Forget that psychologically those who pose as strong men are always the weakest of men. As far as a compelling story for the public to click on, as pure drama, the persecuted underdog who prevails and becomes leader of the Free world is a good story.
Sidebar, and not unrelated. Years ago, during the worst stress of my horrifying years working in the courts, I felt my aggravation rising one night and was afraid I was having a heart attack. I walked 3/4 of a mile to the closest emergency room, which should probably have told me all I needed to know about whether I was having a heart attack or not.
After a long wait they checked me in, I was feeling much better by then, and I heard the doctor tell his colleague that I was a good story. I thought this was good news and when the doctor returned I told her I was going home.
She cautioned me against it, advised an overnight in the hospital and said that if I wanted to leave I had to sign a document saying I was leaving the hospital against medical advice. I said “you just said I was a good story.” She explained that when ER docs are talking about a suspected heart attack, a good story is a man your age, your basic shape, and exhibiting the agitated aggravation that you have been exhibiting since you came in. “It makes you a good story to have a heart attack, in other words.“
Fuck me blind, I thought, as I signed myself out against medical advice and later came back to check in. It left me pondering the flexibility of the phrase “a good story.” Horrifying, sickening stories are also good stories, to fans of those genres.
This entire piece by Lawrence O’Donnell is excellent, contrasting corporate media’s lap dog acquiescence to (and normalizing of) Trump’s outrageous incoherence while it snarls contemptuously at Biden’s press secretary in pursuit of a fanciful story that Biden is a senile vegetable with a team of lying neurologists on call. He notes that the story about the lying neurologist and Biden’s senility were never reported on because it turns out there was absolutely no story there. But the press snarled and yelled over each other as the press secretary patiently and truthfully fielded as many of their shouted questions as she could get to.
He points out that mass media is giving Trump the same primadonna treatment it gave him in 2016. Airing a rambling, lie-filled “press conference” live from Mara-Lago where he answered not a single question, and was asked no follow-up to anything. O’Donnell compared this fawning coverage to the complete news blackout on Kamala Harris, at the same moment addressing the UAW live, and in between he showed the press repeatedly challenging Biden, who answered each question, and screaming at Biden’s press secretary about unfounded allegations of the cover up of his unfounded neurological decline.
The din in the White House press room and the aggressiveness of the screamed out challenges in stark contrast to the glazed silence that meets everything that pours out of corporate meal ticket Donald Trump’s mouth.
O’Donnell, in spite of his brilliance, doesn’t seem to realize who he works for, I guess, but his point is very important and the clip well worth your time.
Nobody was federally prosecuted for Donald’s attempt to overturn the election results in 2020. The DOJ indicted The Donald for those efforts but his lackeys on the court have given him every benefit of every doubt he doesn’t deserve and delayed both federal trials until beyond the 2024 election. Nothing is more bracing to an unrepentant career criminal than endless delays in accountability and the chance to make all prosecutions, convictions against him, and any prison sentence, disappear with his reelection.One thing history teaches us, fascists will always do everything in their power to seize control, they are tireless criminals who exonerate themselves and punish their opponents when they take power.
The radical reactionaries in the War Room at the Willard Hotel on January 5th and 6th? Bannon, Giuliani, Kerik, Eastman, with back up from Roger Stone (who left DC on the 6th to avoid being connected with the riot his body guards had a central role in) and Mike “Q-Anon” Flynn — no criminal conspiracy indictment for any of them. They sat in a command center, during the riot, apparently coordinating the riot which, on cue, interrupted their planned “Green Bay Sweep” where Lyin’ Ted, Josh Fist/Flee Hawley and over a hundred members of the House would contest Biden’s electoral college victory and send the presidential election back to MAGA state legislatures for a final decision.
In part MAGA bravado flows from the fact that their main criminal leaders all so far have gotten away with their crimes, at least on a federal level. Plus, they control mail delivery. Don’t forget that a pugnacious MAGA mega-donor is in charge of how many of the expected 50,000,000 mail-in ballots get counted, if they arrive in time to be counted at all. He has already slowed mail delivery nationwide to record lows. He has already targeted a few Democratic leaning cities for even lower on time mail delivery rates.
A requirement for membership in Donald’s MAGA Republican party is openly declaring that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, presumably by a cabal of cannibalistic pedophiles. Any Republican who admits there is no proof of a stolen, or rigged election, has been ousted from the party. Espousing belief in the Big Lie is literally an article of faith, a requirement for membership in MAGA. Every Republican election official in every state is an adherent to the Stolen Election Truth. In the Nazi’s rise to power the galvanizing myth was The Stab in the Back, the victorious German army had been betrayed by weak, scheming Jews and communists, The November Criminals. If you count the votes, it is much easier to call the election into question. MAGA has many state officials, and state legislatures, in place and committed to a Trump victory, even if the populist Donald loses by 20,000,000 “popular” votes.
Then we have the most corrupt 6-3 Supreme Court majority that money and sheer will to win (at any cost) can buy. Put nothing past these six diehard Nazi motherfuckers, if the fate of a presidential election winds up in their hands again.
Beyond that, every violent Ku Klux Klan type freedom lover is down with killing anyone who needs killing. Many are itching for “payback,” waiting for the day they get to spill rivers of blood. It is unclear how many of these enraged fuckers are embedded in the military, the national guard, police forces around the country. It is a safe bet that in many swing states there are a good number of these “patriots”, the kind who believe in “frontier justice,” in law enforcement. They’ve grown up on violent westerns where powerful white men of iron will break others with their unhesitating use of deadly gunfire and unstoppable lynch mobs.
