Month: June 2020

Steve M makes a good point here. It may not be Trump who refuses to accept the results of the election. According to the new Melania book, he was prepared to slink over to his golf club in Scotland rather than have to face Clinton’s victory:

[T]he election results might still be disputed — by rank-and-file voters, the right-wing media, and state and local GOP officials.

If a new Politico story is accurate, the latter group is living in a world of epistemic closure — they don’t believe the polls, they don’t believe a Biden victory is possible, and, implicitly, they won’t believe the result in November even if Joe Biden wins decisively. They might just be repeating the company line to a reporter, but it sounds to me as if they genuinely believe what they’re saying:

“The more bad things happen in the country, it just solidifies support for Trump,” said Phillip Stephens, GOP chairman in Robeson County, N.C., one of several rural counties in that swing state that shifted from supporting Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016. “We’re calling him ‘Teflon Trump.’ Nothing’s going to stick, because if anything, it’s getting more exciting than it was in 2016.”

This year, Stephens said, “We’re thinking landslide.”

… from the Eastern seaboard to the West Coast and the battlegrounds in between, there is an overriding belief that, just as Trump defied political gravity four years ago, there’s no reason he won’t do it again.

… Lawrence Tabas, the chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, went so far as to predict that Trump would not only carry his state, but beat Biden by more than 100,000 votes — more than twice the margin he mustered in 2016.

“Contrary to what may be portrayed in the media, there’s still a high level of support out there,” said Kyle Hupfer, chairman of the Indiana Republican Party. He described himself as “way more” optimistic than he was at this point in 2016.

… in the states, the Republican Party’s rank-and-file are largely unconvinced that the president is precariously positioned in his reelection bid.

“The narrative from the Beltway is not accurate,” said Joe Bush, chairman of the Republican Party in Muskegon County, Mich., which Trump lost narrowly in 2016. “Here in the heartland, everybody is still very confident, more than ever.”

… At the center of the disconnect between Trump loyalists’ assessment of the state of the race and the one based on public opinion polls is a distrust of polling itself. Republicans see an industry that maliciously oversamples Democrats or under-samples the white, non-college educated voters who are most likely to support Trump. They say it is hard to know who likely voters are this far from the election. And like many Democrats, they suspect Trump supporters disproportionately hang up on pollsters, under-counting his level of support.

Ted Lovdahl, chairman of the Republican Party in Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District, said he has friends who will tell pollsters “just exactly the opposite of what they feel.”

When he asked one of them why, his friend told him, “I don’t like some of their questions. It’s none of their business what I do.”

Steve M wonders the same thing I do:

Joe Biden won’t really win by that 14-point margin seen in a recent CNN poll. He might not win at all. But there’s a decent chance he could win by 5 to 7 points, with a decisive Electoral College margin. Will these local Republican leaders believe the results? Will GOP voters? Will Fox News and Republican elected officials give up and accept the results, or will they claim that five or six million votes were cast fraudulently?

The rank and file Trump voters have been brainwashed more thoroughly than any faction since the South in the civil war. Between Trump himself, Fox News, right-wing media, Facebook and hate radio, they are convinced he is hugely popular and it’s only the mainstream media that’s making it seem to be even close. They will be seriously confused and upset.

Trump may take off for his golf club and hole up there so he doesn’t have to face his own ignominy. But his people have nowhere to go. And they may not accept this challenge to everything they were led to believe. It could be … ugly.

After all, remember how ugly it was when he won?

Have we had enough of this?

The video is about 18 months old and comes from a half-hour from me.

MSNBC’s Joy Reid saw the video at the top and tweeted, “This video had my heart racing, just waiting for one or more of those cops to shoot this man. Wheeewwww… well he was both incredibly brave and yes, he knew his rights. And why did it take 6 cops in battle gear and one with his hand on his gun the WHOLE TIME just to TALK??”

I’m not one to walk around with a firearm on my hip, even if it is legal to. The videographer was attempting to make a point, but at least he got out of there alive. And like Pam Keith, I also remember something about state capital buildings and armed men. A couple of somethings.

