After the Election

A month ago, I wrote about Trump’s plan to steal the election.

As a reminder, the plan was to:

1. Politicize mail-in voting
2. Suppress the vote
3. Declare victory on election night
4. Contest votes tallied after election night
5. Disqualify mail-in ballots
6. Take it to the courts

Politicize mail-in voting

Check. From Red Mirage to Blue Wave.

The overwhelming majority of Democrats in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania used mail-in ballots. And these states had laws that wouldn’t let them start processing mail-in ballots until election day. (Laws enacted and upheld by the GOP, by the way.) Trump had early leads in these states, because the first votes counted were by people who voted that day, these votes skewed Republican. But once they started counting mail-in ballots, Biden picked up votes, because the mail-in ballots were overwhelmingly cast by Democrats, often at rates of 80 to 90%. You had in effect two counts, first the Republicans and then the Democrats.

Declare victory on election night

Check. His tweets were being real-time fact checked by Twitter, and his lies weren’t spreading fast enough. So he held an unhinged press conference at 2:30 am on election night. It was deeply crazy even for Trump. Only he didn’t take any questions, so that’s not a really press conference, is it? If you are into self abuse, you can watch his remarks on YouTube.

Contest votes tallied after election night

Check. At least in the states where he had an early lead. But, in Arizona? No those votes must be counted, because the ‘Anointed One’ was behind in Arizona. Here the MAGA were chanting “count every vote.” At people doing exactly that.

Disqualify mail-in ballots

Actually, this seemed kinda half-hearted. A smarter, more dedicated authoritarian would have done a better job. C minus. At least as far as disqualifying ballots before they were cast.

The efforts to wholesale disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of American voters by disqualifying their votes after the election, in what amounts to a slow-moving public coup attempt, continue.

Take it to the courts

Trump has repeatedly called the election “a fraud.” And threatened legal action, including “taking it to the Supreme Court.”

Trump’s lawyers, and those of State GOP organizations, are filing any lawsuit they can think of, legal merit or no. They would need to flip Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Nevada, or a similar mix of states, to change the outcome.

But the vote, it ain’t that close. Georgia has the closest margin at 12,291 votes or .25%, followed by Pennsylvania at 46,256 (.68%) and Nevada at 36,186 or (2.71%). Arizona is closer at 14,746 votes or .44%.

Courts are, so far, throwing these cases out like flaming turds, because there is no credible evidence of fraud.

So that’s where we are now

Sane Republicans and foreign leaders, both sane and insane, have publicly congratulated Joe Biden and Kamal Harris on their victory. But…

• Attorney General William has reversed the Justice Department’s longstanding policies, and greenlit investigations into election fraud, despite the lack of any credible evidence beyond the President’s fabrications. The Justice Department official who oversees investigations of voter fraud, Richard Pilger, stepped down in protest.

• Senator Lindsey Graham, on Fox News said, “If Republicans — if we don’t challenge and change the U.S. election system, there’ll never be another Republican president elected again.”

• According to a Politico/Morning Consult poll of 1987 registered voters, “70 percent of Republicans don’t think the election was free and fair.”

All of this without any credible evidence of voter fraud.

Are Bill Barr, Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and the rest of the complicit willing to engage in a coup?

I dunno, because I live in the “shit hole country” that Trump and the GOP have turned America into. Grab a child in cage from the gift shop on your way out of hell world.