Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Zelandakh]

There are still a couple of news people at Fox it seems. An excellent report from Eric Shawn reporting from Philly where he not only updated on the count but also managed debunk many of the POTUS's false claims. The change of lead in Pennsylvania seems to have had an effect on the general mood of the coverage generally. Suddenly they are more sober and have aired some criticisms rather than just plugging the voter fraud angle. That might be a signal to the wider GOP audience to weigh in with a "put up or shut up" to dodgy Don. This is the beginning of the end. It might take a while for the WH to accept it but if he loses Fox and the party, that is game over.

[Trinidad]

There may be a lasting effect from the decision to not allow early counting of mail-in ballots in PA: The perception of this election.

 

Suppose that the current status will be the final result: Biden gets PA, GA, AZ and NV. Trump gets NC and AK. Then Biden will have won the popular vote with a margin of 2.5 to 3%, he will have 306 electors vs Trump's 232. That is definitely not a landslide, but it is a clear victory.

 

Suppose that the mail-in ballots would have been counted ahead of time. We would have seen Biden clearly ahead in many states. We would have gone to bed on Tuesday with the clear feeling that we are going to have a new POTUS. We would have woken up on Tuesday and we would have seen that it was actually a little tighter than we thought. But a win is a win.

 

Now, at least Ken and I have had a few sleepless nights in a row. We perceive this election as incredibly close and tense. When, probably, in reality it wasn't.

 

Rik

[Winstonm]

The mood on Fox is getting darker and darker. Newt was just on calling for DJT to "lead the millions", for the AG to lock up the people counting votes, to have all votes thrown out in counties specified by DJT/Barr and for states to ignore the counts and appoint their own electors. Chilling stuff. :blink: :ph34r:

 

I admire you have the courage to watch Fox News - I cannot do so without growing physically ill.

[Winstonm]

St Helena

 

 

Dante's 8th circle of hell.

[Phil]

I admire you have the courage to watch Fox News - I cannot do so without growing physically ill.

 

I have it on now.

 

I turned it on during the 1st Presidential debate, because I wanted to see what the other side thought about the results. I was treated with a montage of Biden stuttering and the cokehead Don Jr. prattering on about Hunter. I could only stand it for 10 minutes.

 

This morning, they are surprisingly muted. Almost resigned.

[Stephen Tu]

We perceive this election as incredibly close and tense. When, probably, in reality it wasn't.

 

No, it was absolutely close and tense. Critical states being won by < 1% margin. It's only the winner take all nature of electoral votes in nearly all states that makes the electoral total look not so close. A true not close election would be if results had been near the polling, with most of the swing states being won with 5-8% margins IMO.

 

Now we have to hope for miracles in Georgia runoffs for Senate. Otherwise gridlock for 2 years as turtle boy blocks everything because winning is all that matters, not whether some policy is actually good for the country, then I'm afraid stupid voters in US think "hey nothing is really significantly getting better/changing, democrats are 'in charge' because they have presidency, must be their fault, time to give the republicans a chance", they get control of both chambers, and Biden's entire term is wasted. Then we get like president Tucker or some such & I will want to blow my brains out over American stupidity.

 

[Phil]

I have it on now.

 

I turned it on during the 1st Presidential debate, because I wanted to see what the other side thought about the results. I was treated with a montage of Biden stuttering and the cokehead Don Jr. prattering on about Hunter. I could only stand it for 10 minutes.

 

This morning, they are surprisingly muted. Almost resigned.

 

By the way, I had CNN earlier and they appealed to the Murdoch's to tell their anchors to show some restraint. This appears to have happened. Bret Baier is telling the leader of the RNC that there is no way that 147K votes were fraudulently cast.

[kenberg]

I think the election "was close" and in fact we need the present tense "is close". There will be a recount in Georgia as surely there should be. The Biden margin is paper thin, there are still some votes to be counted, there will be a recount. It appears that Biden will win, I agree with that, but it was and is close. Not close in popular vote, but the win has to be a win as the rules now are.

 

There will also be legal challenges. These need to be taken seriously but carefully. Losing is obviously not proof of fraud. My big worry there is that once lawyers get into this everything can quickly disintegrate. "If you have three glasses of scotch, set the facts at an angle, and examine them with a purple light then you can see that the law agrees with me." We need to say "No". I can think of more emphatic phrasing, but a loud "No", or even a soft but clear "No", needs to be the response. We should listen to facts. And that does not mean alternative facts, it means facts without adjectives. Alternative fact presenters need to be sent on their way.

