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https://twitter.com/actdottv/status/1296881001168158720?s=20

And they still know.

Read this whole thing. It’s important:

November 14, 8:37 a.m. my phone rings. I do a double take on my caller ID and realize who is calling. I take a deep breath and answer the phone. The next 30 minutes and 32 seconds would be a conversation that was nothing short of surreal.

My discussion with Senator Ron Johnson was one that I have hesitated openly discussing for three weeks. As a former chairman for the Brown County Republican Party, I have people I respect deeply who are still members of the party. There are many elected officials whom I consider friends and I do not want to give reason to think twice about any conversation we have. Additionally, I didn’t want my family to become a target, especially with my wife days from giving birth to our child. However, given what was discussed, and given the war that leaders of the GOP such as Senator Johnson are waging on the very foundations of our democracy, I could no longer stay silent.

The TL;DR of the call was this: Senator Johnson knows that Joe Biden won a free and fair election. He is refusing to admit it publicly and stoking conspiracies that undermine our democracy solely because it would be “political suicide” to oppose Trump. I find this unconscionable.

Full disclosure, I initiated our exchange when I gave Senator Johnson a phone call on November 6 and left him a message. I told him I wanted to discuss, among other things, the direction in which the GOP is headed and my hopes that we could leave some of the more bigoted and conspiratorial elements of Trumpism behind now that the president had lost. I never thought Sen. Johnson would return my call given how outspoken I have been over the past four years. As a local elected official in 2016, I endorsed and campaigned for his opponent, Russ Feingold. This year I was featured in an ad for Republican Voters Against Trump. Yet there we were, on November 14, talking like we used to, many years ago.

I opened the conversation by remarking on my concern for the party. I reiterated that what the GOP is doing and the direction it is going are unsustainable. The GOP has become the party of Donald Trump, and Trumpism has become the doctrine upon which everything else is built; they are one and the same. Senator Johnson spoke about the massive amounts of people Donald Trump brought into the party, many of whom have never cared about politics before. He said that “yes, Donald Trump is an asshole,” but the votes that Trump received, especially in Wisconsin, cannot be overlooked. Senator Johnson talked about how, prior to November 3, Johnson received the highest number of Republican votes in the history of the state of Wisconsin. His goal going into his 2016 re-election was to get 1.5 million votes. He failed to reach that in 2016, while President Trump did in 2020, despite losing. (It did not seem to occur to Senator Johnson that President Trump motivated massive, greater turnout in opposition to him than he did in support.)

Senator Johnson argued that that kind of message from Republican voters was one that he received loud and clear.

In every conversation, we have moments where we look back and wish we said something differently. This is one of those cases. I wish I had reminded the senator that he is not just a senator for Wisconsin Republicans, but a senator for all of Wisconsin. And although the message from Wisconsin Republicans was a strong one, the message from Wisconsin itself was much clearer: It was a rejection of Trumpism, and of the politics of division and toxicity which has poisoned our communities.

Senator Johnson  then asked me if I had ever been to a Trump rally. I chuckled and responded that I had not. He said that I should have gone because if I did, I would have seen that the one constant throughout all his rallies was, “the people there absolutely love America.” I reminded him that in every speech I gave as a Republican county chairman, I asked those in attendance to stop calling Democrats the “enemy.” I would say, “Democrats aren’t the enemy. We both love our country and want to make it a better place. We just have different ways to achieve that goal.” And I told him that “I would be willing to bet that at any rally Bernie Sanders or AOC held, you would see a crowd who loved America just as much.”

Johnson scoffed and said, “Absolutely not. Bernie Sanders and AOC want to fundamentally change our country. And you can’t love something you want to fundamentally change.” I disagreed and believe this is a toxic way to look at our politics. But we moved on.

Next we covered the election results. I said I was both frustrated and gravely concerned about how the GOP is continuing to advance disproved conspiracy theories regarding the integrity of the election. Senator Johnson said that he knew and accepted the fact that Joe Biden had won. I asked why he wouldn’t say so at a moment  when Trump was taking a sledgehammer to the very foundation of our democracy. Senator Johnson replied that the institutions of our democracy are strong enough to withstand what is going on.  This response shocked me, since it suggested that the truth was ultimately unimportant and that Sen. Johnson viewed what the president was doing as someone else’s problem.

Here’s the thing. Ron Johnson knows that this  is BS. Because five years ago he said so. In 2015 he introduced legislation streamlining the transition process, saying “the peaceful transition of power is one of the hallmarks of our democracy. It is also an enormous undertaking requiring months of planning in order to be successful.”

Here he was five years later on the phone with me saying that he knows Biden won. But simultaneously refusing to publicly congratulate Biden and standing in the way of his transition.

And since then, Sen. Johnson’s performance has gone even further. On Tuesday, Attorney General Bill Barr announced that he had found no evidence of fraud that would rise to the level of altering the outcome of the election. Senator Johnson then said  that Barr needed to “show evidence”—meaning:  a negative—and that he still thinks “there’s enough questions outstanding.”

Ron Johnson said the attorney general should “show everybody” his evidence about no mass fraud because “there’s enough suspicions” and “irregularities” there

Asked if he's not satisfied with Barr's conclusion, Johnson added: "I think there is still enough questions outstanding”

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 1, 2020

After dismissing the notion that being honest with his constituents about election integrity was important, Sen. Johnson said that although Biden had won, he was, “the worst candidate for president in the history of the country.” He said that Biden won strictly because of all the hatred for Trump that was advanced by the media every single day. We spoke of organizations such as the Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump. Johnson said that he loathed these organizations because “they are money-grubbing pieces of shit.” He said that these organizations and the media refused to accept all the good things Trump has done, “even though he [Trump] is an asshole, he was right on so many things.” He talked about his displeasure for the “political establishment.” He said that he “honestly doesn’t even much care for Mitch McConnell,” because of his entrenchment within said establishment.

