American Politics Discussion Thread

[darrelljs]

Mjmd, what “worked” for me was going through the transcript of the call between Georgia’s SoS and Trump.  He had investigated every single thing Trump trumped up, and had facts to disprove each allegation one by one.  It’s telling Trump never tried to counter argue, he would simply pivot immediately to another false allegation.

This is the point that the criticizers don't get.  They didn't react that way to a free and fair election.  They reacted that way to the fraud.  They weren't trying to overthrow democracy.  They were trying to save it.

No T-Hawk, they were not.  They were enabling a dangerous megalomaniac in his efforts to overturn an election so he could stay in power.

Rather than point to the subset of court cases that were dismissed for lack of standing, instead look at the lack of any cases that proceeded due to credible evidence.  Or the Republican leaders that vigorously investigated all accusations no matter how outlandish (hoping like hell they’d find something to offer up to Trump because they knew their careers were over if they couldn’t), finding nothing.  Or the members of his own party and even his own inner circle who made it clear there was not nearly enough fraud to alter the not particularly close outcome.  Or the clear twisting of truth by Trump and his supporters to try and create the appearance of fraud with his eager to believe base, such as your inaccurate claim that Pennsylvania violated their own state constitution.  In fact, their constitution does not nor never has banned mail in ballots.  Hawley and others cite this as their evidence:

The Legislature shall, by general law, provide a manner in which, and the time and place at which, qualified electors who may, on the occurrence of any election, be absent from the municipality of their residence, because their duties, occupation or business require them to be elsewhere or who, on the occurrence of any election, are unable to attend at their proper polling places because of illness or physical disability or who will not attend a polling place because of the observance of a religious holiday or who cannot vote because of election day duties, in the case of a county employee, may vote, and for the return and canvass of their votes in the election district in which they respectively reside.

It does not ban mail in balloting, it merely mandates certain circumstances when it must be allowed.  Act 77 pass over a year before the election (with more Republican support than Democratic BTW) expanded mail in balloting for the obvious reason of the pandemic.  No audit or recount of the ballots cast via mail in showed any significant fraud.  So what the effort amounted to was an attempt to throw out ballots reflecting the true will of the citizens of the state...ballots that Pennsylvania courts, the governor, and a vast bi-partisan majority of state legislators all insisted were legal & in accordance with the state constitution.  Do you honestly think Trump should have won Pennsylvania’s electors?

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Okay I just re-read your post T-Hawk, and I think what you were talking about the people who stormed the capital (i.e. that they did so because they thought the election was stolen). I was talking about the Hawley’s & Cruz’s of the world, who enabled Trump to deceive said rioters.

Darrell

[Jowy]

A point I'd like to bring up about Q-Anon believers is that they believed that after the coup there would be tribunals held by Trump where all Democratic politicans are publically executed for being pedophiles. That might sound ridiculous to those of us who aren't Republicans, but it's something that many of the people storming the capital really believed in.

[T-hawk]

Who was the ruling party at the time of election? Oh right it was the GOP. They controlled the presidency, supreme court, senat and some swing states.

This happened at the county level, in localities controlled by Democrats, as follows:

such as your inaccurate claim that Pennsylvania violated their own state constitution. In fact, their constitution does not nor never has banned mail in ballots.

That wasn't the claim. It's about processes regarding the mail-in ballots. This is the text of the SCOTUS filing:

https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sit...Filing.pdf

43.Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State, Kathy Boockvar, without legislative approval, unilaterally abrogated several Pennsylvania statutes requiring signature verification for absentee or mail-in ballots. Pennsylvania’s legislature has not ratified these changes, and the legislation did not include a severability clause.

52.Statewide election officials and local election officials in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties, aware of the historical Democrat advantage in those counties, violated Pennsylvania’s election code and adopted the differential standards favoring voters in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties with the intent to favor former Vice President Biden.

54.The changed process allowing the curing of absentee and mail-in ballots in Allegheny and Philadelphia counties is a separate basis resulting in an unknown number of ballots being treated in an unconstitutional manner inconsistent with Pennsylvania statute.

["Curing" is rectifying problematic ballots, by attempting to interpret the intent or contact the voter.]

The claim is that there were enough mail-in ballots whose admissibility was questionable by the verification and dating, and the deliberate application of different standards in blue counties, to account for Biden's reported margin over Trump in PA.

The case then makes the same point more directly for Georgia. The state unconstitutionally changed its own requirements for verification. 2020 ballots were rejected at a much lower rate than in 2016. If they had been rejected at that same rate, the state flips to Trump.

This is why "there was no fraud", legally speaking. If you still go by the illegally-changed rules, then any amount of audits and recounts will give the same result over again. What we need is a process that would count the ballots by the verification and dating and curing rules that would and should have been in place had they not been illegally changed.

SCOTUS decided not to try to enforce such a thing, that nobody else gets to intrude on PA and GA messing with their own rules (which ultimately I have to agree with, the states are sovereign here), and thus dismissed the case for lack of standing. So the media can report that no illegitimacy was found - because there exists no process to find it.

