contesting Biden ballots: will the GOP buy the Trumpian phantasm of banana republicanism
One score years ago, and this time TPUSA could be the Drumpfjugend to lead the Brooks Brothers Riot 2.0. The limited imagination of conservatives can only imagine as reactionaries.
Trump vs Biden: can America conduct a fair election?
Amid fears the president will not accept the result, the pandemic is exposing longstanding failings in the US voting systemIt is a scenario that the US state department has warned about the world over: an incumbent politician in a democracy with weak institutions tries to hold on to power by casting doubt on an election that should have swept him out of office.
Frank Schaeffer says Jared Kushner is planning an end run around the election process, and will appeal to the Supreme Court, as George W. Bush did in the 2000 election, to ensure Trump is installed in office for another four years.
“Insider says Kushner is now in charge of planning last ditch try at disqualifying Biden ballots on election night, urging Republican state legislatures to ‘send competing slates of electors,’ and then seeking a Supreme Court ruling in Trump’s favor,” Schaeffer said Tuesday, adding that “Barr is said to support this.”
To be clear, Schaeffer offers little substance and cites only one unnamed source.
On Wednesday, he added this:
Hillary Clinton has heard the same Republican insiders' claims of a conspiracy Kushner is hatching I have: She warns 'sabotaging' the USPS to make mail-in voting more difficult could be Trump's strategy for reelection.
— Frank-STOP-Christian-Nationalists-Schaeffer (@Frank_Schaeffer) August 5, 2020
His warning might have sounded far-fetched in earlier times, but now, many are taking notice.
President Trump wants to undermine the election, the Editorial Board writes. Here’s one way to stop him: https://t.co/0nq2rOyBUx
— Washington Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) August 6, 2020
If the United States isn’t a failed state in 2020, it is rapidly on its way toward becoming one. Economists, historians and public health experts I spoke to would generally agree with that sentence, even if they might disagree on some of the details or the severity of the crisis.
Since 2000 we have had two major economic crashes, the related issue of persistent income inequality and an environmental crisis that threatens the future of civilization. In 2020 we are also facing a pandemic and a social uprising against institutional racism, made worse President Trump’s incompetence and the apparent threat he poses to democracy. One might say the real question isn’t whether the U.S. is a failed state, but how we can pull ourselves out of the muck before it is too late.
[…]
“The run-up to the Civil War had similar characteristics minus the virus,” Columbia University historian Eric Foner told Salon by email. “I hope that is not an omen. We were certainly a failed state in 1860.” As Foner explained, “the 1850s witnessed not only intense partisan and ideological division but also the collapse of one party and rise of another; stalemate and violence in Congress; hostility to immigrants (the Know-Nothing party); federal officials battling in the streets with people resisting the Fugitive Slave law; and ultimately civil war. Even more of a failed state than now.”
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) August 6, 2020
