One wonders what Cochise would think of this.
It’s still dangerous. It might be a self-inflicted GOP wound this time, but if enough GOP folks slip onto the election board in a more Democratic area they might keep the votes from being counted in a Democratic leaning area.
Of course! I’m just saying that it is far less likely than people think, because of the obvious negative consequences for most cases. And it is deeply corrosive to trust in democracy, which is another danger.
It’s amazing how much damage Trump has done. None of this would be happening without his setting the scene and encouraging it.
DoubleG
2741
Not defending Trump, but this has been going on for a while. The GOP literally stole a presidential election in 2000, and their long term plan has always been to get enough judges and governors to put their finger on the scale.
Sharpe
2742
Strong claims require strong evidence. Yes, yes, I know Bush v. Gore was crap. But Bush was going to win regardless. Without Bush v. Gore, Florida’s electoral votes would have been disputed and the election would go to Congress on a state by state vote and Bush would have won. There was no scenario for Gore to win in 2000 unless the Florida recount was completed prior to the hard date for submitting electoral votes and that wasn’t going to happen; Florida was too fucking disorganized.
Look, Florida screwed the country HARD in 2000. Bush v. Gore was the frosting on the shit-cake. But claiming the election was “stolen” that is some bullshit in my view.
Unless you have some strong evidence, that is crap.
DoubleG
2743
If I amended what I said to “The GOP anti-democratically interfered with a presidential election in 2000” would you agree? Whether or not it clinched the win doesn’t change my point that these guys have been doing this for years.
Sharpe
2744
OK, that I will agree with. The Bush v. Gore case was bad law and naked partisanship, although it did not affect the outcome (Florida’s incompetence and the GOP control of the Florida governorship, Florida state houses, and the Congress, along with the laughable delays and inconsistencies in the recount, all controlled the outcome, even if Bush v. Gore had been decided differently. Basically, once it became clear that Florida could not finish a competent recount by the drop dead date, Gore was fucked.) There is a bigger issue of the idiocy of the electoral college and the weirdly amateurish way parts of the American electoral system are run (or were run; there were reforms after 2000).
Generally when reaching back to GOP bad faith tactics of that time frame, I use the Clinton impeachment as an example.
JoshL
2746
I mean, you’re glossing over that his brother was governor and his state campaign manager was secretary of state of Florida. So, that laughable incompetence was quite the opposite. The secretary of state threw tens out thousands of people off the voter rolls because they had the same last names or birthdays as felons. An organized group of Republican staffers rioted, causing a recount to be stopped. It didn’t just happen.
# Georgia Gov. asked if Herschel Walker shares his values.
(Narrator voice: “he doesn’t answer the question.” Shocking!
Sharpe
2750
I think the main point I wanted to make about DoubleG’s initial statement about the 2000 election is that we should be careful about making statements about “stolen elections” and other serious accusations, unless we have proof. It’s one thing to say the GOP exploited circumstances to maximize their political position, which they did in Florida in 2000, or to say the GOP has broken norms / behaved in bad faith (which they have over and over) and another thing to say an election was “stolen”. That’s a big accusation, and it can have very negative impacts if not supported by good evidence.
The GOP has been on a terrible path for a long time and they’ve done a lot of exploitative and bad faith stuff, but I haven’t seen any hard evidence of an actual stolen election (yet). They did try on 1/6/21, but that effort failed. And now they are using their own unsupported BS bad faith accusations of stolen elections to set the stage for further efforts. I don’t think we should feed the frenzy with our own unsupported accusations (and by unsupported I mean unsupported by hard evidence - there’s plenty of bullshit that the GOP has done but what has happened thus far IMO doesn’t reach the hard evidence line of an actual stolen election - yet.) Vigilance is called for, and that requires focus and discipline IMO.
Dejin
2751
CNN Chief Congressional Correspondent
Scrax
2754
Well fuck. The Rep I just voted for and elected just died. Seat is held until a special election that Gov. Youngkin gets to schedule with no clear procedural expectation set by the state constitution other than “can’t be held within 55 days of a general election.” The seat is reliably Democratic.
Sharpe
2755
I read he was struggling with cancer for a while, and cancer can take sudden turns, but I wonder what the medical picture was. If the doctors were telling the Congressman he had some time left and then he got unlucky with a sudden turn, then them’s the breaks. But if he knew he was close to the end, I question the judgement of not declining to run and then endorsing a successor. Yes, declining to run does give up the incumbency advantage but my understanding is that the district was reliably Democratic. Instead, the end result is the Dems will be a seat down for some months, as many months as the GOP governor thinks he can delay without taking too much political damage. That’s probably at least a few months. One seat is not determinative but every seat helps.
I wish I could disregard the political hardball aspects of this and just focus on the human elements, but we are in fact in a major ongoing crisis of democracy and political hardball is unavoidable.
I’m curious what the local reporting on this says.
Menzo
2756
I mean sure, question all you want, but the guy is dead. He can’t be shamed for making a bad choice (if that’s what it was).