Police in the Michigan state capitol (above) were not just outgunned. They were outnumbered.

These men below got to walk around metal detectors in Kentucky without being surrounded and asked their business. One guard asks one if they had a safe drive.

But these armed men? There was something different about them.

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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.

The GOP got rid of the odious right-wing racist Steve King and replaced him with another right-winger. The Democrats got rid of the odious right-wing opponent of same-sex marriage and Obamacare Dan Lipinski and replaced him with a progressive.

Now it appears that the Republicans have ousted one of the few remaining humane members of their caucus and will replace him with yet another right-wing Trumpist:

Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), who became a target of conservatives after officiating a same-sex wedding last year, was ousted Saturday by GOP voters in a drive-thru district convention.

Convention-goers picked Bob Good, a former county supervisor who ran to Riggleman’s right, especially on social issues, to be the party’s nominee in the general election. Good won the support of 58 percent of delegates who voted on Saturday, the district GOP chairman, Melvin Adams, said.

Good’s victory came after a day-long convention held in the parking lot of a central Virginia church. He ran as a staunch social conservative, campaigning on a traditional view of marriage, his support to make English the official language of the U.S. and to end birthright citizenship.

Good’s victory came after a day-long convention held in the parking lot of a central Virginia church. He ran as a staunch social conservative, campaigning on a traditional view of marriage, his support to make English the official language of the U.S. and to end birthright citizenship.

Riggleman is claiming the vote was rigged, of course. But it probably wasn’t.

It hurts to look at it. But we have to.

You didn’t think they were did you?

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that ending qualified immunity for police officers is “off the table” for Republicans, and that “any poison pill in legislation means we get nothing done.” 

 Ending “qualified immunity,” a legal doctrine that makes it all but impossible to successfully sue police officers, is one of several policy proposals that has gained traction on the left.

• Scott has been tasked with spearheading Senate Republicans’ reform proposal. He told CBS’ Margaret Brennan that his legislation will focus on increasing information sharing, reforming training and tactics to prioritize de-escalation, and changing how departments deal with officer misconduct.
• Scott said he’s interested in de-certification of officers who engage in misconduct, but said that police unions are opposed to that idea and it’s unlikely to get support from the left.

“From the Republican perspective and the president sent the signal that qualified immunity is off the table. They see that as a poison pill on our side. We could use a de-certification of officer, except for the law enforcement unions say that’s a poison pill. So we’re going to have to find a path that helps us reduce misconduct within the officers. But at the same time, we know that any poison pill in legislation means we get nothing done. That sends the wrong signal, perhaps the worst signal, right now in America. I think we’re going to have legislation that can be negotiated, that gets us to the place where something becomes law that actually makes a difference. That’s got to be our goal. 

— Sen. Tim Scott

 House Democrats have introduced a sweeping police reform package that includes proposals like banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants and removing qualified immunity for police officers.

• The “Justice in Policing Act of 2020” aims to broaden police accountability by tracking “problematic” officers through a national misconduct registry for officers over actions in the field.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) later told “Face the Nation” that he’s spoken to Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) and that ending qualified immunity is still “on the table.”

I’d imagine that they will draw out negotiations for as long as possible in the hopes that the urgency will die down and they can just end in a stalemate. Republicans are terrified of their base and I think it’s fair to say that Trump channels them quite well: Dominate! Law and Order! Take back the streets!

It’s possible that they will be forced to pass something but I’ll be shocked if it’s anything even remotely meaningful. But policing is always much more a state and local issue anyway so that’s where the progress will be. It would be nice if the Justice Department did its part in overseeing the investigation of civil rights violations but I’m afraid that will have to wait until a Democratic administration.

In fact, I think almost everything will have to wait until we get a Democratic administration. Let’s hope that happens in January. If not, we’ll have even bigger problems.

They all seem determined to get COVID. It’s the weirdest thing:

People burned letters informing them that they can vote by absentee ballot in future elections during a protest near Grand Rapids.

