Wednesday, January 6, 2021

2020 General Election, Part III


 
December 14, 2020

As I noted when I posted Part II of this thread:

We'll we've never had that happen before.

November 13, 1920 cover of Judge.  I mean nothing by posting this at all, including commenting on "ads is ads" or "pigs is pigs", whatever that means.  I just like the illustration and the wry sense of getting back to normal, as if we're getting back to normal.  One thing we can't say about this year is Elections is Elections.

And by that I mean run a second "General Election" thread. Usually I run one, and then the election post mortems.  This year has been dramatically different.

Yesterday Pennsylvania and Nevada certified their elections. The day prior, Michigan did. Georgia already has. There the states that were extremely close have officially called their elections and, while some litigating goes on, it's over.
Or not.  

I went on to note how the election results are known and have been since the day after the election.  In spite of that President Trump has drug this out with a series of lawsuits and spurious claims about election fraud.

Now we have the results of the Electoral College and Biden has "officially" won, right?

Yes. . .but . . . and this year all the "buts" have freakishly come true.

Oddly enough, in the weird 19th Century way that the American Presidential election works, the results still need to get to Congress by January 3 and then Congress needs to certify them by January 6.  A mere formality, right?

Well it sure should be, but this year?

I didn't credit what I thought a wild scenario from The Atlantic that Trump would attempt to reverse the results of the election through the courts and state legislatures, but he did. That would have effectively have been a judicial and legislative coup.  The courts were dismissive of the attempt and legislatures didn't bite, but Texas did sue other states in the effort and a large number of Republican Congressmen signed on to it, perhaps knowing that it wouldn't occur.

Given all of that, however, I'm now not convinced that Trump will actually concede in any form and that there won't be a final effort on January 6 to have Congress reverse the results.  It'd be a tragic absurdity, but we're deep into a tragic absurdity right now.

And, of course, we still have the Georgia runoff yet to go.

Cont: 

Attorney General William Bar is "stepping down".

It's hard to say at this point whether late breaking developments with Barr have caused him to actually resign or whether Trump is firing him.  While it's hardly been noted, Barr wasn't a supporter of efforts to find supposed election irregularities and all but instructed his department not to make too much of the claims.  That seemed unnoted at the time but when it honestly reported that there was in fact nothing to make of the election fraud stories the rift with Trump seemed to grow irreparable.

At any rate, its hugely remarkable as Barr was a diehard Trump supporter. 

December 15, 2020


Also yesterday the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected the Trump post election litigation bid there.  This was again not a surprise.

Cont:  

Senators Enzi and Barasso, along with Liz Cheney, all indicated that they respect the results of the Electoral College yesterday.  They stopped short of actually stating that they agree the results are fair, which they obviously actually do, but which continues the surreal situation of obviously intelligent Republican figures in the know actually knowing what occurred, but being reluctant to state that publicly as they fear that their base has bought off on the conspiracy theories.

Be that as it may, the move is significant for at least Barasso who was supportive of the doomed legal efforts to overcome the election.  It's been clear for weeks that Cheney didn't buy off on the Trump effort and was simply choosing to be quiet.  Enzi is retiring in January so his silence wasn't too surprising and can almost be taken as the position of somebody who simply doesn't want to be bothered now that he's walking out the door.  Cynthia Loomis is apparently in Georgia for some reason and couldn't be reached.

Cont:  

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the victors in the election and congratulated them on their victory today.

In contrast, Donald Trump issued a tweet stating that there was election fraud, which has been completely disproven.

As the gap between the administrations refusal to acknowledge reality and various Republicans coming around to acknowledging it grows wider it'll be interesting to see if this is the beginning of a Republican severance with President Trump.

December 16, 2020

Cynthia Lummis acknowledged Joe Biden's victory yesterday.

Lummis has been campaigning in Georgia for the GOP candidates in that state's runoff, although its hard to see how a freshman Senator from Wyoming would have much influence there.

Mitch McConnell has been urging Republican Senators to vote no to consider Republican House members challenges to the general election.  McConnell likely senses that the game has run on election challenges and that the mood in that part of the public that supported them is shifting away from them, and the rest of the public is becoming hardened against the efforts to the detriment of the GOP.

