15 Comments

Three things don't make sense to me in your analysis.

1. If someone believes that voter fraud can be proven, in whose interest is it to drop the case? The public's? Undoubtedly a majority of people now believe their vote is not counted fairly since 40% of Americans believed that in 2018 when only 9% of Republicans believed it. It seems to me you are underestimating how serious this is to the American people and our democracy.

2. The filibuster now is almost a dead letter with Democrats and Republicans eliminating it almost at will. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/filibuster-or-bust-how-the-senate-could-get-rid-of-the-filibuster/ It seems "saving" it is not a real option for the minority, and it's not a useful tool for the majority.

3. How does Trump's legal case make Loeffler and Perdue lose? Unless you believe a wave of Democrats who didn't vote in November will rise up in Georgia because of their anger at the legal case.

Of course, legal cases can have political impact, but to not pursue legal action against fraud just to win politically seems a distortion of everything one wants in a just society.

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I'd like to address number 3. As long as Trump remains committed to this Quixotic effort to steal the election and deny what everyone knows to be the truth the Republicans can't use their best argument for voting Republican on January 5; Purdue and Loffler will be needed to thwart the potential excesses of a Biden presidency. You can't campaign against a reality you deny.

Oh, an L. Lin Wood today recommended voting against Purdue and Loffler because they are not sufficiently loyal to Donald Trump. Does this sound rational to you?

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Next Move: The good people of Georgia should demand a special session of the Georgia legislature to fix the loopholes before the Democrats try to " steal" the Senate seats.

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This is a very sensible argument. We'll keep an eye on it.

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the president does not care about the senate - he cares about Trump.

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Once again a live demonstration of why character matters in the life of a policy maker. David Barton ( and people like him) has bleated on and on about the necessity of separating " personality" from policy when making political choices ( the exact opposite position of the Clinton years by the way ). The truth is that " personality " is a deliberately misleading term. The word " CHARACTER " is the correct term. And these must not be mutually exclusive. If they are , as you have just demonstrated, any good gains will be at serious risk of loss because they were not based in principled judgement but rather political selfishness. Character mattered in 1998, it matters now, it will matter in the future.

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Character in policy making left the building a long time ago. Many years before Trump.

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Unfortunately once again - you are correct.

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Thank you so much and Happy Thanksgiving to you & your family!

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There is only one court case that counts in lawsuits for a Presidential election and for Trump to win his lawyers knew beforehand that it would require a unanimous verdict of 5 justices (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett). One doesn't have to be a Biblical prophet to reach that conclusion. And if Trump was winning lower court cases, the same 5 people would make the final decision, as the Democrats would also appeal to the happy/bitter end. The Supreme Court will ultimately make the decision to either take a case or let lower court rulings stand. According to the rule of law, the time to move on is when all appeals have been exhausted, and the highest court has issued its ruling.

Alan Dershowitz believes Trump has two strong cases that could win at the Supreme Court if they could prove enough votes were in play to change election results: 1) That judges in PA (not the legislature) changed the law allowing ballots to be received after election day. 2) That PA voters were disenfranchised by different ballot curing processes. Consequently, in Dershowitz's opinion, the PA election was not constitutionally fair, even if Trump cannot prove that a fair election would have produced a different result. Thus, unfair elections are likely to continue because in the time allowed to prove massive fraud, it is a virtually impossible task.

Apart from these issues and Sidney Powell's claims of PA voter fraud, I believe the biggest questions of voter fraud involved the checks for legality and illegality of mail-in ballots. As a PA voter, I feel disenfranchised because it was clearly the case that observers were largely prevented from doing any kind of meaningful observation of this process. So it is not the case that one can honestly say that no fraud occurred. Rather, in many cases, the evidence for this type of voter fraud was never truly evaluated by somebody who had the interest and staff to perform this task. For example in GA, this is Erick's quote from his "Nope" post:  "[the]state began examining signatures before the election and the Trump team and Republican Party of Georgia did not object, observe, or care." In other words, in GA no investigation was truly made to ascertain whether illegal ballots were lawfully discarded. And in this election the rejection rate for illegal ballots was often 10x or more lower than in prior elections, suggesting that this is an issue anybody who really wanted a fair verdict of the extent of election fraud would seriously look into.

In all the battleground states, the Democrats have intensely fought any effort to match signatures as this was often the only method used to verify ballots are legal/illegal. Just as there is a home field/court advantage in sports, there is likely a home field/court advantage in deciding which ballots are legal/illegal. One doesn't have to be entirely intent on cheating to have bias have some impact on critical decisions, just like a referee/umpire may see bang-bang calls differently depending on if he wants one side to win (and very many people want one side to win in any competition, especially in close political elections).

Erick is already seeking to blame Trump for possibly losing the Senate elections in GA, but Trump doesn't have a vote in GA, and GA Senate election results will be determined by 2 factors: 1. Voters choices. 2. A fair count of only legal votes as provided by GA election authorities. Trump is not responsible for either of these factors. Erick may want Trump to give up his legal rights to contest what the vast majority of his 73 million voters consider as an unfair election. People of Erick's mindset may indeed give the Senate to the Democrats just as many of them sought to give the Presidency to the Democrats. The bottom line is that voters who chose Democrats and/or election officials who arguably created a system that didn't reject illegal ballots would be the true culprits of any Democratic victory. While God may appoint political leaders (such as Senators), his appointments are not necessarily independent of the wise/foolish choices of people voting to elect their political leaders. If God's sovereignty is the sole determining factor in who he appoints with political power, the alleged fault of Trump choosing to exercise the full extent of his legal rights is a complete non-factor in the GA Senate race. Erick cannot have the theology of God's sovereignty both ways - either it is completely independent of human actions or God takes into account human actions in making his sovereign decisions, as he did with abandoning his threat to destroy Nineveh (Jonah 3:10).

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Dershowitz. Hahaha

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The five names whose opinions most matter are Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Dershowitz is not on that list of names, but nobody who is on that list of names is commenting as they all believe in not judging a case before seeing all the evidence - which is the classic definition of prejudice. Dershowitz (like Jonathan Turley) tilts strongly Democratic in his political views, but both are recognized experts in constitutional law, and both seek to call legal balls and strikes without prejudice. Both believe that Trump is entitled to the same legal rights as any other citizen, regardless of one's opinion about the merits of his case. You are free to have a contrary opinion, as everybody is. But opinions are like posterior orifices and most everybody has at least one.

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I think it’s cute the way you think the president gives a rat’s ass about the country or the GOP.

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I think that it is laughable that anyone would think the dems care about anything but power and filling their pockets.

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Amen. If you ever find yourself in Senioa again, I would love to buy you a cup of coffee. I live in the area.

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