The applications were burned Friday during an event called Operation Incinerator outside the DeltaPlex Arena in Walker. Many people had flags, shirts and signs showing support for President Donald Trump and Republicans.

“For them just to issue them without merit, without request to absolutely everybody — that is a great waste of taxpayer money,” said Michael Farage, president of the Grand Rapids Taxpayers Association.

At this point, if it weren’t for the fact that they will spread it to people who don’t deserve it, I honestly don’t think I’d care.

I noted in the post below that Americans are living in denial about the coronavirus. Trump is wallowing in denial about everything. This Daily Beast article looks at the ridiculous episode last week in which Trump’s lawyers actually sent a cease and desist letter to CNN for publishing poll results they didn’t like:

In one respect, it was just the latest effort by the president’s aides to attempt to satisfy the boss’ appetite for retribution. But it also revealed an element of the Trump political operation that has increasingly demanded time, money, and attention—mainly, the task of convincing Trump that the electoral landscape and polling deficits he faces aren’t as dire as he’s been hearing. 

“This helps keep the president from flying into a rage as much as he otherwise would,” said a White House official who’s been in the room for these types of sessions.

On June 4, for instance, the president convened multiple meetings at the White House with top officials in his administration and from his campaign, including his son-in-law and White House aide Jared Kushner and campaign manager Brad Parscale, to have a series of discussions about strategy and communications. According to a person familiar with one of those gatherings, Trump sounded impressed that the support among his conservative base had remained solid in the presented data given recent media coverage and the maelstrom of crises he’d been facing.

At one point, members of the president’s team began briefing him on the campaign’s own private polling, much of which did not look favorable. They sought to reassure the president by telling him that their numbers showed a large “enthusiasm gap” between Trump and Biden voters, and that much of the public polling wasn’t to be trusted, according to two sources familiar with the meeting. In particular, they argued that public polls skew in favor of the Democratic Party at this time because polling firms were polling registered voters and not “likely voters.” 

In the characterization of one source close to the president, a chunk of the re-election team focuses on proving to the president that his “dumpster-fire numbers” aren’t as bad as they seem, or reinforcing Trump’s conviction that pollsters get it wrong “all the time.”

But not everyone on Team Trump is buying the spin. In fact, efforts to pacify the president about the polls and his campaign’s position ahead of November have been undercut from within, with several key advisers making personal entreaties to Trump in the past few weeks to try to convince him that he should not brush off the numbers, even unpleasant ones that comes from news organizations such as CNN. 

“I have told the president that the numbers are real and that I believe he can and will win, but that right now it looks bad,” said a Republican who recently spoke to Trump. “He said, ‘Come on, don’t you know that’s all fake?’ But in a lot of these internal numbers [that I’ve seen], we’re way down right now.”

“Something needs to change,” the Trump ally added.

This person wasn’t the only one sounding the alarm over the past month. Two other sources who’ve spoken to the president lately—one of whom is a senior administration official—said that when the topic of polls came up they advised Trump that the surveys on swing states and key demographics seemed bleak. Both said they were concerned the president wasn’t taking them as seriously as they had wished. 

Outside the campaign, a belief has grown that the Pollyannaish advisers surrounding the president—and who are feeding him news that won’t puncture his feel-good bubble—are doing a disservice to both their clients and their professions. 

“There are a few pollsters who are bought and paid for, and they will tell you [the client] what you want to hear,” Frank Luntz, a famed-GOP pollster and Trump-skeptical conservative, said, without naming names. “There are pollsters [for whom] if the check is big enough, the lie will be big enough.”

“I don’t envy those who have to tell Donald Trump what he doesn’t want to hear,” Luntz continued. “I’ve met him several times, I’ve met Biden several times. I would rather present bad [polling] information to Biden than Donald Trump. Presenting bad information or tough information to Joe Biden, you’ll break his heart, if you present tough information to Donald Trump, he breaks your arm.”

