2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[RoseMorninStar]

I doubt it will happen though.

I find this so darn frustrating. Applied to the situation as a whole.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Jimmy Carter: I Fear for Our Democracy
By Jimmy Carter
Mr. Carter was the 39th president of the United States.

One year ago, a violent mob, guided by unscrupulous politicians, stormed the Capitol and almost succeeded in preventing the democratic transfer of power. All four of us former presidents condemned their actions and affirmed the legitimacy of the 2020 election. There followed a brief hope that the insurrection would shock the nation into addressing the toxic polarization that threatens our democracy.

However, one year on, promoters of the lie that the election was stolen have taken over one political party and stoked distrust in our electoral systems. These forces exert power and influence through relentless disinformation, which continues to turn Americans against Americans. According to the Survey Center on American Life, 36 percent of Americans — almost 100 million adults across the political spectrum — agree that “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.” The Washington Post recently reported that roughly 40 percent of Republicans believe that violent action against the government is sometimes justified.

Politicians in my home state of Georgia, as well as in others, such as Texas and Florida, have leveraged the distrust they have created to enact laws that empower partisan legislatures to intervene in election processes. They seek to win by any means, and many Americans are being persuaded to think and act likewise, threatening to collapse the foundations of our security and democracy with breathtaking speed. I now fear that what we have fought so hard to achieve globally — the right to free, fair elections, unhindered by strongman politicians who seek nothing more than to grow their own power — has become dangerously fragile at home.

I personally encountered this threat in my own backyard in 1962, when a ballot-stuffing county boss tried to steal my election to the Georgia State Senate. This was in the primary, and I challenged the fraud in court. Ultimately, a judge invalidated the results, and I won the general election. Afterward, the protection and advancement of democracy became a priority for me. As president, a major goal was to institute majority rule in southern Africa and elsewhere.

After I left the White House and founded the Carter Center, we worked to promote free, fair and orderly elections across the globe. I led dozens of election observation missions in Africa, Latin America and Asia, starting with Panama in 1989, where I put a simple question to administrators: “Are you honest officials or thieves?” At each election, my wife, Rosalynn, and I were moved by the courage and commitment of thousands of citizens walking miles and waiting in line from dusk to dawn to cast their first ballots in free elections, renewing hope for themselves and their nations and taking their first steps to self-governance. But I have also seen how new democratic systems — and sometimes even established ones — can fall to military juntas or power-hungry despots. Sudan and Myanmar are two recent examples.

For American democracy to endure, we must demand that our leaders and candidates uphold the ideals of freedom and adhere to high standards of conduct.

First, while citizens can disagree on policies, people of all political stripes must agree on fundamental constitutional principles and norms of fairness, civility and respect for the rule of law. Citizens should be able to participate easily in transparent, safe and secure electoral processes. Claims of election irregularities should be submitted in good faith for adjudication by the courts, with all participants agreeing to accept the findings. And the election process should be conducted peacefully, free of intimidation and violence.

Second, we must push for reforms that ensure the security and accessibility of our elections and ensure public confidence in the accuracy of results. Phony claims of illegal voting and pointless multiple audits only detract from democratic ideals.

Third, we must resist the polarization that is reshaping our identities around politics. We must focus on a few core truths: that we are all human, we are all Americans and we have common hopes for our communities and our country to thrive. We must find ways to re-engage across the divide, respectfully and constructively, by holding civil conversations with family, friends and co-workers and standing up collectively to the forces dividing us.

Fourth, violence has no place in our politics, and we must act urgently to pass or strengthen laws to reverse the trends of character assassination, intimidation and the presence of armed militias at events. We must protect our election officials — who arerusted friends and neighbors of many of us — from threats to their safety. Law enforcement must have the power to address these issues and engage in a national effort to come to terms with the past and present of racial injustice.

Lastly, the spread of disinformation, especially on social media, must be addressed. We must reform these platforms and get in the habit of seeking out accurate information. Corporate America and religious communities should encourage respect for democratic norms, participation in elections and efforts to counter disinformation.

Our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss. Without immediate action, we are at genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy. Americans must set aside differences and work together before it is too late.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/opin ... arter.html

[RoseMorninStar]

Amen Jimmy!
I have a great deal of respect for him but I fear most politicians are not of his moral character. Not even close. Nor do they care.

[N.E. Brigand]

"I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of American democracy.”

--President Joe Biden

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And yet ...

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[N.E. Brigand]

One year ago today, at 3:33 p.m., while the Jan. 6 insurrection had been underway for two hours, Ted Cruz's campaign texted this message to his supporters:

"Ted Cruz here. I'm leading the fight to reject electors from key states unless there is an emergency audit of the election. Will you stand with me?"

Put down the dagger, Ted!

Cruz's spokesperson later said that the text had been pre-programmed weeks earlier. But I'm not sure that's much of an excuse for raising money off an effort to undermine a U.S. election. Similarly I don't think the recent claim by former Trump advisor Peter Navarro that the Trump team absolutely tried to overturn the election results but they intended it to be nonviolent, even if true (I have my doubts), actually lets them off the hook. I agree with TV news host Ari Melber, interviewing Navarro the other day, who responded this way to Navarro's explanation of what Trump was doing: "Do you realize you are describing a coup?"

