinking he can’t lose is part of his value system (as Arahant has pointed out). It is a battle mentality that generals on the battle field must employ. The value isn’t in the reality, it’s in your mental reinforcement. If you believe you can lose, you aren’t as likely to fight as hard as you would if you believed you can’t lose.
It isn’t narcissism. Its one of the habits of highly effective adults.
I got the sense that John Yoo doesn’t think that the claim that Republican poll watchers were prevented from watching vote counts is a true claim. Quite often people assume that the claims being made by Trump’s attorneys are true. But a judge is going to need evidence of any claims like this.
Same for the claim that 6,000 votes were transferred from Trump to Biden. You can’t just show a judge a tweet from someone on twitter and think that a judge will accept this claim as fact. I am not telling you anything you don’t already know.
If I accepted everything that Trump and his closest allies said was true, I would be outraged. But I think Trump and many of his closest allies are very capable of lying, misleading and deceiving. So, I don’t view these claims as prima facia or pro tanto true, in an epistemological sense.
Illustrating why reports of election fraud are plausible: Thomas Friedman Urges Democrats to Commit Voter Fraud in Georgia.
As has been demonstrated on this thread and other threads where you’ve commented, your typical and predictable response is that all allegations of fraud should be dismissed. The 6,000 vote transfer is not a rumor. It occurred. The Democrat election officials blamed the transfer on a software glitch and then on user error but they haven’t denied it happened. Use your favorite internet search engine.
I think there are two sorts of people will be frowned upon:
Those conservatives who go around praising the election of Joe Biden as some sort of watershed moment for conservatism.
Those who go around with a handful of stones, plucked delicately from the stream of their own consciousness, to throw at anyone who who suggests that the election was “stolen” by any means.
The rest of us, the 95% of us with varying views on the election, and Trump, and this or that? We should unite behind holding seats congress in 2 years and defeating President Harris in 4.
I already mentioned that you can’t just accept as fact anything you find on some random internet web site or on someone’s twitter feed.
Do you think a state or federal judge is going to just read someone’s twitter feed and reverse an election result based on that? You don’t.
That’s why the allegations of cheating have to be pursued: not just because there’s a small chance it could change the outcome, but because liberal politicians and the press are always saying that voter fraud is non-existent. That lie has to be exposed so that it can never be credibly uttered again.
He doesn’t think its a true claim because he doesn’t think the accusers are willing to testify under oath.
He has some implicit biases on how he thinks people should behave that don’t really match up to reality.
Someone’s unwillingness to testify need not be because they fear legal repercussion, but Yoo’s default assumption is that.
He doesn’t come by that conclusion or belief through reason. He comes at it from underlying values and beliefs that he has formed over the years.
I pointed out another one of his implicit biases that isn’t come by through reason and logic on the video thread. Anyone who has tried to investigate and prosecute gang leaders knows how difficult it is to tie them to their crimes. One of the difficulties is unwillingness to testify among eye-witnesses.
There are plenty of reasons to not want to testify beyond afraid of the consequences of lying.
Yoo is making a value judgement of the claims themselves based on the claimants lack of desire to testify. In his theoretical mind, that is a logical fact. Out here in the real world, it is not.
Edited to add: Lack of witnesses willing to testify will result in a court loss. But a court loss does not mean the claims were proven false. It means the claims were not given enough truth weight to merit legal action. There is a difference here.
If someone is unwilling to testify, the chances of convincing a judge to overturn the current election results are negligable.
That is a different statement than your original one:
I’m the age of smart phones it’s surprising nobody caught it as it happened.
deleted.
I’ll pile another apple of discord on to the heap and suggest that the “stolen election” plot may divide voters who cast a ballot for Trump, but not necessarily alienate conservatives. Many of Trump’s supporters are more bound to unyielding enthusiasm than political ideology. Mr. Trump’s personality gathered a significant following. It also lost more than a few. His boorish behavior should not be overlooked in the election result. I’d like to think that his strident supporters would come to recognize the man’s character flaws. I doubt they will. The “stolen election” narrative broadcast from the White House does accomplish one thing: it leaves his unenthusiastic supporters with the confirmation that their reluctance was well-founded.
I can’t speak for John Yoo. But Yoo did say that Trump’s attorneys have hurt their credibility by filing lawsuits but being unable to back up their claims in court in front of a judge. So the judges have ruled against them. I don’t know if Trump’s attorneys are actually 0 for 12 as I read, however.
They have pictures of people holding cardboard up over the windows of where people inside are counting ballots.
I think we should be far enough into the age of smart phones and cameras everywhere to know that that is rarely used as conclusive proof of anything.
I think I heard on a podcast that while there were some people outside the room looking in and cardboard was put up to obstruct the view, there were also pro-Trump observers inside the room. So, the video of the cardboard gave people the impression that observers were not allowed to observe. But pro-Trump observers were inside the room observing the vote count.
This is an example of the kind of scrutiny various claims are going to be subjected to. It’s not going to be, “Well, I watched the Sean Hannity show last night and . . . . . “
Yes. I see Trump’s recent behavior as just more the same.
I’m one of those unenthusiastic supporters and I find Trump’s unwillingness to be the “graceful loser” like Romney, McCain, et. al. to be refreshing. The pre-Trump Republican Party was always too willing to accept the rules of the game as defined by Democrats: That the only way to appeal to Hispanics is to look favorably on illegal immigration ala Jeb! and his “illegal immigration is an act of love.” Trump built his wall and increased Hispanic support over Romney anyway. That leftwing charges of racism and sexism should be taken seriously and answered with “proof” that you’ve stopped beating your wife, ala Mitt and his “binders full of women.” Trump gave the finger to such charges (as he should) and increased support among blacks. That the MSM should be taken seriously even though every issue is framed in a way that conservatives can only lose. Trump called out the MSM as the hypocrites they are and used Twitter instead (not always constructively, admittedly). That it is fine for Democrats to use every legal means to challenge elections, but it is somehow beneath the dignity of Republicans to investigate election fraud. Trump doesn’t care that he won’t be invited to cocktail parties. He’s challenging it anyway.
I was an unenthusiastic supporter of Trump. I was also an unenthusiastic supporter of Bob Dole, GWB, McCain and Romney. If the NTers think that with Trump gone, the Republican Party can go back to its old mode of being the straight man in the left’s comedy routine, they are mistaken. I will not be supporting any Romney or McCain types again. I don’t want another Trump, but I demand another fighter.
That’s why I find the Texas numbers split between suburban white and border county Latino voters interesting, insofar as what the GOP (and Democrats) take from this. Trump made huge gains among Latinos from his 2016 run … but he lost more white suburban voters than he gained there, which is why his margin dropped from eight points over Hillary to six over Biden, and why he ran four points behind Cornyn and other Republicans in statewide races. But he ran 6-10 points ahead of Cornyn and other GOPers in Latino-majority counties.
Republicans have been urged for the past 30 years to boost their support among minority voters, as they become a larger percentage of the national vote. But the facile response to the Texas results would be simply to focus the GOP moving forward at wooing back white suburban voters at the presidential level with candidates like John Cornyn.
That gets you back the suburbs, but does it lose you the Latino voters who went for Trump, but looked at Cornyn and other establishment types and said ‘meh’? There has to be some effort to see if Trump’s appeal was due to his style and persona, which might be non-replicable, or the substance of his populist message, which other candidates could use, while attempting to be less abrasive to suburban voters.