Now wouldn't that be simple. But no, I don't know what happened in the election. That's humility and integrity right there. The thing that the media and apparently you don't have. What I do have is lots of schadenfreude.
You see, the only thing that would defuse this thing would be a pants down audit of the whole process. The one thing that won't be done. So it's going to keep festering - past the midterms, past 2024. The media and you can say it's a lie all you want - it just feeds into the impression of dishonesty created by the unwillingness to audit. This is politics 101, folks. The silencing of Trump fits right in with this.
Just enjoying the spectacle of people hoist on their own petard. A real Pyrrhic victory, 2020 was.
"You see, the only thing that would defuse this thing would be a pants down audit of the whole process."
You have to be exceptionally naive to think that an audit would somehow help. First of all, what would that even look like? Elections are run on the state level. So an audit of all 50 states? Or just the ones Trump lost? Or just the ones he lost and then complained about? Secondly, why would an audit convince anyone to change their minds? If the audit will discover that there was no election fraud, why would the people who believe that there was suddenly think otherwise? They'll just assume that the audit was just as rigged as the election. And you're forgetting that there's a huge audit happening in Arizona, with the results scheduled to come out any day now. Will the results change anyone's mind, no matter what they're going to be? Of course not.
"Just enjoying the spectacle of people hoist on their own petard. A real Pyrrhic victory, 2020 was."
So just like any election in the history of elections? Remember 2016, and how the Republicans won both the Presidency and the House and the Senate? Remember how during the next 2 years Trump pushed the Democrats so far to the left that in the 2018 they elected AOC and Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib? And still managed to recapture the House, and two years later the Presidency and the Senate? So was 2016 just another Pyrrhic for the Republicans then?
Yeah, audit all 50 states, make it contingent on federal money. It's how they do everything on the federal level.
As for my naivete or not, if you don't do it, my scenario stands. I'm not saying it'd convince everyone, but it'll make cranks out of those who still talk about it. As for whether it would be complete or conclusive, almost assuredly not, but the appearance is better than saying no, that's the Politics 101 part. Remember Nixon...the crime is in the cover-up.
As it stands now, the same lying liars who brought us Russian Collusion are the ones that are saying that the election fraud is a lie. That's not going to fly.
As for electoral failures on the Republican side, Trump was unpopular with suburbia because of how he talked. You saw a realignment based on that. If you look at the 2016 results, 2018 is unremarkable along with the average 27 seat loss in a midterm over the last century. Yes, average. Though it's thrown off a bit by some very big years like 1938, 1958, 1974, 1994, 2010. Trump lost 41. His loss was less than Ike's, Johnson's, Ford's, Clinton's, Obama's, and FDR himself.
We can expect a significant realignment in 2022 as well.
I think a proper audit is a superior scenario to "he said-she said" which is what we have now.
Unfortunately the proper audit in the age of social media involves the GOP AZ audit committee and the Dem AZ Secretary of State both embarrassing themselves over Twitter, and the whole thing devolving into buffoonery.
It was irresponsible for the left to immediately start discrediting every expert AZ brought forward. There was no good evidence of any problems brought forward, just a lot of gaslighting.
It was irresponsible for the right leaning audit group to be blasting out gotcha headlines for things that didn't even hold up (like files were deleted ((they were but they were just copied somewhere else)) ).
It's a stupid idea to do it on anything but a national level. The integrity of elections was called into question in a big way. Faith needs to be restored by all constitutional means or the experiment is over.
The proof is in the pudding. The Arizona audit results will be published soon. Will they convince anyone to change his mind? Not a chance. If the results say at the election wasn't rigged, the Trump supporters won't believe it. If they say that the election was rigged, then the Biden supporters won't believe it.
I'm quite sure the people complaining about "dangers to democracy" in the press aren't thinking exactly what I am thinking, but they are possibly inadvertently right. If this is not put right, most of the underpinnings of our current form of government are cast aside.
Because it's been a partisan football since the start.
You can't have government officials criticizing the government while they're trying to restore faith in it. There would be a simple way to accomplish this and I think the national audit would be the right hill to die on to do so.
Which makes it interesting why the Republicans are really really REALLY against an audit. This means that there are two options: either the Republicans secretly know that the election was free and fair, and don't want this to be proven so they could continue saying that it wasn't; or the Republicans have something to hide which they don't want an audit to uncover, for example their own rigging of the election in red states or counties. Because if neither of these things is true, why would they possibly be against an audit?
Anyone who won an election is against an audit by default. They all know how shitty the election system is with the actual fraud and the decisions being made at the precinct level on how to tally votes, which could easily be second-guessed. The general view in the past was that most of the cheating canceled itself out except in big urban areas and absentee ballots that counted were rare; that's the real issue with 2020, that belief is not holding anymore and people are questioning the urban vote, drop box voting, etc.
"Anyone who won an election is against an audit by default."
Except the Republicans are against auditing even elections they lost. Here's Republicans in Pennsylvania freaking out over the possibility of an audit:
There are other ballots than the headline Presidential one, that's why they care. Municipal elections could be impacted - there are people up and down the line that don't want it. Also, since it's a uniparty, I don't know why you are calling out Republicans, it's all the same regardless of which party with power you mention.
Put the card back in the deck. The urban vote in the US has been the most fraudulent since forever. Tammany Hall was manufacturing votes in the 1800s. More voters, more impersonal government, much more lucrative fraud prospects. The dead vote every election in NYC. The only reason it doesn't get much attention is that the elections are rarely close in places like that.
So you freely admit that the "election fraud thing" is made up? And it's just petty retribution for Russiagate? Cool.
Now wouldn't that be simple. But no, I don't know what happened in the election. That's humility and integrity right there. The thing that the media and apparently you don't have. What I do have is lots of schadenfreude.