The senator talked about Trump being right on the First Step Act, right on China, and right on the economy. He said that Trump had so many accomplishments but that nobody wants to talk about them because everyone hates his guts. He said that with him, “it’s really about what’s right and what’s wrong,” and in his mind Trump was right on so many things. I asked him that if it truly is about right versus wrong, why doesn’t he call out what Trump does wrong?

His answer: In essence, that it would be political suicide.

To his credit, Senator Johnson was incredibly cordial. We had a respectful discussion, even though we passionately disagree. He did not come off at all like the person you see on TV. He was not the aloof, abrasive persona he puts on when he’s on Fox. Also to his credit, he even criticized Wisconsin Republicans for not working enough with the Evers administration regarding the COVID-19 crisis that has been ripping through America’s Dairyland. (Which is another thing I wish he’d say publicly.)

Our discussion was mostly based in reality. (With the one exception being Johnson’s assertion to me that  Joe Biden “has Lewy body dementia.”) The senator understands Joe Biden’s victory.

The problem is he refuses to live in that reality publicly, because of political considerations.

Looking back at the disaster these last four years have been, I hope that my speaking out gives those on the right a permission structure to come back to the world of facts. You can support the good things President Trump did without lying about how our elections were rigged by Venezuela. Conspiracies and alternate realities are causing our society to crumble. We can’t move forward together when we acknowledge reality in private and then peddle falsehoods in public. It’s bad enough when people in the media do this. But we need more from our elected officials.

They are servants, first and foremost. Servants not just of one party, but of all their constituents. They owe us more.

It’s not too late, Senator Johnson. Just tell America what you told me.

He is the greatest con man that ever lived in America.

And these people can’t admit it because it would expose them as the dupes they are.

Brett Fryar is a middle-class Republican. A 50-year-old chiropractor in this west Texas town, he owns a small business. He has two undergraduate degrees and a master’s degree, in organic chemistry. He attends Southcrest Baptist Church in nearby Lubbock.

Fryar didn’t much like Donald Trump at first, during the U.S. president’s 2016 campaign. He voted for Texas Senator Ted Cruz in the Republican primaries.

Now, Fryar says he would go to war for Trump. He has joined the newly formed South Plains Patriots, a group of a few hundred members that includes a “reactionary” force of about three dozen – including Fryar and his son, Caleb – who conduct firearms training.

Nothing will convince Fryar and many others here in Sundown – including the town’s mayor, another Patriots member – that Democrat Joe Biden won the Nov. 3 presidential election fairly. They believe Trump’s stream of election-fraud allegations and say they’re preparing for the possibility of a “civil war” with the American political left.

“If President Trump comes out and says: ‘Guys, I have irrefutable proof of fraud, the courts won’t listen, and I’m now calling on Americans to take up arms,’ we would go,” said Fryar, wearing a button-down shirt, pressed slacks and a paisley tie during a recent interview at his office.

The unshakable trust in Trump in this town of about 1,400 residents reflects a national phenomenon among many Republicans, despite the absence of evidence in a barrage of post-election lawsuits by the president and his allies. About half of Republicans polled by Reuters/Ipsos said Trump “rightfully won” the election but had it stolen from him in systemic fraud favoring Biden, according to a survey conducted between Nov. 13 and 17. Just 29% of Republicans said Biden rightfully won. Other polls since the election have reported that an even higher proportion – up to 80% – of Republicans trust Trump’s baseless fraud narrative.

In Reuters interviews with 50 Trump voters, all said they believed the election was rigged or in some way illegitimate. Of those, 20 said they would consider accepting Biden as their president, but only in light of proof that the election was conducted fairly. Most repeated debunked conspiracy theories espoused by Trump, Republican officials and conservative media claiming that millions of votes were dishonestly switched to Biden in key states by biased poll workers and hacked voting machines.

Many voters interviewed by Reuters said they formed their opinions by watching emergent right-wing media outlets such as Newsmax and One American News Network that have amplified Trump’s fraud claims. Some have boycotted Fox News out of anger that the network called Biden the election winner and that some of its news anchors – in contrast to its opinion show stars – have been skeptical of Trump’s fraud allegations.

“I just sent Fox News an email,” Fryar said, telling the network: “You’re the only news I’ve watched for the last six years, but I will not watch you anymore.”

I think we can see the problem, can’t we? These people are being informed by a toxic stream of disinformation and propaganda and it’s metastasizing on social media and traditional media. I don’t think we have any hope of a vaccine for that.

GOP politicians are excitedly taking notes:

It may not be the last time. Many Republicans see attacks on election integrity as a winning issue for future campaigns – including the next presidential race, according to one Republican operative close to the Trump campaign. The party, the person said, is setting up a push for “far more stringent oversight on voting procedures in 2024,” when the party’s nominee will likely be Trump or his anointed successor.

Translation: “stringent” vote suppression. I don’t think there will be any hope of that during a Democratic administration. But in the those swing states that are run by Republicans you can bet that Democrats will be forced to walk on hot coals to vote in 2024 — particularly African Americans and other racial minorities.

Meanwhile, Republicans in this country are increasingly deluded:

In Grant County, West Virginia – a mountainous region where more than 88% of voters backed the president – trust in Trump runs deep. Janet Hedrick, co-owner of the Smoke Hole Caverns log cabin resort in the small town of Cabins, said she would never accept Biden as a legitimate president.

“There’s millions and millions of Trump votes that were just thrown out,” said Hedrick, 70, a retired teacher and librarian. “That computer was throwing them out.”

At the Sunset Restaurant in Moorefield, West Virginia – a diner featuring omelettes, hotcakes and waitresses who remember your order – a mention of the election sparked a spirited discussion at one table. Gene See, a retired highway construction inspector, and Bob Hyson, a semi-retired insurance sales manager, said Trump had been cheated, that Biden had dementia and that Democrats planned all along to quickly replace Biden with his more liberal running mate for vice president, Kamala Harris.

