Thursday Reads

Posted: November 12, 2020 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: & Wilmer, Department of Defense, Donald Trump, Fox News, intelligence agencies, Jones Day, Porter, Robert O'Brien, Trump tantrums, Wright Morris & Arthur | 11 Comments

Good Morning!!

Prospects are not looking good for Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results, but that doesn’t mean he won’t do serious damage to the government in his remaining lame duck weeks. The biggest problem for the transition to a real president is that Trump’s staff and most GOP elected officials are living in fear of Trump’s tantrums.

The Daily Beast: Trump’s National Security Adviser Tells Staff: Don’t Even Mention Biden’s Name.

President Donald Trump continues to refuse to cede the election. His national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, is enabling the mayhem, four senior officials told The Daily Beast.

O’Brien—once viewed as a potential check on Trump’s erratic national security demands—endorsed the installation of a pair of Trumpists at the Pentagon’s highest levels, while a defense secretary O’Brien has long opposed was fired by tweet.

One official claimed that O’Brien has been supportive of a peaceful transfer of power, joking in a Monday event about Trump’s loss and directing his staff to begin drafting transition materials. But three other officials told The Daily Beast that O’Brien has emerged as one of Trump’s biggest enablers at a decisive moment, supporting the president’s bid to retain power even though it is being waged through a nationwide disinformation campaign….

This week, officials say, O’Brien supported the removal of several top officials at the Pentagon and favored Christopher Miller, a former NSC official who moved to the National Counterterrorism Center, to replace Esper as secretary of defense. He also approved of the installation of Kash Patel as Miller’s chief of staff, officials said. Patel worked previously under O’Brien at the National Security Council. One senior official described Miller and Patel as “O’Brien’s boys.” Patel is also said to be close with another former NSC colleague, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who is now the Pentagon’s senior intelligence official.

A bit more:

Other officials familiar with the matter noted that O’Brien has also pushed national security officials to publicly embrace the absurd Trump message that the election has not been certified and that there are still legal battles playing out across the country that could turn in the president’s favor.

“If you even mention Biden’s name… that’s a no-go, you’d be fired,” one national security official said. “Everyone is scared of even talking about the chance of working with the [Biden] transition.”

Asked if officials in the White House feel comfortable saying Biden’s name in the West Wing, one senior White House official said, half-jokingly, “Sure, you can say his name. If you’re talking about who lost the election to the president.”

Behind closed doors, one official claimed, O’Brien has been much more forthcoming about Trump’s loss and the need to prepare for a transition. The problem, the other officials said, is that O’Brien hasn’t made that known to the commander in chief.

There’s much more interesting gossip at the Daily Beast link.

wu201109 On the other hand, some right wingers are speaking up, including John Yoo, Mike DeWine, and John Bolton.

The law firms representing Trump are also getting antsy. The New York Times: Growing Discomfort at Law Firms Representing Trump in Election Lawsuits.

Jones Day is the most prominent firm representing President Trump and the Republican Party as they prepare to wage a legal war challenging the results of the election. The work is intensifying concerns inside the firm about the propriety and wisdom of working for Mr. Trump, according to lawyers at the firm.

Doing business with Mr. Trump — with his history of inflammatory rhetoric, meritless lawsuits and refusal to pay what he owes — has long induced heartburn among lawyers, contractors, suppliers and lenders. But the concerns are taking on new urgency as the president seeks to raise doubts about the election results.

Some senior lawyers at Jones Day, one of the country’s largest law firms, are worried that it is advancing arguments that lack evidence and may be helping Mr. Trump and his allies undermine the integrity of American elections, according to interviews with nine partners and associates, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs.

At another large firm, Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, based in Columbus, Ohio, lawyers have held internal meetings to voice similar concerns about their firm’s election-related work for Mr. Trump and the Republican Party, according to people at the firm. At least one lawyer quit in protest.

Tuesday Reads: Trump’s “Autocratic Attempt”

Posted: November 10, 2020 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Autocracy, autocratic attempt, autocratic breakthrough, Bálint Magyar, democracy, Department of Defense, Donald Trump, famous autocrats, GSA, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Mark Esper, NSA, Richard PIlger, U.S. nuclear arsenal, William Barr | 18 Comments

Good Morning!!

Benito Mussolini

The U.S. is going through a very dangerous time. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been elected decisively, but Trump and his GOP cult followers are trying to overthrow the election results. They are, in fact, attempting a coup.

Masha Gessen at The New Yorker, November 5: By Declaring Victory, Donald Trump Is Attempting an Autocratic Breakthrough.

The President of the United States has called the election a fraud. He has declared victory without basis, tweeting on Wednesday, “We have claimed” Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, and perhaps Michigan—all states that were still counting votes. Donald Trump, who has been engaged in an autocratic attempt for the last four years, is now trying to stage an autocratic breakthrough.

I have borrowed the term “autocratic attempt” from the work of Bálint Magyar, a Hungarian sociologist who set out to develop analytical tools for understanding the turn away from democracy in many Eastern and Central European countries. I have found Magyar’s ideas surprisingly illuminating when applied to the United States.

Magyar divides the autocrat’s journey into three stages: autocratic attempt, autocratic breakthrough, and autocratic consolidation. The attempt is a period when autocracy is still preventable, or reversible, by electoral means. When it is no longer possible to reverse autocracy peacefully, the autocratic breakthrough has occurred, because the very structures of government have been transformed and can no longer protect themselves. These changes usually include packing the constitutional court (the Supreme Court, in the case of the U.S.) with judges loyal to the autocrat; packing and weakening the courts in general; appointing a chief prosecutor (the Attorney General) who is loyal to the autocrat and will enforce the law selectively on his behalf; changing the rules on the appointment of civil servants; weakening local governments; unilaterally changing electoral rules (to accommodate gerrymandering, for instance); and changing the Constitution to expand the powers of the executive.

