It might be that clownishness is part and parcel, but it might also be that it is a way of ignoring or downplaying the reality of the threat. If you read articles from the 1920s, after the failed Beer Hall Putsch, the general tone was silly little Hitler. What a clown. What an amateur. Chaplin played him as a comic figure in The Great Dictator. Even Hitler's moustache was funny.

Orwell said that fascists like the goose step because it is a silly, almost laughable way to walk, but once they are in power one doesn't dare laugh at them. There's a definite truth to that. Look at Republican judges. Maybe their legal reasoning is laughable, but you're the one who will go without health care coverage, be executed even though one s provably innocent or be denied the right to vote.

The turn of Murdochland seemed pivotal this time, and it looks like the various flailings he and the GOP are doing don't have much potential to change the outcome unless they really up the ante with arrests or something, but the linked Gessen makes a good point that even if it doesn't work this time, a lot of the infrastructure for it has been built up and will recur.

Definitely in the territory of:
What to have for lunch? Pizza or you?

That it is even under discussion is a huge problem.

wonder if the clownishness isn't actually essential to the autocratic breakthrough

Compare Sartre:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play.

They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

Quoted in https://newrepublic.com/article/139004/ironic-nazis-still-nazis

Standpipe!

Elections in Myanmar. (I'm open to complaints about the name, but I have to pick one.)

This time around, there was sniping about the National League of Democracy's shortcomings as a governing party. The pandemic hit Myanmar late but it is now sweeping through a country with one of the worst health care systems in the world. Despite the lifting of international sanctions imposed because of human rights concerns, Myanmar never received an expected boon in foreign investment. The coronavirus has thrashed the economy further.

And for all the voter enthusiasm that was recorded on Sunday, more than 1.5 million people among an electorate of 37 million were excluded from the polls. Last month, the election commission canceled the vote for many ethnic minorities living in conflict zones, citing security concerns. Legal experts pointed out that the vote should have been suspended, not canceled outright, and wondered whether the disenfranchisement was a deliberate tactic by the governing party.

I regret to say that I would not have voted for Biden if he'd shot a man on Fifth Avenue.

Standpipe is here. Things have gone farther than I imagined.

I'm not totally clear on why Twitter has become wall-to-wall panic, but the level of manifest fear is disturbing me a lot more than the actual news of Barr's machinations.

Afaik they're still counting the (D) votes in California, there are that many. Just cannot picture the whole of the US accepting minority GOP government / autocracy, so struggle to think what the GOP imagine they can achieve. Secession of the south?

For what to do, could the Republicans be encouraged to split? Some of them, not many, still seem sane.

6: What about a drone strike?

Aren't a lot of these autocrats and would-be autocrats in sorta democratic countries considered clowns, just until the moment they have power?

Jawohl!

8: because Twitter, and the traditional folkway of the Unfogged class that any event whatsoever should be greeted with catastrophising? I mean, within moments of Biden hitting the lead in PA there were takes on how it was a bad thing he won because the R candidate in 2024 would necessarily be unbeatably perfect.

Was there much catastrophizing here? I saw plenty of it elsewhere, in all variants -- from "We lost, you fools!" to "We were too happy when Obama won. We can't be that happy again, or we'll be punished." Of course, most people relaxed enough to turn to their traditional hobby: infighting.

some folks talking about the next authoritarian attempt being more competent, headed by someone less clownish, is to wonder if the clownishness isn't actually essential to the autocratic breakthrough, because it gives a patina of unseriousness to everything, which mutes the reaction to it.

My thoughts on this are:

1) I don't think this is true at all. There are lots of autocrats out there who aren't clownish. Putin was deliberately coarse in his early years ("we will hunt them down, even when they're on the shitter"), as was Stalin throughout his life, but neither were clownish. Pinochet wasn't clownish, neither was Franco, neither was Fujimori. Neither is Xi, neither is Orban, neither is Erdogan. Neither, contra 1, were Hitler and Mussolini. Come on: name one thing that Hitler did that was deliberately clownish.

2) I think we think autocrats are clownish for two reasons: first, some of the would-be autocrats around today (Trump, possibly Johnson, possibly Zeman in Czechia) actually are clownish; second, historically, a common democratic response to autocrats has been to mock them, precisely because it is so effective, and so we remember them as inherently clownish, when in fact we are remembering our own propaganda.

3) AIMHMHB my response to the "ah but what if Hitler but competent?" question is that there may well be good reasons why extremist politicians are generally not competent, which I think I summarised as the Sink-Trap and Bone-Head models.
In the Sink-Trap model, an incompetent person who desires political power will not get far in established political parties, because she is incompetent, and will therefore be forced to the extremes, whence she will rise to power only by fluke. Note how poor a lot of Trump's advisors were: they were the contents of the Republican sink trap.
In the Bone-Head model, one way to be competent will be to listen to the advice of people who know what they're talking about. But part of this advice will generally be "don't be an extremist" because, by definition, the extremists are in a tiny minority. Therefore people who end up as extremists are bad at listening to advice, and therefore are incompetent.

Zizek wrote a longish LRB article, some years ago now, on the whole clownish "Berlusconist" authoritarian phenomenon. I think in terms of predicting/describing Boris Johnson and Donald Trump it was pretty good, actually.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v31/n14/slavoj-zizek/berlusconi-in-tehran

He isn't claiming that unseriousness is essential to autocracy. Rather, that there's a specific kind of clownish autocrat which is a modern phenomenon.

This is perhaps the saddest aspect of his reign: his democracy is a democracy of those who win by default, who rule through cynical demoralisation....
This is how ideology functions today: nobody takes democracy or justice seriously, we are all aware that they are corrupt, but we practise them anyway because we assume they work even if we don't believe in them. Berlusconi is our own Kung Fu Panda. As the Marx Brothers might have put it, 'this man may look like a corrupt idiot and act like a corrupt idiot, but don't let that deceive you - he is a corrupt idiot.'

The autocratic breakthrough relies on support for autocracy - maybe not majority popular support, but still the support of a significant share of the public, and the support of sufficient key power centres (established political factions, military factions, business leaders, trade unions, churches and so forth). Why do they, historically, decide to support autocrats? Because they see democratic government as having failed them - either it's undermining their historical privileges, or it's under the sway of foreign influence, or it's just incompetent. They support the autocrat because they believe she will be strong and decisive in defence of their supporters' interests.

Why, given that, would any would-be autocrat try to gain power by deliberately making herself appear clownish?

14.2: Kaleberg is literally doing this with regard to The Great Dictator, as it didn't premiere until October 1940, after the Fall of France and the Battle of Britain.

(Also I wonder if Orwell realized the goose-step was 200 or so years old then, or whether he just figured Prussia = Imperial Germany = Nazis.)

re: 17

There's quite a bit of that in the Zizek article, re: Berlusconi's appeal as an outsider (not part of the corrupt elite old guard) and being a red-blooded typical Italian male, etc. I think it's pretty obvious that both Boris Johnson and Trump appeal to quite a lot of people. So the question isn't really, "why would someone do this in order to gain power?" but rather "why DO people who do this gain power?"

I would definitely not describe Berlusconi as an autocrat - actual, or would-be. I think Zizek is way off the mark here. Or, thinking about it, Johnson either.

There is definitely a phenomenon of clownishness in modern politics - an outsider engaging in deliberate mocking and undermining of the norms of formal politics - and it's not limited to the populist right either. There have actually been good clownish politicians. I would put Havel in this category, for example, and I think one could make a case for Desmond Tutu being there as well. When the norms of established politics in your country are oppressive, poking fun at them is a good and necessary thing to do. In other cases, though, it's a way of camouflaging the fact that you aren't actually able to engage with and argue against these norms, because you have no useful ideas of your own. (Like, well, Zizek.)

