America hit 200,000 COVID deaths this week.
By Tuesday, when Romney said he would not block the Supreme Court nomination, Republicans were lined up behind Trump on the effort to replace Ginsburg this year.
Brownstein on how the conservative bloc on the Supreme Court represents an electoral minority and will continue to into 2030s: That could be a recipe for explosive conflict through the coming decade between the priorities of rising generations that compose a growing majority of the population and a court chosen and confirmed by a Republican political coalition that no longer can regularly command majority support from voters. Those confrontations could unfold across a wide array of issues, with a conservative court rejecting or constraining legislation or executive branch actions popular with the emerging generations on questions ranging from climate change and racial equity to women’s rights, gay rights, access to voting — and perhaps most immediately, access to legal abortion.
Election 2020
Edsel on why Biden could lose.
Wednesday morning the Atlantic published this piece by Bart Gellman:
- The worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress. He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all. He could seize on that uncertainty to hold on to power.
- We have no precedent or procedure to end this election if Biden seems to carry the Electoral College but Trump refuses to concede. We will have to invent one.
- On the idea that the vote tally will shift after election day, he quotes an unnamed Trump campaign official: “There will be a count on Election Night, that count will shift over time, and the results when the final count is given will be challenged as being inaccurate, fraudulent—pick your word.”
- The worst case for an orderly count is also considered by some election modelers the likeliest: that Trump will jump ahead on Election Night, based on in-person returns, but his lead will slowly give way to a Biden victory as mail-in votes are tabulated. Josh Mendelsohn, the CEO of the Democratic data-modeling firm Hawkfish, calls this scenario “the red mirage.” The turbulence of that interval, fed by street protests, social media, and Trump’s desperate struggles to lock in his lead, can only be imagined. “Any scenario that you come up with will not be as weird as the reality of it,” the Trump legal adviser said.
- Another Trump advisor: “The state legislatures will say, ‘All right, we’ve been given this constitutional power. We don’t think the results of our own state are accurate, so here’s our slate of electors that we think properly reflect the results of our state,’ ”
Lawrence Tabas, the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s chairman went on the record to say: “I’ve mentioned it to [the national Trump campaign], and I hope they’re thinking about it too,” I just don’t think this is the right time for me to be discussing those strategies and approaches, but [direct appointment of electors] is one of the options. It is one of the available legal options set forth in the Constitution. If the process, though, is flawed, and has significant flaws, our public may lose faith and confidence” in the election’s integrity.
Richard Hasen writing in Slate puts the concern this way: The idea is to throw so much muck into the process and cast so much doubt on who is the actual winner in one of those swing states because of supposed massive voter fraud and uncertainty about the rules for absentee ballots that some other actor besides the voter will decide the winner of the election. … The president has been laying the groundwork for these claims for months, and just Tuesday his son, Donald Trump Jr., baselessly suggested that Democrats will “add millions of fraudulent ballots that can cancel your vote and overturn the election.”
As if on cue, Trump said at a Wednesday afternoon press conference, when asked if he would concede the election: “We’re going to have to see what happens. You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster. Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”
Trumps refrain about voter fraud is motivating his supporters: The head of the party in Philadelphia said Wednesday that there would be multiple poll watchers at every site in the city, which would mean at least 1,600 Republican watchers in Philadelphia alone.
poll watchers are being instructed in specific detail. In Michigan, for instance, they are being told to record when any paper jams occur, while those in Arizona are being given a detailed breakdown of the state’s voter identification requirements.
The New York Times ran a story about the Pentagon’s uneasiness about being thrust into the election: “senior leaders at the Pentagon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that they were talking among themselves about what to do if Mr. Trump, who will still be president from Election Day to Inauguration Day, invokes the Insurrection Act and tries to send troops into the streets, as he threatened to do during the protests against police brutality and systemic racism.”
Personal Log: our mail in ballots were delivered by the mail man Saturday afternoon, September 26. New Jersey is one of a few states that are mailing ballots to all voters.
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Trump’s Job Approval: 43.2%
COVID Cases / Deaths: 7,009,216 / 203,180