 

This might take a while but phase 1, getting the count, seems to be nearing completion. It would be nice if phase one were the final phase, but reality bites. This is going to be wearing.

[Zelandakh]

I admire you have the courage to watch Fox News - I cannot do so without growing physically ill.

I like to get different points of view and flipped quite a lot during the coverage between CNN, Fox and CBS/BBC, which are the 3 channels I can get live at this time. Most of the time Fox was fine but after it became clear that Trump was losing they started to become difficult to stay on. When it gets too bad I switch back to CNN for a bit.

 

I have it on now.

 

I turned it on during the 1st Presidential debate, because I wanted to see what the other side thought about the results. I was treated with a montage of Biden stuttering and the cokehead Don Jr. prattering on about Hunter. I could only stand it for 10 minutes.

 

This morning, they are surprisingly muted. Almost resigned.

You are lucky you were not watching earlier. The worst was while the blue shift was slowly progressing and the terrible trio - Tucker, Hannity and Laura - all went into pure conspiracy mode for a while. I checked them and all were laughably easy to debunk. It is inconceivable that Fox would think that these held water but they were pushing them anyway and on repeat. The worst part of this section was an interview with Newt Gingrich though - that was genuinely scary.

 

Things did not really go into muted mode until PA turned blue. Shortly thereafter they read out a mildly critical tweet from a Republican and then went to the interview I mentioned above with Eric Shawn. Some of the hosts are still trying to keep alive the idea of the election still being open or of voter fraud but basically they seem to have accepted that the game is up. Hopefully that will help calm things down some. The way they were going there was a serious risk of people getting hurt.

[Zelandakh]

I think the election "was close" and in fact we need the present tense "is close".

It is interesting the different way people look at the same information. From the messages here at BBF I get the impression that a lot of liberals had a sinking feeling early on. Yet at no time during the coverage did I have any serious doubts that Biden would win. I was looking at the forecasts and the demographic swings and the critical paths always seemed to me to be open.

 

My main concern both before and during the count was the Senate and that worry turned out to be well founded. Now of course it might be possible to win the run-offs but my expectation would be 48-52, which is about as bad as it could have been. That is going to make for a difficult period. Mitch will surely re-remember what fiscal responsibility means and try to starve the economy of any restart cash inflow. And I doubt the way the count has gone will lend itself to much bipartisan action whatever JB tries. So pretty much 2-4 years of status quo and sluggish growth. Bad for America and bad for the entire world. We'll see though - the people of Georgia came through once, perhaps they can hit one last 2 run homer at the bottom of the 9^th.

[Winstonm]

Why 69 million still follow Trump, and why we are quickly approaching a critically dangerous moment in the U.S. (Commentary of Bandy X. Lee)

 

 

 

In mental pathology, where higher functions are impaired, an individual taps more easily into "the primitive brain," which is irrational but very powerful, as it is survival-driven. Illegitimate power is like oxygen to the narcissistically- or sociopathically-disordered mind, and such a person would be driven to do anything—including annihilate himself and the world—for his psychic survival. Losing an election would, therefore, not at all be like a healthy person's experience of defeat. In fact, we know how much Donald Trump fears it through his readiness to call others "losers" and "suckers", in order to separate himself and to disavow qualities he cannot tolerate.

Many of his followers will equally experience his downfall as a life-or-death matter, since he has conditioned this into them. Their bond is pathological to start, based on developmental wounds or regression to an earlier stage of development under stress, which led them to seeking a parental figure. They are thus vulnerable to someone manipulative and exploitative enough to claim he will take care of them and protect them in unrealistic ways. And once they do, they often give up their agency and rationality. Recent footage of his followers chanting, "Fire Fauci!" is disturbing in its depiction of their conformity, loss of personality, and alignment with Donald Trump's thinking—to suggest proactively that he remove the reminder of his unwanted reality: the pandemic. Delusions, paranoia, and violence-proneness are among the most contagious symptoms, and we see all these tendencies in his followers.

 

Under these emotional bonds, his followers will likely experience any threat to his position as an existential threat to themselves, which is why negative facts about him only activate defensive denial and disavowal, rather than abandonment. Abused children rather blame themselves than the parent as a survival impulse, for the parent is their lifeline, and it is easier to believe that he or she could never do wrong—and the more untrue this belief, the more insistently they cling to it.

