On today’s BradCast: It was a very very bad day for Donald J. Trump and for his odds of winning re-election. At least on paper. Don’t get too excited just yet. (But please do vote, ASAP, if you have not done so already! And if you’re voting by mail-in ballot, do not mail it in! Deliver it in person, at this point!) [Audio link to full show is posted beneath summary.]
Among the very bad news for our failed President on Wednesday…
- ‘Anonymous’ was revealed to have been the Chief of Staff of his own Dept. of Homeland Security, who has now endorsed Joe Biden;
- The stock market — the only thing that Trump has left to crow about — plummeted on concerns about the startling third-peak surge in the U.S. COVID pandemic, thanks to Trump’s bungled response, with the Dow falling more than 950 points;
- Hackers defaced the Trump Campaign website;
- The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released an embarrassing document detailing the Trump Administration’s “accomplishments”, leading off with “Ending the COVID-19 pandemic”! If you have any doubts about that, they quote noticed science and technologist Ivanka Trump as supporting evidence;
- 20 former Republican U.S. Attorneys, serving in Presidential administrations from Eisenhower to George W. Bush came out with their “strongest endorsement” for…Joe Biden. (So much for Trump as the self-proclaimed “law and order President”);
- Hundreds of Trump supporters were left stranded by the Trump Campaign in frigid temps on an airstrip in Omaha, Nebraska on Tuesday night, after Trump’s latest super-spreader rally. Seven supporters were hospitalized “with a variety of medical conditions” as they waited in the dark until after midnight for buses to arrive to drive them back three miles to their cars;
- And, all the while, the polling both nationally and in battleground states continues to appear bleak for Trump, including one (frankly, hard-to-believe) new poll from ABC News/Washington Post finding Biden up by 17 points in Wisconsin.
As noted, it was a very bad day for Donald Trump’s reelection effort. At least in theory. But he still has a few Trump Cards that he believes — with good reason — he may be able to play at his stolen and corrupt U.S. Supreme Court. That effort will involve preventing timely cast ballots from being tabulated at all following Election Day.
If the concurrence filed in a Wisconsin case on Monday night by former GOP operative turned GOP activist Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, however, is any indication of how this scheme will work, you should plan to either laugh or cry yourself to death in the coming days.
We’re joined today once again by Slate’s brilliant legal reporter MARK JOSEPH STERN to explain which of those two options is more likely at this point. Or, as he says today, “be the ‘Angel of Doom’ on your show, here to deliver some bad news from the heavens and generally terrify you about what’s coming from our Supreme Court in the coming weeks and months.”
On Monday night, the Supremes issued an order that blocked a lower federal court’s ruling allowing the counting of mail-in ballots postmarked in the Badger State by Election Day that arrive up to six days after November 3rd. The opinion was a party-line 5 to 3 vote, with Kavanaugh issuing an extraordinary 18-page concurrence [PDF] with his majority vote to nullify potentially hundreds of thousands of legitimate ballots. The concurrence, however, was full of demonstrable, laughable, egregious errors of fact, including the claim that states like to declare winners on Election Night (zero of them actually do, as Stern correctly notes) and that counting ballots after Election Day might “potentially flip the results of an election.”
Since elections are never certified by states on Election Night — only the media declare “winners”, in that sense — official state results cannot be “flipped” with the counting of ballots after Election Day. It takes anywhere from days to weeks to tally ballots and certify winners even when we’re not in the middle of an horrific pandemic that has resulted in an all-time record use of vote-by-mail options across the country.
That said, as insane as Kavanaugh’s opinion was, both he and Trump’s first stolen Supreme Court pick, Neil Gorsuch, offered a “totally deranged attempt”, as Stern described it, to hew to a rejected opinion from the Bush v. Gore case in 2000 that handed the Presidency to George W. Bush. Though it came from a minority of Justices at the time — in an opinion that specifically said it could never be used as a precedent in any other case — it does now seem to be one of the Trump Cards that could be played to try and steal this year’s election.
As Stern explains today, the portion of Bush v. Gore cited by Kavanaugh (inaccurately claiming it was from a unanimous majority opinion when it was neither unanimous nor in the majority!) was so radical at the time that even Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy refused to concur with it. Nonetheless, incredibly enough, there are now three Republican Party attorneys who worked on that Florida case in 2000 on behalf of Bush — John Roberts, Kavanaugh and now Amy Coney Barrett — actually sitting on the Court as Justices. That means anything could now happen, depending on how things work out as of next Tuesday night. So buckle up, as Stern details why all of this could come into play week and in the future, “because if this comes down to a few thousand or a few hundred ballots — hoo boy — it’s going to make Bush v. Gore look like a warmup act for what’s coming next.”
We also get some reaction from Stern on Biden’s recently stated position to call for a bi-partisan panel of Constitutional scholars to make recommendations for Court reform and/or expansion (presuming Biden wins and Dems take back the Senate), and a federal court’s rejection this week of the DoJ’s absurd attempt to dismiss a defamation lawsuit against Trump, filed in NY state court by columnist E. Jean Carroll who alleges he raped her in the 1990’s.
Finally, we use a few minutes to name the “winner” of our recent bumper music trivia “contest” from Monday, when our guest was Ion Sancho (the legendary former Florida election official who oversaw the aborted 2000 “recount”) and then, just in case you needed any more inspiration today to help ensure a landslide next week, we close with a parody song performed by Lauren Myers with lyrics written by our friend and regular guest-host Nicole Sandler!
Oh, and P.S., if you want to share that absolutely bone chilling Lincoln Project ad we opened today’s show with, it’s right here.
https://freepress.org/article/w...rump-his-crownhttps://freepress.org/article/w...rump-his-crown
link for 18 page concurrence leads to error page
Thanks, Allin! Looks like Kav decided to update his concurrence and the link moved with it. Have now updated the link. Should work now!
Thanks, Brad. By the way, is there a place to report election irregularities for this election?
Allin @ 4:
Yes, please!
Call 866-OUR-VOTE and log them at SeeSay2020.com
NOTE:
Link above lacks a zero.
The link:
https://seesay2020.com/
Oops, I mean the above linkj lacks a “2”.
https://seesay2020.com/
Thanks, DonL! Fixed!
Thanks for the link & number. Should irregularities also be reported in the form of an affidavit to the county elections official?
Allin –
Yes! Absolutely report irregularities to both your county election officials and your Sec. of State. And, before you ask, yes, you should also contact media and make as much noise as you can on social media as well!