Debates? Huh! What's It Good For? Absolutely Nothin'

President Biden and Former President Trump are both being criticized for not participating in debates in preparation for the presidential primaries. Traditionally, incumbent presidents haven't done so. In the case of former presidents, there haven't been any precedents in the modern era, but it's reasonable for Trump to demur - we shouldn't have any doubt as to his positions on anything - the man never shuts up. 

But is the presidential debate, at least in its current form, good for anything? I think the obvious answer is "no". 

Firstly, the "debates" are not really debates. At best, the moderator asks a question and the candidate does his or her best to respond with a rambling non-answer. The tougher the question, the more obfuscating the response. The only real useful information is if the candidate's answer reveals ignorance of the subject. Otherwise we're getting canned mini-speeches that we've already heard in interviews, rallies and other public appearances. 

But how else are we going to find out about a candidates fitness for office? Well, we don't find out now, as I have said. When we have people running for high office with zero political experience, we're going to get an unknown quantity, no matter how well, or how poorly they do in a debate. When a senator or governor is running for president, they have a record to run on - either their knowledge of foreign policy or the big national issues in the case of a senator, or the ability to work with a legislature and oversee a bureaucracy in the case of a governor. Running a business is a completely different skill set with entirely different consequences for getting things wrong. 

The way debates have devolved into "gotcha" sessions has just made things worse. Candidate Trump turned the Republican primary debates in 2015 and 2016 into a circus. Voters responded to crude put-downs over reasoned policy positions. 

Granted, determining who will be the best candidate is difficult. There's a lot of information, misinformation and disinformation to sort through. The current two-party system, where everyone is funneled through the two major parties doesn't make it any easier. But let's stop pretending that debates mean anything.

False equivalency: abortion rights & vaccinations

Scrolling through "X" (the site formerly known as Twitter) and came across this nonsense: 

I was talking to a friend on the phone and she said she could never vote Republican because they want to take away abortion.”

I said “what’s so horrible about that?”

She said women should have the right to decide what happens to their own bodies.

ME: Did you feel that way when the government FORCED you to wear a mask and get the vaccine? HER: That was different, that was saving lives.

ME: Not killing unborn babies is saving lives too.

SILENCE.

Lavern Spicer is a Black woman running as a Republican for a House seat from Florida. She's what the Republicans love: someone from a traditionally Democratic demographic who is conservative and pushes pro-Trump, pro-conservative, politics. Of course no demographic is going to be a voting monolith. But it seems to me that the small number of Black conservatives someone how think that they speak for the masses who vote differently. But I didn't come here this morning to talk about Black Republicans, but the disingenuous argument many conservatives you to counter the pro-choice argument of "my body, my choice". 

Keep in mind that the anti-abortion movement has never been concerned about a woman's right to control what happens to her own body. Most conservatives, until the rollout of the Covid vaccine, never had a problem with mandatory vaccination. In most school districts proof of vaccination for mumps, rubella  and measles is required and the military has a longer list of required vaccinations. Other than a fringe movement of anti-vaxxers, most people had no problem with getting themselves or their children vaccinated. Most people trusted the medical consensus that universal, or near universal, vaccination against some diseases was in the public interest, and went along. Most people didn't demand to know what was in the MMR vaccine or refuse to get vaccinated because they didn't understand how it worked. 

Any time an anti-abortion advocate brings up this argument, pro-choice people should refuse to engage. It's a rhetorical trap. They didn't care about anyone's bodily autonomy until masking became mandatory in public spaces, and the whole question of to-mask-or-not-to-mask became political and infected by the fringe conspiracy theorists. How would I respond to the following question?

Them: Did you feel that way when the government FORCED you to wear a mask and get the vaccine?

Me: That's a red herring. You're making a bad faith argument. You want to engage me in a discussion about abortion? If so, I'm not going to respond to goalpost moving and false equivalencies. 

How about the follow up?

Them: Not killing unborn babies is saving lives too.

