America Revealed 2020

[Big RR]

I'd have to check (I'm sure there is a Wiki or something on it), but a number of states have laws which will cancel the vote if the lector fails to vote as pledged. So far as I recall, I don't think it happened many (if any) times and it has never changed the election outcome.

[Darren]

If AZ and NV hold for Biden as projected, and PA, NC, and GA go for Trump as trending, that puts Biden at EXACTLY 270.

Which means faithless electors could come into play.

Faithless electors not permitted.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/1 ... 5_i425.pdf

[Scooter]

Except that not all states have laws to preempt faithless electors from voting. Some impose punishments after the fact, and if an elector is willing to risk that...

[datsunaholic]

There were several last election. As long as the appointed electors are people and not an automatic tally, it can happen.

[BoSoxGal]

Millions of White voters are once again showing who they are

Washington (CNN) — Millions of White voters are once again showing who they are and -- spoiler -- it's not really that great for America, but in particular for Black and brown people.

The miasmic uncertainty hanging over the 2020 presidential election, as hundreds of thousands of legal votes in key battleground states continue to be counted, is damning, even if Democrat Joe Biden ekes out a victory.
For one thing, despite four years of President Donald Trump -- that is, of a man who has made White nationalism a central part of his administration and whose abject negligence in the face of a pandemic has contributed to more than 230,000 dead -- millions of voters are turning out for him.

White voters, especially. While early exit polls (which, it's important to underscore, are notoriously mercurial) indicate that Trump may receive more support from voters of color this year than he did in 2016, the more significant story is that his White base seems sturdy.

As the political scientist Melanye Price wrote in October of the Trump campaign's efforts to court Black men, "Even if Black male Republican support increases in 2020, most of the responsibility for a second Trump victory will be attributable to White voters."

Indeed, one thing that this week has clarified is the lengths to which many White Americans are willing to go in order to protect their Whiteness, to centralize it, even after a summer that saw unprecedented support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

But that's only a piece of why the election is so shameful.

That the contest appears as tight as it does speaks to the relative success of the Republican Party, the minority party, at holding on to power via maneuvering such as disenfranchisement, gerrymandering and voter suppression, which disproportionately affect voters of color, who overwhelmingly back the Democratic Party.

For instance, one state that had pundits on edge was Florida. Many wondered whether it might go into Biden's column, given the direction of preelection polling. Ultimately, Trump won the state by a wafer-thin margin. His victory, though, was helped by the fact that many people didn't have access to the ballot box.

After 65% of Floridians voted in 2018 to restore voting rights to former felons, the state's "Republican-led legislature and governor then decided to overrule the will of the voters by creating new obstacles for former felons to vote, especially paying fees and fines," Julio Capó Jr. and Melba V. Pearson wrote on Tuesday for The Washington Post, calling the move "a 21st-century version of Jim Crow." "In many ways, it amounts to a poll tax by a new name. Some estimates indicated 1.4 million Floridians would have received their right to vote back. But as a result of the legislature's actions, only about 300,000 of them were eligible to register to vote."

Similarly, the Mississippi Free Press' Ashton Pittman recently reported that, over the summer, election officials in Madison County "quietly rezoned" 2,000 mostly Black and Hispanic voters out of a majority-White precinct into a cramped majority non-White precinct with few parking spaces, in what many believe is a means of making the area solidly Republican.

"My view is that this is being done to discourage minorities from voting," Carol Mann, a Democratic candidate for District 1 election commissioner, told the Mississippi Free Press. "These streets and these apartment complexes, and I can tell you having gone through all of them and knocking on doors in this area, are vastly majority African American."

While galling, these two connected elements of the election -- White voters' buoying of Trump, the jockeying of a minority party to maintain control of a country that increasingly rejects it -- aren't surprising. Arguably, they reveal what America has always been.

Or as the African American studies professor Eddie S. Glaude Jr. says in a video that's been recirculating this week, "It's easy for us to place it all on Donald Trump's shoulders. ... (But) this is us."

[liberty]

How about an idea I saw on another forum of having two Americas, a red nation and a blue nation. That way, you guys could deport all your deplorable to the red Nation. What do you; say sounds like an idea. You guys would be Russian slaves in five years.

[MajGenl.Meade]

[Darren]

Seems odd the GOP did well in Senate and House races despite the effort to unseat Graham and McConnell. Will Pelosi retain the House speaker position?

[Big RR]

How about an idea I saw on another forum of having two Americas, a red nation and a blue nation. That way, you guys could deport all your deplorable to the red Nation. What do you; say sounds like an idea. You guys would be Russian slaves in five years.

