“Our Constitution does not secure the peaceful transition of power, but rather presupposes it,” the legal scholar Lawrence Douglas wrote in a recent book.
I’m shocked at what I have been learning about our democracy. I did not know the Governors could throw out the voters decision and throw their electoral college votes toward their party’s Presidential candidate to ensure their party wins. Astonishing.
Sven Henrich recently asked a good question:
And those that presume a blue wave will propel Biden into the White House perhaps they should ask themselves this question:
Who says the electoral college will vote for Biden even if he wins? Imagine a scenario where Biden wins key swing states such as Florida, yet the Republican governor and state legislature there decides to cast electoral college votes for Trump anyways using fraud in the election count (real or not) as an excuse? Who would stop them? The law? There is no such law that says they couldn’t vote for Trump. Would the Supreme Court stop them? Watch the nomination hearings in the Senate right now. ACB will likely pass and then the GOP has a 6-3 majority in the court. I’m not predicting anything, but I’m also not making this up. This scenario was recently outlined in the Atlantic. Via Forbes:
“A jarring new report from The Atlantic claims that the Trump campaign is discussing potential strategies to circumvent the results of the 2020 election, should Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump, by first alleging the existence of rampant fraud and then asking legislators in battleground states where the Republicans have a legislative majority to bypass the state’s popular vote and instead to choose electors loyal to the GOP and the sitting president”.
Can you imagine the storm of uncertainty that would follow?
Sven is right. The markets do not like uncertainty. And I can think of no worse uncertainty for the nation than the perception of an unfair election.
Read the whole Atlantic article. If nothing else to be aware of the unfolding events during the election.
So what about Trump’s claims of voter fraud in mail-in voting? I see this as classic gas-lighting, but it also preps the battle for any operations to stop counting mail-in votes or to call the election in key states a fraud (with planted fake fraud) so electoral college votes can be thrown toward him by Republican governors and legislators.
Again, read the whole Atlantic article, but this part got my attention:
Just under a year ago, Justin Clark gave a closed-door talk in Wisconsin to a select audience of Republican lawyers. He thought he was speaking privately, but someone had brought a recording device. He had a lot to say about Election Day operations, or “EDO.”
At the time, Clark was a senior lieutenant with Trump’s reelection campaign; in July, he was promoted to deputy campaign manager. “Wisconsin’s the state that is going to tip this one way or the other … So it makes EDO really, really, really important,” he said. He put the mission bluntly: “Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes … [Democrats’] voters are all in one part of the state, so let’s start playing offense a little bit. And that’s what you’re going to see in 2020. That’s what’s going to be markedly different. It’s going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program, and we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
Of all the favorable signs for Trump’s Election Day operations, Clark explained, “first and foremost is the consent decree’s gone.” He was referring to a court order forbidding Republican operatives from using any of a long list of voter-purging and intimidation techniques. The expiration of that order was a “huge, huge, huge, huge deal,” Clark said.
His audience of lawyers knew what he meant. The 2020 presidential election will be the first in 40 years to take place without a federal judge requiring the Republican National Committee to seek approval in advance for any “ballot security” operations at the polls.
You might think I am a Democrat because of my recent writings. I have voted both ways. I am an American and do not see things from a left or right position but from a top to bottom position. And we, the people, are losing badly.
The impairment of voting destroys the checks and balances built into our constitution. It will also throw more power to the top that they may never give up.
It is not that a Biden win will fix anything dramatically. The Republicans will probably maintain control of the Senate and block most economic stimulus because they will become fiscal hawks again… after sleeping for four years.
The two and half months from November 4th to January 20th could be a period of great uncertainty. Will the Fed try to help by continuing to prop the markets up during potential turmoil. What will be unleashed by the final outcome of the election. We will find out.
Bookmark and read The Election That Could Break America to follow along over the next few months. To better understand the battle unfolding today.
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Categories: Perspectives