From the article on HuffPost:
President Donald Trump on Thursday suggested delaying the November presidential election while baselessly warning that mail-in voting will lead to “the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history.”
States are increasingly offering mail-in ballots due to concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic, but Trump has repeatedly tried to dissuade people from voting by mail, claiming — without any supporting evidence — that it will lead to voter fraud.
Trump has no power over the election schedule; moving it would require changing federal law. The Constitution states the exact date and time when a president and vice president’s term ends. There is no clause that would allow a president to remain in office beyond that date, which is the Jan. 20 following the presidential election.
"...His likely Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, has previously suggested that Trump may try to delay the election in an effort to win."
“I think he is gonna try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,” Biden told supporters in April.
“This is simply not true, and it’s dangerous for our democracy. The President cannot delay the election,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) tweeted, while urging his Republican colleagues to “publicly and forcefully refute the President’s alarming suggestion that he can.”
“The USA held an election during the Civil War, and we will hold one in 96 days,” tweeted Pete Buttigieg, the former Democratic candidate and mayor of South Bend, Indiana."
Updated:
I see that Hong Kong has postponed its election for a year, ostensibly because of the pandemic, but more likely for more cynical political reasons. It is unclear to me whether that announcement came before or after Trump's Tweet suggesting ours be delayed. The timing doesn't especially matter, because we know he was thinking about it anyway. It just adds another layer to the reasons a delay should be resisted with all our strength, since it echoes the actions of a totalitarian government (if there was any doubt about Hong Kong's status under the People's Republic.)
Has anyone else had problems inserting a jump break? I tried to, but it wouldn't save it.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't find the story in the link list, but here's his tweet from 8 hrs ago:
ReplyDelete"With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???"
While Louie Gohmert is busy taking hydrochloroquine so he can prove that Mein Fuhrer has been right all along (or die trying), you can bet the Trumpers will be beating the drum on election fraud.
Meantime, Herman Caine has died of covid19, Trump offering all glory, laud, and honor to his friend--and never mentioning cause of death or that Caine may have caught it at Il Duce's rally.
The sad thing is that the madness Trump has unleashed will be hard to stuff back into the dark dank hole it crawled out of.
You are right, Jean. Which is why I have dragged out my old French language books and cassette tapes to brush up if we have to act on our escape plan. Assuming, of course, that someday in the future residents of the US will again be allowed to enter the country. Our son and French daughter in law hope to buy a vacation place in France next year. We have offered to go in on it with them financially so that we could use it too!
DeleteThink of the rest of us, too old, poor, and sick to leave while you parley vous and butter your brioche.
DeleteDon't forget visiting all the local wineries! Sante!
DeleteIn the Better News department, even Mitch isn't buying the election delay idea. WaPo reports:
ReplyDeleteSenior Republicans, who often refuse to weigh in on President Trump’s controversial tweets, overwhelmingly rejected his idea Thursday that the election be postponed because of the risk of fraud.
“Never in the history of the country, through wars, depressions and the Civil War, have we ever not had a federally scheduled election on time,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in a television interview with WNKY of Bowling Green, Ky. “We’ll find a way to do that again this Nov. 3.”
For the president to even make the suggestion is breathtakingly irresponsible. Should he take any action to pursue this unconstitutional idea, Democrats in the House should waste no time impeaching the president, and the Senate should waste no time convicting him.
ReplyDeletePfft. Republicans, with the exception of Mitt Romney, seem willing to put up with President Crazy as long as he slashes environmental regs, appoints Supreme Court conservatives, and gives kickbacks to rich people.
DeleteReally, I used to know and like many Republicans. You seem like a largely reasonable person. I just don't know how the GOP is even still viable, representing increasingly narrow interests. Seems to me that they're down to the Church of the Angry Jesus, volunteer militia members, and one-percenters.
Jean, I didn’t just know Republicans, I was a donating, volunteering member of the GOP for most of my life. I look back now and realize that I drank too much of the kool-aid years back. By 2008 I was fed up with the increasing right wing extremism and reregistered as “no affiliation” because of the tea party influence. Almost all of our friends and family were Republicans. My husband and I and one of my sisters are the only defectors we are aware of from among all these many people. By refusing to support trump, we have lost friends and barely communicate with some family members. It’s a bit of a lonely road, but we had to make the break. Mitt Romney is the last real Republican in the party. The party should be renamed, as the real GOP is dead.
