Last Chance Plot Goes Down the Drain
Any semblance of misguided hope Trump would remain president was just flushed down the drain.
Republican leaders in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin throw cold water on ploy to flip electors to Trump
Republican leaders in Michigan and three other critical states won by President-elect Joe Biden say they won’t participate in a legally dubious scheme to flip their state’s electors to vote for President Donald Trump. Their comments effectively shut down a half-baked plot some Republicans floated as a last chance to keep Trump in the White House.
State by State Reality
- Arizona: “I do not see, short of finding some type of fraud — which I haven’t heard of anything — I don’t see us in any serious way addressing a change in electors,” said Rusty Bowers, Arizona’s Republican House speaker, who says he’s been inundated with emails pleading for the legislature to intervene. “They are mandated by statute to choose according to the vote of the people.”
- Michigan: Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey told radio station WJR on Friday, “It is not the expectation that our analysis will result in any change in the outcome.”
- Pennsylvania: “The Pennsylvania General Assembly does not have and will not have a hand in choosing the state’s presidential electors or in deciding the outcome of the presidential election,” top Republican legislative leaders, state Sen. Jake Corman and Rep. Kerry Benninghoff, wrote in an October op-ed.
- Wisconsin: The Republican leader of Wisconsin’s Assembly, Robin Vos, has long dismissed the idea, and his spokesperson, Kit Beyer, said he stood by that position on Thursday.
Half-Baked Theory
The theory is rooted in the fact that the U.S. Constitution grants state legislatures the power to decide how electors are chosen. Each state already has passed laws that delegate this power to voters and appoint electors for whichever candidate wins the state on Election Day. The only opportunity for a state legislature to then get involved with electors is a provision in federal law allowing it if the actual election “fails.”
The problem, legal experts note, is that the result of the election is not in any way unclear. Biden won all the states at issue. It’s hard to argue the election “failed” when Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security reported it was not tampered with and was “the most secure in American history.” There has been no finding of widespread fraud or problems in the vote count, which shows Biden leading Trump by more than 5 million votes nationally.
Georgia and Wisconsin Recounts
Trump is entitled to a recount in Georgia and Wisconsin. He is due those. But recounts needing this many vote changes are futile.
Note that Georgia Recount Yields Few Changes in Vote Totals
Some 48 of the state’s 159 counties have finished their examination of the ballots with either no change or minor shifts — differences of fewer than five votes in some instances, they said. Four counties that have finished their retallies reported having no changes.
Biden won the first count by over 14,000 votes. Election officials on Saturday started auditing almost 5 million ballots.The Trump campaign has said it’s found widespread voting irregularities but has cited little evidence to substantiate its claims.
An online Atlanta television station, WXIA or 11 Alive, reported on Friday that a ballot the campaign said had been cast by a man, James E. Blalock, who died in 2006 had in fact been cast by his elderly widow, who has always used her married name — Mrs James E. Blalock — to vote.
Delusion Will Continue
Will this stop delusional thinking?
Amusingly, not a chance.
Note that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis urged Pennsylvania and Michigan residents to call state lawmakers and urge them to intervene.
Trump Will Not Concede
Dear President Trump, other than to make a fool of yourself, whether you concede or no does not change the outcome.
You Lost. https://t.co/eRw5WkzNTQ
— Mike “Mish” Shedlock (@MishGEA) November 15, 2020
Trump will not concede. So what?
Now that the state elector path was flushed down the toilet, the fallback delusion is the Supreme Court will decide the election for Trump.
No it won’t. It is absurd to believe the court will throw out ballots because Trump supporters claim they were not close enough to watch the count.
I have my doubts the Supreme Court accepts any cases Trump loses in lower courts. Even if one assumes the court will not take late votes in Pennsylvania, there are not enough of them to matter.
If you seriously believe Trump will prevail, you have TDS Type II. Unfortunately, there is no known cure.
Mish
#21 was just dismissed today.
The way I look at Trump and his minions’ nonsense is that they’re like a bunch of drunks trying to take down a skyscraper with a blowtorch. I don’t think they have the remotest chance of succeeding, but I also don’t think we should allow them to start a fire while they try.
Famed Republican lawyer Ben Ginsberg penned this almost two weeks ago but it bears repeating.
President Trump has failed the test of leadership. His bid for reelection is foundering. And his only solution has been to launch an all-out, multimillion-dollar effort to disenfranchise voters — first by seeking to block state laws to ease voting during the pandemic, and now, in the final stages of the campaign, by challenging the ballots of individual voters unlikely to support him.
Nearly every Election Day since 1984 I’ve worked with Republican poll watchers, observers and lawyers to record and litigate any fraud or election irregularities discovered.
The truth is that over all those years Republicans found only isolated incidents of fraud. Proof of systematic fraud has become the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican Party. People have spent a lot of time looking for it, but it doesn’t exist.
As he confronts losing, Trump has devoted his campaign and the Republican Party to this myth of voter fraud. Absent being able to articulate a cogent plan for a second term or find an attack against Joe Biden that will stick, disenfranchising enough voters has become key to his reelection strategy.
All of the suits include the mythical fraud claim. Many are efforts to disqualify absentee ballots, which have surged in the pandemic. The grounds range from supposedly inadequate signature matches to burdensome witness requirements. Others concern excluding absentee ballots postmarked on Election Day but received later, as permitted under state deadlines. Voter-convenience devices such as drop boxes and curbside voting have been attacked.
The Republican challenging effort is focused almost exclusively in heavily Democratic areas. Signature mismatches will go unheeded by Trump forces in friendly precincts. This is not about finding fraud and irregularities. It’s about suppressing the number of votes not cast for Trump.
