US election 2020 - WEEK 1...2...3

Judges have no legal requirement to recuse, so of course they won't.

I don't think, though, that any of his legal avenues lead to success at this point, even if the SCOTUS throws out 1M votes in PA. There are more details about this on line (and in the video Intro posted, IIRC).

Illegal avenues are a different issue, of course, and will entirely depend on how much of the military backs him, and how much of the GOP decides to be full fascist when the rubber meets the road. I don't think there's a huge possibility it'll go that far, but I do worry.

Great, thanks. So will Biden's position be unassailable after Dec 8th?

I will check out that video. I can't imagine there being a military option, but then 2020 is the gift that keeps on giving!

The POTUS is the commander in chief of the military. If enough of the military continues to recognize *rump as commander in chief, there you go. Never mind all his armed followers. You don't need a huge number of guns to hold back average people.

My pessimistic view is that the US is headed for armed civil war in my lifetime. I dearly hope it's not now, but I don't see Biden's victory as giving us all the tools we need to step back from the cliff.

He's commander in chief, true, but would modern soldiers with the access they have to information, etc, see a coup as something their uniform requires them to the perform? I hope you are wrong, but fear you are not.

It all depends on the commanders. Soldiers are well trained to follow orders and not ask questions. Legally, of course, they can refuse unlawful orders, but in practice that's extremely difficult to do unless you have enough support.

If the SCOTUS makes any decision that even implies there was large-scale voter fraud, the argument would be he's still officially the POTUS and they must obey.

Like I said, I don't think it'll go that far. But it's absolutely a possibility.

The generals are not in Trump's pocket. Trump does not have command of the military regardless he has it in name. Withdrawing troops, sure, but not a coup. We are not a banana republic.

He has exhausted his legal options. Aside from trying to delay a state certifying their election results, there is nothing he can do. His wet dream is to have the SCOTUS overturn the election results like they did with Gore. It's only a dream.

And there are no state legislatures who are going to break the law (for reasons) and be the first to stick their necks' out given it would take more than one state to shift enough votes to give Trump 270. The legislators would be left dangling in the wind and for nothing gained.


People close to Trump have begun leaking the fact he knows he has lost but now it is all about getting even with Obama and Clinton and the Democrats who he blames for everything.

He is trying to burn down the house to make trouble for the incoming occupant. And sadly that means more unnecessary COVID deaths.

It also sadly means we are going to have right-wing extremists who could get violent.


With all those bad thoughts, you might appreciate some levity, complements of my neighbor:

"I have a case here....hear me out:

I’m suing Powerball. They stole my lottery jackpot because I wasn’t allowed to clearly see the ping pong balls as they were selected. Plus, there were fraudulent ping pong balls in the machine. I know this because the numbers drawn were not on my ticket. What’s especially suspicious is that I bought my ticket on a Saturday, yet the drawing did not take place until Tuesday! Why the delay? Obviously, it was so they had more time to rig the drawing.

And Rudy Giuliani says he'll represent me for $25,000 a day. I'm going to be a winner."

This Onion article eloquently summarizes the gist of Giuliani's tactics so far.

https://politics.theonion.com/your-honor-i-m-ready-to-present-says-giuliani-pulli-1845716203

I think of two possible reasons for these flailings. One is he is simply tossing garbage at the wall and desperately hoping something sticks that will delay the certification of the election. Perhaps he is hoping that if they dig enough, something will surely show up eventually. Or maybe he is simply grasping at that thin (but not entirely impossible) hope that the SCOTUS will still come through for him if it ends up in their laps because of intractable delays.

The second possibility is that Trump knows conceding, graciously or otherwise, will not play well with his base. They'd take it as a betrayal of everything they like about him--the rule-breaking, macho, narcissistic/sociopathic "winner at all costs" persona. Adoring mobs can turn on their leaders, and when they do so they can be incredibly vicious. Given the sort of person present among Trump's base (like, ahem, Kyle Rittenhouse), Trump and his family might even be in danger if some of them feel personally betrayed by a concession on his part.

Of course, these two things aren't mutually exclusive.

Keep in mind how serious Trump's pathologic narcissism is (documented by Dr Lee, Mary Trump and others).

He is incapable of conceding just like he was incapable of admitting so much as a typo.

That doesn't mean he doesn't recognize he lost (he has admitted so in private per CNN and other news sources). In his mind that will translate into: he only lost because people cheated him.

I'm not sure his continuing to challenge the results is a long term plan. It is however, revenge. Having people doubt Biden's legitimacy is rewarding to him. There is irony there on multiple levels.

Trump challenging the results will fade after this week. He's trying to delay states' certifying their results. I suspect Biden will reach 270 despite Trump trying to delay that inevitability. All states need not certify for Biden to technically reach 270. NY, CA, WA and many other states don't certify until Dec. But once Biden reaches the inevitable 270, all the worrying over Trump's coup should fade away.