December 21, 2020

Sidney Powell and her client Michael Flynn visited the White House on Friday and then Powell was back in the White House over the weekend. Powell is an attorney whose positions in regard to the election were so bizarre that the Trump legal team dumped her.

Reportedly the Friday meeting became a shouting match as members of the Trump administration argued down the more extreme Powell positions.  At some point somebody even brought up the idea of declaring martial law.  Powell's statements have been so bizarre and lacking in credibility that its difficult to see why she was even allowed in the White House, and Trump confidant Chris Christie warned him not to let Michael Flynn in.  None the less she was back in over the weekend.

President Trump reduced the news stories to being "fake news" but the fact that Trump, whose legal team announced yet another doomed attempt at an appeal to the Supreme Court, would even entertain somebody like Powell at this point is damaging to his credibility.

Indeed, the Atlantic, which turned out to be on the mark in regard to its predictions that Trump would try to use the courts and state legislatures to overturn the election results, has came out with a story yesterday that was headlined "Trump is losing his mind" flatly declaring that the President is descending into a species of "madness".  Twice entertaining Powell in a three day period, whose claims about the election are not only totally discredited but completely bizarre, and the fact that she represents Flynn who has advocated for declaring martial law to "rerun" the election in states that Trump disputes, are disconcerting in the extreme.

Indeed Flynn's statements are among those that meet the definition of sedition in that he's clearly calling for the use of force against the government in order to achieve a political result.  Flynn has only recently been pardoned but something like this is of such a serious nature that at some point serious thought should be given to the legal implications of it.  Even if he is credited with having a sincere belief in the conspiracy theories that have been floated it would not amount to a defense.

The continued maintenance of such extreme theories and the fact that they continue to be entertained does credit them with Trump supporters, however, which gets back to the Atlantic's article. This sort of thing stands to do serious damage to the country.

December 30, 2020

President Trump has been lashing out at his own party as it becomes increasingly clear that the GOP, late in the day, is starting to put some distance between themselves and his efforts to maintain that he won the election.  Indeed, these efforts have been so distinct that they've resulted in a two fold reaction; 1) they simply baffle close election watchers as they're bizarre and 2) they're starting to be widely ignored.

On the latter point, sometime in the last week the President tweeted that he'd heard from a young man with military connections that recently elections in Afghanistan were more fair than those just conducted in the US, and closed his comment by calling Biden a "Fake President".  This is both absurd and shocking, but it received very little attention in the news as for the most part nearly everyone has moved on from these comments.

The fact that they're still made, however, is really hard to figure.  The election was really well conducted and a massive amount of American voters turned out.  At this point the President is really beyond just asserting his rights, but is outright lying.  Commenters on This Week were unable to really land on either, but one expressed the view that he simply didn't understand the process.

This came about as it seems that the President and his allies might believe that the Vice Presidents role in acting as the crier for the delivery of the electoral vote amounts to more than simply delivering it.  It doesn't.  None the less some Republican Congressmen have filed another doomed lawsuit, actually naming Pence as a defendant, which takes the position that he can ignore state elector certification and choose his own electors if there's any sort of a contest.  Following is the prayer for relief from the suit.

PRAYER FOR RELIEF

73. Accordingly, Plaintiffs respectfully request that this Court issue a judgment that:

A. Declares that Section 15 of the Electoral Count Act, 3 U.S.C. §§5 and 15, is unconstitutional because it violates the Twelfth Amendment on its face, Amend. XII, Constitution;

B. Declares that Section 15 of the Electoral Count Act, 3 U.S.C. §§5 and 15, is unconstitutional because it violates the Electors Clause. U.S. CONST. art. II, § 1, cl. 1;

C. Declares that Vice-President Pence, in his capacity as President of Senate and Presiding Officer of the January 6, 2021 Joint Session of Congress, is subject solely to the requirements of the Twelfth Amendment and may exercise the Case 6:20-cv-00660 Document 1 Filed 12/27/20 Page 25 of 28 PageID #: 25 26 exclusive authority and sole discretion in determining which electoral votes to count for a given State;

