Election Results

[Wayward Son]

The Kraken has finally shown itself.

Judge Parker has ordered the "Kraken Lawyers" to pay more than $175,000 to the state of Michigan and the city of Detroit for their legal fees.  So the end result of their lawsuits is they have to pay the other sides' lawyers.

And to add a bit of spice to it:

The attorneys were ordered to attend at least 12 hours of continuing legal training on the topics of election law and pleading standards, and Parker also referred the lawyers to licensing disciplinary boards.

They will be (literally) schooled!    Perhaps their supporters, like a certain ex-president, could use those classes, too.

Yes, the Kraken has shown itself.  In the form of sushi. 

[msquared]

But they have all of the evidence.

[Wayward Son]

Doesn't look like the evidence is in evidence, does it?

After all, they could always just release their evidence to the general public and try to exonerate themselves that way. 

[TheDrake]

"The investigation by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) found 'no evidence of widespread voter fraud,' which it defined as 'an intentional effort to subvert the election' by preventing voters who support a specific candidate from voting or having their vote counted, 'attempting to procure votes that were never cast' or 'falsely increasing' one candidate’s vote share," reported Alison Durkee.

In an extra blow, WILL found that Democrats performed "worse than expected" in areas that used equipment from Dominion Voting Systems — an elections company that has been the target of conspiracy theories from Trump allies who have claimed their machines switched votes to Joe Biden.

"In all likelihood, more eligible voters cast ballots for Joe Biden than Donald Trump," concluded WILL — although the report was sure to note the group still recommends new voting restrictions.

Once again, even the most biased of groups still can't come up with a plausible case for widespread fraud.

[DJQuag]

Stepping aside from the reflex Repug position of, "If we make it easier for anyone to vote, we'll lose," the biggest threat to democracy is gerrymandering. That's the reason Repugs are even still a thing, given the numbers you literally have to craft specially made districts so they are still relevant.

"Bu-bu-but Quag, the Democratic party does the same thing!"

Yeah we do, but we'd be the first to give it up, because as I said the numbers are in our favor. On literally every issue.

[wmLambert]

...the numbers are in our favor. On literally every issue.

Actually, they are not. The discovered "Silent Majority" of the Nixon era was a news item because the Democrats had been so good at presenting the image of support. I remember FDR and LBJ creating policy to ensure Nannystate dependence by those they put in Ghettos, Barrios, and Urban Plantations. LBJ did brag about it.

When anyone looks at the red/blue maps of the country, the only reason the blues attempt to claim popular wins is because of those failed cities where the needed in the Barrios, Ghettos, and Urban Plantations dwell. If those failed areas were ever given a chance to prosper, the way Trump did, the popular support would evaporate.

The numbers are not in your favor on the issues. No one supports opening the border, allowing non-citizens to vote, defunding police, and all the other Green initiatives proven to fail so spectacularly.

[msquared]

Well FoxNews looses their bid to have the Dominion defamation suit against them thrown out.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/much-fox-news-end-paying-165347748.html

As the article states, Fox is not going to trial on this. They are going to settle out of court.  For a fairly large amount is my guess.  I wonder if having Hannity and et al fired can be part of the settlement?

[LetterRip]

As the article states, Fox is not going to trial on this. They are going to settle out of court.

Dominion has stated they have no interest in settling.

[wmLambert]

Well FoxNews looses their bid to have the Dominion defamation suit against them thrown out.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/much-fox-news-end-paying-165347748.html

As the article states, Fox is not going to trial on this. They are going to settle out of court.  For a fairly large amount is my guess.  I wonder if having Hannity and et al fired can be part of the settlement?

EJ Montini, author of the story from the Arizona Republic said:

"...cases like this have a discovery phase.

And I can’t imagine that Fox News wants anything to do with that.

I hope it does go forward, because I suspect there will be some fascinating revelations found in emails, texts, memos and other internal communications that went on within Fox during the time the nasty claims about Dominion were being made by Fox’s hosts and their guests.
Would Fox allow for discovery?

But I’d be surprised if we ever see those messages..."

Except for the fact that the disclosed authors of the emails, Hannity, Abraham, and others all stand behind their statements, and have already released them. It seems the courts tended to not look at proof presented to them because of alleged "lack of standing." It seems that if you pay a legal team enough money, they can make a guilty person look innocent. Secondly. Since Rupert Murdoch stepped down and let his Progressive children take over the most successful Cable News Network, there is little incentive for them to do anything that could bolster Trump's popularity.