Interested in seeing how GA goes, if they find any fraud if they go over each ballet they the other states will have to fix this, or the supreme court will do it. If not then Biden wins, lol. What a nightmare you dopes voted for. I can’t imagine anyone with just half a brain voting for someone who supports BLM and Antifa or someone who couldn’t win. What’s up Mish? lol
At waht point does this get ridiculous?
There are 2 ways Trump can still win. 1. A recount and throwing out fake votes and the courts. 2. Through the US Congress after the 8th of January.
neither statement makes sense
Trump just giving ACB and Kavanaugh a chance to vote against him, so they look independent and shed the impeachment heat. 5d chess baby
/Jk /sarcasm
There are some amazing amazing opportunities afoot. We could nuc that Chinese Island in the South China Sea. Would China retaliate and risk Trump declaring Marshal Law, permanently pushing Biden to the back burner? After all, with legal observers denied access to counting, whose to say we are a nation of laws?
LOL. I suspect Drumpf probably does think he can declare Marshall Law. And can deputise all his supporters….. try googling Martial Law.
For those who say “lockdowns don’t work”…
New coronavirus cases in France have plummeted after two weeks of a nationwide lockdown, according to data from the country’s health ministry.
Health officials reported about 23,794 new confirmed COVID-19 infections in the past 24 hours, down from 33,172 on Thursday — and less than half of the 60,486 new cases reported last Friday.
Hospitalizations for the virus also dropped sharply, with just 24 people in the entire country — one of Europe’s hardest-hit — admitted to the hospital on Friday, compared to 737 on Thursday. The number of patients going into intensive care fell to just four from 96 on Thursday.
However, health officials reported an uptick in coronavirus-related deaths, with the country’s seven-day moving average of the death toll increasing by 15 to 575 — a level last seen at the end of April during the first lockdown.
Trump notwithstanding, I don’t give a F- about what the rest of the world thinks.
Trump notwithstanding, why would Madison have included a potential “ploy” into the constitution?
Newsflash for those who flunked middle school civics: it’s a republic, not a democracy.
Constitutional Democratic Republic.
Because, you know, there’s like elections and stuff.
Sour looser…
only idiots make the case republics are NOT themselves democracies. seems like you did pass Chump University. who was your favorite professor, eric or donny jr.
Just because there is evil in the White House does not mean that all Republicans are evil, nor that they will participate in the creation of an un-elected dictatorship.
My theory is that many Republicans are simply scared of Trump and his base. Does it really matter what their motivation is? There’s a reason that most Republicans are not saying and doing the right thing until they announce that they are retiring from the House and Senate
I agree. The problem is that the Republicans are enabling (and have enabled) Trump’s worst impulses.
They could have put a stop to it, but they abdicated.
There are a few speaking out against Trump’s assault on democracy, but not enough. At what point do we consider them complicit?
No. Republicans had every chance to behave like ‘the adults in the room’ for several years. They had yet another chance to do so now – when our elections are under attack and members of their own party are saying that the elections should stand. They, as a group, have not shown any backbone at all. Perhaps they are not all instigators of this sort of evil – but they are certainly enablers and the few that may speak against are not enough to escape the broad brush of being labeled exactly that. Enablers of an enemy of this country.
I do not relish saying the above, BTW. I have always thought of myself as firmly centrist in my views and therefore I always liked having the broader choice of candidates from both parties. The experience of the last four years and specifically the pandemic and this election have deeply colored my views of the Republican party and those that continue to ‘say’ they are Republicans. I will not go back to looking at anything or anyone they offer until there is some sort of reset of their goals and beliefs. Perhaps the Libertarians can get their act together enough to pull those that no longer fit under the Republican name to their side.
Obama did the same thing. His administration rushed through a slew of executive orders in the last days of their administration. Further proof that Trump knows its over. If they really thought they were going to secure 2nd term they wouldn’t be doing this.
With oil at current levels, I suspect new oil leases will sell at record lows.
Most banks have said they will not finance any arctic drilling. I suspect Insurance companies have similar policies
Trump eats the chess pieces. He isn’t playing 3 or 4 dimensional chess. Just munching the pieces.
I don’t think this is about winning but engaging in a scorched earth defense and fighting to the end so Trump can tell his base the election was stolen. The base will readily consume it and it sets Trump up or his next grift. Additionally conceding is simply not in Trump’s vocabulary. He’s used the courts this way his whole life.
Trump will fight to the end, but he’ll most likely go to Mar-a-largo over Christmas and never return.
He won’t be going to Mar a Lago. I have it on good authority that he’s sent Rudy on a property hunting mission for a something gaudy around the area where Edward Snowdon’s living. The whole family are going “home”.
It’s become increasingly clear that Trump’s plots will fail. His lawyers have all quit , cases are all being thrown out and a precedent known as “Purcell” means that judges will not want to change the rules during or after an election. Challenges to the rules should be brought up before hand. The theory is that voters have a right to know what the rules are.
What’s also seems clear is that there will be on transition and Biden’s team will be hobbled one they assume the White house. Mitch McConnell and his Senate Republicans are either too afraid of Trump’s base or simply lack the power to rein him in. I thought Biden’s team might go to court and get a Mandamus which is a court order forcing a public official to do their job. On the surface it would seem slam dunk but judges tend to show deference to government bureaus and of course Trump could appeal and before we know it, its January 20th.
It’s over. Please just focus on winning the 2 GA senate seats.
The only “victory” Trump is providing is cover for ANTI-DEMOCRATIC Tyrants to follow Trump’s bogus claims BS and wrongly claim to power themselves.
Trump, I appreciate the laugh, but you’re starting to get deeply into anti-American harm.