Given many of the stories covered on today’s BradCast, it’s beginning to feel more and more each day like the GOP is a party in its death throes. Of course, rumors of that death have been greatly exaggerated in the past. [Audio link to show follows below]
Among the many stories covered on today’s program…
- The stock market was closed today in observance of a national day of mourning declared for President George H.W. Bush, whose funeral ceremony was held on Wednesday at the National Cathedral in D.C. The market closures may prove to have been a good thing, given that the Dow plummeted some 800 points on Tuesday after it became clear that Donald Trump and his Administration had lied over the weekend regarding a deal with China to avoid more tariffs on Chinese imports. During a Twitter rant that helped send the markets plunging, Trump appeared to reveal once again that he has no idea what tariffs actually are. He seems to believe they involve foreign countries paying money to the U.S., rather than an actual tax on American consumers. Is it conceivable that he really does not understand this by now? Or is he just continuing to play his supporters for chumps? We discuss;
- In Georgia‘s runoff election for Secretary of State on Tuesday, Republican Brad Raffensperger has declared himself the winner over Democrat John Barrow, in a race that will have serious repercussions for the 2020 Presidential election in the trending-“blue” southern state, where voter suppression and 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems created havoc in the 2018 Gubernatorial race said to have been won by GOP Sec. of State Brian Kemp. Raffensperger has called for new 100% touchscreen systems that create unverifiable computer-marked/barcoded ballot summary cards. Barrow, who is waiting for late absentee ballots to actually be tallied, has called for the only system of voting that is actually verifiable by the public after an election: hand-marked paper ballots.
At the same time, the state’s largest newspaper, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, has finally noticed the wildly anomalous undervote rate from the November 6th general election in the Lt. Governor’s race, as only seen in the unverifiable touchscreen results, not on the vote-by-mail paper absentee ballots. Last week, we discussed these concerns with plaintiff Marilyn Marks of the non-partisan Coalition for Good Governance. Two weeks ago, Marks filed an election lawsuit contesting the results of the Lt. Governor’s race. She and other plaintiffs are seeking a first-of-its-kind post-election forensic audit of the state’s voting systems in light of the seemingly inexplicable undervote numbers;
- But there was some good news from Tuesday’s runoffs as well. In Little Rock, Arkansas, where, six decades after angry white mobs protested the integration of nine black students at the Little Rock Central High School in 1957, the town will now have its very first elected African-American mayor!;
- In North Carolina, new details continue to emerge from the intensifying GOP absentee ballot election fraud scandal which has prevented the certification of Republican Mark Harris’ purported 905-vote “win” over Democrat Dan McCready in the 9th District U.S. House race. A second woman has now come forward to allege that she was paid to unlawfully collect absentee ballots by McCrae Dowless, a former felon contracted by Harris in Bladen Country and, as discussed today, by the Bladen County Sheriff Jim McVicker. The GOP Sheriff has deleted his campaign webpage on Facebook and refuses to comment after he was found to have paid thousands of dollars to Dowless along with Harris.
A top Democrat in the U.S. House has now suggested that “Republican operatives stole” the House seat and cites the silence from the Trump Administration about it. “LOCK THEM UP,” quipped new House Democratic Caucus chair Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on Tuesday. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) has now called for a new election and, on Wednesday, he was joined in that call by the editorial board of The Charlotte Observer, the state’s largest newspaper.
(For my part, I’m just happy that at least some in the media reporting on this have finally noticed they were previously misreporting on it as a “voter fraud”, rather than election fraud, scandal, even though voters are accused of having done nothing wrong here. In fact, they are the ones who appear to have been defrauded in this matter by GOP insiders! Happily, the Washington Post removed three references to “voter fraud” in one of their stories after my complaints last week.)
