Senate Dems on Barbara Boxer's objection, Jan. 2005
Hillary: "I commend the senator from California for raising the objection"
Ted Kennedy: "I commend and thank our friend for giving us this opportunity"
Harry Reid: "I applaud my friend"
Dick Durbin: "I thank her for doing it"
Perhaps Amy Klobuchar should ask her Dem colleagues why they participated in a "coup attempt" in 2005 🙄
FYI: Obama, just three days after he'd assumed office, also used the opportunity to lament that so many American voters have doubts as to "whether our processes are fair and just"
The challenge to certification of Ohio 2004 results for Bush was based on allegations of "irregularities" and "fraud" (inferred from purported exit poll discrepancies), claimed violations state/federal law, and much more. John Conyers produce a report outlining these theories
A lot of the anti-certification Dem rhetoric circa 2004-5 is uncannily similar to anti-certification GOP rhetoric today
And then this from Jan 2017 will also be ignored, with the main difference being that House Dems couldn't find a Senator to sign onto their plan. Barbara Lee literally screamed about Russia before being cut off by Biden, who presided over the joint session
Read Hawley's statement carefully -- he's not saying he'll ultimately vote against certification of any state's results, just that he'll support a motion to object in order to initiate debate over "critical issues." It's procedurally possible to object, and still vote to certify
It looks like what he's signaling is that he'll object to the results of PA (enabling him to rail entirely against Dems, as opposed to GA or AZ) which will then initiate an hour of debate. Would have to separately object to multiple states in order to affect the final outcome
So just to be clear. Supporting a motion to object to one state simply initiates an hour of debate related to the certification of results for that state. Hawley doesn't say he won't vote to certify any state. Just that he wants to "raise critical issues" before certification
If Trump does forge a role as some kind of "shadow president" after leaving office, it will be a natural extension of his basic worldview: he has never subscribed to cliched, bipartisan "American Exceptionalism" dogma. Which drives a lot of people crazy unherd.com/2020/12/enter-…
"Obama is the real shadow president!" some commenters proclaim. The way I define "shadow president" here is a former president who overtly makes a competing claim to the presidency. Which Trump is likely to do. Obama wields power, but Trump's situation would be unique in history
Trump's lack of fidelity to dogmatic "American Exceptionalism" is in some ways the prime mover of his presidency. Explains his popularity, because this dogma has long been used as a justification for unpopular policies. Also explains the rage he provokes from "institutionalists"
The “spread” in today’s print edition of the NY Daily News is a highly thoughtful consideration by me of Trump’s key election fraud claim nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-ope…
I would hope that my track record over the past four years establishes that I'm not interested in performatively "debunking" Trump for its own sake. That's not the point. I had the same posture post-2016 when legions of Dems also lost their minds. See: nydailynews.com/opinion/anti-t…
Additional facts:
- Biden "netted" a grand total of 858 more votes than Clinton out Detroit
- 3,001 more votes out of Milwaukee
- And 4,227 *fewer* votes out of Philadelphia
And yet fraud theorists obsess with these cities as if they were integral to Biden's win. They weren't
It's totally false by every conceivable metric that Biden only over-performed Hillary in swing states -- which is supposed to be a very suspicious "statistic." Trump just repeated this phony claim once again, because his "coup" plan is going nowhere
A giveaway about the futility of these "fraud" claims is that a central theme of them is so trivially easy to disprove, as long as your brain isn't melted by rage-infused confirmation bias
Everyone who wants to live in a perpetual election fraud dreamworld is welcome to do so, but ultimately you're only damaging yourself
Trump's raw vote total increased in the city of Milwaukee by a greater percentage (6.6%) from 2016 than Biden's increased compared to Hillary (3.2%)
If whatever partisan outlet you're getting election info from omits these easily-findable facts, they are purposely misleading you
City of Milwaukee 2016:
Clinton: 188,657
Trump: 45,411
2020:
Biden: 194,661
Trump: 48,414
Biden netted only 3,001 more votes than Hillary out of Milwaukee. Which really is mediocre/bad given Dems' relentless post-2016 emphasis on Milwaukee. Statewide margin in WI is 20,682
Obama got 227,384 votes in Milwaukee in 2012 while Biden got 194,661 in 2020 so no, once again, Biden did not outperform Obama in Milwaukee
I've yet to hear an explanation for how the fraud algorithm caused Trump to over-perform in Detroit
Obama received 96.93% of the vote in Detroit in 2008, with a total of 324,895 votes. Biden received 240,936 total votes in Detroit, a 34.8% decrease -- some but not all of which you can attribute to population decline. Biden did not out-perform Obama in Detroit by any metric
The total number of votes cast in Detroit increased by 3.9% compared to 2016, which amounted to 9,626 additional votes. This was far less than the statewide increase in votes cast (15.4%). The margin separating Biden and Trump in Michigan is 154,188 votes