But clownishness is a separate phenomenon from autocracy. Clowns are clownish because they want to be liked. Johnson desperately wants to be liked; to be Churchill, the lion of the House, going from soaring Gibbonian periods to dry humour. Churchill was funny. But would-be autocrats want power and adulation, they don't want people to like them and find them funny. Funny how? Funny, like a clown? Like I'm here to fucking amuse you? Funny how? And they definitely don't want people to laugh at them. At most they want people to sneer at their enemies. (Nazi cartoons are terrible and racist, but they are also, even on their own terms, not funny. It would be possible to conceive of a funny anti-semitic cartoon - one, at least, that would be funny to an anti-semite. You could definitely have a funny anti-semitic sitcom. But the Nazis didn't do any.)

Orwell said that fascists like the goose step because it is a silly, almost laughable way to walk, but once they are in power one doesn't dare laugh at them.

18: it's also worth noting that, at the time Orwell wrote this in 1941, the Wehrmacht had actually given up the goose-step, because it took too long to teach new recruits to do it. The Red Army (Soviet Army from 1943) kept it, and the Russian army keeps it to this day.

re: 20.1

Oh, I think Johnson is definitely non-democratic* in instinct and temperament, and there's absolutely a cynical element in which the buffoonery is a strategy. There's lots of evidence that in many ways, he really is an incompetent wanker, but he's also someone who consciously and intentionally uses that.

But yeah, he's not an autocrat in the classic sense.

* I think this is a fairly widespread phenomenon on the modern right, though. The willingness to go all in with deceit, manipulation, deliberate law breaking, misuse of process and so on, to get what they want.

I am also very suspicious of the "no one took Hitler seriously until he came to power, he was this ridiculous little guy" thesis - at least when it is expressed by Germans. Germans have a very large vested interest in making people believe that Hitler just sort of sneaked up on them and then all of a sudden, before they really noticed, there he was being Enabled. That way, you see, the only thing Germans did wrong was underestimate the threat - which was a mistake, but wasn't evil. In fact, isn't it pretty much what a lot of people outside Germany did too?

So, really, Germans aren't that much worse than anyone else.

Rest in peace, for the error will not be repeated.

But in fact a lot of people in Germany did take Hitler seriously - they supported him because they liked him, they liked the policies he proposed, and they went on liking them well into the 1950s.

I have no idea how truly concerned* to be, but I do wish I were a fly on the wall during the Barr/McConnell meeting. Was it "look we gotta give a show of it, both see he doesn't go completely off the rails, and also not to risk a Republican rupture with the Senate in the balance"? I think the real nitty-gritty point will be in early December after the election results are certified (I suspect they all will be for Biden other than maybe Georgia) and Trump is absolutely banging on the various legislatures to DO SOMETHING! Once again they probably won't do anything material, but I suspect they will try to not look like they are directly counteracting Trump's' wishes. The most "benign" thing would be Barr/DOJ giving them cover by not finding anything significant.

Finding out if it is an actual attempt at a judicial/legislative coup or just assuaging Jabba the Hunt's ego is half the fun!

*Aside from any immediate/near-term threat ther is incremental legitimate concern in further demonization of elections and government in general.

Also will be used to justify zero cooperation if Rs hold senate. There may be literally zero judicial appointments.

What he is probably more invested in is things like unfettered arms sales to Middle East etc. (so Oman) setting up for post-Presidency continuing grift.

I know it has been beaten to death, but this BBC recap (Ros Atkins) of the Four Seasons thing is among the more satisfying.

Putin...Stalin...Pinochet...Franco...Fujimori...Xi...Orban...Erdogan...Hitler ...Mussolini

I could have been clearer about this, but this is why I caveated with "sorta democratic countries." I think the skill set to be an autocrat of other systems is pretty different, and clownishness isn't much of a bonus. I need to read about Berlusconi, I guess, because I've had Italian friends tell me that they always thought of him as a clown. But Mussolini does seem pretty clownish to me, from the speeches of his that I've seen. I'm referring to a kind of affected theatricality when I say that. Like the fifteen seconds starting here for example. Like, dude, Nino, give me a fucking break.

As for Hitler, have you seen the guy giving a speech? What would you think if you saw someone doing that today? I would think he was a joke, or at the very least, mentally unstable. 1930 wasn't that long ago; I'm sure it was bizarre to a lot of people then.

I'm not totally clear on why Twitter has become wall-to-wall panic

Without fully endorsing this view, I'd say it's because the election felt like the last possibility of for legal democratic action to stop Trump, and when Barr signalled that he was going along with the fraud narrative, what's to stop them now? The good faith of Republican congressmen and judges? If they really decide to press this, it's either people in the street or the Joint Chiefs. Seems crazy, but unless we have something reassuring besides "they wouldn't do this, would they?" then maybe it's not so crazy.

Anyway, Manchin has already said he won't get rid of the filibuster, so I think we're already screwed. Biden won't be able to do much of affirmative consequence for at least a couple of years (that he won't be actively destroying the country is great, obviously).

There are both structural problems with Trumpian autocracy and an inherent appeal to it that are tied together. A "more competent Trump" wouldn't be Trump.

GW Bush was a more competent Trump -- but when he drowned a bunch of Americans, he only bragged about it briefly (Heck of a job, Brownie). He couldn't sustain a Trumpian level of shamelessness, and it cost him political support.

The remaining question is: Does democratic support matter any more? The next autocrat won't necessarily be more competent, but can build on the accomplishments of Trump/McConnell.

name one thing that Hitler did that was deliberately clownish.

Certainly with Trump (and I think probably with Hitler) the clownishness wasn't deliberate. Trump takes himself very seriously, and he is nonetheless a clown.

So the question is: Why does that work? I think maybe the essence of autocracy is gaslighting. What the autocrat says is true because the autocrat says it, and not because it makes any sense at all. That stance has a surprising amount of appeal to people, who themselves want to be able to do/say whatever they want without judgment, without shame.

28: this is why I caveated with "sorta democratic countries."

Well, Republican Spain and Allende's Chile and Fujimori's Peru were all sorta democratic, though? So were Hungary and Turkey.

What I'm saying is that autocrats getting power in democracies by presenting themselves as anti-establishment is definitely a thing that happens, and people (often but not always right-wing) using clownishness as an anti-establishment political persona is also definitely a thing that happens. But I don't think there are very many examples of anti-establishment clowns becoming autocrats.

The Philippines, for example, no stranger to autocracy, and no stranger to clowns. But their clown president was Estrada. Definitely anti-establishment; definitely clownish; not, I would say, clearly autocratic. Duterte, on the other hand, anti-establishment and autocratic, but not a clown.

But Mussolini does seem pretty clownish to me, from the speeches of his that I've seen. I'm referring to a kind of affected theatricality when I say that.

Mussolini is definitely emotional and theatrical and so on. He looks affected in that clip partly for the same reason that stage actors look affected when they start doing film - because Mussolini was a live performer who had to reach the back of the audience, not a TV performer delivering fireside chats. So he has big gestures and big variations in tone and pitch and exaggerated facial expressions. But I think that "clownish" is the wrong word for it, because you know what there isn't any of in that clip? Audience laughter. Similarly Hitler. Of course Hitler seems ridiculous now but that's because we've seen so many people making fun of his oratorical style, from Chaplin on. But he wasn't trying to be funny, and the audiences he was speaking to didn't think he was being funny. (Plus, oratorical styles change. Listen to a recording of Churchill. Great speaker, but no one delivers speeches like that any more. There are some old recordings of Gladstone speaking - I've heard them. He was one of the greatest parliamentary orators of all time. Today he sounds like a mad tramp.)

Trump's audiences do think he's funny - but Trump is an unusual sort of would-be autocrat, and not, I would say, typical of any larger trend.

32: but Trump does do things that are deliberately funny. He mocks reporters for their disabilities. He means that to be funny, and to his supporters it is funny. He makes fun of Little Marco for his height. He does silly voices on stage and exaggerated impressions of people. He pretends to drive trucks and makes vroom-vroom faces. All that is deliberate clowning. Hitler didn't do any of that kind of thing.

Hitler never got the chance to appear at a professional wrestling event.