That's why I always thought we should have let the south secede in 1861, but no, we had to fight a war to win them back. This is their revenge.

[liberty]

I am not a smartass that would be you; I try to apply the golden rule, of course with some assholes it is not possible.

And, here is a question for everyone: Would you stay in a marriage that was this dysfunctional? A political divorce is the only solution; we all would be a lot happier.

[BoSoxGal]

That’s impossible in 2020; I for one will not abandon my LGBTQIA siblings and other Others (anyone who doesn’t fit the cisgender conservative uptight evangelical fervently religious ‘model citizen’ bullshit hypocrite ha! model) who reside in so-called red states and comprise the political majority. (If they even do; in some states like Georgia there are really more progressives, they’re just historically disenfranchised.)

America is purple, everywhere. 4 million+ Californians voted for Trump; would you sacrifice them?

We need universal civics education beginning at the grade school level up to and including high school - with lots of American history thrown in to give context to understanding how our government works and when it’s failed and when it has shone. We need to teach kids the facts that would automatically instill reverence for the institutions whether politically left or right or middle, because THOSE values have always been our shared values.

I really think the tolerance of Trump must be indicative of a failing to understand the threat he posed to our democratic republic. If not, we need to grasp that at least ~69,000,000 authoritarian inclined fellow citizens live among us, just waiting for the chance to oppress and disenfranchise us.

[Burning Petard]

One clear potential result of this election is that the pre-election polling industry will be totally researched and drastically changed--

Or maybe not. "Experts" can be just as closed minded in their field as Trumpers watching Sean Hannity.

snailgate

[BoSoxGal]

The biggest Trump meltdown the world has ever seen is imminent. Be prepared.

Even if the Democratic candidate becomes president, the extent of that victory will feel almost anticlimactic after what the incumbent president likely has in store

Mark Steel 49 minutes ago

Of course it’s ended like this. It’s completely unsurprising for the American election to end with Donald Trump shouting: “How dare they count the votes? Stop the counting, counting is for terrorists. We’re going to sue the counters. There are a whole bunch of votes all for the same guy who isn’t me? Coincidence? I don’t think so. A lot of these votes are from California, that’s not part of America, it’s in Brazil, their votes don’t count. I’ve heard all the people in Wisconsin who voted for Biden, a bad bunch. They weren’t people, they were frogs, they’ve counted the votes of FROGS, this is very bad. My votes have been put on the moon. I know an astronaut, he’s a terrific astronaut, he said he saw them, on the moon, he’s got a telescope, we’re going to investigate. And then I want the World Cup. I won it, the French need to give it back, they kept counting the goals after the game had started, I won it but they stole it, bad French!”

Mr Trump’s complaint that votes were counted after the deadline for voting suggests he’s mixed up casting the votes with counting the votes. Maybe Mr Trump’s method for holding elections should be tried, so the moment an election ends, all the votes are tipped in a landfill site before anyone can calculate them. Then we start all over again.

The problem is we’ve tried to counter the madness by being reasonable. When Mr Trump declared victory with the full picture of the election results still yet to come, Joe Biden should have responded by saying “But I’ve discovered a new state, it’s called Witchetywa and we’ve won, it gives us 37 votes.”

Because this is what happens now, we’re in a different dimension. I was one of the idiots who thought Mr Biden would win easily simply because every survey said he would win easily.

But this is 2020, so that wasn’t going to happen.

You can’t expect issues to unfold in the way they used to, otherwise you’ll be surprised next year, when Dipsy from the Teletubbies becomes president of the World Bank and Britain is invaded by armed pelicans.

If Mr Trump has lost, as he goes through various phases of meltdown, he could fulfil his dream of boosting the American economy by being streamed on Netflix while locked in a cage on the Mexican border. Billions would pay $5 a month to watch him crawling in circles, screaming: “I know Jesus and he says I won Michigan,” and writing: “Don’t count mail votes, US mail is run by Isis” on the floor in his own dribble.

But even if we assume Mr Biden becomes president, the extent of that victory for the liberal half of the world will feel almost anticlimactic after sneaking a win against a madman who puts babies in cages and thinks you cure a virus by drinking bleach.

It’s a cause of celebration in the same way that if your dog won the “Best Breed” award at Crufts, when the only other entrant was a chicken. But even then, at one point during the counting, it looked as if the chicken would win.