But some Trump confidants are more willing to take the chance of harm than others. Late last month, David Bossie and Corey Lewandowski, two prominent informal advisers to the president, visited the White House to warn Trump that his electoral prospects were deteriorating in certain states crucial to securing a second term in office. Lewandowski, who also serves as a senior adviser to Trump 2020, has often second-guessed official campaign strategy, while whispering in the president’s ear that his current aides are failing him.

The Trump campaign counters that the surveys that have shown him trailing Biden do not account for the economic turn around that they believe is taking place, which the president and his allies have dubbed the “Great American Comeback.” 

The campaign has also argued that their own secret polls give Trump the edge over a “defined” Joe Biden—a descriptor that is both unscientific and a concession that the campaign has so far failed to effectively define its opponent with just a few months left before election night.

That’s because Trump needs constant reassurance that his boasts are real and anything that contradicts that threatens his entire worldview and sense of himself. His psyche is always on a very rickety foundation. These crises have shaken it beyond anything he’s ever experienced.

Some comments from the health director of Tulsa:

“COVID is here in Tulsa, it is transmitting very efficiently,” Dart said. “I wish we could postpone this to a time when the virus isn’t as large a concern as it is today.”

Dart said his concern stems from a sudden spike in cases he said likely comes from a combination of factors, but not increased testing. Health department data shows Tulsa County’s 7-day rolling average for COVID-19 cases has risen from 24.9 cases on June 7 to 51.4 as of Friday.

About the same number of people have been tested for COVID-19 in Tulsa for the past few weeks, and Dart said several highly attended private events and “quarantine fatigue” have led to back-to-back record high numbers of new Tulsa County cases reported Friday and Saturday.

Dart said he acknowledges the desire to go back to life before the virus, but it remains a threat for large groups or those not heeding warnings.

“There was a funeral that had a large attendance and we’re finding quite a few cases from that,” Dart said. “But other than that, it’s broad community spread from being out in the community and not taking those necessary precautions we’ve been talking about.

“People are not staying home now, they’re out and about. I completely understand that, staying closed just wasn’t feasible economically and from an emotional, physical perspective.

So if we’re going to be out, we shouldn’t be in enclosed spaces and we shouldn’t have extended contact with other people because that’s where the risk lies.”

Large groups of people outside the arena pose a risk for more infections in a short period of time, possibly enough to overwhelm local hospitals’ and the healthcare system’s ability to treat COVID-19 cases, Dart said.

Between the crowds inside and out, as well as those coming to Tulsa to attend the rally, Dart said the situation is a convergence of factors that don’t point to a good outcome.

“A large indoor rally with 19-20,000 people is a huge risk factor today in Tulsa, Oklahoma,” Dart said. “ … I want to make sure we can keep everyone in that building safe, including the president.”

America has decided that the coronavirus is over, no matter how many people get sick and die. It’s a very interesting experiment in mass denial.

Personally, I think Trump and Pence should just hand out cups of kool-aid at the rallies and get it over with. COVID is an awful way to die.

Political scientist Rachel Bitecofer last night pointed to the Economist’s Democracy Index 2019, dubbed “a year of democratic setbacks and popular protest.” In its survey of democracies in 165 independent states and two territories, the United States ranks 25th in the world, somewhere below Chile and into the “flawed democracy” category.

Jordan and Kuwait tie for the top position in the “authoritarian regime” category at 114, making that either something for the Donald Trump administration to crow about or else to shoot for.

Considering Trump now “leads” the world’s most enduring democracy, you would think he might care about little details like that ranking. But since his marketing professor at Wharton considered him “the dumbest goddam student I ever had,” scores likely were never as important to him as his image. One might assume from the acting president’s affection for authoritarians, flash grenades, and tear gas that getting a high score in democracy was not his idea of greatness anyway. Tanks in the streets are. Whatever MAGA cult members thought they were buying in November 2016, a high score in democracy wasn’t it.

Frank Rich considers the election last week in blue-trending Georgia (the North American one) a preview of our teetering democracy’s coming attractions:

The white supremacist party’s game plan to counter that threat was made clear this week: utter chaos. There was a breakdown in voting machines (purchased from a vendor with close ties to the Republican governor, Brian Kemp) that centered on black neighborhoods in Atlanta (including the one where Martin Luther King grew up), and a breakdown in mail voting that led to even [Stacey] Abrams herself receiving a defective ballot.