D. Enjoins reliance on any provisions of the Electoral Count Act that would limit Defendant’s exclusive authority and his sole discretion to determine which of two or more competing slates of electors’ votes are to be counted for President;

E. Declares that, with respect to competing slates of electors from the State of Arizona or other Contested States, or with respect to objection to any single slate of electors, the Twelfth Amendment contains the exclusive dispute resolution mechanisms, namely, that (i) Vice-President Pence determines which slate of electors’ votes shall be counted, or if none be counted, for that State and (ii) if no person has a majority, then the House of Representatives (and only the House of Representatives) shall choose the President where “the votes [in the House of Representatives] shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote,” U.S. CONST. amend. XII;

F. Declares that, also with respect to competing slates of electors, the alternative dispute resolution procedure or priority rule in 3 U.S.C. § 15, is null and void insofar as it contradicts and replaces the Twelfth Amendment rules above by with an entirely different procedure in which the House and Senate each separately “decide” which slate is to be counted, and in the event of a disagreement, then only “the votes of the electors whose appointment shall have been certified by the executive of the State … shall be counted,” 3 U.S.C. § 15; Case 6:20-cv-00660 Document 1 Filed 12/27/20 Page 26 of 28 PageID #: 26 27

G. Enjoins the Defendant from executing his duties on January 6th during the Joint Session of Congress in any manner that is insistent with the declaratory relief set forth herein, and 

H. Issue any other declaratory judgments or findings or injunctions necessary to support or effectuate the foregoing declaratory judgment.

74. Plaintiffs have concurrently submitted a motion for a speedy summary proceeding under FRCP Rule 57 to grant the relief requested herein as soon as practicable, and for emergency injunctive relief under FRCP Rule 65 thereof consistent with the declaratory judgment requested herein on that same date.

To put it more politely than one disgruntled Republican I know defined it, a lawyer filing this is really risking sanctions and I'll be somewhat surprised if they don't result from this.

Stuff like this really needs to stop.  It's discrediting the nation and the people who bring the suits and its completely wiping out any legacy Trump may have had, and he did in fact have one.  Much like Watergate has come to completely define Richard Nixon, the denial of election reality is going to completely define Donald Trump.  And its really hurting the nation at this point.

Beyond that, and this is now starting to happen, it's so odd that some people are questioning Trump's grasp on reality.  The early best theory was that these actions were occurring for strategic reasons and he was simply finding a way to weld the base to himself.  That is probably correct but if its beginning at this point to really fail.

Lots of Republicans are severing themselves from Trump at this point.  His actions in regard to COVID emergency relief funds, no matter what you think of them, is further damaging this as he's now pitted directly against Mitch McConnell, whom he's lashing out at, and he's sabotaging the chances of  the two Republican candidates for the Senate in Georgia who are on record supporting them.  Indeed, while polls have proven particularly unreliable this year, one GOP candidate who had a lead going into next week's race is now neck and neck with the well spoken Democrat.  These races were always extremely tight but early election pundits figured the GOP would win them. There's real doubt now, which perhaps there always should have been as Georgia added 20,000 potential voters between November and next week.  Trump's lashing out at his own party, however, is creating really trouble for the GOP's chances.

Again, on This Week the theory was that this was being done on purpose by an angry President, and nobody, including the Republican Chris Christie, denied that.  Indeed, Christie, a real Trump loyalist, is now making clear signals that the post January GOP really doesn't have a place for Trump. The fact that he's now acting against McConnell suggests that things really are severing, and McConnell has a record as a survivor.

December 31, 2020

2,560,000 votes have already been cast in the Georgia runoff.

As a reminder, the Democrats currently hold 46 seats, the Republicans 50, and there are two independents who caucus with the Democrats.  Two seats in Georgia are up in the election.

The House ended up with 222 Democrats and 211 Republicans.

January 2, 2021

President Trump declared the Georgia runoffs illegal and asserted that "we", by which he presumably means he, won the election there "big".  This is simply false.   By all measures the vote in Georgia was extremely tight and Joe Biden won.

