Happy Electoral College Day, everybody! The moment of truth has finally arrived and you can track the results as they come in here. Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada have already cast their votes for Biden-Harris with no faithless electors, so everything is on track.
Even the Wall Street Journal says that Trump ought to concede now, not that he will.
Stephen Miller says Trump electors will be voting and sending results to Congress.
(They'll be worthless because they won't have the seals of the state Secretaries of State, though) pic.twitter.com/B9pKXqYGIa
— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) December 14, 2020
It’s my personal opinion that Trump has been instructed by Vladimir Putin not to concede, and I think there’s a lot more basis for my conspiracy theory than anything produced by Trump, Giuliani or their merry band of felons. I haven’t seen anything in four years that has led me away from the belief that Trump is completely owned by Putin and has been serving his interests in foreign policy and in undermining America’s reputation and leadership in the world.
If you doubt me, just watch how Trump fails to react to the news that Russia has hacked into our government servers.
The Trump administration acknowledged on Sunday that hackers acting on behalf of a foreign government — almost certainly a Russian intelligence agency, according to federal and private experts — broke into a range of key government networks, including in the Treasury and Commerce Departments, and had free access to their email systems.
His refusal to concede accomplishes very little except to serve Russia’s interests by reducing America’s reputation as a strong representational government known for its peaceful and orderly transfers of power. I know that 99 percent of what Trump does is based on narcissistic self-interest, but his actions dovetail with Putin’s interests too often to be a coincidence. This can only be because Putin has leverage.
It’s not enough for Trump to be forced out of the White House. He needs to be exposed and punished.
It’s astounding to me that you seem to be the only one saying this. It seems patently obvious that Trump is wittingly or unwittingly an agent serving the interests of Russia’s oligarch-in-chief.
Unwitting? Don’t let him get away with the “I didn’t know/I wuz blindsided/the dems did it/I’m too stupid” con.
This is a criminal who knows what he’s doing, and if that harms people, he absolutely does not care.
I can’t wait for when the only news we hear about Trump is the many court cases he will have to front up for. But in the meanwhile, thousands are still dying. On the other hand, when Biden steps in it seems like he will get set to reap the political reward of presiding over the recovery from the pandemic. This is basically guaranteed, so it makes me feel a bit better. If we get those two GA seats, political life will become much more tolerable.
I feel like Rmoney might switch sides if we get both GA seats. Would Rmoney lose his seat in Utah if he switched sides?
Might as well join the team of the sane, and if he wants any kind of legacy, he might as well start earning it now.
I don’t see how he could manage that in Utah. Whatever its people think of Trump, it’s a very Republican state.
I really don’t understand the thinking that “If he’s halfway rational, he must be on our side.” Romney is a real conservative. I don’t think there is a single policy preference of the democratic party that he would agree with.
I must have missed where I stated Rmoney was on our side. In fact, my intentional misspelling of his name might have given away that I don’t think Rmoney is an ally.
Just because someone isn’t an ally doesn’t mean they can’t be useful.
While I too am pretty certain that Trump is Putin’s pawn, I don’t think it took much if any effort on Putin’s part to elicit Trump’s non-concession. Trump is someone who must always be a winner, who once created a coat of arms for himself with the words Numquam Concedere : never concede. Putin is surely very happy with Trump’s ridiculous and corrosive behavior in this and in everything else, but it all was foreordained by Trumps narcissistic personality disorder.
Speaking of the electoral college, I think it’s interesting that McConnell and the other republican senators are taking the view that “the electoral college has spoken so the process is over.” I think they are very keen to preserve the norm that the electoral college is the final arbiter. It’s a good principle for them. It has been used to legitimize two minority republican presidents in the past 20 years, and it very well might be used to legitimize a republican president that isn’t even elected (selected by state legislators) in the future. Preserving that norm is more valuable to them than fighting on for Trump.