This is a day for seismic events. I was shaken awake at 4:28 a.m. by the 4.2 earthquake that hit Los Angeles this morning and shortly thereafter I found Donald Trump’s epic tweet about delaying the election — and then the internet started rocking, just like the room. If this was one of Trump’s trial balloons, file it under Hindenberg.
With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020
I wrote earlier today that Donald Trump had self-immolated, but I did not expect this in a million years. Federalist Society co-founder Steven Calabresi has penned an op/ed in the New York Times and I will start with his conclusion first.
President Trump needs to be told by every Republican in Congress that he cannot postpone the federal election. Doing so would be illegal, unconstitutional and without precedent in American history. Anyone who says otherwise should never be elected to Congress again.
That’s refreshingly direct. What is interesting about this particular development, is that some heretofore invisible button has been pushed in the Republican psyche. If I could tell you what it was, believe me, I would. The closest that I can come, is that when Joe Biden predicted this very thing on April 23, the conservative cloak was drawn around Donald Trump yet once again. Read this morning’s piece which starts with a summary of how Biden was promulgating baseless “conspiracy theory” when he warned what Trump would do. Cries of “unfounded accusation” rang through the conservative world, with typical sanctimony and faux outrage on how low Democrats will go.
This particular conservative, Calabresi, has attacked the Mueller investigation as unconstitutional and he wrote an opinion piece opposing Trump’s impeachment. So what has caused the leopard to change his spots? What makes this the last straw? We’re going to hear a lot of commentary on this in the hours and days ahead, but make no mistake. This is epic. Donald Trump crossed the Rubicon today is he’s earned the censure of the Federalist Society.
I am frankly appalled by the president’s recent tweet seeking to postpone the November election. Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats’ assertion that President Trump is a fascist. But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate.
The nation has faced grave challenges before, just as it does today with the spread of the coronavirus. But it has never canceled or delayed a presidential election. Not in 1864, when President Abraham Lincoln was expected to lose and the South looked as if it might defeat the North. Not in 1932 in the depths of the Great Depression. Not in 1944 during World War II. […]
Election Day was fixed by a federal law passed in 1845, and the Constitution itself in the 20th Amendment specifies that the newly elected Congress meet at noon on Jan. 3, 2021, and that the terms of the president and vice president end at noon on Jan. 20, 2021. If no newly elected president is available, the speaker of the House of Representatives becomes acting president.
And yet Trump won’t let it alone. He said that he wants the election to go forward at his White House presser today but he keeps going on about how the election will not be decided for “weeks” or, “with litigation, maybe years” or, “you might never know who won.” I’m betting that this last comment is going to be his delusional mantra, as this sad sack settles into the sunset years of his life, scarfing his French fries and Diet Coke and mumbling about how his glory was stolen from him, between thorazine shots.
Asked about his tweet suggesting the election should be delayed, Trump reiterates "pants on fire" claims that mail-in voting is ripe for election fraud pic.twitter.com/9wAN4QwvH4
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 30, 2020
The Supreme Court didn’t take years to litigate the Gore v. Bush debacle. Trump is pushing his conspiracy theory and apparently that’s what he needs to do to justify to his own delusional self that he really didn’t lose, he was sabotaged. This is most likely what we’re going to hear from now until November 3. Two things need to be done now:
1. Give Trump and the nation a tutorial in how mail-in voting works, so this idiotic narrative stops cold. Maybe the Lincoln Project can work on that;
2. Make sure Trump sees this editorial that Calabresi penned. He needs to know the jig is up.
Donald Trump can rationalize his loss any way he wants to, but if this editorial is any indication, it’s time for him to bend over and kiss his ass goodbye. He can’t delay the election and once his current conspiracy theory of mail-in voting being fraudulent is exposed for the fantasy it is, he can either accept what has happened to him or he can go off blubbering from the White House to the nut house. And if his demeanor and comments at the presser today are any indication, he’s headed for the latter. The man is clearly falling apart and he’s a total disgrace. Maybe the Republicans are starting to wake up at long last. Cross your fingers.
As for Trump, he will never wake up. He is the embodiment of graceless under pressure and I don’t expect that to change.
Music to my ears. Gives me hope to go on
Man, if you told me yesterday that I would be writing this today, I would have laughed. The Federalist Society? The Kavanaugh Federalist Society? Those guys? Right. Trump hit some nerve.
Respectfully disagree with you re items 1 and 2.
1. Give Trump and the nation a tutorial in how mail-in voting works, so this idiotic narrative stops cold. Maybe the Lincoln Project can work on that;………..
Any tutorial may benefit some of us nationwide, but sociopaths do not react to solidly based and grounded information. The narrative stops only when, as we’ve now seen today, influential Republicans hop aboard the sane train. And it appears this is precisely what is already happening with Trump’s walk backs. Albeit Looney Tunes nutso bonzo.
2. Make sure Trump sees this editorial that Calabresi penned. He needs to know the jig is up.
This guy does not read. Ever. If he cannot be bothered with his PDB’s, he’d never be interested in an editorial by a Federalist Society co-founder. And, the dependent clause of my sentence one in above under item #1 applies here as well. This guy is a sociopath. The jig to him is merely an Irish dance. Well, if he even knows it’s a dance in the first place.
