Considering some of them went the bleach route, it’s not impossible they won’t try. And just the fact that The President is promoting election fraud, however improbable, should be horrifying.
I can’t argue with this. Some people are morons 
and Trump gets more horrifying ever single day.
The Postmaster General is a trump crony.
Surely. Most presidents engage in a certain amount of cronyism. But according to the article, these plans were in place before DeJoy was appointed. Cronyism isn’t enough for me to accuse him of wrongdoing.
And there is this from the article:
“Still, Paul Hogrogian, national president for the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, said he does not expect the dismantling of processing equipment to have a widespread impact on mail delivery time across the country, including in election season.”
I’m endlessly amused and bumfuzzled by your lame attempts to pooh-pooh legitimate concerns about Dear Leader, while scrambling to maintain a facade of utter fairness. WTG. Do continue, please. Knock yourself out, ‘cause I did laundry yesterday and got nuttin’ goin’ on today. In what other ways are trump’s actions and policies totally normal and in keeping with the behavior of past presidents. Hmmm??
- He lives in The White House.
- Uh… um… ah… ooh…
I won’t speak for others, but what I’m saying is that there is an attempt to destroy confidence in the validity of the election results so that Trump can lay claim to a “win” even if the results indicate he may end up with fewer votes.
Again, remember what happened in Florida, where a recount, which had originally been ordered by the state supreme court, probably would have resulted in Gore winning that state. Instead, Bush sues, gets the Supreme Court to intervene on dubious legal grounds, and essentially hands the election to Bush. The precedent for one side suing and using a politically-leaning Supreme Court to intervene in a state election has a clear and recent precedent.
Now take this and expand it on a larger scale. Imagine a not that far-fetched scenario in which Trump fears losing, Fox News and right wing outlets claim that Trump is the winner, and sues to interfere with mail-in votes that are coming in. On what grounds? On grounds that there are “irregularities.”
“Well anyone can claim irregularities, so the hell what?”
Yes, I agree that anyone can claim “irregularities.” That’s why he is doing his dirty work now before the election results are counted. He and his political henchmen, who also want to stay in power, are trying to lay down a psychological foundation in the minds of millions of people that it’s the other side that’s stealing their election victory. They’re not stealing the election now; they’re discrediting the election process now so that they can “steal” (or whichever verb you wish to use) the election later.
If Republicans get torched in down-ballot election after down-ballot election, I absolutely agree that this would be hard to pull off, and I would assume (hope) that Lindsay Graham, Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, and others say “Okay, show’s over. Let’s accept our ass kicking and figure out where to go next.” I’m not making a prediction that this will absolutely happen.
But if this election is close - and by close I mean that it comes down to three or four swing states that have a margin of victory/defeat within 2-3%, then all bets are off. Trump Land refuses to accept the “fake news” that their Dear Leader has lost. Losing means giving up the country to Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and illegals. It means men can use women’s bathrooms and vice versa. Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Linda Ingraham, Mark Levin, OANN, and others start banging the drums. Soon both domestic and Russian propaganda channels begin spreading discord on social media. By the millions, voters call their congressmen and demand that they refuse to accept the outcome of the election. Congressmen, realizing that their own voters are almost 95% Republican or right-leaning "independents," feel compelled to support Trump regardless of what official results, still being counted, say. The Republican party and affiliated groups begin flooding the courts with lawsuits, claiming that people voted twice, that there were foreign intrusions in election databases, that mail-in ballots were mailed too late, that they’ll never know who the real winners are now because the states botched the elections, so we won’t be able to accept the election results and should instead find an alternate way to choose electors.
I am not pooh-poohing anything, if I take that to mean making excuses for Trump or trying to lessen in some way the harm that he is doing to this country. If you want to have someone tell you, for instance, that Postmaster General DeJoy is out to destroy the election process, without reading someone else’s reasoning as to why he thinks this might not be the case, fine. I on the other hand like to look at both sides of something and then make a decision about it. If that’s scrambling to be fair, I’m glad you picked up on it, but I don’t think you did, since you describe it as a “facade”. It is not a facade. It is an honest attempt to look at a supposed issue, and come to a conclusion.
