I don’t own people. Presidents or not. Mr. Trump is the President. Like it or not. If the States certify what the media has proclaimed (almost a certainty, but it’s not official yet) then Mr. Biden will become President Jan20@noon. Like it or not.
There’s an enterprising young coyote… and not too out of character for Coyote.
Bloomberg Opinion Today: Light at End of Covid Tunnel Not Train, Apparently … Traders, naturally, have already jumped to that future, pushing stocks to new highs. Brian Chappatta writes markets are pricing in a return to normalcy. But Mohamed El-Erian suggests this is premature. Especially considering the current Covid wave, we’ll still need economic stimulus, vaccine or no, to get the economy back to full health and avoid permanent damage.
Trump Wants His Stapler Back … hopefully he doesn’t burn the office to the ground… Further Shaky-Democracy Reading: America needs e-voting, and making it safe is a perfectly solvable engineering problem. — Leonid Bershidsky
Previewing Biden Policy, Foreign and Domestic … it may feel premature to start thinking about a Biden presidency. But the former vice president is wasting no time … Biden won’t exactly embrace China in the circle of trust, but he will end Trump’s trade wars.
A hearing on Wednesday in an election case captured in miniature the challenge for the Trump campaign as it gears up for what could become an all-out legal assault on presidential election results in key swing states:
It’s easy enough to file a lawsuit claiming improprieties — in this case, that Pennsylvania had violated the law by allowing voters whose mail-in ballots were defective to correct them — but a lot harder to provide evidence of wrongdoing or a convincing legal argument.
“I don’t understand how the integrity of the election was affected,” said U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage, something he repeated several times during the hearing.
(However the judge rules, the case is unlikely to have a significant effect; only 93 ballots are at issue, a county election official said.)
“A lawsuit without provable facts showing a statutory or constitutional violation is just a tweet with a filing fee,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
✁
One of the few certainties is that we will not see the instant Bush v. Gore replay that Trump seems to have in mind.
A few hours after voting ended, in a 2 a.m. speech that drew bipartisan condemnation for the president’s premature declaration that he had won the election, Trump baselessly described the ongoing ballot count as “a fraud on the American public.”
“We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court,” he told his supporters. “We want all voting to stop.”
Trump is famously litigious, but he’s not a lawyer, and he seemed not to understand that apart from a small class of cases (largely territorial disputes between states), lawsuits don’t originate at the Supreme Court.
The Trump campaign would have to file suit in a state or federal court and eventually appeal an adverse decision to the high court.
The presidential election is certainly over, and the result was not particularly close.
President-elect Joe Biden won a decisive majority of the popular vote and likely a considerable electoral college victory.
Claims of widespread electoral fraud would be spurious even if they weren’t made by a prating fool in front of a Philadelphia landscaping firm.
The 2020 election is done. Concluded. Finished.
What has not ended — what seems endless — is Republican bad faith and poltroonery.
I am not referring here to those voters for President Trump who have been misled into false hope.
It is not hard to convince people who distrust elites and are prone to conspiracy theories that elites are plotting to deny “real” Americans their influence.
It does not even matter if the vote-counters are Republicans, because that is exactly what a conspiracy would do to hide its nefarious work.
No, it is Republican leaders who are responsible for poisoning whatever wells of goodwill still exist in our republic.
Having aided Trump’s autocratic delusions, they are now abetting his assault on the orderly transfer of power.
Through their active support or guilty silence, most elected Republicans are encouraging their fellow citizens to believe that America’s democratic system is fundamentally corrupt.
No agent of China or Russia could do a better job of sabotage. Republicans are fostering cynicism about the constitutional order on a massive scale.
They are stumbling toward sedition.
And they are looking mighty pathetic in the process.
After Trump’s campaign manager threatened political harm to Republicans who refused to embrace Trump’s position on the election, Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) reported promptly for degradation.
