Thanks for the information.
The rules of this forum prevent me from commenting further on Henry Olsen.
Right. I’m just trying to imagine a remotely plausible scenario where this works for Trump (even ignoring the fact that he can’t actually, you know, do anything about it). What if, say, FL and AZ were looking very likely to vote Biden on election day, and would be the tipping point states (i.e. without them Biden doesn’t get to 270)? Could the governors of those states (and Trump’s behest) declare some sort of emergency to delay the vote even a few weeks, perhaps hoping that the increased pressure of being the deciding states plus some last-minute shenanigans flips them from Biden to Trump?
I believe as long as they vote and have electors prior the electoral college meeting (mid-December) it’s all good.
Of course the sticking point is that neither Trump nor the state governors can do a damn thing without Congress. So it’s all just pissing in the wind and blowing smoke about “fraud”, with a nice dose of covering up some truly awful news re: the economy.
You mean that Austrian fellow?
There was more to it than that. BTW, it costs $29 per year to subscribe to the Washington Post.
… No president has ever suggested that an election be delayed. We did not delay elections when the future of the nation was at stake during the Civil War and World War II. We did not delay the election in 1968 when urban riots were the norm, when the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, and when the Democratic National Convention broke down amid an anti-war riot outside the event that Chicago police brutally suppressed with tear gas and billy clubs. There is no need to even suggest delaying today, when most Americans can move freely and with three months to go before Election Day.
Trump’s stated cause for his suggestion, the purported fraudulent nature of mail-in balloting, is a spurious canard. Mail-in balloting does carry risks, but states have been using mass mail ballots for years with no incidences of significant voter fraud. Other nations, such as Australia, also employ mass mail balloting and have also not experienced mass fraud. A responsible approach to holding an election during the pandemic involves compromise on all sides but is easily obtained: Expand voting options, including expanded mail balloting and early in-person voting, and couple it with guarantees of security and safety such as requiring receipt of ballots by Election Day and a post office postmark on all ballots electoral officials receive. Trump’s refusal to even contemplate such an offer speaks volumes.
Fortunately, Trump has no power to delay the elections. …Trump’s gesture is as futile as it is dangerous.
Nonetheless, his tweet strikes at the heart of American democracy and therefore must be instantly repudiated. Republicans should be among the leaders in denouncing his call.
…
There’s more after that, too. Henry is an idiot, but at least condemn him after you know more of what he said.
It doesn’t say much more than the title did. While Olsen repudiates the tweet, he does not repudiate Trump. Nor does he engage in any reflection on the chain of faulty reasoning that led him to support Trump in the first place, or to criticize Biden. And even in his critique of the tweet, there is the undertone of it’s not that big a deal because Trump can’t actually do anything about it.
In short, it’s about the weakest repudiation possible without being an outright apology for it. It is better than nothing, but not by much.
He tweeted this a half-hour after another piece of damning economic news, successfully grabbing the story of the day while pushing back the real story to the business pages and down to the middle of the evening news.
Trump’s a master of misdirection. Don’t let him fool you.
Just to make y’all feel better.
Schools will be opening at the end of August followed a week or so later by Labor Day weekend.
The resulting Covid spike from that 1-2 punch should peak right around Election Day.
Yeah:
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He calls Biden nuts for suggesting trump might do this, and “VOTE FOR TRUMP”!!
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When trump actually really does it, he says that’s horrible but “DONT VOTE FOR BIDEN!!!”
Not a retraction or a apology at all, imho.
Umm, what schools are opening up?
Not in CA.
And it wasnt just this Olsen idiot:
“It is just the type of thing that a crazed guy in a tightly buttoned raincoat whispers to you on the subway,” said law professor and Trump impeachment witness Jonathan Turley. “There’s a lot of projection,” sneered Mollie Hemingway. Ari Fleischer called Biden’s warning an “extreme, dangerous conspiracy theory.”
