2024 Election Postmortem

Since the Republicans won all three houses of the government, and have staffed the judiciary with their operatives, Democrats have engaged in a discussion of why they did so poorly.  Its taken a while for things to become clear, but there is enough evidence to move forward with provisional conclusions.

As an aside, the NY Times revealed today, five weeks after the election, that the Biden administration oversaw the greatest immigration surge in American history.  A little late in the day for a major tool of corporate America to come clean on this issue, dont you think?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/briefing/the-largest-immigration-surge-in-us-history.html

Why did they wait until now to say so?  Why did the Democrats not have a policy on both legal and illegal immigration beyond saying "Hey, we dont want to talk about it?"  Or "the Republicans are freaking out about something that is not a real issue".  But the reality turns out to be that immigration is objectively a very real, historical issue and yet I dont even know what Harris' position on immigration is.  The Republican strategy of blocking the bipartisan bill on this topic was clearly a winning move and the Democrats are, as always, too weak to do anything and the American electorate is not interested in the "We tried" excuse.

The Republicans also ran on the economy.  Here, again, the Democrats seem to have been in some weird reality of their own.  They kept saying "The economy is fine, dont worry" but everyone I know who isnt in the top 20% think that prices have exploded in the last few years.  Which makes the incumbent responsible for the economy no matter whose fault it is.

A third issue is the area of competence, or which party seems to listen and then get things done. It is extremely clear that the Republicans have acted with diligence and obstinacy to achieve their goals, from corrupting the judiciary, defunding the government to supporting any authoritarian dictatorship.  The Democrats, not so much.

There are several other explanations that have been proposed for this election result.  It is said that Biden abdicated too late in the cycle for voters to get to know Harris.  It is said that by the very structure of the situation that Harris was essentially the incumbent and that the electorate was in an anti-incumbent mood.  Both of these seem plausible to me although it is hard for me to gauge how important they were.  Beyond that, however, the democrats were clearly the party of identity politics even when that meant active discrimination against white candidates. So why was there any surprise when white people voted against democrats?    The democrats were the party of hard core transexual rights, even for minors without parental approval.  That seems like a really weird policy to me if you want to get people who are parents to vote for you.

The democrats were the party of abortion rights.  Now I keep reading that this is an important issue, and I think it is but clearly it did not win elections.  In fact between two women's issues: abortion and a woman candidate for president, it does not seem as though women turned out overwhelmingly for democrats.  Maybe I wont have to hear too much about the "women's vote" in the future?  No  I think I will be hearing about this for the rest of my life no matter what the data says.

The American people did not seem to object to a leader who is a pig, a rapist, a convicted felon and so forth. A traitor and a pig.  All that stuff from Republicans about "character" has been BS all along.  This is not a surprise to me, and I hope it is not a surprise to you either.   Nixon seems like a fine, outstanding scholar compared to Trump.

So maybe the Republican positions are egregious and offensive.  Maybe they are pandering to the worst segments of the American people.  Maybe so, but they seem to win elections and while there are lots of flaws in the American Republic, and voter suppression, and weirdnesses in the way red states organize and vote in order to keep the people from being able to affect their government, nevertheless they seem to have won, in the aggregate, this last election.

Like all good proto-fascist societies, America seems to be in that phase where only power matters.  That is what the Republicans have proven time and time again since November 2000 and the Democrats never seem to learn.  The democrats will not listen to Bernie Sanders, or to AOC, nor will they fight Trump and all his works.  The Democrats had a chance to make judicial term limits a reality but they could not be bothered.  They do not have the courage of their convictions.

So why bother to elect a democrat?  Whats the point?  They want to rule in some sort of fantasy past where America was semi-bi-partisan, a world very different from today.  So electing a democrat seems to me to have no raison d'etre.

Image courtesy of Midjourney

For those who see no difference between the candidates

God only knows we want to help those who live among us but say they see no difference between the candidates such that they could not vote for either one.  This message is here to help.  For those who think this message is a little overly strong my response is no, it isnt, not even a little bit overly strong.

One candidate is a rapist, the other isnt.

One candidate is a convicted felon, the other isn't.

One candidate is recognized as being a sociopath and a malignant narcissist.

One candidate will avoid being tried for his criminal offenses if he is elected.

One candidate probably murdered 250,000 american citizens when in office.

One candidate was impeached twice.

One candidate attempted to overthrow the government of the united states.  

Excuse me, this is not enough for you?

You are nuts, you need help but you will never get it.  You destroyed america.  Congratulations, idiot, you are a dupe who helped murder many people in this world.

Does the NY Times Support Trump?