“I think if they ever get to the bottom of it, they will find massive fraud,” said another of the diners, Larry Kessel, a 67-year-old farmer.

Kessel’s wife, Jane, patted him on the arm, trying to calm him, as he grew agitated while railing against anti-Trump media bias.

Trump’s rage against the media has lately included rants against Fox News. He has pushed his supporters towards more right-wing outlets such as Newsmax and One America News Network, which have championed the president’s fraud claims.

Rory Wells, 51, a New Jersey lawyer who attended a pro-Trump “stop the steal” election protest in Trenton last week, said he now watches Newsmax because Fox isn’t sufficiently conservative.

“I like that I get to hear from Rudy Giuliani and others who are not immediately discounted as being crazy,” he said of Trump’s lead election lawyer.

In Sundown, Texas, Mayor Jonathan Strickland said there’s “no way in hell” Biden won fairly. The only way he’ll believe it, he said, is if Trump himself says so.

“Trump is the only one we’ve been able to trust for the last four years,” said Strickland, an oilfield production engineer. “As far as the civil war goes, I don’t think it’s off the table.”

If it comes to a fight, Caleb Fryar is ready. But the 26-year-old son of Brett Fryar, the chiropractor, said he hoped Trump’s fraud allegations would instead spark a massive mobilization of Republican voters in future elections.

Asked whether Trump might be duping his followers, he said it’s hard to fathom.

“If I’m being manipulated by Trump … then he is the greatest con man that ever lived in America,” Caleb Fryar said. “I think he’s the greatest patriot that ever lived.”

Will these people ever come down to earth? I don’t know. I sure hope their parachute opens.

(And yes, I realize we don’t need to focus on the Trump voters, but this article discusses the sources of their delusion and I think that is something we have to face whether we like it or not.)

A concern troll in a local Facebook forum fretted yesterday about “those responsible for counting ballots,” about the “temptation for cheating,” and about observers “denied access to vote counting areas.” Do poll officials act “with integrity”? Clearly someone spending too much time listening to the wrong people online who know too little and are easily misled.

Coincidentally, this USA Today story about election integrity popped up from coastal North Carolina:

The integrity of the 2020 election became especially personal for Brunswick County Elections Director Sara Knotts on Nov. 13 when she had to ask her elections board to reject her mother’s ballot.

Knotts felt obligated to do this because her mother had submitted an absentee ballot in September, then died on Oct. 11, several weeks before the Nov. 3 Election Day.

North Carolina election law requires voters to be alive on Election Day. This includes voters who cast their ballots early by mail-in absentee ballot or via in-person early voting.

The Brunswick County Board of Elections voted unanimously to remove the absentee ballot of 62-year-old Anne Ashcraft of Winnabow because she was deceased as of Nov. 3 and therefore not qualified to participate in the election.

Hardest thing I've done as an elections administrator: present a challenge against the absentee ballot cast by my mom. In NC, the qualifications to vote are judged on election day. She passed away from glioblastoma after submitting her ballot but before Nov 3. #electionintegrity

— Sara LaVere (@SaraLaVere) November 13, 2020

Do dead people vote? In every election! Just as Anne Ashcraft did. In some states those votes still count. Just not here. (I lost an aunt in the Midwest to old age just before the election; her absentee vote did not count either.)

People who run elections here are top-notch. People who work Election Day polls do it to give back to the community. You can’t pry them out of those jobs until they themselves give out. They don’t do it for the money. Their work is a source of pride.

And by the way, vote-counting is done by machine here and backed up by random hand-counted audits overseen by bipartisan teams. Same for full hand-recounts performed after machine recounts. Initial recounts are done by machine to look for discrepancies.

Are mistakes made? In what human endeavor are they not?

When the Brunswick County Board of Elections took up Ashcraft’s ballot on Friday, Knotts stepped aside and had another elections staff person present the case.

Board members on Friday praised Knotts for her honesty just before they took the vote.

This is what integrity looks like. For real. It is far more prevalent than conspiracists suppose.

This has been a tumultuous week, to say the least. But if there was one silver lining — even before Joe Biden’s apparent or imminent victory — it was the blessed 36 hours in which we didn’t have to hear Donald Trump’s voice. After his obnoxious declaration of victory at 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning, he stuck to primal tweeting until Thursday evening when he emerged to make the worst speech of his career. He disconsolately rattled off a fantasy laundry list of voting irregularities and declared, “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.” Reading haltingly from a script, he rambled about media conspiracies and lied about vote-rigging, saying, “Ultimately, I have a feeling judges are going to have to rule” which he has always believed was his failsafe. It set a new standard for awful, which is really saying something.

Once again, a majority of Americans were no doubt horrified, embarrassed and frightened that their so-called president was declaring the American system that elected him to be corrupt because he is now on track to lose.

If you wondered where Trump was getting all these alleged horror stories, you need look no further than his favorite news network. It’s on Fox News that the conspiracy theories and propaganda have been disseminated to the faithful who were already primed to believe that a Biden presidency cannot be legitimate because Trump told them so. He is continuing to tell them so, and there’s a good chance that a large number of Americans will never accept the legitimacy of this election based upon Trump’s outrageous lies to cover for his failure. Here’s a little taste of what they’re seeing:

LOL! Newt compares Trump's apparent loss with the battle of Gettysburg pic.twitter.com/UGdGcAE1vA

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 6, 2020

After watching Trump’s atrocious speech, I thought perhaps the Republican establishment might take a breath and do one of those “Goldwater walks” to the White House to tell Trump it was time to hang up the gloves. It really was that bad. As usual, that was a vain hope. There have been a few half-hearted remonstrations from former GOP officials and commentators. Beyond Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a longtime Trump critic, and Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who’s been lukewarm toward Trump all along, hardly any prominent Republicans have spoken out. 

