With the unfolding contested election, the only clear conclusion is the uniform polls declaring Joe Biden with commanding leads nationally and in states like Wisconsin were laughingly false. It appears that pollsters at newspapers like the Washington Post (which gave Biden a 17 point lead in Wisconsin on Election Day) have succumbed to the same pressures of echo chamber journalism as their journalistic counterparts. Polls on NBC, CNN, and the major newspapers all gave the same reassuring message that only a hardcore group of knuckle-dragging racists were left supporting Donald Trump. It has been a conversation with themselves in an echo chamber of unrelenting negative coverage. That narrative crashed and burned last night. As I noted today, if Trump is reelected, he will have the mainstream media to thank.
This is the result of a movement to set aside objectivity in journalism in favor of advocacy. The most surprised are often those who ignored or avoided the real evidence on the ground of a close election.
The embarrassing protection of Joe Biden from allegations of sexual misconduct, the Hunter Biden scandal, or even serious campaign questions fooled no one. Instead, it further alienated voters as the establishment maintained a uniform narrative against Trump on every and any issue. Moreover, it is hardly surprising that Trump supporters were undercounted by media when it prefaced such requests for self-identification with coverage labeling any Trump supporters as “drug addicts,” Nazis, racists, liars, or brainwashed zombies. How open and forthcoming does NBC expect voters to be in a poll when its analysts are referring to Trump supporters as existing on “lizard brains”?
The media bias ultimately insulated Trump from backlash as the public simply grew suspicious of all media reports. The media has rendered itself as unbelievable as the subject of its current ire. While denouncing Trump as a pathological liar, the media has been pathologically biased. Polls consistently show the media racing Trump to the bottom on trustworthiness. Most of the media now feeds a steady diet of unrelentingly negative stories to a shrinking audience of true believers. Some polls show that the only group deemed less trustworthy than Trump is the media. The Knight Foundation has found that three-fourths of the public believe the media is too biased; some 54 percent believe reporters regularly misrepresent facts, and 28 percent believe reporters make things up entirely.
What I previously wrote deserves repeating:
Thus, polls indicate that the unending attacks on Trump and his supporters in the media are not conditioning but, instead, are repelling voters. They are fulfilling his narrative that voters cannot trust the media. Many voters may still view both Trump and Biden as over-inflated clowns, but they resent being continually conditioned to hit one clown and hug the other. Indeed, if Trump is reelected, he may have the media to thank.
https://youtu.be/fS6xOuhsiJw
The Democrats and their allies in the MSM telegraphed their vote fraud plan when Barrett was confirmed to the SCOTUS by asking that she recuse herself if the election was contested.
They knew that it would be contested because their only chance at avoiding defeat was to engage in widespread voter fraud. So, now they will use their protestations about Barrett recusing herself to try to create plausible deniability.
Obviously this is all headed to the Supreme Court, and that is when they will cue the rioting.
Liar, they asked about it because TRUMP said in September that he expected there to be a SC case involving mail-in voting and HE wanted a 9th Justice on the court to decide the case.
https://www.rollcall.com/2020/09/23/trump-wants-new-justice-to-be-able-to-decide-2020-election/
The Constitution requires vacancies be filled. Not hard to figure out mail voting would be a nightmare. Shame on the states that didn’t pass legislation to be able to start counting before the night of Nov. 3rd.
https://www.politico.com/news/agenda/2020/09/04/election-officials-face-a-ballot-counting-time-crunch-but-congress-can-fix-it-408528
Absloutely not!!
Early counting and late counting are BOTH vectors to incentivize fraud.
This is not about legislation – it is about preventing corruption.
The solution is not to start early or extend deadlines.
It is to MEET them.
Adults do the job asked of them in the time they are given.
Every congressional district in the US has the same number of voters.
They also have the same resources to devote to elections.
They should all be able to count their votes in the same amount of time.
There should not be different rules for 1% of the country that can not manage.
One of the reasons that vote counting needs to be done as quickly as possible is to reduce the opportunity for fraud.
We do not want any precinct to have a clue how the election is going elsewhere while the counting is going on.
So long as the counting is occuring everywhere simultaneously no precinct has the knowledge needed to skew its totals.
What is wrong right now is that we all know that whether it is in states Trump is leading in or ones he is behind in that actors possibly on both sides are striving to find every possible vote to either catch up or get ahead.
And knowing how many are needed is a tremendous advantage if you do not wish to get caught.
Are democrats “cheating” right now ? Without any doubt. Are some republicans ? Certainly.
But republicans have a structural disadvantage with regard to voter fraud.
They are far more distributed than democrats. Democrats can get a 100,000 extra votes from one small part of one city.
Republicans would need every election official in a state to be in on it to pick up 100K votes.
It is not that republicans are more honest, it is that they have less opportunity and are more likely to get caught.
Regardless we are entitled to trustworthy elections.
We are NOT entitled to elections designed to have our candidate win.
From the moment that Democratic governors in swing states decided to unilaterally write new law authorizing mail-in voting despite no legal authority to do so the likelyhood of a supreme court case was extremely high.
Are you so deep in the tank that you are obliviois to the fact that DEMOCRATS tossed 200K+ mail in votes in the primary in just a few states.
Even without Fraud Mail-in voting is the most unreliable form of voting there is.
It is an abysmally bad idea.
Those few states that legitimately had it before authoritarian governors imposed it without authority, had radically different schemes that are being used in other states at the moment.
It is probably not possible to do mail in voting without the opportunity for significant fraud. But it still could be done far better than it is.
First Ballots have to be sent to registered voters directly – without involving third parties.
And they have to be sent in a way that no hanky panky can occur,
Next, preferably mail in ballots would be dropped off by the voter – and their ID checked when they are dropped off.
But if votes must be mailed then they must be RECEIVED by end of the day election day. Post marks are far to easy to fake.
Next Mail in ballots must be delivered properly. They must be in a signed envelope and the signature must be verfied against voting records. If the envelope is not signed and the ballot is not nested properly the vote is spoiled and must be rejected.
All handling of mail-in (really all ballots) between the voter filling them out and their being counted must be subject to public observation.
One of the problems with mail in ballots is that from the moment the ballot is sealed until it is counted there is no trustworthy chain of custody.
When I voted in person – I was given a blank ballot. I filled it out. I put it in the scanner which counted my vote.
There was absolutely no third party handling of my vote from the moment I received the blank ballot until it was counted.
No one could induce me.
Mail-in ballots are subject to every possible form of voter fraud. But TWO huge ones come to the fore.
The first is candidates can buy votes. You can not do that with in person secret ballots.
While it is trivial with mailin ballots. All you have to do is show your ballot to the person buying your vote and then seal it and mail it.
But the 2nd is that the mail in ballot system is highly subject to the insertion and removal of ballots.
We already know that the postmen have thrown away mail in ballots.
It is also trivial for anyone with access to ballots after they have been received to either insert or remove ballots.
At some parts of the process – you would need to insert the ballots of known registered voters.
But once the outer envelopes are separated from the ballot – any filled out blank ballot can be inserted into the stream.
Remember it is illegal to keep any records of how anyone voted. There are numerous reasons for that – one of which is that it means votes can be bought. But the fact that ballots must be secret means there is no means to tell a valid ballot from an inserted fraud.
And we are dealing an election where nearly $14B has been spent. almost $10B of that by democrats.
Do you think the people contributing billions to elections are not highly incentivized to assure that they win ?
Do you think that the trillions of dollars in government contracts and jobs that hinge on elections are not an incentive for fraud outside of the political parties ?
I constantly listen to democrats ready to convict people of criminal conduct – because they MIGHT benefit from it – not because they did it, but only because they would benefit if they did.
So why the hypocracy over voting ?
It is BTW not at all difficult to structure elections such that fraud is nearly impossible, and more importantly that there is a near 100% chance of getting caught.
As we sit almost 3 days after the election I would note that it is also simple to structure elections so that they will ALWAYS be over on election day.
Approx 140M votes were cast in 2016 – virtually all of those were cast on and counted on election day.
If 90% of the country can manage to count the vote on election day – why can’t the rest ?
If you want all votes counted on election day accomplishing that is trivial.
Declare that any vote not counted on election day is spoiled.
Voters will then demand that their precincts do what it takes to count votes.
Running elections is funded based on the registered voters in a district, there is no advantage that wealthy districts have over poor ones.