The easiest way to explain this would be to describe Mr Trump’s supporters as idiots and racists. One poll suggested 91 per cent of Biden voters thought racial inequality was the most important issue, against only 8 per cent of Trump voters. And that 8 per cent probably thought it was important because there’s not enough of it.

But it can’t just be that. Mr Trump connects with his supporters, they adore him, they see him as one of them. I doubt that’s true of Mr Biden’s supporters. He didn’t hold rallies, to respect rules of social distancing. But when the pandemic is over, if he tries to hold rallies to make up for the ones he couldn’t have before, he’ll still only get three people, and they’ll ask if they can watch it on Zoom.

Sometimes he’s so uninspiring he leaves during his own speech. If was asked why, he’d probably say “There was no point in hanging around to listen to that bollocks.”

The rules are different now. To start with, if someone wants to be a candidate for leader in most countries, they should be checked to see if they have any dodgy financial history, or have a string of embarrassing family revelations, and if they haven’t, there’s no point in even standing.

But also, you have to give people a reason to vote FOR you, it’s not enough to assume the other lot is so hated that people will support you whoever you are.

Everyone knows what Mr Trump stands for because he uses plain language. He said he would build a wall, whereas most politicians would have said: “I have always been a supporter of wallness, and would like to see a measured move towards wallacity in those areas in which a wall either will or won’t be a wall.”

Somehow the opposition to the Trumps and Johnsons of the world have to learn to connect with people, including those who don’t already agree with them.

Otherwise, we’ll face even wilder candidates next time. So the next Republican candidate will be Joe Exotic from Netflix’s Tiger King docuseries. And his running mate for vice president will be one of his tigers.

Liberal people everywhere will point out how stupid this is, but half of Florida will say: “Give that tiger its due, when it says it’s going to rip someone’s arm off it goes ahead and does it, it keeps its word.”

And in four years we’ll all be watching CNN, thinking: “Luckily, if the vote narrows in Pennsylvania the tiger might not win.”

[BoSoxGal]

From the journal Nature

NEWS 04 NOVEMBER 2020
Scientists aghast as hopes for landslide Biden election victory vanish

With so many votes cast for Trump in US election, some researchers conclude they must work harder to communicate the importance of facts, science and truth.
Jeff Tollefson

US President Donald Trump, left, and former US Vice President Joe Biden at a debate
Trump versus Biden: The US election has come down to a few critical states where votes are still being counted.Credit: Brendan Smialowski and Jim Watson/AFP via Getty

As the possibility of a landslide victory for US presidential candidate Joe Biden vanished in the wee hours of 4 November, some scientists saw the deadlocked election as a sign of their own failure to communicate the importance of science, evidence and truth to the general population.

“This election is not going to be a decisive national categorical repudiation of Trump, regardless of who wins the presidency,” says James Lindley Wilson, a political scientist who studies elections and democracy at the University of Chicago.

Many researchers supported Biden because of his science-friendly policies — in particular his plans to bring the coronavirus under control and to mitigate climate change — and have recoiled from Republican President Donald Trump’s blatant disregard for evidence and truth during his time in office.

With vote tallies in several critical states too close to call, who will win the election and go on to be the next president is still unclear. Depending on how things shake out, it could be a few days, or even a week, before a clear winner emerges.

The hard truth
For some researchers, the fact that the election has come down to the wire is evidence that scientists simply aren’t connecting with the general population. Whatever happens, says Naomi Oreskes, a science historian at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “we have a lot of work ahead of us”.

Distrust within the scientific community stems from Trump’s rejection of climate science, his rollback of numerous environmental regulations, and his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now killed more than 230,000 people in the United States. Nature’s own survey of its scientist readers demonstrated their condemnation for these actions: of the approximately 580 respondents eligible to vote, 87% said they would be doing so for Biden.

But as in 2016, Trump out-performed polls suggesting that his opponent was positioned for a potential landslide victory. With a clear winner yet to emerge, scientists are disappointed — both inside and outside the United States.

“It’s horrific,” says Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Cobb has her own fears about the pandemic, the economy and climate change but is trying to understand the anxieties that are driving so many to vote for Trump.

“It is depressing to see that the American electorate have not heeded the evidence of the last four years to give a strong message about the damage being caused by Trump's actions and behaviour, for their own country as well as the wider world,” says Athene Donald, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, UK.

Voting for science
Although early polling suggested that Biden could run away with the election, the battle has come down to Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and a trio of Midwestern states — Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — that proved pivotal in 2016. In a brief address to his supporters late last night, Biden expressed confidence that he would prevail once all the votes are counted. “It ain’t over till every vote is counted,” Biden said, “but we’re feeling good.”

