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Don Moynihan Profile picture
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9 Dec, 5 tweets, 2 min read
One major US political party supports democracy; letting people vote, free and fair elections, losers handing power over to the winners, that sort of thing.
To make it easy to remember, that party is called "The Democratic Party."
The other major US party, well, not so much.
Very good thread on how polarization as an explanatory framework can blind us to even bigger problems, like one party becoming less and less supportive of democratic norms.
Trump's superpower has been to get people to reveal the worst version of themselves. Shame on us if we ignore what is in front of us.

Here, 106 GOP House members are telling us they do not believe in democracy.
One-quarter of the House wants to invalidate free and fair elections in four states in the name of "free and fair elections" tossing out millions of votes to reflect "the consent of the governed."

Insane stuff.
They will literally disempower their own citizens to empower Trump.
They will strip their constituents of their most basic constitutional right for a leader who rejects constitutional constraints on his power.

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More from @donmoyn

Don Moynihan Profile picture
14 Dec
Wisconsin Supreme rejects Trump campaigns efforts to overturn the election (again). Two observations:
1) Again, it was 4-3 with one conservative joining the liberal minority. That is really too close for comfort.
2) Great football metaphor.
Justice Patience Roggensack argues the court should have heard the case because of low confidence in the election. But the low confidence is entirely driven by false partisan claims of fraud. "Successful conspiracy theory" should not be grounds for hearing cases. Image
The dissenting Judges do not say they would have thrown out absentee votes, but signal they were open to such arguments, writing that guidance that the state election Commission provided to jurisdictions and voters was "erroneous." Not reassuring. wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/Dis… ImageImage
Read 6 tweets
Don Moynihan Profile picture
13 Dec
All signs point to Biden being confirmed as President. This is cause for celebration, but lets take a moment to push back against a simple narrative of an anti-democratic putsch failing against strong institutions.
It's not that black and white. 1/
In the aftermath of a pretty routine election where Biden won more convincingly than Trump did in 2016 we have:
*a majority of GOP supporters say they do not trust the outcomes
*the majority of the GOP House Congressional delegation and 18 AGs proposed overturning the election 2
*Courts pushed back against fairily bizarre claims, but in some cases (MI and WI) decisions were 4-3, suggesting more openness to those claims than we would like
*significant and routine disinformation from Fox and other media platforms that people trust 3/
Read 7 tweets
Don Moynihan Profile picture
12 Dec
I regret to inform you the Wall St. Journal opinion page is at it again. wsj.com/articles/is-th…
"Hello, Jill Biden, I'd like to request, in the most condescending way possible, that you do not use the title that you earned because its not a MD"
This debate comes every so often on twitter, so here is the conclusion:
*PhDs predate MDs, and the medical profession grabbed the title of doctor to make themselves appear more credible
*Female & POC scholars often as a way to insist people fo not overlook their real credentials
Read 10 tweets
Don Moynihan Profile picture
11 Dec
This feels like a good example of someone being smart and accomplished and having strong opinions about government (and probably lots of stuff) while not knowing much about how it works. cnbc.com/2020/12/11/mar…
Cuban advocates for means-tested cash payments that have an economic multiplier effect. Well, that sounds a lot like SNAP, the program he proposes replacing.
And what about health insurance? Given people a 1K a month will not help them replace Medicaid. Image
I am all for minimizing bureaucracy, but if you want something to do to "those really in need" that implies means-testing, which is where you get bureaucracy.
Read 6 tweets
Don Moynihan Profile picture
9 Dec
Good op-ed denouncing the nutso effort by Texas to throw the votes in other elections. But this passage, where entirely fabricated claims about election fraud are compared to theories about Russian interference in the 2016 election is false equivalence. 1/ star-telegram.com/opinion/editor…
Click on the link for "Russia stole the election" and it goes to a press release for an academic paper that complains that people are misusing the word "hack" too broadly even though Russia did hack the DNC, some election sites, and engaged in other election interference
US intelligence agencies, bipartisan Senate report, Mueller report all conclude Russia interfered in the 2016 election in various ways with the goal of helping Trump. Perhaps most notably, Russia laundered stolen information through Wikileaks, which worked w the Trump campaign.
Read 4 tweets
Don Moynihan Profile picture
8 Dec
Congrats to the savvy centrists who predicted that Supreme Court would not throw the election toward the party that appointed them, a thing that has definitely never happened in American history.
Here are some things that are true:
*3 members of SCOTUS were part of a legal team that handed the 2000 election to Bush on the flimsiest of legal pre-texts, and a fourth member voted for that opinion.
*SCOTUS has blessed a series of partisan voter suppression policies
The courts have been strong in resisting obviously bogus election fraud claims. But that's the point: the claims are obviously bogus, and the margin is too great. If it was a few hundred votes, in one or two states, maybe a different outcome.
Read 4 tweets

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