One of the oddest things on election day is that inner city democratic districts where population is dense and your polling place is likely in walking distance, have long lines, while rural districts where voters must travel significant distances to get to the polls tend not to have lines.
Yet both districts serve the same number of voters – and are funded equally.
The Trump campaign is still predicting sweeping all outstanding states AND flipping Arizona and getting Wisconsin into recount territory.
They sound way too optomistic to me.
But on Monday I would not have beleived Trump had a chance.
Thus far Trump has been more accurate than pollsters.
So maybe he is correct.
Regardless it is near certain that there are more than enough fraudulent votes in the key states to flip things. Hopefully we do not have to come to that.
In days of old we had newspapers, television and radio “news media”. Now we also have all the internet things too. In days of old there were two categories in the newspapers: news and “opinion”. Now the newspaper or television network has merged all into opinion.
We can believe Fix or CNN but “never the Twain shall meet.”
In the book Huckleberry Finn two humans were going south on the Mississippi River and when it merged with the Ohio River, N Jim wanted to go left and north and achieve freedom.
Today the media has gone to hell in a hand basket.
Who can you trust ?
Those who have been most often actually correct in the past.
What is terifying right now is that Alex Jones has a better Track record than all of CNN
News report: With Hispanics Leaning Republican, Dems Push for Southern Border Wall
You’re exactly right Mr. Turley. I started out as a lukewarm Trump voter at best. The relentless attacks by the media, their refusal to give him credit even for his really incredible achievements such as peace in the mideast, the erosion of ISIS (before Trump got elected there were terrorist attacks once a month), have made me, and millions of others like me, into diehard Trump fanatics. I speak seven languages, I graduated cum laude, I have a master’s degree, and am routinely condescended to and treated, as you described it, as a knuckle dragging racist. If they had treated Trump (and us) fairly, I and others like me would have been ready to move on long ago and we would have certainly been open to bipartisan cooperation. There are so many issues where gray area is needed. Immigration is one. I feel sorry for the people at the border too, and favor conditional amnesty for DACA people, but open borders is a very bad idea. The Flynn conspiracy should terrify every American because of the precedent it sets. We can’t have judges openly taking sides. I think many people on the left feel as I do about these issues and more but they feel that they can’t say it because orange man bad and when I say it, the screaming starts. I thought that guy Howard Schultz would have been a good pick from President but the Dems got rid of him as if he were foot fungus because he wasn’t crazy enough and because it was Biden’s “turn.” I am grateful to the President for waking us all up to the Swamp’s existence but I and many others like me would like to return to normalcy. That can’t happen as long as we and our republic are under attack. And for the record, we all knew, at least everybody on my side knew, that the polls were rigged. Don’t forget they gave Hillary a 98% chance back in 2016. The only difference between then and now is that then they actually believed their own lies so they didn’t bother to cheat in any significant way. In this election we are seeing voter fraud on a colossal scale and how it will end, I don’t know, but we’re looking at weeks of legal battles and recounts and I’m sure the results will be very interesting indeed and very costly. The media have rendered themselves obsolete through their relentless lying and that’s a very dangerous state of affairs because we need unbiased sources of information. You continue to compare Trump to the media but I can give you a long list of things Trump has said that were true. Not so for the leftist media. If it weren’t for your voice of sanity there would be would be a complete vacuum.
Twitter And Facebook Forced To Act..
As Trump Allies Attempt Disinformation Blitz Regarding ‘Rigged Election’
President Trump, his son and top members of his campaign on Wednesday advanced a set of unfounded conspiracy theories about the vote-tallying process to claim that Democrats were rigging the final count.
Eric Trump tweeted a video, first pushed out by an account associated with the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, that purported to show someone burning ballots cast for his father. The materials turned out to be sample ballots, and Twitter quickly suspended the original account that circulated the misleading clip.
Trump’s son and others, including White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, claimed falsely in tweets later hidden by warning labels that the president had won Pennsylvania — even though no such determination had been made. And the campaign’s spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, claimed without evidence that crowd control at a processing center in Detroit was an effort to thwart Trump’s chances of reelection.
The misleading messages came as states continued to count mail-in ballots that appeared to favor former vice president Joe Biden. The Trump campaign’s quest to sow doubt about the tabulation process went hand-in-hand with its pursuit of a flurry of legal actions seeking to halt the counting and its tacit endorsement of protests from Philadelphia to Detroit aiming to “stop the steal.”
Social media companies raced to apply labels to the misleading posts, with Facebook in most cases appending a notice that the count was still underway. Twitter applied more stringent standards, hiding some of the claims behind warning labels and restricting the reach of the tweets — but those actions often came only after the messaging had already been shared widely.
In all, Twitter appended labels and warnings to at least eight tweets sent or shared by either the president’s account or his campaign’s official account, Team Trump, in what provided a visual signal of the volume of misinformation emanating from their feeds.
Some of those tweets ran afoul of rules prohibiting manipulated media; others called the state in Trump’s favor before an official result had been announced. Twitter cited data from researchers at the Election Integrity Partnership to show its actions had reduced the reach of some of Trump’s prior attacks on mail-in voting. Still, tweets from the president that Twitter had labeled around Election Day had been shared more than 156,000 times by Wednesday evening, the site’s publicly available sharing figures show.
The tweets from Trump and his family members reverberated quickly and widely among far-right communities. After Eric Trump shared the fake video showing the desecration of pro-Trump ballots, a user on the messaging app Telegram leaped to action: “Please can everyone retweet this,” he said.
On Facebook, meanwhile, all nine of Trump’s posts were tagged with extra-information boxes disputing or adding context to his claims. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Efforts to create the impression of widespread fraud and miscounts conflicted with the assessment of the Trump administration’s own officials. Chris Krebs, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in a statement on Wednesday hailed the “hard work of state and local election officials and private sector partners who have focused efforts on enhancing the security and resilience of elections.”
Social media was not the only channel Trump and his campaign used to reach potential supporters as the ballot counting continued. The campaign bombarded Americans’ smartphones with an estimated 9 million text messages from midnight to midday Wednesday, according to data compiled by RoboKiller, a call-blocking app. Some of the texts accused Democrats of trying to steal the election while asking recipients to donate to help pay for the president’s coming legal efforts to challenge the results, the data shows.
No credible reports of election fraud have surfaced since Trump baselessly declared victory early Wednesday.
Other efforts that sought to mislead the public about election results gained less traction. Twitter permanently suspended several accounts that impersonated the Associated Press, which for many media organizations is the primary source for calling state results. The accounts, which at times prematurely or falsely called election results, violated Twitter’s rules against attempts to “portray another entity in a misleading or deceptive manner” but did not appear to be part of an especially sophisticated or well-disguised operation.
Edited From: “Trump And His Allies Boost Bogus Conspiracy Theories In A Big To Undermine Vote Count”
This Evening’s Washington Post
REGARDING ABOVE:
For 2 weeks Professor Turley ran daily columns decrying Social Media’s blackout of the Hunter Biden story. And now here it is, the day after the election, and Trump forces are attempting to use Social Media for what is arguably a treasonous effort to undermine the election. Which goes to show that Social Media were justified in blacking-out the Hunter Biden story. Trump allies are essentially on the level of foreign trolls.
Turley’s post above is objectively correct – The media narrative regarding Trump and this election has been incredibly false.
So what is your response ? To double down on lies, misrepresentations etc.
What should be clear to all – that Turley atleast partly grasps is that:
We can not trust the media to report things accurately.
With respect to your long littany of purported Trump misrepresentations since election night – they all come from the same media that has been wrong by the numbers.
I do not know whether to beleive Trump or the Trump campaign right now.
But I do know that I should not beleive the media or YOU.
Once again you have been caught selling nonsense.
You rant that Eric Trump is selling “conspiracy theories from Q Annon”.
I have no idea what Eric Trump is pushing, or what Q Annon is pushing – Q Annon seems to be some boogie monster of the lunatic left.
That said I have no reason to beleive YOU or the media – and far more reason to beleive purported right wing nut conspiracy theorists.
You do not seem to grasp that the price you pay for selling lies, misrepresentations or simplying buying and pushing nonsense is that no one trusts you.