 

 

 

[PassedOut]

It was good to see so much live coverage of the actual process of counting and verifying the accuracy of the votes -- and of the folks doing that work. Yes, the process varies from state to state (more than I had imagined, I learned recently B-) ), but my experiences in Michigan make me confident that the folks working the election, regardless of political orientation, want to obtain an accurate count. Poll watchers are fine, but both the republicans and democrats make sure that they have their own folks actually doing the counting and signing off on its accuracy.

 

The lies told by Trump and some of his toadies are intended and designed to undermine the work of the honest citizens who care about preserving our electoral system. Trump and cohorts do want to substitute an authoritarian system because too much democracy threatens the oligarchy. Throwing out Trump is step one, but there is still a long way to go to repair the system.

 

Looking ahead, it seems to me that McConnell does not subscribe to the Trump nuttiness about Covid-19, so I'm hoping that even a divided government can work together on a national strategy to address the pandemic. Fixing roads, bridges, water, and sewer systems might be another such thing.

 

And let's immediately can the misleading slogan, "Defund the Police!" But maybe we could find ways to provide care for the mentally ill and drug addicts without relying on the police and the jails to deal with and warehouse folks who really need treatment.

[cherdano]

It won't be *that* close. Biden will win 306 electoral votes, and 270 of them with a margin of 2% or more.

 

As always, coastal Democrats conspire to make the popular vote look closer than it actually is, by taking longer to count votes in NY and CA than anywhere else (why??). But in the end, the popular vote will be a bigger margin than any recent election except Obama's 2008 victory.

[Phil]

It won't be *that* close. Biden will win 306 electoral votes, and 270 of them with a margin of 2% or more.

 

As always, coastal Democrats conspire to make the popular vote look closer than it actually is, by taking longer to count votes in NY and CA than anywhere else (why??). But in the end, the popular vote will be a bigger margin than any recent election except Obama's 2008 victory.

 

You can't look at it this way. This is like saying he won 306 / 538 ~ 57%. This would be a great record in many sports leagues.

 

In an election with 144 MM some-odd votes, two swing states with margins of .1 (4,200) and .4% (17,000) were the deciding factor. Slightly different strategy by Trump, like not being an ass-hat to Cindy McCain or toward John Lewis' legacy may have been the difference.

 

Of course, certain things paid off, like labeling Biden a Socialist which scared South FLA to death too.

[Winstonm]

You can't look at it this way. This is like saying he won 306 / 538 ~ 57%. This would be a great record in many sports leagues.

 

In an election with 144 MM some-odd votes, two swing states with margins of .1 (4,200) and .4% (17,000) were the deciding factor. Slightly different strategy by Trump, like not being an ass-hat to Cindy McCain or toward John Lewis' legacy may have been the difference.

 

Of course, certain things paid off, like labeling Biden a Socialist which scared South FLA to death too.

 

Regardless, this will be only the 4th time an incumbent president has been defeated. It will also be a larger win than Trump had in 2016, and Trump was not running against an incumbent. The big disappointment was in the down ballot votes.

[pilowsky]

Regardless, this will be only the 4th time an incumbent president has been defeated. It will also be a larger win than Trump had in 2016, and Trump was not running against an incumbent. The big disappointment was in the down ballot votes.

 

One could almost imagine that there was a deliberate strategy amongst Republican party stalwarts (thinking the Lincoln project) to organise to ditch Trump for Biden so that the 'Republican base' could happily return a conservative house.

 

A similar approach is used in campaigns in Australia when Labor (that's how we spell it) looks like gaining office. The conservatives (called the liberals in Australia) convince everyone that it's a good idea to vote liberal in the senate so that someone can 'keep the bastards honest' (1).

 

Naturally, as you have seen in the USA, this simply the means that nothing useful gets done at all.

 

(1) 'Keep the Bastards' honest was a genuine election slogan for the Australian Democrats. A modestly successful party in Australia in the 1970's and the forerunner of the Greens.

Australia has compulsory preferential voting and a federal electoral commission independent of government so the nonsense that we are seeing in the USA is not likely to happen here.

 

In other words, an actual democracy.

[y66]

Considering all the stress and drama of this year’s presidential race, it may be difficult to view the 2020 election as a success. Close elections in polarized societies place a great strain on democracy. After all, no matter who eventually wins, nearly half the country will be disappointed, perhaps even outraged, by the result. But from the perspective of election administration, the past week has been a surprising success.

