Vote for Democrats everywhere up and down the ballot even if you think your vote won't matter because you're in a deep blue or deep red state.

Every vote this election matters. There will be no argument even from Fox News if Trump is soundly defeated in both the electoral college and popular votes.

Besides, there are red Congress seats that are surprisingly in play (Graham's seat for example) and you absolutely should vote Democrat between now and election day even for an outside chance of flipping a red seat to blue.

Finally, it is not a secret that many Republicans privately disdain Trump and follow their dear leader out of political convenience. Every vote against them is a vote that makes it just a little bit less politically convenient for them to follow Trump.

Vote, vote, vote, and vote.

And give money if you can. Harrison in South Carolina has a real chance (though still a dog) to beat take Grahman's Senate seat. The GOP machinery is in full swing raising money for Graham. Anyone who wants Graham out should contribute to Harrison's campaign. I gave what I could afford and I hope you do too.

I mostly agree with this, except that Republicans will never turn on Trump if there is an ongoing legal challenge, even if Trump's legal position is weak. In that situation, you will see a fair number of Republicans remaining silent or making bland statements about patience and respect for the legal process. But they won't truly turn on him.

I'm sorry to say that I think we are in for a shitshow. I doubt Biden will be ahead by enough on election night to be declared the winner. As the hours and days grind on, if it appears that the mail in votes are skewing to Biden (which seems likely), and Trump senses that he is going to lose because of the mail-in vote, he will devote the rest of his presidency to undermining the legitimacy of the election.

Trump is the only candidate for president who would have been willing to burn the house down on his way out. And he will burn it down without a second thought. That's how little he cares about the country.

As long as he leaves that might be a good thing. The desperately needed constitutional reform might emerge from the ashes.

Although there will more likely be the usual head in the sand 'it proves the system works' approach.

I don't see a legislative or constitutional solution to the problem I am describing. We are not going to make it a crime for a candidate to say that the vote is rigged or that an election has been stolen. Decency and actual concern for the country are the only things that can prevent that sort of behavior. And those things are in short supply at the moment, especially on the GOP side.

Election day is Tuesday, November 3, 2020. Voting in person is the reliable constant people understand and most expect a winner declared on election night. But mail in ballots this year will be an incredibly confusing mess and in many ways an angle shoot for Trump.

Trump/Republican party are fighting what date constitutes a correctly received mail in ballot. The legal battles are moving thru several different state and federal courts and is changing by the minute, but here is the most accurate info at the time of me writing this.

Michigan, postmarked no later than November 2nd and can be received up until November 17th. What the hell, a Michigan winner might not be declared until 2 weeks after the election.

North Carolina, postmarked no later than November 3rd, received by November 12th.

Pennsylvania, postmarked no later than November 3rd, received no later than November 6th. This is lame in that mail can take more than 3 days.

Wisconsin, postmarked no later than November 3rd, received no later than November 9th.

The above are swing states that account for enough electoral votes that if they are too close to call on election night will end up taking the election a week or more to settle. Americans, like everyone else on the planet, are a bunch of impatient mouth breathing partisan hypocrites that are going to spend that post-election week in total confusion and chaos, especially with Trump stoking the fire.

Each of the states I mentioned above have on-going legal battles brought by Republicans about when a ballot should have been received. Some of the battles are in state court, state supreme court, federal court or even federal supreme court. It is a hodge podge mess. The different states are not all grouped together. Don't be surprised when the free roll and angle shooting starts after November 3rd. If Trump is ahead in a particular state on election night, then he will fight to have that state stop counting mail in ballots. But if he is behind in a different state, the hypocrite will say that state should keep counting mail in ballots.

Moving forward, one clear thing that needs to come from this situation is standardized mail in ballot rules about postmarks and received dates. Going forward, I would prefer a mail in ballot needing to be postmarked at least 2 weeks before the election and received by poll close on election day. Beat it into people heads about the dates involve, i.e. that a mail in ballot must be mailed at least two weeks before the election so that it can be received by election day and count. That way on election day we get a declared winner.

And don't forget that ass clown Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election and immediately tried to delegitimize the election he just won by saying there were millions of fake votes for Hillary Clinton since she won the popular vote. Donald Trump tried to delegitimize part of an election he won, imagine what he will do if he loses.

ladybruin,

The deadlines you cite above are exactly why I said that I expected a shitshow.

If the stupid Dems conduct the fight to remove Trump from office the way they conducted the impeachment we'll have a president for life.

#lolDems

If only there was an opposition party that represented the interests of enough voters to keep Trump in check.

Maybe next time.

You are severely understating the breadth of the democratic party. We are talking about a party that has won the popular vote in the presidential race every year since 1992, with the sole exception of 2004 when George W. Bush won the popular vote on the heels of 9/11. And Democrats tend to be underrepresented in a lot of areas due to gerrymandering and winner-take-all structures that give outsized weight to Republican voters. Of course, that works the other way around in some places, but when you balance things out, there is no dispute that the Democratic party is the one that is underrepresented in government on both the state and federal level.

I am not really how you imagine in a two party system the Democratic party should adjust to build a bigger tent. It is a center-left party. In a two-party system, it is the natural home for everyone on the left and folks in the political center who favor the left on social issues and/or moderately redistributive economic policies.

It sounds like you are really decrying that the Republican party is no longer a center-right party, which is true, and unless it corrects it is going to be a really big problem for it.