Here is your vaunted democracy and elections. Fraud! Backdating of postal ballots received late in Michigan by post office criminals.
https://www.projectveritas.com/news/michigan-usps-insider-delivers-testimony-of-shady-postmark-scheme-to/
True power lies in the future social and political organization of a ruthless and determined vanguard party that truly represents the working and middle class American national interests and will exert whatever means are necessary to use this state or a new one, to punish the billionaires for their crimes.
There is really no point to all the ideological bantering and pointless electioneering. It takes away needed time and energy from the true goal of forging a genuine American patriotic united front against the globalist forces which have totally owned and enslaved us with their false promises and illusionary prosperity. The nation wrecking billionaires are the enemy. Their treasure must be expropriated and they must be arrested and tried for crimes against the people and given the severest punishments.
-Saloth Sar
A genuine patriotic united front would follow the Constitution.
You sound like you hunger for a dictator to take over.
Pol Pot or Winnie the Pooh?
Today, the US broke a record for new Covid cases in a single day — 103K. 52K people are currently hospitalized with Covid and today’s death toll was again over 1,000.
Trump claimed “we’re rounding the turn” when it comes to Covid. Trump lies a lot.
Long term graph of US Covid Daily Deaths – no evidence of an increasing Trend.
Since late may with the exception of a few weeks in august the 7 day rolling average number of deaths per day has never exceeded 1000. Currently it is about 800 – the same as it has been for months.
https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-daily-deaths
You’ll notice that the graph of the 7-day rolling average for deaths has been increasing for the last 2 weeks.
You’ll notice that you chose to change the topic from a record number of daily cases to the number of deaths, as if deaths are all that matter, and all of the people who have to quarantine, all of the people who end up in the hospital, all of the people who end up with longterm health complications, etc., don’t matter.
Here’s their graph of the rolling average for new cases, which shows yesterday’s record in the number of new cases –
https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-daily-positive
Or look at the number hospitalized, which has been increasing since late September –
https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-currently-hospitalized
You vomit words all over the page, but you’re silent about Trump’s lie that “we’re rounding the turn” when it comes to Covid.
Can you admit that Trump is a liar, John?
I notice lots of things – there are fluctuations in the 7 day rolling average of deaths.
Could it be rising at the moment ? Maybe – a little, it will take several weeks to be sure.
What is clear is that it is NOT doing anything spectacular.
Regardless, we have been through this before.
We had claims of a huge spike in cases in July/August – there was an inconsequential increase in deaths that faded quickly.
If Deaths doubled right now – which is highly unlikely – they still would be less than 1/2 the peak daily deaths in April.
There are only two possibilities – we have gotten something like 5 times better at treating C19 – which is false. We are at the very best 50% better at treating it, or the number of cases can not be meaningfully compared – atleast not without substantial statistical adjustment over time.
I would further note that we are also seeing claims of much larger spikes in cases in the EU – in France, Germany and the UK – also without increases int he number of deaths. While we are seeing case spikes in places like Belguim that are also corresponding to significant increases in deaths.
Yes, I deliberately shifted from your deceptive use of a number that can not be meaningfully compared accross time without significant statistical correctsion – that you did not perform (and one that really does not have much meaning anyway) To one that can be compared in raw form from the start to the present.
Here is hospitalization and mortality data from the CDC through to the present. All trends are either solidly down or at worst slightly elevated from their lowest rates.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/10302020/images/national-activity-indicators.gif
The only one being deceptive is you.
I would further note that though the counting is not over, and the fraud is not over, and the legal battles are not over,
the election itself is actually over.
It is past time for you to abandon this idiocy regarding Covid.
The US is doing better than most of the developed world and probably the world as a whole, if we had good data from the underdeveloped countries.
it is increasingly obvious that C19 rates globally are entirely predicted by demographics and latitude – that policies have had no consequential impact beyond delay.
Imperial College just estimated the C19 transmission rate – after lockdowns, social distancing and masking in the UK at about 1.59.
That is still higher than the FLU without ANY preventive measures.
More important it is significantly over 1.0 and any value over 1.0 means that the same number of people will ultimately be infected and die,
that all the policies have done is drag this out for months.
More data for you – WHO’s Cov id dashboard for Sweden – while new cases are spiking in Sweden too.
There are virtually no new deaths. Sweden appears to have put the worst behind it.
It continues to drop down the list of countries by mortality – as the rest of the world catches up.
And Sweden imposed no manditory Covid 19 policies – except on care homes. No lockdowns, no manditory social distancing or masks,
Schools shut for only a few days in April.
https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/se
Sweden is not the only nation where the results demonstrate that the policies the left has sold us have little effect,
It is just the only western nation that did not follow the politices of left wing nuts.
Regardless, the election is over – you do not need to keep lying about Covid.
Eyes were opened wide on this election night coverage by Fox News.
RIP Fox News
Test
Third attempt:
“A constitutional republic is a form of government in which the head of the state, as well as other officials, are elected by the country’s citizens to represent them. Those representatives must then follow the rules of that country’s constitution in governing their people. Like the U.S. government, a constitutional republic may consist of three branches – executive, judicial, and legislative – which divide the power of the government so that no one branch becomes too powerful.
A country is considered constitutional republic if:
–It has a constitution that limits the government’s power
–The citizens choose their own heads of state and other governmental officials”
“Some believe that the United States is a democracy, but it is actually the perfect example of a constitutional republic. A pure democracy would be a form of government in which the leaders, while elected by the people, are not constrained by a constitution as to its actions. In a republic, however, elected officials cannot take away or violate certain rights of the people.”
Legal Dictionary citation.
“The word republic, derived from the Latin res publica, or “public thing,” refers to a form of government where the citizens conduct their affairs for their own benefit rather than for the benefit of a ruler. Historically republics have not always been democratic in character, however. For example, the ancient Republic of Venice was ruled by an aristocratic elite.
In the U.S. historical tradition, the belief in republicanism shaped the U.S. Revolution and Constitution. Before the revolution, leaders developed many political theories to justify independence from Great Britain. Thomas Paine, in his book Common Sense (1776), called for a representative government for the colonies and for a written constitution. Paine rejected the legitimacy of the monarchy to have a part in government. This attack on the king was echoed the following year in the Declaration of Independence, where Thomas Jefferson proposed that colonists reject the monarchy and become republican citizens. Framers of the U.S. Constitution intended to create a republican government. Article IV, Section 4, states “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government….” Though the language was vague, the authors of the Constitution clearly intended to prevent the rise to power of either a monarchy or a hereditary aristocracy. Article I, Section 9, states, “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States,” and most state constitutions have similar provisions.
The guarantee of republican government was designed to provide a national remedy for domestic insurrection threatening the state governments and to prevent the rise of a monarchy, about which there was some talk at the time.James Madison, the author of many of the essays included in The Federalist Papers (1787–88), put forward a sophisticated concept of republican government. He explained in Number 10 that a republic must be contrasted with a democracy. In the eighteenth century the term “democracy” meant what is now called a pure or direct democracy, wherein legislation is made by a primary assembly of citizens, as existed in several rural Swiss cantons and in New England towns. In a pure democracy, Madison argued, there is no check on the majority to protect the weaker party or individuals and therefore such democracies “have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention,” where rights of personal security and property are always in jeopardy.
By a republic, Madison meant a system in which representatives are chosen by the citizens to exercise the powers of government. In Number 39 of The Federalist Papers, he returned to this theme, saying that a republic “is a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people; and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior.” Generally, such leaders as Madison and John Adams believed that republicanism rests on the foundation of a balanced constitution, involving a Separation of Powers and checks and balances.”
Legal Dictionary citation 2.
The US is a both a representative democracy and a constitutional federal republic.
Anonymous,
It seems prudent to focus on the constitutional republic aspect of our government.
” Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents. This is a truth of great importance, but not yet sufficiently attended to. Whenever there is an interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done, and not less readily by [a majority of the people] than by a . . . prince.”
“Madison foresaw that in a representative democracy a threat to individual’s liberty could come from an unrestrained majority. Unless they are effectively limited by a well-constructed constitution, which the people observe faithfully, the winners of a democratic election could persecute the losers and prevent them from competing for control of the government in a future election. This kind of danger to liberty and justice can be overcome by constructing and enforcing constitutional limits on majority rule in order to protect minority rights.”
https://www.annenbergclassroom.org/resource/understanding-democracy-hip-pocket-guide/democracy-representative-and-constitutional/
Considering too keenly the democracy element, I fear, could tip people towards acting as an ‘unrestrained majority’.
