CBS News – Page 4 – * Failed Pols

As I write this, the world is still awaiting the results of the 2020 Presidential election. Even before the winner is called, and no matter whether it is Joe Biden (who at this moment looks promising) or Donald Trump, the overall results have been a little disturbing. It is genuinely surprising how much of the country wants Donald Trump to remain their president for four more years.

Many Americans (a lot of us thought it was most Americans) couldn’t wait for the opportunity to elect Joe Biden to replace Donald Trump and stop the national bleeding that has resulted from an administration defined by corruption, lies, divisiveness, recklessness, and gross mismanagement of a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. Record voter turnouts were encouraging. Lifelong Republicans in droves were declaring their intention to vote for Joe Biden, and even many prominent Republicans endorsed Biden.

Yet, on Election Night, the news networks’ Magic Walls and prediction maps lit up in red, one state after another, showing Donald Trump as the winner for those states. It’s always true that some states will vote predominantly red, while others vote predominantly blue; that’s democracy in action. During this, The Most Important Election of Our Lifetimes, then, why have so many people voted to keep a man in office who has shown a keen interest in eliminating as much of our democracy as possible?

Polls showed that the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic was a big factor in how Americans planned to vote. According to those polls, most Americans aren’t happy with how Donald Trump has managed the pandemic, and feel Joe Biden would do a better job of it. Though we can’t ignore that fact that millions of votes did reflect this, for an alarming number of other Americans, the over 224,000 deaths, the millions of positive cases, and the president’s reckless super-spreader rallies, weren’t a problem.

When Americans elected Donald Trump in 2016, it might have been understandable that they wanted a change from politics as usual, and saw that in Trump. They’d try him out, and if it didn’t work out, then, in four years, another president could be elected instead. It might have been excusable that some of them were desperate about their jobs or their futures, and saw hope in Donald Trump. Others believed his convenient claim of being “pro-life,” and that’s all that mattered to them. And some, we know, liked Trump’s message of racism and xenophobia disguised as “America First” and “Law and Order,” which made them, at last, feel safe to come out of the shadows and express their own racism and xenophobia. Many were in all three pro-Trump camps.

Desperation and hope are understandable. “But the economy” is perhaps a valid argument until we consider all of the integrity and decency that Trump voters have been willing to disregard and overlook for its sake. What’s more, it’s been four years, and many of those desperate people who voted for Trump are still waiting for “the economy” to work for them.

Donald Trump has shown who he is, and his loyalists have shown who they really are. The “let’s see what happens” approach to Trump as president has expired. We’ve seen what has happened: the division, the open corruption of the adminstration, the rollback of many Obama-era environmental protections, the rise (or at least the increased boldness) of white supremacists and right-wing militia groups, the death and tragedy from an unmanaged pandemic, the open racism and xenophobia, the stamp of approval on misogyny. After four years of all this, an alarming number of Americans have demonstrated that they have no problem with any of it.

Numerous high-ranking former military officers have condemned Trump’s misuse of the military to squelch freedoms and further his own political interests.

Following Trump’s stunt in June, 2020, where he used the military to break up a peaceful demonstration in response to the police killing of George Floyd, then posed in front of church with a Bible for a photo-op, Marine Corps General John Allen, former commander of US forces in Afghanistan under Obama, said, “Donald Trump isn’t religious, has no need of religion, and doesn’t care about the devout, except insofar as they serve his political needs…To even the casual observer, Monday was awful for the United States and its democracy. The president’s speech was calculated to project his abject and arbitrary power, but he failed to project any of the higher emotions or leadership desperately needed in every quarter of this nation during this dire moment.”

National security experts and former intelligence officials have warned that Trump is a threat to our national security in a variety of ways. Some of the ways Trump endangers the nation include his freewheeling granting of security clearance to others who may be national security threats; his cozying up to despotic strongmen such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping; and his replacement of experienced career diplomats in key global locations with inexperienced campaign donors. In addition, it was recently revealed that Trump has excessive financial debt to foreign countries.

