FYI, the USPS is the #1 employer of US veterans. Virtually all mail-order prescriptions come through the Post, at a cost considerably less than other carriers. It’s vital to rural and indigenous communities.
Trump’s mail-in ballot is carried by the Post Office. So what if his ballot is slowed down and doesn’t get there in time?
The pandemic is essentially election gold for the Democrats. I’m a Trump supporter, but I believe Phil is entirely justified in taking the course he’s on. The justification? Safeguarding public health. And I think Phil will win in court, on that basis, if litigation ensues. The fact that exact same course also happens to bolster Democrat prospects is Trump’s tough luck.
Trump is in a vice and cannot win so long as the virus remains a legitimate threat . . . which it certainly is today.
Of course if the virus miraculously disappeared everything would change. But no such diminution of the virus appears today to be in the cards . . . . not here and not in a great many other countries, either.
Brief historical look at pandemic politics
If you think back to the last time anything akin to COVID-19 engulfed our country, it was the Spanish flu in 1918. But the timing vis a vis Presidential politics was entirely different than now:
By 1918 President Wilson had already won his reelection contest against Hughes, which took place back in 1916. So the Spanish outbreak was not the election dilemma for Wilson that today’s China virus is for Trump. This because of when the two viruses hit related to the two election cycles.
The Spanish flu was over by early 1920. I do not know what impact, if any, that pandemic had on the 1920 POTUS election. But I would note that the Republicans won in 1920 with Harding, and Harding was perhaps one of the worst Presidents of the last century. I do not know how good a campaigner he was, or whether the American people back then desired a change in party at the top owing to bitter experience with the flu during Wilson’s second term.
Gosh, President Trump’s younger brother has passed. The gentleman was only 72 years of age. He suffered a fall which resulted in a fatal brain bleed.
Have to wonder if the Democrats will seek to capitalize on this tragedy, suggesting Trump himself could be closer to kicking the bucket than many people might have believed prior . . . weakness running in the family, etc…
Also Trump was close to his younger brother so a bitter personal loss for the candidate himself. I guess there were three brothers and now Trump himself is the only one remaining. I think his two sisters are still alive.
???
Trump is already seen as in weaker health than Biden, and rightly so. Trump’s brother has nothing to do with it. Biden is only slightly older, but active and not obese. Trump is obese and his activity is limited to walking to and from a golf cart. He can’t even hold a bottle of water in one hand or walk down a ramp.
Then there’s all the behaviors that point to dementia… But I assume you were referring to physical weakness.
I am LMAO.
“One in 3 voters, 33 percent, rate Trump’s health as poor, while 27 percent of voters say Biden is in poor health. Forty percent of voters say the 74-year-old incumbent is in good or excellent health, compared with 39 percent for his 77-year-old challenger.”
Same with mental health (obviously, as Trump is incoherent and frequently can’t string more than three words together.). Yo, Semite? Plosma. We need plosma!
Edit: oops, I mean he can’t string more than five words together. “Person, woman, man, camera, TV” is five words. Although… There was that very awkward and long pause before he said “camera. TV.”
Obstructing the ability to vote of the American people is a crime at the federal level and in every state.
First, Trump’s throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of the Post Office is a likely unconstitutional infringement of state authority to run their own elections, in addition to being directly criminal.
Second, Trump is lying. We know he’s lying because countless studies have found mail-in voter fraud to be virtually nonexistent compared to the number of ballots cast, because it doesn’t even make sense as a way to commit election theft, and most of all because Trump himself has voted through the mail repeatedly — in 2017 and 2018 in New York, and just this week for the primary election in Florida. His argument is a scam and obviously so.
But that’s not all. It is a crime to interfere with the mail at all.
18 U.S. Code § 1701. Obstruction of mails generally
“Whoever knowingly and willfully obstructs or retards the passage of the mail, or any carrier or conveyance carrying the mail, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.”
Well yeah, its so criminal that ballots being mailed will…be delivered to their destination like they always have been. The Post Office has even proactively reminded states election officials to have realistic expectations regarding delivery times.
So hell-bent on the idea the Post Office is going to just start burning all the mail that comes through it.
Looks like the peaceful protestors got another one of those historical oppressors.
While we can’t possibly know what could have been, this is not a reasonable guess. Unlike the current administration, previous administrations had pandemic response plans and training. Add to that Trump’s habit of sidelining and undermining professionals, scientists, all of the media, etc. So the Trump administration probably handled it worse, not “as good as”.
Biden is ok riding his bike. He is showing dementia. Keeping him in the basement only hinders his ability to speak & answer questions.
Many medical doctors have talked within their circle of his signs of dementia. He needs to be tested & I’m sure that request is going to handled sooner or later.
Now I’m sure you Bendr, are going to try & compare this to Trump. Its NOT going to work. He has been POTUS for onward to 4 years. Promises made have been kept. The economy was tops before the pandemic & I think voters are smart enough to know the Trump is not to blame for the China virus…
The Sunday shows earlier today shed some light on vote by mail viability. Vote by mail IS viable. Certain states, Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, and perhaps one or two others, were among those states mentioned that will have no difficulty whatsoever with vote by mail this November.
But a really important point emerged:
It took the aforementioned states between three and eight years to iron out all the wrinkles and create a smooth vote by mail process. Doing so goes FAR beyond merely sending out and receiving ballots via the USPS. It instead comprises a multi-faceted SYSTEM which is needed to get everything right, and accurate, and achieve the desired end result.
For states with no mail-in voting experience whatsoever, starting from scratch, getting everything up and running in the space of only weeks will be impossible. It’s a process which should be begun using lower level elections first to assist in climbing the learning curve. Kicking off mail in voting with a Presidential election is insanity.
Trump as usual has the messaging on this matter fouled up. He is focusing on concern over intentional fraud. Reality is matters in states without experience are likely to become so confused and disordered that even the fraudsters will be hard pressed to execute on their malign plans!
If mail-in voting goes forward in certain states, those having no prior experience, we are most assuredly heading for a train wreck.
CA looks like it might get a wealth tax, not just higher income taxes. I enjoyed the commentary.
the author of the wealth tax proposal AB2008 justified the wealth expropriation by saying that California is facing a big budget deficit because of the health and economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus, and “we can’t simply rely on austerity measures,” to close it. It wasn’t immediately clear why austerity doesn’t work considering that California has never actually tried it
Lol can’t make this up
Is it “on the verge of passing” though? It has only been proposed, according to the original article on which this ZeroHedge hit piece was based. I doubt it’ll get anywhere near passing.
I got one of those. I agree it’s pretty funny, how it contradicts the spin that’s being pushed…
“President Trump has consistently and rightly said that where a voter cannot make it to the polls, they should request an absentee ballot,” McDonald said. “The President has also correctly distinguished between chaos-ridden universal mail-in voting systems, like the one that led to California’s train wreck primary, and traditional absentee mail voting systems, like the tried and true system in North Carolina—a distinction Democrats and many in the mainstream media purposely ignore to sow confusion.”
Maybe people need to stop “reading between the lines”, and insisting they know what certain people “really” mean.
Hard to tell, but probably not on the wealth tax - lots of messy logistics for those. The higher income tax, raising the brackets for those over $1M by an extra 1 to 3.5%, seems a lot more plausible.
538 looks like it has electoral college odds now (based on current conditions).