US Elections 2020

[filghy2]

I expected Democrats to win the Presidency and the House. I was hopeful about the Senate. I suppose I wasn't judging victory based on expectations just prior to the election but compared to status quo ante. If a ten to one favorite in a boxing match wins eight out of twelve rounds I don't consider it a setback or a defeat even if the odds implied something more emphatic.

The question for me was whether they increased their ability to pass legislation and control the direction this country takes. The incumbent has historically done very well in our Presidential elections and Trump winning re-election, something Clinton, GW, and Obama did, would have been a nightmare.

I think winning the House (which is gerrymandered), winning the Presidency (with an incumbent tried to cheat repeatedly and used a pandemic to suppress votes), and having a chance to get 50 seats in the senate is a victory even if you expected more simply because they controlled the Presidency and the Senate.

The overall vote margin in the House was 3.1%, compared to 4.5% in the Presidential vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_U...ives_elections
That suggest that the percentage of voters who rejected Trump but also rejected the Dems In Congress was relatively small.

It's true that there was a sizable swing away from the Dems compared to 2018, but that margin would still have delivered a very decisive victory in any reasonably fair electoral system. I think a lot of Americans don't appreciate just how much their system has been corrupted.

[Stavros]

I haven't listened to the whole hour and I'm not sure if this is in the clip I posted or another one, but one fragment that struck me was when Trump was basically told not to believe everything on social media. His response was "it wasn't from social media, it was from Trump media". Strongly suggests he only listens to whatever sources are biased towards him. Personally, I wonder if that's one reason he's still in denial over the election result having only been fed positive polling numbers and other information.

It is a tedious hour, because of the repetition and the claims Trump makes that are simply not true -'we won the state'. It is risky to base an assessment on the few books about him I have read, but I think we can agree that Trump has no intellectual curiosity, indeed, not much of an intellect. Other than Scotland and Slovenia -and he only went there once to please his wife- he has never willingly travelled outside the US, and doesn't even seem to have travelled much inside it before he became President. His ignorance of things outside the immediate orbit of his bodily functions and money suggests he is also easily impressed by people he knows are better informed than he is, even if he claims he knows better than most people. I had never heard of the woman on the phone call, Cleta Mitchell, and we don't know who has been feeding Trump verifiable rubbish, such as the claim Trump made on twitter that Brad Raffensperger's brother Ron 'works for China' when Brad Raffensperger doesn't have a brother. Surely at some point the President must query where all these bogus claims come from that make him look stupid? Again, consider Giuliani presenting an Affidavit to a court in Michigan that claims that electoral fraud took place in counties listed in the Affidavit that were not in Michigan, but Minnesota. It is not as if there is any doubt about the claims, they are all proven to be bogus, and when Raffensperger insists the election count is accurate it just gets a blanket denial-

"Raffensperger: We believe that we do have an accurate election.
Trump: No, no you don’t. No, no you don’t. You don’t have. Not even close. You’re off by hundreds of thousands of votes."

It is simple really, Trump can't bear the fact that he lost the election, and anyone offering him 'proof' he won it will be listened to, but this makes it all personal, rather than a matter of state. The question now is how many times is Trump going to either break the law or commit an impeachable offence, and get away with it? Surely at some point the law must be held more important than the delusions of a failed candidate?

And today the election official in Georgia has presented a complete rebuttal of every claim the President made (link below)

Transcript of the phone call is here-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...356_story.html

Georgia's rebuttal of Trump's claims here-

[KnightHawk 2.0]

Washington Post reporting on a Trump phonecall where he begs and threatens the Georgia secretary of state to find votes for him.

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/s...92166715600897

Part of the recording.

https://twitter.com/keithedwards/sta...96238722129923

Donald-D.A.M.N-Trump calling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger begging and threatening him is illegal and very dangerous,and shows that he's delusional and isn't willing to accept the fact that he lost the presidential election by 74 electoral college votes and the popular vote by over 7 million,and is trying to hold on to power by intimidating elected officials,and knows what awaits him when his term ends in 15 days. And meanwhile his enablers in Congress and the Senate haven't said anything and have been silent,because they are too busy trying to overturn an election that was called nearly 2 months ago. but if a democratic president would of done something like this,they will have been in a uproar with plenty to say and ready to impeach him. and this also shows how toxic and corrupt the Republican Party has become under the D.A.M.N. over the last 4 years.

