Democrats may feel smug, but there’s plenty to be worried about with Biden in charge
As has been looking increasingly clear since the morning after election night a narrow win in key states will deliver Joe Biden a comfortable election win in the electoral college. This is much as it was four years ago when Trump won, and much as it looked like it might be for him again when voting first halted on election night, before the late rush of mail-in ballots proved to be even stronger for the Democrats than expected.
The first point to make is that — legal challenges withstanding — this makes it a clear and orthodox presidential victory. Much like our own system often turns on narrow margins in key seats, it is entirely normal for a US presidential result to hinge on relatively few votes in swing states.
Especially given the temporary electoral changes for this election — widely relaxed rules around mail-in ballots that boosted “turnout” and helped deliver victory to the Democrats — Republicans will need uncommon grace to acknowledge and accept the result. That is because the Democrats and large swathes of media commentary have spent the past four years undermining the legitimacy of the Trump presidency, pointing to the nationwide popular vote and the narrow margins in crucial states.
This was nonsense then and is nonsense now — the nationwide popular vote does not matter, it never does, because neither the campaigns nor the voters have an interest in winning it. The bulk of the difference, for instance, is contained in one state, California, and if the national vote mattered it would lead to a very different campaign in that state and give Californian Republicans a much greater incentive to turn out.
Republican supporters must, and most likely will, hold themselves to a higher standard than Democrat supporters who first started smashing widows and burning cars on election night 2016 and did not stop until they won the White House back. Lord knows what will happen when Biden disappoints them.
The Biden win will be attributable to a focused and successful campaign in the states that matter, the states Hillary Clinton ignored and, it must be said, the states Trump did a solid job trying to hold. Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania are key, Georgia was a bonus, and Arizona may well have been gifted to the Democrats thanks partly to Trump’s unforgivable disrespect towards the late senator John McCain — the ghost of McCain had the last laugh.
So, just as it was for Trump, Biden must be chastened and urged on by the realisation that his tenure in the White House hinges on less than 100,000 votes across about five crucial states. This is a political reality that Trump at least understood — it means that to win a second term you must entrench that support and broaden it, something the property billionaire had achieved before this year of the pandemic.
The legal challenges will play out through the tried and tested checks and balances of the US system; that is as it should be. But the role of the mail-in ballots will warrant serious examination by both parties and political analysts.
On first blush it seems to have delivered the highest “turnout” because it removed the burden of having to turn out. On one level this should be welcomed for encouraging more Americans to be involved in their democracy.
But there are questions. There is no doubt it increases the opportunity for rorting. It will also reward greater organisation in encouraging and arranging delivery of votes — did the Democrats and their union and party organisations do this better, and do the Republicans need to improve this element of the ground game?
Some of the changes — allowing any voter to ask for a mail-in ballot for any reason, mailing out mail-in applications to all voters, or extending the time period for such voting — are temporary in most states. Will there be a case and a push to make them permanent?
This could change electoral dynamics forever. Much might rely on what transpires in the investigations and court cases prompted by a president who shows no sign of budging at the moment.
Calm and the rule of law must prevail. January 20 seems a long way away.
Still, if Trump moves on what will we miss? What will we lose?
First, the incessant drama and permanent combativeness around the White House will not be missed. There will be a return to something approaching normality; less fun, fewer stories, less belligerence, more order.
What Trump’s always emotional and often dishonest media critics never acknowledge — fixed as they are on “character” above effectiveness — is how his unpredictability delivered some historic developments in global affairs. Only the volatile and unorthodox approach of Trump could have delivered the breakthrough in the Middle East peace process, the concessions from China on trade and, indeed, the unfinished rapprochement with North Korea.
At home Trump delivered lower taxes and high jobs growth before he was sideswiped by the coronavirus. He also focused on cheap and reliable energy, relieving the US of the multilateral constraints of the Paris agreement.
The US will suffer a tough winter at the hands of the coronavirus; Biden will not be able to change much. Health management rests mainly with the states, just as it does here, and the US social and political dynamic means brutal lockdowns will not be tolerated or respected.
Biden will be less active, less confrontational, and less dynamic. He will be more of a puppet of his party; by contrast Trump used the Republican party like a parasite uses a host.
There is a grave risk that he will be pushed by Bernie Sanders and The Squad of Far Left Democrats. They have publicly proclaimed their intent to make him the most progressive president since FDR.
But the strong Republican showing under Trump will provide some protection. The Democrats should be denied the Senate and their majority in the House has been cut. The Senate should block fundamental changes to the Supreme Court and the political reality of these narrow margins should curb Biden’s activism.
Still, Biden will rejoin the Paris deal and launch an assault on the oil and gas industries the likes of which the US has never seen before. This will attack the very building block of the largest and most innovative economy the world has ever seen.
Biden has also been a captive of identity politics, in all its destructive guises. There is a contest between the police in major cities, against activists, anarchists and protesters, and we should worry that Biden will continue show ambivalence about where he stands. So, there is plenty to be worried about.
It is laughably hypocritical for Biden and his media barrackers to start taking the high moral ground now, calling for unity and respect, when they have spent every day of the past four years questioning the legitimacy of President Trump and calling him everything from a white supremacist to a Russian collaborator. Healing will not be easy — almost half the country’s voters will be aggrieved.