The US is a racket run by political and bureaucratic mercenaries of the billionaires
Organized violence, ie, political power that knows no false boundaries of restraint, is what can bring them to heel, and nothing less.
Saloth Sar
It is both ? Because you say so ?
The word democracy does not appear anywhere in the constitution.
It’s both because that’s what the facts support. Lots of words don’t appear in the Constitution, but the words that are there prove that the US is a representative democracy. We elect state and federal legislators by popular vote, and they represent us. That’s what a representative democracy is, or are you too ignorant to understand that John?
“It’s both because that’s what the facts support.”
No they do not.
The constitution is the blue print for our government.
Calling a Frank Furness blueprint “bauhaus” does not make it a bauhaus design.
The design of the US govenrment is the constitution – and it is not the design of a democracy.
” Lots of words don’t appear in the Constitution, but the words that are there prove that the US is a representative democracy.”
Nope.
“We elect state and federal legislators by popular vote, and they represent us. ”
That is NOT democracy. That is representative government – that is a republic.
“That’s what a representative democracy is,”
There is no such thing. A democracy is not representative, Representative govenrment is republican – not democracy.
The constitution REQUIRES the states to also have republican governments – not democracies – again the word democracy is nowhere in the constitution.
“or are you too ignorant to understand that John?”
I am not interested in the centuries of deceptive word mangling by the left.
Government is about the legitimate use of FORCE. It is not something that we should ever be vague or ambiguous about.
It is not fiction or poetry, or creative writing. It is a requirement that government, its laws, its limits, its powers, be defined CLEARLY and UNAMBIGUOUSLY – without the confusion created by those such as yourself that wish to play word games.
Two centuries ago “liberal” meant someone who prizes individual liberty – I am a liberal by the clear meaning of the word as well as by its use prior to the mid 20th century. Early left wing nuts called themselves progressives. But they so besmirched the label they had to abandon it and starting in the 30’s they stole the term “liberal” from clasical liberals – libertarains. Then they fouled the meaning of that term – just look at the number of conservitives here who bemoan the misconduct of “liberals” – those on the left who are just about the most ill-liberal that anyone can possibly be.
I have used your vile abuse of the word liberal as an example – because you have done much the same thing with the word democracy.
Our founders loathed democracy, they deliberately created a republic. They had zero desire for the tyranny of the majority and were well aware of its dangers. They RARELY used the word democracy in a favorable way. The certainly did not in our founding document.
This is not some accident or oversight.
They vigorously opposed democracy. Even YOUR misuse of democracy to mean popularly elected government – was BARELY part of the constitution. Only the house of representatives was to be popularly elected. Other means were used to appoint every single other position in government. Our founders were not fans of popular elections for anything. The complex machinations of our elections were deliberately to pit different power structures against each other in govenrment to make it extremely difficult for government to act.
Forget about the Framers. Rich old guys who made themselves into a new aristocracy which hid behind republicanism. Coming time when we write a new constitution and shuck the 1789 one in the garbage.
Learn this from the Democrat success: they only invoke the constitution when it serves your purposes. Otherwise they do what they please. So it’s all fake.
Power is what counts. The people must have the power. The failed ideology of liberal democracy will always protect billionaires and they will own the system. The only way to dislodge the power of global billionaires is with the power that grows from the barrel of a gun, employed by a vanguard party who acts fiercely in the interests of the people.
Judge Learned Hand: “if liberty is not in the hearts of the people then no paper will save it.”
-Saloth Sar
You are free to draft a new constitution – and if you can get it ratified by the same super majority of people that have ratified the current constitution and subsequent amendments if will have the same legitimacy.
As to power to the people – people have power when government does not.
All power concentrated in government WILL ALWAYS be bent to the will of some special interest.
Pol Pot,
Dictators rise from such violence and infighting.
It is best for the people to act in their own self-interest.
A vanguard party sounds like a narcissistic, controlling mother, perhaps akin to Uncle Fester’s mother in The Addams Family.
“The only way to dislodge the power of global billionaires is with the power that grows from the barrel of a gun, employed by a vanguard party who acts fiercely in the interests of the people.”
Global billionaires who love power would love nothing more than to be that wolf in sheep’s clothing you call a vanguard party. Dispense with giving money to both parties! Dispense with having to curry favor and buy votes from both parties! One party acting under the pretense that they are doing things ‘for our own good’?
Sounds like a metaphorical version of the horrible reality in The Matrix–machines (big businesses) feeding off the life blood of the people, keeping us safe and fat for their benefit.
Businesses are there to provide goods and services for people to purchase. People are not a commodity to be bought and sold like cattle.
“Ants don’t serve grasshoppers! It’s you who need us! We’re a lot stronger than you say we are.”
Actually, JT, the media created Trump in the first place, giving him free air time afforded none of the other Repub candidates in ’16 when he’d call in to morning shows. NBC probably even had an internal mandate to do it because the Apprentice was still on the air at that point and beginning to flounder in the ratings war…, so they probably saw it as more promotional than anything else.
“How open and forthcoming does NBC expect voters to be in a poll when its analysts are referring to Trump supporters as existing on “lizard brains”?”
Correct. They should’ve known slimy lizards will always lie and do whatever necessary to survive when cornered. Not very insightful on NBC’s part certainly.
Interesting thesis.
So you are claiming that Trump would not be popular but for the continuous media attacks on him over the past 5 years ?
When you make this free airtime claim – is there any time in which the media has consistently supported Trump ?
When they consistently gave him free air time when he called in to the morning shows. Total support. They gave him free air time, used it for ratings bumps, and then were surprised when he actually pulled an inside straight and won in ’16….
Instead of being media “attacks” they were using Trump for what they could get from him. Just like the Republican party did once he was in office. He came into office so clueless in the ways of government that they had to “guide” him (read: piggyback him for a gigantic tax break).
Now they’re done with him and will let him twist.
Trump has gotten an enormous amount of free air time. That is correct, but the claim of “total support” is idiocy.
Most of Trump’s “free air time” was and still is contentious.
What Trump got/gets that is not, is on Fox – which means it is essentially limited to republicans.
Did Trump beat Cruz because of his ability to seduce fox into free air time ? Absolutely.
Did he beat Clinton that way ? Not a chance.
You also have an odd view of things. Aparently you think that this “free air time” was magical.
That merely seeing or hearing Trump mesmerizes people into voting for him.
The Free Airtime in the 2016 primary got Trump noticed by republicans when he would have had a hard time otherwise.
But he won votes just as he does today – by what he says, and what he has done and will do.
With respect to Trump as president.
Absolutely Trump has had a hard time.
But your claim that he is “clueless” or “guided” is ludicrously stupid.
Trump has transformed government more in 4 years than any other president ever.
some of what Trump has accomplished is what makes YOU so angry.
Further Trump has not accomplished some traditional republican agenda.
He has accomplished what he promised voters – whether the rest of the GOP liked it or not.
And Trump did so against significant GOP opposition.
I guess that you are blind to all the assorted republicans early on who impeded Trump.
There would be no SC but for the fact that too many GOP Senators did not have the brains to figure out that the Trump Russia Collusion story was a Hoax.
Are you claiming that McCain was a supporter of Trump ? Flake ?
Trump is actually correct about Sessions. If Sessions was going to recuse himself he should not have accepted the post as AG.
This Trump was nursed claim is complete idiocy.
Trump brought in “the Generals” to start – he told them what he wanted – Deliver what he promissed to voters.
“The Generalls” attempted to manipulate him in every possible way – Kelley, Mattis, McMasters,
They are gone, and with their departure Trump has accomplished what he promissed.
I have listed other Trump accomplishments.
Blaiming them on the GOP coddling him is ludicrously stupid.
BUT if that is what you wish to do – what does it matter ?
The fact is the Trump presidency expanded the weak economic recovery that occured under Obama – something that the left claimed was impossible. Trump continued to drive unemployment down to levels that had never been seen before.
The left rants about $15 Minimum Wage as a boon to the poor – how does a higher minimum wage benefit people who can not get a job ?
You think making it even harder to get hired is what poor people need ?
Regardless, the Trump recovery was especially strong for the poor and minorities. That is not espeically a republican program item.
You think Trump’s accomplishments in the Mid East were the result of coddling by GOP leaders ?
What did the Bushes do in the Mideast beyond get us more deeply embedded into mideast conflicts ?