Trump’s adult sons have taken their angry demands to social media, urging elected Republicans to step up in defense of their father, and saying they would “remember” who failed. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri stepped up to announce that he was very concerned about the “confusion” and would introduce “election integrity” legislation. Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas also jumped in to back Trump, without being entirely specific about his claims. Advertisement:Trump may lose 2020, but his followers havegrownGo To Video Page

But it was Lindsey Graham, the newly re-elected senator from South Carolina, who outdid himself, going on Fox News and slobbering all over the camera, apparently vying for the dubious honor of most obsequious Trump bootlicker of the week:

Lindsey Graham tells Hannity he's donating $500,000 to Trump's legal defense fund, then says, "I've been on your show. You've raised a ton of money for me." pic.twitter.com/BnmBvO6490

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 6, 2020

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a likely 2024 candidate, also got in on the action:

We need transparency. Now. pic.twitter.com/fHmXivl6Y5

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) November 6, 2020

This “observer” hysteria was resolved earlier. But apparently they’ve decided this is the magic bullet that, in some unknown fashion, may require a do-over of the whole election. Or, if Sean Hannity has his way, maybe just have Trump declared president for life.

You’ll notice that with the exception of Haley, all the Republican luminaries rushing to Trump’s defense are members of the U.S. Senate. You have to wonder why they would feel so strongly about fighting for a Trump victory that has clearly slipped away. Sure, they might feel that Trump will continue to have influence in the party for a while, but Cruz and Hawley have four more years in their terms, while Cotton and Graham just got re-elected. It’s possible they are all made men in the Trump cult, but I doubt it. All of them have big ambitions, and it’s difficult to believe they actually believe it will be good for them to perpetuate Trump’s struggle to overturn this election result on the basis of phony allegations made up to soothe his shattered ego.

Aside from reflexively responding to the call of the Trump scions, they may have a compelling reason. They may not care much about Donald Trump getting another term, but they care deeply about keeping their Senate majority. They need him to keep stirring up the base in advance of a likely double cage match in Georgia come January. There are almost certain to be two Senate runoff elections there that could yet tip the balance of the Senate to the Democrats.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made no comment about Trump’s antics on Thursday evening. And he’s been quite cagey about Trump in recent weeks, saying he hasn’t been to the White House recently because of its lax COVID protocols and even gently chiding the president for his election night speech, saying that all the votes should be counted. But I would imagine he’ll walk over hot coals to help Trump now if it means keeping his majority. Power is the air Mitch breathes.

Democrats had better get some sleep this weekend and then get ready for round two. The disappointment of all those defeats in Senate races hasn’t really sunk in with all the anxiety surrounding the presidential race. But it’s a huge problem. If McConnell remains in charge of the Senate, we can kiss the Democratic agenda good-bye. He is a ruthless opposition leader who is already giving notice that he plans to veto any Biden cabinet choice that doesn’t please him. There will be no liberal judges, and if another Supreme Court justice dies or retires, that seat could well stay empty indefinitely. He will enable Graham and other Senate committee chairs to run endless investigations into Biden and his family, regardless of the merits.

And of course, any hopes of the legislation required to clean up this mess and actually improve the lives of the American people will be dashed. In fairness, we should note that even if Democrats had won the majority, there’s no guarantee the Senate could pass any progressive legislation, thanks to both the filibuster rule and the presence of conservative Democrats who become very powerful veto points of their own. Nonetheless, it’s necessary to have a majority simply to set the legislative agenda and with these domineering Republicans running the Senate we are looking at gridlock. Again.Advertisement:https://a313f5dfbacca19e5b16ebc37bb8c73f.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

I don’t know if the Democrats can gain those two Senate seats in Georgia. But you can bet that Mitch McConnell will do everything he can to prevent it. If that means helping Donald Trump turn this country inside out over the next couple of months so that his people stay active and engaged, he will do it. And so will his troops. If the last four years have shown us anything, it’s that any niggling concerns Republicans might have about destroying our democracy are easily disregarded, when it’s a question of maintaining their own power.

My Salon column

Surprise!

As Election Day turned into election week early Wednesday morning, Donald Trump had a simple message for his closest political and legal advisers as they began charting a plan to challenge and temporarily halt ballot counts in several key states: give them a court fight that “they’ll never forget.”

The president’s remarks, relayed by two people familiar with them, came on the morning after an inconclusive election night, but one that seemed trending Joe Biden’s way. And for Team Trump, it was meant as a clarion call to use every possible legal resource and bit of political organizing to help re-tip the balance of the scale.

Trump told his advisers that, even if Biden were to claw the presidency away from him,he wanted them to “go down fighting” harder than they ever had before, one of the sources with direct knowledge said. By Wednesday afternoon, some semblance of that approach began to materialize.

In Detroit, pro-Trump protestes showed up at a ballot counting site demanding access to the officials and insisting that the counting be ended. In Arizona, one of Trump’s closest congressional allies, Rep. Paul Gosar, put out a “call to action” for “red blooded American patriots” to attend a rally to “protect our president” at the Maricopa County election center. In Nevada, a Trump supporter interrupted a registrar of voters press conference by declaring “the Biden crime family steals this election.” And throughout the day, the Trump campaign peppered donors and supporters with text messages and emails asking for money to help fund—what it erroneously called—an attempt by Democrats to “steal” the election.

Trump’s legal team—including George W. Bush campaign veteran Mark “Thor” Hearne—asked a court in Michigan to halt absentee ballot counts because it alleged its observers had not been granted full access to the tally, and were not permitted to watch video footage of “remote and unattended dropboxes.” It brought a similar suit in Pennsylvania, fighting to stop the tabulation on the grounds that its overseers had not been allowed within 25 feet of the counting effort.

Further, it filed to enter an ongoing Supreme Court case, hoping to convince jurists on the highest bench to overturn a state policy that would allow counties to count votes postmarked on Election Day and received as late as Friday.