[msquared]

But how many internal e-mails have been released? We are not talking about the recent texts from Jan 6 of 2021. We are talking about the election fraud claims.

Wm 

Are you saying you expect Fox to settle?  Yes or no?  If they have the evidence that is all they need to provide in court. Truth is the defense for defamation.

[wmLambert]

...Are you saying you expect Fox to settle?  Yes or no?  If they have the evidence that is all they need to provide in court. Truth is the defense for defamation.

Why should James and Lachlan Murdoch want to settle? They let the network continue with some of the Conservative hosts while pillorying others with morality charges to keep the money flowing. If they turned into MSNBC or CNN, a large chunk of their income would go away. As it is, they can exploit the image of Conservative culture why hoping to put the screws on Trump. For them, it's a win-win proposition no matter what happens.

I still ask a simple question: Why announce a lie about a water break and then open the counting without observers? Many, many questions like this are unanswered, with the courts avoiding controversy.

[alai]

Are you saying you expect Fox to settle?  Yes or no?  If they have the evidence that is all they need to provide in court. Truth is the defense for defamation.

It's a little hard to follow his chain of reasoning.  As best as I can tell, it's more like, decline to say, would rather whatabout how Mike Lindell is being denied his day in court, Fox is now a "Progressive" false-flag operation, etc.  But as Dominion is also suing Lindell personally, MyPillow, Giuliani and Powell, I don't see how vague allusions to some sort of collusion between Dominion and Fox are generally instructive as to how this will play out.  Good news for Lindellites, he certainly won't lack standing to introduce his "proof" in that case!  Though a wiser line of defence might be as to the supposed sincerity of his erroneous claims.

[DJQuag]

https://www.mediaite.com/news/rand-paul-mocked-for-claiming-democrats-steal-elections-using-completely-legal-methods/

I mean, c'mon. This dumbass said the quiet part out loud , fair enough, but this is all you need for an insight into current conservative mindset. They do *not* want as many legitimate voters to vote, because they would *lose.* Instead they try to make it as hard as possible to vote, to in hopes *their* people will somehow pull off a victory.

America was the first big country to truly take in at least the idea of democracy, truly astounding how we're still given the role as flagbearers when gerrymandering and this BS is so. Very. Clear.

To the entire world.

[TheDrake]

I wonder if there is a better standard bearer? The UK has a lot of the same gerrymandering. Israel, Australia. France has people accusing macron of staging a coup, people questioning voter requirements. And that is the top tier, compared to Spain, Venezuela, Taiwan.

[alai]

I wonder if there is a better standard bearer? The UK has a lot of the same gerrymandering. Israel, Australia. France has people accusing macron of staging a coup, people questioning voter requirements. And that is the top tier, compared to Spain, Venezuela, Taiwan.

I certainly think there's better.  "Standard bearer" might be setting different countries up for a fall...  I think there's also a lot of rather different thinsg going on in different places.

The UK doesn't have have shamelessly overt "politician choosing their voters" "classical" gerrymandering the US does.  Boundaries are handled by a commission -- imaginatively called "the Boundary Commission" which as far as I know is genuinely independent and non-partisan.  There's certainly some scope for incumbent governments to screw around with that all the same.  They can change the sizes of constituencies, and they can "purge" electoral rolls in such a way as to distort these.  The current Tory regime has been accused of both.  The latter is slightly like a hybrid of voter suppression and gerrymandering.  The biggest issue is I think the "first past the post" system, which is hugely distorting of outcomes.  The US suffers from this too, exacerbated by the huge "winner takes all" constituency sizes in federal elections, but mitigated by having closer to an actual two-party system, as opposed to 2.75-party system (in England, it gets weirder still in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland).  An almost now-unique hellaciousness of the UK is the "no constitution" angle.  Sure, they'll tell you there's an "unwritten constitution" and other such meaningless statements, but the legal effect is straightforward parliamentary dictatorship.  Get a house-of-commons majority (in practice never needing a popular vote majority, as above), and you can do what you like -- no checks and balances.

Most European and other developed countries fix FPTP by some sort of proportional representation.  In Ireland there's again an independent BC, so no high-order gerrymandering.  There's fairly blatant localism and clientalism due to the particular system of PR, but that'd hardly shock or stun most US voters, I don't think.  I couldn't comment in any detail about the gerrymandering sitch elsewhere.