 

The smooth administration of the 2020 election is all the more impressive given the unprecedented challenges posed by the pandemic. Earlier this year, we saw meltdowns in election administration in the presidential primaries. During the Wisconsin primary, Milwaukee closed 97% of its polling places. New York City ended up disqualifying 20% of its primary absentee ballots over problems with postmarks, signatures and mail processing. The possibility that there would be too few polling places, supply-chain disruptions for voting equipment and poll-worker shortages loomed over the general election.

 

But none of it materialized in the early voting period or on Election Day itself. The election wasn’t perfect; in some places, there were unacceptably long lines, voting machine outages and problems with the electronic “poll books” used to check in voters. Some underserved communities and communities of color struggled with closed or understaffed polling places. Still, as of now, we know of no major failure of election administration that cast the legitimacy of the outcome into question.

 

One key mark of the election’s success was its record turnout. Millions of ballots remain to be counted, but the number of people who voted—as a percentage of eligible voters—was greater than it has been since 1900. More than 100 million Americans cast ballots early—either through the mail or in person—and 50 million more votes will be counted before the election is over.

 

On Election Day, we saw fewer problems than in any recent election. Poll workers, many of them serving for the first time, braved the pandemic and showed up in large numbers, and polling places were rarely crowded.

 

Because a mounting number of court proceedings are now focusing on mail ballots, it will be tempting to say, when the counting ends, that mail ballots were this election’s distinctive problem. Just as 2000 had its hanging chads, some will argue, 2020 had its absentee ballots. Indeed, the distinct challenges of mail ballots—ranging from rejections due to missing signatures to uncorrected ballot mistakes—may yet play a role in the recounts that are likely to be on the way.

 

Nonetheless, the main story about mail ballots is very positive, once separated from the drama of postelection brawling. Between 80 and 90 million mail and absentee ballots were mailed to voters in the past few months—far more than in 2016. Some experts had worried that the share of rejected ballots would go up this year because first-time voters by mail would be prone to mistakes. Instead, the preliminary evidence suggests that the share of rejected ballots was actually lower than in 2016.

 

The concern about U.S. Postal Service delays amid the pandemic took a political turn this summer when Democrats charged that service changes initiated by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy—appointed by President Trump, who has denounced widespread voting by mail—were politically motivated. The revelation earlier this week that the USPS couldn’t account for 300,000 mail ballots that had received a bar code when they entered the mail stream stoked speculation that the Postal Service was refusing to expedite the delivery of absentee ballots on Election Day, as promised. The suspicion is understandable, but no evidence of political manipulation has yet emerged. The ballots probably hadn’t been scanned upon delivery precisely because they were being expedited.

 

Yet the USPS also balked at a federal judge’s order to institute “sweeps” of postal facilities in battleground areas on Election Day, claiming that it would be impossible to comply. Postal Service data now shows that at least 150,000 ballots probably only got to election officials on Wednesday, leaving many Americans’ votes out of some state counts. When such events occur, citizens will naturally wonder whether partisan administrative officers are out to abscond with their ballots.

 

Something must be done to give the public more confidence that the speed of election mail won’t fall prey to the political whims of a given administration. Both parties have an interest in a Postal Service that gives priority to election mail and removes the risk that ballots will arrive late.

 

As the postelection period also has made clear, if we expect to use the mail more in future elections, we will need changes to some state and federal laws.

 

First, every state should allow for the processing and counting of absentee ballots when they are received. The acrimony of the current litigation is almost completely a product of the fact that the legislatures of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were reluctant to change their absentee-ballot laws to prepare for the vast expansion of mail voting during the pandemic. Florida could release its vote count so quickly in part because it could begin processing its ballots 22 days before the election.

 

We also need to recalibrate election deadlines to the realities of mail balloting. Many voters who voted by mail for the first time during the pandemic are likely to do so again. States that have implemented all-mail balloting in response to the pandemic, such as California, New Jersey, Nevada and Vermont, will find that many voters like it—and that it greatly reduces or even eliminates lines on Election Day, depending on the number of polling places that the state keeps open.

 

Still, high rates of mail balloting clearly don’t work well under the current schedule for presidential elections. It is all well and good to preach patience (as we must right now) when it comes to the vote-counting process, but states need to establish more reasonable deadlines to request and return absentee ballots.

 

Finally, to solidify confidence in the vote-by-mail process, voters must have options besides the Postal Service for delivering their ballots. In states with a great number of centers for early in-person voting, dropping off mail ballots there may suffice. In other states, numerous well-positioned ballot drop boxes will be necessary. Voters need a range of options to ensure that their ballots will be received on time.