Trump responded with a tweet suggesting that Democrats are trying to steal the election, a threat he has repeatedly raised without any substantiation in the run-up to the election. Late in the night, he declared that Republicans will take their challenges to the US Supreme Court, where his latest appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, could cast a decisive vote. “This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country,” Trump said. “We will win this, and as far as I’m concerned, we already have.”

Four years ago, science did not play a large role in the US election. This year, however, it’s been front and center due to the pandemic. But it didn’t overwhelmingly sway voters. Polls show that most Republicans think Trump has handled the coronavirus crisis well, despite the fact that he has downplayed the dangers of the virus and undermined government scientists and public health measures designed to contain its spread.

A similar dynamic is at play with global warming. As wildfires and hurricanes cause damage across the globe, Democrats have made climate change a top priority, whereas Republicans continue to oppose efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. In Florida, for instance, residents voted to re-elect Trump, even though his efforts to promote fossil fuels could fuel global warming and boost sea-level rise, which poses an existential threat to the low-lying state. “Evidently a lot of Floridians are in denial about climate change,” says Oreskes. “How do we fix that? I don’t know, but obviously what we’ve been doing has not worked.”

Michael Lubell, a physicist who tracks science policy at the City College of New York, says he worries about what the results of the election say about the value many Americans put on truth. Trump, former host of the television show The Apprentice, is well known for making inaccurate statements and spreading misinformation to further his political agenda. “What I see is people rejecting reality, and opting more for a reality show,” says Lubell. “And that to me is frightening.”

For Gerardo Chowell-Puente, an epidemiological modeller at Georgia State University in Atlanta, the fear isn’t just re-electing a president who has mismanaged the pandemic, costing countless American lives. Born in Mexico, Chowell-Puente came to the United States to pursue his education in 2001, and only last year became a US citizen. He says Trump’s rhetoric and efforts to restrict international visas for scientists and others have left him sad.

“I am very hurt by the actions of this man, who happens to be president of the country,” he says. “I cannot wait for a change. I am just crossing my fingers.”

Counting ballots
As of early 4 November, the US electoral college vote — determined by how many votes each state can cast based on its congressional representation— remained too close to call. Nonetheless, Biden is expected to prevail in the popular vote, an absolute count of votes in the United States that does not determine a winner.

Although Democrats seem likely to maintain their majority in the House of Representatives, their prospects for taking control of the Senate have dimmed. As of Nature’s press time, 2 scientists — astronaut Mark Kelly in Arizona and geologist John Hickenlooper in Colorado — won their races, flipping seats from Republican to Democrat, but one other seat flipped in the opposite direction. With several races too close to call, control over the Senate remains up in the air. Which party controls the Senate will be critical to the next US president: If Republicans maintain their Senate majority, they will more easily advance Trump’s agenda in a second term or block Biden’s attempts to push through new legislation if he wins.

The 2020 election has proved more challenging because of the coronavirus pandemic, and a massive shift toward mail-in voting, particularly among Democrats who have taken the dangers of COVID-19 more seriously. By contrast, Trump has repeatedly played down the dangers of the coronavirus to his supporters, who were more willing to show up in person at the polls on election day. Trump remains on top in key states such as Pennsylvania and Georgia, but many mail-in ballots remain to be counted.

Both Republicans and Democrats are preparing for potential legal battles over recounts and the eligibility of postal ballots. Delays in counting votes are normal, Wilson says, but public trust in the election could suffer if legal battles ensue and ballots start getting disqualified. Longer term, he says, the election could fuel debate about whether the electoral college should decide US presidential elections. Wilson predicts that Biden could win the popular vote by 5-7 million votes, an even larger margin than the 3 million vote advantage held by Hillary Clinton in 2016.

[Econoline]

As the possibility of a landslide victory for US presidential candidate Joe Biden vanished in the wee hours of 4 November, some scientists saw the deadlocked election as a sign of their own failure to communicate the importance of science, evidence and truth to the general population.

Many researchers supported Biden because of his science-friendly policies — in particular his plans to bring the coronavirus under control and to mitigate climate change — and have recoiled from Republican President Donald Trump’s blatant disregard for evidence and truth during his time in office.

Distrust within the scientific community stems from Trump’s rejection of climate science, his rollback of numerous environmental regulations, and his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now killed more than 230,000 people in the United States. Nature’s own survey of its scientist readers demonstrated their condemnation for these actions: of the approximately 580 respondents eligible to vote, 87% said they would be doing so for Biden.

