.@realDonaldTrump has signaled strongly that he won't concede if he loses this election. I gamed out what could happen next. There are some really alarming scenarios.
The key tipping-point Electoral College states (AZ/MI/PA/WI) all will use heavy vote by mail this election and all but AZ can't start counting ballots 'til election day means long counts expected - and Trump could lead big on election day even in states where he'll lose.
On top of that, mail ballots are a lot more likely to be rejected for technical reasons (missing signatures/envelopes/witness signatures/etc)— and a lot more likely to face litigation over whether they should count post-election.
PA, for instance, took 3 weeks to count ballots after their primary. There's only about a month before states legally have to certify their results for the electoral college. Doesn't leave much time for potential litigation...
We're already seeing isolated violence in the streets from protests. If Trump claims he's been robbed — or if the left thinks the GOP is stealing the election — that could escalate, esp. if Trump seeks to escalate it, as he did during the BLM protests.
The fact that MI, PA & WI all have Dem govs and GOP legislatures raises chances for them to certify two different slates of electors if the final count. Congress is supposed to resolve it if that happens, but laws governing what happens at that point are murky at best.
And RBG's death could matter - if fighting over ballot counts or (lord forbid) competing slates of electors winds up in the Supreme Court, either a hobbled 8-member court or one with a brand-new justice rammed through by the GOP would be arbitrating the election.
Anyways, I haven't been sleeping well the last week or so.
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I spent the last few months trying to get my head around Tommy Tuberville for @RollingStone. Talked to him multiple times, chatted with former players and a bunch of senators.
Claremont recently opened its first state-based office in its history in FL, and DeSantis rolled out the red carpet.
He's involved them in his hostile takeover of New College, his push to end DEI programs and a K-12 civics program.
They're involved in his nascent campaign too.
“On a whole range of issues where wokeness is a threat he has risen to the occasion—rhetorically, but he’s also trying to do something about it legislatively," Claremont Institute senior fellow Charles Kesler, who DeSantis appointed at New College, told me.
Trump and his allies have spent two-plus years plotting to turn states with slower vote counts into scenes of chaotic protest, last-minute lawsuits and outright rejections of the democratic process.
“I'm very concerned about the possibility of violence in the post-election period incited by losing candidates."
The two swing states where conditions are most ripe for chaos:
Arizona (mail-heavy state, vigilante voter intimidation, a slate of election-denying candidates)
Pennsylvania (slow mail ballot counting caused by intentional GOP intransigence, focus from Trump folks)
“After I pulled an all nighter watching The Fall of the Cabal, I was wrecked. Between the compelling evidence indicating that the migrant caravan in 2018 was totally staged, to the bone chilling saga of Pizzagate..."
"..., to the idea that JFK Jr. could still be alive (which I believe is completely false), my world was rocked."
Shuppe repeatedly used the QAnon hashtag WWG1WGA and referenced "the storm," and seemed particularly alarmed by pedophilia conspiracies (Pizzagate/Wayfair).