This isn’t really a realistic scenario and has been analyzed ad infinitum. Simply screaming fraud didn’t work with the Supreme Court at all in 2020. You’d have to have a deeper machination in order for a particular state’s votes not to count, and the possibilities seem very limited (Georgia seems to be Trump’s best bet in this area). “Getting thrown to the House” only happens when no candidate can secure a majority of the electoral votes. It doesn’t just happen because of “problems.”
Interesting.
For people who don’t click, it’s about a 5% point lead for Trump over Harris; and 2% lead for Cruz over D contender Allred.
I’m in Houston - I mentioned somewhere that during the Olympics on NBC Harris ads were constant. I’ll add to that and say Allred has been almost 24/7 ads for about 2months now on various channels.
It’s even worse than this. Sometimes they don’t even have to fish around.
Some reporters from the supposedly liberal media rely on Republican operatives to recruit man-on-the-street sources.
The folks handed over are, of course, Republican operatives themselves, playing a fictional role. That role is to lie about their background (“I’m a Democrat/liberal/ex-Biden supporter/undecided/moderate”) and then shit on the Democrats/liberals/Biden. The reporter then gets to write yet another “disaffected Dems” story.**
That is to say, I don’t believe for a minute that the New York Times panel is composed of actual undecided or moderates. Those are Republicans, man. (Does this sound too conspiracy-theory-ish for you? Well, check out the fine print! It says right there that “[Luntz] chose the participants.” Luntz is a Republican operative! This is known!)
And this all contributes to how Trump can win at this point. I lack the optimism of many posters in this thread. I suspect the race is incredibly close right now. But I know for sure that even if Harris/Walz start to pull away, the supposedly liberal media will continue with such absurd coverage, which will help, in its own small way, to narrow any gaps that might develop. This thing is going to be portrayed as dead heat no matter what.
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**Why would a reporter do this? Not because of any ideology. They don’t know they’re being duped. They do it out of laziness. Why fish around for the mythical lifelong-progressive-who-feels-driven-to-vote-for-Trump – a rare breed, difficult to find in the wild – when you can custom-order one from your Republican source?
Different court.
Tell me, who stops the rightwing nutters on the Court (now) from deciding to adjudicate the election that is hopelessly entangled in absurd but vociferous charges of election fraud of the highest order? Are they going to say, “Oh, wait. Aeschines on the Straight Dope says we can’t butt in here, so let’s not”? There’s no one who has the standing to tell the Court to butt out if they decide to butt in.
Crazy people are not able to do that. Trump is melting into his psychopathy.
It’s a little confusing.
For each state, the Harris column has how many electoral votes she’d have if she won that state. The Trump column has how many electoral votes he’d have if he won it. Of course, it’s impossible for both columns to be true.
Right. And the Supreme Court did nothing when there was lots of screaming because the lower courts were dismissing all of these cases.
The lower courts.
They would have to do something different than in 2020, since they were unable to do anything that caused the Supreme Court to adjudicate the election. And it’s still the same 6-3 majority, right?
There’s also been a law passed to protect against this: Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022. It fixes a lot of what went wrong in 2020.
Yeah, it’s too late for Trump to pivot and try to win this thing. Which is not the same thing as saying he won’t win anyway, but it’s looking worse and worse for him.
Trump is going to demand that the SC intervenes, right? That’s a given. What basis did they have in 2000 to intervene, with far less carrying on than we’re going to see in 2024? If they want to, they can, and in my view they will. They are personally being threatened with all sorts of sanctions and censure from a Democratic administration and Congress, and some of them (Thomas and Alito) are up against an existential crisis, almost as much as a losing Trump is. Kavanaugh is on the record as seeking revenge against the Dems who sullied his name and reputation, and Coney Barrett sincerely fears that innocent babies will be slaughtered if the Dems get in. These people are unhinged and don’t care a damn about precedent or logic. They aren’t jurists, they’re political operatives who will take advantage of any pretext to elect Republicans.
I hope I 'm wrong.
Be careful about reading too much into the numbers.
Cruz won re-election by a 2% margin back in 2018 and Trump won Texas in 2020 by about a 6% margin, i.e. more or less the same margins the polling currently shows.
Signs point up but just because Texas is generally conservative doesn’t mean conservatives win election in landslides every time. Anything less than a 10% win is cause for concern, which shows just how unlikable Cruz is even to Republicans and how badly, relatively, Trump did in many parts of the state the last time.