Anyway, if fifty percent or so of the white people want to ruin the county, they can probably do it regardless of what I do. But in case they can't, I'm going to try not to exhaust on overthinking every piece of shit they drop from their asshole. In addition to fundraising and undermining institutions, one very clear goal is that they take joy in the public display of worry or fear by people like me.

standpipe! also, I concur that the very fact that standpipe is here indicates that things are v. v. bad. and on a scale from four seasons total landscaping to full-blown constitutional crisis I'm afraid to say I'm giving it a 9.5. stormcrow's 24 leads to ogged's 29: first everyone's just trying to keep trump from gnawing on them as if they were a flat from popeye's, next they look around shiftily and realize that no one is stopping them, and maybe give the next thing a try as well? and then they are just as unable to resist trump as before and just as convinced that one more turn of the screw couldn't hurt, and then...heyyy...maybe this is actually working?! and then, and then.

Somebody turned the Four Seasons Total Landscaping lot into a VR chatroom for furries and it's one of funniest things I've seen.

36 what about the private non-display of worry or fear which manifests only as glaring strangely into the washing machine, unable to remember if you put in color safe bleach?

I never use that.

Eric Trump just tweeted encouraging his MN supporters to get out and vote, so apparently he had a scheduled tweet but didn't know which Tuesday was Election Day. Does that fall under clownish or incompetent?

Trump does do things that are deliberately funny.

True. But did Hitler not publicly deride Jews in a similar way? (That's not intended as a rhetorical question. I don't know the answer.)

Anyway, I may not be on the right track in this conversation because I want to use the word "clownish" to denote something a bit different than you are. Trump's efforts to ignore the election results are clownish to me; his mockery of others is not -- it's self-aggrandizing. The beer hall putsch was clownish, but deadly serious to the participants. Is goose-stepping intended as clownish? Not to the soldiers or their leaders. (Though I share the skepticism about Orwell's interpretation.)

Boris Johnson, on the other hand, really is a clown in the sense that you're talking about -- deliberately silly in an effort to be endearing, as opposed to vicious in an effort to be intimidating.

Was it "look we gotta give a show of it, both see he doesn't go completely off the rails, and also not to risk a Republican rupture with the Senate in the balance"? I think the real nitty-gritty point will be in early December after the election results are certified (I suspect they all will be for Biden other than maybe Georgia) and Trump is absolutely banging on the various legislatures to DO SOMETHING! Once again they probably won't do anything material, but I suspect they will try to not look like they are directly counteracting Trump's' wishes. The most "benign" thing would be Barr/DOJ giving them cover by not finding anything significant.

I think that it's:
(1) yes, to keep Trump from going off the rails and sabotaging January, but also
(2) planting the seeds for the new but her emails!/Benghazi!/Seekrit muslim! In other words, McConnell will stonewall everything for the next four years because this election was stolen.

Excuse me, the next TWO years.

Oh my god, on the topic of Trump's clownishness: a local rightwing family that plays baseball with our kids posted a Halloween video. They took their kids to buy costumes, and the 10 year old bought an inflatable odd looking baby. He came out wearing it for the camera, and they're all audibly puzzled at this baby wearing a diaper with an orange shock of hair. Then they gradually realize it's a Baby Trump costume, of course, and express their shock that this happened to them. Then they posted the video to Facebook. It's amazing.

43: The universal (mainstream) media rejection of Trump's voter fraud scam is really interesting to me. I wonder if, come the next Benghazi or Whitewater or whatever, the media might not be so fucking stupid.

Did I miss something? Was there a time limit on "Unclench your jaw, take a deep breath, all that good stuff."? What we're seeing today isn't what a coup looks like, it's what Trump throwing tantrums and trashing everything he can reach looks like. It sucks and it was always going to suck, whether Biden won the popular vote by 3 percent or 30 (or for the thing that actually matters, with 270 electoral college votes or 500), but not in the specific way that a coup would suck.

Caveat: if one of Trump's lawsuits makes it to the Supreme Court, I'll be a lot more worried. But so far they're all getting laughed out of lower courts.

37 That is the thing, isn't it. You want to think the guardrails will hold, but then you realize they're not guardrails, but people, particularly unreliable people at that.

46 It's pretty encouraging.

Finding out if it is an actual attempt at a judicial/legislative coup or just assuaging Jabba the Hunt's ego is half the fun!

I was thinking neither, and it is intended
A) to get Republican voters hopping mad
- to help with Republican fundraising
- to mobilize voters in Georgia
- to make Democrat office holders feel intimidated by a barrage of death threats from Republican voters who no longer believe elections are real
B) to give themselves an excuse to sabotage Biden by delaying the transition period until nonexistent irregularities are cleared up

The Attorney General and Republicans in Congress going along with it is what a coup looks like. I'm not actually worried it's going to be successful, but I don't see what would be different if they were seriously trying to retain control of the executive after losing the election.

But did Hitler not publicly deride Jews in a similar way? (That's not intended as a rhetorical question. I don't know the answer.)

Not as far as I know - they were a deadly, world-historical menace, not something to be laughed at and belittled. But I'm not an expert on his speeches. I don't have the stomach for it.

Trump's efforts to ignore the election results are clownish to me; his mockery of others is not -- it's self-aggrandizing. The beer hall putsch was clownish, but deadly serious to the participants.

Ah, OK - that is a different definition. Can I respectfully suggest that you use "ridiculous" or "ludicrous" for stuff like this, and then we can keep "clownish" for stuff that is meant to be funny by the person doing it?

Also, agree with 46 and 47. Trump can file as many lawsuits as he likes, just as Glendower could call spirits from the vasty deep. So far, though, it's had about the same result.

It's what a coup looks like, but the difference is that the Republicans in congress are just performing a coup, not actually passionately fighting for it.

Further reflecting on clownishness, I might be bending my definitions a bit because what I really worry about is the embrace of the ridiculous. Everybody has probably seen this Arendt quote from The Origins of Totalitarianism:

"In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."

Implicit in this is both-siderism: The other side is just as bad or worse, so whatever my side does is okay.

So smart lawyer twitter seems to think there's no basis for the lawsuits, and all of them have been thrown out so far, which would comfort me, but then I remember how smart lawyer blogs told me that there was no legal basis whatsoever to throw out the ACA so welp.

Can I respectfully suggest that you use "ridiculous" or "ludicrous" for stuff like this,

53 before reading this, so I take your point.

Still, ogged's discussion of clownishness, for me at least, raises a question about the utility of absurdity -- rather than the efficacy of comedy.

50 But because of the dynamic al explains in 37, you can't rule it out. How does this end? One assumes that Judge Brann* doesn't let Trump's federal lawsuit get much traction, but denial of a preliminary injunction will be fast-tracked at the Third Circuit, and Justice Alito isn't the guy you want as a guardrail, so you can imagine first a stay and then it probably gets cert.

* Obama appointee. But wiki entry says he'd spent years as a Republican party official. Marinating, no doubt, in stories of how the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh Democratic establishments are hopelessly corrupt.

54: Right. Roberts (who is now in the liberal minority) has always been willing to embrace lawlessness. The earlier ACA decision and especially Shelby County (the voting rights decision) don't seem to be based on anything at all.

I think today's challenge on Obamacare, though, goes to a new level. Even more than Shelby County, throwing out Obamacare would be a clear message that Congress is not capable of determining Congress's intent. This is a 9-0 no-brainer if the rule of law means anything at all.

(Further to 56, they didn't move for a PI yet, but I assume they'll file that today or tomorrow. All the docket shows at this moment is the complaint, and appearances of counsel for various defendants. So far, only Delaware County has engaged a larger law firm. But many counties haven't appeared yet.)

There are definitely the beginnings of a coup attempt underway, unfortunately. It's Plan A for if the vote was very close, only being run when the vote is not close at all, just to see. Guessing that the quality of the US judiciary is what will block it, or maybe not even the quality of it; just nervousness about overturning a massive popular vote / disenfranchising millions when you're only a judge and therefore operating way outside your remit. Can't see many GOP legislators stepping up; they seem to be mostly bought into the plan.

And why does it get cert? Because, imo, enough of them can't resist the opportunity to save the country (from a Democratic coup!)

Obviously, I'm assuming a Third Circuit victory for reason.

