Donald’s Long Con
The cheating is baked in, so we're told
Every time my uncle open his mouth, something incomprehensible, delusional, or terrifying comes out of it. This happens so frequently, that the outrages and shocks tend to run together. But there is one thing Donald keeps saying over and over again that we really need to pay attention to:
“We don’t need the votes,” Donald recently told Fox News. “I have so many votes.”
We should be suspicious of a man who, while running for president, tells people he doesn’t need any more votes. In what universe is this a sane tactic? What kind of candidate has his aides tell the press that he’s not actively campaigning because he prefers to play golf?
Put another way — what kind of presidential campaign is so lazy that its principal doesn’t even make an effort?
The answer should be obvious to anybody who’s been paying attention to Donald’s professional life over the last six decades—the kind that’s planning to cheat.
Just as in 2020, Donald’s coup is already well underway. From his lies that Democrats are trying to steal the election, to his false claims that the election is being rigged against him (in the event he loses), Donald’s efforts to undermine American voters’ faith in free and fair elections is right out in the open. He’s convinced that his right to be back in the White House supersedes his need to play by the rules. Unfortunately, his followers feel the same way.
The most egregious example of engineering election results in Donald’s favor is coming out of Georgia, an important swing state. Thanks to a MAGA majority (the members of whom Donald has called his “pitbulls fighting for victory”), the state elections board voted 3-2 to require the hand-counting of ballots. This will cause chaos, which is exactly what Donald’s campaign is counting on.
“The new rule for tabulation centers was proposed by Julie Adams, a Georgia conservative who is known for peddling conspiracies about election workers and now serves on the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections in Georgia’s largest county,” CNN reported.
Both the state’s Secretary of State and Attorney General, both Republicans, said the changes are probably illegal. But there’s no reason to think that will matter.
When is the last time you saw Donald try to appeal to voters beyond his base? Has he ever reached out to independents or women in the suburbs, for example? Why is he spending so much talking to his base this close to an election?
We know the answer—it’s because he’s confident his sycophants and enablers—from local election boards to the U.S. Congress—are going to pre-rig the results in swing states where polls show a frighteningly close race.
Donald’s best hope is that the election is close enough in enough states for him to claim victory and then the decision gets thrown to his allies in the U.S. House of Representatives who will happily steal the election on his behalf. He wants to finish what he started on Jan. 6, 2021.
But there’s hope.
In recent days, Sen. Lindsey Graham — a man who was almost indicted for interfering in the 2020 Georgia election — has been pressuring Nebraska legislators to change the way the state awards its electoral votes. While most states are winner-take-all, Nebraska and Maine both give two electoral votes to the winner of the state and one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district.
That one potential vote in the Omaha area can get Democrats to 270 electoral votes if they also win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Though it’s a long shot, under the right circumstances that one electoral vote could decide the presidential election in a country that, because of the electoral college, does not honor the principle of “one person, one vote.”
“To my friends in Nebraska, that one electoral vote could be the difference between Harris being president or not, and she's a disaster for Nebraska and the world,” Graham said on Sunday’s Meet the Press, saying the quiet part out-loud.
Luckily, there appear to be some Republicans who still care more about the sanctity of elections than Graham (admittedly a low bar). Today, Nebraska state Sen. Mike McDonnell, one of the few holdouts against Donald’s pressure campaign, announced that he won’t support a change in how electoral votes in Nebraska are awarded.
“Elections should be an opportunity for all voters to be heard, no matter who they are, where they live or what party they support,” McDonnell said. “I have taken time to listen carefully to Nebraskans and national leaders on both sides of the issue. After deep consideration, it is clear to me that right now, 43 days from Election Day, is not the moment to make this change.”
McDonnell is a former Democrat who became a Republican after his party censured him for his stance on abortion. He plans to run for mayor of Omaha, a largely blue city in the congressional district whose electoral vote would likely go to Harris, so let’s take his partially self-serving stance with a grain of salt. Even so, it’s still the right thing to do. Let’s hope he holds fast.
We all know exactly how much more dark and ugly Donald’s campaign can get and we can only imagine the kinds of pressure that will be brought to bear on Sen. McDonnell now that he’s decided to do the right thing.
This is today’s Republican Party.
Yeah. He doesn’t care about the popular vote because his people are focusing on the electoral votes. Nowhere near enough news happening on this front. The polls aren’t the news. The electoral college is the news.
Of all the horrendous things this pathologic weasel of a human being Donald Trump has done, perhaps the worst is his destruction of confidence in elections for years and decades to come. It undermines democracy and who we are as a country.