And so it has begun

[Kevin Seitzer]

To your point about hope, I am sure that we can all hold on to at least a modicum of hope in knowing that Democrats believe in the integrity of federal elections and hold a very strong popular majority of millions of voters ahead of the Republicans. So if 95% of Democrats believe the federal election was legitimate and only 22% of Republicans feel the same, the total still represents a large majority of Americans who still believe we can hold functioning democratic elections. I feel like we often lose perspective that on nearly every one of these "left versus right" issues, Democrats hold strong popular support and Republicans represent the minority.

Yes, and I do, but the Republicans will gerrymander and cheat and subvert legal processes to gain control even from the minority.

That, to me, is the topper to a long series of awful abuses by the GOP (starting, for me, with endorsing torture) that will keep me from ever voting for a Republican again. Once a party abandons the idea of democracy and commits to gaining power by force and fraud, they need to be drummed out of the public discourse and into the ash heap of history. Do we need conservative party in America? Yes, but not this one, not by a long shot.

[Bene Futuis]

My point is not that there was a bias in the question posed, it's that there is a functional difference to our democracy between how many answered "No" because they truly believe the Democrats cheated and therefore don't trust elections going forward, and answering "No" because "fuck Joe Biden and those damn liberals, I'm not going to answer that question yes" even though they know the election was fundamentally fair.

I imagine it would be difficult to pose a question in a mail survey that would tease that out. The survey literally tests what they were willing to mark on a piece of paper. I don't trust your further claim that it is a true window into their beliefs. That's the leap of logic I'm not willing to make and for which I see no evidence. I'm not faulting the survey for that, I just don't think you can tell one way or the other what it means.

Honestly, we don't think about this too differently, I'd wager. However, we only have one "sure thing" input and that's the survey results. We can attribute all sorts of motives to those results but I haven't ever seen any support for any of the motives beyond mere guesswork. In the absence of evidence, I think we take the input at face value. Therefore, if the answer to a question that is "do you believe X" is "yes", we can really only say that "the respondent believes X." 78% of Republicans polled do not believe Joe Biden legitimately won enough votes to become president.

[Bene Futuis]

A friend of one of the Capitol Police force present at the insurrection just turned him in to the FBI, claiming his cop buddy was sympathetic to the terrorists invading the Capitol (!) and disclosed to the rioters the secure location to where the lawmakers were evacuated (!!!!!). Yeesh. Cop apparently denied sympathizing with the terrorists but admitted disclosing the secure location.

[Bene Futuis]

And, as you'll all fondly recall, Republican Representative Lauren Boebert was live-tweeting Nancy Pelosi's whereabouts to the seditionist mob just after she had notified everyone they were locked inside House Chambers.

[Kevin Seitzer]

A friend of one of the Capitol Police force present at the insurrection just turned him in to the FBI, claiming his cop buddy was sympathetic to the terrorists invading the Capitol (!) and disclosed to the rioters the secure location to where the lawmakers were evacuated (!!!!!). Yeesh. Cop apparently denied sympathizing with the terrorists but admitted disclosing the secure location.

It doesn't really matter where his sympathies lay, if that's what he did. Yikes!

[heyelander]

I'm sure you can divine what my thoughts are about the intellectual capacity of Republican voters in general, but that doesn't change my outlook here.

78% of Republican voters, whether through somber consideration or blind allegiance, do not believe Joe Biden legitimately won the presidency. We don't get to take the inputs and change them to our preconceived notions. I see no implicit bias in the question posed.


To your point about hope, I am sure that we can all hold on to at least a modicum of hope in knowing that Democrats believe in the integrity of federal elections and hold a very strong popular majority of millions of voters ahead of the Republicans. So if 95% of Democrats believe the federal election was legitimate and only 22% of Republicans feel the same, the total still represents a large majority of Americans who still believe we can hold functioning democratic elections. I feel like we often lose perspective that on nearly every one of these "left versus right" issues, Democrats hold strong popular support and Republicans represent the minority.

I'd attribute a double-digit number of those to trolls pwning the libs.

[Bene Futuis]

It doesn't really matter where his sympathies lay, if that's what he did. Yikes!

AOC said after the insurrection that a police officer tried to lead her somewhere but she felt fear after seeing anger and hostility in his eyes. She couldn't help but wonder whether the guy was leading her somewhere where she would be even more vulnerable. She refused to stay in the "safe location" provided by the cops. She got unbelievable amounts of mockery from the right wing for her statements. Turns out she was pretty fucking right to wonder, eh?

[madducks]

And, as you'll all fondly recall, Republican Representative Lauren Boebert was live-tweeting Nancy Pelosi's whereabouts to the seditionist mob just after she had notified everyone they were locked inside House Chambers.