And what is with this assumption on your part that I am continually looking for a way to simply make excuses for Trump? I’ve said at least a thousand times on this board and in other conversations that there are more than enough legitimate things to excoriate Trump for. We don’t need to make them up out of whole cloth.
Yay, something we can agree on. 
This is also something I’ve been saying all along. He is setting up excuses in case he loses, so he can leave office peacefully (which, he will) and then save face by blaming his loss on fraud. But he is too much a coward to refuse to leave if he loses, and he will have NO ONE in a position of authority to help him stay. IMO, of course.
And just a general comment about my posts about Trump. I’d say oh 80% of the threads I read make legitimate claims about the harm Trump is doing to this country. It’s just that when I read them, I usually have no interest in just chiming in and agreeing. It isn’t very interesting to me to do that. And since I like to have intellectual discussions about the issues, I like to offer my opinion when I think Trump is being blamed unfairly. Or any other type of discussion, for example, George Floyd, which I won’t go into here. I just wist people would read my posts for they themselves say about an issue, without making unfounded assumptions.
- How anyone can say, after the last few years, that the Republicans will not put up with an attempt to subvert the election without choking on those words simply astonishes me.
- No one came close to predicting what Trump would try and how much he would get away with when his shitshow of a Presidency started. NO ONE.
- Therefore any reassurances as to what he will not be allowed to get away with if he gets into office again deserve to be openly laughed at.
Fine. I’m really happy I can give you a good laugh. Truly, we all need some laughs at this point. All I can say is, if and when there is an attempt to subvert an election, and Republicans instigate it/go along with it, I’ll be proven wrong. All I’m saying is, let’s wait until it happens. Because it hasn’t, yet. As for the shitshow, agreed.
I think we agree that Biden will probably get more votes than Trump and that he will probably win more votes in more states than Trump. I think we also agree that Trump and his allies are essentially preparing themselves for this defeat at the polls. I think we disagree on what their recent behavior means.
I think some people see conservative behavior as just more dirty politics; I see it differently. Democracies don’t survive based on their traditions alone. The fact that we’ve been through tumult in the past and survived it doesn’t necessarily suggest that we will continue to survive continued attacks on Democratic institutions. Globally, democracy is on the decline, and where it has declined, we’ve seen narrow political majorities use tactics similar to what we’re seeing Republicans use now. I’m telling you: we’re seeing very dangerous signs about the future of American democracy.
Holy shit-Really?
One could also say that since we have survived such in the past, we can do so once again. I am in this camp. Time will tell.
I don’t mean things like Trump telling people to vote twice. I mean, people being turned away at the polls for no reason. I mean polling places being shut down on election day. I mean, legislatures trying to introduce voting tests, I mean ballot box stuffing, and any other number of things that will actually result in a stolen election. This might even make for an interesting thread, if someone were interested in laying out what they believe is being done in this regard.
Being aware that the things I mention will mostly have to wait until election day or after, this is not really possible, I guess. But I am saying, wait and see, and I don’t believe those things will happen.
Oh I absolutely agree that we can. But people should know that as democratic institutions become more strained, the outcome becomes more like a roll of the dice. It’s a simulation game at that point. If you put democracies with X amount of democratic strength and subject it to Y amount of democratic strain, the outcome won’t be continued democracy 10 out of 10 times. And the odds are probably considerably lower than that.
I predict (going WAY out on a limb here, ha ha ha) that Republicans are going to do whatever they can to delay the actual counting of mail in votes, in an effort to miss the deadline for the final count. Republicans will try very hard to sabotage a fair, democrstic election for the presidential office in our country. The result could easily be that Trump loses and stays on.
So, wait until it is too late to do anything about it to worry about it?
If we are wrong, and the election goes smoothly and without any hitches and the freely and fairly elected president and congress take power on schedule in January, we will be happy to be wrong to worry.
If you are wrong, and the Republicans manage to pull off what they are plainly stating that they want to do, then that’s it. We will be right, which will be no consolation.
No. Feel free to worry, and I will feel free not to. But by all means, do what you think is necessary.