Josef Stalin

For all the apparent flailing and incompetence of the Trump Administration, his autocratic attempt checks most of the boxes. He has appointed three Supreme Court Justices and a record number of federal judges. The Justice Department, under William Barr, acts like Trump’s pocket law-enforcement agency and personal law firm. Trump’s army of “acting” officials, some of them carrying out their duties in violation of relevant federal regulations, have made mincemeat of the rules and norms of federal appointments. Trump has preëmptively declared the election rigged; has incited voter intimidation and encouraged voter suppression; has mobilized his armed supporters to prevent votes from being counted; and has explicitly stated that he is changing the rules of the election. “We want all voting to stop,” he said on Wednesday morning, and vowed to take his case to the Supreme Court.

Please go read the rest at The New Yorker.

Ezra Klein makes a similar argument at Vox: Trump is attempting a coup in plain sight.

The Trump administration’s current strategy is to go to court to try and get votes for Biden ruled illegitimate, and that strategy explicitly rests on Trump’s appointees honoring a debt the administration, at least, believes they owe. One of his legal advisers said, “We’re waiting for the United States Supreme Court — of which the President has nominated three justices — to step in and do something. And hopefully Amy Coney Barrett will come through.”

If that fails, and it will, Mark Levin, one of the nation’s most popular conservative radio hosts, is explicitly calling on Republican legislatures to reject the election results and seat Donald Trump as president anyway. After Twitter tagged the tweet as contested, Trump’s press secretary weighed in furiously on Levin’s behalf.

That this coup probably will not work — that it is being carried out farcically, erratically, ineffectively — does not mean it is not happening, or that it will not have consequences. Millions will believe Trump, will see the election as stolen. The Trump family’s Twitter feeds, and those of associated outlets and allies, are filled with allegations of fraud and lies about the process (reporter Isaac Saul has been doing yeoman’s work tracking these arguments, and his thread is worth reading). It’s the construction of a confusing, but immersive, alternative reality in which the election has been stolen from Trump and weak-kneed Republicans are letting the thieves escape.

Francisco Franco, Spain

This is, to borrow Hungarian sociologist Bálint Magyar’s framework, “an autocratic attempt.” That’s the stage in the transition toward autocracy in which the would-be autocrat is trying to sever his power from electoral check. If he’s successful, autocratic breakthrough follows, and then autocratic consolidation occurs. In this case, the would-be autocrat stands little chance of being successful. But he will not entirely fail, either. What Trump is trying to form is something akin to an autocracy-in-exile, an alternative America in which he is the rightful leader, and he — and the public he claims to represent — has been robbed of power by corrupt elites.

“Democracy works only when losers recognize that they have lost,” writes political scientist Henry Farrell. That will not happen here.

It won’t happen, because the GOP is going along with Trump’s attempt.

Here’s the grim kicker: The conditions that made Trump and this Republican Party possible are set to worsen. Republicans retained control of enough statehouses to drive the next redistricting effort, too, and their 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court will unleash their map-drawers more fully. The elections analyst G. Elliott Morris estimates that the gap between the popular vote margin and the tipping point state in the Electoral College will be 4 to 5 percentage points, and that the GOP’s control of the redistricting process could push it to 6 to 7 points next time.

To say that America’s institutions did not wholly fail in the Trump era is not the same thing as saying they succeeded. They did not, and in particular, the Republican Party did not. It has failed dangerously, spectacularly. It has made clear that would-be autocrats have a path to power in the United States, and if they can walk far enough down that path, an entire political party will support them, and protect them. And it has been insulated from public fury by a political system that values land over people, and that lets partisan actors set election rules and draw district lines — and despite losing the presidency, the GOP still holds the power to tilt that system further in its direction in the coming years.

What happens when the next would-be autocrat tries this strategy — and what if they are smoother, more strategic, more capable than this one?

How is Trump’s autocratic attempt going so far? He has fired the Secretary of Defense and replaced him with a partisan loyalist.

Adolf HItler, Germany

The Independent: ‘God help us’: Fired defence secretary Mark Esper worries about ‘yes men’ under Trump.

In an exclusive interview with Military Times that dropped shortly after his abrupt firing, Mr Esper took exception with critics who have called him a “yes man”, the source of the derogatory nickname “Yesper” used by the president.

“Name another Cabinet secretary that’s pushed back… Have you seen me on a stage saying, ‘Under the exceptional leadership of blah-blah-blah, we have blah-blah-blah-blah?” Mr Esper said.

“At the end of the day, it’s as I said — you’ve got to pick your fights… I could have a fight over anything, and I could make it a big fight, and I could live with that —why? Who’s going to come in behind me? It’s going to be a real ‘yes man.’ And then God help us.”

The interview was conducted on 4 November, before Mr Esper’s replacement would have been known.

Trump also fired the three officials who were in charge of our nuclear weapons. NPR:

The Trump administration abruptly dumped the leaders of three agencies that oversee the nuclear weapons stockpile, electricity and natural gas regulation, and overseas aid during the past two days, drawing a rebuke from a prominent Republican senator for one of the decisions.

The sudden departures included:

Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the first woman to oversee the agency in charge of the nuclear stockpile. She was required to resign on Friday.

Bonnie Glick, deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. She was replaced by acting Administrator John Barsa, who had run out of time for his more senior role under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.