Jay Sekulow, a personal attorney and confidant of Trump’s, is overseeing the Supreme Court effort.

And in the afternoon, members of Trump’s family and another one of his personal lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, were heading to Philadelphia for a “press conference,” but they made a late diversion and chose to host it at a nearby airport.

During the presser, Giuliani declared the city’s count “totally illegitimate,” citing fabricated data, contextual-less anecdotes, and manufactured rumors of illegal voters.

The effort to swarm the sites and demand access to the vote counting operations had clear echoes to what Republicans did in Florida in 2000, when a group of young operatives famously caused a scene in Florida that became known as the Brooks Brothers Riots. Those operatives insisted that they were merely pushing for transparency to ensure a valid recourt. Officials on the ground in Miami-Dade said they felt it was an intimidation tactic.

At least one of the infamous Brooks Brothers rioters is a top ally of President Donald Trump. In an interview, Matt Schlapp declined to say if he was involved in any current effort. But he defended what was transpiring in Detroit, where pro-Trump rallies demannded that workers “stop the count” on grounds that it was a matter of election integrity.

“I can just reiterate that it is perfectly appropriate for voters to highlight any voting irregularity to the officials whose job it is to make sure there is no irregularity,” said Schlapp. “And if citizens want to get involved in that process, i think that’s a positive thing, not a negative.”

But others involved in that episode said the parallels don’t actually hold up well. For starters, Biden is currently leading in Michigan, making it unclear why the Trump side would want counting stopped. Doug Heye, another member of the 2000 crew, noted: “We wanted every vote counted and counted publicly.”

Those inconsistencies didn’t seem to bother the Trump team. Even before the clock struck noon on Wednesday, top players on the president’s campaign were already starting to bet everything on an armada of lawyers. Publicly, the campaign put on a determined, cocky face, with Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien and other aides assuring reporters that they were all still confident that, as the week progressed, the final ballot counts in the critical battleground states would hand them a clean, decisive victory.

However, before the morning even ended, three senior officials on the reelection effort were already telling The Daily Beast that they were confident the president’s best, if not only, hope in locking Biden out of the White House would be if the attorneys were able to successfully intervene in enough states.

“Lawyer city,” Joe Grogan, formerly a top domestic policy adviser to President Trump, said, describing the situation on Wednesday afternoon. “It’s going to be really ugly.”

Trump just wants to fight because that’s what he does. Most of this is just instinctual. He’ll rile up the cult and get them out in the streets if he can and who knows what else he might do. But he’s also preparing to refuse to concede and if he leaves office in January without disruption, he will make himself into the president in exile. I think he sees this as a key to replenishing his coffers.

Coming soon to a swing state near you? Strap in tight.

The two Republicans on North Carolina’s five-member State Board of Elections resigned Wednesday night:

David Black and Ken Raymond submitted their letters of resignation to the State Board of Elections, according to a statement from the board. In their letters, the Republicans believe they were blindsided on their agreement to make the deal.

The proposed settlement, which was approved by all five members of the board, allows voters whose absentee ballots have deficient information to fix them without having to fill out a new blank ballot.

Sources told ABC11, the proposed settlement, if approved, will likely be challenged by President Donald Trump in federal court.

It is a sound bet that what really blindsided Black and Raymond was vicious pushback they likely received from Republican operatives from the state house to the White House.

There are still decisions the State Board needs to make ahead of the election and after. It is not clear how much business the body can conduct with just three members. Gov. Roy Cooper (D) is charged with filling vacancies from a list provided by the Republican Party’s state chair.

Whaddya think such a list is not forthcoming? This allows the GOP to cast any actions taken by the three Democrats on the Board as tainted, and to allege that changes to absentee ballot rules to which Republican members agreed will mean absentee ballots are as well. See Barton Gellman’s piece in The Atlantic. I don’t have time to research how state boards are appointed in other states where Democrats hold a majority, but watch for similar actions elsewhere.

Trump’s known associates have been laying the groundwork for declaring the 2020 election invalid if he loses. Trump has said as much himself. The Republican Party has spent decades promoting conspiracy theories aimed at undermining public confidence in the election process, then blaming Democrats for undermining election integrity.

A Republican staff report released Wednesday by a House Judiciary Committee on Oversight and Reform argues that Democrats “are attempting to sow uncertainty, inaccuracy, and delay in the 2020 election.” Among the allegations is that Democrats in Wisconsin attempted to allow the counting of ballots that arrive up to a week after Election Day. Plus, Democrats in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and other states want to extend the time allotted for counting absentee ballots. There are a couple of complaints about last-minute voting changes that have some merit. But you can see where this is going.

Democrats are trying to win the election after the election!

We can’t let them steal it.

Read the facts: https://t.co/QI50e5xf7j

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) September 23, 2020

What is this “increased risk of uncertainty and confusion” of which you scaremonger?

Alaska accepts mailed ballots up to 10 days after Election Day. In Illinois, it is 14 days. Iowa accepts absentee ballots until the Monday after Election Day. Mississippi allows five business days post-election. Kansas, North Carolina, and Virginia accept ballots postmarked by Election Day until the close of business Friday. But the GOP has issues with Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Minnesota and Florida doing things like that.

There will be more of this. Republicans are just getting warmed up.

UPDATE: Like I said earlier. This came in at 11:25 a.m. EDT. They’re pulling out all the stops.

PRESS RELEASE: Lt. Governor requests AG Barr investigate Democrat collusion, election interferencehttps://t.co/50KGVySlxl#ncpol #ncga pic.twitter.com/XLXlewVFc5

— Lt. Gov. Dan Forest (@LtGovDanForest) September 24, 2020

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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.