But the idea that the Democratic party does not represent the "interests of enough voters" sounds a lot to me like you've bought into the propaganda that Democratic policies only favor coastal elites. That is really far from the truth. The coastal elites actually do much better under Republican economic plans, but vote blue because the GOP is such a disaster show these days. If the GOP stripped all its culture war bullshit and truly favored small government, it would capture a lot of those voters. Economically, most voters do better or basically break even under Democratic policies. The biggest con Republicans have pulled over the past 30 years or so is convincing poor and middle class Americans to vote against their economic interests.

I could hope that people will realise that the system allows a bufoon like trump to, almost accidentally, destroy USA democracy. The problem is who decides who wins the extremely powerful position of president?

Make the president more of a figurehead and found the real leader on the choice of the elected representatives - accountable to them all the time. Like we do in most democracies. It's not perfect by any means but it removes the obvious disaster waiting to happen.

Just had a thought for tactic for the Biden campaign.

Trump's #1 weapon right now will be the narrative of mail in votes being fraudulent, and his tactic will obviously be to declare himself a winner on November 3rd.

I think the Biden campaign starting today, needs to advertise far and wide that we will NOT know the winner on November 3rd, to get everyone accustomed to it now. Spread that narrative across the land so that it has time to sink in.

And the baller move is for Biden to go one step further, and come out with a statement that even if he humself is miles ahead on election night, he vows not to declare victory on November 3rd, so that the votes of the American people are given fair time to be counted.
He doesn't need to answer the inevitable follow up of "what date IS ok to call it" because that's going to depend on a lot of factors.

But if he can commit to just not declaring victory on November 3, and URGE TRUMP TO DO THE SAME then it will go a long way in legitimizing mail in votes, acknowledging that this is a special situation because of the pandemic, and will help the electorate to recognize that patience and getting the final count accurate to determine the next leader of the free world is more important than having a winner declared on election night.

This will in advance take a lot of steam out of the action Trump is obviously going to take on election night.

That would be a parliamentary system, which the US doesn't have, and you can't get there from here. The problem is indeed the constitution ('It's the constitution, stupid,' as nobody dares say), but you can't fix the constitution, because of the constitution.

I agree it's a very hard problem but nothing is impossible. The first step is for people to recognise the real danger which was always fairly obvious but which trump has brought into focus of more poeple.

The 22nd Amendment that limits the presidency to two terms helps a lot. Furthermore, I think there is a built in voter philosophy of, "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me."

Trump winning (the electoral college) once was because of a couple of factors like Independents thinking what the hell, people that didn't know how truly dysfunctional Trump was, not liking Hilary, dumb f#ucking Bernie voters voting third party, etc. But now people know that the crazy Trump dude from the debate yesterday is the same crazy dude making COVID policy despite doctors telling him otherwise and other important issues. And that Trump is unsuitable to be president.

Trump's popular vote loss can't be stated enough. Simply put, 3 million more Americans voted to NOT have Trump win the presidency. More Americans than not knew this would be a shitshow.

Looks like we're deep into war game #1:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...&postcount=221

Prepare yourselves for a **** show.

"What Could Happen If Donald Trump Rejects Electoral Defeat?"

It's happening right now.

Thank you Michigan!

Prediction: presuming that Biden wins AZ and NV, then whether or not Trump goes hard to pursue post-election ****ery will be dependent on if Biden wins Georgia and/or Pennsylvania. If he doesn't and ends up with exactly 270, Trump gonna do everything he can. If Biden wins one or both of PA/GA, his advisors will tell him that it will be too tall of a task and he'll concede.

Our democracy might hinge on Georgia and Pennsylvania right now, but no one wants to talk about it. I don't blame them.

Can someone give me a quick run down on 2000? Could we see something similar here?

Bush won the initial count, and a recount. Both sides went to court to stop recounts and due to a number of disagreements about how ballots should be counted. "Chads".

2000: Florida was decided by ~500 votes, with the winner of Florida winning the election, and was then the subject of an intense recount and political shenanigans.

We should not see anything similar here, both because a.) it's looking like Biden will win by more than one state, and b.) none of the states are anywhere near that close.

Wow. You crushed with your prediction in this post.

After watching this election I feel something has to be changed about mail in ballets. They should set a postmark or due date for mail in ballets to a week prior or so to the election date. If a person wants to vote after that date they are expected to make it to the voting booth. That would clear up most of this mess.

I took a fair bit of heat for saying that Trump had virtually no chance of retaining power if he lost the vote and the courts upheld the results of the election.

At this point, if Trump's legal challenges fail (as they almost certainly will), does anyone seriously doubt that Trump will be escorted from the White House at the end of his term if he refuses to leave voluntarily?

Trump is the president until 11:59am on January 20th, 2021. When the clock ticks over to 12:00pm is term his over. Every single person in the federal government system will then recognize Biden as president. Biden could simply ask the secret service to escort Trump out of the White House if it actually went that far.

Trump is all hat and no cattle. He won't embarrass himself in front of cameras getting escorted out. Trump will be on a golf course in Florida disrespecting the transfer of the presidency when Biden is being sworn in.

Of course. I said as much three months ago. And a lot of people responded with some version of "LOL at thinking the Secret Service/FBI/military/whatever will do anything to prevent Trump from remaining in power."

You left out the part where conservatives attempted to break into the building where votes were being counted and through their efforts delayed the counting enough so that a court deadline could not be met and the recount was forced to stop.