If you wish to blame someone else for Trump’s foreign policy successes – which as I noted elsewhere rival – and may exceed those of nixon,
Who is it you are going to blame ? Tillerson – I think he was a good choice, but he quit. Pompeo ? I do not like him nearly as much regardless, much of Trump’s foreign policy was in place before Pompeo got on board.
Regardless, Just as the buck stops at the resolute desk for disasters, it also does for successes.
I run a business today that employs about half a dozen other people who would not have work otherswise.
There is only one thing that I “the boss” do, that no one else can do. That is make everything happen.
While I can personally do every job in this business – and have done and often do so. I can replace myself in all these tasks with others,
in many cases people who do the job better than I do. But none of this would exist without me. Because Obama was wrong – “I Built it”.
This would not happen without me. Because what those on the left fail to grasp is there is really only a small portion of people who make things happen. Nearly all of us have the ability to perform tasks that have value. But only a few of us are able to “make things happen”.
Trump is one of those. Interestingly Obama is also – But Obama made absymally bad choices. Likely the product of a bad leftist education.
Where do we sign up for the RESISTANCE to treat Joe Biden and his corrupt family and all the lying Democrats with the same sh*t they dumped on President Trump and all of his supporters and voters for the past four years? You are not a “uniter” Joe Biden, you have NO madate from voters, your campaign was a sad joke, and you will be put the ringer of never-ending investigations and “resistance” just like you all did for the past four years. IF you squeak by and win by the skin of your fake teeth, you ain’t seen nothing yet Joe Biden.
Anonymous, actually winning the vote – the GOP has pulled that off only once in the last 8 presidential elections – does create a mandate. So does receiving the most votes of any candidate in our history also creates a mandate. Hey you’re guy got a huge number of votes too and you should rightly take pride in that.
It just wasn’t as much as the other guy.
We are entering Joe Biden’s ‘dark winter.’ There will be no concession. Joe Biden stands up there in his pathetic non-victory, victory speech and talks about being president for all, not blue states and red states, but as a ‘uniter’ of all the ‘united states.’ Gee, where have we heard that one before? The notion that you, Joe Biden, think you all can vilify, criminalize and deligitimzie a president, his family, stimy his agenda, and disparage his supporters as nazis, racists, and substandard less-than-human beings, and think we will accept your ‘unity’ horsesh*t, you are now on notice that we will treat you with the same disdain and contempt that you treated Trump and his supporters.
Here is a message for you Joe Biden: We will fight against you and resist your agenda harder than you all did Trump over the past four years. For startters: #NOT MY PRESIDENT.
You, Joe Biden project nothing but the weakness of a dottering old corrupt fool who will be run roughshod over by Progressives, by China, by Russia, by the rest of the world. No one believes in your agenda for imposing high taxes, destroying the oil and gase industry, destroying our jobs….and you can be sure that we do not accept your illegitimate Marxist running mate. We held the Senate firewall and your radical agenda will be stopped dead on Mitch McConnell’s desk. We are not done. What goes around comes around Joe Biden.
Does anyone honestly believe that Joe Biden got MORE voters to come out and cast a vote for HIM than Barack Obama got in 2008? They are telling us that Joe Biden was able to get more popular votes cast for HIM, than any candidate in history, including Barack Obama? Sure thing, Democrats.
The population has grown since 2008, and Democrats HATE Trump. Think of the votes for Biden as votes against Trump, and you’ll understand.
Democrats, Independents, and some Republicans hate Trump.
That’s true, Joe, thanks for the correction.
Yes, there are lots of haters out there on the left.
So this monster vote for Joe Biden proves that Hate trumps Love, and cheaters always win?
It is not believable that Joe Biden garnered MORE votes than Obama or any other candidate in history. It is simply not plausible.
I am sorry – but that actually is plausible.
That is another part of the problem with Mailin voting.
The easier you make voting the more people participate the closer we become to an actual democracy.
The vast majority of people think democracy is good rather than evil and think that easier voting is good rather than evil.
In the real world when people make choices – those choices have a cost. When you decide to buy a hamburger – you must trade your money for that hamburger, you think – atleast a little about what you want, to maximize the value you get from that money.
But the easier you make voting – the less the cost. My grandmother used to vote for the most handsome candidate. The easier you make voting the more of that kind of voting you get.
Democrats knew last year that Biden had more people expressing a preference for him than Trump. But they also knew than the strength of that preference was incredibly weak. That a smaller than normal portion of people prefering Biden would bother to go through the hassle of going to the polls and casting a vote. So Biden would lose.
Mailin Voting solved the problem for them. deliver a vote to the voter, send someone to walk them through voting – in rare instances even filling the ballot out for them, and then get it into the mail. That is far easier than getting someone to the polls.
It is especially easier when you do absoilutely everything for them.
But it is a mistake. It is irrevelant whether the election is Trump/Biden or anyone else.
You do NOT want real democrcary. You do NOT want the whimsy of people who do not take the election seriously.
As I said before – If I could all votes would be on election day only and everyone would have to go through a huricane to vote.
We know from massive amounts of psychological testing that people make incredibly bad choices when there is no cost to those choices.
That is part of why government fails – because most of those “experts” – that the left fixates on, have no “skin in the game” and without that they make bad choices. It is also why social safetynet programs fail. The creation of medicare had no effect on the life expectance of senior citizens, but it radically increased their consumption of medical serives, and that created shortages and that increased the price of healthcare for everyone – including government. Medicare alone is responsible for atleast 1/3 of all medical cost increases since 1965 and probably responsible for 100% of all cost increases. The cost of all medical care that is outside the domain of government has DECLINED.
Voters are no different.
When choices have no immediate cost – people make bad decisions. That is well known and applies whether we are in government or elsewhere.
And more people voted FOR Trump on Tuesday than have ever voted FOR an incumbent president.
The portion of serious Trump haters in the country is far far far smaller than the left fixates on.
It was absolutely critical to make it trivially easy to vote for Biden or there is no possibility that Biden voters would come out.
I would not be surprised if hundreds of thousands of votes for Biden were hand delivered by democrats to voters, and the voters were even relieved of the tiresome burden of actually filling out and returning the ballot.
There are myriads of problems with mailin voting.
High among them are buying votes – which is not possible with in person or properly done absentee balloting, and voter coaching.
Both of which are illegal, but can not be detected with mailin voting.
And of course as is typical with the left – voter fraud that is easy to do byt hard to catch – really never happened.
I would point out that those that Hate Trump – also hate Trump voters,
And that is why Trump was able to get so big an improvement in voting.
Actually yes – Biden likely got more votes than Obama.
But not because he was charasmatic or popular, or even that Trump was unpopular on the left.
But because of the massive illegitimate authoritarian action of democrats in swing states creating mailin voting laws in their states without any legitimate authority to do so.
One of the problems with the democrats “voter supression” nonsense is that voting is NOT supposed to be easy.
If we really wanted good elections we would find a way to have a huricane on election day in every state.
So that those who voted would only be those willing to go to the polls in a huricane.
Making voting easy amplifies all the problems with democracy – a political structure our founders rejected.
As John Stuart Mill noted, there is no limit to the willingness of the majority in a democracy to meddle in the private affairs of
their neighbors.
Contra the left – democracy is the most oppressive form of govenrment – not dictatorship or monarchy.
Historically high turnout elections are a sign of unstable countries.
JF – in the vast majority of this country the majority of votes are for republicans.
Democrats have absolute power in the large urban areas of this country.
These are the very same places with the highest political corruption.
These are where the riots and looting are taking place.
These are where there is purportedly all this systemic racism.
Every ill that the democratic party seeks to correct appears to only exist in places governed by democrats.
I would further note that Republicans MOSTLY seek to limit government.
You do not need the support of the majority of people for government that does the bare minimum.
You need supermajority support to EXPAND the role of government.
Democrats do not have that.
They never have.
John, you’re a liar when you say “in the vast majority of this country the majority of votes are for republicans”. Land mass doesn’t vote. People vote, and the majority of votes are for Democrats.
“John, you’re a liar when you say “in the vast majority of this country the majority of votes are for republicans”.
My statement is absolutely completely accurate.
You are correct – land mass does not vote. But the people who live on those lands DO.
Outside of tiny islands of blue almost the entire country is red.
No one is stopping democrats from running those blue islands as they please.
Thus far they are doing so BADLY.