DeleteA dear departed friend, an old cold warrior who retired from the Air Force, quit the GOP 20 years ago because of the evangelical/fundamentalist influence. He was a Melkite Catholic concerned that fundiegelicals were pushing a very narrow kind of theocracy.
DeleteYour AF friend was more aware than I was. I was ready to quit before I did, but was too lazy to go through the process. Once they put the change registration process online I finally did it.
DeleteI was pretty much blissfully unaware of the evangelical right-wing influence 20 years ago. Just not paying attention I guess.
Trump is just making up excuses for losing the coming election. I wonder if he might find some reason to withdraw so that he will not be defeated. His mind works in weird ways.
ReplyDeleteI could see him doing that, then spending the next several years playing the martyr role, about how he was hounded from office. So who would be the Republican candidate, Pence?
DeleteEven Pence would be an improvement. He seems to at least be sane. . Ivanka wants to be the successor to the throne....and first woman president. Take that, Hillary!
DeleteThere are rumors (unsubstantiated) that plans are already in the works for 2024.
"breathtakingly irresponsible" is The Don's middle name. While the likes of Gen. Kelly and Gen. Mattis were giving him a fig leaf of cover, I seriously worried that he would use his status of commander-in-chief to put the military between a rock and a hard place. But then he dissed one too many people with stars on their shoulders and honored several too many 8-balls, and even he knows that horse won't go to the gate. I suspect that's why he created that Graustarkian strike force of boys with boots and guns playing soldier. I really worry more about the Kool-Aid krowd than the chief kleagle himself now.
ReplyDeleteThe bigger his loss, the quieter his departure should be. If it's close, 2021 will be a very bad year. If he wins, I imagine most of us will end up behind barbed wire.
My wife points out that he initiated this Tweet on the day the numbers show that all the growth he was going to run on has been wiped out since March and the COVID-19 death toll, which he once said might reach 100,000 but probably wouldn't, reached 150,000.
DeleteAny distraction in a mud storm.
I don't know about barbed wire, but I think it would lead to us being a real third world country. Venezuela, move over.
DeleteActually, Tom might be right about the barbed wire too.
DeleteThis is Henry Olsen in the Washington Post. I am told that he has been carrying water for Trump for the last four years:
ReplyDelete"President Trump’s tweet Thursday morning suggesting that the November election should be delayed is more than reckless and irresponsible. It is the single most anti-democratic statement any sitting president has ever made. It should be immediately, forcefully and vocally repudiated by every conservative and Republican.
"I do not write these words lightly. I have generally supported the Trump administration’s policies. Everyone has disagreements even with leaders of their own party, but I remain what I was before Trump was even a candidate — a conservative Republican with populist leanings. Were this election solely a matter of Trump’s platform vs. former vice president Joe Biden’s, I would enthusiastically back the Trump agenda.
"But Trump’s tweet jumps the shark in so many ways that it is impossible to ignore. Such a statement should be unthinkable (in fact, I assumed it was unthinkable, which is why I strongly criticized Biden in April when he claimed without evidence that Trump would try to delay the election)."
As a daily Post reader, I admit that I was shocked by Olsen's column. He has always been a true blue defender of all actions and words Trump.
ReplyDeleteSome say the entire thins was simply part of the grand strategy of laying the groundwork to claim election fraud. Setting the stage.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/31/trump-rigged-election-campaign-strategy-388884
Govern DeWine usually carefully sidesteps all questions that would put him at odds with Trump, usually saying something like he has enough to handle as governor of Ohio. Seemed to me a clear message to Trump supporters to stay clear of the election fraud strategy.
ReplyDeleteYet when asked about the November election being delayed, and while carefully sidestepping any direct comment on Trump, DeWine said not only that there were no foreseeable circumstances for that to happen but also that Ohio has an extremely good elections system including absentee balloting without any need for excuse, which was fully participated in and monitored by both parties. He also said that everyone has faith in the system and accepts its result even when they do not agree with the voters.
Good for De Wine! He sounds like someone I'd like to see living along Pennsylvania Ave in DC in four years or so.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete