Election 2020

[Murphy]

Is it over yet?

 

[IdleRich]

I think Luka's point is that what one side see as "protecting democracy" the other side sees as "changing the rules to make it more likely we can win". And there is some truth in that, in that, for example, when Republicans say "You should need to provide proof that you're a legal citizen when you vote" on the face of it it it sounds perfectly fair. Or if not fair, it sounds like a point that people could debate - why not require that? So to straight up report that rejecting that rule would be protecting democracy and that enforcing it would be an attack on democracy is rather simplistic - the other side could equally well claim the opposite.
The fact that a number of large groups and powerful individuals - apparently having different political affiliations on the surface - have got together, taken the same side and jointly decreed that the Democrat's vision (and version) of what democracy is, is indeed, the one True Democracy, is where people's antennae might start twitching...

 

[Leo]

The fact that a number of large groups and powerful individuals - apparently having different political affiliations on the surface - have got together, taken the same side and jointly decreed that the Democrat's vision (and version) of what democracy is, is indeed, the one True Democracy, is where people's antennae might start twitching...

coalitions of interested bodies happen all the time. the disparate groups who got behind biden in 2020 aren't different from decades where the NRA (gun lobby), Chamber of Commerce (small/mid-size business representative organization), Club for Growth (small government lobby) and police unions (law enforcement) coalesced to support GOP presidential candidates.

 

[IdleRich]

However, I do find that argument only goes so far cos, as I said above; yeah, straight off the bat, the thing about requiring strong ID for voters doesn't sound hugely unreasonable and it's not automatically clear, which side does represent "true democracy" - but when you look at the majority of other issues that were contentious, then it's hard to escape the view that one side was democracy and the other wasn't.

Examples that spring to mind:
Should mail votes that were submitted by legal voters in time, be counted, even if it takes a long time? Or should they just be thrown away?
After a state has been found to have voted for one candidate, is it ok for that state's legislature to ignore the popular vote cos they don't like it and instead allocate the state's voters to that of the candidate for their own party?
Is it ok to change the rules after the election so that hundreds of thousands of legal voters who voted according to the law at the time will have their votes thrown out?
After the whole election has been through and everything has been decided, is it ok for the man who reads out the verified results to just read out a different name if he prefers it?

And there are countless like this, so ultimately, cos of the sheer stupidity of the arguments they chose and the battles they tried to win, it did really come down to "Trump vs Democracy" in all these cases... but there might be an argument that the coalition above would have always plumped for the Dem interpretation of democracy, and this was disguised by the sheer idiocy of the arguments Rudy and co put in front of them. They let them off the hook a little by being so shit - it was easy to disguise their prejudice cos the one they were prejudiced against spelled all the words in their lawsuit wrong and then complained about a count that was in a different state.
So the argument is, the ref and the linesman got together before the game and said "We're gonna fix this so team A lose" but luckily team A kept tripping up the opposition blatantly in the box so they didn't even need to give any dodgy penalties...
Thing is "They were prepared to cheat for them but in the end didn't need to" is a lot less exciting than "they cheated for them" and a lot lot harder to prove.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I think Luka's point is that what one side see as "protecting democracy" the other side sees as "changing the rules to make it more likely we can win". And there is some truth in that, in that, for example, when Republicans say "You should need to provide proof that you're a legal citizen when you vote" on the face of it it it sounds perfectly fair. Or if not fair, it sounds like a point that people could debate - why not require that? So to straight up report that rejecting that rule would be protecting democracy and that enforcing it would be an attack on democracy is rather simplistic - the other side could equally well claim the opposite.
The fact that a number of large groups and powerful individuals - apparently having different political affiliations on the surface - have got together, taken the same side and jointly decreed that the Democrat's vision (and version) of what democracy is, is indeed, the one True Democracy, is where people's antennae might start twitching...

Right, but it wasn't just Democrats - it was also Republicans with enough moral backbone that they would prefer to lose an election fairly than "win" it by criminal means.

 

[Leo]

So the argument is, the ref and the linesman got together before the game and said "We're gonna fix this so team A lose" but luckily team A kept tripping up the opposition blatantly in the box so they didn't even need to give any dodgy penalties...
Thing is "They were prepared to cheat for them but in the end didn't need to" is a lot less exciting than "they cheated for them" and a lot lot harder to prove.

I just don't know about this. first, 60 judges, many of them Trump appointees, dismissed cases related to voting issue. just because a state may have decided, due to the pandemic, to expand mail in voting, that doesn't make it illegal.

and if it is illegal, then it should be illegal for the entire ballot, not just the presidential vote. for some strange reason, none of the GOP voter fraud crowd are disputing all the GOP state, House and Senate wins they picked up ON THOSE VERY SAME BALLOTS that they claim are fraudulent. How can the vote be "rigged" against Trump but OK for all the other GOP candidates for the rest of the ballot?

There's no fix on the voting front, it's all bullshit.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Anyway, the important thing is that I'm able to read English words and understand what they mean, so that when the article explicitly and repeatedly says things like

an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted

and

The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory.

and

They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.

- which @luka actually quoted - it actually meant, well, exactly what it says, i.e. not "The election was rigged for your own safety", per @146 I.Q. Magical thinker, or luka's tired stoner cliché of the men-in-the-smoky-room, who supposedly "got rid" of Trump.

I think this qualifies as a double-crushing.

 

[luka]

you fukwit

 

[luka]

you absolute fuckwit.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Great comeback.

What's happened here is that you've finally, completely and utterly fallen down the same alt-right alternate-reality rabbit hole as @146 I.Q. Magical thinker and @mixed_biscuits. You've skated so close to the sinkhole for so long that you've just been swallowed up.

one of the other things it does is that it makes those claims about Biden controlling a BLM street army sound a lot less comical.

I mean this is only a cunt-hair away from "the riots at the Capitol were a false flag by Antifa."

 

[luka]

you didnt read it

 

[luka]

if you read it tell me what part of the article that line is referring to

 

[luka]

yes, well, exactly. thats what i thought. no response. you havent read it.

 

[luka]

“We wanted to be mindful of when was the right time to call for moving masses of people into the street,” Peoples says. As much as they were eager to mount a show of strength, mobilizing immediately could backfire and put people at risk. Protests that devolved into violent clashes would give Trump a pretext to send in federal agents or troops as he had over the summer. And rather than elevate Trump’s complaints by continuing to fight him, the alliance wanted to send the message that the people had spoken.


So the word went out: stand down. Protect the Results announced that it would “not be activating the entire national mobilization network today, but remains ready to activate if necessary.”

i mean, you didnt even have to read it to know what i was referring to given i extracted it and highlighted it very helpfully here.

 

[luka]

this is a great bit

"it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.”


That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.

and here are your men in a smoky room.

 

[luka]

coalitions of interested bodies happen all the time. the disparate groups who got behind biden in 2020 aren't different from decades where the NRA (gun lobby), Chamber of Commerce (small/mid-size business representative organization), Club for Growth (small government lobby) and police unions (law enforcement) coalesced to support GOP presidential candidates.

obviously party politics is about coalitions yes.

 

[luka]

this - a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information is what an election is.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I read it. My comment on Antifa wasn't a reference to the article, it was a comment on the sorry state of your politics these days.

And I was in bed at 1 am, surprisingly enough.

 

[Mr. Tea]

this - a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information is what an election is.

That's not MIASR determining the outcome of the election, is it? Which is what you and Mr IQ have been getting at. It's MIASR ensuring that the voters get to determine the outcome of the election, which is the entire point of democracy, even in a system as archaic and ass-backwards as America's.

You're desperate to see a symmetry that isn't there.

 

[luka]

fuck knows what MIASR is but please dont invent things for me to beleive. i know for a fact you havent read it and i know for a fact you havent read any of my comments on this thread.