David Kris, former head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division and founder of Culper Partners consulting firm, says, “For a person with access to U.S. classified information to be in massive financial debt is a counterintelligence risk because the debt-holder tends to have leverage over the person, and the leverage may be used to encourage actions, such as disclosure of information or influencing policy, that compromise U.S. national security.”

Perhaps most astonishing is the fact that even though Donald Trump has loudly signaled that he’d like to be a despotic ruler more than president of a democratic nation, the small-government, self-proclaimed rugged individualists who are his supporters are willing to enable him as he attains this career goal. They believed his threats of chaos, violence, loss of liberty, and even “socialism,” should he not get four more years in the White House, fearing for their democracy. Yet, they’re just fine with Trump’s claim of “absolute authority” as president, his attempts to silence the media, and his frequent abuses of office.

It’s true that Joe Biden has received more popular votes than any other candidate in American history, yet it’s dismaying how many Americans chose to cast their votes for Donald Trump. Whether it was in spite of who Trump is, or because of who he is, those voters have demonstrated clearly that they don’t have a problem with what Trump stands for, and how he treats other human beings.

If Joe Biden does become president, it will be a start toward ending the division in this country. The division, however, stems from something deeper than mere “political disagreement.” Friends and neighbors can agree to disagree. When it comes to human rights, treatment of others, and the safety of American lives, however, it is no longer a matter of political opinion, it is a matter of character. The 2020 Presidential Election revealed to us the disturbing fact that a large number of Americans align with the character of Donald Trump. Joe Biden, if elected to replace Donald Trump, has his work cut out for him. (P.S.: I believe he’s up to the task.)

How the world is reacting to the U.S. presidential election | CBS News
[2020-11-04]

Trump supporter leaves CNN anchor speechless | CNN [2016-10-10]

Voter intimidation and suppression are illegal, as is election tampering. Yet our current president continues to openly support and encourage all three, evidently in fear that those are the only ways to ensure that he wins re-election. In few areas are Trump’s authoritarian ambitions more apparent than in his efforts at voter suppression and intimidation, as well as election tampering; and even if some guns, harassment, or violence happen to be in the mix, so be it.

Donald Trump has insisted that the only way he will lose the 2020 presidential election is if the Democrats cheat. Having already nursed his supporters’ distrust of anyone but himself and those associated with him, Trump has also persuaded his base to believe his narrative about election results. Trump’s desperate crafting of such an outcome expectation has set the stage for his supporters to refuse to accept any election outcome other than Trump’s re-election. This, in itself, is election tampering by Donald Trump. Cheating, even.

When it became clear that the coronavirus pandemic would stretch beyond the summer and into the time of the presidential election, it also became apparent that polling venues would be risky places to be on Election Day. Consequently, many states decided to make it easier for their residents to vote by mail in order to protect them from contracting the virus while voting, as well as make voting generally more accessible for every voter.

Donald Trump has used the situation as another opportunity to meddle with the election by insisting that voting by mail leads to widespread voter fraud. Though it’s true that more Democrats than Republicans vote by mail, both Republican-led and Democrat-led states have successfully carried out past elections that were largely by mail-in ballot, with negligible voter fraud. Trump, however, continues to try to promote mistrust in voting by mail, and his administration has initiated several lawsuits to try to stop voting by mail. If more voters vote (and more mail-in voting ensures that more voters will vote), it is a threat to a Trump victory.

Over the summer, as if to reinforce his scheme to prevent successful mail-in voting, Trump appointed top campaign donor Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General of the U.S. Postal Service. DeJoy soon issued “cost-savings measures” that included reductions in service; decommissioning of hundreds of mail sorting machines; removal of numerous blue mailboxes across the country; and abolishing the overtime needed to ensure that all of the day’s mail is processed and delivered in a timely manner. DeJoy’s actions brought into question whether he would, intentionally or unintentionally, prevent mail-in ballots from arriving in time to be counted in the election.