All of that, even as Republicans in the state’s legislature continue to jam through a polling place Photo ID voting restriction during the lame duck period before they lose their supermajority in the upcoming new session, along with their ability to override a veto from the state’s Democratic Governor. The Photo ID measure, which they’ve been trying to adopt for years, claiming it necessary to prevent “voter fraud”, did not, until today, apply to absentee voting — where actual fraud clearly exists;
- Finally today, speaking of lame ducks, the GOP-gerrymandered and controlled state legislature in Wisconsin worked, literally, all night to jam through a bill aimed at stealing power from incoming Democratic Governor Tony Evers, incoming Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul and from the state’s voters who elected Democrats for every statewide office in November. Adopted by party line votes in both chambers as the sun rose today after another all-night session, Republicans hope GOP Gov. Scott Walker will sign the measure before leaving office after the first of the year. Walker, who was rejected by voters last month, has said he planned to do so.
As we discussed on yesterday’s program, the outrageous GOP power grab in WI mirrors a similar coup by the NC legislature in 2016 after a Democrat was elected as Governor in that state. Republican lawmakers in Michigan are also considering similarly desperate measures before Democrats take over as Governor and Sec. of State in that state next month. All in all, the desperate power grabs by GOPers around the country do not suggest a healthy party but, rather, one that may well be revealing its political death throes.
Colbert does a great job of explaining election flim-flam in NC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glHN-QE8GjI
4 mins
The idea of “GOP Death Throes” sounds too good to be true.
And even without the GOP, progressives still have some hard fighting ahead of them, WITHIN the Democratic Party, as well as outside the party.
Story HERE:
https://hispanicla.com/the-bigg...t-2-of-2-31316
In the previous episode (and relevant to the present one) Desi asks: “What the hell are voters supposed to do in Wisconsin if the Republicans manage to cement their grip on power such that they [the voters] can’t ever get rid of the Republicans?!”
While Brad provides the practical-minded answer for small d-democracy such as voting and going to court, one must wonder – informed by Desi’s question – if the day will come when even these efforts will no longer be effective in some of the states. At the risk of appearing to mount my old hobby horse, the beat-back offered by the voters against Republican governance in the 2018 mid-terms is only a very fragile one: cue any of the scarier scenes out of “The Handmaid’s Tale” TV series.
And Desi’s question is effing scary – What if the voters “can’t ever get rid of the Republicans?!” (again, after having exhausted the legitimizing tools of small d-democracy…)
What if? Just, what if?
While we are not yet at the point where voting and law-suiting and protesting do NOT at present remain the most effective responses to Republicans’ intransigent rejection of small d-democracy…(dramatic pause, with ellipsis)
… But, again, just what if the day finally comes when these strategies really are no longer effective because the Republicans, duly and properly rejected by small d-democratic means, just simply refuse to go?
I ask not out of paranoia (I think) but because the Republicans are already pushing envelope as to what they think the public which voted them out will tolerate from them. They do have cause to think that their refusal to surrender official power to their Democratic Party successors will likely be met with little more than bemused consternation, followed by eventual acceptance of the idea that Republicans really do not need to give up their lost seats or their lost power. A vote to replace them with Democrats is not to be taken seriously – indeed, they are entirely within their right minds even to think that victorious Democrats will be pilloried in the press for demanding to be seated in their justly won elective offices.
The advantage that Republicans have over Democrats in this wise is that the Republicans have trademarked patriotism as their brand while tarnishing the Dems as commie subversives for decades. The Democratic Party will, because of this, always carry the taint of illegitimacy because Real Americans don’t vote Democratic. This is part of the reason why voter-fraud lies will stick to the Dems no matter how much election fraud criminality that the Republicans are put on record as having actually committed.
So, when the Republicans pull the stuff we see them doing in Wisconsin or North Carolina or Michigan or Ohio, protests notwithstanding, they appear to have every right to expect that they will prevail and that we will just accept because they, the Republicans, are the True Americans. One must be truly obtuse to think that just because Republicans lost their seats in races for elective office to Democrats that they are then obligated to then actually give those seats up to Democrats. Democrats are supposed to lose because Real America rejects the naive decency that they stand for. And if they do win they are not supposed to receive that which they have won. And if they do receive that which they have won they are not supposed to use what they have won for any progressive purpose. At all turns the lot of the Democrat is interposition and nullification.
Desi’s question is a goddamned serious one and its premise is not without justification, and as such needs to be seriously addressed. The day that the defeated Republicans just refuse to give up their seats will come. And we as a nation will be truly tested then, if we are not already now.