Neil Chatterjee, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He was replaced as chairman, though he will remain at FERC, an independent agency, as a commissioner.

The firings were overshadowed by the prolonged drama of the presidential election.

Hideki Tojo, Japan

Trump is expected to fire CIA director Gina Haspel and FBI director Christopher Wray, according to Axios.

He has named another yes man as general counsel at the NSA. The Washington Post: White House official and former GOP political operative Michael Ellis named as NSA general counsel.

The Pentagon general counsel has named a White House official and former GOP political operative to be the top lawyer at the National Security Agency, the U.S. government’s largest and most technically advanced spy agency, U.S. officials said.

The selection of Michael Ellis, which has not yet been announced, was made Monday, said officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The appointment was made under pressure from the White House, said a person familiar with the matter….

Ellis, who was chief counsel to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), a staunch supporter of President Trump and then-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has been at the White House since early 2017, when he became a lawyer on the National Security Council and then this year was elevated to senior director for intelligence.

There’s much more at the link.

Bill Barr is also on the case. The New York Times: Barr Hands Prosecutors the Authority to Investigate Voter Fraud Claims.

Attorney General William P. Barr, wading into President Trump’s unfounded accusations of widespread election irregularities, told federal prosecutors on Monday that they were allowed to investigate “specific allegations” of voter fraud before the results of the presidential race are certified.

Augusto Pinochet, Chile

Mr. Barr’s authorization prompted the Justice Department official who oversees investigations of voter fraud, Richard Pilger, to step down from the post within hours, according to an email Mr. Pilger sent to colleagues that was obtained by The New York Times.

Mr. Barr said he had authorized “specific instances” of investigative steps in some cases. He made clear in a carefully worded memo that prosecutors had the authority to investigate, but he warned that “specious, speculative, fanciful or far-fetched claims should not be a basis for initiating federal inquiries.”

Mr. Barr’s directive ignored the Justice Department’s longstanding policies intended to keep law enforcement from affecting the outcome of an election. And it followed a move weeks before the election in which the department lifted a prohibition on voter fraud investigations before an election.

The head of the branch of the Justice Department that prosecutes election crimes resigned Monday hours after Attorney General William Barr issued a memo to federal prosecutors authorizing them to investigate “specific allegations” of voter fraud before the results of the presidential race are certified.

Richard Pilger, who was director of the Election Crimes Branch of the DOJ, sent a memo to colleagues that suggested his resignation was linked to Barr’s memo, which was issued as the president’s legal team mount baseless legal challenges to the election results, alleging widespread voter fraud cost him the race.

“Having familiarized myself with the new policy and its ramifications, and in accord with the best tradition of the John C. Keeney Award for Exceptional Integrity and Professionalism (my most cherished Departmental recognition), I must regretfully resign from my role as Director of the Election Crimes Branch,” Pilger’s letter said, according to a copy obtained by NBC News.

“I have enjoyed very much working with you for over a decade to aggressively and diligently enforce federal criminal election law, policy, and practice without partisan fear or favor. I thank you for your support in that effort.”

Kim Il-sung, North Korea

Finally, Trump is preventing the Biden transition team from beginning their work. The Washington Post: White House, escalating tensions, orders agencies to rebuff Biden transition team.

The Trump White House on Monday instructed senior government leaders to block cooperation with President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team, escalating a standoff that threatens to impede the transfer of power and prompting the Biden team to consider legal action.

Officials at agencies across the government who had prepared briefing books and carved out office space for the incoming Biden team to use as soon as this week were told instead that the transition would not be recognized until the Democrat’s election was confirmed by the General Services Administration, the low-profile agency that officially starts the transition.

While media outlets on Saturday projected Biden as the winner, President Trump has not conceded the election.

“We have been told: Ignore the media, wait for it to be official from the government,” said a senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly.

The GSA, the government’s real estate arm, remained for a third day the proxy in the battle. Administrator Emily Murphy, a Trump political appointee who has lasted a full term in an administration where turnover has been the norm, is refusing to sign paperwork that releases Biden’s $6.3 million share of nearly $10 million in transition resources and gives his team access to agency officials and information.

So that’s where things stand right now, as we battle an out-of-control pandemic with no help from the federal government and the Supreme Court hears arguments that may end the Affordable Care Act and strip 20,000,000 people of health insurance.

Hang in there Sky Dancers! Take care of yourselves in this dangerous time.

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: November 7, 2020 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | 23 Comments

Good Morning!!

UPDATE: CNN and MSNBC have now called the election for Biden.

BREAKING: JOE BIDEN WILL BE PRESIDENT-ELECT, NBC NEWS PROJECTS. https://t.co/gGS2tyKRy9 pic.twitter.com/s17hCZDvBR
— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 7, 2020

I don’t have the energy to rewrite this post….it’s still ridiculous that it took this long.

Will the networks call the election before January 20, 2021? If we have learned one thing during this endless week, it’s that we don’t need the media to call our elections. Anyone with half a brain can see that Biden is the winner, but NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and FNN are terrified to say it for fear of Trump tantrums.

I genuinely can't believe that I slept overnight, woke up, and turned on the TV only to find Kornacki STILL patiently explaining that it's no longer possible for Trump to win Pennsylvania or the election

Is this hell? Did we all die and go to hell? pic.twitter.com/9OHITGINOj
— brynne ridley (@BrynneRidley) November 7, 2020

Ball-less wonders at @CNN @MSNBC @nytimes et al who are scared of hurting Trump's feelings: He's going to be on the golf course for 4 hours, it's safe to call the election. https://t.co/IErMe8Z9jB
— scary lawyerguy (@scarylawyerguy) November 7, 2020

It’s hilarious that anchors on CNN and MSNBC have been forced to defend their networks’ refusal to bring an end to the madness.