You see, the only thing that would defuse this thing would be a pants down audit of the whole process. The one thing that won't be done. So it's going to keep festering - past the midterms, past 2024. The media and you can say it's a lie all you want - it just feeds into the impression of dishonesty created by the unwillingness to audit. This is politics 101, folks. The silencing of Trump fits right in with this.
Just enjoying the spectacle of people hoist on their own petard. A real Pyrrhic victory, 2020 was.
"You see, the only thing that would defuse this thing would be a pants down audit of the whole process."
You have to be exceptionally naive to think that an audit would somehow help. First of all, what would that even look like? Elections are run on the state level. So an audit of all 50 states? Or just the ones Trump lost? Or just the ones he lost and then complained about? Secondly, why would an audit convince anyone to change their minds? If the audit will discover that there was no election fraud, why would the people who believe that there was suddenly think otherwise? They'll just assume that the audit was just as rigged as the election. And you're forgetting that there's a huge audit happening in Arizona, with the results scheduled to come out any day now. Will the results change anyone's mind, no matter what they're going to be? Of course not.
"Just enjoying the spectacle of people hoist on their own petard. A real Pyrrhic victory, 2020 was."
So just like any election in the history of elections? Remember 2016, and how the Republicans won both the Presidency and the House and the Senate? Remember how during the next 2 years Trump pushed the Democrats so far to the left that in the 2018 they elected AOC and Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib? And still managed to recapture the House, and two years later the Presidency and the Senate? So was 2016 just another Pyrrhic for the Republicans then?
Yeah, audit all 50 states, make it contingent on federal money. It's how they do everything on the federal level.
As for my naivete or not, if you don't do it, my scenario stands. I'm not saying it'd convince everyone, but it'll make cranks out of those who still talk about it. As for whether it would be complete or conclusive, almost assuredly not, but the appearance is better than saying no, that's the Politics 101 part. Remember Nixon...the crime is in the cover-up.
As it stands now, the same lying liars who brought us Russian Collusion are the ones that are saying that the election fraud is a lie. That's not going to fly.
As for electoral failures on the Republican side, Trump was unpopular with suburbia because of how he talked. You saw a realignment based on that. If you look at the 2016 results, 2018 is unremarkable along with the average 27 seat loss in a midterm over the last century. Yes, average. Though it's thrown off a bit by some very big years like 1938, 1958, 1974, 1994, 2010. Trump lost 41. His loss was less than Ike's, Johnson's, Ford's, Clinton's, Obama's, and FDR himself.
We can expect a significant realignment in 2022 as well.
I think a proper audit is a superior scenario to "he said-she said" which is what we have now.
Unfortunately the proper audit in the age of social media involves the GOP AZ audit committee and the Dem AZ Secretary of State both embarrassing themselves over Twitter, and the whole thing devolving into buffoonery.
It was irresponsible for the left to immediately start discrediting every expert AZ brought forward. There was no good evidence of any problems brought forward, just a lot of gaslighting.
It was irresponsible for the right leaning audit group to be blasting out gotcha headlines for things that didn't even hold up (like files were deleted ((they were but they were just copied somewhere else)) ).
And here we are. Thanks, internet!
It's a stupid idea to do it on anything but a national level. The integrity of elections was called into question in a big way. Faith needs to be restored by all constitutional means or the experiment is over.
The proof is in the pudding. The Arizona audit results will be published soon. Will they convince anyone to change his mind? Not a chance. If the results say at the election wasn't rigged, the Trump supporters won't believe it. If they say that the election was rigged, then the Biden supporters won't believe it.
I'm quite sure the people complaining about "dangers to democracy" in the press aren't thinking exactly what I am thinking, but they are possibly inadvertently right. If this is not put right, most of the underpinnings of our current form of government are cast aside.
Because it's been a partisan football since the start.
You can't have government officials criticizing the government while they're trying to restore faith in it. There would be a simple way to accomplish this and I think the national audit would be the right hill to die on to do so.
Which makes it interesting why the Republicans are really really REALLY against an audit. This means that there are two options: either the Republicans secretly know that the election was free and fair, and don't want this to be proven so they could continue saying that it wasn't; or the Republicans have something to hide which they don't want an audit to uncover, for example their own rigging of the election in red states or counties. Because if neither of these things is true, why would they possibly be against an audit?
Anyone who won an election is against an audit by default. They all know how shitty the election system is with the actual fraud and the decisions being made at the precinct level on how to tally votes, which could easily be second-guessed. The general view in the past was that most of the cheating canceled itself out except in big urban areas and absentee ballots that counted were rare; that's the real issue with 2020, that belief is not holding anymore and people are questioning the urban vote, drop box voting, etc.
"Anyone who won an election is against an audit by default."
Except the Republicans are against auditing even elections they lost. Here's Republicans in Pennsylvania freaking out over the possibility of an audit:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/08/10/republican-officials-slam-arizona-style-election-audit-in-pennsylvania-unnecessary-chaos/
"that belief is not holding anymore and people are questioning the urban vote, drop box voting, etc."
So people are questioning the urban vote, which just happens to be where Democrats and non-white people live? Curious.
There are other ballots than the headline Presidential one, that's why they care. Municipal elections could be impacted - there are people up and down the line that don't want it. Also, since it's a uniparty, I don't know why you are calling out Republicans, it's all the same regardless of which party with power you mention.
Put the card back in the deck. The urban vote in the US has been the most fraudulent since forever. Tammany Hall was manufacturing votes in the 1800s. More voters, more impersonal government, much more lucrative fraud prospects. The dead vote every election in NYC. The only reason it doesn't get much attention is that the elections are rarely close in places like that.