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that states can penalize faithless electors, the members of the Electoral College who do not support the winner of their state’s popular vote in a presidential election.
Why it matters: The 2016 presidential election saw 10 electors vote for someone other than their state’s chosen candidate — highlighting how faithless electors could have the potential to swing an election.
32 states and Washington, D.C. require their electors to cast their Electoral College votes for the winner of their respective statewide popular vote.
Before 2016, a modern presidential election had never seen more than one faithless elector — prompting states to move ahead with their legal challenge.
What they’re saying: "A State follows in the same tradition if, like Washington, it chooses to sanction an elector for breaching his promise. Then too, the State instructs its electors that they have no ground for reversing the vote of millions of its citizens.
That direction accords with the Constitution — as well as with the trust of a Nation that here, We the People rule," Justice Elena Kagan wrote on the court’s ruling.
The big picture: During oral arguments before the court last month, Colorado’s attorney general argued that a loss by the states could “occasion a constitutional crisis,” per CNN.
The justices also expressed worries that ruling against the states could lead to wide-scale bribing of members of the Electoral College — with little to no recourse.
Representatives for the electors had argued that the Constitution “requires that presidential electors be free to cast votes without interference or sanction.”
For those who were wondering why the Alaska result is taking so long …https://www.yahoo.com/news/alaska-2020-election-vote-count-delay-sullivan-gross-192330923.html
Cheapskate0 about 4 years ago
Got a point. This has been going on since W.
ChukLitl Premium Member about 4 years ago
I don’t own people. Presidents or not. Mr. Trump is the President. Like it or not. If the States certify what the media has proclaimed (almost a certainty, but it’s not official yet) then Mr. Biden will become President Jan20@noon. Like it or not.
braindead Premium Member about 4 years ago
Trump Disciples won’t buy.
Insufficient amounts of lying and hatred.
William Robbins Premium Member about 4 years ago
There’s an enterprising young coyote… and not too out of character for Coyote.
Bloomberg Opinion Today: Light at End of Covid Tunnel Not Train, Apparently … Traders, naturally, have already jumped to that future, pushing stocks to new highs. Brian Chappatta writes markets are pricing in a return to normalcy. But Mohamed El-Erian suggests this is premature. Especially considering the current Covid wave, we’ll still need economic stimulus, vaccine or no, to get the economy back to full health and avoid permanent damage.
Trump Wants His Stapler Back … hopefully he doesn’t burn the office to the ground… Further Shaky-Democracy Reading: America needs e-voting, and making it safe is a perfectly solvable engineering problem. — Leonid Bershidsky
Previewing Biden Policy, Foreign and Domestic … it may feel premature to start thinking about a Biden presidency. But the former vice president is wasting no time … Biden won’t exactly embrace China in the circle of trust, but he will end Trump’s trade wars.
Silly Season about 4 years ago
A hearing on Wednesday in an election case captured in miniature the challenge for the Trump campaign as it gears up for what could become an all-out legal assault on presidential election results in key swing states:
It’s easy enough to file a lawsuit claiming improprieties — in this case, that Pennsylvania had violated the law by allowing voters whose mail-in ballots were defective to correct them — but a lot harder to provide evidence of wrongdoing or a convincing legal argument.
“I don’t understand how the integrity of the election was affected,” said U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage, something he repeated several times during the hearing.
(However the judge rules, the case is unlikely to have a significant effect; only 93 ballots are at issue, a county election official said.)
“A lawsuit without provable facts showing a statutory or constitutional violation is just a tweet with a filing fee,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
✁One of the few certainties is that we will not see the instant Bush v. Gore replay that Trump seems to have in mind.
A few hours after voting ended, in a 2 a.m. speech that drew bipartisan condemnation for the president’s premature declaration that he had won the election, Trump baselessly described the ongoing ballot count as “a fraud on the American public.”
“We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court,” he told his supporters. “We want all voting to stop.”