[KnightHawk 2.0]

It is a tedious hour, because of the repetition and the claims Trump makes that are simply not true -'we won the state'. It is risky to base an assessment on the few books about him I have read, but I think we can agree that Trump has no intellectual curiosity, indeed, not much of an intellect. Other than Scotland and Slovenia -and he only went there once to please his wife- he has never willingly travelled outside the US, and doesn't even seem to have travelled much inside it before he became President. His ignorance of things outside the immediate orbit of his bodily functions and money suggests he is also easily impressed by people he knows are better informed than he is, even if he claims he knows better than most people. I had never heard of the woman on the phone call, Cleta Mitchell, and we don't know who has been feeding Trump verifiable rubbish, such as the claim Trump made on twitter that Brad Raffensperger's brother Ron 'works for China' when Brad Raffensperger doesn't have a brother. Surely at some point the President must query where all these bogus claims come from that make him look stupid? Again, consider Giuliani presenting an Affidavit to a court in Michigan that claims that electoral fraud took place in counties listed in the Affidavit that were not in Michigan, but Minnesota. It is not as if there is any doubt about the claims, they are all proven to be bogus, and when Raffensperger insists the election count is accurate it just gets a blanket denial-

"Raffensperger: We believe that we do have an accurate election.
Trump: No, no you don’t. No, no you don’t. You don’t have. Not even close. You’re off by hundreds of thousands of votes."

It is simple really, Trump can't bear the fact that he lost the election, and anyone offering him 'proof' he won it will be listened to, but this makes it all personal, rather than a matter of state. The question now is how many times is Trump going to either break the law or commit an impeachable offence, and get away with it? Surely at some point the law must be held more important than the delusions of a failed candidate?

And today the election official in Georgia has presented a complete rebuttal of every claim the President made (link below)

Transcript of the phone call is here-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...356_story.html

Georgia's rebuttal of Trump's claims here-

As long as his enablers in Congress and the US Senate stay silent and let him continue to abuse his power and commit illegal impeachable offenses,he will continue to get with away breaking the law. and it is good to see Republicans like Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling standing up to Donald Trump and debunking false claims by him over the past several months.

[broncofan]

The overall vote margin in the House was 3.1%, compared to 4.5% in the Presidential vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_U...ives_elections
That suggest that the percentage of voters who rejected Trump but also rejected the Dems In Congress was relatively small.

It's true that there was a sizable swing away from the Dems compared to 2018, but that margin would still have delivered a very decisive victory in any reasonably fair electoral system. I think a lot of Americans don't appreciate just how much their system has been corrupted.

I think you're right that we need to put in perspective the fact that a two to three percent handicap is enormous in a two party system. Maybe it partly explains why Republicans have been able to give up principles, make people ignore outcomes, and appeal only to tribal loyalty. You'd think there would be something else restraining more of them, like an aversion to falsehoods, and an unwillingness to accept behavior whose adoption by their adversaries would create hell on earth for everyone.

But I think you're right. The corruption of our system has allowed a level of impunity that their morals will not rein in. I'm hopeful they face another defeat that does it for them. But not too hopeful.....we'll see.

[filghy2]

It is risky to base an assessment on the few books about him I have read, but I think we can agree that Trump has no intellectual curiosity, indeed, not much of an intellect.

We should actually be grateful for his lack of intellectual abilities because that has been his undoing in the end - especially his idiotic denialism on the pandemic. Even if he didn't want to follow some of the medical advice, a more intelligent person would have recognised that he needed to be seen to care and to be working hard to address the health and economic impacts.

Similarly, it has only been his brazen and ham-fisted attempts to overturn the election result that are leading many Republicans to finally break with him. A more intelligent person would have seen that this would not work and looked for some other strategy toward either running or controlling the nomination in 2024. It's ironic that this man is so fixated on retaining power when he has completely lost interest in governing. I can't see how spending the next four years obsessing about the myth of the stolen election, rather than the country's problems, can possibly be a foundation for winning in 2024.

