Unintended consequences

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Daily Kos, quoted Russel Berman of The Atlantic:

From a sheer numbers perspective, none of the experts I spoke with doubted that the Postal Service could handle a vote-by-mail election, even if every one of the nation’s more than 150 million registered voters stuck their ballot in a mailbox. As one noted to me, a presidential election might be a big deal, but in postal terms, it’s no Christmas. The Postal Service processes nearly 500 million pieces of mail every day, and it annually handles more than 3 billion pieces in the week before Christmas alone. “I don’t worry about their capacity,” Amber McReynolds, the former director of elections in Denver, who now runs the National Vote at Home Institute, a mail-balloting advocacy group, told me.

And then Postmaster General Louis DeJoy started mucking around.

Joan McCarter of Kos reported that a memo went out from DeJoy to USPS employees in which he admitted there were “unintended consequences” to the procedural changes he made. The rest of her post goes into detail about his lies.

In another post McCarter reported that the USPS sent letters to 46 states and Washington, DC warning it cannot guarantee that mailed ballots would arrive by election day. The letters were planned before DeJoy took over, though sent out at the end of July.

Planned before DeJoy started wrecking the system? Hmm. That means the nasty guy was already planning this. Nice of him to give a warning so states could adjust deadlines.

I hear Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has asked the legislature to change the law so ballots have to be postmarked by election day and arrive two days later, rather than arrive by election day. But the Michigan legislature is solidly in GOP hands, so …

This situation prompted a flurry of tweets, such as these. From Sarah Kendzior responding to Rep. Eric Swalwell:

Then why are House Dems on vacation? Why aren't you issuing timely subpoenas?

Why aren't you even trying? We don't have faith or time. We have mass death and a stolen election.

You should publicly name the officials in the House preventing you from taking urgent action.

Jason Gilbert:

TRUMP: Mail is illegal now

DEMOCRATS: Fam, smash that RT if you agree someone should do something about this

RT = retweet

Gilbert then quoted David Plouffe, a former Obama guy:

1) Prime time hearings, now.
2) Subpoenas to Trump WH and camp officials. This is a RICO case
3) Visit local post offices with cameras - show people what is happening.
4) Events with those getting Rx late
) Involve governors
5) No rest, no vacation. Go to war for our country.

Judd Legum:

I understand that Mitch McConnell may be conspiring with Trump to undermine the Postal Service.

But why is the House doing this?

Why aren't they holding hearings on the multiple crises afflicting this country?

Yeah, August is for campaigning, but they can’t campaign in person anyway.

Adam Jentleson:

When you suggest Dems could do more you tend to get a lot of “what more do you expect?” replies. But when you control the House your options are endless. Investigations & hearings would focus attention, bring facts to light & mark the issue as a BFD for the public. That matters.

Mark Sumner of Kos included a tweet of protests outside of DeJoy’s condo. Sumner then went on to report with details:

DeJoy can be indicted for deliberate interference in a federal election.

DeJoy can be impeached.

DeJoy can be removed. He answers to a board of governors and they could fire him. Sumner gives their email addresses. So we can express our displeasure.

There are lots of petitions we can also sign. Sumner has details.

In another post Sumner shows the media attention the USPS is now getting. Some of the tweets are from Pelosi and other House members. These are the people from whom the tweets above were demanding action, so take their tweets with a grain of salt.

Then again, it looks like the pressure worked. DeJoy’s testimony before the House has been moved from September 17 to August 24. That gives hearing members a week to get ready, though the hearing may be only a day – the GOP online convention starts that night. There’s also the possibility the House will then say, see we did something!



Dworkin, in his pundit roundup, also quoted a thread by Dave Roberts. Why is the GOP not acting on another virus relief package? There’s no ideological or economic rationale. The silly “moral hazard” arguments don’t apply because it’s the virus, not people’s actions, that did it. The arguments for sending people back to bars and schools are not coherent. Refusing the package isn’t good politics either – people hate that they’re not acting.

The conclusion I've come to is that no one's in charge. They're not doing anything, per se. The party has lost all superego & runs entirely on id now - no strategy, no plan, no intentionality. All that's left is a bunch of tired tropes & instincts that haven't changed in decades.

The conclusion I’ve come to is this is all about supremacy. The way they enforce that they’re at the top of the social hierarchy is to make sure everyone else suffers, that their lives are miserable. Ideology, economics, and politics don’t explain their behavior. Supremacy does.



Kos of Kos discussed an article by Olivian Nuzzi in New York Magazine about the incompetence of the nasty guy campaign. It’s so bad one wonders how he got elected in 2016 – though we know then he was an outsider shaking things up and now we see what all that shaking accomplished. One quote of Nuzzi caught my attention:

What Trump does is take people who are mediocre talent at best, who know they could never have the position they have if it were not for Trump, and it creates this instant loyalty to Trump.

And the top of that heap is the pandemic prince.

All that reinforces for me that he won’t win the election. He’s going to steal it.



From a poll that was (amazingly) on Fox News:
What message would you like to send to government?

2019 and a few years before:
Leave me alone 55%, Lend me a hand 34%.
Now:
Leave me alone 36%, Lend me a hand 57%.



From Bill in Portland, Maine’s Friday roundup of late night commentary:

Clip of Kamala Harris at Delaware event: [Trump] inherited the longest economic expansion in history from Barack Obama and Joe Biden. And then, like everything else he inherited, he ran it straight into the ground.
Stephen Colbert: Ran it into the ground? This is Donald Trump we're talking about here, Senator. At best, he golf-carted it into the ground.
—The Late Show