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Meanwhile, Biden today was asked whether calling out Trump (albeit not by name: Biden referred to him "a defeated former president") for his role in the insurrection in his speech this morning would "divide more than it heals." Biden,who has talked about Trump far less than Trump talked about Obama, gave what I think is the right answer:

"The way you have to heal, you have to recognize the extent of the wound."

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J.D. Vance, the venture capitalist and memoirist seeking the Republican nomination to be Ohio's next U.S. senator, complained today that the insurrectionists have been denied their rights to a speedy trial and are "rotting in jail" despite being "accused of nothing." I am sympathetic to concerns of prosecutorial misconduct, but as far as I know, there are no jailed insurrectionists who haven't been charged, and also the problem is one of scale: there are so many insurrectionists that the Dept. of Justice is nigh overwhelmed. Is Vance willing to call for the hiring of more prosecutors to speed things along?

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Emily Hernandez, a 22-year-old insurrectionist was was photographed at the Capitol holding a sign stolen from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, and who had been described by her lawyer as "the girl next door" caught up in "an unfortunate situation," was due to plead guilty next Monday. Last night, apparently driving drunk on the wrong side of a highway in Missouri, she struck another car, seriously injuring the man who was driving it and killing his wife, a passenger in the front seat. The couple has two sons.

(I see that some people are interpreting that story as an argument that Hernandez should have been jailed while awaiting her plea. I don't think she should have been, but the story does seemed framed that way ... now. It's titled "Family Fumes After Capitol Rioter Out on Bond Kills Young Mom in Drunken Crash" and it has the additional tag "Why Is She Still Out?" But I think it had a different title and lacked that tag when I first read it a few hours ago.)

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Cyber Ninjas, the firm hired by the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate to re-audit the election results in Maricopa County, ultimately found nothing of significance. Today an Arizona judge found the company in contempt for failing to turn over records sought by the Arizona Republic. They will be fined $50,000 per day until the records are provided. (But they are likely to appeal to Arizona's supreme court, which presumably will stop the clock on the fine.) It's not clear whether they can even pay the fine. Today their lawyer tried to withdraw because he says they're not paying him. But they also had two new lawyers in the courtroom (who aren't licensed in Arizona and thus couldn't actually participate in today's hearing), and I second the question of the Republic reporter who wants to know: how are they getting paid?

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Donald Trump today issued a statement claiming that Democrats in 2020 "tried to stop the peaceful transfer with a rigged election." (Trump's statement is just one lie after another about the election. Among other things, he claims that in Georgia, "it was just revealed they sold ballots for $10 a piece".) He says that "America is a laughingstock stock [sic] of the world."

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Matt Yyglesias reminds people that Trump's plan to steal the election was clear even before the election happened with a link to a story that's fourteen months old:

Current polls [as of Nov. 1, 2020] show Biden leading in all six states. But his leads are narrower in the fast-counting states than in the slow-counting states, so if Trump does moderately better than polls currently suggest, he could win the fast-counting states on election night and wage battle in the courts to try to prevent the slow-counting ones from fully tallying their votes. ...

As Jason Miller, a Trump campaign official, put it Sunday morning on ABC, "If you speak with many smart Democrats, they believe that Trump will be ahead on election night, probably getting 280 electoral [votes], somewhere in that range, and then they’re gonna try to steal it back after the election."

Yes, even before the election, Republicans were saying on TV that counting all the votes would be stealing.

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Politico reports today that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris was actually in DNC headquarters on January 6th when a pipe bomb was discovered just outside that building and the nearby RNC headquarters. She was evacuated. The bomb had been placed the previous evening. There have been no arrests made in that case.

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Today, Donald Trump's former press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, said on CNN that Trump "gleefully" watched the riot on TV as it happened: he would rewind the footage and say, "Look at all those people fighting for me."

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Newt Gingrich today contrasted Biden's speech with Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address. Like many lazy students of history, Gingrich remembers only the parts of that speech that promised reconciliation ("with malice toward none, with charity toward all"), but as others have pointed out today, the Civil War was still months from ending, and just moments before uttering those words, Lincoln was very clear about what had to be done before the healing could begin:

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray -- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'

[N.E. Brigand]

Interesting but somewhat disturbing (if not completely hopeless) summary from a McClatchy reporter of how two focus groups of moderate voters respond to questions about January 6: broadly speaking, they don't understand why something they think was no big deal is still in the news.

[RoseMorninStar]

It's depressing.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Well, maybe it isn't important. Who is to say that we are right and they are wrong?

[RoseMorninStar]

People are entitled to their opinions but they are not the same as facts.

Defining Facts & Opinions

An important part of reading comprehension is determining what a fact is and what an opinion is. To understand more completely, let's define each. A fact is a statement that is true and can be verified objectively, or proven. In other words, a fact is true and correct no matter what. An opinion, however, is a statement that holds an element of belief; it tells how someone feels. An opinion is not always true and cannot be proven.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Whether something is important is an opinion, not a fact.