“It’s horrific,” says Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Cobb has her own fears about the pandemic, the economy and climate change but is trying to understand the anxieties that are driving so many to vote for Trump.

“It is depressing to see that the American electorate have not heeded the evidence of the last four years to give a strong message about the damage being caused by Trump's actions and behaviour, for their own country as well as the wider world,” says Athene Donald, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, UK.

Four years ago, science did not play a large role in the US election. This year, however, it’s been front and center due to the pandemic. But it didn’t overwhelmingly sway voters. Polls show that most Republicans think Trump has handled the coronavirus crisis well, despite the fact that he has downplayed the dangers of the virus and undermined government scientists and public health measures designed to contain its spread.

A similar dynamic is at play with global warming. As wildfires and hurricanes cause damage across the globe, Democrats have made climate change a top priority, whereas Republicans continue to oppose efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. In Florida, for instance, residents voted to re-elect Trump, even though his efforts to promote fossil fuels could fuel global warming and boost sea-level rise, which poses an existential threat to the low-lying state. “Evidently a lot of Floridians are in denial about climate change,” says Oreskes. “How do we fix that? I don’t know, but obviously what we’ve been doing has not worked.”

Michael Lubell, a physicist who tracks science policy at the City College of New York, says he worries about what the results of the election say about the value many Americans put on truth. Trump, former host of the television show The Apprentice, is well known for making inaccurate statements and spreading misinformation to further his political agenda. “What I see is people rejecting reality, and opting more for a reality show,” says Lubell. “And that to me is frightening.”

I think that the above is *EXACTLY* the sort of “liberal bossing” that “a lot of people [...] are sick of”—which Meade referred to in this post (from another thread) quoted below:

I am shocked seeing either of you give credence to this bullshit, which is a patently false narrative spun by right-wing pols since Spiro Agnew.

Said the liberal, shooting down anyone else's opinion, experience and knowledge because "we are correct and you are wrong"

I am fed up with liberal bossing. I talk to a lot of people who are sick of it. To you, that makes us evil, wrong, phobic, nasty, etc. etc. If Trump was not such a monster, I might well have voted for him both times just to stick it to leftist elitists. I don't understand those who did vote for him despite his awfulness - nothing was worth that.

See, “a lot of people” can't stand smarty-pants “experts” acting like they know stuff, even when they *DO* actually know stuff.

That's a real problem.

[Burning Petard]

See, “a lot of people” can't stand smarty-pants “experts” acting like they know stuff, even when they *DO* actually know stuff.

That's a real problem.

It always amazes me that my family members in Iowa and Missouri who always hated Hillary (by their own declaration, not my conclusion from their behavior) and always support Trump (again, their declaration) always call an expert to fix their totally failing septic tank, or depend on an expert to advise them on the care of their type II diabetes. They freely inform me that since I left the midWest for Delaware some 49 years ago I have become one of those East Coast elitetest Lieberals who just don't understand. And why should they wear a mask and do this fake 'social separation' BS?

snailgate

[BoSoxGal]

45* planning to speak from the White House shortly, no doubt to pour gasoline on the fire of agitation he’s already stirred up with his toxic election night victory declaration and his several subsequent tweets alleging election fraud.


Or maybe he’ll be gracious and urge calm while the votes are all counted.

[Bicycle Bill]

Or maybe he’ll be gracious and urge calm while the votes are all counted.

What the hell have you been smoking?

-"BB"-

[Crackpot]

No slot of people don’t like people who don’t know what they’re talking about or at least can’t articulately condescending to them. Anti- intellectualism is one thing what Meade is talking about is something completely different. (The fact that you attribute Meades complaint as anti-intellectualism is unfortunately the exact type of response that Meade is complaining about.

[BoSoxGal]

Or maybe he’ll be gracious and urge calm while the votes are all counted.

What the hell have you been smoking?

-"BB"-

Black Diamond - fantastic stuff!

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Black Diamond also has several applications for medical cannabis patients. Its strong, almost narcotic feeling of sedation can effectively numb aches and pains, whether temporary as due to injury or chronic as due to diseases like arthritis or lupus. Its mellow euphoria may also take the edge off of mild to moderate cases of stress, anxiety, and depression. Finally, Black Diamond can be an antidote for insomnia, pulling users into a deep and restful sleep. Because the frantic feeling of “mind race” is not often reported with this strain, it can be a good choice for those who are prone to panic or paranoia.