The best end would be a denial of cert, with Alito, Kavanaugh, and Thomas dissenting.

Barrett has to choose between, what, her reputation (among people concerned about the rule of law) and the forces of Godlessness. Who wants to place a bet on that?

Will there be a moment when the world's press converges on Williamsport Pa, and we get to hear about Little League etc? Catnip for the NYT, surely.

That said, wasn't the moment for THE COUP!!! STOP TEH COUNT! while the counts were going on and Trump was ahead? It seems a lot harder to unring the bell/unscramble the egg after the event.

62: No, don't think so. I mean, all of it is insane, risks ending the country, etc. But there is clearly some constitutional space for anti-democratic bullshit, and this is where things look to be headed on the current trajectory.

Suppose the other thing that stops it is very large scale protest, brought to where the GOP lives, in some sense. But in sequence, that would probably follow the SC giving license to autocracy, and how could anyone stop it?

I think partially the goal is to provoke protest so that can tear gas and arrest people.

Anyway, I don't see how arguing doom helps. PA was won by what will be close to 100,000 votes. That's not the time to give up democratic actions as a way to stop authoritarian governments. It's working and the loser is trying to shit on the winner.

I look at the Republicans in the US Senate and think "This is especially insulting because all of them except Ron Johnson are smart enough to know there is no fraud or irregularities. They know everything that happened is normal, but they are acting like something unprecedented happened, and therefore they are in fact being unprecedented in their bullshit, which they all know. They are the most cynical and malevolent politicians we could ever be cursed with."

Then I look at the Republicans in the House and the Pennsylvania legislature and think "Most of these people probably do believe all this bullshit. Why wouldn't they?"

Then I look at the Republicans making decisions in the courts and think "They are even less likely to believe any of this bullshit, but they were trained long ago that that doesn't matter and they just need to follow abstract rules and be an unthinking pawn."

Which ones are worse?

Well, any pretext to point to an enemy within, sure. But at some point there is nothing left except protest, so you may as well, and I'm not sure that the GOP fully appreciates what this means for them?

The win sent hundreds of people out into the street celebrating here, more in other places. That's worth more than a protest. I'm not saying the Republicans aren't trying to end democratic government, I'm pointing out that maybe prophecies of doom drowning out one of the few cheering outcomes in the past couple of years isn't a very good way of making sure the people are willing and eager for the next flight. "We won but it probably won't matter so be sure to get ready for 2022" is a really bad way to win that. I don't think magnifying what is basically enemy propaganda is helpful.

The hearing seems to be showing good signs for the ACA. This is not tea-leaf reading from the implications of the justices' questions, as I know that tends to be misleading - more or less flat-out statements from Roberts and Kavanaugh that the rest of the law does not fall when the zero-dollar mandate does. At least as reported.

(Could lead to some misleading headlines "SCOTUS RULES ACA MANDATE UNCONSTITUTIONAL" when the ruling is actually harmless.)

62 is/was my understanding as well. IANAL, and the people who are lawyers seem worried, and on some level we should continue to be worried until the votes are certified (until the Electoral College votes, until Biden is inaugurated, until there's a fundamental change in the Republican Party)...

but all that being said, it seems to me like the most acutely dangerous time to the Democratic process was Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, and as long as the normal process continues the danger of an outright coup is going down and not up as time goes on, right?

"As long as the normal process continues" glosses over a lot. Obstruction from the GSA and the Senate and the majority of the Republican Party continuing to say that democracy is illegitimate are all big problems. But nothing between Saturday morning and today has made me think a coup is more likely. Am I missing something?

68: I want to agree. With luck, various Republicans will sober up and the challenges to the vote will just stop. Still, there is a grim logic to what is going on, and it's maybe worth asking what stops it, if it doesn't stop on its own.

I think we will get to January 20 alright, but we going to be stuck with "election truthers" for years and god knows what damage they will do.

70: What's made me pessimistic is the demented consistency of GOP speech and action over the last two days. You have the Pennsylvania Republicans issuing pronouncements - they want to scrutinise the vote, apparently - and also McConnell, and you've now got the (apparently very sketchy) 'constitutional' legal claims underway as well. Otoh there is a mountain of votes to scale, wins in multiple states to overturn, and you'd think that any sensible judge would dismiss all of it instantly.

(71 was me also, apologies.)

I think there is a very deep strain of magical thinking in American culture, descending perhaps ultimately from the Puritans and their belief in providence, through New Thought, to Norman Vincent Peale, the Prosperity Gospellers and finally reality television. The idea that if you only say something with enough conviction it will become true and all the obstacles will melt away ...

So I expect the great Trump victory of 2020 will be like the Second Coming so convincingly prophesied for 1837, then 1844, and, just as happened after the Great Disappointment , there will be a substantial group who convince themselves that Trump has already won, and that only sin and demonic bondage explains the belief that he hasn't.

Paula White is already on this kick; so is Archbishop Vigano and his Bannonite followers. It frightens me. I know we all laugh at Four Seasons Landscaping but if you wanted to believe, as millions do, it will have been convincing.

or what 72 said.

Expansion of the "social trust gap is killing poll accuracy" hypothesis.

I guess I don't think they're setting out to have a coup. Trump fired Esper for reasons unrelated to his election dispute, surely. It's about money and continuing influence for him, and keeping their unhinged followers on board for the rest of them.

But I also think that Trump didn't set out to become President of the United States. The incentives for the various players just ended up going that way.

We've still got the upper hand here, but anyone betting on Republicans sobering up should re-read Ned's 66.

The thing I'm most worried about right now is the Trump order to federal agencies not to communicate with the Biden transition team.

Handing off the power of the US government is an enormous challenge and they are tying both hands behind the new president's back. He can navigate this, but it's going to cost him heavily in unnecessary extra money, time, and effort. That will hamstring his ability to move his agenda effectively in January. And worst case scenario, it's going to leave us flat-footed if any adversaries try anything aggressive in the interim (I'm looking at you, Russia).

Trump fired Esper for reasons unrelated to his election dispute, surely.

...such as his unwillingness to use federal troops against protestors back in June? That's not reassuring me.

Yes. On the other hand, presumably many of the people Biden brings in will have done similar work under Obama.

72 is exactly what they intend.

81 is me.

The idea that if you only say something with enough conviction it will become true and all the obstacles will melt away

This is it. Orwell was all over this: It's doublethink. It's kayfabe. It's not a matter of believing things that are bullshit; it's believing in bullshitting as an epistemic method, a way of understanding the universe.

Possibly I'm unfair to Pennsylvania Republicans:

https://eu.ydr.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/26/pa-republicans-say-they-wont-choose-electors/3538437001/

Otoh, even the saner sounding ones don't seem exactly rock solid on this 'alternate electors' thing.

Well, no one expects the Pennsylvania legislature to step in before (a) the Supreme Court has failed to stop the Democratic "coup" and (b) "rioters" have shown that even non-shithole places like Williamsport are at risk.

To get from where we are to the end, we're going to have to have some Republicans in authority -- judges or politicians -- publicly declare that this is bullshit, and throw themselves on the grenade. I'm actually more optimistic than pessimistic about that.

84: They've gotten squishier since solid statements back in September/October. Their big thing now (mentioned above I believe) is that they want to "audit" the election. No way it would overturn, but it might delay to where the gambit of just appointing electors comes into play. No way do I think they think they are going to do this... but per CC, shit happens sometimes. I am thinking of group decision I have been part of that we knew were wrong/bad. Start off as something just being entertained, and then somehow the opportunity comes up and it's a bit of ,"Are we doing really doing this?", "OMG, I think we are doing this!", "YIPPPEEE!!"

No matter what ten kinds of disgraceful that they are even entertaining the preliminary steps.

79- There was an enormous arms shipment that was just approved to UAE which could have also been related. Is it implausible that Trump ships weapons to a bunch of places in the next couple months with the understanding that they pay him directly in addition to the US government?

JFC, my grad school is hosting a civilized conversational event with one of the Trump admin guys who sat quietly and later wrote a book about how icky it was.