We had riots all summer – and recently in Philadelphia as well as Portland Again.
These riots were purportedly about systemic racism in the police.
But it was not rioters in portland protesting racist police in Selma Alabama.
It was rioters across the US protesting systemic racism in democratically controlled cities with democraticly controlled police forces.
If there is systemic racism in this country – it is in the blue cities.
I am hard pressed to think of a single protest in a republican part of the country.
I would note that the majority of votes in Cuba are for communists, in Venezuela for socialists.
Absoilutely the overwhelming majority of americans in big cities vote democrat – no one is arguing other wise.
What is being challenged is this idiotic notion that democrats from dense urban areas have any business running the rest of the country.
When you have demonstrated that you can manage cities without rioting and without minorities accusing your police forces of racism, when you have crime levels that are no more than double the rest of the country. then MAYBE the rest of us will be interested in your ideas regarding government.
In the meantime 90% of the country is doing fine on its own – and it does not need clueless idiots who can not manage their own land areas without crime and rioting, to tell the rest of us how to live.
“Land mass doesn’t vote. People vote,”
That is correct. And those of you who live in those failed democrat cities have no business telling those of us who live in well functioning parts of the country with low crime, no rioting, minimally intrusive government, roads and schools and water and power systems that actually work, how we should run our lives.
The people in NYC and a few other US cities outnumber everyone in Canada – should NYC be allowed to annex canada and dictate how all canadians live ?
The same is true of americans in Red parts of the country – we too dwarf the population of canada – can we just step in and take over.
Democrats have congregated in dense urban areas by choice. I have no problem with that.
It is possible that you even think that all the problems of urban areas are outweighed by the benefits – and if that is your free choice – I wish you success and happinenss. But that is NOT my choice – or the choice of most of the people who live outside your densely populated blue urban islands. We do not want your problems and we have rejected your benefits. That is a choice we have made freely too.
You are not free to stomp in by virtue of slightly greater overall numbers.
I have noted before – just as our founders did – that democracy is the most evil form of government their is.
And this is specifically why. Because idiots like you think that slightly greater numbers entitle you to dictate how everyone else must live.
If you like your blue islands – stay.
If you do not – you are welcome to move to the vast read ocean of this country – we have plenty of room. But if you come – do not try to transform the suburban and rural areas you come to, into the urban hellscape you left.
IF you are not coming because you actually like things as they are here – STAY.
In the meantime
https://portlandflag.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/online-stores.jpg
It is a mistake to target Biden with the same kind of crud they heaped on Trump. We do not have the power to make any useful change by doing that. We are faced with the status quo before Trump, ie, a fake opposition party in the form of Republicans who are in reality controlled by the silkstocking types like Bush, Romney, the Pentagon sycophants, and so forth. And a Democrat party that says they are for the working and middle classes but only act against their interests in the long run.
Biden is a mercenary. Don’t get sucked into hating the soldier. Look to the generals and the ones who send them on to the field in the first place. The globalist billionaires, that is. We will either strip them of their power or they will reduce us all to poor, drug addicted, sterilized and sick weaklings only fit for tax farming. We have to break them. Trump failed in this.
The Republican party must become a true populist party of the working and middle class, and wholly divest itself of any hesitation to go after the big money, or it will remain what it was before Trump, a permanent false flag failure.
-Saloth Sar
Trump claims to be a billionaire.
He has never been part of the the working and middle classes, and he is not acting on behalf of the working and middle classes. He is working on his own behalf.
Yes he claims to be a billionaire. He was something of a class traitor. To a degree, but not enough
He did act in the interests of the working and middle classes to some degree in the trade dispute with China and a few other notable things. Not quite enough it seems or he would not be on his way out. He had nerve but not enough.
It is your illusion that he did not serve the people at all, because you are a Biden cheerleader, and a billionaire class tool in that respect. I hope you get paid for your trouble.
Progressives and far-Leftists and disappointed Trumpers already know it, and others will soon see the reality that your man Biden is a tool of his donors like Soros and Bloomberg and all the rest. If he goes, Kamala will be even worse.
When you see the “bernie bros” and disappointed Trumpers fuse themselves into something real, if ever, then billionaires will get their reckoning.
We may one day look back on the riots of BLM and ANTIFA and say, hmmm, they really gave us some fine ideas. The day when riots call for the billionaires to be crushed, instead of the poor hapless police, low paid workers in their own right, or the much despised red state crackers, who are no better off either, well, that day will be a glorious one. It is coming.
Saloth Sar
I am reminded of three quotes by past observers of American politics. In historical sequence;
“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.” Mark Twain
“A fool and his money are soon elected” Will Rogers
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” H.L. Mencken
These men lived from the early 1800’s to the mid 1930’s. It appears that in 100 years nothing much has changed except the magnitude of destruction people are capable of inflecting on themselves by their gullibility.
Trump should just pull a Stacy Abrams. She has never conceded and is STILL calling herself the rightful Governor of Georgia.
It doesn’t really matter who is declared the ‘winner’. That map was virtually solid red before dems began cheating, and those voters ain’t going anywhere. Being eminently arrogant pr***s that don’t seem to understand the constituency isn’t freaking stupid, the DNC may very well have just cooked up their own worst-case scenario. Prepare yourselves for the REAL resistance. Dem tyrants can go to the fiery place. This is OUR country, period. The idiocy of the left in the 21st century is simply breathtaking
Republican Gov. Mike Dewine of Ohio on Fox News: “We count the votes. We believe in the rule of law. I am for Trump, but if it ends up being Biden, all of us will accept that… Every vote has to be counted. We as a country accept election results. We believe in counting all the votes.”
James, do you believe in counting all the votes?
We all witnessed how the Dems RESISTED, rioted, destroyed property, and then lied about Russia and they have NEVER accepted the results of the last election. Total BS. Trump should fight this all the way — just like a Dem would. RESIST!
Anonymous, we agree that the President should use every legal means available to him to challenge something he thinks will help him. It’s a free country and he owes it to himself and his supporters to pursue legal remedies for perceived injustices. However, Democrats have not rioted and have put up with 2 unelected frauds in the WH due to the random BS of the EC. So don’t talk to us about living by the rule of law and the Constitution. Looks like your turn in the barrel an at least you have the solace of knowing your guy just didn’t get enough votes and maybe you’ll come back with a better candidate next time.
PS Here’s the GOP led Senate Intel Comm Report from August which documents and confirms the collusion of the Trump campaign with the Russians.
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/report_volume5.pdf
Does everyone understand now why Soros funded so many state attorney generals and secretary of state races?
https://www.senatorcorman.com/2020/11/03/senate-republican-leaders-call-for-pa-secretary-of-state-to-resign-immediately/
From the U.S. Supreme Court statement (LINK) by Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsuch, dated October 28, 2020:
“…the Court’s denial of the motion to expedite is not a denial of a request for this Court to order that ballots received after election day be segregated so that if the State Supreme Court’s decision is ultimately overturned, a targeted remedy will be available. Petitioner represents that it will apply to this Court to obtain that modest relief…and Respondent DPP agrees that such relief is appropriate…Although the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected Petitioner’s request for that relief, we have been informed by the Pennsylvania Attorney General that the Secretary of the Commonwealth issued guidance today directing county boards of elections to segregate ballots received between November 3, 2020, and 5:00 p.m. on November 6, 2020. Nothing in the Court’s order today precludes Petitioner from applying to this Court for relief if, for some reason, it is not satisfied with the Secretary’s guidance.” (emphasis added)
Soros is the chief enemy of the people. He should receive maximum punishment. Along with those billionaires who imitate him.
Saloth Sar
Does anyone honestly believe that Joe Biden got MORE voters to come out and cast a vote for HIM than Barack Obama got in 2008? They are telling us that Joe Biden was able to get more popular votes cast for HIM, than any candidate in history, including Barack Obama? Sure thing, Democrats.
Dems didn’t pick up a single state legislative chamber in 2020.
Republicans, against expectations, won the New Hampshire state Senate and the Alaska state House.
Democratic House Speakers in deep blue Rhode Island & Vermont have lost their re-election bids to Republicans.
Yes, due to corruption of the vote by Democrat operatives trying to steal the election from Trump.
We believe in counting all the ‘legally cast votes.’
James, do you believe in counting all the votes?
1. One vote to a voter
2. Only from those validly registered
3, And only when cast in a timely fashion.