This is an anti-abortion cheerleader's go-to response to anything. Any Democratic Party supported program that purports to help people, especially children, is met with that response. We supposedly don't care about children because we support killing them. The anti-abortion folks count on this response shutting us up. Of course killing babies is wrong. How could anyone argue with that? They maintain that "science" has proved that a fetus is alive. But is that relevant? Sperm is alive, an ovum is alive, cancer cells are alive. The question is whether a fetus is a person. And the answer to that cannot be determined by science. It's an opinion, mostly driven by religious belief. Catholics and Protestant Evangelicals believe that a fetus is a person starting at conception. Other Christians, not to mention members of other faiths and people with no faith, believe differently. The position that a fetus is a person, or not a person, is a religiously-based opinion which those with different opinions should not be compelled to abide by. 

So the response should be: whether or not a fetus is a "baby" is your opinion, likely based on your religious faith, which I am under no obligation to share. Whether a pregnant woman is a person is not disputed, so her opinion is the only one that should carry any weight.  

Don't let them define the boundaries of the discussion. 

Losin' Donnie's Latest Indictment

Gaslighting and whataboutism continue unabated! 

I know I have discussed Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election previously, but in light of the latest criminal indictment, it's time to revisit the whole sordid mess. 

Let's start out by stating that it's always appropriate to insist on recounts in close elections. Some of the states in 2020 had margins of victory that fell within the statutory requirements for a recount. It's also always appropriate to point out problems: voter suppression, disinformation, issues with voting machines or procedural quirks. If there are problems we should want to fix them. And there have been instances other than the 2020 election where legitimate issues were raised, and others where there was pure grandstanding.

In 2018 Stacey Abrams ran for governor of Georgia. During the run up to the election and afterwards, Abrams accused Kemp, her opponent, of voter suppression. At the time Kemp was the Georgia Secretary of State, the official who oversaw elections in the state. While Abrams stated that Kemp was "not a legitimate governor", accusing him of cheating and rigging the election, she eventually moderated her rhetoric and founded Fair Fight Action, an advocacy group for fair election laws, achieving significant changes in the way Georgia's elections were run, including the methods which the Secretary of State's office maintained voter rolls. 

In 1960 Vice President Nixon was running for president against Senator John Kennedy. It was clear that Kennedy had won the election, the only state's electoral votes that were in doubt were Hawaii's. The initial count showed Nixon winning by around 140 votes, which triggered an automatic recount. However, the cutoff date for states to cast their electoral votes had arrived, so the 3 Republican electors cast their votes for Nixon. At the same time, the Democratic elector-nominees also met and armed with documents claiming that Kennedy had won the state, signed the paperwork and sent it off to Washington as if Kennedy had prevailed. The difference between 1960 and 2020 was that a recount was still underway in Hawaii, which Kennedy ended up winning. The Democratic electors then submitted a new set of documents. In addition, a judge in Hawaii ruled that the newest set of electoral votes were valid and they were certified by the Republican governor. 

Republican Representative Lee Zeldin charged that Democrats, in every recent election when a Republican was the winner, Democrats objected to the certifying of electoral votes. This is partially true, in that Democratic House members objected to certifying some votes in the 2000, 2004 and 2016 elections, only in 2004 was there a Senator who joined in. The objections went nowhere. In each case the losing Democratic candidate had conceded. 

The 2000 election garnered the most complaints by Democrats, mainly due to the action by the Supreme Court stopping a recount in Florida. The problems with Florida's ballots, it's tabulating processes and alleged voter suppression are too numerous to go into now, but suffice it to say many Democrats were unhappy with the decision by the Supreme Court to end manual recounts in several counties. There were challenges to certifying Florida's electoral votes, as well as accusations by many Democrats that Bush was an illegitimate president. 

In 2016 there was clear evidence of Russian attempts to influence the election in favor of Trump, confirmed by the Mueller Report, although there was no evidence that the Russians took any action to change votes or hack voting machines. Nonetheless many Democrats claimed that Clinton would have won absent that interference. Despite that belief Clinton conceded and accepted the results of the election. 

In all of the above examples, and many others that I have not mentioned, including objections by Republicans, the losing candidate, as well as the vast majority of the losing party, made no organized or significant attempts to change the results of the election. In most instances the majority of Americans were unaware of the sour grapes complaining by losing candidates and their supporters. Any challenges to vote totals or objections addressed specific problems with the voting. The difference with the 2020 election are several.

