the mouth but not the muscle

 

American voters:  President Nixon had some problems.

Donald Trump:  Hold my beer.

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some of the headlines in today's New York Times

How Fox News Covered the Trump Tax Story on Monday

Even as Americans Grew Richer, Inequality Persisted

End the Filibuster?  Pack the Court?  The Left is Pushing Biden

Trump's Taxes Show Chronic Losses and Years of Income Tax Avoidance

Ransomware Attacks Take on New Urgency Ahead of Vote

     Attacks against small towns, big cities and the contractors who run their voting systems have federal officials fearing that hackers will try to sow chaos around the election.

Voters Believe Winner of Election Should Fill Court Vacancy, Poll Shows

Some Workers Face Looming Cutoffs in Health Insurance

As Covid-19 Closes Schools, the World's Children Go to Work

     Former students are taking illegal and often dangerous jobs in India and other developing countries, potentially rolling back years of progress in social mobility and public health.

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"The Election That Could Break America"

written by Barton Gellman

The Atlantic

(continued)

...Speaking as a man with unexpended ammunition, Gore laid down his arms.  "I accept the finality of this outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College," he said.  "And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession."

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.

Trump is, by some measures, a weak authoritarian.  He has the mouth but not the muscle to work his will with assurance.  Trump denounced Special Counsel Robert Mueller but couldn't fire him.  He accused his foes of treason but couldn't jail them.  He has bent the bureaucracy and flouted the law but not broken free altogether of their restraints.

A proper despot would not risk the inconvenience of losing an election.  He would fix his victory in advance, avoiding the need to overturn an incorrect outcome.  Trump cannot do that.

     But he's not powerless to skew the proceedings -- first on Election Day and then during the Interregnum.  He could disrupt the vote count where it's going badly, and if that does not work, try to bypass it altogether.  On Election Day, Trump and his allies can begin by suppressing the Biden vote.

There is no truth to be found in dancing around this point, either:  Trump does not want Black people to vote.  (He said as much in 2017 -- on Martin Luther King Day, no less -- to a voting-rights group co-founded by King, according to a recording leaked to Politico.)  He does not want young people or poor people to vote.  He believes, with reason, that he is less likely to win reelection if turnout is high at the polls.  

     This is not a "both sides" phenomenon.  

     In present-day politics, we have one party that consistently seeks advantage in depriving the other party's adherents of the right to vote.

Just under a year ago, Justin Clark gave a closed-door talk in Wisconsin to a select audience of Republican lawyers.  He thought he was speaking privately, but someone had brought a recording device.  He had a lot to say about Election Day operations, or "EDO."

At the time, Clark was a senior lieutenant with Trump's reelection campaign; in July, he was promoted to deputy campaign manager.  "Wisconsin's the state that is going to tip this one way or the other ... So it makes EDO really, really, really important," he said.  He put the mission bluntly:  "Traditionally it's always been Republicans suppressing votes ... [Democrats'] voters are all in one part of the state, so let's start playing offense a little bit.  And that's what you're going to see in 2020.  That's what's going to be markedly different.  

     It's going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program, and we're going to need all the help we can get."  (Clark later claimed that his remarks had been misconstrued, but his explanation made no sense in context.)

Of all the favorable signs for Trump's Election Day operations, Clark explained, "first and foremost is the consent decree's gone."  He was referring to a court order forbidding Republican operatives from using any of a long list of voter-purging and intimidation techniques.  The expiration of that order was a "huge, huge, huge, huge deal," Clark said.

His audience of lawyers knew what he meant.  The 2020 presidential election will be the first in 40 years to take place without a federal judge requiring the Republican National Committee to seek approval in advance for any "ballot security" operations at the polls.  In 2018, a federal  judge allowed the consent decree to expire, ruling that the plaintiffs had no proof of recent violations by Republicans.  The consent decree, by this logic, was not needed, because it worked.

The order had its origins in the New Jersey gubernatorial election of 1981.  According to the district court's opinion in Democratic National Committee v. Republican National Committee, the RNC allegedly tried to intimidate voters by hiring off-duty law-enforcement officers as members of a "National Ballot Security Task Force," some of them armed and carrying two-way radios.  

According to the plaintiffs, they stopped and questioned voters in minority neighborhoods, blocked voters from entering the polls, forcibly restrained poll workers, challenged people's eligibility to vote, warned of criminal charges for casting an illegal ballot, and generally did their best to frighten voters away from the polls.  The power of these methods relied on well-founded fears among people of color about contact with police.

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