Some Democrats have already been wise enough to recognise the limitations of their victory, the fact that it does not represent a widespread repudiation of Trump’s agenda or an overwhelming endorsement of the Democrat alternative. Much will depend on how Biden handles this period before the inauguration when an outgoing president is usually a lame duck but this time will be more like a wounded bull.
Apart from the dynamic in the Middle East and the strength on China there is one thing about Trump that I will miss most. Like no president before him, even a host of other Republicans who are so reviled by the White House press corps, Trump has taken the vitriol from the media and turned it straight back at them. No president has exposed the jaundice and hypocrisy of journalists so courageously.
He was enabled in this by the tool of social media. Usually a platform for the juvenile Left, Trump used it to reach voters directly and expose the games and dishonesty of the media. Many of us will miss that, especially when we can already see the cosy cabal around a Democrat president-elect and a mainstream media smug about getting the president it wants.
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If there's fraud in the 2020 election, then we must find it
There’s more evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election than there ever was of Russia collusion, so America is owed a legal examination of the election irregularities alleged by the Trump campaign.
It’s not crazy to say this, despite the gaslighting from much of the media. Basically, the election is down to roughly 120,000 votes of almost 150 million votes cast. That’s 0.08 percent, a tiny margin by anyone’s reckoning.
Recounts have been ordered. President Trump’s campaign is challenging hundreds of thousands of votes in the courts.
Five swing states are within 1 percent, all with Joe Biden in the lead.
In Georgia, Biden was ahead on Sunday night by just 10,352 votes.
In Arizona, he was ahead by 19,438 votes.
In Wisconsin, he was ahead by 20,540.
In Pennsylvania, he was ahead by 43,251.
In Nevada, he was ahead by 31,464.
It is not outlandish or unprecedented to accept the possibility that at least some of those margins may be erroneous, whether through human error or, indeed, fraud.
Electoral fraud is not unknown in America. Probably the most famous example was in 1960, when Chicago Mayor Richard Daley allegedly rigged the ballot for John F. Kennedy, dead people were found to have “voted” and 677 election officials were indicted.
Due to the pandemic, around 40 percent of votes in Tuesday’s election were cast by mail, double the percentage in 2016.
Even the New York Times once reported the truth that mail-in voting is the most vulnerable to fraud. This is why most developed countries ban the practice.
So, as you can see, it is perfectly reasonable in such a close election to take seriously allegations of irregularities and suspicious activity.
An honest media would investigate rather than dismissing the allegations out of hand as “baseless,” “false” and “conspiracy theories.”
The Trump campaign’s legal team, led by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, claims that, in Pennsylvania alone, 600,000 ballots are in question because they were counted without any poll-watchers observing to ensure they were legitimate, as state law requires.
In Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Giuliani says that “50 to 60 poll-watchers … will all testify that they were uniformly deprived of their right to inspect any single part of the mail-in ballots … Not a single one was inspected as the law required. Even when a court order was obtained to allow the Republican inspectors to get six feet closer, they moved the people counting the ballots six further feet away.
“It’s really simple. If you have nothing to hide with these mail-in ballots, you allow inspection.”
Giuliani has promised one lawsuit will be filed today and four more by the end of this week.
Another Trump team lawyer, Sidney Powell, claimed yesterday that 450,000 ballots had been found with only votes for Biden and no down-ballot selections, which she regarded as suspicious.
She also claimed in an interview on Fox News that two pieces of software called Hammer and Scorecard were used to flip votes from Trump to Biden in some pre-election voting ballots.
As well, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Saturday an “issue involving reporting” of votes in Fulton County on Friday, and said he had sent “investigators onsite.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that he will be investigating “all credible allegations of voting irregularities and misconduct” after receiving a sworn affidavit from Pennsylvania postal worker Richard Hopkins alleging that Erie Postmaster Robert Weisenbach had told workers he was “back-dating the postmarks on the ballots to make it appear as though the ballots had been collected on November 3, 2020 despite them in fact being collected on November 4 and possibly later.”
Graham, R-S.C., also yesterday claimed that in Pennsylvania, the Trump team has found “over 100 people they think were dead but 15 people that we verified that have been dead who voted … Six people registered after they died and voted.”
All of this may not amount to a hill of beans. But it deserves to be examined, or otherwise 71 million people who voted for Trump may end up believing the election was stolen.
Whatever comes of the allegations, in reality, nothing is more important than two Georgia US Senate runoffs, on which control of the Senate may depend.
Since neither of the Republicans, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, has reached the 50 percent threshold in votes required under Georgia law to win outright, there has to be a redo on Jan. 5.
If they both were to lose, the US Senate would be deadlocked 50-50, with the vice president, Kamala Harris, having the deciding vote. In other words, the Democrats would be in control and nothing would impede their radical agenda, including the Green New Deal, packing the Supreme Court and adding two new states.
In the end, it’s worth remembering that the situation we are in today is not unprecedented.
It took 37 days for the legal battles to be sorted out after the very close 2000 election, and George W. Bush to be declared the winner.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/fraud-2020-election-miranda-devine
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