The only political skill Trump seems to possess is in appealing to his cult following, which is not sufficient for most purposes. In anything that requires going beyond that he flounders cluelessly.

[filghy2]

I haven't listened to the whole hour and I'm not sure if this is in the clip I posted or another one, but one fragment that struck me was when Trump was basically told not to believe everything on social media. His response was "it wasn't from social media, it was from Trump media". Strongly suggests he only listens to whatever sources are biased towards him. Personally, I wonder if that's one reason he's still in denial over the election result having only been fed positive polling numbers and other information.

It's a classic closed feedback loop. Trump media feeds the prejudices and delusions of Trump and his supporters for political and commercial reasons. That in turn becomes the 'evidence' for the delusions. Any contrary information is rejected as fake news from people who are anti-Trump. And of course the people who work for Trump have learned that it's not a good idea to tell him anything he doesn't want to know.

The only way the loop can be broken is if inconvenient realities become so undeniable that they can't be spun away. It's not clear what might do that. Over 300,000 deaths from coronavirus was obviously not enough.

The interesting question about Trump is whether he actually believes what he says in his own mind or is just cynically adept at lying. I suspect it started as the latter but he can no longer tell the difference between truth and his own wishes.

[broncofan]

The interesting question about Trump is whether he actually believes what he says in his own mind or is just cynically adept at lying. I suspect it started as the latter but he can no longer tell the difference between truth and his own wishes.

Sometimes it seems he's very aware he's speaking falsely because of the timing of the lies. The lies get more desperate as he hears bad news and recently the lies bring about more bad news. His insistence prior to the election that mail-in ballots were fraudulent probably suppressed his own turnout. If he loses tonight, and it looks like he will, it might be because people aren't able to live with the same contradictions he can. You tell them their vote doesn't count, they don't vote.

Tens of thousands of people who died likely believed covid was not much worse than the flu up until they couldn't deny it any longer. Their family members watched them die horrible, painful deaths. Why did he lie about Covid? At some level I suspect he knew he didn't have the organization or competence to deal with it. His staff could have told him that you can't lie about death tolls and you can't bluff in a scenario where the effects are so objectively provable. He tried anyway because the thought of doing anything honestly must make him shudder.

The Republicans chose mass death and unprecedented corruption and the disgrace of it is theirs to live with.

[Laphroaig]

Sometimes it seems he's very aware he's speaking falsely because of the timing of the lies. The lies get more desperate as he hears bad news and recently the lies bring about more bad news. His insistence prior to the election that mail-in ballots were fraudulent probably suppressed his own turnout. If he loses tonight, and it looks like he will, it might be because people aren't able to live with the same contradictions he can. You tell them their vote doesn't count, they don't vote.

Tens of thousands of people who died likely believed covid was not much worse than the flu up until they couldn't deny it any longer. Their family members watched them die horrible, painful deaths. Why did he lie about Covid? At some level I suspect he knew he didn't have the organization or competence to deal with it. His staff could have told him that you can't lie about death tolls and you can't bluff in a scenario where the effects are so objectively provable. He tried anyway because the thought of doing anything honestly must make him shudder.

The Republicans chose mass death and unprecedented corruption and the disgrace of it is theirs to live with.

All the clips in this Twitter thread are ridiculous but this one is insane.

"I'm going to give everyone three action steps ... turn to the person next to you and give them a hug. Someone you don't know ... it's a mass-spreader event! It's a mass-spreader event!"

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1346540391143788544

Edit: for some reason the link keeps going to the beginning of the thread, so screenshot of the clip I'm talking about.

[filghy2]

Sometimes it seems he's very aware he's speaking falsely because of the timing of the lies. The lies get more desperate as he hears bad news and recently the lies bring about more bad news.

What I find interesting is that Trump doesn't seem to care whether his lies sound plausible, whereas most practised liars put some effort into appearing plausible and avoiding obvious inconsistencies. He's definitely a believer in the Goebbels dictum that if you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it people will come to believe it.

But as you say, much of his behaviour is explained by his lacking the competence to do anything else. He's probably not smart enough to ensure his lies are plausible.