Assertions of this type are now being widely regarded as becoming hugely problematic for the Republican candidates in Georgia who are regarded as being put in the place of siding with the President on demonstrably false claims or facing his ire.

Cont:

Wyoming's Cynthia Lummis is one of the dozen or so Republican Senators who have announced that they're going to vote for a debate of certain state electors and demand an audit of the votes for the same states, an effort that's doomed.  Indeed those backing the effort know its doomed so the effort is for posturing reasons.

Those already in the Senate can take this position with no immediate risks, but those coming in, like Lummis, are taking a risk in that they're bucking Mitch McConnell, who is rapidly becoming a more significant GOP figure than President Trump and who definitely is in the Senate.  In short order there's a good chance that this will play itself out in terms of committee assignments with those incurring McConnell's' ire finding less than plumb assignments, assuming that the GOP retains the Senate.  If they don't, this is almost certain to occur.

All of this is being done for strategic purposes, of course, but is really feeding into a belief in some quarters that the election was stolen.  If this strategy doesn't bear fruit by 2022 it may well haunt the GOP significantly, perhaps fatally.  There's already a strong suggestion it may have swung Georgia's voters to the Democrats in which case the Democrats will take the Senate..  The opposing party usually gains mid term, of course, but these are odd times and this is pretty risky strategy.

January 4, 2021

An election that seeming couldn't get any odder, keeps getting odder.

A bipartisan coalition of ten U.S. Senators issued a letter condemning the effort by a dozen Senators, including Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis, to join Republican Congressmen in questioning the certification of certain electoral votes and submit them to a commission.  Wyoming's Elizabeth Cheney warned that the effort risked setting "an especially dangerous precedent"

In the meantime, President Trump telephoned Georgia officials including Georgia Secretary of State George Raffensperger and pressured them to "find" sufficient votes to give him the state's electoral votes.  It should be noted that even if that occurred, Trump would still lose the election.  Raffensperger has defended his office's work and after the news broke he specifically replied to a Tweet from President Trump denying that his office had done its work improperly and vaguely hinting that there's more to reveal about Trump's effort with "Respectfully President Trump, what your saying is not true. The truth will come out."

Georgia Election Board members have now called for an investigation into the call, which may have criminal implications.  Georgia Senator Perdue, who is in a tight runoff election that goes to the polls tomorrow, indicated that he was "shocked" by the call and termed the efforts by eleven Republicans to challenge the electoral votes "disgusting".  This may indicate that Trump's actions, which have been hurting the two Georgia Republican candidates, may have reached the point where those Republicans and Republicans in general now will feel free to break from the departing President.  At least one other Trump loyalist in the Senate has publicly disavowed the effort.

CNN has a complete transcript of the rambling hour long telephone call on its website.

Chuck Todd managed to end up in the headlines due to Meet The Press.  It's a well known rule of sorts in journalism that the journalist should never become the headlines, although there are exceptions.  Todd was outright confrontational and dismissive of his guest Senator Ron Johnson, terming him an "arsonist" for his role in creating a controversy that he now will be voting to investigate, but Johnson was unable to defend himself and came across as rather dim.  Johnson tried to divert attention to hearings he had on why doctors weren't given greater leeway with alternative treatments early in the pandemic but the effort was anemic at best.  The same episode featured an portion on the QAnon conspiracy theorists which was well done.

As noted, Georgia goes into its runoff tomorrow. The events of the past 24 hours have been dramatic, and are likely to have long lasting impact. What that is right now isn't really known and Trump's followers have been so loyal to him that perhaps it will have no impact.  It will have an impact on GOP fence sitters however and it opens the door, possibly, to criminal prosecution of Trump after he's left office, something that Democrats on the left will likely assert should be done.  Overall, the contents of the call are shocking and show and reveal a clearly improper effort to pressure Georgia's officials and a President who is either completely comfortable with lying or who is believing fantasies regarding the election himself.  At least to the extent that they're on the call, it also shows that some of his staff are willing to be complicit in asserting stories that are false in this effort.

