Now, admittedly, this is an especially dumb tweet, even by President Trump’s standards:
1. It just plays into the hands of the “resistance” and Democrats, as well as their allied mainstream media pundits, supporting their lie that the President is planning on refusing to accept the results of the election if he loses. Is their baseless claim any more reasonable and divisive than Trump’s constant claims that mail-in ballots will lead to massive election fraud? In fact, it’s much less reasonable, as well as hypocritical, since Democrats never accepted the legitimacy of Trump’s election, and have been plotting to undo it by any means necessary. Still, their irresponsible blather doesn’t justify or excuse Trump’s.
2. The tweet is stupid because there’s no way the election will be postponed. Trump doesn’t have the power to do it; I assume he knows that, but if not, someone will tell him. The idea might be defensible if anyone knew a date certain by which the pandemic would be over and we could romp, maskless and holding hands, to the polls. There is no such date, however. That means that postponing the election at all would mean postponing it indefinitely, which would give the Axis of Unethical Conduct more ammunition to claim President Trump was trying to become President for Life.
3. This is one of Trump’s “Wouldn’t it be great?” tweets, which are the work of his inner 10-year-old. He lets that spoiled kid out way, way too much. I don’t blame him for thinking, “Boy, wouldn’t it be great if there was time for the pandemic to go away, the economy recover, and people have plenty of opportunity to realize I’m running against a Pet Rock?” I do blame him for tweeting it. It’s one more completely unnecessary self-inflicted wound
But the routine freak-out by the Trump Deranged is so predictable, repetitious and boring. Aren’t the Trump Deranged sick of it yet? The tweet has and will have no substantive impact, other than reinforcing the biases Trump-haters already have, and making fence-sitters wonder what the hell is the matter with this guy. A Facebook friend wrote, “We knew he’d get serious about this.” Sending out a dumb tweet musing about something that will never happen is getting serious?
The President says or tweets something stupid and irresponsible, and the reactions to it are always, always nearly as stupid and irresponsible, and sometimes more,
I put this episode in the “nearly” category.
Ethics Alarms 
Trump is trolling his opposition.
I support Trump but this is unnecessary.
I do believe that sending out ballots to all registered voters in a national election is rife with problems. Not only is it highly costly – in Maryland they board of elections asked for 5.4 million just for postage.
I can see allowing people to request a mail in ballot if they are afraid to go to the polls but printing as many as 2 million blank ballots that could be lost, stolen, or used fraudulently is simply irresponsible. If mail in ballots are used NO reporting of counts should be made until the vote count is certified by the Secretary of State or other state certifying official.
The notion of delaying the vote is stupid and, at this point, trolling will be detrimental to the campaign,
If I have a moral duty to wear a damn mask to protect my neighbor then my neighbor has a moral duty to get to the polls. The same goes for voter ID.
I do not support President Trump, but am a fair critic of him. I am also a fair critic of Biden….
Shit like this just makes throw up my hands and lament that if Trump looses the the election, it was his own doing.
That’s fair. What I don’t inderstand is why with so much advanced warning we simply went with mail in voting without any discussion.
Universal mail in voting has significant security problems. For most people going to the polls is less of a risk of contracting disease than going to WalMart. I see elderly and those with multiple co -morbidity factors out shopping every day so the argument that it is too risky to go vote is viewed with suspicion.
Of course it does. One of my co-workers just told me he thinks the White House and the Senate are as good as in the bag for the Ds, and it’s easy to see why he might think that.
I cannot help but remember that was all the talk leading up to the 2016 election, it was just whether Hilary would have a landslide, maybe take some deep Red states.
Different situation this year, but still — it is a long way to the election still, and I think Trump had a great deal of support going into all this.
I am really hard pressed to see why the ‘swing’ voters would swing back to the Democrats this year.
I cast a blank ballot at the top in 2016 — I will not be doing that this time around. Trump’s actions have earned my vote this election, regardless of his twitter follies.
Actually, I don’t fall into the camp of wanting to see him close down his twitter account, cringeworthy as some of his tweets have been. How else is he to communicate on a regular basis to that many regular citizens?
Regarding Hillary and the 2016 election,
I just stumbled upon the book, The Hunting of Hillary: The Forty-Year Campaign to Destroy Hillary Clinton
From the cover,
Wow. What a load of crap.