This is just a glimpse of what will be a national effort. Trump and his party will use any means they can to abridge the right to vote — whether it be this week’s vote by the Republican-majority senate in Iowa to restrict mail ballots, or White House inaction on Russian election interference, or the administration’s ongoing enabling of a COVID-19 second wave that can be exploited to sow further chaos into the electoral process right through Election Day.

Trump may or may not be at the tipping point. The country is.

Events surrounding the deaths by police of George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis and Rayshard Brooks on June 12 in Atlanta have the whole world watching for which way the United States tips.

Perceiving that a revival of The Recent Unpleasantness might not work to Trump’s electoral advantage (no matter the candidate’s inclinations), someone has prevailed on him to reschedule his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma from its original Juneteenth (6/19) date. Tulsa was the site of the largest white massacre of blacks in America history one hundred years ago. And with Juneteenth being the annual celebration of the end of slavery, the campaign seems to believe a MAGA rally in Tulsa on that date would be over the top even for Trump.

David Frum observes that this backing-off demonstrates the campaign (if not Trump) understands how weak he is right now.

“This time, 2020, Trump’s own people must be telling him that his divide-and-win tactics have bumped into hostile electoral math,” Frum wrote in a tweet thread. “‘American carnage’ is a political attack for a challenger, not a political defense for an incumbent.”

With the likelihood of protests and possible police violence in “the heart of Trump country” at a Tulsa rally, “He’s confronting a responsibility he cannot dodge, at a time when his only political trick has ceased to work for him.” The police shooting of Rayshard Brooks and likely another wave or international protests makes the decision appear both prudent and further confirmation of his weakness.

Trump allies in the hinterlands are already bending in these political winds. But only so far.

The legislature in North Carolina on Friday passed and Gov. Roy Cooper (D) signed H1169, the “Bipartisan Elections Act of 2020. Despite 2018’s Republican absentee ballot scandal in the 9th Congressional District, the bill provides a modicum of relief for voters hoping to vote absentee to avoid both lines at the polls and coronavirus infections. (Still on the rise here, BTW.)

The bill “liberalizes” the absentee ballot process for the COVID-19 age. Voters will no longer need two witnesses or a notary to validate their sealed ballot envelopes. One witness or a notary will do. Voters may now make their requests by email or fax, and will be able to track their ballot submissions online.

Liberalizing, yes, but only to a point. Not wanting a repeat of Michigan’s sending out absentee ballot requests to every registered voter, North Carolina Republicans made sure any state or county board of elections employee “who knowingly sends or delivers an absentee ballot to any person who has not requested an absentee ballot … shall be guilty of a Class I felony.” Furthermore, the legislation makes clear the Executive Director or State Board of Elections shall not order an election using all mail-in absentee ballots. “Under no circumstances.”

Whether this experiment in self-governance survives another cycle may depend on voters utilizing one of several avenues for casting their ballots to prevent mischief in one from bringing down the entire effort. Moving to absentee ballots is part of that. We need to “flatten the curve” on how and when people vote this fall, I wrote recently. Expanding absentee voting to supplement early- and election-day voting makes it a third leg in a democratic strategic triad.

Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog confirmed that approach days later on MSNBC’s “All in with Chris Hayes.” Hasen said, “People need to be requesting absentee ballots just as soon as they’re allowed to. We have to flatten the absentee ballot request curve.”

This democracy may be groaning with growing pains or struggling to breathe its last. But it is not done yet.

Democracy Index editor Joan Hoey sees hope in the wave of global protests, writing, “The global march of democracy stalled in the 2000s and retreated in the second decade of the 21st century. But the recent wave of protest in the developing world and the populist insurgency in the mature democracies show the potential for democratic renewal.”

That gives us something to hope for. But renewal will not happen without action on all our parts.

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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.