76 is good. I do want to find a good account of how Doug Jones lost, since his special election win was portrayed as a GOTV/organizing victory at the time -- not quite along the lines of Georgia this year but similarly. Please share if anyone has one.

Nothing odd about Jones losing. The event that required explanation was his victory, which happened because he was running against someone too nutty even for Alabama. Jones outperformed Biden by a couple percent this year, and didn't come close.

Pompeo gets in on the fun:

Pompeo asked whether the State Department will cooperate with the Biden transition, says: "There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration"

And later he'll say he was joking about how he meant Trump running in 2024 and he'll be invited on TV for interviews and speeches at colleges.

90: thanks. I didn't follow it all that closely.

I did not appreciate how truly loathsome he was until he became SoS. (I mean I knew he was vile and low, but he seems to be subterranean.)

89, 90 -- What I'd wonder about, if I wanted to take the time to think about this, is how Jones' 2020 vote compares to his 2018 vote. He won not only because of a bad opponent, but also because of a very serious GOTV effort. There's an upper bound to where GOTV is going to get you.

Here in Msla, we sent every registered voter a ballot, and something like 90% of those were returned. The folks who didn't turn them in got calls for days, people coming to their doors, etc. Thousands more people registered on election day, many waiting more than an hour in line.

There are undoubtedly more people who (a) aren't registered, (b) aren't in any database, and (c) would support our candidates. Who are they, and how can we find them? Everyone talks smack about our inability to bring these people in, but few of the critics are interested in either doing or funding that work.

(I haven't looked at the final numbers for this, but I'd guess that the pandemic was a huge barrier to GOTV in Indigenous communities.)

He won 673K to 651K. Lost this year 1385K to 913K. So it is really a different turnout universe. As I recall the 2017 win really was due to differential turnout. In fact it was looking not good early in the counting in 2017 because Rs were generally hitting their % targets except in some urban areas, but they had quite depressed relative turnout in their areas of strength.

And all of the places are not satisfying my need for updated results (not that there is doubt other than a tiny, tiny smidgen in Arizona). But I still want to see.

In particular want to see if PA goes over 100K. I think they will if they count the post-Tuesday arriving votes of which I believe there were more than I had thought there would b e (a few tens of thousands I believe). Boy I am I glad they were not material to the outcome. (For instance things like 375 ballots arrived at Westmoreland a few minutes too late--Post Office claimed a logistical issue; they couldn't find parking. Also early in the day they would not let election workers come get them. Just imagine the stink from Rs if people thought they leaned Trump.

95: I wonder about that too. But how do you do it? I'm not that kind of person, so I don't know how to find them or appeal to them. Hell, when I started college, there was somebody with voter registration cards. I took one and mailed it in a few weeks later when I turned 18. There were no elections for a whole, but voting was what grown ups did. I still remember going to vote with my Mom as a kid.

White House directs agencies to proceed with planning for Trump's federal budget next year

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) has congratulated Biden.

Shit - ex-Senator, until last year.

He's no longer an ex-Senator? They really are all in on canceling previous elections that used any mail ballots.

As a slightly distant observer, the phenomenon I'm seeing as incredibly effective is: low-income Central Valley Latina goes to law school, gets priced out of the urban housing market, goes back to her home city, knows absolutely everyone, starts organizing them from the inside. Those women know where to find the unregistered voters. Maybe focus more on supporting them (UBI-fashion) to let them do their work with fewer daily demands.

Which changes the problem from 'where to find the unregistered voters' to 'where to find the inside organizers'.

103 Absolutely right.

We're aware and supportive of these efforts in Indigenous communities (including here in the city) and try to amplify, but (a) they need to be independent of us for a host of reasons and (b) we're basically broke too. We have no paid staff at all, and the money we raise goes mostly towards candidates, or technology. Folks doing real work also hate to come to our meetings, because Roberts Fucking Rules empower dipshits to say 'point of order, you're doing it wrong' whenever they feel like they're not getting attention. (Example from last year: a procedural argument over whether 3 particular people, in a group of 40, could join in approving, by acclamation, giving $25 in improperly labelled donations to the local food bank. OK, yes, the chair can rule on your point, you can appeal the ruling, lose that vote 38-2, but you've made an important point. Gotta follow the fucking rules, since that is the whole point of human existence.)

California pricing people out is helping all over, I suspect.

99: jesus christ, that's kind of terrifying.

Man I hate watching this go down.

There's an upper bound to where GOTV is going to get you.

Absolutely, and I think both parties are going to find that out over the next decade. Republican GOTV was obviously huge this year too, despite their reputation for lazy reliance on disenfranchisement; I think that is going to continue. I'm not sure what the next phase looks like for either party, although I won't try to predict the future. I will be a broken record one more time and point out that there was a viral tweet, which I absolutely can't find now, about Dem disorganization in Florida -- I'm sure it will get more resources, but the uphill slope is a bit steeper now.

106: yes, people are now getting priced out of other cities due to California overflow!

Also, how do we build a cross class coalition? In our primary, a Markey did well in the well off and the highly-educated areas while Kennedy did better in working class spots. He talked a lot about trade school options but there was not a lot of depth. Other than that he sold himself as younger with more energy and a fighter, but that played well in the Latin X communities. I think Lawrence is mostly Dominican, although there used to be more Puerto Rican's. Kennedy also did well in New Bedford (historically Portuguese).

Trump didn't just promise, pre-election, that he would allege voter fraud. He explicitly refused to guarantee a peaceful transition. At some point, the media needs to start paying attention to that fact and start querying McConnell, Pompeo, etc. about how far they are prepared to go. And for that matter, querying the generals about where they land on this issue. And the brown shirts -- what will they do if Trump calls them to action? There is still a conspiracy of silence surrounding Trump's behavior -- a desire to take him both not seriously and not literally.

Folks doing real work also hate to come to our meetings, because Roberts Fucking Rules empower dipshits to say 'point of order, you're doing it wrong' whenever they feel like they're not getting attention.

Oh man, this, a thousand times. The amount of procedural bullshit in party operations is staggering, and it's a real barrier to getting effective people involved at all levels.

(One of the things that makes our Young Dems group unusually effective is that they deliberately don't use Robert's Rules or any other formal system for running meetings. That's not really a scalable option for larger groups though.)

Also, how do we build a cross class coalition?

I'm often cross.

I will go to my grave still fuming about what happened at our January 2019 meeting.

Even though Biden is about to cross into indisputably being the victor in PA (despite incredibly slow count of votes today) I am freaking the fuck out. This is a coup attempt and we're a boiling frog. They've convinced 50 million plus people with guns that the election has been stolen and those people are going to provide cover for the WI MI and PA legislatures to change the electors. The voters in WI MI and PA (and all the non voters there too) need to show them they won't stand for that.

I'm not their yell-monkey. If they want me to act like they threw a coup, they need to actually throw the fucking coup and stand in the street where I can spit on them. I'm not saying they won't, but I'm done jumping for every fucking brain shit that comes out because this is exhausting. One of the things they want is to see the tears of liberals (rage with no tangible consequences to them very much included). I'm not going to rage into their mouse orgasm-meter.

If anything I hope this finally convinces Biden that all Republicans constantly act in bad faith and not to include them in any way n his administration

I agree with that twitter thread. The questions are (a) how likely is it to work and (b) what can *we* do to lower that likelihood. I think a lot of folks on our side are doing a good job of calling this out, and of brushing away the enablers' feeble excuses. This isn't, as said above, surprising at all. IMO, we have to keep on that track, I think: not minimizing or despairing, just re-iterating that on the merits, there isn't a winning case here for overturning the elections.

We're mostly irrelevant here: this is a game of chicken between Trump and his enablers, because if they blink, he gets to call them traitors. Neither Trump nor the enablers care about anything we do, except to the extent it might help one against the other (either directly or indirectly).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/postal-worker-fabricated-ballot-pennsylvania/2020/11/10/99269a7c-2364-11eb-8599-406466ad1b8e_story.html

I guess they've found the fraud in Pennsylvania.

I wonder if Fetterman has a case?

Me. Sorry.