The attempt to subvert the democratic process predated the actual election by many months. Long before the first vote was cast Trump was claiming, very publicly, and without evidence, that the election would be rigged against him. He refused to answer questions about his willingness to ensure a peaceful transition if he lost. He used this same tactic in 2016, but he won, obviating any need to push that narrative. The months leading up to Election Day were an unending litany of nebulous accusations questioning the integrity of the election process, insisting that the only way he could lose the election was if it were rigged against him. He alleged repeatedly that mail-in and early voting, which had been expanded due to the pandemic were not only subject to manipulation, but were guaranteed to be hijacked by his opponents. 

None of this was born out by any evidence. How could there be? The election hadn't happened yet. 

One of the results of Trump's attack on the integrity of early and mail-in voting was that his supporters mostly opted to vote in person on Election Day, while many Democrats availed themselves of the alternative methods. This led to the entirely predictable scenario where in-person ballots, which in most states had to be counted before any absentee, early, or mail-in votes, showed an early lead for Trump in the so-called battleground states. The equally predictable, and predicted, outcome was that Trump's lead began to erode as the Biden-heavy ballots from before Election Day began to be tallied. This was when the first of Trump's concrete actions to subvert the democratic process made its appearance. 

Seeing his lead erode as the night moved on Trump made public statements calling for the vote counting to be stopped, claiming that only votes counted on Election Day were valid. He claimed that thousands of votes were "dumped" into the count in several states, implying that they were "fake" ballots. He asked aides to "just announce that I won, and I'll do the rest". He then embarked on a two-prong attack on the election results. He used his bully pulpit to assert that he had not in fact lost, that he won the election, "by a lot" or even "by a landslide". He pointed fingers at "crooked" election officials, the Democratic Party, and the media, accusing all of them of conspiring against him. If I haven't mentioned yet that there was no evidence...well, there was not a shred of evidence. He also sent his lawyers into courthouses around the country challenging the results, mainly in the close states where he lost. Despite his chest thumping about a rigged election, none of the lawyers alleged fraud, what they were challenging were a variety of procedural and legal issues. They alleged that Pennsylvania's mail-in voting regulations were illegal, which if they had won the case, tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians' votes would have been thrown out.  In many of the cases what was alleged as suspect practices were in fact normal and routine (and secure) vote counting and ballot handling procedures. In others their allegations were based not on something that had been observed to have occured, but speculation on what could have happened. 

In December Trump moved on from court cases to attempting to directly overturn the election. He contacted Republicans across the country, urging them to reverse their states certification. A publicized phone call to Georgia Governor Kemp indicates that he asked the governor to "find" precisely the number of votes that would make him the winner in Georgia. A conference call with over 300 Republican officials has him asking for them to find ways to reverse their states certification of the results. He received the cooperation of nearly 150 Republican members of Congress who would object to the certification of the electoral votes of states where Trump lost a close race. On that same day that Congress was tasked with formally accepting the states' electoral votes, Trump held a rally where he whipped his supporters into a frenzy, pushing them to take back the country, to march on the Capitol and make their voices heard. In retrospect his supporters point to one phrase in his speech where he urges them to do it "peacefully and patriotically" as some kind of exoneration, which in context is more like a "who shall rid me of this turbulent priest?" moment. But he's not been indicted for inciting the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

The previous examples of groups or individuals contesting or refusing to accept election results, or claiming winners to be illegitimate, in my opinion were sore loser scenarios, where no substantive attempt was made to change the results. In contrast, Trump did more than just complain, he took concrete steps to overturn an election that he unquestionably lost. That he knew he lost. He has been charged with conspiring to defraud the United States by way of undermining the election results; the method for doing this that he is charged with is knowingly using false claims of election fraud. Here is the entire indictment https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23893878-trump-dc-indictment

Between now and the trial we will be subject to a tsunami of false claims, gaslighting, rewriting of history and everyone's favorite - whataboutism, to show that Trump was justified in his actions because the election was stolen. That he was acting within his rights constitutionally and morally. But it comes down to the fact that there isn't and never has been any evidence that there was election fraud and Trump knew it, if there had been his lawyers would have presented that evidence in court. 

Do I think it's a slam dunk that he will be convicted? Or if convicted he'll see one day in prison? The jury very literally is out on those questions. But it's way past time that the legal system is addressing Trump's scofflaw ways.