But there still are 29,000 votes in Philadelphia left and Trump might win 100% so we can’t make call. https://t.co/xMhm8JLfV8
— Armando (@ArmandoNDK) November 7, 2020

https://twitter.com/AlisynCamerota/status/1325073742486237184?s=20

There is certainly no excuse for not calling Nevada, but I think the network bosses are afraid if they allow that, it will mean that Biden will pass 270 in the Fox News and AP calculations. They don’t want to hurt Trump’s delicate feelings until they absolutely have to. Maybe they think he’ll gradually catch on that he’s lost and they won’t have to break the news to him.

Anyway, it’s clear that Biden has won and the media should be barred from making “calls” in future elections. We don’t need them to do the math for us.

Some stories to check out today while we continue the interminable wait for the votes to be counted.

Bess Levin at Vanity Fair: It Sure Sounds Like Trump May Barricade Himself in the Oval Office and Refuse to Come Out if Biden Wins.

By now you’ve likely heard that after pulling ahead in Georgia and, most crucially, Pennsylvania, Joe Biden will very likely be the next president of the United States. As you’ve probably also heard, Donald Trump is taking it as well as everyone had expected, ranting and raving about all kinds of made-up fraud, demanding counts be stopped in one state and continued in others, and filing numerous lawsuits that stand little chance of holding up in court because they have no merit (and, in some cases, have led judges to believe the lawyers attached to them have recently suffered traumatic brain injuries). At this point, a quasi reasonable person might say to himself, Okay, I’m going to cut my losses, salvage my last atom of dignity, and admit defeat. But obviously Donald Trump is not reasonable and he has no dignity. So instead he’s decided he’ll keep fighting this thing well beyond the point that it’s hugely embarrassing to do so, and even after that fails, refuse to acknowledge that he lost and that Joe Biden is going to be president.

Yes, like George Costanza deciding to just go back to the office on Monday as if he didn’t quit the Friday before, Trump apparently thinks he can just go on being president even if the American people have fired him. According to CNN, Trump reportedly has not prepared a concession speech and “in conversations with allies in recent days has said he has no intention of conceding the election.” The decision to go full delusional has obviously been strengthened by staffers, such as Mark Meadows, who “have not attempted to come to terms with the president about the reality of what is happening” and have instead fed into his claims of fraud; Vice President Mike Pence, who’s been soliciting money for a legal defense fund; and his adult children, who’ve been spouting absurd conspiracy theories on Twitter as they watch the ultimate opportunity for nepotism slip away. While Trump has apparently admitted to some people that he knows the electoral math has no chance of working out in his favor, he has “maintained that a prolonged court battle and corrosive rhetoric about election fraud would sow enough doubt to allow him to refuse to accept the results.”

And while the majority of the president’s inner circle is more than happy to go along with this sad alternative reality, a few members have reportedly grown worried that, eventually, someone will have to sit Trump down and explain that little Donny’s not going to be president anymore—and at this point, it seems unlikely anyone will be able to get through to him short of slapping him across the face and screaming, “YOU LOST! IT’S OVER!” Yes, this is an actual thing allies of the president of the United States are actually grappling with.

Click the link to read the rest.

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Says He Will Keep Fighting as Aides Doubt Path Forward.

President Trump said Friday he would continue to fight election results that showed him on the cusp of losing to former Vice President Joe Biden. Privately, people familiar with the conversations say, advisers are urging him to prepare for that eventuality.

Mr. Trump’s campaign on Friday named David Bossie, one of the president’s closest political confidants, to head up its legal team. The addition of Mr. Bossie, who is not a lawyer, comes three days after polls closed and after some lawsuits challenging results had been dismissed while others remained active.

Some advisers have privately said they see little path forward, politically or legally, that would prevent Mr. Trump from becoming the first president to lose reelection since 1992.

Among the president’s advisers, finger-pointing over the campaign’s legal strategy has intensified in recent days, White House and campaign aides said. Aides have expressed acute frustration over what many see as a slapdash legal effort, complaining that—even though Mr. Trump spent months telegraphing his intent to fight the election outcome in the courts—there wasn’t enough planning ahead of Election Day and has been little follow-through on decisions made this week. For days after the election, advisers said they didn’t know who was in charge of the strategy.

One more tidbit:

The president’s mood, an adviser said, is “black.” He has spent the last few days seething over the vote count as it increasingly moves in Mr. Biden’s favor. He spent much of the day Thursday on the phone with advisers urging them to use every tool available to fight what is expected to be an election victory for Mr. Biden. A short speech Thursday evening in the White House briefing room offered a window into the president’s frustration, as he accused Democrats, pollsters and the news media of stealing the election from him.

Advisers expect the president to let his campaign’s legal efforts play out before conceding the race. One adviser, asked if he expected the president to concede the race, replied via text message: “Lol.”

Read the rest at the WSJ. There’s no paywall on this one.

There’s another coronavirus outbreak at the White House. Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has tested positive, and he tried to keep it a secret. He was everywhere at Trump’s illegal election night party in the people’s house so others are now testing positive. Biden will need to get that place fumigated before he moves in.

2118d069ca73ea62ec719709476ae0f8 Bloomberg: Trump’s Aides Frustrated After Meadows’s Silence on Infection.

Some of Donald Trump’s White House and campaign aides are frustrated that the president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, didn’t issue a statement after he tested positive for coronavirus this week, instead informing only a close circle of advisers.

His infection was not widely known across Trump’s staff until late Friday, after Bloomberg News reported it. He tested positive on Wednesday, according to a senior administration official.