I had long ago started reading the Trib over the Post Gazette out of disdain for the owners of the PG, but now that the Trib has disabled comments on their whole site (probably only temporarily), I'm moving toward viewing the Trib with actual fondness.

118: They've been talking about Baker as a possible Cabinet pick. I've never had the sense that Baker was interested in national politics, and he would be cut out of Republican circles if he took a job in the administration.

Also, our Lieutenant Governor is a moron, and it would be terrible if he left and she was in charge.

120: I couldn't read that due to the paywall, but it seems like the same story as this.

I'm thinking our lieutenant governor would make a fine governor. But I don't know if he or the AG will be the stronger candidate for the nomination.

That's nice you have a Lieutenant Governor. NH has 17 million legislators and an executive council, but no Lieutenant Governor.

Not a majority, but a decent number of states have their "spare governor in case of emergency" role filled by another elected official who actually has a separate function while the governor is alive. Most often Secretary of State.

I wonder if I could just go around claiming to be the Lieutenant Governor of New Hampshire. Its not like there is someone who would object, right? If its an office that doesn't exist, I don't think you can actually get in trouble pretending to be that.

I bet the Lieutenant Governor of New Hampshire would get mad comps down at the Mohegan Sun.

A very smart friend of mine at that other place:

My guess is that none of these assholes know whether they're part of an actual coup attempt. And that's the point. They can tiptoe up to the edge and just sort of see how it goes. Maybe the institutions hold, maybe they don't. Maybe they go for it. Maybe they were just joking.

That sounds about dead-accurate a read on the situation.

I see that Boockvar filed a motion to transfer the case to Harrisburg -- saying that Williamsport is inconvenient for her and everyone else, given everything they have to get done right now.

Denied.

Also entered a scheduling order:

Trump has to file his motion for an injunction, and defendants (state, 7 counties) their motions to dismiss, by 5 on Thursday. Trump's response to the motion to dismiss is due noon Sunday, and the defendants' reply by noon Monday. Oral argument on the motion to dismiss Tuesday, and if there's still a case, evidentiary hearing on Thursday.

Not a majority, but a decent number of states have their "spare governor in case of emergency" role filled by another elected official who actually has a separate function while the governor is alive. Most often Secretary of State.

Alaska has sort of the opposite: the Lieutenant Governor fulfills the typical functions of a Secretary of State.

One of those functions, of course, is running elections. Speaking of which, they've started counting the mail ballots and posted a first update. No major changes to the high-profile races so far, but there's still more to count.

||
Hey Barry!!
|>

Boy, the covid report today is grim.

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Does anyone else lose count of the husbands in this story?
|>

88: Ask the Trump guy if he knows the word "Schreibtischtäter."

135 that's a great thread. Both the Sufism and the book/print history.

Howard Kurtz making a bold claim to be dumber than Chris Cilizza:

From Trump's GSA barring Biden transition officials from federal buildings to Whoopi Goldberg telling his voters to suck it up, both sides are playing the politics of payback. Why the anger still rages and the election feels endless

And then he complains that people are reacting to the tweet, not the article! (The article is only marginally better than the Onion-worthy tweet.)

As usual, Moby is right in 117. Nothing left to say. About anything really.

Wittgenstein always wins in the end.

Kurtz is really interesting to me because the guy used to be a legit, if rather pedestrian, media reporter for the Washington Post. I've been fascinated to watch how these people react as they join Fox and are liberated from their professional responsibilities. Britt Hume is another one -- always leaned a bit right, as did his boss, Ted Koppel, but seemed to genuinely aspire to some kind of integrity. Joe Kernen is another.

And even guys like Lou Dobbs and Neil Cavuto, while always kind of dopey, weren't insane. And look how Tucker Carlson has gone from one asshole persona to an entirely different one.

Right wing pundits have determined that both Whoopi Goldberg AND Rob Reiner have been committing outrages akin to 90% of Republican senators lying that they think the election isn't over yet.

It's a good thing Rob Reiner doesn't have a history of using satire or they'd look even more ridiculous.

Georgia decides on a hand audit of the Presidential race. I think they always do some manner of audit and this time they chose the Presidential race. because of the close margin it would require examining millions of ballots so they decided to do all of them. A bit confusing as it seems to also serve as a a recount (when they do statistical audits they do not).

I'm sure the SoS is trying to take pressure off himself. The only real "risk" here to Bidenis if it extends too long and is used as an excuse not to certify. (Current plans are to have it done by the 20th which is the certification date.)

141: Shep Smith didn't turn too crazy; he also decided that he had to quit.

Shep Smith was still pretty bad though. He was just allowed semi-annual outbursts of decency, which is more than the rest of them, but still not much.

The only real "risk" here to Bidenis if it extends too long and is used as an excuse not to certify. (Current plans are to have it done by the 20th which is the certification date.)

The other question is how much this stays in the news and affects the Senate runoffs. I'm not sure who it benefits, it appears that historically GA runoffs have had better Republican turnout than Democratic: https://twitter.com/baseballot/status/1326539742754713601

My attempt to find a silver lining is that this has kept the betting markets' uncertainty high. I figure Trump stealing the election would be so awful that I wouldn't notice losing $50 more, but if it all works out, hey, that's a free fiver.

I suppose the Georgia runoff will give us some idea of how Trump-specific the last results were.

OT: If you're white and middle class, you can totally kick the shit out of a Target with few consequences. I'm not going to try it myself because maybe you also have to be a woman.

150: the fact that she got into QAnon through wellness and spirituality spaces justifies my hatred of those things.

Fucking essential oils.

Ugh, found more stuff on this connection: "The strongest bridge we found between QAnon and non-QAnon communities was spirituality and religion," McAweeney said. "This content isn't inherently problematic, but people are often most vulnerable when seeking spiritual information online and more susceptible to alternative and extreme views."

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/how-qanon-rode-pandemic-new-heights-fueled-viral-anti-mask-n1236695

I got so mad at that puff piece that I had to email the author and make sure he felt bad about writing it.

I'm sure this will have been an valuable use of my time.

I wonder if they're really going to try the states not seating electors strategy.

The interesting thing is if Republicans controlled the House they might have a chance to succeed. Background on the procedures which I vaguely recalled from 2000. If one member from each of the House and Senate object to an elector's vote then the separate chambers debate and vote on whether to reject and it is accepted unless both houses agree to reject. Note that this is separate from the one vote per state rule- that's if no one gets to 270, this process is rejecting votes so that it might get to that next stage. But since Dems will still hold the House the electoral vote counting should move ahead normally. Now we just have to get to that stage.
Serious fuck this guy for making everyone have to think about certification deadlines and electoral college meeting and electoral tabulation.

151: this reminds me that when I lived in the suburbs, the huge supermarket near me shelved the magazines "Spirit and Destiny" and "Muscle and Fitness" together. It always sounded like a totalitarian slogan, or the challenge and password of a weird cult:

"Halt! Who goes there? Muscle and fitness!"

"Spirit and destiny!"

"Pass, friend!"

*smashes out the Red Dwarf double-Rimmer salute*

that was of course before I started sticking hundreds of kilos of iron over my back.

The US electoral vote rules are not unlike Space Corps Directives in their scope and complexity:

https://youtu.be/Qa_gZ_7sdZg

The US electoral vote rules are not unlike Space Corps Directives in their scope and complexity:

https://youtu.be/Qa_gZ_7sdZg

It's good to know the second civil war is starting exactly like the first.

Do we have even a single Civil War nerd on this blog? Alameida could fake it with half her brain, probably, but I'm actually not sure this is anyone's thing here. Von Wafer? Maybe reading a good book about it would keep my internet-poisoned mind sharp in the coming weeks.

You could join me -- at any time in the next 10 years, apparently -- in my incredibly slow progress through The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border. It's genuinely interesting but I have to designate time to read it that isn't "five minutes before I fall asleep." Cognitive benefits there are very uncertain.

Does anyone else lose count of the husbands in this story?

It sounds like she took a new husband every 3-6 months or so (after having dispatched of the previous husband through an act of murder!...).

Some people have too much energy.

