“Donald Trump may be crazy, but he’s not stupid. When he claims that ‘nobody’ showed up at a 10,000 person Harris-Walz rally in Michigan that was live-streamed and widely covered by the media, that it was all AI, and that Democrats cheat all of the time, there is a method to his madness,” Sanders said in a statement.
“Clearly, and dangerously, what Trump is doing is laying the groundwork for rejecting the election results if he loses,” he added. “If you can convince your supporters that thousands of people who attended a televised rally do not exist, it will not be hard to convince them that the election returns in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere are ‘fake’ and ‘fraudulent.’”
[…]
“This is what destroying faith in institutions is about. This is what undermining democracy is about. This is what fascism is about,” he said of Trump’s campaign falsehoods. “This is why we must do everything we can to see that Trump is defeated.”
Bernie continues to espouse truth.
I will always cherish my time volunteering for him.
Except for the “Trump is not stupid” part.
Stupid is a stupid does, and smart is just the ability to efficiently accomplish your objectives with the resources available to you.
I would argue that Trump is smart in that he has managed to, with limited intellectual, strategic, or character resources pull off one of the largest con jobs in American history.
He doesn’t want to do good for America, he wants to do good for himself and has achieved heretofore not possible levels of graft and extortion and all of this without facing any real consequences himself.
He’s not a good man, He’s not an intelligent man, but he is a smart monster. He not an imbecile, he’s not witless, but he is a stupid business man.
Trump proves that you can be stupid and smart at the same time because they can apply to different qualities of a person.
He is undeniably a bad American.
There is a difference between intelligence and low cunning.
Trump has the latter, not the former.
He was born rich, all the stuff he does is because he got started on third base and even then lost it all.
His saving grace was him being entertaining, not intelligent.
You don’t give him enough credit.
He didn’t just lose it all, until the presidential graft, he had lost a couple orders of magnitude more money than the substantial fortune he inherited.
Read about his past, he lost it all and then made the apprentice which he only could do because he was famous.
…and he only got that job because of how hard up for cash he was after somehow managing to lose money on a casino.
In the world of business Donald Trump is boldly pioneering the frontier of incompetence.
Lots of people are saying it. Everyday someone comes to me to say Donald Trump is an amazing loser of money. Big strong men come to me in tears saying No one can lose money quite as confidently as Trump, (with the possible exceptions of Cathie Woods and Elon Musk).
He offers very little in the way of remedy.
What do you do in a country with a two party system when one party is openly caught trying to cheat the election results? What do you do when that party loses and then accuses the other party of doing the same? What do you do with the millions of Americans who don’t trust the winning party to lead?
The Dems’ answer seems to be capitulation. Give Republicans what they want to demonstrate bipartisanship. Put Republicans in your cabinet. Cherry pick “the good Republicans” and pretend they represent the secret heart of the rival party. Then compromise away every piece of legislation that becomes the subject of right wing hysterics.
How do you govern like this? How do you govern in a country where one party can break the law with impunity absent any consequences? How do you govern when breaking the law gets your opposition rewarded whether or not you win on election day?
This is why turnout matters. If enough people vote against Trump the mandate will restore faith in the election results. Harris/Waltz need to win with a clear mandate. If not we will still be dealing with MAGA going forward.
If enough people vote against Trump
“We need to score 3 points for every 1 they make in order to win” is a rickety formula for success. It assumes you can run up the score every season and doesn’t question what happens when you lose.
Its what we got. Win here and then throw out FPTP immediately. We can’t change how voting works right this instance, Varuca.
Win here and then throw out FPTP immediately.
Uh huh
You seem to be ignoring the obvious here, this is intentional. The Democratic party leadership actually wants the same as the old Republicans. It’s just that the Overton Window has shifted so far to the right that we no longer see actual Left views to compare against anymore.
And both parties are fine with using social issues to mask everything else because those are always in your face and easy to take a side one way or the other, and the two-party system excels at that.
The Democratic party leadership actually wants the same as the old Republicans.
Careful, you’ll get called a Putinista Wumao Trump Bot Account for saying things like this.
And both parties are fine with using social issues to mask everything else
Social issues tend to be the symptom of underlaying economic issues. They’re just easier to talk about, because we can frame the discussion as “opportunity” and “freedom” rather than “economic restructuring” and “wealth redistribution”.
Nobody is surprised by it, and we can only hope the infrastructure is in place to properly defend against it when the time comes.
Of course he fucking is, he’s still denying the last one.
No warning necessary. This is guaranteed.
It is his only choice now. He will lose the election, and all of the swing states will not certify it.
It’s worse than just laying the groundwork to make a claim. Much worse. Republicans have been installing MAGA zealots in key positions getting ready to tie up the election until SCOTUS steps in and hands Trump the win as they did with Bush in 2000.
Rolling Stone identified at least 70 election officials around the country that are 2020 election deniers. In addition, 3 of the 5 member Georgia Board of Elections are election denying Trump supporters that are already changing rules to allow and support challenges this November. Trump called out all three by name at a rally there and one was even in the front row and briefly spoke at the rally.
With Democrats in control of the Senate and White House during the transition, and such a narrow margin of Republican control in the House, I can’t really see how denying the election results without court-admissible evidence ends with Trump in power. That said, it could still result in violence.
I think one idea this time is to have enough states not certify the results to force a vote for president where each state gets a single vote. Since there are more Republican states they vote in Trump. Not sure what safeguards there are against states that decide not to certify even if they don’t have proof, or what role courts play in that scenario.
The thing is, that was the plan in 2020, and the reason it didn’t happen was because Pence was supposed to refuse to count the electoral college due to the “confusion” caused by the fake electors. He’d then call for the “1 vote per state” sham. Now, Kamala Harris is in charge of that process.
I thought states needed to certify before it got to Congress? This would be not sending any results period so the VP isn’t involved yet. Least that’s my understanding.
Well there’s nothing in the constitution or law that says “if the electoral college is too gunked up to work, we go to a single vote per state.” The Electoral Count Act of 1887 lays out rules for how it’s supposed to be done. The plan in 2020 was for Mike Pence to claim the ECA was unconstitutional and throw it to a 1 vote per state assembly, since the extra (fake) electors from some states were muddying the waters. He didn’t do it because his lawyers and advisors convinced him that he didn’t have that power under the law.
I’m no expert, but it seems like best they can do by refusing to certify at the state level is probably just to slow things down. There’s really no viable way that gumming up the works will end with Trump in the White House without having actually won.
According to Wikipedia a candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win, if no one gets 270 votes then it goes to the other vote. All I’m saying is one avenue I’ve read about is they are trying to have enough people in place to ensure the Democratic candidate can’t get the electoral votes to win to force the house to vote by not certifying their states’s results.
I’m not saying it’s likely or possible, that’s beyond my knowledge of the process so I really have no clue, but that’s slightly different than the VP not certifying the votes though it’s the same end result.