Trump is famously litigious, but he’s not a lawyer, and he seemed not to understand that apart from a small class of cases (largely territorial disputes between states), lawsuits don’t originate at the Supreme Court.
The Trump campaign would have to file suit in a state or federal court and eventually appeal an adverse decision to the high court.
~
https://www.propublica.org/article/if-trump-tries-to-sue-his-way-to-election-victory-heres-what-happens
Silly Season about 4 years ago
It is not over.
The presidential election is certainly over, and the result was not particularly close.
President-elect Joe Biden won a decisive majority of the popular vote and likely a considerable electoral college victory.
Claims of widespread electoral fraud would be spurious even if they weren’t made by a prating fool in front of a Philadelphia landscaping firm.
The 2020 election is done. Concluded. Finished.
What has not ended — what seems endless — is Republican bad faith and poltroonery.
I am not referring here to those voters for President Trump who have been misled into false hope.
It is not hard to convince people who distrust elites and are prone to conspiracy theories that elites are plotting to deny “real” Americans their influence.
It does not even matter if the vote-counters are Republicans, because that is exactly what a conspiracy would do to hide its nefarious work.
No, it is Republican leaders who are responsible for poisoning whatever wells of goodwill still exist in our republic.
Having aided Trump’s autocratic delusions, they are now abetting his assault on the orderly transfer of power.
Through their active support or guilty silence, most elected Republicans are encouraging their fellow citizens to believe that America’s democratic system is fundamentally corrupt.
No agent of China or Russia could do a better job of sabotage. Republicans are fostering cynicism about the constitutional order on a massive scale.
They are stumbling toward sedition.
And they are looking mighty pathetic in the process.
After Trump’s campaign manager threatened political harm to Republicans who refused to embrace Trump’s position on the election, Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) reported promptly for degradation.
~
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-election-is-over-but-theres-no-end-to-republican-bad-faith/2020/11/09/56101008-22c7-11eb-a688-5298ad5d580a_story.html
Silly Season about 4 years ago
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that states can penalize faithless electors, the members of the Electoral College who do not support the winner of their state’s popular vote in a presidential election.
Why it matters: The 2016 presidential election saw 10 electors vote for someone other than their state’s chosen candidate — highlighting how faithless electors could have the potential to swing an election.
32 states and Washington, D.C. require their electors to cast their Electoral College votes for the winner of their respective statewide popular vote.
Before 2016, a modern presidential election had never seen more than one faithless elector — prompting states to move ahead with their legal challenge.
What they’re saying: "A State follows in the same tradition if, like Washington, it chooses to sanction an elector for breaching his promise. Then too, the State instructs its electors that they have no ground for reversing the vote of millions of its citizens.
That direction accords with the Constitution — as well as with the trust of a Nation that here, We the People rule," Justice Elena Kagan wrote on the court’s ruling.
The big picture: During oral arguments before the court last month, Colorado’s attorney general argued that a loss by the states could “occasion a constitutional crisis,” per CNN.
The justices also expressed worries that ruling against the states could lead to wide-scale bribing of members of the Electoral College — with little to no recourse.
Representatives for the electors had argued that the Constitution “requires that presidential electors be free to cast votes without interference or sanction.”
~
https://www.axios.com/supreme-court-faithless-electors-ruling-66baa307-8a6b-41ea-a087-c8ddb747a435.html
bookworm0812 about 4 years ago
I need that shirt.
MollyCat about 4 years ago
For those who were wondering why the Alaska result is taking so long …https://www.yahoo.com/news/alaska-2020-election-vote-count-delay-sullivan-gross-192330923.html
quixotic3 about 4 years ago
Only one wants to be the president of those who didn’t vote for him, as well as those who did.
ndblackirish97 about 4 years ago
We’ve been selling this shirt since 2008 when so many we’re shouting “he’s not my president” and “he’s illegitimate”. So yeah, whatever.