Thread by @RachelBitecofer

1. Vote Count Thread

The GOP legislatures refused to allow early counting of the mail vote in order to assist Trump w his "Red Mirage" plan. The goal was that IF the election was super close, he'd need to create the illusion of fraudulent ballots, so they needed a "live count"

2. process to be able to work the media and to be able to work the courts. BC FL basically invested the mail vote (absentee vote-by-mail system) the infrastructure for it has been codified- that is to say the GOP couldn't easily do what they did in MI, PA, & WI bc they'd have

3. pass laws & have @GovRonDeSantis sign them. So it was decided to rely on the Blue Wall states- which added/expanded their very weak vote-by-mail systems dramatically to deal w the pandemic. As everyone knows. the WI GOP f'ed w the Dems hard in the spring Dem primary bc it also

4. housed the state's general election for a state supreme court judge race- suing the state's gov to force him to hold the election largely in-person at a time when the pandemic was spiking (this was back when the Trump Admin/country was at least pretending that the American

5. strategy was something other than "herd immunity-" or what I like to call- "just let them die" so it generated a shit ton of coverage. It also created a turnout surge of pissed off Dems & left leaning Indies (neg partisanship folks, but also bc the state's Dem Party chair,

6. the person shaping strategy in WI, @benwikler, shapes the RIGHT strategy- one based on turnout & acknowledges the limitations that polarizations imposes on persuasion) an n 11pt route for the Ds. It also convinced Republicans/Trump that they must murder vote by mail. So Trump

7. comes full force after mail voting, and since he's the ultimate elite signaling for Republicans, Republican voters abandon that voting method everywhere they have the option to. That actually ends up making the GOP's strategy of this "Red Mirage" viable, bc they now have high

8. confidence that election day vote is going to heavily favor them and that disqualifying mail ballots, en masse, normally a crazy plan in a swing state, is now a great approach bc they are likely to break strongly in favor of Biden. So they begin to roll out their Red Mirage

9. plan- spend months preparing the Rep electorate to see mailed-in ballots as inherently corrupt & thus, accomplish a very hard task of normalizing the idea of disqualifying these ballots in a democracy. They have, of course, a not-insignificant asset. They have Fox News, which

10. serves as the linchpin in a massive & impenetrable propaganda machine on the political Right that has pushed out, buried, and utterly marginalized conservativisms traditional "thinkers" and publications. Today, the political right's intellectual publications, the ones that

11. that survive like The Economist (very center right) and The Bulwark (conservative) likely have as many subscribers that are moderate and even center-left as they do actual conservatives. And if that's not the case (and it may well not be) this is DEF true, in terms of

12. conservative market share, they are barely a blip. The titans there are the Sean Hannitys, Tucker Carlsons, and Rush Limbaughs & in "print," Breitbart and sites like World Net Daily. All of which conservatives describe as "news" but none of objectively meet those standards

13. Luckily, it has ended up where Biden is winning these races by margins that are indisputable but most importantly, OFF OF THE BALLOTS THAT ARRIVED PRIOR TO ELECTION DAY.

In order to "stop the count" in PA, MI, WI, GA, NC, etc, as the president requested (back when he had

14. leads in them, mind you) the courts would have to agree to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of votes. Of legitimate, regular votes of regular American citizens that arrived via the mail bc the state's election office gave them that option in lieu of the pandemic. These

15. votes are scared votes. They are American votes. They are the votes of Michiganders, Wisconites, Pennsylvanians, Georgians. Indeed, some of the judges on these cases may have mailed their own ballots. It is very fortunate that the turnout surges & rejection of Trump

16. among pure Indies were large enough in MI, WI, and PA that the courts won't be asked to consider whether ballots postmarked before Election Day, but held up by the intentional sabotage of the USPS by Trump's team's placement of Dejoy into that position and the intentional

17. policies he put in place to "break" our mail delivery system to help Donald Trump win reelection. I truly don't know how this Dejoy guy can stand to look at himself. Hopefully, this helps you understand what I mean when I say that the lawsuits you see are not organic or

18. responding to events, the lawsuits are pre-determined and part of a months-long scam designed to corrupt our electoral system & also designed to confuse the American people. Corrupting it while simultaneously blaming the "other guy" for doing it. A staple feature of Donald

19. Trump's presidency. This is why he is a cancerous tumor on the presidency, even if a very large portion of the American population, due in large part to a steady diet of propaganda being fed to them don't realize they're in danger by Trump proximity to power, they are, in

20. in fact, in danger. So removing him from office will be the most important pro-democracy achievement of the 21st century (so far).