155: That is what they are down to. If it really were just one semi-close state with R control I would not have been surprised if they had tried it. For now, various delaying things can help set up a "Well, an election with a known result did not get completed. So we sorrowfully must step in." The John Roberts statement was fucked up in multiple ways. Utterly irresponsible even if the Legislatures don;t come anywhere near trying to pull it off.

161: How do you feel about a graphic novel? https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Lines-Graphic-History-Civil/dp/0809094746

Von Wafer would approve.

Hey, that's right! I had almost but not completely forgotten.

The writing is good, but they should have drawn all the people with absolutely giant eyes, like the Japanese do in graphic novels.

Just for that, you're going to have nightmares about wandering the corpse-strewn battlefield at Gettysburg trying to catch Pokemon.

I uninstalled Pokemon Go.

And my nightmares involving central Pennsylvania are already too real.

Here, let's diversify them a bit with some access journalism about the Pentagon et al.

"It's like dealing with a lunatic on the subway. Everyone just kind of sits and stares ahead, pretends they can't hear him, and waits for him to eventually get off," a GOP source close to the administration told The Daily Beast.

They all so often sound like they delight in writing their own snappy TV-ready scripts.

Decision Desk calls Arizona. Last sizable Maricopa drop gets it to 11,635. ~22K outstanding, Pima county (Tucson) biggest chunk left is bluer. Also a lot of provisionals and some needing curing (which local expert* says usually do not get cured. I suspect the other networks will not, and Fox/AP breathing a sigh of relief.

And there was no doubt about it ...

*A couple of them guessed it would end up at 12K a number of days back.

Other networks will not call until actually less votes left than margin, or maybe not until certification.

Kooky AZ lawsuit seems to depend on getting a judge to admit illegally recorded video of a poll worker supposedly doing something wrong.

Red Dwarf is the only reason I know gazpacho soup is served cold.

174 That story is pretty vague about what it is the the poll worker is said to have gotten wrong. Telling people to push the green button when they feed their ballot into the tabulator?

169: Moby, why??

169: That is also my cry of existential angst. Moby without Pokemon is such an obviously apocalyptic sign that I am now more worried about a Trump coup than I was five minutes ago.

Whoops, 177 is also my cry of existential angst about 169. The news has left me so distraught that I can't even cite correctly.

It started to feel too deliberately like they were trying to get me to push buttons for a pellet.

Somehow telling that "R" is both an epidemiological parameter and short for Republican.

180: I've never played Pokémon. Did it change or did you change how you felt about it?

They kept adding features and events.

I'll probably pick it up again at some point.

Only have seen data from Philly so far, but they had 1.1% of mail ballots rejected as "naked" (not in security envelope). That is better than in past elections (before this year's primary there were very few mail ballots as PA did not have no-excuse absentee.) I think there were quite a lot in this year's primary. IF you extrapolate to the whole state that would be in the range of 25 to 30K. Given the Biden % in those probably 10-20K margin lost.

Also in Wisconsin 51 of 72 counties have completed their "audit." Net gain of about 10 for Biden loss of ~270 for Trump so far. Clerical reporting errors. IIRC in 2016 this process reduced Trump's margin by some thousands of votes. (One precinct had a 16000 vote error in Trump's favor that was corrected.) The most populous counties have not completed yet.

This election has even made me get a subscription to the WaPo, a newspaper in a country I don't live in. OK, it was £1 for a month.

Anyway, WaPo is pouring a lot of cold water on this Republican 'Hail Mary' electoral college play. Of course, the GOP might try to ignore the law, due process, etc. but surely they want a fig leaf of legality, and they've been banging on (crowing) for months about the SC being Republican now.

These Trump lawsuits are...a bit crap?

https://mobile.twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1326932166262087681

Yes, but it turns out the stab-in-the-back argument was stupid too.

As I'm sure people have seen, we now have enough votes counted in Alaska to call it for Trump, Sullivan, and Young. Not a huge surprise. Some local races are very close and counting continues. The oil tax ballot measure looks to have failed, but the election reform one is surprisingly close and may even win.

The federal government is currently being directed by an Ed Anger column and we're past the point of no return on the largest Covid peak of the pandemic.

And tomorrow is Friday the 13th.

And sooner or later, Trump's provoking will require that hundreds of thousands or millions pour into the streets so that local officials don't think that caving into the Republicans is the easy way out.

186.2 I hope they're right. They should be right. But [Charlton Heston voice] Guardrails are made of people!

And here, the people are Penna legislators from gerrymandered districts who voted for Trump twice, everyone they know voted for Trump twice, they believe to their very marrow that Philadelphia is corrupt and illegitimate, and that Democrats always get away with it. Their commander in chief is calling on them, personally, to prevent the socialist coup. The streets of Harrisburg will be filled with their friends, neighbors, constituents, and gun-toting whackos from other states. Braying about 'betrayal' of the President and of what America is about. What is the upside for them in turning their back on the President?

I'm not saying they won't do it, but I'm not thinking their dilemma can be hand-waved away.

161: I'm partial to "The Battle Cry of Freedom" by James MacPherson. Among other nice features it starts well before the actual war, so you get your dose of John Brown. This is useful if you are watching "The Good Lord Bird."

Did folks see that the Trump campaign filed their Michigan complaint in the US Court of Federal Claims, in DC?

I've made plenty of mistakes, but this one is beyond even my experience.

193: What's the down side? If the PA state legislators allow the vote to stand, Trump won't be President in a few months, and the entire Republican Party will decide that he lost because he was a uniquely awful candidate.

If the state legislators try to overrrule the voters, Trump also won't be president in two months, unless (1) The bill to subvert democracy passes both houses (and it will need support from some Republicans whose districts voted for Biden), (2) The same bill passes two houses of at least two other state legislatures, and (3) the Supreme Court rules in favor of the state legislatures, and against the voters, the governors who tried to veto these bills, and democracy. On the Supreme Court side, Amy Covid may recuse herself, or decide she'd like to be remembered 100 years from now as the justice with the integrity to save democracy even against the guy who appointed her, or she may look at the merits of the case and realize it doesn't make sense. Collectively, a very long shot.

And if somehow they successfully keep Trump in office, they will be facing another four years of less money flowing out of Washington into their districts than would have happened under Biden. Pennsylvania has several rural districts with Amtrak stations. Not worth it.

The state legislatures are not going to help Trump. Nor will the Suprmee Court. Nor. I don't think, will the military. He's on his way out.

.

The downside is I have to live in a state where the rules are made by those fucks and the shitheels whose rage gets stirred up by this kind of propaganda might come to where I live and shoot people again.

I feel like the strategy is just to delay past the certification date so that they have to use the electoral college safe harbor provision. Same strategy as 2000- we're out of time so can't figure out who really won so let's go with the current results or in this case the legislature will just have to choose the electors. If they can find one sympathetic Trump appointed judge who will issue an injunction they can get the delay they need. Then it becomes a disputed electoral college result which, if they can keep Biden under 270 it goes to the House, and Trump wins. It's a direct attempt to hack the stupid system we have and exploit all the anti democratic features of it.

You don't have to care about any of that stuff if you're a member of the Pennsylvania, or Michigan, house or senate. You certainly don't have to care whether it will work. You do have to care whether turning your back on Trump is going to cost you your political career and/or your business (or worse, if gun-toting whackos decide that you are *the one* that ended Trump's chances).

The people who are supposed to care about whether it will work are the President and his close aides. They don't. They need to keep trying everything they can think of, because they get rewarded for failure as well as for success.

I put the chances of a Barrett recusal somewhat lower than the chances of the courthouse being destroyed by an asteroid before the hearing. If she cared what "liberals" thinks of her, she'd have done a lot of things differently.

I agree it's going to fall short. I also think counting on Republicans in power to publicly and consequentially turn their back on Trump is something of a triumph of hope over experience.

189- Looks like Don decided to celebrate by getting infected.

