Posted on 04/05/2021 5:25:57 AM PDT by Kaslin
The past few weeks our country made it much more likely we’ll have another contested election. The president of the United States deployed aggressively misleading and divisive language this week and stated without evidence that a Georgia election law was akin to the Jim Crow era. He was joined not only in that reckless rhetoric by other Democrats, but many of those same Democrats decided to also presuppose the outcome of a criminal trial and set the stage for our next round of unrest. No word yet from Jack Dorsey of Twitter on whether he’ll be banning any of this discourse if our streets erupt in a second summer of discontent. Of course, all of this is on top of the primary messaging from the Democratic Party of the past few years: that something called “the system” is not only rigged, but “rigged against you.” That type of red meat is apparently not divisive, exploitative, or dangerous when utilized by our brethren on the other side of the aisle.
We may be on the verge of the necessary puncturing of a prominent political myth: that the 2020 election unrest was an aberration. Instead, we’ll soon recognize it as an event along a continuum of instability that 1) started at least as early as the 2018 midterms and 2) was not a symptom of Trump’s unique irresponsibility. This is unfortunately where we are.
As it relates to our evolving election laws, after a massive and historic change in how Americans vote in 2020, Democrats are taking a revanchist hard line: that all elections conducted before last November – like the ones that brought us Bill Clinton twice and Barack Obama as our first black president – were relics of a Jim Crow system. That conducting elections according to any rules other than our new COVID-emergency rules of 2020 is about an evil racism, not the natural push and pull of partisan overreach on issues we’ve been arguing about for decades. Also, that basic voting security restrictions of the type that existed in 2018, and 2016, and 2014, and 2012, oh and in so many state and local and special elections around the country – all of the rules in place then are now equivalent to, I’m sorry Joe “akin to,” the segregationist horrors of the Jim Crow era. And that’s so despite broad increases in voter participation percentages across minority populations, a trend that has continued even for midterm elections where underrepresentation is typically starker. That irresponsible narrative is why we would have likely seen political violence regardless of which candidate seemed on top the morning of November 4th.
What does all of this mean? As the next midterms approach, we seem committed as a country to repeat the patterns of November 2018, patterns that predictably metastasized in 2020 given the higher stakes. Just like our two past elections, we’re now seeding the conditions for a full return of the two competing election narratives of widespread voter fraud and racist voter suppression, facts be damned. We’ll again fail to recognize that the process fights and inability to cleanly transfer power is a symptom, not the cause of, a division we still struggle to grasp the literal nature of. The introduction of HR1 by Democrats is an attempt to formalize their narrative into law, and the death blow to federalism it entails in their minds is a happy side effect.
But for now, Democrats will revel in the messaging victories and, frankly, it is smart politics on their behalf. The consequences of their throwing this red meat to their base are alienation and bitter national division, but also maybe electoral victory 18 months from now. In fact, Stacey Abrams, their celebrated trailblazer and before Trump the most senior official to refuse to concede an election in a generation, continues to spread misinformation. This is dangerous because elections are settled not only as a function of the rules in place, but also by public perception of those rules, and the narrative develops in the lead-up to the vote. Put more simply, legitimacy is in the eye of the beholder.
So, we speed on towards our next contested election. The question is whether our next January 6 moment comes from an election like a few months ago, a coming verdict much like the one nearly thirty years ago in LA, or something new entirely.
Oh, the next election will be “no contest” at all. Voters don’t matter. This is all pretend.
Again, all of this huffing and puffing over “legal votes” misses the point entirely.
Your opponents believe, and are acting on their belief, that everyone should vote. They believe that this is “democracy” (about which they are correct). They believe that “democracy” is good (about which they are wrong).
YOU are willing to yield on the main issue (democracy is good) but want to fix the central problem (mob rule) by limiting (OK, “suppressing”) enough voters so that rational, reasonably intelligent people with low time preference and the ability to see that effects have causes form a small majority (50% +1) so that the country does not go to hell.
You have accepted every increase in the franchise as a good, conservative position.
Now, you want to get off at the “illegal voters” stop, but it’s the last stop, and the mob on the platform won’t let you off the train.
The paradigm change in how elections are conducted is not going away. Should the question be how do conservatives adapt and take advantage of these changes? Sticking heads in the sand and lamenting the ‘steal’ is not going to be a winning argument for votes.
GOP doesn’t have the guts to contest anything do they?
The GOP will make sure subsequent elections will mimic 2020. It’s disgusting.
There is no 2022 or 2024. There is only 2020. If we don’t reverse this stolen election and put Trump back in the presidency nothing will matter going forward.
Agree 100%
Are great and wonderful president Donald J Trump expose all of the democratic fraud machine
This machine was much more extensive than any of us had ever imagined and included back to being in machines algorithms and all kinds of foreign computer interference
We must make a dog that has the criminal by the leg hold on and hold on and hold on until the police arrive
Right now Arizona is the hottest of the battle zones we have a team of auditors that are supposed to get the ballots and it seems like we’re just about to have a gun battle over getting access to the ballots
Same thing in Georgia simmering on the burner
We have all the Time in the world we just need the ballots
The Democrats are convinced with their media that they can just continue to run over the truth over and over and over again and the truth will go away
Because they do not understand the Bible or the fact that the truth cannot be destroyed this will undermine them in the end
Wonder how many in his base are wiling to have a recall now they have seen the damage their party has caused.
Its actually conceivable that 4-5 states may overturn their results and decertify. At some point when enough evidence is released so that its coming from sources other than Trump the military will step in. At this point it looks like they will oversee a revote. I think they are watching Myanmar as a beta test.
You're quite right, we must abandon the shibboleth that democracy is an unalloyed good, although we might stipulate that its absence is an unalloyed evil. The point is that interest must be representative but balanced and checked.
The framers well understood this but, alas, the current uni-party understands it well enough to know that they will not tolerate it. Perhaps the concept will linger among us when we try to put the pieces of a constitutional republic back together.
They have plenty of guts when they have to oppose their voters to please their donors.
What you are missing is that the issue IN THIS CASE: "Everyone should vote" is an issue that the GOP is not prepared to dispute on principle.
Of course, your problem is that the Democrats are basically right about this.
The voting procedures that used to exist (and still are enshrined in black-letter law in most states) ARE SUPPOSED TO PREVENT voting by "everyone".
What evidence do you have that any of them think the result of the Biden ascension constitutes "damage"?
Most of them, as far as I can tell, think it's great and want more.
That is in no way conceivable. But keep moving on with delusion instead of putting efforts into making elections as secure and fair as possible.
Welcome to AmeriKa, Comrade! Where elections don't matter and all the votes are cast for you.
(Borrowed from the original "Who's line is it anyway?" where the rules are all made up by the host and the points don't matter.)
There is so much going on in the world and the US that as “inconceivable” as it may seem to you it is happening. Soon the MSM will not be able to stop information from coming out. You only think things are inconceivable because you don’t hear it from an anchor on Fox or CNN. Think about that.
Some UK papers covers how some dems don’t like him or what they did.
Even the Epoch Time has some coverage of it.
How long before the march toward building the Peoples Republic of the US is met with a revolution? Look at how quickly things moved in France from the storming of the Bastille in July 1789 to the Terror.
There is no legal or constitutional means to reverse the election results. The cat is out of the bag, and the military is not dissenting in the slightest. All the Qnuts are just going to keep moving the goalposts as nothing changes.
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