 

Election officials and regular citizens came together to pull off a national election that only months before seemed in jeopardy. Even as we enter a contentious stretch of litigation, in which every aspect of the election infrastructure will be scrutinized, the U.S. should be thankful for the heroic—and successful—efforts of election administrators around the country.

Mr. Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. Mr. Stewart is the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science at MIT. They are co-directors of the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.

[pilowsky]

Mr. Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. Mr. Stewart is the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science at MIT. They are co-directors of the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.

 

What you seem to be saying with this commentary is that America is country that is a complete and utter disaster, but at least one can drive from one city to another and the restaurants still serve food.

That is not what I call success.

[Winstonm]

If Biden indeed wins, I hope his first day one activity is to fire Bill Barr.

[Zelandakh]

If Biden indeed wins, I hope his first day one activity is to fire Bill Barr.

I have a better idea:-

 

1. call him into the Oval Office and ask him to provide an explanation for misleading the American public.

2. detain him and send him to Guantanamo Bay for crimes against the state.

3. release or transfer every other prisoner currently held there.

4. re-introduce water boarding.

[helene_t]

MrAce shared on Facebook a terrible but probably accurate outlook on the future for US democracy https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/trump-proved-authoritarians-can-get-elected-america/617023/

[Trinidad]

No, it was absolutely close and tense. Critical states being won by < 1% margin. It's only the winner take all nature of electoral votes in nearly all states that makes the electoral total look not so close. A true not close election would be if results had been near the polling, with most of the swing states being won with 5-8% margins IMO.

That is obviously true. I would have preferred Biden to win Pennsylvania with a 5 % difference and get Florida and Texas too.

 

What I meant to say, and probably I wasn't clear about that, is that the perception would have been entirely different if mail-in ballots would have been counted when they came in:

On Tuesday evening, the map of almost the entire USA would have looked blue. During the night Ohio and Iowa, and later Texas and Florida, would have turned red. Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania would have been blue all the way. On Wednesday morning it would have been clear that Pennsylvania goes to Biden, and the election is decided. At about the same time, they would have finished counting in Georgia, giving it to Biden too. They would have announced a recount in Georgia, on principal grounds, but it would have been moot. At that time, North-Carolina would start to shift red.

 

Biden would have been ahead of the race all the time. Trump would have played catch-up but would simply run out of time. Apart from the Georgia recount, the result would have been clear on Wednesday. This would have saved me my finger nails, but that is not important.

 

What is important is that Trumpers would not have been able to say that the election was stolen from them, certainly not by Democrats who "found" votes. They never would have had the perception that they "had" the election, so it couldn't have been stolen either. No one would have called for a war against "a Democratic election fraud apparatus". We would have been in the transition period. Probably, Trump would have forced a few issues while he still could.

 

The fact that the election actually was closer than it initially seemed would be good for the history books only.

 

Rik

[jandrew]

A bad winner ?

A worse loser ??

 

Better start counting the bathroom fittings and lamps :angry:

[Cyberyeti]

A bad winner ?

A worse loser ??

 

Better start counting the bathroom fittings and lamps :angry:

 

And the nuclear codes ?

[PeterAlan]

[T]he perception would have been entirely different if mail-in ballots would have been counted when they came in:

On Tuesday evening, the map of almost the entire USA would have looked blue. During the night Ohio and Iowa, and later Texas and Florida, would have turned red. Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania would have been blue all the way. On Wednesday morning it would have been clear that Pennsylvania goes to Biden, and the election is decided. At about the same time, they would have finished counting in Georgia, giving it to Biden too. They would have announced a recount in Georgia, on principal grounds, but it would have been moot. At that time, North-Carolina would start to shift red.

 

Biden would have been ahead of the race all the time. Trump would have played catch-up but would simply run out of time. Apart from the Georgia recount, the result would have been clear on Wednesday. This would have saved me my finger nails, but that is not important.

 

What is important is that Trumpers would not have been able to say that the election was stolen from them, certainly not by Democrats who "found" votes. They never would have had the perception that they "had" the election, so it couldn't have been stolen either. No one would have called for a war against "a Democratic election fraud apparatus". We would have been in the transition period.

 

Rik

You might think that this has been part of the Trumpian playbook since the Republican legislatures of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania ensured that the counting of their mail-in ballots could not start before election day. I couldn't possibly comment.