199 to 196

198 I'm not actually sure that works so easily for Trump, because Congress has a role in determining which electoral slates are valid. I won't say I actually fully understand the processes outlined in the Act of 1887 (I think that's what it is) because the prose of 3 USC section 5 and 6 is kind of dense, and we didn't get there in 2000. But there's stuff between state legislature steps up with bullshit, and House gets to do it's one-state, one-vote thing.

If I understand the PA AG correctly, what happens after the PA legislature designates a bunch of Republican electors is the Governor says 'fuck off' and sends The Archivist a certified list of the electors chosen in the actual election, under the laws existing as of election day. This is I suppose what you get the Supreme Court to review: whether 3 USC 5 and 6 and constitutional, given the Constitution's use of the word legislature about who decides how electors are chosen.

Oh I know, I argued against myself in 156, but today I just feel like the plan is to throw enough shit at the wall to make it so there's no valid result in which case it goes to the House. If it actually comes down to slates of electors that have to be rejected then Biden wins because Dems control the House. If they can block electors from being appointed entirely then it's the one state one vote scenario and Trump wins.

If they block the electors entirely, it would start a civil war.

That's what I'm talking' about!

204 In 1876, horsetrading settled it. Without, I think, the Democratic candidate's agreement. (?)

203: Not according to this piece:

https://verdict.justia.com/2020/09/30/no-republicans-cannot-throw-the-presidential-election-into-the-house-so-that-trump-wins

If I read it right it says that the house only gets to do its state delegation thing if the electoral college votes don't show a winner, but they arguably inevitably would, since there are only two candidates and the threshold for a majority becomes lower once you start tossing slates of electors out.

Ah, interesting- I assumed it was always 270 but entire lack of electors from some states lowers the threshold for majority?

That's the argument made there, and it convinces me. Doubt it'd convince the GOP, for whom the threshold for majority is the number that makes their guy win, and if there is no such number, they will order that one be created.

200: We all have our ways.

There are fucking cruise ships out now?

I mean, with paying guests and everything.

Passengers? Petri dishes?

Happy to answer any questions about the Civil War.

Yes, there were very fine people on both sides. Next.

What did by great, great grandfather do to get land in Nebraska for his service with the Union? Somebody says he was soldier, but my dad said he was probably labor on a riverboat.

I can't ask my cousin because I can't tell if she voted for Trump or not.

216 It might be ascertainable on the public record.

Just saw a meme: Laugh all you want, but Rudi is ready to take this all the way to the Supreme
Courtyard by Marriot.

Heh.

214: Oh, fun. I have no serious questions (yet) but two frivolous ones:

1) What is with all the Civil War nerds? Why are there so many? Does anyone ever teach classes on "military history as recreation" -- reenactors, gamers of all sorts, eccentric amateur historians, etc.?

Okay, that was three questions. Sorry.

2) If you, von wafer, could wave a wand and transform the image of one major Civil War figure in the popular imagination -- this can be loosely defined, northern/southern/whatever -- which figure would you choose and why?

He didn't answer my question either.

Election reform measure pulls ahead!

And Arizona is more widely called for Biden.

1) Long story short: history, for a bunch of different reasons related to how the profession is structured, has very low barriers to entry, so lots of people feel comfortable playing. And the Civil War is the great American novel, so everyone has a role they want to inhabit. Finally, yes, people teach classes like that, but they're fairly unusual.

2) I sort of want to make some elaborate argument about the way that Lincoln's role is misunderstood, but I like that there's a heroic cult surrounding him, so I'll leave that alone. I guess I'd go with John Ross, the Principal Chief of the Cherokees, who's largely unknown despite having been a fascinating and tragic character: Princeton educated, slaveholder, penpal to a bunch of presidents and other major figures, tried to hold his nation together during its own civil war that was an precursor and then adjunct to the US Civil War.

As for Moby's question, I really don't know. I don't think getting a land grant in Nebraska was especially tough going in the wake of the war, so I imagine he could have done just about anything and ended up with his little slice of heaven.

220: The popular book you want for 1) is Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz.

Happy to answer any questions about the Civil War.

Was it really started by Jenny Geddes, or is that 19th century mythmaking?

203: iI see that. And the final vote counts followed quite well what the local knowledgeable people predicted per assumptions listed back in the scrutiny thread: The last significant batch from Maricopa (less than a thousand left there) was 55/45% Biden. MArgin now less than the number of votes outstanding; probably the internal trigger non-callers had been waiting for. Automatic Arizona recounts only happen if there is a margin of less than 200! And apparently no requested recounts allowed. Trump campaign sued about "overvotes" and claimed thousands, 180 found. (Overvotes are classic thing for Rs to argue strenuously to disallow--in 2000 Gore almost certainly wind Florida if all were counted, and in fact Duval county did not reportaits significant "overvotes" in a timely manner so Gore did not include in the (probably doomed) list of recount counties. And most were where someone voted in the usual way plus wrote in the name---very hard to discern voter intent in that case....)

My last vote-counting hope is that Pa exceed North Carolina margin (in the other direction). 54K vs. 71K right now and both moving slowly in the right direction. But I'm guessing the PA late arrivers will not end up counting, and a few other categories will also not. (apparently a some thousands where signature on mail ballot lacks the date.) Imagine the fury of the lawsuits and rhetoric if they were thought to favor Trump. Thank God none of them needed, any one of those categories in PA could have become the butterfly ballot of 2020.

226: Not sure if the book answers those questions, but boy did that book nail an increasingly visible socio-political phenomenon. I am particularly thinking of where he is pointing out the irony of the Confed nostalgia in(at least one) county in Kentucky which was Union -supporting and did not support secession (as did many of the Appalachian and CUmberland plateau areas which I think are implicitly invoked in people's minds by The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down-ism).

He could do a whole 'nother one travelling around Wisconsin, Ohio, PA and upstate New York.

"Jonathan Pie" with a satisfying summary of Trump's post-election antics.

230: Full clip.

230/231 that's absolutely hilarious.

||

Is Aquaman the most well-made stupid movie ever? It has too many characters, too many scenes, the most by-the-numbers plot ever, but each little scene of it is carefully constructed. It's a triumph of direction, editing, and special effects, where every single other ingredient sucks.

|>

Was that the one with Willem Defoe and a lighthouse?

233 Those movies are all designed by committee and that's exactly the kind of dull lifeless dreck you get that way.

Honestly, I enjoyed Aquaman. Also Black Panther. But most of the comic book films kind of sucked.

So it is dreck, but it's not dull or lifeless. It also doesn't look like it was made by committee. A movie that was made by committee (or at least finished by committee) was Suicide Squad. You can see the checklist of features they went down to come up with the final edit of Suicide Squad, which is why the final product resembles the committee meeting to plan Poochie on the Simpsons. If I had to guess, they shot Aquaman without a clear plan and with a shitty script, probably rushed by Warner Bros, and then basically James Wan and the postproduction team saved it as much as they could.

That's what happened with Annie Hall.

229.last: The material is no doubt there, but the author, alas, is NMM.

Which was a slightly better movie, but not by much.

That color in the oval and then also write in the same candidate is a thing I saw on several ballots in the county I was count-monitoring. The resolution panel didn't have any trouble ascertaining voter intent, but they did have to individually handle the ballot.

241: Yeah, I saw a first-time voter ask about that too. It's confusing! There's a universal standard format for selections like that in everyday life: you see a checkbox next to "Other: __________" and then you write in your custom text. It's clear that that's a none-of-the-above option, unlike "Write in:__________". They probably figure that elections are weird, ballots are weird; why wouldn't there be some convention where you write the name of your selected candidate after you've filled in the oval?

He could do a whole 'nother one travelling around Wisconsin, Ohio, PA and upstate New York.

He's dead, you fucking monster. He dropped dead from a heart attack about a year ago.

239, 243: After I wrote that I vaguely remembered that. Someone else could write it then.

So now he's easily replaceable.

Black Panther was both an extremely important film and also a dumb comic book movie. Aquaman was a dumb comic book movie at peak execution.

The key difference is that rhinoceros cavalry is better than riding on fucking fish.

And enough better to compensate for the fact that Willem Defoe chewing the scenery is better than Martin Freeman looking bemused.