OK Deco, that’s right. What’s the problem?
The problem is that is NOT what is occuring.
In the 2020 democratic primary hundreds of thousands of ballots were rejected.
There is not an explanation for that that is acceptable. Either large amounts of voter fraud occured, or democrats wiped out the votes of hundreds of thousands of democratic voters.
Regardless, it is evidence of a system that does not work.
That is the first problem.
The next is that there is no reason today why all votes can not be counted by midnight election day.
Any system where that is not the case is far more subject to fraud.
John Say, the GOP successfully resisted attempts to allow officials to begin counting mail-ins early in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
“John Say, the GOP successfully resisted attempts to allow officials to begin counting mail-ins early in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.”
So ?
I have no problem with that. Aside from the fact that mailin voting is not legitimate.
Even if it were. Counting must START on election day, and it must FINISH on election day.
Starting early increases the incentives for fraud. Finishing late increases the incentives and oportunities for fraud.
There are 435 congressional districts int he US. Each has approx 700,000 voters. Each has very nearly the same resources to count votes.
99% of those districts count every vote in that district on election day.
Why are those places that can not manage to do so “special” ? Why do they get special priviledges ? Why aren’t they competent to do what most of the rest fo the country has managed without difficulty ?
SCOTUS should have flushed mailin voting several months before the election.
Because they did not we can not follow the constitution, while assuring people and equal right to vote.
A typical leftist move do something unconstitutional and then force the rest of us to accept it because failing to accept your unconstitutional usurpation of power would itself result in an unconstitional violation of peoples voting rights.
Given that SCOTUS is highly unlikely to reject mailin voting – atleast for 2020, the very least that should be done is to confine all counting to votes received by election day, as well as requiring that vote counts be completed on very short deadlines, and that all counting of mailin ballots be done under meaningful public scrutiny.
I voted in person, as I have done every election since I was 18. The fact that YOU took a gamble and voted some illiegitimate means – that is your problem.
Mailin ballots have several requirements – which together are still insufficient to prevent fraud.
They must be double enveloped, signed on the outside, and they must arrive by election day.
If you can not manage to do those things correctly – you should not be surprised if your vote is spoiled – whether you are republican or democrat.
Further Democratic governors of mostly red states should never have by fiat enacted mailin voting. But given that they did this ludicrously stupid thing, it was THEIR responsibility to assure that the ad hoc stupid arrangement they imposed would work.
Frankly I wish that SCOTUS would throw out every mailin ballot from every state that did not establish mailing voting by law rather then fiat.
If your vote gets spoiled as a result – blame your governor.
If your vote gets spoiled because you failed to go through all the necescary steps to cast a valid mailin vote – that is your problem.
If your vote gets spoiled because it got tied up in the post office and did not arrive on time – your problem.
If you were worried – nearly every state with mail in voting allows you to vote in person on election day replacing your mailin vote.
The point is YOU had choices. If you made bad ones and lose your vote as a result – that is YOUR problem.
If you can vote – you are an adult – and adults take responsibility for their own actions – including voting.
No one else owes you special treatment. No one owes you the conventience of a ballot delivered to your bedroom, and a vote cast without getting out of your pajamas.
Become and adult – take responsibility for your life.
And sure as $h!t if you can not manage that – quit telling everyone else how to live theirs.
“Sunshine go away today
I don’t feel much like dancin’
Some man’s gone, he’s tried to run my life
He don’t know what he’s askin’
When he tells me I better get in line
I can’t hear what he’s sayin’
When I grow up, I’m gonna make it mine
These ain’t dues I been payin’
Well how much does it cost?
I’ll buy it
The time is all we’ve lost
I’ll try it
And he can’t even run his own life
I’ll be damned if he’ll run mine, sunshine”
I’d say Trump has a point when he’s leading by 200,000 then overnight 136,000 mail in votes show up all for Biden. The damage to the country that the Obama Administration has wrought is foundational and leads to tyranny. I guess I’ll be gone but I feel bad for my kids and grandkids who’ve lost the greatest Republican ever created and for those with less who are not elite and will lose the most. Families, towns and countries seem to be most valuable to those with less and our constitutional republic was designed to protect the minority and provide opportunity. I’m very sad for what’s been lost.
Tom, don’t be a drama queen. Looks like you lost an election. Actually you lost the one in 2016 too, but still got your guy in office. Suck it up buddy. It’s not the end of democracy or the republic.
It does ?
All I see is that the media and the left have been MASSIVELY lying to everyone for years.
Why should I trust your claims regarding the election ? You and your ilk had Trump loosing by 17% in some states that are currently dead heats. Your overall error has been almost 10%. Virtually nothing has matched what you claim.
So why should anyone trust you what you say ?
You say one thing – Trump says another – so far Trump has been closer to correct than you have been.
Based on track record – why should I beleive you ?
Why shouldn;t I beleive Trump ?
Trump is a fighter. He won’t simply capitulate like Romney or McStain.
Dude, when you lose an election in a democracy, you don’t get to fight about it short of legitimate legal issues. That’s the idea – we don’t fight, we vote and then accept the results.
Take my word for it. There will be other first Tuesdays in November.
No Democrat has “accepted” the last election.
No Democrat filed a lawsuit to stop counting the votes in the last election, no Democrat attempted to prevent Trump from being sworn in — there was a peaceful transition of power.
Liar. No Republican has either. He didn’t object to counting, he objected to allowing voting after the cutoff.
“We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court — we want all voting to stop,” Trump said early Wednesday.
You imagine lies where there aren’t any, Olly.
Voting already stopped yesterday.
And then you rioted.
Regardless, of course democrats did not file lawsuits in 2016 – the odds are that the narrow victrories Trump had in 2016 were actually larger, that any legal contest, recount, validation of ballots would result in a larger margin of victory for Trump.
Further 2016 was conducted according to normal rules which made the opportunity to game the election after election night much harder.
There were not millions of mail-in ballots that are much easier to manipulate in 2016, as their are today.
There is absolutely no reason that all ballots can not be counted before midnight on election day.
Anytime you see dramatic swings after the polls have closed you should be highly suspicious of fraud.
Had the election been conducted properly that would be the case.
Regardless of the results it is SELF-EVIDENT that it has not been.
That has been no secret for months.
Regardless, you have been wrong by the numbers in most every claim you have made regarding this election.
Why are you to be beleived ?
We were all told by you and the MSM and the left that this election was not even close.
Clearly you were radically wrong.
Conversely the rest of us told you that mail in voting would prove to be a mess.
Which it clearly has.
It is not difficult to conduct an election where the opportunity for fraud is low, and the results are trustworthy and uncertainty and delay is low.
But you and your ilk have resisted every effort to increase the trustworthyness of elections.
Why should anyone trust those who ALWAYS choose the most fraud prone approach rather than the most trustworthy one ?
Actually, Trump isn’t a Republican, nor conservative. Yes, he ran as one and has been quoted as saying he did it because because Repubs are more malleable and easy to manipulate, two qualities Trump has always preyed on.
Conservativism is nothing. It is dead. Trump was effective to the degree he was mostly unrestrained by prior conventional thinking.
He failed to the extent that he cooperated with the dead wood in the old Republican party and all the stay behind Deep state saboteurs who he failed to root out at the outset.
His failure was not acting like a dictator, it was failing to act with sufficiently comprehensive force and strike at the billionaires who owned the status quo in the first place.
The Republican party must become a true populist working and middle class party and henceforth carry the banner of that and only that, which necessarily means, attacking the evil American billionaire class as the enemy of the people.
you Democrats have taken the billionaire soup and must dance to the tune they call. We will watch and learn as you fail to do anything more than what they please.
Republicans should be studying Mao Zedong and the Chinese civil war to prepare for a middle of the country versus the coasts type civil war. And to win the war in the eventual disintegration of the United States as a corporate entity, and a devolution into something more just. It may be that there is no other way to get to the billionaires than that.
We do not actually have a lot to lose. Look at your balance sheets. What do you really care if the US defaults on its debt.? Do you really have that much of a savings anyhow? Most people have most of their savings tied up in homes. Get rid of your mortgage debt to prepare for what’s coming eventually and when the financial house of cards tumbles you will be fine.
Gold silver and bitcoin are good too. And guns and ammo. Beware that stock market.
Saloth Sar
The key issue is that we have to be able to trust the results of elections.