The question people have wondered for months is whether the NY Times is really a stooge for the Republicans.  From their attacks on Biden to their failure to call Trump out for being senile, to their failure to indicate that trump is a felon, it feels as though the NY Times wants Trump to win.

I can tell you that when the Supreme Court put Bush in power in 2000 in spite of the results which clearly showed that Al Gore had won, that I have always felt that when push came to shove, the NY Times will obey their Wall Street masters.

That is what the evidence shows.

One Republican Strategy for Containing Kamala and Defeating Democracy

Since Kamala Harris is doing well against her opponent, the convicted felon and known abuser of women, Republicans have been working on strategies in case Trump loses the election and can not steal it, as they are certainly planning to do.

My summary of at least one of their strategies is as follows:

First win a majority in the Senate.  With the resignation of Senator Manchin they believe they have a good chance of either winning a 50-50 position or even a 51-49 position.  If they do the latter, they can tie up any legislation and control senate investigations.  According to a survey prediction by thehill.com, the Republicans are favored to win the Senate.

Second, win a majority in the House.  Again, they are favored to win the House of Representatives.

Third, they overwhelmingly control the Supreme Court which has demonstrate a willingness to violate any standard of law or precedence to support extreme Republican positions.

With these three things, or even two of them, the Republicans are confident they can "contain" Kamala Harris and defeat any attempt to improve the country or act in the nation's interest.  Then they can use this to go for the presidency in 2028.

Therefore, although defeating Trump is obviously the highest priority, winning the House and the Senate are essential if we are to do more than just prevent Trump from destroying the country.  We need both houses in order to move the country forward.  And even then, the nation must deal with the right wing and lawless former Supreme Court, something the Democrats, at least, have proven unwilling to do so far.

Republican zombie horde attempting to climb the Statue of Liberty

Scenario for Trump Judicial Coup d'Etat

draft draft draft

I propose in this post that Trump will seize power, legally or illegally, in November.  To show this, lets review the various election result scenarios.  Check my logic here.

As we all know, it does not matter if the Democrats win the popular vote at the national level.  It is only the electoral college that matters and that is normally decided by the popular vote at the state level.

In our first scenario, Trump legitimately wins the electoral college and therefore becomes the next POTUS.  He did this in 2016 and I think he has a good chance of doing it in 2024 based on where we are today.  But even if he does not win the electoral college he will still be awarded the Presidency as we will see.  The general strategy here will be "judicial challenge, appeal, delay and deny". 

1. The Republicans have stated that they plan to challenge any state results where they lose. This challenge will be in the form of a lawsuit and if they do not win the lawsuit they will appeal. 

2. Not all of the judges at the Federal level are Republican partisans but a substantial number of them are. At the state level, again its a mixed bag, but many of the judges from Red states are partisan Republicans. These justices have shown that they will rule in the Republican's favor no matter what the evidence or the law might call for.  This happened most recently when Judge Cannon of Florida stalled and then dismissed the case about the classified documents for the most disingenuous reasons.

3. Therefore a certain percentage of election results are likely to be overturned by Republican judges and awarded to Trump.  If a sufficient number of these exist, then the election is thrown to Trump and we are done.  This is the "local", e.g. by state, version of what the SCOTUS did in November 2000 to throw the election.

4. But if for any reason this is not sufficient to throw the election to Trump, in other words they can not get enough electoral votes, then the SCOTUS will step in and rule in Trump's favor and Trump will have won the election.

5. We know this will happen, if necessary, because the SCOTUS has already thrown one election to the Republicans in 2000 even though the Democrat, Al Gore, won the popular vote and was on his way to winning the electoral college when the SCOTUS intervened.

6. We also know the SCOTUS will intervene to put Trump in power because of how they handled the immunity matter.  In that situation they could have declined to hear the issue of presidential immunity because the Appeals court had already considered the issues and written what many people believe to be a reasonable opinion.  Not only did the SCOTUS insist on reconsidering the issue, they delayed doing so until the last possible minute, therefore making it impossible for Trump to be tried for his crimes before the election.  And then they ruled that Trump does have immunity for most crimes that he commits as president.  There is no justification for this ruling.  But there doesnt have to be.  Whatever the theoretical issues may be, practically Trump has been given blanket immunity because there is no time for a trial before the election.

7. Therefore the SCOTUS has proven that it will always intercede in the Republican's favor whenever it can get the opportunity.  And since any disagreeable result in the election will be appealed to the Supreme Court, they will certainly get the opportunity.

As a footnote, of course within moments of becoming nominal president he will instruct his Attorney General to dismiss the charges against him.

Whether or not this is what happens, I propose to you that what has been described here is reasonable given the people and institutions involved.

Therefore, I think it is fair to say that Trump becomes the next President of the United States and you should make your plans accordingly.