American Politics Discussion Thread

[Mjmd]

I do want to address the whole lost every court case. I know Republicans have a bunch of excuses as to why...... HOWEVER, it doesn't actually matter. You can find Democrats who disagree with the conservative supreme court ruling that gave the election to Bush...... HOWEVER, Gore conceded IMMEDIATELY after. Democracy cannot survive when one side is constantly casting doubt on elections..... OH and only when the lose.

On a related note, all your paranoid "government taking liberties away from me" doesn't evidently apply to voter rights. I'm sure THIS time in American history they are totally 100% legit though.......

Mjmd political dream list:
1) NEITHER party should be involved in making election policy or have any avenue to 'verifying'. This should all be either independent or bi-partisan.
2) campaign finance reform. Ya I listed this 2nd........

[superdeath]

We had this discussion before.  They weren't trying to overturn democracy, they were trying to SAVE it, against the improper and illegal changes in voting procedures that the Democrats rammed through using Covid as an excuse.

The clear example was Pennsylvania.  They openly admitted to counting invalid mail-in ballots that arrived after their (state) constitutional deadline.  The court challenges resulted in dismissal because no entity (other states or federal) had any standing to force a state to follow their own rules.  The fake news framed that as "courts found no fraud" when it was really "nobody has any oversight authority so they can just cheat."  This is what Trump meant in the "make your voices heard" speech, to pressure Congress into recognizing only lawfully cast electoral votes and not these unlawfully cast ones.

The Democrats were the ones overturning democracy.  The Democrats pushed recognizing illegally cast votes, when there was no question whatsoever about the illegality.  Shouldn't supporting THAT lie and not denouncing disqualify that party from getting any votes?  Nope, you don't care when it benefits your side.

I hope none of this indicates that you believe that mail-in voting shouldnt be a thing. That is all i have to say (and its far too late tonight for me to write much more)

[Mjmd]

No he is just trying to create a straw man he can talk about. Its not a good argument, but its better than focusing on everything else Trump did / said.

T-Hawk I'm sure being a libertarian is fully for having as many people vote as possible.

[T-hawk]

All of that is whataboutism, ignoring the core point to throw in something else (and so was pivoting from libertarianism to "what about so-called voter fraud" in the first place.) Address the core point. Trump going too far on some other topic doesn't invalidate this one. Pennsylvania illegally violated its own voting rules and incurred no consequences. There's no dispute about those facts. That is not a legitimate democracy and that is a valid impetus for protest.

And "lost every court case" is fake-news framing. You are being lied to by omission and you're believing it. The courts "found no fraud" because they refused to look. The real facts were that the cases weren't heard because the supplicants had no standing. That is not at all the same as losing any case, despite what the fake news propaganda tried and succeeded to make you believe.

Understand it this way. The Mets lost every game they played this month. EVERY GAME! The courts found NO Mets victories at all. (They didn't play any games at all.) That's how the fake news is lying to you here. The court cases didn't lose, they didn't play.

The point that libertarianism's freedoms should include the freedom to vote (including mail-in) is correct, but the way to get there is by lawfully enacting those rules (and safeguards to verify identity etc), not by haphazardly violating them. That just makes it a contest of who can get away with cheating.

[darrelljs]

Unless something else transpired, I believe you are taking about the ~10,000 ballots that came in up to 3 days after polling closed? I agree those ballots should not have been counted based on state law, and it was correct to challenge them. That said, this was in an election that had a 54,000 vote margin of victory. Let's not exaggerate the impact or create some kind of false equivalency with actions taken by Trump, Giuliani, et. al.

Darrell

[T-hawk]

That was one of the issues. There were other cheats too; one was that mail-in verification standards were applied differently in different counties, stricter in red-leaning areas, looser in blue-leaning. The biggest one was that PA had universal mail-in voting at all, which was enacted too late; PA's state law stipulates that election procedures must be in place by 6 months before the election, but that was enacted in June, using Covid as an excuse.

Whether the sum total of the cheats added up to enough to swing the state is an open question. The courts refused to investigate that question. So we don't even know if we have a democracy or a cheatocracy.

If you (generic you) think PA's result was either definitely legitimate or definitely stolen, you're falling for the fake-news propaganda from one side or the other. The correct answer is that we don't know because we refused to investigate, and the correct response is to protest that until we do know the functional status of our democracy.

[darrelljs]

I will try and find references to those before replying.

Darrell

[Mjmd]

 Trump going too far on some other topic doesn't invalidate this one.  

You ignoring all the other areas Trump tried to overturn the election is just BAFFLING. Even if you were 100% right about this one, it wouldn't change everything else. Spreading fraud lies and then saying WELL ACTUALLY we were talking about procedurals issues is still extremely dangerous to democracy. You can't just ignore all the other ways he lied and tried to steal the election. I realize I repeated this, but it bears repeating.

Listen. I'm not a lawyer. You are very much spouting Republican talking points and as a non lawyer I don't have a relevant legal opinion on if those talking points legally make sense. Just looking at it from a top level view: The rule of law is still key. For whatever excuse reason, Republicans weren't able to win a court case. You can argue that laws may need reformed or processes might need changed. That doesn't change the fact that they lost those cases. You can be mad about it. Again, some democrats are still mad about the 2000 court ruling. IT DOESN'T HOWEVER GIVE HIM A RIGHT TO TRY TO OVERTURN AN ELECTION. 

[T-hawk]

The Democratic side is lying about election integrity just as much as Trump. "Courts found no fraud" is a lie by omission, because they refused to look. Until you understand that lie, you're living in propaganda-land and not reality. I'm aware enough to know that both sides are bullshit.

[The Black Sword]

All of that is whataboutism, ignoring the core point to throw in something else (and so was pivoting from libertarianism to "what about so-called voter fraud" in the first place.) Address the core point

I'd still love to hear your defense of that phone call.

Amica's core point is that your words say one thing but your votes say something else. Establishing the actions of the people you voted for seems very relevant to that. Trump certainly seemed more interested in silencing enough voices to ensure he was the winner, than establishing the truth of the democratic process.