Sure he can. Generally, campaign funds can be used to defend lawsuits arising out of campaign activities or officeholder duties. And the FEC has ruled that in some circumstances campaign funds can pay for up to 50% of legal expenses that don’t relate to campaign or officeholder duties, if the lawsuit still impacts their official duties (e.g. they have to defend their actions in the press). Of course, the FEC is effectively crippled so there’s really nobody to stop him from doing whatever the hell he wants with his campaign funds.
And has.
Apologies; I wasn’t as clear as I should have been.
I’m presuming the Trump campaign will be filing lawsuits challenging ballots in every state where the count was close, but a loss for Trump.
That could get expensive.
Right now I’ve got Biden winning this race 290-248, which assumes the following:
Biden carries: MN, WI, MI, PA, NV, AZ, VA, and NH.
Trump carries: OH, FL, IA, and NC.
However, polling averages suggest Trump is quite vulnerable in NC, FL, OH, and even IA - all of these states. Trump’s fighting to keep the territory he has, and he’s not making progress in the states that he needs, so clearly, Biden is winning the polls and the race is actually pretty stable.
I do like the trend lines so far. Just hope the debates don’t mix them up too much to Biden’s detriment.
I don’t think the debates really do much one way or the other. It seems that any ‘bounce’ that occurs with debates usually occurs after the first one but it often stabilizes after that. Biden would have to forget how to say his own name for it to be a real problem for him, IMO. Just as a point of reference, I felt Biden was consistently weaker than many of this fellow debaters during the democratic primaries, and it didn’t matter that much in the end.
Hope you’re right. I’m worried that ol’ Gabby McGillicuddy will say something particularly stupid or damaging that will make a real difference in the last month of the campaign.
One thing in Biden’s favor is that Trump has so lowered the bar for him, all he has to do is stay upright and speak in complete sentences to have a “successful” debate. Kind of the inverse of what the left did with Bush back in '00. I think the debates expose Trump more than they expose Biden – he (Trump) is not used to a format in which he can’t simply pontificate freely and at length.
Which is exactly what happened last night. Trump faced a town hall full of “uncommitted” (but not friendly) voters and an antagonistic moderator (Stephanopolous), and, according to the reviews I’ve read this morning, face-planted pretty badly.
I’m confident Biden can obliterate Trump in a live debate, but I don’t think it will make much difference.
Romney clearly dominated Obama in the first 2012 debate (I remember looking at my wife and saying “uh-oh”), but we all know how that turned out.
As to my comment about using campaign funds …
I was refering to simply stuffing them in his pocket and using them to defend all manner of suits & criminal charges stemming from his personal and business life actions pre-candidate and post-President. Yes he can use them to defend the operations of the campaigns, both 2016 & 2020.
And as @flurb says, the FEC has obligingly told the political class they may divert funds to almost anything even remotely related to their time in office. Convenient that.
Specifically though, the “Biden = senile” attack could be greatly reduced by a good debate. From my own social media, the various “sit it out/3rd party” waverers are citing that as a reason for wavering, and they’re mainly getting this characterization from clips/headlines of gaffes or out-of-context snippets. Given that the debates are the only time some people watch a candidate give a full live performance, a showing that puts that issue to rest for even 1-2% of people may be important.
That, and Trump’s whole theory that Biden is a trojan horse for Bernie Sanders and AOC will probably take a serious hit.
Excellent point. For many of the voters that matter most in this election, BIden isn’t so much running against Trump as he’s running against the social media/Fox News charicature of Biden.
Meaningful election reform could overcome the absurd power of the big money interests in campaigns and in the legislation that follows. If Trump supporters make one and only one reasonable point, it is that they understand this absurdity, even if the decisions they make to end it are usually endeavors of stupidity. But everyone currently involved – the wealthy donors, the tiny but influential election industry and the candidates/legislators themselves – has a vested interest in continuing the current system.
Trump supporters are indeed the worst of us as a block of voters but they get this concept much better than most of us libbies do. Yes, they make bad decisions in trying to fix it – they’re Republicans for a reason, after all – but Dems need to get on board with serious election reform or it will leave the little guys with no choices left but bad ones.
I think the race is now, and always has been, about whether America can tolerate four more years of this shit show. Increasingly, ever so gradually, Americans seem to be saying “Maybe not.”
The incumbent usually holds the cards, even until fairly late in the election cycle. Trump is probably giving his base mass erections, but he didn’t win with just his base; he needed others who were less ideological to get him over the top, and some of those appear to be abandoning him.
Still, there are always things that don’t get picked up in polling, and each election cycle is about different issues. I wouldn’t completely write off Trump just yet, but it’s not looking good for him - again, with my usual caveats about assuming we’re talking about a free and fair election. I expect this election to be like no other.
Biden isn’t senile and never was, but he is 78 years-old and looks it. He will periodically remind voters how old he is during debates. Fortunately, I don’t think Biden’s age is much of a winning argument considering Trump’s lack of sanity and coherence. If Biden were going up against Mitt Romney (the 2012 version), Nikki Haley, or even Mike Pence, yes, Biden’s age and periodic stammering would very much be an image-related concern. But Trump’s idiocy and unhinged behavior nullify that argument.
There wont be a debate is my Bet. Altho yes, trump loves a pulpit, trumps and his handlers will demand so many insane concessions about the debate that Biden would be crazy to accept.
The debates are already confirmed and, at least in principle, agreed to by the campaigns. Trump has no basis from which to demand additional concessions and would only make himself appear weak if he did so.
And Trump is 74. Said another way, if Trump is elected he’ll be the same age at the end of his term as Biden is now. If Biden’s too old now to start, then Trump’s already too old to finish a next term.
Not that everybody ages the same, but lots of folks focus on the number as if some certain number is too old, QED. And as to these two candidates, the difference isn’t decisive; its negligible compared to the vast gaping differences between them in almost all other measures of merit and competence.
But it appears that merit and competence don’t matter. Or at least they don’t matter for one side.