I've never heard this notion of a Macron coup.  The worry there if anything is a far-right ethnonationalist like Le Pen or Zemmour winning the presidency.  Might not behave terribly democratically if they won, but they do still have to win it in the first place in a pretty much straightforwardly democratic manner.

Spain one might accuse of having too much constitution, given the whole "putting peaceful and democratic secessionists in jail" thing.  Plus they haven't made it a half-century since their last formal dictatorship -- Francoism, the original "fascist, who us?!" protesters-too-much! -- so not a great deal of room for complacency there.

Honestly though?  Way more to worry about in the US than in any if the above, for my money.  Even if we didn't have to worry about the "when America catches a cold" effect.

[DJQuag]

Two things?

Holy *censored* yes. There *is* no Constitution in the UK. All the time, every time, I try hard to explain how the people here just don't get it that they don't hav these rights, and there is nothing  to back them up. What I get is they have a monarch who is always willing to put their two cents in and protect the rights. Jesus *censored*ing Christ. I almost get and understand from the point of a thousand year old country that had to do all that feudal *censored*, fine.

No. Prince John got bullied into Magna Carta against his will and that's fair enough. He was also the first monarch to bother learning English. The rest, you know, the monarchs, they decided because they were French, *censored* the *peasant* tongue.

[TheDrake]

I've never heard this notion of a Macron coup.

Can't find the original citation, but it was his opponents basically using the "Big Lie/Steal" playbook same as the Trumpians. Meanwhile, there is of course rumbling about French generals threating a coup, which is why I couldn't find the specific quote I had read earlier.

So if it comes down to the better poster child for Democracy between the UK and the US... I don't know enough about UK politics to make a judgement. Structurally the representative structure is more proportionally matched to the population. All of the US greatest hits seem to show up there, though. Voter roll purges, as you mentioned.

Maybe the most important measure is the confidence that the population has in their democracy.

26 % of Britons say Democracy is not working well. 38% said the voting system is fair, 40% said no.

study

[msquared]

I wonder if Trump is actually a Putin stooge who was put in place by Russian misinformation in 2016 to help Putin destroy American Democracy by calling it into question. Trump actually intentionally failed to treat Covid 19 seriously, which obviously cost him the election and then used that as his reason for the Big Lie.

Prove he did not do that.

[alai]

Trump actually intentionally failed to treat Covid 19 seriously, which obviously cost him the election and then used that as his reason for the Big Lie.

He intentionally failed to treat it seriously, but intending the opposite result (and out of general 'boosterist' instincts).  While Putin would have been delighted by his decision-making process here, I see no even faintly plausible mechanism for him causing it.

Can't find the original citation, but it was his opponents basically using the "Big Lie/Steal" playbook same as the Trumpians. Meanwhile, there is of course rumbling about French generals threating a coup, which is why I couldn't find the specific quote I had read earlier.

Yeah, it's not like "Macron coup" or "French coup" gets no search hits -- they just happen to be wildly different ones!

Structurally the representative structure is more proportionally matched to the population.

Mixed picture on that, I think.  On the one hand, there's no "small-state bonus" equivalent between different regions and constituent countries.  (One long-running exception to that was Scotland, which did actually get more than its share, but that was adjusted after devolution of the Scottish parliament.)  But the party-system thing is huge.  In the US there's understandable angst about presidents winning "majorities" with popular vote shares like 46%.  The current UK regime was elected with 42% -- and that was seen as a historical landslide on a huge scale.  (And in a sense it was, for example the 2015 one was "won" with 36%.)

All of the US greatest hits seem to show up there, though. Voter roll purges, as you mentioned.

I think they're of a different order, but equally I'm no expert.  The British state goes to certain active steps to maintain the electoral register, rather than just waiting for people to pitch up and ask to be (then deny them on frivolous grounds).  But there's a whiff of the same spectrum, at least.

26 % of Britons say Democracy is not working well. 38% said the voting system is fair, 40% said no.

These polls need to be taken with a pinch of salt, as they might well arise from the worst possible sort of take.  People may consider it's "not working well" just because their party's not in power, or because an insufficiently extreme faction of theirs is.  The "unfairness" of the voting system might be that Scotland still has MPs, that British Asians haven't been disenfranchised ("not the BrExit I voted for!", etc).  As well as actually rational reasons.