Yes. He will file many lawsuits. That is the basis for the SC to intervene. There does have to be evidence, though. That’s a tough ask when there is none. Also, Harris has hired 100’s of lawyers in every battleground state who are at the ready. Here’s a NYT article about it:
With the lessons of 2020 still fresh in Democrats’ minds, Harris advisers claim that the legal team is about 10 times the size of the 2020 operation.
The expansive new Democratic legal team, and the opposing group at the Republican National Committee, is a reflection of the legal arms race that is the new reality of American elections since Mr. Trump’s election victory in 2016. The battle over whose votes count — not just how many votes are counted — has become central to modern presidential campaigns.
The best place for this to succeed is in Georgia. They have passed laws that will help Trump manufacture evidence of fraud that will make it easier for a Judge to run with it. If it comes down to just Georgia, strap in.
He didn’t in 2020.
I certainly think the decision was shit, but you know the history. The Florida recount was at least something.
About the only thing that could be done that could go to the SC is an entire state finding itself unable to certify based on a local or statewide refusal to certify. IANAL, but that would go through lower courts first. Further, it would have to be enough electoral votes to make the difference to Trump.
They are already facing a credibility crisis and lots of problems, so getting Trump in through flagrantly illegitimate means would completely nullify said credibility in the eyes of Democrats forever. It would be a big gamble. They’d have to count on Trump holding onto power, the country not coming apart because of the decision, and Dems playing nice if they ever got back into power. If any of those things doesn’t go their way, they can pretty much count on impeachment and removal at the very least with a criminal trial and imprisonment not being an unrealistic outcome (Thomas should be going to prison for bribery right now). Whereas ruling against Trump saves their skins for now. I actually don’t think they’d cross the Rubicon.
Do you mistake them for someone who cares?
Exactly. They see they struggle. They see social programs that “advantage” other groups. Doesn’t matter that culturally they have advantages that those other people don’t. They hear about somebody who takes advantage of the system. They don’t inquire as to if that person is real, or if that kind of taking advantage actually works. “It’s cheating!”
Yeah, and so is not reporting all your income for income taxes. Cash transaction? “I don’t have to report it.”
I have said and keep saying losing an unfair, unearned privilege is not being discriminated against. Finding yourself in the same footing as the previously disadvantaged is not taking away your rights.
I have observed to others that how things are when you start to pay attention is what you think is normal. These kids have a very skewed sense of normal.
Also, they are uninformed. They don’t understand how the two party system is winner take all, that only those two parties have enough clout to actually win, but that others can be spoilers that ruin the outcome and unpredictably, sometimes causing the exact outcome you don’t want.
They also mostly don’t understand policy beyond the headline, don’t know what the label says doesn’t always match the contents.
And many of them are children of republicans, so get their opinions heavily influenced by their parents.
“Democrats are scary socialists!” That’s what they hear from the ones they trust.
More on the argument that evil people don’t know they’re evil. Today, the MAGA scum were making fun of Tim Walz’s special needs son, saying that he was crying “like a bitch” at the DNC, someone get him a tampon–oh, and since Walz was older when he had Gus, he was working with spoiled sperm.
Sure, these people have no clue that they’re evil. They sure as fucking do, and they revel in it.
They care about themselves. I expect them to care about nothing else. If they start a revolution, I think they know that they are not going to come out of it with their careers and freedom intact. Even if that revolution were won by MAGA, they know they would have zero power in an authoritarian government. Lose-lose.
No, but he did in 2021, so that’s splitting hairs.
Trump tried to get the SCOTUS involved, but they rejected all of his requests. Well, most of them did…
Justice Clarence Thomas called the cases an “ideal opportunity” to address an important question whether state lawmakers or state courts get the last word about the manner in which federal elections are carried out. And he called it “befuddling” and “inexplicable” that his colleagues were declining to weigh in.
This is my shocked face!
Wasn’t trying to split hairs. I had forgotten that it had got as far as being rejected by the SC. I stand corrected.
Yeah, Thomas is a hack and a criminal. Disgraceful.
But will they? I think (Trump is hoping) that the Dems will ultimately concede that the SC has ruled, and they intend to protest, go to jail perhaps, make some unprecedented moves, but ultimately cave in face of the SC’s wrongful decision to throw the election to Trump. Trump’s plan is that they’ll see living under a vindictive leftwing administration would damage their reputation more than keeping within the rule of law. It’s a lose/lose situation, but who’s to say that they won’t choose the other side of “lose”?