And it is obvious that both the opportunity for fraud and the incentive for fraud exist.
It is not particularly difficult to conduct elections by rules that minimize the opportunity for election fraud.
I would further note that not only must Fraud be difficult, it is also a requirement that the people are able to trust that fraud is rare to non-existant. Contra the left – that is not accomplished by words, but by trustworthy processes.
Anyone who thinks that there is little effort to commit fraud in elections where billions of dollars are spent and where trillions of dollars are at stake is an idiot.
“Trust us” is NOT a dependable impediment to election fraud. Rules that are designed to reduce the opportunity for Fraud and that are scrupulously followed and whose compliance is subject to public observation are the means for establishing confidence in election results.
I beleive in counting all the votes legally cast on election day.
DeWine is incorrect.
Voting is NOT a process that you continue until you get the results you wish.
We do not count votes that are cast after the election.
We do not count the votes of dead people.
We count the votes of PEOPLE – not whatever some ballot harvestor dumped into a bin.
We count the votes of citizens.
We count the votes of people who bothered to follow the rules and vote properly.
While we can structure the rules such that the possibility of fraud is dramatically lowered,
It is critical that elections have consistent rules, and that those rules are followed.
Where we do not have rules, or where the rules are not followed – that is where fraud is likely.
In this election Billions of dollars were spent to defeat Trump and Senate Republicans.
Accross the country Republicans were outspent by 2-3:1. And this is the best Democrats have managed ?
You do not think that those would would spend billions of dollars to flip the senate and the presidency would also be willing to commit election fraud ?
WE made a huge mistake with this mass illegitimate experiment in mail in voting.
Even NYT reported that Mail In voting is the most error prone and fraud ridden form of voting there is.
What does it take to get democrats to agree to end this nonsense.
Whatever the results of this election we should all be able to agree NOT to repeat this nonsense ever again.
But we will not.
Regardless of how people vote there is absolutely no reason that all votes should not be counted by the end of the night on election night.
We absolutely know that the longer it takes to count the votes the greater the probability there is fraud involved.
It is not particularly difficult to conduct an election where there is very little opportunity for fraud.
Voting in person, with voter ID, with paper ballots that are scanned by the voter and counted as they are scanned, with numerous observers and the press present to watch election officials is very difficult to defraud.
Any system where uncounted ballots are handled by anyone other than voters has significant opportunities for Fraud.
James, it is your country, but it’s ours too and we have more votes. That’s how it works in a democracy.
We are a republic.
A republic is a kind of democracy.
Nope.
Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%.
Thomas Jefferson
The United States Is Both a Republic and a Democracy
https://reason.com/2018/01/17/the-united-states-is-both-a-republic-and/
these are fatuous distinctions. the US is controlled by a plutocratic elite and it has been since 1789.
They are the enemy and they must be punished
-Saloth Sar
Saloth Sar is Pol Pot’s birth name. He is not a model for anything just. He was a dictator and responsible for the Cambodian genocide.
Gee, you know your history. Good for you. He was a fearsome ethnic nationalist leader and liquidated his enemies instead of playing games with them., He saw what Mao Zedong did and understood it and made it happen in his backward little corner of SE Asia. Yes awful bad results, boo hoo. That is not my point. My point is that his political organization was ruthless and thus politically effective. You will note that his sidekick Hun Sen has been the top leader there since 1985.
I’m introducing his name to the disappointed Trumpers because it has a nice ring to it and I am making the point that paltry incremental changes are insufficient to neutralize the chokehold that billionaires have on America. The only way for the people to wrest sovereignty from the plutocracy in the end will be organized violence and nothing less. Politics of course is always a form of implicit organized violence, smart people understand that, Leftists obviously get it for a solid century now, and it’s time the average Trump fan learns it too. Elections can play a role but in the end expropriation and punishment of the billionaires as a class is the obvious objective. Because they clearly own the entire political process. Trump was to some degree, a painful reminder of it. For all his sharp words, he failed, and he failed because he let his enemies continue polluting earth with their CO2 emissions.
You claim to know what is just? What did Thrasymachus say justice is? That’s all you need to know.
-Saloth Sar
Saloth Sar is going to give you some advice for free.
The United States is on life support. It looks OK now but what Biden will deliver will enrich only the billionaires and leave the people with the bill. A bill that can never be repaid.
Trump was only prolonging the collapse phase. if that’s done, well, there goes all hope for the old United States. Goose is cooked and waiting to be carved and served.
There is no way for the US to ever repay its debts. Not within these parameters. Default will come and with it the end of the racket.
All that would need to happen is inflation. A little bit and then monetizing the debt even more than now and when it becomes obvious and the Fed Balance sheet goes out of whack and creditors stop buying. A fully monetized debt will lead to a dollar collapse. Not a lot of inflation would be needed. NIRP will not last forever.,
A little bit of social chaos like this year is not enough perhaps but more is coming.
At some point enough people will get sick of the song and dance they will want it to collapse.
What’s happened in this election has probably sent millions in that direction hard and fast.
real estate, gold, silver, bitcoin. guns and ammo. a good family and circle of friends close by
beyond that, a vanguard party of the people who can punish the billionaires that ruined the old United States and ran it like a criminal racket for so long.
and assert a newer sovereignty that leaves us better off, socially and culturally, if not in terms of shiny new junk, when this order passes away
Saloth Sar
Not a democracy.
I do not like you. Can I am 51 of 100 of my friends who also do not like you murder you – because we are the majority ?
Of course not.
It is not your country to do whatever you please because you have more votes. That is NOT how it works!
If you win an election – following the rules and with results that even the losers are prepared to trust, then you are free to do whatever can be done without infringing on the rights of others – which is not much.
I do not think there are many voters in the entire country that would care whether Trump or Biden wins the election, if the winner was unable to do more than the constitution as written allows.
Since it looks as though Biden will still get the victory the assertion that all of the media’s ridiculous fooled no one couldn’t be more off based. They fooled a whole lot of folks, and you, Professor Turley, should know that well for all of the times you pointed out how out of touch they were and recieved scorn. They heed nothing and no one, and many people still believe in the Russia collusion lies as if they were 3 year olds trying to stay up and catch a glimpse of Santa Claus.
I firmly agree with your indictments of the media but if they were really fooling no one, Trump would have pulled out a victory, as it looks now, that is not the case. We are still full of stupid people.
A. Cady, the GOP led Senate Intel Comm Report released this August confirms and documents the Trump campaign collusion with Russians. You can read it here:
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/report_volume5.pdf
Yes, I don’t really care what Democrats snuck into a report. We had a Special Counsel that came back with nothing. We would’t need a Special Counsel if we trusted investigations to politicians… That is asking criminals to investigate themselves.
A. Cady, the report was written under a GOP led majority that worked on it for a couple of years, conducting numerous hearings, and interviewing witnesses. Democrats didn’t “sneak in” the conclusions.
The Mueller Report found insufficient evidence for a criminal conspiracy, but specifically and pointedly did not address collusion which it made clear is not a legal term, while documenting pretty much all the same points of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia that the Senate Report did.
Again – this nonsense has been thoroughly debunked.
the FACTS are currently available to ALL.
If your claim was correct – instead of this ludicrously stupid appeal to authority based on your personal twisted interpretation of a tiny part of a 1000 page report, you would cite actual facts.
Name specific instances in which someone fro the Trump campaign knowingly gave or recieved assistance from anyone working at the direction of the Kremlin ?
The closest actual example we have of that is HFA paying for the Steele Dossier which was primarily written by a likely Russian agent in the Brookings institute who was handled by a Known Russian Dupe.
Please indicate in instance where anyone in the Trump Campaign sought and received election asistance from actual russian agents.
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/report_volume5.pdf
Why do you think a link to something that barely says what you claim – in among lots of damning things to your own argument that you ignore and is demonstrably wrong on the facts is relevant ?
“You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”
Daniel Patricjk Moynihan.
The facts are all well known at this point.
There was no collusion. There was not even actual contact between the Trump campaign and anyone actually part of the Russian government. Something that can not be siad of Hillary For America
A. Cady. FYI- Joe Friday is a Chicom troll.
FYI, Rhodes is a Russian troll.
We have been through this garbage before – over and over.
A few cherry picked twisted and demonstrably false lines in a 1000 page report are not confirmation of anything.
The only actual “collusion” with russia that has been established by evidence is that of Clinton.