I can’t argue with your logic. No, he probably does think the jig is a dance. I’m pretty sure his aides told him don’t say any more about delaying the election, though. Because he backed right off of that and spoke only of mall-in ballot fraud. I still think the Lincoln Project or Don Winslow Films or somebody should do an ad on this topic. This is Trump’s Waterloo, Take XXXXXX…infinity.
He seems to think there’s a difference between mail-in and absentee voting, which no one else can see.
He should have included Barr in that. Barr *couldn’t tell* the Senate that it’s illegal and can’t be done. He had to put himself in the middle of it by claiming the DOJ would have to decide – which isn’t necessary, never mind legal.
I wondered why Barr bothered with that. He knows damn good and well it requires an act of congress. WTF is he talking about the DOJ having to decide anything? What is this, posturing for the base? It’s gotta be.
BW, I noticed that shaker also. I was already awake (it was one of those nights). My 4:30am estimate was “4, about 10 miles away”.
Ursula, I thought that too! Barr must have just been showing off. He knows moving the election is unconstitutional. But that hasn’t stopped him and his Orange Compadre before….
Calabresi is saying this because Trump…is…done. Make no mistake…the only reason he’s getting out in front of this is because he’s realizing–too late–that Trump has done his dreams more harm than good. He’s fine with fascism in principle. But this loud, open and stupid? No way. May he and the neocons drink themselves to sleep every night of 2021 over how it all went wrong.
This is the most likely explanation. Other explanations require Republicans having standards, which have finally been violated. At this point, I can’t think in those terms. Call me jaded, but we’ve all got scar tissue on our nerve endings from the never ending onslaught of outrage.
Yeah, that explanation is BSus Maximus and always has been. As far back as the 1990s, I knew what these people were about and it sure as hell wasn’t what they said it was.
This is the best explanation for him saying that I’ve heard all day. Even Calabrese knows Trump is through. Yeah, I’m gonna say you hit the nail on the head on this one Bare.
Well, gods above and below, it’s not freaking rocket science, right? Any conservative with more than three working brain cells has GOT to be thinking of a post-Trump future by this point. If they want to stay relevant, they need to adjust. Too bad for creeps like Calabresi that folks who got out before they did (hi, Lincoln Project!) are the ones in the driver’s seat.
Trump is feeling like dry toast.
Give it a few more months, Cmae, and he’ll feel like burnt toast. And that’s assuming the unsealed evidence relating to Ghislane Maxwell doesn’t scorch him first. BTW, since I didn’t say before, welcome back!
Thank you, I hope it will be permanent.
We do too, missed you, sweetie!
Mail in ballots called into question. 45 knows Russia has the ability to hack the machines and wants more folks to go to the machines than mail in. 45 is fucked in the head. He isn’t going to change. Putin has him by the balls too. Now….Barr/McConnell/L. Graham and others – how deep will they let this go before saying enough?
The problem with going against mail-in ballots is that by broadcasting this to your cult, you’re making them less willing to use it as well. You’re basically depressing your own turnout.
This is so, so true–can’t remember who I heard bring this up, but it made sense then and it makes sense as you write it here. This one is to me at least the “be careful what you ask for,” but not because you’ll get what you ask for, but rather, you’ll be slogging around in those nasty little unintended consequences. Many of those in his base aren’t after all among those who’d be considered the coldest beers in the fridge.
I think he and the other top “Lords” of the Federalist Society have decided they’ve gotten all they are going to get from Trump. They’ve gotten a wholesale remaking of the federal judiciary with a chronic cancer made up of their hand-picked appointees. They’ve gotten two of their Justices on SCOTUS and now have five of their (long, long time) members there meaning they have the majority. If worst comes to worst (for us) RBG passes away before Trump is gone they will get another Justice for Insurance as nothing in the Constitution prevents Trump from making another appointment during the lame duck period or a Senate, if still controlled by the GOP from forcing the nomination through. They’ve gotten plenty more that satisfies them on other matters too, but they’ve probably grown increasingly nervous about Trump’s foreign entanglements and carelessness between now and the election blowing everything up into more and tinier pieces than even a blue tsunami in November.
I honestly think at this point they’d rather have Pence, if only until January 20, 2021. That might give them just enough cover for Senate Republicans to force through a handful more of their judicial candidates. I also think they fear judicial appointments (and their role since Trump has touted unveiling a new list) shining the spotlight on them once again but more focused and for a longer period of time. This might be an attempt to put a filter over it to make them seem like the “good guys” and mitigate any criticism pointing out what they actually are. I could go on and on about them. But in the end I think you are right about this being a big deal, as it’s a signal to all conservatives that they think Trump is toast and their fellow Republicans had better start looking out for their own butts – Trump’s twitter feed be damned.
To add to this: Judge Sullivan got what he requested–a hearing before all 12 on the DC appellate court and this one ain’t looking at all good for Trump, Flynn, or Barr. And the Federalist Society knows exactly what this could portend–we could be looking at a slo-mo unraveling of so many of the cover stories and machinations. We shall see.
Again…watch what they do, not what they say.
what would really put a spike in this whole mail-vote question is for a white house reporter to ask him point blank why he used a mail in ballot the last time he voted in FL. and then follow it up with a question about his residency at mar a lago.
How ironic it would be, not to delay the election, but to witness, because of litigation about the results, the removal of Trump by noon on 20 January 2021, and the installation of presumptive Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as interim president. That’s the way it works. If the race results are not clear, then that preempts even a vice-president from taking over, as he is a part of the undecided results. Gotta love how the know-nothings are so back in force, with guns a-blazing at their own feet!