And Ashli Babbitt was killed by a Capitol Police officer as she was climbing through a partially barricaded doorway in an attempt to lead the mob into those very same House Chambers. But the Republicans will never place any blame on Boebert for causing the death of Babbitt.

[revo]

And Ashli Babbitt was killed by a Capitol Police officer as she was climbing through a partially barricaded doorway in an attempt to lead the mob into those very same House Chambers. But the Republicans will never place any blame on Boebert for causing the death of Babbitt.

It was clearly Nancy Pelosi's fault. She should have known the Trumptards (or in the words of one of their public defenders, "short bus types") would raid the Capitol and should have had more police on hand prepared to gun them down!

[madducks]

Right-wing rally to support the seditionists is tomorrow (September 18) in Washington, DC. That should go well.

[GwynnInTheHall]

Right-wing rally to support the seditionists is tomorrow (September 18) in Washington, DC. That should go well.

Ahem...Political Prisoners...

[revo]

I love it. As someone with a history degree, the first thing they teach you is to "learn from your mistakes." But instead of learning from their mistakes in elections, today's Republican party is just going to claim fraud, like the boy who cried wolf. They'll never win.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/20/election-fraud-conspiracies-infect-midterms-512783

[revo]

Even Former Guy knows it's all bunk:


"Two weeks after the 2020 election, a team of lawyers closely allied with Donald J. Trump held a widely watched news conference at the Republican Party’s headquarters in Washington. At the event, they laid out a bizarre conspiracy theory claiming that a voting machine company had worked with an election software firm, the financier George Soros and Venezuela to steal the presidential contest from Mr. Trump.

But there was a problem for the Trump team, according to court documents released on Monday evening.

By the time the news conference occurred on Nov. 19, Mr. Trump’s campaign had already prepared an internal memo on many of the outlandish claims about the company, Dominion Voting Systems, and the separate software company, Smartmatic. The memo had determined that those allegations were untrue.

The court papers, which were initially filed late last week as a motion in a defamation lawsuit brought against the campaign and others by a former Dominion employee, Eric Coomer, contain evidence that officials in the Trump campaign were aware early on that many of the claims against the companies were baseless.

The documents also suggest that the campaign sat on its findings about Dominion even as Sidney Powell and other lawyers attacked the company in the conservative media and ultimately filed four federal lawsuits accusing it of a vast conspiracy to rig the election against Mr. Trump."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/us/politics/trump-dominion-voting.html

[revo]

If even the most biased of the biased says there was nothing, it's time to end the charade GOP:

"(CNN)The partisan review of Maricopa County's 2.1 million ballots cast in the 2020 election found a vote count nearly identical to what the county had previously reported, a draft report detailing its findings shows.

The state Senate Republicans who seized on former President Donald Trump's lies about widespread election fraud and ordered up the report and Cyber Ninjas, the inexperienced company hired to conduct it, are set to detail their findings in a public presentation Friday.

The draft report emerged Thursday night, and audit spokesman Randy Pullen confirmed its validity to KJZZ Phoenix. "It's not the final report, but it's close," he said. The draft report shows that the hand recount found that President Joe Biden received 99 more votes than Maricopa County had reported after November's election, while former President Donald Trump received 261 fewer votes than the county reported."

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/24/politics/arizona-election-review-results/index.html

[Bene Futuis]

If even the most biased of the biased says there was nothing, it's time to end the charade GOP:

"(CNN)The partisan review of Maricopa County's 2.1 million ballots cast in the 2020 election found a vote count nearly identical to what the county had previously reported, a draft report detailing its findings shows.

The state Senate Republicans who seized on former President Donald Trump's lies about widespread election fraud and ordered up the report and Cyber Ninjas, the inexperienced company hired to conduct it, are set to detail their findings in a public presentation Friday.

The draft report emerged Thursday night, and audit spokesman Randy Pullen confirmed its validity to KJZZ Phoenix. "It's not the final report, but it's close," he said. The draft report shows that the hand recount found that President Joe Biden received 99 more votes than Maricopa County had reported after November's election, while former President Donald Trump received 261 fewer votes than the county reported."
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/24/polit...lts/index.html

Although that's the portion that's been seized upon by everyone, I am willing to bet that A) there is something nefarious inserted somewhere into their "forensic recount" report, and that B) Republicans will ignore every single thing other than that which furthers their idiotic stop the steal lie. Reasonable people knew this thing was a charade to begin with, but about half our country is anything but reasonable.

This whole Cyber Ninja thing is such an embarrassing stain on our democracy. Yet another thing, one of about a million, that makes me wonder just how we got to this point - what kind of abject stupidity is required for folks to buy into this bullshit?