*Election – Page 18 – * Failed Pols

The Republicans are having a difficult time with 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s pick of Kamala Harris as his running mate. She’s formidable, and she’s a woman (two characteristics that, together, offend the sensibilities of a few in the GOP), but the issue is that they can’t agree on how best to attack Kamala Harris.

To the party of Trump (and we should note here that there are Republicans who would like to distance themselves from the party of Trump), Harris is all at once a socialist and a sellout to Wall Street. She is a moderate (which, to many Republicans, means she is without principles), at the same time that she is a radical extreme leftist. She is too tough on crime, but she’s too weak on crime. Donald Trump has been less analytical, placing Harris into the category of other intelligent and assertive women like Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton, whom he calls “nasty.”

When Joe Biden first announced Kamala Harris as his running mate, some Trumpers gleefully pointed out the disapproval from the far left because she isn’t progressive enough.

“Bernie Bros get burnt!” Tweeted Brad Parscale, a Trump campaign aide.

Immediately following the announcement of Harris as Joe Biden’s pick, some right-wing pundits were warning about a hostile extreme liberal takeover of the Democratic Party.

“Kamala Harris’ extreme positions … show that the left-wing mob is controlling Biden’s candidacy, just like they would control him as president,” said Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

That the Republican Party would float the idea of “left-wing mob control” of Biden and Harris is in keeping with the party’s increasing slant to the far right, which fits well with its bent for supporting conspiracy theories.

For other Trumpers, the fact that financial advisory firms such as Signum Global have started telling clients that Biden’s choice of Harris reinforces the notion that the Democratic ticket is more moderate than progressive is a sign that progressives will be disenchanted with the Democratic ticket.

But wait— Other Trumpers are saying that Harris wants to turn the Democratic Party toward socialism (a concept they appear not to understand).

On the Wednesday following the announcement of Kamala Harris on Biden’s ticket, Vice President Mike Pence, in a fundraising email, wrote, “From the very first day of this Administration, President Trump has set our Nation on a path to freedom and opportunity. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would set America on the path of SOCIALISM and DECLINE.”

Speaking of takeovers, the Republican Party seems to have been taken over by people who don’t know much about history or political science.

Quick to depict Kamala Harris as a radical lefty, they have posited that in Kamala Harris, the far left has infiltrated the Democratic Party. Not only that, but Joe Biden, they hint, is little more than a puppet controlled by the radical left.

David Bossie, Trump’s 2016 deputy campaign manager, thinks both Biden and Harris are malleable. In a recent op-ed piece, Bossie wrote, “Make no mistake about it, if elected, this weak Democratic duo will aid and abet the radical socialists and anarchists at every turn…Americans must reject Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their dangerous ideology.”

CNN contributor Scott Jennings, a former special assistant to President George W. Bush and a former campaign adviser to Sen. Mitch McConnell, writes, “Her politics— liberal with more than a hint of authoritarianism (think of her attempts to get Donald Trump banned fro Twitter) sprinkled in for good measure— fit well on a national ticket trending hard towards both.” Jennings ignores the fact that his party supports a president who regularly defies the checks and balances of the federal government, wants to hobble the U.S. Postal Service in order to interfere with the presidential election, and fires government officials just for disagreeing with him.

Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson, on the other hand, knows that hate and love are just two sides of the same emotion, so instead, he chose an attempt at indifference by simply trying to diminish Harris. In a monologue on his Fox News show last week, he not only dismissed the correct pronunciation of Kamala Harris’ name, he said this: “So, it seemed inconceivable that given his current state, Joe Biden would choose someone so transparently one-dimensional as Kamala Harris, someone as empty as he is. It would be the first entirely hollow presidential ticket in American history and we thought it could never happen. But it is. They’re doing it anyway.”

Still other members of the Party of Trump have taken to insulting Harris by making a show of being insulted by her. On Fox News host Jeanine Pirro’s show, Lara Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, who is married to Eric Trump, and who spearheaded the Women for Trump tour, said, “I for one was insulted when months ago Joe Biden came out and he said, ‘Guess what? It’s going to be a woman who’s my running mate.’ Let’s not worry about qualifications, let’s not worry about what they bring to the table. If these people want to stand up for equality, people in this country will never be fully equal in their eyes until they stop pandering for votes and playing identity politics.

“It didn’t even matter who it was going to be,” Lara Trump concluded. “Women were already insulted.”

As if to demonstrate that she wasn’t too passionate about Kamala Harris, she did what appears to have become a standard move by the right to show disregard for Harris: she mispronounced Kamala Harris’ name.

Kamala Harris is neither a radical left-wing extremist, nor a socialist, nor a noncommittal people-pleaser. Nor is she a token. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden’s “dangerous ideology” talks of a future, and their ideal for the American experience in that future, where groups of people are not marginalized; where Americans can earn a living wage, and where they can have access to affordable health care. The party of Trump, on the other hand, hopes for a future that is dangerous to everyone but straight white folks; one that looks like its version of an idealized past, where white heterosexual people are in power and everyone else “keeps their place;” and where no one gets help or health care or food that they may not “deserve.”

Americans are free to disagree with Kamala Harris’ platform, but she is clear on what she stands for. The party of Trump has a platform that is not based on what it stands for, but what it is against.

Republicans Struggle To React To Kamala Harris As VP Pick | TODAY
[2020-08-13]

Republicans Can’t Agree On How To Attack Kamala As Biden/Harris Make 1st Appearance | Roland S. Martin. [2020-08-13]

For months, Donald Trump has promoted his conspiracy theory that voting by mail leads to “widespread voter fraud.” Analyses of past elections indicate that he is wrong. Nevertheless, Trump maintains that if a large number of Americans vote by mail in the 2020 presidential election, the election will be illegitimized. As he pushes his narrative, Trump, himself, is attempting to cheat possibly millions of voters out of their right and access to vote during a pandemic that would otherwise force voters to choose between risking infection at the polls and staying home. The White House’s efforts to obstruct mail-in voting, however, may go beyond simply preaching and tweeting against it.

The U.S. Postal Service has a new Postmaster General, Trump loyalist Louis DeJoy. DeJoy has no experience as a letter carrier or postal service employee, unlike Postmasters General who preceded him, but he is a top Trump donor. If that’s not worrisome, we have only to consider the other heavy donors Trump has appointed to top government positions for which they had no background experience, including Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Dr. Ben Carson.

In addition, DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Wos, have some stakes in several Postal Service competitors, including United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS). In some other sectors, this might be called conflict of interests. But this is the Trump administration.

We can hardly be surprised that Postmaster General DeJoy wants to dramatically reform the U.S. Postal Service, ostensibly in the name of efficiency. One of his first changes will be to eliminate overtime for hundreds of thousands of U.S. postal workers, even though he knows that it will cause delays in mail delivery. DeJoy also plans to cut services and reduce hours of operation at some post offices, as well as close a number of others.

The U.S. Postal Service’s finances have been strained for years, and the coronavirus pandemic has placed an additional burden on it. The coronavirus relief package that Congress passed in March, however, authorized the U.S. Postal Service to borrow up to $10 billion from the U.S. Treasury to maintain essential services during the pandemic. Though the agency operates independently of the federal government, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin led efforts by the White House to persuade the Postal Service to agree to greater presidential control in exchange for the federal bailout funding. Incidentally, the president has expressed his contempt for the U.S. Post Office, referring to it as a “joke.”

The coronavirus pandemic has led to a surge in mail-in voting in this year’s elections. During the spring primary elections, absentee ballots were up exponentially from previous years. With no foreseeable end to the spread of the virus by November, even more voters are expected to cast their ballots by mail, and many states want to facilitate this.

Most states already allow some type of mail-in voting. Republicans fear that it favors Democrats, but according to data, it has not historically provided either party with an advantage. At the same time, increased voter turnout tends to benefit Democrats, and voting by mail will make it easer to vote, thus increasing voter turnout. Trump has clearly been made aware of this.

The president knows he lags significantly behind his opponent, Joe Biden, in most presidential polls. His attempts now to portray mail-in voting as fraught with cheating and fraud are setting the stage for Trump’s intention to discredit the election should he lose.

This week, Trump realized that his efforts to interfere with mail-in voting might work too well, where some of his supporters are concerned. Fearing a situation in November where the coronavirus would keep them home on Election Day, Trump amended his crusade against mail-in voting. He urged GOP voters in Florida and Arizona, only, to cast their ballots by mail, saying, in effect, “It doesn’t work well in most places, except in Florida and Arizona.” Both states have Republican governors.

In contrast, the Trump administration is suing Democrat-run Nevada over its plan to allow universal mail-in voting, saying Nevada is “unprepared.”

“Even if Nevada wanted to do it well, they wouldn’t have enough time. I’m sure the post office doesn’t have enough time. Millions of ballots all of a sudden coming out of nowhere? You know, voting starts in a very short period of time.”

If voters and their governors can’t be discouraged from mailing in their votes during the 2020 election, some lawmakers fear that the U.S. Postal Service, itself, could interfere with election integrity. Postal workers will continue doing their best to get mail to its destination as quickly as possible. The new boss that Trump has appointed for them, however, could slow things down considerably.

Without specifically naming Donald Trump or Louis DeJoy, former President Barack Obama, during his eulogy for the late congressman John Lewis, warned of the current attack on voting rights that is being conducted “with surgical precision, even undermining the Postal Service in the run-up to an election that is going to be dependent on mailed-in ballots so people don’t get sick.”

With DeJoy’s postal reforms just in time for the November election, imagine a surge of ballots lying on the floors of post offices across the country and missing their deadlines or timelines because postal workers are no longer allowed to work overtime to process them in a timely manner. Imagine low-income rural voters, such as those in West Virginia, where DeJoy plans to close a number of post offices, unable to get to a nearby post office to ensure a timely postmark on their ballots. Imagine bundles of ballots from certain areas of the country being altogether mysteriously “misplaced.”

Since many states don’t currently accept mail-in ballots unless they arrive by Election Day (even if postmarked before Election Day), on-time delivery will be crucial to this election. If ballots miss deadlines despite voters’ doing all they can to ensure timely arrival, voters will have been disenfranchised. As head of the U.S. Postal Service, Louis DeJoy has the authority and duty to ensure that voters who cast their votes with mail-in ballots are not deprived of their right to vote. But, as stated earlier, this is the Trump administration.

Let’s Talk Trump’s Appointment of Postmaster General DeJoy and the Elements of Criminal Conspiracy | Glenn Kirschner [2020-08-04]

How Trump Is Slowing Down The Post Office In The Year Of The Mail-In Ballot | All In | MSNBC [2020-07-29]

Category: *Election

Editorial: Republicans Can’t Agree on How Best to Malign Kamala Harris

Editorial: If Trump Can’t Stop Mail-in Voting, His New Postmaster Could Slow It Down