[alai]

Holy *censored* yes. There *is* no Constitution in the UK. All the time, every time, I try hard to explain how the people here just don't get it that they don't hav these rights, and there is nothing  to back them up. What I get is they have a monarch who is always willing to put their two cents in and protect the rights. Jesus *censored*ing Christ. I almost get and understand from the point of a thousand year old country that had to do all that feudal *censored*, fine.

UK citizens have rights in law.  It's just that changing (or abolishing) them is a pretty brisk process if and when it comes to it.  Of course, even in countries that do have an actual constitution, the difficulty of changing them varies wildly from case to case.  The US is fairly near the "extreme fossilised" end of the spectrum.  Hence the popularity of the "pack the court" route to "reinterpret" it, rather than actually changing it.  In other places it's much easier than that, but generally harder than in the UK.  For example, Sweden uses the World Science Fiction Association model -- have pass a bill in two distinct terms to use it.  Ireland uses referenda, but they just need a simple national majority to pass -- no supermajority of supermajorities nonsense.

No. Prince John got bullied into Magna Carta against his will and that's fair enough.

Case in point, most of Magna Carta's been repealed.  Not violently overthrown in the Civil War, or eliminated by treaty in the union with Scotland or Ireland -- much less when it joined the EU -- just changed by act of parliament when it decided otherwise one day.  (Well, probably many days for each separate change, don't ask me for chapter and verse.)

He was also the first monarch to bother learning English. The rest, you know, the monarchs, they decided because they were French, *censored* the *peasant* tongue

I didn't know that about Lackland.  I wonder how good his English was -- maybe just the SPEAKING SLOWLY AND LOUDLY! variety since perfected by Anglophone tourists abroad ever since.   It was way later than that for the first Plantagenet king to speak English as their mother tongue -- and even then only because he was a usurper.  Ironically, then all happens again with a run of German-speaking Hanoverian kings much later!

[jc44]

The UK system has its flaws, IMHO First past the post being the main one, but I'm going to assert (without, I admit, a shred of evidence to back it up) that nearly everybody here believes that your votes get cast and counted without significant fraud.

[DJQuag]

I've never heard this notion of a Macron coup.

Can't find the original citation, but it was his opponents basically using the "Big Lie/Steal" playbook same as the Trumpians. Meanwhile, there is of course rumbling about French generals threating a coup, which is why I couldn't find the specific quote I had read earlier.

So if it comes down to the better poster child for Democracy between the UK and the US... I don't know enough about UK politics to make a judgement. Structurally the representative structure is more proportionally matched to the population. All of the US greatest hits seem to show up there, though. Voter roll purges, as you mentioned.

Maybe the most important measure is the confidence that the population has in their democracy.

26 % of Britons say Democracy is not working well. 38% said the voting system is fair, 40% said no.

study

People don't vote. That's the issue.

It's one thing to call people and do a telephone poll (with the people who don't just hang up,) and it's another entirely to hang those results on the entire population.

They. Don't. Vote. The entire idea of democracy falls apart entirely when the very people who could be helped just ...

Look. The UK idea of socialism is...it's weird. It got ripped apart by Thatcher, to an extent her own party, to this day, is trying very hard to introduce American ideas into our way of doing things.

It *is* still there, that idea, but it's attacked at every point by right wing politicians and Murdoch media. It's been ripped apart for decades in the mid class media.

They're learning. The enemy. You can see it in Boris Johnson, the way he pretended he was an idiot who couldn't comb his hair.

Eh. I've been trying to explain this *censored*, unfortunately science says at my best I'll influence maybe 9 or 10 people.

[alai]

Look. The UK idea of socialism is...it's weird. It got ripped apart by Thatcher, to an extent her own party, to this day, is trying very hard to introduce American ideas into our way of doing things.

"The Enterprise Years", as I cringe every time I remember them being described do seem to have lurched the country to the right semi-permanently.  (I could practically hear the copter blades in my flashback when Baron von Frost popped up to bloviate about BrExit requiring "radical supply-side reform".  Dude.  That's pretty much the exact opposite of what it was "won" on!)  But UK "socialism" was fairly weird even before then.  It's -- again -- very largely down to First Past the Post.  It's not so much much a lemon of a party, as two half-lemons welded hastily together.  In just about every other European or developed country (i.e. the ones with PR), it'd be two entirely separate and mostly mutually loathing parties.  In fact, even just counting parties represented in the Dáil, Ireland has two explicitly social democratic parties, arguably four or five depending on how you account for other parties that either have described themselves that way or have such policies.  Not to mention the infamous "left-leaning independents", who can can any ad hoc fusion of soft-left and shamelessly local-populist causes.  And then we start on the overtly socialists one, of which there are three with TDs.  Three!

