If there isn’t enough fraud

A few items about what’s going on in Washington. I learned about most of them from Melissa McEwan of Shakesville.

A report from Stanford has 45 recommendations for protecting the democratic process in America. Many of them have been formalized into bills before Congress. Many of those even have support of GOP senators and representatives. The number of those that Senate Majority Leader and democracy gravedigger Mitch McConnell has allowed to be considered: zero.

They want our election system to be vulnerable. Because it benefits them.



A campaign pollster told the nasty guy that polling showed him behind Joe Biden in several key states. The nasty guy told aides to deny this internal polling and to publicly say other data showed him doing well.

McEwan says, “Trump is almost certainly directing people to lie about polling as part of laying the groundwork to challenge election results.”

In a separate post McEwan wrote:

I cannot emphasize this strongly enough: Pinning all of our hopes for crawling out of this mess on the 2020 election is aggressively foolish. With Mitch McConnell at the helm, the Republican Party is doing every goddamn thing it can to rig this election. And, if all their efforts fail, Donald Trump will almost certainly assert that there was election fraud and refuse to leave office. We have to do something to prevent that outcome now.

This is saying that if there isn’t enough fraud to ensure the election of the nasty guy he will claim there is fraud committed by his opponent.



The big news this morning is an interview in which the nasty guy said that he’d consider taking information against an opponent if offered by a foreign agent. He certainly wouldn’t tell the FBI about it. Which means he’s inviting foreign agents to offer him info. Which is a reason to impeach.



When asked about impeachment the nasty guy replied that he’s different than Clinton and Nixon in one important way: “I don’t leave.” He is again saying that he won’t respect the 2020 election if he isn’t declared the winner. McEwan says his entire response was authoritarian propaganda.



The nasty guy continues to bait Joe Biden. This time he’s calling Biden mentally weak. Alas, it seems Biden and the press keep taking the bait. McEwan says the nasty guy is doing that because he’s scared of facing Elizabeth Warren, who is surging in the polls.



After all that we need something different. McEwan usually has a question of the day. Her community has a chance to share answers and to see a broad spectrum of responses. Yesterday’s question was from FloraFlora and asked, “What are two things that entirely do not go together?” My favorite responses:

McEwan: peanut butter and nuclear war.

Patrick Linnen: chocolate and beets.

Rebecca De Santis: Joe Biden and progressive politics.

RachelB: Ayn Randian ideals and a functioning society.

Yankee Transferred: Black Americans and the criminal justice system.

carovee: democracy and voter suppression.

krelnick: Mitch McConnell and a functioning democracy.

SisterShimmy: pumpkin pie and peanut butter.