Again, Trump will continue to cry foul. He may however, stop blocking officials from working with Biden while Trump golfs. He may even fly off to Mar-a-Lago to lick his wounds.

Or, he might continue blocking Biden out of revenge. That is an unknown.

GSA tells Biden that transition can formally begin

The General Services Administration has informed President-elect Joe Biden that the Trump administration is ready to begin the formal transition process, according to a letter from Administrator Emily Murphy sent Monday afternoon and obtained by CNN.

The letter is the first step the administration has taken to acknowledge President Donald Trump's defeat, more than two weeks after Biden was declared the winner in the election.


The letter signals that Murphy will formally sign off on Biden's victory, a normally perfunctory process known as ascertainment. The move will allow the transition to officially begin, permitting current administration agency officials to coordinate with the incoming Biden team, and providing millions in government funding for the transition.

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Guess she decided the most self-serving action was to stop refusing to do her job.

Editing to add that I just read Murphy's letter to Biden, and except for being coherent and grammatically correct, it's as dishonest, self-serving, and whiny as anything Trump's ever tweeted.

Meanwhile, Biden's been announcing cabinet members.

President-elect Joe Biden announced several picks for top jobs in national security and foreign relations, and is also expected to name Janet L. Yellen as treasury secretary, according to three people in close communication with aides to the president-elect.

The nominations announced Monday are: Alejandro Mayorkas to head the Department of Homeland Security, the first immigrant in that position; Avril D. Haines as director of national intelligence, the first woman in that position; and former secretary of state John F. Kerry as special presidential envoy for climate.

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Biden is choosing people with the experience and skills to do their jobs. I always felt that's why he chose Kamala Harris for the VP slot. When he said he wanted a vice president who could do the job of president on day one, I believed he meant it. I am sure people will have feelings about this choice or that, but overall, I think most of us are breathing nice, long sighs of relief.

Can we Snoopy dance yet?

Introversion said:

For me, though, the scary thing isn’t the next two months, it’s the next decade. Trump supporters are literally behaving like a cult, and there are 70 million of them. All it takes is another charismatic, but competent autocrat, and they’re all-in. They seem to believe that Democrats are hell-bound to destroy America, so they’re fighting an existential threat. What lengths would they and the Y’allQueada militias go to prevent that, by which I mean, Republicans losing fair elections?

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This is a big worry, I think.

BenPanced said:

Meanwhile, the computer shop owner who supposedly found Hunter Biden's emails...

...has closed shop and skipped town.

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Allegedly because he was receiving death threats, unfortunately. True or not, this sort of thing plays into the Right's hands, because when someone on the Left acts as whacked out as what is rapidly becoming the Right's baseline norm, they can point and say, "See, see!" In fact, folks I know who are Conservative were all crowing on social media about how nice and nonviolent the protests by Republicans were after Trump lost. They got their digs in by saying, "Non violent protests are a nice change!"

Funny, I was watching after Biden's numbers came in, and I got the impression that the Republicans were all so nice and nonviolent was because Trump's gun-toters got a good, up-close look at all those Biden crowds dancing and singing, in their vast numbers. <br>
Trump's goons know how easy it is for a crowd to snap and turn. Even with their rifles, they'd be hard-pressed to make a run for it if <em>something</em> stampeded those happy hordes. Or made them very, very angry.<br><br>Oh, as to the computer shop owner, I hadn't heard he was getting death threats. I assumed that he ran rather than testify to anything under oath. <img src="images/smilies/EmoteShrug.gif" border="0" alt="" title="Shrug" smilieid="36" class="inlineimg">

The Trump election saga has been some of the most entertaining reality television I've seen yet. I can't wait until the morning of January 20th, when the Secret Service are forced to go to the White House and drag Donald Trump out of it, kicking and screaming like a toddler who refuses to leave a toy store. He'll be hanging on to the doorjamb screaming and crying while Melania throws his clothes out the window and a million cameras record it all.

Fun times.

Someone on twitter commented that this is a bit like an advent calendar, where you open a new panel each day for a new "surprise." Except instead of candy, each day there is a new ruling against Trump, or some new ridiculously silly thing he or his has done.

I wonder how Trump sleeps at night. That man has no peace of mind.

vicelimmer said:

I wonder how Trump sleeps at night. That man has no peace piece of mind.

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fixed it for you

Simple: he follows the Charlie Sheen Method of WINNING! He tells himself he's a winner and he's won over anything and everything and SO MUCH WINNING.

Basically delusion.

He may be deluded, but the main point of all this is the same as why he ran for the office to begin with: his behavior makes people send him money, and he likes money.

He'll leave office without ever having conceded, and use that fact to continue the grift.

Roxxsmom said:

Someone on twitter commented that this is a bit like an advent calendar, where you open a new panel each day for a new "surprise." Except instead of candy, each day there is a new ruling against Trump, or some new ridiculously silly thing he or his has done.

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On the matter of ridiculously silly things... I can't get past the Four Seasons Total Landscaping debacle.