If There's Even One Republican Left In Office Tomorrow, We Haven't Done Enough

 

Any time I've ever seen Ben Ginsburg's name in the media, it's always been bad news. He's a right-wing, shark-like political lawyer, first at Patton Boggs and more recently at Jones Day, the two sleaziest legal firms in DC. He was counsel for the NRC, the NRSC, the NRCC, the RGA and for the Bush Cheney campaign. If there's one person tp blame the corrupted 2000 Florida recount on, it's Ben Ginsburg. That and the GOP gerrymandering in 1990 and 2000, two vicious assaults on American democracy.

Over the weekend, though, Ginsburg closed a Washington Post OpEd, My Party Is Destroying Itself On The Alter Of Trump with this plea: "My fellow Republicans, look what we’ve become. It is we who must fix this. Trump should not be reelected. Vote, but not for him."

Long before there was a Trump, there was a Ginsburg, laying the groundwork for a Trump. who now worries the GOP is making itself into "a permanent minority." He admits he's a scumbag: "I spent four decades in the Republican trenches, representing GOP presidential and congressional campaigns, working on Election Day operations, recounts, redistricting and other issues, including trying to lift the consent decree. Nearly every Election Day since 1984 I’ve worked with Republican poll watchers, observers and lawyers to record and litigate any fraud or election irregularities discovered. The truth is that over all those years Republicans found only isolated incidents of fraud. Proof of systematic fraud has become the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican Party. People have spent a lot of time looking for it, but it doesn’t exist."

And now he wants to blame Trump? "As he confronts losing," Ginsburg opined, "Trump has devoted his campaign and the Republican Party to this myth of voter fraud. Absent being able to articulate a cogent plan for a second term or find an attack against Joe Biden that will stick, disenfranchising enough voters has become key to his reelection strategy. Perhaps this was the plan all along. The president’s unsubstantiated talk about 'rigged' elections caused by absentee ballot 'fraud' and 'cheating' has been around since 2016; it’s just increased in recent weeks. Trump has enlisted a compliant Republican Party in this shameful effort. The Trump campaign and Republican entities engaged in more than 40 voting and ballot court cases around the country this year. In exactly none-- zero-- are they trying to make it easier for citizens to vote. In many, they are seeking to erect barriers... This attempted disenfranchisement of voters cannot be justified by the unproven Republican dogma about widespread fraud. Challenging voters at the polls or disputing the legitimacy of mail-in ballots isn’t about fraud. Rather than producing conservative policies that appeal to suburban women, young voters or racial minorities, Republicans are trying to exclude their votes."

This is obviously all part of an elaborate negotiation strategy for Trump, the "deal maker." Foremost in his reptilian mind is the idea of prison-- for himself and his family and perhaps some associates, though he's not been known to care much about any associates. He'll agree to leave the White House peacefully if and only if Biden promises him and his crooked family blanket pardons. Watch.





Let's go forth and start today with a few words from William Steding at Americtecture. He starts by comparing today to Yeats' 1919 The Second Coming, which was written in the context of the Irish War of Independence and the Spanish flu, of which Yeats' pregnant wife nearly died just before he wrote the poem. Yeats wrote that we deserved the "rough beast, its hour come 'round at last' that slithered into Washington decimating democratic institutions at home and American credibility throughout the world. Trump simply poured gasoline on the fire we had already started to destroy traditional American values after the end of the Cold War, then capped the ash heap with a dumpster-load of diabolical cruelty and stupefying incompetence. He has been a wake-up call we will forever condemn, and yet, tragically deserved. For those of you wringing your hands over the results we are about to witness, continue wringing them. But, not for the actual votes cast-- Biden will win that battle-- rather, for the nefarious acts currently underway by the Trump campaign and our illegitimate Justice Department that are contriving incidents and arguments for our now-illegitimate Supreme Court to assure power remains in Trumplican hands."

He closed with a message of hope, that "We must shine the mighty light of the good to disinfect the bad. We must look into the eyes of our children and grandchildren and assure them, with sincerity equal to their innocence, that we’ve got this; that their lives will be as safe and prosperous as ours have been. We must hand them a torch worth carrying forth. Reason and science and humanism must return to the alter of American discourse. We have saved America from its enemies in the past, now we must save it from ourselves. We can do this. After all, we are (still) Americans."

There was some good news yesterday: a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that support for Trump in 12 battleground states has remained unchanged last week-- so no last minute shift Trump has been counting on. Trump is losing 51-46% in those dozen states. "With the election one day away, the number of undecided voters in swing states in this election cycle is small. Just 1% of voters in the new poll said they were not sure for whom they would vote. And most voters’ opinions are set in stone. Only 1% of Trump supporters and 1% of Biden supporters in the swing states said there was a fair chance they would change their minds and support the other candidate, a rock-bottom figure that echoes previous polls.