Following challenges by Congress and by consumers, DeJoy pulled back on his plan to continue decommissioning postal machines and removing mailboxes. By that time, however, many machines had already been taken out of service, and many mailboxes had already been removed. Further, many Americans’ faith in the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail-in ballots on time had been eroded.

For those who will not be casting their votes by mail, the polling places have begun to open for early voting. As evidenced by the hours-long lines of voters waiting to cast their votes, Donald Trump’s efforts have not squelched voter enthusiasm, nor have they prevented votes from being cast in any fashion.

As Donald Trump has seen that nothing will deter voters from voting in the 2020 election, he has now called for an army of his supporters to deem themselves “poll watchers,” and go to voting places to “watch very carefully” as voters exercise their right to vote.

“I’m urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully because that’s what has to happen,” Said Trump at his first presidential debate against former Vice President Joe Biden. “I am urging them to do it.”

Sean Morales-Doyle, deputy director of the Brennan Center’s voting rights and elections program, has said that many states have laws that dictate who is allowed to be in a polling place at a given time, including who is permitted to be a poll watcher, and what a poll watcher is allowed to do.

“There are laws like this in many states,” says Morales-Doyle. “Regular citizens can’t just take it upon themselves to engage in this kind of poll watching, and for good reason, because it opens up the possibility of voter intimidation, of vigilantism, which the president is seemingly encouraging. But it is illegal.”

Many Democratic leaders and election officials, including Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, also fear voter intimidation, and particularly, suppression of Black voters and other voters of color. Ford tweeted that Trump wasn’t referring to standard poll watching, but instead was calling for “voter intimidation.”

“Voter intimidation is illegal in Nevada. Believe me when I say it: You do it, and you will be prosecuted,” said Ford.

“The President is openly urging his supporters to congregate at polling places, go inside, and ostensibly harass and intimidate voters,” said Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring. “While there are authorized ‘poll watchers’ who monitor polls on Election Day, their duties are clearly laid out, and they do not include what President Trump has suggested.”

During early voting at one location in Fairfax, Virginia, a group of about 50 Trump supporters gathered, waving Trump 2020 banners, wrapping themselves in American flags, and shouting, “Four more years! Four more years!” Though the group hadn’t violated any election laws, some voters felt threatened, and requested escorts into the building.

In Michigan, fearing that unauthorized “poll watching” by Trump’s supporters could turn violent, the state has banned open carry of guns at polling places on Election Day, as well as at places where absentee ballots are counted.

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said that the Michigan directive prohibits the open carry of firearms “in a polling place, in any hallway used by voters to enter or exit, or within 100 feet of any entrance to a building in which a polling place is located.”

Donald Trump would like to abolish “liberty and justice for all” by using his supporters, the very people who claim to wield their guns in support of “liberty and justice” (at least for some), to help him accomplish his goal. He has shown that he would do anything to prevent an election result that is not in his favor, including stopping the mail, and even postponing the election (which can’t be done without an act of Congress).

Trump may fantasize about winning re-election, no matter what, and he may fantasize even more about being an authoritarian leader, but Americans in large numbers have shown how dogged they are when it comes to the standing up against the attempts by the president and his enablers to prevent them from casting their votes in this election.

After all votes are counted, may the total be against the one who wanted to suppress and intimidate voters, and may it be in favor of the candidate who will work for “liberty and justice,” not just for some, but for all.

Trump’s “poll watcher” comments raise concerns about voter intimidation |
CBS News [2020-10-06]

Trump Supporters Disrupt Early Voting in Virginia | Now This News
[2020-09-22]

Category: CBS News

Editorial: The 2020 Presidential Election Reveals More Than Just “Differences of Opinion.”

Editorial: Voter Intimidation and Suppression are Illegal, and Our President Openly Encourages Both