I’ll admit to not knowing how the election will turn out. I think Harris, and therefore the United States and the free world are in a good position. However I’m far from sure and again I say it only works out okay if ALL of us make sure our vote is cast. And that we also get others to cast their own votes for Harris as well as other Democrats. Harris exudes confidence lately which tells me she’s either one hell of an actor or has information most of us don’t. Trump is of course being Trump and showing his own share of bravado but to me (and others) it seems forced. He too has access to information most of us don’t and there have been signs he’s worried. The latest one is how publicly and pointedly he’s setting up who will be to blame if he loses and THAT person is RNC honcho Michael Whatley.
It was (for me) fascinating to read this article from Axios this morning. Trump of course, as he will be the first to tell you has been perfect in every way his entire life. Everything he’s done has been ‘perfect’, and he’s never ever, ever EVER made a mistake. If anything hasn’t gone the way he wanted it’s ALWAYS been someone else’s fault. Given that, no one has been surprised both in the past and this year when Trump has proclaimed the ONLY way he could possibly lose is if Democrats and ‘the deep state’ cheat him out of victory. In his mind every single voter wholeheartedly supports him! Or so he says. We all know he lies like he breathes. He knows damn well over half the country despises him, and even a good chunk of those who vote for him don’t like him.
So, we’ve been treated to Trump’s repeated claims that the only way he loses is if Harris/Democrats cheat. However that’s pretty vague and if as I hope Harris kicks his ass Trump seems to have decided he needs a scapegoat from his own ranks. Someone he can point to and scream “IT’S ALL HIS FAULT!” Welcome to the increasingly uncomfortable world of RNC Committee Chair Michael Whatley. Trump tasked Whatley with having the RNC build up a massive ‘election integrity’ operation. We are told some 200k ‘election observers’ will be out there at polling places (and one presumes ballot counting places) looking for ‘voter fraud.’ An awful lot of time and money has gone into that pet Trump project. From Axios:
- Under Whatley — and at Trump’s insistence — Republicans say they’ve amassed 200,000 poll watchers and poll workers across the country.
- It’s an unprecedented program that’s partly aimed at collecting evidence of voter fraud at a time when Republicans have filed scores of lawsuits targeting voting eligibility rules, ballot-processing procedures and other issues.
- Within the GOP, the program is actually a bigger priority than on-the-ground efforts to reach voters.
Trump I remind you has more recently tasked Elon Musk with Get Out The Vote operations. Musk has no experience with such things, and reporting I’ve seen is pretty much universal in saying the Trump GOTV operation is at best unorganized and under-resourced. Some has even described it in ‘Charlie Fox’ (cluster f**k) terms. Harris, thanks to the work of what was once the Biden/Harris campaign had a robust GOTV operation organized and well-funded back in the spring. It far outweighed the GOP effort even then. Once Biden stepped aside Harris got two things – vast sums of new donations, AND some 200k NEW volunteers. Even better they had that robust organization ready to train and deploy them!
Trump knows this and he’s known it for a long time. Still, he bet his chips on finding “voter fraud’ and after election lawsuits. That didn’t work out in 2020, and having telegraphed the punch Democrats have quietly been preparing for all that in every state with particular emphasis on swing states. Hence Trump turning to Musk, who it seems every week is willing to kick in another ten or twenty million bucks to help Trump. However as I’ve said Musk knows no more about organizing and running a large (or any for that matter) organized GOTV effort than he does about running a large social media platform.
Last month at an event in North Carolina (where Whatley is from) Trump singled out Whatley and his ‘mission’, ‘joking’ that if he (Trump) doesn’t win Whatley won’t have a place back home, or anywhere else for that matter. That he’d be ‘looking for work.’ Ouch. Privately Trump is said to have told people that the ONLY way he can lose is if Whatley ‘drops the ball’ on ‘election integrity’ issues. Let’s go back further to August:
“Our primary focus is not to get out to vote,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Asheboro, N.C., in August. “It’s to make sure [Democrats] don’t cheat, because we have all the votes you need.”
To be clear, Trump made his bed. Others on his team wanted more focus on GOTV but Trump by god wanted to focus on ‘election integrity/voter fraud’ and Whatley used the RNC to do exactly what Trump ordered him to do. That brings me back to Trump’s belatedly deciding maybe he should have Elon do some GOTV work. What now is clear is that Trump realizes he probably screwed the pooch on GOTV and could well lose because of HIS decision. So last month he started publicly setting someone else up to take the fall. Michael Whatley.
It must suck to be Whatley these days but if he wants sympathy from me I’m telling him to look it up in the dictionary. Every person in politics had to know before ever getting involved with Trump that there is no one he won’t throw under the bus. And people including and especially Republicans have been terrified of Trump for years now. Whatley chose to ignore all that and took a position that is going to get him burnt to a crisp if Trump loses. Trump will make sure of that!
Whatley seems resigned to his fate:
Whatley has been clear-eyed about the risks of his position, according to a colleague who warned him before he became RNC chair that he would the target of Trump’s wrath if the ex-president lost on Nov. 5.
“‘He’s like, ‘I know that if we lose, I’m gonna get the blame,’ ” the colleague told Axios.
Let’s hope Whatley gets what he so richly deserves. The wrath of a defeated Trump telling MAGA world it’s all HIS fault Trump won’t be returning to the WH. That the saying ‘Everything Trump touches dies’ takes place where Whatley’s career is concerned. Whatley knew was he could be in for yet went to work for Trump anyway. He set aside his knowledge about what the RNC should have been doing and instead did what Trump ordered him to do. Whatley deserves to pay the price for his choice. Let’s hope he winds up ruined both career wise and financially.
Whatley is on a fool’s errand and pretty much screwed. He basically has to manufacture some kind of “fraud”.
200,000 “poll watchers” when most polling places allow only a limited number of such people and in equal proportions between the parties. Well, it’s their money to waste I guess.
In MT, we still have polling stations and a lot of them are in schools. Everyone I know who is registered to vote does so by mail.
To Trump, “election integrity / fraud” is a win-win. He will bask in glory if he actually wins, or will claim fraud if he doesn’t. The real question is whether the rest of the GOP will go along with this old, tired playbook, further cementing their reputation as the party that opposes democracy.