This is actually a big deal:

This is good to see. @robkelner is a (still-practicing) very prominent Republican election lawyer. His endorsement of Ben Ginsberg’s column matters a lot and takes courage in this environment. More of this please. https://t.co/iyS6tUSxDo

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) September 9, 2020

Here is that article:

Legions of Republican lawyers have searched in vain over four decades for fraudulent double voting. At long last, they have a blatant example of a major politician urging his supporters to illegally vote twice.

The only hitch is that the candidate is President Trump.

The president, who has been arguing that our elections are “rigged” and “fraudulent,” last week instructed voters to act in a way that would fulfill that prophecy. On Wednesday in North Carolina, he urged supporters to double vote, casting ballots at the polls even if they have already mailed in absentee ballots. A tweet claiming he meant only for people to check that their ballots had been received and counted sounded fine — until Trump renewed his original push on Thursday evening in Pennsylvania and again Friday at a telerally.

The president’s actions — urging his followers to commit an illegal act and seeking to undermine confidence in the credibility of election results — are doubly wrong. They impose an obligation on his campaign and the Republican Party to reevaluate their position in the more than 40 voting cases they’re involved in around the country.

The president’s words make his and the Republican Party’s rhetoric look less like sincere concern — and more like transactional hypocrisy designed to provide an electoral advantage.

And they come as Republicans trying to make their cases in courts must deal with the basic truth that four decades of dedicated investigation have produced only isolated incidents of election fraud.

My emphasis there. Oh my God. 40 years of this stuff and Ginsburg is finally admitting they were full of shit:

These are painful conclusions for me to reach. Before retiring from law practice last month, I spent 38 years in the GOP’s legal trenches. I was part of the 1990s redistricting that ended 40 years of Democratic control and brought 30 years of GOP successes in Congress and state legislatures. I played a central role in the 2000 Florida recount and several dozen Senate, House and state contests. I served as counsel to all three Republican national party committees and represented four of the past six Republican presidential nominees (including, through my law firm, Trump 2020).

Each Election Day since 1984, I’ve been in precincts looking for voting violations, or in Washington helping run the nationwide GOP Election Day operations, overseeing the thousands of Republican lawyers and operatives each election on alert for voting fraud. In every election, Republicans have been in polling places and vote tabulation centers. Republican lawyers in every state have been able to examine mail-in/absentee ballot programs.

The president has said that “the only way we can lose … is if cheating goes on.” He has asserted that mail-in voting is “very dangerous” and that “there is tremendous fraud involved and tremendous illegality.”

The lack of evidence renders these claims unsustainable. The truth is that after decades of looking for illegal voting, there’s no proof of widespread fraud. At most, there are isolated incidents — by both Democrats and Republicans. Elections are not rigged. Absentee ballots use the same process as mail-in ballots — different states use different labels for the same process.

The Trump 2016 campaign, of which I was not a part, could produce no hard evidence of systemic fraud. Trump established a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in 2017 to expose all the fraud he maintains permeates our elections. He named the most vociferous hunters of Democratic election fraud to run the commission. It disbanded without finding anything.

The Heritage Foundation Election Fraud Database has compiled every instance of any kind of voter fraud it could find since 1982. It contains 1,296 incidents, a minuscule percentage of the votes cast. A study of results in three states where all voters are mailed actual ballots, a practice at the apex of the president’s outrage, found just 372 possible cases of illegal voting of 14.6 million cast in the 2016 and 2018 general elections — 0.0025 percent.

The president’s rhetoric has put my party in the position of a firefighter who deliberately sets fires to look like a hero putting them out. Republicans need to take a hard look before advocating laws that actually do limit the franchise of otherwise qualified voters. Calling elections “fraudulent” and results “rigged” with almost nonexistent evidence is antithetical to being the “rule of law” party.

Many of the GOP’s litigation concerns are meritorious in principle. But the president’s inflammatory language undercuts the claim that Republicans seek merely to uphold statutory safeguards needed to validate the results’ credibility.

Republicans need to rethink their arguments in many of the cases in which they are involved — quickly. Otherwise, they risk harming the fundamental principle of our democracy: that all eligible voters must be allowed to cast their ballots. If that happens, Americans will deservedly render the GOP a minority party for a long, long time.

I’ll admit that this stuns me. Ginsburg has been a top GOP henchman for decades, leading the charge for phony “voter fraud” and helping to create this widespread Republican belief that Democrats have been cheating in elections for years so the GOP could justify measures to suppress their vote.

The GOP lawyers who have fanned out across the country to carry water for Trump may or may not listen to him. If they don’t Ginsburg will make a good witness against them in court. You can bet that after writing this, the Democrats will call him.

Eric Boehlert’s Press Run newsletter today takes a look at how the media is covering this threat to our democracy:

Openly taunting voters and Congress about how he has no plans to accept the results of the November election, Trump’s coordinated assault on the U.S. Postal Service, a longtime hub of vote counting, represents an historic crisis for American democracy. Actively trying to subvert the will of voters, Trump is broadcasting his authoritarian ways, practically daring opponents to stand in the way of his attempts to steal an election. The press needs to do a better job ringing the alarm bells.

Following Trump‘S demand that a 200-year-old law be invoked to allow the U.S. military to wage war on U.S. street protesters, his campaign to undermine election integrity is another indication he’s anxious to trample long-standing American liberties. Enamored by authoritarians around the world, Trump has made his goal clear for years.

He fired an inspector general who reviewed the whistle-blower complaint that led to his impeachment, declared a phony national emergency in order to grab billions in government funds to build a border wall, worked to obliterate the country’s checks and balance system of government, purged the Department of Homeland Security,  defied a lawful order to turn over his taxes, demanded the Department of Justice launch criminal investigations into his perceived enemies, and promised pardons to border officials who broke the law. These are the type of actions the United States traditionally condemns when they occur in other countries, particularly among emerging democracies. Now they’re happening here.