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[RoseMorninStar]

Whether something is important is an opinion, not a fact.

That is true, and I understand your point, but whether something is news is not. I'm more than frustrated with people changing the perception of reality with propaganda. Like Rep. Andrew Clyde claiming the Jan. 6 Capitol takeover was just another day of “normal tourist visits.” That is his opinion, but it's not based on reality.

[N.E. Brigand]

Well, maybe it isn't important. Who is to say that we are right and they are wrong?

The ghost of Pauline Kael?

But this may largely be moot, if pillow entrepreneur and right-wing conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell is correct. As shown in this video, Lindell foresees the imprisonment of 90% of the American public for their supposed role in thwarting Donald Trump's victory:

"We already have all the pieces of the puzzle. And you talk about evidence, we have enough evidence to put everybody in prison for life, 300 and some million people. We have that all the way back to November and December."

Who wants to share a cell with me?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Whether something is important is an opinion, not a fact.

That is true, and I understand your point, but whether something is news is not. I'm more than frustrated with people changing the perception of reality with propaganda. Like Rep. Andrew Clyde claiming the Jan. 6 Capitol takeover was just another day of “normal tourist visits.” That is his opinion, but it's not based on reality.

Whether something is news is in fact opinion. It is my opinion, for instance, that what Mike Lindell has to say is not news, as ridiculous as it is. On the other hand, Clyde's claim that the 1/6 insurrection was just a day of normal tourist visits is not an opinion. It is a demonstrably false statement of fact.

ETA: I had to look up who Pauline Kael was.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The 1/6 Select Committee has requested "voluntary cooperation" from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy so that they can ask him about conversations that he had with Trump during and after the insurrection.

Good luck with that!

[RoseMorninStar]

The 1/6 Select Committee has requested "voluntary cooperation" from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy so that they can ask him about conversations that he had with Trump during and after the insurrection.

Good luck with that!

Yeah.

Opinion/fact/newsworthiness can edge it's way into something of a grey area. For example, I do not watch sports. I could care less about sports. I don't even watch the super bowl. *I* don't think it's important, but I still recognize that it as an important event (for many). The same could be said of say.. The Boston Tea party, Watergate, or the Vietnam war. What is personally important or what is of historical importance can vary. I find it disturbing that so many find what happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 of no importance, or not newsworthy/a nothingburger. Additionally I tend to believe that lack of importance was engineered by propaganda which I also find disturbing.

Kim Jong Un.. God or delusional leader? It depends who you ask.

[N.E. Brigand]

ETA: I had to look up who Pauline Kael was.

Kael was an influential but often contrarian movie critic from about 1960 to her retirement in the early 1990s. While she generally expressed a preference for unpretentious "movies" to more serious "films," she was fired from McCall's magazine for panning the very popular The Sound of Music in 1965 (although she wasn't the only one to dub it "The Sound of Money"). She spent most of the rest of her career at The New Yorker. It was probably her positive review of The Empire Strikes Back, which like many of her reviews came out after most other critics had had their say, that had the biggest impact on that film eventually being considered the greatest of the original three Star Wars movies (she had panned the original in 1977, and she would go on to pan Return of the Jedi three years later). She could turn a memorable phrase, even when trashing a film I liked. While I often disagreed with her, I have several of her books, and I still remember how she wrote of Dances With Wolves that Kevin Costner, the film's star and director, had "feathers in his hair and feathers in his head."

But the reason I cited her here was this comment she made in a December 1972 speech: "I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they [i.e., the majority of Nixon's voters] are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them." Often rephrased as "I can't believe Nixon won. I don't know anyone who voted for him," this comment has been cited for five decades as an expression of how liberals live in a bubble.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Thanks! That says more about her than the Wikipedia article that I read.

Rose, I don't mean to be a contrarian, but it continues to be *my* opinion that whether something is "news" or a "big deal" or even "important" is purely a matter of opinion. No U.S. news outlet is not going to cover the Super Bowl since enough people in the U.S. consider it to be a big deal, but in Australia or Ireland, it would be the opinion of most of the people that a cricket match is a bigger deal than the Super Bowl. Matter of opinion.

[RoseMorninStar]

No, no worries V.. I realize I'm the one being contrarian and kinda processing a thought exercise, but the initial link has this:

Moderator asked 1st group (five women) about Jan 6th. Long pause followed, before one of the women asked what he meant. Invoking "Jan. 6" didn't immediately mean anything, even days after anniversary

. I'm not on Twitter so I wasn't able to go back to what prompted the conversation. I realize that what occurred on Jan. 6th may not have been important/registered anything to those on the panel, but it was a violent coup attempt to overthrow our own government, not something that happened in another country. I find that (the lack of knowledge/interest/concern) depressing.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile we have a definitive winner in the category of least unexpected headlines.

McCarthy says he will not cooperate with January 6 committee probe