A small circle of people were aware earlier in the week that Meadows had become infected but were told to keep it quiet, several people said….

The White House Medical Unit conducted contact tracing during the latest outbreak, according to people familiar with the matter. Throughout the pandemic, the unit’s guidance for contract tracing has been to reach out to people in close proximity with the infected person for 15 minutes or more, within 48 hours of the diagnosis.

That excluded many aides who had crossed paths with Meadows at large events around Election Day, including a visit to campaign headquarters on Tuesday and a party at the White House that night….

At least four other White House officials have been infected, including Cassidy Hutchinson, one of Meadows’s closest aides, and Charlton Boyd, an aide to senior Trump adviser Jared Kushner, according to several people.

A senior Trump campaign aide, Nick Trainer, is also infected, according to people familiar with the matter.

Politico Playbook reports that Matt Gaetz has also tested positive.

ANOTHER HIGH-PROFILE MEMBER OF THE PRESIDENT’S circle tested positive: GOP Rep. MATT GAETZ of Florida told multiple people on Capitol Hill and in the White House that he too had contracted the virus. GAETZ and his staff did not reply to a request for comment.

I wonder if someone will tell Trump he lost while he’s on the golf course? I hope he has a public tantrum and throws his clubs all over the place.

Have a nice weekend Sky Dancers!

Thursday Reads

Posted: November 5, 2020 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2020 presidential election results, American divided, counting votes, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Pennsylvania, SCOTUS, Senator Bob Casey | 56 Comments

Birch Grove, Isaac Levitan, 1885-89

Good Morning!!

My brain is mush this morning. I stayed up all night on Tuesday, fell asleep very early yesterday, and woke up this morning at 3:00. I’m too old for this. I wonder when we’ll know something definitive about the election results. At least we know that Biden is the winner; we just don’t know which state will put him over the top.

The best outcome would be for Pennsylvania to be called for Biden. Here’s Senator Bob Casey explaining where vote counting stands in his state as of this morning:

PENNSYLVANIA UPDATE 20: Mapping out the morning as we enter day 3 of making sure every vote is counted. Watch for some information on where we're at and why I'm confident Joe Biden is going to sweep Pennsylvania today. pic.twitter.com/ma239xd6M4

— Bob Casey Jr. (@Bob_Casey) November 5, 2020

John Wagner has live election updates on the state of the race at The Washington Post: Biden closes in on electoral college victory; race narrows in Arizona, Georgia.

The latest …

Arizona: Biden’s lead narrowed to about 68,000 votes early Thursday as Maricopa County, the state’s largest jurisdiction, released the tallies of more ballots it had counted. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said her state has just under 450,000 ballots left to count.
Georgia: Fulton County, home to Atlanta, continued counting ballots overnight. Trump’s lead had narrowed to about 18,500 votes as of early Thursday. Fulton County elections chief Rick Barron said officials will release more vote totals around 11 a.m.
Nevada: Updated vote totals will be released around noon Eastern time Thursday, officials said.
North Carolina: As of late Wednesday, officials were still counting provisional and absentee ballots. Trump was ahead, but officials said it is likely that the winner will not be known for days.
Pennsylvania: Trump maintained a lead of about 164,000 votes, but that was expected to shrink as more ballots were counted in heavily Democratic areas.

Trump is supposedly filing lawsuits to stop vote counting in states that look bad for him, but it seems unlikely his efforts will come to anything.

Claude Monet – (1840 – 1926) Ulivi nel giardino Moreno 1884

The New York Times: With His Path to Re-election Narrowing, Trump Turns to the Courts.

With his political path narrowing, President Trump turned to the courts and procedural maneuvers on Wednesday in a last-ditch effort to stave off defeat in the handful of states that will decide the outcome of the bitterly fought election.

The president’s campaign intervened at the Supreme Court in a case challenging Pennsylvania’s plan to count ballots received for up to three days after Election Day. The campaign said it would also file suit in Michigan to halt the counting there while it pursues its demands for better access for the observers it sent to monitor elections boards for signs of malfeasance in tallying ballots, modeled on a similar suit it was pursuing in Nevada.

On Wednesday evening, Mr. Trump’s team added Georgia to its list of legal targets, seeking a court order enforcing strict deadlines in Chatham County in the wake of allegations by a Republican poll observer that a small number of ineligible ballots might be counted in one location.

In Wisconsin, which along with Michigan was called on Wednesday for his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., the president’s campaign announced it would request a recount.

I think the best outcome we can hope for today is that Pennsylvania will get enough votes counted for the state to be called for Biden. That would put him over 270, and make Trump’s claims in other states irrelevant. Here’s Senator Bob Casey explaining where the Pennsylvania vote counting stands this morning.

The moves signaled Mr. Trump’s determination to make good on his longstanding threats to carry out an aggressive post-Election Day campaign to upend any result not in his favor and pursue his baseless allegations that the outcome was rigged.

But it was not clear how much effect any of his efforts would have. In Georgia, the suit is about 53 ballots, and another case in Pennsylvania is about fewer than 100.

The Road Under the Trees, Maurice de Vlaminck

The Biden camp is ready to fight back, according to Politico: Biden campaign gears up for legal warfare as he nears 270.

In a Zoom call with donors Wednesday, the aides told the group that Joe Biden was on pace to reach 270 electoral votes in short order, beaming over victories in the Midwestern states that Donald Trump flipped four years ago….

The campaign had good reason to project confidence: On Wednesday evening, Biden was on the cusp of clinching 270 electoral votes and the presidency after Michigan and Wisconsin were called in his favor.