She was done in by her own unforced errors, as well as Obama alienating “racially conservative” Democrats.
Ass-kissing is more like it. But hey, she was the most qualified candidate or something like that.
I’ve done mail in voting for years, without a doubt there’s issues, but I’ve voted more with it and am more informed. Our state has a website you can make sure it’s received on time.
I think mail in voting is less risky than digital voting.
I don’t think so. But let’s give the argument the benefit of the doubt… This… Wears really thin after a while. It’s possible that, for instance, Trump is saying this to distract from the awful numbers coming out of the stock market right now, or he’s doing it to keep his opposition off balance, is that enough of a payoff to cover the people put off by another shitty and stupid take from Trump?
It might not be many people, but everyone has a breaking point, and I think Trump’s downfall will be the story of a million self-inflicted wounds like this. I don’t know where my point was, but I don’t feel the need to defend him anymore. I used to, I was one of the “watch what he does, ignore what he says” proponents for his first couple of years because while I felt the gongshow was odious, I liked the policy. I still like the policy, but I’m fucking exhausted. Trump deserves to lose. I don’t know if he *will* lose, because November’s a long way away, and his opponent is a zombie… But he deserves to.
Bingo.
The question, however, is whether the US deserves what will happen if he does. He deserved to lose in 2016, too. And while he deserves to lose, allowing the Democratic strategy of setting out to undermine an elected President to succeed points the way to disaster.
The real losers if he loses are the ordinary people who just want to work and raise their families without being overtaxed, overregulated, or over-anything. That said, we’re all going into this election with our eyes open. There are only two realistic choices on the menu. If we vote to give the Democrats everything, then we vote for a lot higher taxes, a lot of regulation, and a very heavy layer of political correctness imposed over everything. If enough Americans hate Trump enough to do that, then ok, but don’t complain when your 401(k) tanks and 911 goes to voicemail. Also don’t complain when the Democrats get rid of the filibuster and start passing all kinds of crazy new laws.
I thought I was at the point of not defending him.
Then the BBC chimed in “Breaking – Trump calls for postponing election”, and people responded predictably, I found myself replying:
Fact Check: Trump “called” for nothing. He sent another stupid tweet asking if it was a good idea.
Trump vomits words like nobody else, and this is just one more example.
Maybe the British should stop interfering in our elections….
Just defend the truth, even if it benefits Trump (or Biden).
The Trump Deranged are not, and will not get, sick of it. They get plenty of positive feedback within the echo chamber. For many outrage, has an addictive element, and it feeds a pleasure center in the brain. We tell our little kids that they don’t elevate themselves by putting others down, but the Deranged just ‘know’ they are superior to the man pretending to be president, and that gets reinforced many times every day.
Trump seems to understand his opposition more than they understand him.
So if you work for the Biden Campaign, and that tweet comes in at 10:30 in the morning, do you get the rest of the day off?
No no Dan, someone has to change the embalming fluid one way or the other. The smell, you know.
I am wondering how the racially conservative Democrats, as described by Matthew Yglesias’s article “The Great Awokening” must feel.
While at least a significant minority of them voted for Trump, they did not support him. And any actual support from this constituency he gained in the last four years is minimal, at best. He is still the same as before. The negative qualities that kept them from supporting him, even if so many had voted for him, are still there.
Important to remember is that they backed Democrats on most policy issues, and had not written out going “back home” as it were.
Reining in the excesses of the Great Awokening would have opened the door for them.
But that did not happen.
They were seeing signs of these excesses continuing, such as the OK symbol and the Gadsden flag and the Betsy Ross flag being declared “racist”. Army cadets and Navy midshipmen were being investigated for flashing the OK symbol on the claim that it was a white supremacist symbol, a symbol that the previous commander-in-chief had used!
The initial protests after George Floyd’s death seemed enticing. Here was an issue that many of them agreed with, that many of them could get behind. Even some of the early unrest did not faze them, as they distinguished between peaceful protesters and rioters.
But then the whole thing jumped not just the shark, but multiple shivers of sharks. Statues of U.S. Presidents were torn down.
Emmanuel Cafferty was fired for using the OK symbol.