If any US readers are by this point confused and wondering, "but but but...  US Democrats are Dangerous Extreme Big Bad Communistic Menace Left, to which of these clusters do they correspond?!", the answer is... neither.  They're a bunch of centrists with some social policies (on a good day).

[msquared]

An election review in TX, a state Trump won handily but he still claims that voter fraud happened, shows basically no issues with the results.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/nothing-resembling-fraud-detected-initial-172148020.html

The 4 counties audited make up almost 35% of the total votes cast.

Of course the guy pushing the audit supports Trump and releases the nothing found results on New Years Eve?

So again no evidence of any major, or really even any minor fraud.

I wonder if Trump runs again in 2024 and if any other Republican has the guts to run against him, will he ever debate them?  They would be able to tear him apart in a debate on the big lie.

[msquared]

Alai

I have as much factual support for my claim that Trump is working for Putin to over turn American democracy as Trump has for his election fraud claims. Hell if you look at what he and his supporters are doing, I probably have more empirical evidence than he does.  I was being sarcastic but the more he does, the more it seems like it might be true.

[TheDrake]

I wonder if Trump runs again in 2024 and if any other Republican has the guts to run against him, will he ever debate them?  They would be able to tear him apart in a debate on the big lie.

Did you sleep through 2016? Did you think Rubio didn't have enough material to work with?

Meanwhile, how's Cruz going to call him out on that? Or desantis? Abbott? Most high profile Republicans already sailed on the good ship "secret unproven voter fraud".

[alai]

Meanwhile, how's Cruz going to call him out on that? Or desantis? Abbott? Most high profile Republicans already sailed on the good ship "secret unproven voter fraud".

None of those, for sure.  Unless they have an even bigger "heel-face turn" in them than any they've managed in their admittedly slippery careers to date.  I gather there's some idle chatter of someone like Larry Hogan might have a pop at it.  I doubt he has the cojones or the standing, but who knows.

I have as much factual support for my claim that Trump is working for Putin to over turn American democracy as Trump has for his election fraud claims. Hell if you look at what he and his supporters are doing, I probably have more empirical evidence than he does.  I was being sarcastic but the more he does, the more it seems like it might be true.

He's a hard man to parody, no question.  And it's exactly the sort of thing Putin would want him to do, given a quarter of a chance to get him to do it.  But equally the "we didn't collude, we're too much of an exploding clown car of incompetence to have managed that" line of defence also has something of a ring of plausibility to it.

I wonder if Trump runs again in 2024 and if any other Republican has the guts to run against him, will he ever debate them?  They would be able to tear him apart in a debate on the big lie.

While I think Trump will likely run if he believes it'll be a walkover -- and no telling how rational his assessment of that may be! -- I think there's also every possibility he'll talk a big game, and pull out late.  In which case there's more scope for an epic punchup between the anointed mini-Trump (or wannabes fighting for that crown of crap among themselves) and centrists and traditional conservatives attacking the proxy over such issues.

[msquared]

The real reason I could see him running is to prevent any of the investigations from continuing on.  However, if the Trumpists take the House and Senate in 2022 he may not have to worry about that.

[alai]

The real reason I could see him running is to prevent any of the investigations from continuing on.  However, if the Trumpists take the House and Senate in 2022 he may not have to worry about that.

He'll certainly be meddling to that effect regardless.  But if he thinks it'll be a 2016-style squeaker I wonder if he'd rather some "loyalist" do the hard yards.

Of course, arguing against that is that his ego will insist that he personally is the only person that could do it.

[TheDrake]

Former President Donald Trump plans to hold a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort on January 6, seeking to co-opt the first anniversary of the attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol to push his false claims of election fraud.

[alai]

Former President Donald Trump plans to hold a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort on January 6, seeking to co-opt the first anniversary of the attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol to push his false claims of election fraud.

Extraordinary.  Talk about returning to the scene of the crime -- at least in calendar form.