At the same time, President Donald Trump was making specious claims of victory, cranking up unfounded grievances about stolen votes and filing lawsuits to challenge vote counts. Biden advisers moved to reassure anxious supporters as Trump declared himself the winner in states such as Pennsylvania, where hundreds of thousands of votes had yet to be tallied.

Biden’s team activated teams of attorneys in Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan in preparation for court battles, and blasted out requests for donations to combat myriad legal challenges.

Canale a Bruges by Alfred Joseph Auguste Van Neste (1874-1969) The problem for Trump is that he would have to provide actual evidence of the “fraud” he is claiming. ProPublica: If Trump Tries to Sue His Way to Election Victory, Here’s What Happens.

A hearing on Wednesday in an election case captured in miniature the challenge for the Trump campaign as it gears up for what could become an all-out legal assault on presidential election results in key swing states: It’s easy enough to file a lawsuit claiming improprieties — in this case, that Pennsylvania had violated the law by allowing voters whose mail-in ballots were defective to correct them — but a lot harder to provide evidence of wrongdoing or a convincing legal argument. “I don’t understand how the integrity of the election was affected,” said U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage, something he repeated several times during the hearing. (However the judge rules, the case is unlikely to have a significant effect; only 93 ballots are at issue, a county election official said.)

“A lawsuit without provable facts showing a statutory or constitutional violation is just a tweet with a filing fee,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

Levitt said judges by and large have ignored the noise of the race and the bluster of President Donald Trump’s Twitter feed. “They’ve actually demanded facts and haven’t been ruling on all-caps claims of fraud or suppression,” Levitt said. “They haven’t confused public relations with the predicate for litigation, and I would expect that to continue.”

If Levitt is right, that may augur poorly for the legal challenges to the presidential election. Either way, the number of cases is starting to rapidly increase. But lawsuits will do little good unless, as in the 2000 presidential election, the race winds up being so close that it comes down to a very thin margin of votes in one or more must-win states.

Read the rest at ProPublica.

Lane at alchamps, Arles, Paul Gaugin, 1888

Trump seems to think that he can just call on “his” Supreme Court justices to overturn the results of the election. But he can’t actually do that. Zoe Tillman at Buzzfeed News: Supreme Court To Fight Election Results. Here’s What Would Need To Happen To End Up There.

In the early hours of Wednesday, with many states still going through the lawful process of tallying votes, President Donald Trump declared: “We will be going to the Supreme Court.”

That’s not how the courts work, though. With rare exceptions that don’t apply to the election, no one can simply bring a case to the US Supreme Court. Trump’s rhetoric created an appearance of legal uncertainty around the election results that doesn’t exist yet — by Wednesday evening, there were a handful of lawsuits pending, but none involved the kind of consequential fights over final vote tallies that would decide the outcome of the race.

That could change, of course. Trump’s campaign said they’ll seek a recount in Wisconsin after former vice president Joe Biden was declared the winner, and could try to go to court to challenge the results if he still lost after that. Decision Desk HQ called Wisconsin for Biden outright on Wednesday.

There’s already a case pending before the Supreme Court about whether Pennsylvania can count absentee ballots that arrive between Nov. 4 and Nov. 6, but that would only be a vehicle for deciding the election if the race came down to Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes — and if those as-yet-unknown number of post–Election Day ballots would change the outcome.

Regardless of whether the Trump campaign’s lawsuits succeed in stopping any ballots from being counted, they’ve underscored Trump and his campaign’s efforts to falsely question the lawfulness of ballot counting that extends beyond Election Day — something that happens in every election.

Election Day Reads

Posted: November 3, 2020 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | 24 Comments

Good Morning!!

Election Day has finally arrived! At midnight last night Joe Biden won all 5 votes in Dixville Notch, NH. Is it a good omen? I hope so.

Biden jokes in Scranton, PA this morning: "We’re the first person I'm told to win [Dixville Notch, NH] unanimously, all 5 votes. So based on Trump’s notion, I’m going to declare victory right now. You know what I mean? They voted so it’s over."
— Johnny Verhovek (@JTHVerhovek) November 3, 2020

Biden spent the past week talking about how we can restore the soul of America and get the pandemic under control. Trump spent his time at superspreader rallies complaining about how mean everyone is to him, sounding like what he is–a crazy old man completely out of touch with reality.

This morning on Fox and Friends, he attacked Fox News for putting clips of Obama and Biden on the air and he told the hosts that the U.S. is harder for him to deal with than Russia or North Korea.

Trump bizarrely claims that "the US" is harder to deal with than Russia or North Korea, as though America is a foreign country pic.twitter.com/XNtQagudrv
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 3, 2020

The New York Times: As Election Day Arrives, Trump Shifts Between Combativeness and Grievance.

President Trump arrives at Election Day on Tuesday toggling between confidence and exasperation, bravado and grievance, and marinating in frustration that he is trailing Joseph R. Biden Jr., whom he considers an unworthy opponent.

“Man, it’s going to be embarrassing if I lose to this guy,” Mr. Trump has told advisers, a lament he has aired publicly as well. But in the off-camera version, Mr. Trump frequently exclaims, “This guy!” in reference to Mr. Biden, with a salty adjective separating the words.

Trailing in most polls, Mr. Trump has careened through a marathon series of rallies in the last week, trying to tear down Mr. Biden and energize his supporters, but also fixated on crowd size and targeting perceived enemies like the news media and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s infectious disease expert whom he suggested on Sunday he might try to dismiss after the election.