The long term implications for the GOP, as noted, are vast.  Right now there's a fairly good chance that the party will split into two parties and one or both of them will die, leaving a gap until a new conservative party emerges.  That's only one possibility of course but the GOP won't continue on this way and a struggle for its future has really commenced.  The irony is that the GOP had done well down ballot this year and now the defeated President is wrecking his party in real terms.

In the House, Nancy Pelosi secured another term as Speaker, but only barely.  Part of that is simply, and now ironically, because the GOP did well in the down ballot elections and picked up seats in the House.

Cont:

The Lincoln Project, the Republican group opposed to Donald Trump, has taken the interesting approach of identifying large donors to the eleven Republican Senators who are going to oppose accepting the electoral votes and are urging Americans to reconsider their patronage of those entities.  Picking up on the idea, the New York Times sought their comments.  One of those entities, the ExxonMobilPac, was a donor to the Lummis campaign in the amount of $10,000 (not a giant sum in context) and responded to the NYT by congratulating Joe Biden on his victory.  Another, the US Chamber of Commerce, didn't respond to the Times but had earlier congratulated Joe Biden.

This is an interesting approach as embarrassing donors serves to dry up donations in some circumstances, which is a limiting factor with politicians.  

Dick Cheney, father if Congressman Cheney and former Secretary of Defense organized a collection of former Secretaries of Defense who have called for the Republican effort to end.

Trump allies Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham have denounced the Republican Senators efforts to refuse to certify the election.

This is particularly interesting in that both individuals are Trump stalwarts who are abandoning ship.  Graham in particular has been a Trump loyalist even after the election.  If Graham is abandoning the effort its a pretty clear sign that the Republican Party is now breaking away from Trump.

January 5, 2020

Over 170 business leaders issued a leader urging President Trump to accept the election results.

The Mayor of Washington D.C. has activated the city's National Guard units in advance of pro Trump protests scheduled this week.

Two US. Attorneys appointed by Trump have resigned this week.

Georgia election officials were very vocal yesterday, even as Trump was in their state, in their defense of their state's election process.  One official compared what is going on to the movie Groundhog Day.

Kelly Loeffler, an incumbent Georgia Senator filling out a term through an appointment pledged to support the effort of eleven Republican Senators lead by Ted Cruz to challenge the election results. This effort is known to be doomed and is splitting the GOP.  Loeffler has been falling in the polls and this step, which is the polar opposite of the position taken by Senator Perdue of Georgia, is presumably calculated to appeal to hard line Trump supporters, which would have supported her anyway.

January 6, 2021

Raphael Warnock, a Baptist minister in Atlanta, unseated incumbent, but appointed, Kelly Loeffler, putting the Democrats one seat closer to controlling the Senate by the thinnest of margins.  While this was with 98% of the vote in, it was beyond the margin needed for a recall and the net result is that Loeffler lost.

Her loss may be directly attributable to President Trump.  During the runoff campaign Loeffler went from having a margin over Warnock to behind n the polls as Trump continued, and continues, to maintain he won an election he clearly lost.  In the final days of the campaign he pressured, unsuccessfully, Georgia election officials to "find" votes, which they resisted, and then the spectacle of a Ted Cruz lead effort to challenge the electoral vote in the Senate was endorsed by Loeffler while condemned by fellow candidate Perdue.  All  in all, Loeffler generally presented poorly in the election, appearing baffled and lost, while Warnock didn't.  In the end, Trump's machinations and her miscalculation drug her under in the polls.

As this race was to fill the remainder of a term, Warnock will have to run again in two years, making 2022's mid terms all the more dramatic as a result.  While we'll post more on this later, this makes it clear that the GOP needs to figure out how to handle the growing division in its ranks by that time.

Senator David Perdue fell behind candidate Jon Ossoff but the race is too close to call.  Having said that, it now appears likely that Perdue will fall as well.

If this is the case, the Senate will go to the Democrats, but only because it will be, for the time being, evenly split 50/50.  This assumes no Republican defections to independent, which right now is not a safe assumption.  While we'll also deal with this later, this also means that Kamala Harris will be the tie vote.

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