Not one of them actually retracted their comments, in fact Fleischer doubled down in saying trump was right about election fraud- but wrong to delay the election.
Does he actually say “don’t vote for Biden”? I did not pick up on language that explicitly said that, but am happy to be corrected.
The bolded section should read: not only affects.
Pompeo: Barr will decide whether the election will be postponed
I would not be at all surprised to see Republicans begin to jump on board the “The election’s rigged” train the closer we get to election day. They’re saying the right things now because they were, as usual, caught off guard by something that Trump tweeted. They didn’t have time to actually feel the reverberations from Trump’s base, but a lot of Trump’s base is also their base. Some republicans may rely more on a branching out strategy to include some crossover moderates and independents, but don’t kid yourself: anyone with an R by his name has to pander to Trump voters, or they’re a one-termer - period. Anyone with any ambitions beyond their current term knows this.
I expect that a surprising number of Republicans will come closer to echoing Trump’s claims than we might assume based on the initial reaction. They might say it differently. They might not be so explicit, but I find it hard to believe that they will wander too far away from the base camp. What Republican politicians fear most is getting shunned, and not just in terms of their political career but also in terms of future political consulting. It takes someone who is either really brave, or like Mitt Romney, someone who is at the end of their career and doesn’t really give a shit who he crosses anymore (FWIW, I think Romney is actually a decent guy in many regards).
ETA: Shit, it looks like there was a time out when posting the original version. This is an edited version of my original.
As I posted in another thread (can’t remember which one), Bill Barr will definitely factor. I don’t think it’s necessarily a matter of Bill Barr acting as President Trump’s personal coin flipper. I don’t think Pompeo is saying won’t declare the election postponed - that’s just more noise coming from someone else who’s high ranking in the administration, but this noise by itself has a purpose: reinforce the message from the president that there’s something terribly wrong with this year’s election.
As Josef Goebbels said, tell the lie again and again, and the lie becomes truth.
Pompeo will tell the lie.
AG Barr will tell the lie.
Republicans in the Senate and House will tell the lie.
Republicans in state politics will tell the lie.
Fox News and other right wing outlets will tell the lie.
Right wing media will spread the lie in very personal and powerful ways.
The goal isn’t necessarily to persuade critics or people who are politically neutral that there’s a problem with voter fraud - that is not the goal, and it’s a mistake to assume that this is their intention when they spread misinformation.
What Pompeo, Barr, and others are doing is telling you in advance what they intend to do, and they’re feeling out the opposition to see what kind of resistance they will face. They are conditioning us to accept what is on the face of it an overreach of presidential power and violation of constitutional norms. Moreover, they’re using the legitimacy of the presidency to do it, which is going to be powerful and difficult to stop. Baseless claims of voter fraud are one thing, but claims that emanate from the institution that was created by the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and from an office and institution shaped by giants such as Lincoln, TR, FDR, and Reagan…those claims carry weight whether we like it or not. They carry implicit legitimacy whether we admit it or not. The human instinct is to obey authority in that situation. And they know it, and this is what the authoritarians are counting on. Otherwise they wouldn’t be saying it - understand that. Don’t think that this is trolling. It’s not. They would . not. say . it. if it was far removed from their imagination. The fact that we have a Sec of State - an office once held by Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration - ought to tell you everything.
Democracies that descend into authoritarianism always, always, always do so with the consent of the governed. Always.
Have you seen the video a waiter took at a Romney benefit where Romney orders the waiters around like slaves?
Except that this time the Russian forces surrounding the Reichskanzlei White House will be there to rescue him.
It’s the top three vote getters.
“The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President…”
That famous 47% remark.
Let’s not forget the spectacle of Romney groveling before Trump for the SecOfSte job.
I want to thank the Dope. I watch Fox often, and it gives you ideas of how people are trying to destroy America with their anarchy etc.and Trump is the only one who loves our country… so it helps when I come here and get another viewpoint. Thanks.