[darrelljs]

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/11/ballot...nsylvania/

[Serdoa]

They keep saying "the courts haven't found fraud" ... which is true ... but it's not because the courts have actually looked at evidence.  Every claim like the Texas lawsuit has been dismissed for procedural or technical reasons like lack of standing, not because fraud wasn't found; they didn't look. 

Do you realize how stupid that sounds? "They didn't look at the cases that provided no evidence, were filed incorrectly or at the wrong court to begin with". What is the justice system to do? Help Trumps / Reps lawyers to learn how to actually file a lawsuit? Or point them to the correct court? Honestly, you complain that they did not look, but there was nothing to look at. That's like complaining that the ice-cream truck does not sell you gasoline...

There's still a lot of statistical evidence that there was: the big telltale is that Trump still won almost every bellwether swing county; Biden's margin came from an oversupply of votes in just a few blue counties like Philadelphia, and failed to correlate with downballot races at a historically unprecedented level. It turns out that the system decided that there's no method to challenge such a statistical outcome in court,

Why? Why should the system decide to let you challenge results by claiming "but they are statistically unlikely"? Like, can you show me the court I can file a lawsuit at when the universe decides to let me roll three 1s in a row or have me lose 2 90%+ fights in Civ4 one after the other?

And just for the record, we do not talk about THESE kind of statistical outliers. What you talk about is stuff like fighting 5 60% fights in Civ4 and losing 3 while you expected to lose only 2... if even that.

or to force a state to follow its own electoral laws.  PA directly violated its own constitution in changing the rules for mail-in balloting.  This was the basis of Ted Cruz's lawsuit.  The courts just shrugged and said not our problem, thus enshrining any fraud as fact, declaring the bug as a feature that we can't force states to follow their own laws.

Yeah, not true. Also: You realize that you are not making a case that there was fraud - as in votes that were not for Biden counted for him - you instead complain that people that wanted to vote for a candidate but made an error could correct them. Basically your point is "Trump lost because the voters were actually allowed to vote the candidate they wanted to vote". I mean apparently it's not even that mail-in voters have been getting better treatment than in-person voters, what you are complaining about is that they got the same treatment: Being told that they did something wrong and if they cared enough that they would have to vote anew.

If you believed there was sufficient fraud, then what happened (minus the actual injuries and deaths) was the right course of action.  Or else we've just established that the ruling party can commit electoral fraud with no consequence, and then you've got a uniparty dictatorial state forever.

Um, so if I just strong enough believe in something - no matter if I can prove it - my actions are rightful, did I get that right? Sounds much like church, not so much like democracy. But hey, I can tell you one thing: All the terrorists sure do believe that America is actually a cruel oppressor and basically the devil in state-form. I guess that means their actions too are just the right course of action, eh?

[Dreylin]

There's still a lot of statistical evidence that there was: the big telltale is that Trump still won almost every bellwether swing county

Actually, the bellwether counties shift /is/ statistically likely when you look at shifting coalitions, demographic shift and turnout:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/whe...unties-go/

[Cyneheard]

There's still a lot of statistical evidence that there was: the big telltale is that Trump still won almost every bellwether swing county

Actually, the bellwether counties shift /is/ statistically likely when you look at shifting coalitions, demographic shift and turnout:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/whe...unties-go/

And those 19 counties didn’t vote that differently from 2016. They’d already diverged from the national vote.

[Commodore]

So as the SEC and other entities slowly wake up long enough to weigh in, looks like Robinhood might get sacrificed but u/deepfuckingvalue is already DOXed and I'm not certain his measly $10M will be enough to save him from the crushing weight of lawsuits for violating...something...

Is anyone else somewhat interested that beyond the detail level the outcome of all the stock market fun last week is going to be favoring Short over Long? As those two actions become not economic but political.

[Thoth]

So as the SEC and other entities slowly wake up long enough to weigh in, looks like Robinhood might get sacrificed but u/deepfuckingvalue is already DOXed and I'm not certain his measly $10M will be enough to save him from the crushing weight of lawsuits for violating...something...

Is anyone else somewhat interested that beyond the detail level the outcome of all the stock market fun last week is going to be favoring Short over Long? As those two actions become not economic but political.

DFV posted an alleged screenshot of his holdings in WSB yesterday. He's claiming to still be holding ~35 million in stock (as of yesterday's close, less now) and call options and is using that to encourage the masses to stay in the bubble.Everyone who shorted while it was over $300 is laughing every bit as hard as the folks who sold to the latecomers at prices that are 10x value. I am very curious as to which funds made made bank from selling off their long positions (while very sensibly keeping very quiet so as to not disturb the "little guy fucks over Wall St" narrative).</p><p>Yesterday's market volume was around 35 million shares.; The short interest declined by 35 million. This suggests to me that the only people buying were shorts taking their profits and cashing out and that the bubble is collapsing.