[yossarian22c]

Former President Donald Trump plans to hold a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort on January 6, seeking to co-opt the first anniversary of the attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol to push his false claims of election fraud.

At least this time any wayward supporters will only be storming the 18th green. 

[msquared]

I wonder how many networks are going to cover it. It is just going to be the same Big Lie. Of course Fox News and OAN and the other fringe networks will be there in their fawning glory.

[TheDrake]

Says the couple that booked Mar-a-lago for a Jan 6 wedding reception - FML...

[msquared]

The couple with the wedding need not worry. He cancelled the new conference.  I guess he figured it would interfere with his round of golf.

[msquared]

Maricopa County AZ has responded, in writing, to the Cyber Ninja report.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/misleading-inaccurate-false-maricopa-county-204624484.html

And Cyber Ninja's is still stonewalling on turning over their work papers, which are public documents.

i wonder who really has something to hide?

[msquared]

A Republican who voted for Trump twice has issues with people who think Trump is the party.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/guest-opinion-no-coronation-trump-133250300.html

He has a valid point. When people like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are considered RINO's only because they do not support Trump, there is something wrong with the Party.

[alai]

A Republican who voted for Trump twice has issues with people who think Trump is the party.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/guest-opinion-no-coronation-trump-133250300.html

He has a valid point. When people like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are considered RINO's only because they do not support Trump, there is something wrong with the Party.

There might be a point in there someplace, but you have to dig pretty deep through this great big steaming pile of an article to get to it.  I also note that his "predictions" are mutually contradictory:  he's shooting at "two out of three ain't bad", at best.  Or more likely, plain ol' kissing up to Ron de.

[msquared]

And CyberNinjas has taken the money and ran.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/cyber-ninjas-company-led-arizona-025600651.html

Shutting down rather than turn over documents or pay a $50,000 per day fine.

[alai]

Qui audit auditores.  That sounds remarkably like an especially sleazy case of corporate impunity.  The people involved shouldn't be able to escape scrutiny for their actions behind a smokescreen of "oh, a limited-liability company did that, and it was dissolved -- nothing to do with us, the people that actually did it!"

[TheDrake]

The judge who issued the order says...

"The court is not going to accept the assertion that Cyber Ninjas is an empty shell and that no one is responsible for seeing that it complies," the judge said.

[alai]

Sense from the bench.  Whodathunk.

Makes basic sense -- which is more than I've come to expect from many quarters these days -- because the "assets" of a company don't just cease to exist when it's wound up.  And company directors are legally liable for actual misconduct in the conduct of their duties.

[msquared]

Even Trump supporter Brian Kilmeade is getting sick and tired of Trumps continual ranting about a stolen election with out showing any proof.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brian-kilmeade-donald-trump-learn-to-lose_n_61dbaee2e4b04b42ab8173ba

[cherrypoptart]

Whataboutism incoming: But the Democrats never got sick and tired of their own continual ranting, for over four years, with an impeachment, about a stolen election without showing any proof. It's funny seeing the freak out about what they themselves did so proudly for so long.

The Democrats had their own kraken with "the smoking gun" and "the walls are closing in" that all turned out to be nothing more than the same pack of lies they accuse Trump of peddling now. And just like the Trumpers who won't give up on it, Democrats still believe their own lies too, with still no proof of collusion but no proof is required, not for them and not for that. They just know and that's good enough.

They questioned the integrity of an election and the foundation of our entire system of government for the entirety of Trump's Presidency with violent nationwide protests against racism with the Russian-colluding, election-stealing racist in chief being Trump himself and that questioning of an election and violent deadly months long rioting during a pandemic was the height of patriotism, but now the same thing is insurrection, sedition, and treason. It's just fascinating watching how that works.

[msquared]

how many audits did the Dems do? I mean after the official audits were done?  How many lawsuits filed and dismissed?

I do not think the 2016 election was stolen from Clinton.  Do I think that Russia might have played a part in Trump getting elected?  Yes I think it is possible but not in a stolen election way. I think they used their social media skills to bombard the US with propaganda. I have no real proof of that but I think it possible. Do I think Trump asked them to do it.  No. Do I think it is possible that some one in Trump's camp might have suggested somewhere along the line it would help. Possibly, but again no evidence.