A selectman’s conversation as secretly recorded by a waiter at a restaurant. The restaurant responded by banning the selectman.
People were calling for repealing the National Anthem!
Local Democratic officials called for abolishing the police!
the Democratic Party itself defamed Mt. Rushmore!
When Trump sent federal agents to protect federal property, under a credible threat of vandalism and arson, Speaker Nancy Pelosi called those “secret police”.
this was not some random rabblerouser, this was the Speaker of the House, a leader in the Democratic Party!
The Democrats seem to appear to be pro-riot and pro-arson.
As for Joe Biden, of those racially conservative Democrats who voted in the primaries, a lopsided majority voted for him. No doubt this was because he was a non-Woke candidate with the credentials and history to back it up. Many hoped he would lead the Democratic Party away from the Awokening.
This did not happen.
Furthermore, Biden has his own gaffes, “you ain’t black” not the least among them. What else is there?
More will learn about how Obama sabotaged the transition.
At this point, do these “racially conservative Democrats” have a home?
If the claim is “baseless”…exactly what would constitute a base?
A statement that he might not accept any election result?
A statement that the election might have to be delayed till the state of emergency is over?
“Might” of course. I guess we’ll have to see. And if so, what happens on Jan 20? President and vice presidential posts are vacant.
Pelosi is unelected. McConnell is unelected. So with no incumbent speaker of the House or president of the Senate, what is the line of succession?
Secretary of State Pompeio.
If the Democrats had any nous, before Jan 4 they would elect temporarily a new speaker of the House, one not up for re election, until the crisis is past. Just in case. If only to remove the temptation from Barr to go along and run the clock out.
The entire house is always up for election along with 1/3 of the senate. As to the rest, election day is set by Congress, only Congress can change it. I suppose a state could fail to hold an election thus forgoing their electors and representatives. Representatives cannot be appointed, their seats can only be filled by election.
If somehow you managed to have no house of representatives and if you can convince SCOTUS that a speaker’s term actually expires rather than lasting till a new speaker is chosen and further manage to convince them that the speaker must also be a member of the house–the constitution is silent on both–you’d still have 2/3’rd of the Senate that didn’t stand for election (35 D, 30R) and able to choose a president pro-tem. Pat Leahy D-VT would be the senior-most member of the majority.
But I’m betting on there being voting in November. Whether it be an election or an “election” remains to be seen.
My bet would absolutely be that we’ll hold the election November 3rd. Let’s say 99.8% My biggest fear is that Biden and the media won’t accept the results.
But, just for fun, let’s say that October 1st, we decide we cannot hold the regular election November 3rd.
Having a rump Senate elect a president pro tempore — or devolving to the Cabinet is not the only option.
The Constitution provides that “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.”
Right now, the states universally choose electors based on the results of the popular vote for president. But I see nothing in the Constitution that requires that — the legislatures could convene and each legislature appoint electors by themselves. As long as there are enough electors certified by the December deadline so that there are 270 electoral votes for one of the candidates (remember it has to be a majority of the whole number of electors), I think it might just pass constitutional muster.
The procedural details — there are 49 bicameral legislatures and, of course, 50 governors who might or might not be relevant — are left as an exercise for the student.
It would certainly be a full employment opportunity both for the media and the legal profession….
There may well be voting in November. May.
There might even be results before January. Might.
If there are no clear results, due to unresolved legal challenges by one side or another because ” Must know Election results on the night of the Election, not days, months, or even years later!” Then indeed the SCOTUS plays a pivotal role. The wheels of Justice grind slowly, and serial objections by the DOJ in multiple states can easily run out the clock before the Jan 4 deadline where the new Congress certifies the result of the Presidential election. Recent changes have clarified that it is the new Congress that does this, not the old. No uncontested new Congress, no uncontested certification.
Then we have Presidentialists vs Constitutionalists, both claiming legal justification.
At least, that is what has happened in every other case of such shennanigans, all of which have happened outside the US so far.
Can Trump legally delay the election? Pompeio says he’ll have to examine the issue, it’s not immediately obvious and uncontroversial. Barr likewise. That is apparently a minority view.
Can Trump illegally delay? “It’s not illegal if the President does it”. What are they going to do, impeach him? ” John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it ” Are people going to take to the streets?
We shall see.