At every turn, the president has railed that the voting system is rigged against him and has threatened to sue when the election is over, in an obvious bid to undermine an electoral process strained by the coronavirus pandemic. It is not clear, however, precisely what legal instruments Mr. Trump believes he has at his disposal.

He’s got nothing except his hopes that he can steal the election by suppressing votes or get his cronies on the Supreme Court to name him to winner.

His mad dash to the finish is a distillation of his four tumultuous years in office, a mix of resentment, combativeness and a penchant for viewing events through a prism all his own — and perhaps the hope that everything will work out for him in the end, the way it did four years ago when he surprised himself, his advisers and the world by winning the White House.

But by enclosing himself in the thin bubble of his own worldview, Mr. Trump may have further severed himself from the political realities of a country in crisis. And that, in turn, has helped enable Mr. Trump to wage a campaign offering no central message, no clear agenda for a second term and no answer to the woes of the pandemic.

Read more insider stuff at the link.

At The Washington Post, Alexandra Petrii mocks Trump’s threat to prematurely declare himself the winner if he’s ahead tonight: I’d like to announce right now that I have won the 2024 Olympics.

Hello, everyone! As long as we are sharing our plans to announce that we’ve won things we haven’t won, I would like to announce now that I have won the entire 2024 Olympics. I was surprised, too, given that I do not do any sports, and the Olympics have not concluded — or even started — yet, but, well, there it is. You had better cover my announcement, because I think it is big news for one person to win the entire Olympics of 2024, the Summer Olympics, the better of the two Olympics!

It’s especially impressive when you consider that I am not an athlete! I used to run, but only when late for a train, and I don’t do that anymore. And yet it did not matter: I won the 2024 Olympics! Incredible! I won the pole vault and I won the gymnastics (floor and balance beam) and I also won all the events that Katie Ledecky usually wins, which should be impossible, but I guess it was not, because I must have believed in myself. A pretty inspiring story, I think, and big news. I hope America will hasten to get behind me and acknowledge my victory with various parades and jet flyovers and things of that nature.

Please stop saying I haven’t won the 2024 Olympics and we won’t know who won the 2024 Olympics until 2024, at the very earliest. This partisan sniping tears America apart! We all know that the realest, most important part of the Olympics has already happened: the part where it was announced and I decided I would like to have won it.

All the indications are pretty clear, now, before the races have concluded or even begun, that I am the clear winner in all the Olympic events. My shot-put performance was especially impressive! This overwhelming show of strength by me speaks for itself. Please don’t be distracted by the calls of the so-called athletes to “wait for the Olympics to begin, transpire and conclude before we declare a winner.” That would be divisive, the last thing we need right now, when we should all be rallying around me, the clear winner of events which, were they to have been won by someone else, would be illegitimate and thievish.

Late last night, Trump posted an embarrassing video of himself “dancing” at his superspreader events. Here’s the response from MeidasTouch:

Trump thinks his dancing to YMCA makes a fun campaign ad. He is dancing on the graves of those lost due to his malicious incompetence. Vote him out! pic.twitter.com/iFs8C7Fqr7
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) November 3, 2020

According to Ryan Lizza and Daniel Lippman at Politico, Republicans are secretly disgusted by Trump’s threats to interfere with voting: Republicans publicly silent, privately disgusted by Trump’s election threats.

At rallies across the Midwest and Sun Belt swing states, President Donald Trump has been openly discussing murky schemes to prevent legitimate ballots from being counted, escalating threats to disenfranchise millions of American as the weeks-long voting season ends tonight and his pathway to reelection becomes increasingly narrow.

“The Election should end on Nov. 3, not weeks later!” the president said on Friday. He repeated the claim at an event in Dubuque, Iowa on Sunday, adding falsely, “That’s the way it’s been, and that’s the way it should be.”

Democrats have been clear in their condemnations of the president’s comments, which they consider the most worrisome of Trump’s four years in office, which were often marked by anti-democratic rhetoric….

But most Republicans, from critics to allies of Trump, have remained publicly silent. It’s not new for Trump’s party brethren to duck and cover when he says something troubling. But after five years of perfecting the art of explaining how they “didn’t see the tweet” — the much parodied talking point to which Republicans on Capitol Hill often resort — it is shocking but not surprising that they aren’t speaking up now, even when the integrity of America’s electoral system is under attack by their party’s leader….

Many Republicans insist they are disgusted by Trump’s threats, they just aren’t willing to say so publicly. Dozens of quietly anti-Trump members on Capitol Hill, or who left the Trump administration, usually in disgust, are willing to torch the president — but only under the cloak of anonymity.

“It’s despicable and un-American but not surprising,” said one senior Senate GOP aide. “They have never had any respect for the institutions of democracy that don’t benefit them. The beauty of federalism is that we leave it to the states to make their own rules and the idea that a president would overturn a state official’s decision to benefit them in an election is just kind of the antithesis of what Republicans used to believe in.”

It’s way too late for Republicans to redeem themselves now. They should all be voted out.

According to Axios, Biden has a plan to “assert control” if the networks declare him the mathematical winner:

If news organizations declare Joe Biden the mathematical president-elect, he plans to address the nation as its new leader, even if President Trump continues to fight in court, advisers tell Axios.

Why it matters: Biden advisers learned the lesson of 2000, when Al Gore hung back while George W. Bush declared victory in that contested election, putting the Democrat on the defensive while Bush acted like the winner.

So if Biden is declared the winner, he’ll begin forming his government and looking presidential — and won’t yield to doubts Trump might try to sow.

Biden’s schedule for Tuesday includes a clue to this posture: He “will address the nation on Election Night in Wilmington, Delaware.”

Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters Monday that even if all the votes aren’t counted tonight, the campaign should have “a very good sense of where we’re headed”:

“We’re not really concerned about what Donald Trump says. … We’re going to use our data, our understanding of where this is headed, and make sure that the vice president is addressing the American people.”

To show momentum, Biden may begin transition announcements quickly, starting with senior staff appointments.

That way, core aides won’t have to worry about their own jobs, but will immediately be able to get to work.

At The New York Times, Peter Wehner writes that even if we can rid ourselves of Trump, we’ll be dealing with the people who bought into his insane conspiracy theories for a long time to come: Trump Lives in a Hall of Mirrors and He’s Got Plenty of Company.

If Donald Trump loses his re-election bid, there will be a lot of ruin to sort through. But his most damaging and enduring legacy may well turn out to be the promiscuous use of conspiracy theories that have defined both the man and his presidency.

The president’s cruelest policies, like intentionally separating children from their parents at the border, can at least be ended, although their devastating effects will reverberate for decades. It’s less clear what the half-life is for his conspiracy theorizing, which fundamentally distorts the way people think about politics, our country and reality itself.

There have been so many conspiracy theories it’s easy to forget some of them, and this list is hardly exhaustive, but it includes Mr. Trump claiming that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States and that Bill and Hillary Clinton were behind the death of their former aide Vince Foster; suggesting that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of President John Kennedy and that MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough was involved in the death of a staff member nearly 20 years ago; retweeting claims that SEAL Team 6 didn’t kill Osama bin Laden in 2011; insisting that Ukraine was hiding Hillary Clinton’s missing emails and that Mr. Obama wiretapped Mr. Trump’s phones; and promoting QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory that believes, as Kevin Roose put it in The Times, that “the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who are plotting against Mr. Trump while operating a global child sex-trafficking ring.”

There was a time when popularizing such crazed machinations would have caused one to be cast to the outer fringes of American politics; in the case of Mr. Trump, it helped elect him and has created a cultlike devotion among tens of millions of his supporters. And because of Mr. Trump, conspiracy theorizing is now a central feature of the Republican Party and American politics.

Read the rest at the NYT.

One more before I wrap this up from Jordan Weissmann at Slate: Do Not Lose Sight of the Fact That Every Aspect of This Is Absolutely Insane.

Maybe the polls are right, and Joe Biden is on course for a dominant 7 or 8 point win over Donald Trump. He could pick up a couple of decisive swing states that are supposed to finish counting votes on Tuesday night—North Carolina and Arizona, for instance—and short-circuit the president’s plan to first claim victory, then sue his way to a second term. There’s a chance that Democrats will eke out a Senate majority, too, so that they can actually govern come January, and deal properly with the deadly plague that’s reshaped our lives and crippled the economy. Perhaps there won’t be any violence at voting places, and people will be able to cast their ballots without getting hurt. Knock on wood.

But even if this election does bring an orderly end to the Trump era, do not for a second forget that absolutely everything about it, and the year that has led us to this point, has been utterly, incalculably insane, a 50-car pileup of reminders that we are a broken society with a broken political system that seems ever-more untenable, whether or not we are doomed to spend four more years with our addled president.

It is insane, for starters, that he even has a shot of pulling this race out. Nobody, least of all Trump, believes that he will win the popular vote. It is not even a discussion at this point. But we’re all trapped in a mad house erected upon the Electoral College, an anti-majoritarian barbarism that, according to conventional wisdom, now requires Democrats to win by at least 3 percent to have a shot at the White House and drives otherwise sensible Americans to spend sleepless nights and precious emotional energy freaking out over early voting patterns in Miami-Dade.

Other countries—the ones we like to think of as our peers, even if they see us more like a tragic, strung-out uncle these days—don’t do this to themselves. In normal, advanced presidential democracies, the candidate who gets the most votes actually wins. We’re the only one where the person who comes in second can still somehow end up in charge. There is no good argument for it, in this year of our collective misery 2020. It is nuts.

It is also pure lunacy that after four years of family separations, tax cuts for the rich, transparent corruption, and deadly ineptitude, more than 4 in 10 Americans are apparently ready for another round of Trump. We are literally living through one of the worst-case scenarios experts anticipated when he was first elected: A pandemic that has killed 231,000 Americans, thanks in no small part to the White House’s botched response, and is set to ravage the country for months more, since Republican leaders seem to have mostly decided to let COVID rip and hope for the best. This a man who caught a deadly pathogen because he wanted to look tough and felt silly wearing a mask, turned a White House Rose Garden party into a superspreader event, and ended up dragging the country through a week of steroid-fueled psychodrama as doctors blasted him with experimental treatments to save his life, then somehow concluded that, hey, the disease wasn’t so bad after all. Since then, he’s moved on to talking openly about firing Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most trusted disease expert in America, after the election as payback for criticizing the administration’s response.

So the day of decision is finally here. I’m cautiously optimistic, but I’m not making any assumptions–not after what happened in 2016. If all goes well, we should have some idea who the winner late tonight. If Trump really does try to declare a premature victory or contest the results, I think the best response would be to mock him. He has been looking weak and whiny at his ridiculous rallies. He is clearly exhausted; maybe he’ll decide to take his ball and go home to one of his golf resorts and wallow in self-pity. I can only hope that’s how this ends.

How are you all doing? Please check in with us today. As Dakinikat wrote yesterday, we’ve been doing this together for a very long time now; we can help each other get through what’s coming–whatever it is. We’ll have a live blog up later tonight when the returns start coming in. Take care, I love you all!

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a place to discuss real issues

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UPDATE: CNN and MSNBC have now called the election for Biden.

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