The Covid-19 pandemic sparked even more authoritarian moves by Trump. Like undemocratic leaders in China and Russia, Trump’s first response to the health crisis was to recklessly downplay the problem, silence scientists, lie about the government’s response, and lash out at critics.

The Beltway press corps has no experience covering authoritarian rulers and remains too timid to accurately label Trump’s behavior. In the process, they’ve allowed the unthinkable to become possible — like trying to defund the Postal Service for political gain.  

Why that target? Because the 2020 election, taking place amidst the Trump pandemic, is going to feature way more mail-in ballots than usual and he doesn’t want them counted. “Trump and his designated henchman — his wealthy donor Louis DeJoy — are vandalizing the post office in plain sight with the election less than three months away, disappearing mailboxes and throwing expensive sorters into dumpsters,” noted Will Bunch in the Philadelphia Inquirer, who calls the unfolding attack a “nine-alarm fire for American democracy.”

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The Postal Service is story is getting lots of attention, and deservedly so. But are most of the news media being sufficiently aggressive and sufficiently blunt about what’s happening and the history-changing consequences at hand? “If journalists don’t keep the pressure on Postal Service problems, they will be abdicating their duty,” warned Washington Post media critic Margaret Sullivan.

So far the coverage is there, but the urgency and the direct connection to deliberate Trump interference is not. Here’s a sample of page-one headlines over the weekend:

·     “Postal Service warns 46 states about ballot delays” (Arizona Republic,)

·    “USPS to CT: Mail-in ballots not assured by Nov. 3 election (Connecticut Post:)

·    “Mail-in votes are threatened” (Tampa Bay Times:)

·    Boston Globe:“Postal service warns about vote”

·     “Are mail ballots at risk?” (Dallas Morning News:)

Notice what every headline was missing? Any mention of Trump. Here’s what an accurate headline would have looked like last weekend: “Trump threatens Postal Service funding to sabotage vote count.”

A Reuters news article on Monday did an awful job presenting Trump’s blatant attempt to steal the U.S. election, putting the onus on Democratic nominee Joe Biden, instead of the Republican authoritarian:

With fewer than 80 days to go before the U.S. presidential election, it looks like Joe Biden’s race to lose.

Yet, as Democrats nationwide gather online this week to nominate him as their party’s choice to challenge President Donald Trump on Nov. 3, many fear Biden may just do that – for factors almost entirely out of his control.

The story of Trump trying to defund the Postal Service to unravel an election should definitely not be framed around Biden, the target of the cheating.

We’re in a time of national crisis. Unfortunately the mainstream media have not been great at sounding alarms during the Trump years. Reluctant to portray a white, male Republican president as a radical player actively endangering America, much of the political press has taken the easy way out. That’s why almost none of the 100-plus newspapers that demanded Bill Clinton resign from office during impeachment because he was not “fit to serve,” have done the same and called for Trump’s removal from office, even as he plots the undoing of a U.S. election.

Incredibly, four days after Trump went on Fox News and specifically said he wanted to defund the Postal Service so that ballots would not be counted this fall, The New York Times editorial page not only failed to call for Trump’s resignation, it failed to publish a single sentence denouncing Trump’s authoritarian attack on election integrity.

This is the same editorial page that obsessed over the Whitewater non-scandal when Clinton was president, acting as a battering ram to drive the phony, GOP-concocted controversy, which cost taxpayers $64 million. Yet Trump threatening to steal an election elicited no institutional response from the Times.

Reminder: Authoritarians thrive off a compliant press corps.

Donald Trump is brazenly trying to steal the election by suppressing the vote in the middle of a deadly pandemic. You simply can’t treat this like just another political spat.

Bonus Boehlert: Obama’s summer playlist

You can subscribe to PRESS RUN, with a nice discount, here.

For all the concern about Russian interference in the election and the reliability of voting machines, a yooge threat to election integrity this fall is one of the men running for president. He distrusts mail-in ballots, at least when they are mailed by non-Republicans. Sabotaging voting by mail during its soaring popularity in the coronavirus pandemic does not require Donald Trump to accept help from Russia.

Vice News’ Aaron Gordon reports:

Post offices around the country are slashing their hours—including during the busiest times of day—with little notice as yet another abrupt cost-saving measure, according to interviews with union officials conducted by Motherboard and various local news reports. The USPS had also planned to close some offices entirely with just three weeks’ notice, likely in violation of federal law, but appears to be backtracking.

The sudden changes come as part of a slate of policies instituted by the new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor with a history of anti-union practices at his private logistics firm New Breed Logistics, that are ostensibly about fiscal responsibility but have contributed to mail being delayed across the country and have postal workers concerned they’re no longer being allowed to do their jobs. Many postal employees also believe the changes will only make the post office’s financial situation worse.

Trump tweeted this local news report on mail delays, one might conclude, to depress voting by mail:

Check out this Mail-In Voting experiment by a local news station! pic.twitter.com/23tOdt1hYc

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2020

But the mail slowdown Trump is promoting he himself helped create with his choice of postmaster general:

On Tuesday, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia sent a letter to DeJoy regarding the “imminent closure or significant reduction in hours and services” as post offices “in my state and across the nation.” Manchin’s letter noted that “this would likely be a violation of both federal law and United States Postal Service (USPS) rules that prescribe a specific closure process which requires, at minimum, 120 days’ notice,” a far cry from the three weeks under the current plan. By Tuesday evening, Coonan told Motherboard the post office had “walked back its position on closing the offices” and they are “currently reevaluating the situation.”

“It’s just asinine to think that you can shut something down or throttle it back in terms of the pandemic when basically the lifeline for voting and democracy is going to be in the hands of the Postal Service,” Manchin told reporters Wednesday.

But again, this is how the GOP defines law and order down, and democracy itself:

1. Find the line.
2. Step over it.
3. Dare someone to push you back .
4. No pushback? New line.
5. Repeat.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes noted the slowdowns and vowed to not let them go unreported, “The only way that the administration can get away with gutting the post office is if they try to do it sneakily behind the scenes. And we’re not going to let them.”