[cherrypoptart]

Well you're one person and that's fine but we saw what the Democrats as a Party did, what Pelosi and Schiff and agents at the FBI did, what the courts did, what the rioters in the streets did. And we see how right after Biden won it's like a switch got flipped, all of that got turned off, and now questioning the results of an election is treason and protesting amounts to insurrection and doesn't get Democrats in Congress raising money to bail you out with all charges dropped but gets very long prison sentences with Democrats tsk tsk tsking all the way.

[cherrypoptart]

And audits? What's to audit? The Democrats didn't make accusations of voter fraud. The accusation was that the election was stolen by Facebook ads Russia paid for that influenced people to vote against Hillary. The election was stolen by a picture of the devil and Jesus arm wrestling and Hillary being made out to be on the side of the devil. The election was stolen by Russia doing in our elections what our government has done in elections all over the world, trying to influence them. And we collude with one side or another too, sometimes probably even multiple parties at the same time. Obama himself publicly attempted to influence elections in both Israel and Britain. There's video proof of it. And no Democrat had any problem with that. There isn't even an international law that says people of one country aren't allowed to express a public opinion through advertisements or other ways about elections in another country. The whole idea was preposterous but the Democrats used it anyway, feeble and weak as it was, to undermine our election process and the duly elected President, to accuse him of stealing the election. And they're still proud of it too. No regrets, no remorse, but of course not much mentioning of it anymore either because now that they won it's no longer acceptable to question elections. In fact, now it's treason.

[TheDrake]

I would love to see a quote by any democrat that suggested Trump should not be inaugurated. The themes of the time, as I remember, was that the electoral college is flawed and that there was voter suppression. I don't remember anyone saying that Trump was fraudulently elected. I remember people saying "he's not my president". That wasn't an expression that he wasn't the legitimate president, but rather that they would never support him and would do their best to undermine him. That is not the same ballpark, the same league, or the same sport.

[yossarian22c]

And audits? What's to audit? The Democrats didn't make accusations of voter fraud. The accusation was that the election was stolen by Facebook ads Russia paid for that influenced people to vote against Hillary. The election was stolen by a picture of the devil and Jesus arm wrestling and Hillary being made out to be on the side of the devil. The election was stolen by Russia doing in our elections what our government has done in elections all over the world, trying to influence them. And we collude with one side or another too, sometimes probably even multiple parties at the same time. Obama himself publicly attempted to influence elections in both Israel and Britain. There's video proof of it. And no Democrat had any problem with that. There isn't even an international law that says people of one country aren't allowed to express a public opinion through advertisements or other ways about elections in another country. The whole idea was preposterous but the Democrats used it anyway, feeble and weak as it was, to undermine our election process and the duly elected President, to accuse him of stealing the election. And they're still proud of it too. No regrets, no remorse, but of course not much mentioning of it anymore either because now that they won it's no longer acceptable to question elections. In fact, now it's treason.

There are American laws against what the Russians did. Did Trump's sons or campaign manager discuss it when they were meeting with Russian lawyers, we'll never really know. We know Trump gave a press conference and asked Russia to release hacked Clinton emails. We know the Russian bots largely favored Trump and divisiveness. We know Russia spent some money on facebook ads in swing states. Did it sway the election? Probably not, but Trump won by about 250k votes spread over 5 states so its hard to say. We know people in the Trump orbit shared polling data with Russians and we know Roger Stone was trying to work a back door between the Trump campaign, Russian hackers, and wikileaks to get the most bang out of the hacked DNC emails.

Democrats were mad about all those things but he wasn't impeached over any of that. He was impeached the first time for asking for "a favor" from the Ukrainian president to investigate Hunter Biden specifically. He was impeached the second time for inciting a riot at the capital because his ego is too fragile to concede defeat.

[TheDrake]

And the Russia thing, I guess I'll respond to that. Not one person of any substance suggested that Russia turned the election. Just that they attempted to influence it, which they most certainly did. Most major powers, including our own, make attempts to influence elections. It is often overt, like coming out in support of the opposition candidate in Venezuela. It is sometimes covert, funneling money into things. It is sometimes reprehensible, like backing a coup.

I will also say, after looking up some old articles, there was a certain subgroup that was hopeful that electors would be faithless and cast their ballot for Clinton even though their state tallied for Trump. That is in a similar ballpark, and it did include some Democrat members of Congress. They succeeded in flipping seven electors, so they even had more success than their violent right wing counterparts. Some of these electors did face threats of violence, including death threats. I would be comfortable labeling the people involved in that effort as attempting a coup.