There is more to the mail slowdown than Trump, Gordon reported days ago. Package deliveries are slower too:

DeJoy’s July 10 memo, titled “Pivoting For Our Future,” caught the media’s attention because of one particularly inflammatory line. “One aspect of these changes that may be difficult for employees is that—temporarily—we may see mail left behind or mail on the workroom floor or docks (in P&DCs [Processing and Distribution Centers]), which is not typical,” the memo stated.

Personnel cuts made to address the “fiscal kneecapping” of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act have left the popular service shorthanded during the pandemic. There are simply too many packages for the service to handle, a challenge that Congress has refused to address.

The same postal service will strain to deliver millions of mailed ballots this fall, Politico suggests:

The Postal Service hasn’t hit its own on-time delivery goals in five years, meaning that ballots may trickle in for days after an election. And now the pandemic is making successful deliveries more challenging. Mail across the system has slowed as more than 60 postal workers have been killed by the virus and thousands sickened or sent home to quarantine.

[…]

Those problems almost guarantee that everyone who loved the “hanging chads” debate of 2000 should steel themselves for the “what does that fuzzy postmark say?” debate of 2020. For the time being, different standards from state to state and slowed delivery times—both for absentee ballots going out and coming back—guarantee that tens of thousands of voted ballots nationwide will be thrown in the trash because they arrived too late to be counted. Pennsylvania, which now requires mailed ballots to be received by Election Day, rejected nearly 5 percent of absentee ballots in 2018, the vast majority because they arrived too late. Florida, home to George W. Bush’s 537-vote victory, tossed out 18,500 ballots that arrived too late to be counted in its primary this year.

Like it or not and whoever is to blame, timing when you mail your ballot is a real issue. In my county, 13 ballots postmarked in late February for March 3 primary arrived after March 6 cutoff. Just over 80 ballots in all went uncounted, included 35 postmarked after Election Day. It was a tiny fraction, a tenth of a percent of ballots cast. You just do not want yours in it.

I am advising voters here not to mail absentee ballots later than two weeks ahead of Election Day. Even better: Mail them back ASAP after receipt (North Carolina will mail absentee ballots September 4; find your state’s dates here), or drop them off in person ASAP at their local Board of Elections or at an early voting site for processing long before Election Day. Flatten the absentee ballot processing curve.

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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.

Wealth is simply a surrogate for power. Commerce is the principle means those not born to it acquire it in peacetime (pillaging and piracy requiring more dirty, hands-on work).

Salon’s David Masciotra joins me in considering our willingness to sacrifice others’ lives in service to the economy. Leilani Jordan, for example. The 27-year-old developmentally disabled woman worked and died of the coronavirus as a grocery clerk at Giant Foods. Her last paycheck was for $20.64. Economic cultists insist the poor and powerless serve the economy that enriches them. Same as it ever was. Thomas Jefferson owned about 200 slaves at the founding of this “economy.”

Masciotra writes:

The majority of Americans have less than $500 in savings. They simply do not experience the same “economy” as Rep. Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana, a Republican who described Americans dying as a result of “opening the economy” as the “lesser of two evils.” Hollingsworth is the 12th-richest member of Congress, with a net worth of $50.1 million, most of it coming from his father — the “silent partner” in Hollingsworth’s investment firm. 

While Jordan and Hollingsworth might share the same country and economy, their conception of whose lost lives are acceptable casualties in propping up the stock market is (or was) likely very different:

The ideological disease that cripples the United States is the belief that society does not exist beyond its commercial activity. President Calvin Coolidge famously remarked that “the business of America is business,” while Joel Millman, a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, once wrote, “America is not a nation … America is a market.”

Millman was making a neutral, analytical observation, but a similar thesis has guided America’s long succession of disastrous policy decisions that treat the “economy” — meaning profits for corporations and their owners or shareholders — as sacred. An entire set of religious assumptions follow, most significantly that people like Jordan are martyrs for the God of profit. Their deaths are acceptable losses in the name of God and country, which mutate together into the bloodless idol of commerce.

Masciotra believes the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to confront our market-based theology. But there is little sign of that philosophical reassessment. Because underlying the quest for wealth is something much baser and primal: the quest for power.

I wrote here in December 2017:

Power is why plutocrats and their pet politicians loathe unions; unions counterbalance the power of capital. Whether it is money or civil rights or geopolitics, the specifics are secondary. Power is the bottom line? Congress is filled with alpha males who dream of being the alpha dog.

Republicans know this on a gut level. Democrats think we should all just get along, and government action should lift all boats. What matters more to their rivals is whose boats get lifted most. To the point of sinking their rivals’ dinghies if that’s what it takes to show who’s yacht is master of the seas.

Those possessing the most power nearly always view others as a mean to that end and, if necessary, as acceptable casualties. Like Leilani Jordan, they are more likely to be women, especially women of color, as with promoting photo ID laws that make voting more difficult:

The Republicans’ argument is since voting restrictions in their majestic equality prevent rich and poor, Republican and Democrat alike from participating as full citizens without presenting IDs, nothing is amiss in passing and enforcing them.

But in professing concern for “election integrity,” fearful, white Republican politicians are playing percentages, displaying scorn not just for their opponents but their own supporters. They are willing to sacrifice the franchise of thousands, potentially, as acceptable casualties in elections, if that is what it takes to win, including their own sisters, wives, and daughters.

And in this pandemic season, forcing workers back into meat processing plants as human sacrifices to the Market is equally ecumenical. In demanding states reopen their economies, there may even be a subconscious calculation about whose 2020 voters will perish in greater proportion.

Don’t expect the acting president to mourn the Leilani Jordans any more than those who perish in meat processing plants. It is not in his nature. It would only make you angrier if he tried.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

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 by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.