If not for that vestige of slavery, the Electoral College, benefactor of Republican presidential candidates who lose the popular vote, there would be no worry heading into an election where the candidate who favors democracy should beat the demented autocrat by fifteen million votes, at least. It is only that bit of American Exceptionalism, a mechanism by which a powerful minority can overturn a landslide democratic victory, that has me concerned.
Add in Louis DeJoy, a piece of shit in human form, a cartoon villain version of a despotic CEO, and his ability to target mail BY ZIP CODE, and that is what keeps me awake some nights. The fact that nobody, NOBODY, is reporting on why Biden’s three nominations for Postal governors are languishing month after month in a Senate Committee where Kyrsten “I’ll blow any CEO for $2,000,000” Sinema is the swing vote — is the stuff of my democratic nightmares. Seriously, does nobody else see the fatal threat in democracy’s inability to unseat a crooked, partisan political appointee who could hand the election to the candidate he’s given a million or more to?
The Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1871, 1875, 1957, 1960, 1964,1968 , 1990 and 1991 [1] attempted to address, and end, racist practices by government officials done under “color of law”. If a local sheriff was performing his official duties in transporting prisoners, and those prisoners happened to be met on the road by a pickup truck full of angry vigilantes, and the prisoners wound up mutilated, murdered and buried in an earthen dam, well, there was a presumption under the law and local customs that the sheriff, acting within the scope of his official duties, was immune from prosecution. If local racist sheriffs didn’t have full immunity to perform their duties as they saw fit, who would respect them? Who in their right mind would take the job?
This presumption that any crime committed during the performance of official duties, “under cover of law” is no crime has long been the get out of jail free card for any criminally inclined person who manages to acquire a cloak of legal power. The Federalist Society Supreme Court extended this extra-legal presumption, and absolute immunity for criminal acts performed by the president within his core official duties, to convicted felon, adjudicated rapist and serial fraudster Donald Trump last month. The ruling echoes Alan Dershowitz’s demented argument at Donald’s second impeachment that if the president honestly believes he is not breaking the law, well, by God, he can’t be breaking the law. This is a restatement of Nixon’s audacious, legally incoherent “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal, by definition.”
So, as often in humanity’s past, powerful racist motherfuckers get a pass for violations of laws, norms and common decency. Donald (he hates being called that, according to his niece Mary) attempted to bully a group of Black female journalists the other day. Every member of the Klan who watched his tired show of sneering dominance over the journalists high fived each other. Nobody who wasn’t a racist failed to see the desperate weakness, and smirking racism, behind Donald’s attempted bullying.
Yesterday the DOJ Inspector General released a report into Donald’s violent June 2020 dispersal of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park, using DOJ personnel to “dominate” the street and show that the president, who’d been hiding in a bunker, and had built a wall around the White House (Mexico didn’t pay for that one either), was a tough guy. Bill Barr, as big a racist piece of shit as any Ku Klux Klan sheriff anywhere, (he huffily opined that there is absolutely no institutional racism in the US and that Blacks better respect the cops if they expect police protection) ordered hundreds of federal prison guards and others to forcibly clear the streets so Donald could walk to a nearby church and hold up a Bible. The miracle of that day is that the holy book of Christianity didn’t burst into flames in Donald’s hand.
Barr, of course, didn’t testify during the DOJ investigation into his actions. He wasn’t legally required to (as the DOJ cannot compel former officials to testify, for some reason) and he declined. There was nothing in it for him but shame, hard questions and blame. The DOJ Inspector General told the whole hideous story, four years late, fair enough, but still, an ugly story of abuse of government power. That criminal abuse, under Trump v. US, would be perfectly legal now.
Why were protesters in the park and street near the White House, shortly after the on camera murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, a gruesome example of not uncommon racist brutality by police officers? Exercising their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. Donald was outraged, did the only thing he knows how to do when challenged, adamantly doubling down, like an angry drunk at the roulette table. The Blacks and others protesting were the racists, Donald claimed, Trump no racist, least racist white man ever! They, the antifa terrorists in the street were the racists and they needed to be given a taste of the full force of the state.
Under the new Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. United States(dig the fragrant irony of that fucking shit…) Donald could have ordered snipers to shoot peaceful protesters, and if he had done it with his Attorney General present it would be an unquestionable official act, even though also a despicable criminal act. No harm no foul, under the new ruling the president could not be indicted ever for ordering snipers to take out peaceful protesters. The snipers could be criminally prosecuted, but the president has an unchallengeable, absolute right to pardon anyone for any reason, criminal co-conspirators included, and even charge them $1,000,000 for it. What is power for, if not to use it to do whatever you want?
If there weren’t already a thousand reasons for anyone not in the Ku Klux Klan (or the many fine people in the American Nazi party, or the National Socialist Movement) not to vote for Donald, his racism alone should alert you to the kind of malignant, exploitative, unreflective, uncurious, vindictive, petty, indecent criminal fuck he is. Look no further than the five “colored” teenagers, wrongly convicted of raping a jogger in Central Park, whose execution Donald called for in a full page NY Times ad (one of whom is now on the New York City Council) and who he still insists were the actual rapists, in spite of their exoneration. He also denounced the settlement as a disgrace. [2]
Donald, on the other hand, if he wins the Electoral College by even a single vote and becomes president again, could rape whoever he wants, and if the woman is someone involved, however tangentially, in official presidential business, full immunity, baby! He could rape her on the resolute desk, as long as his Attorney General, or a member of his cabinet, held her down. The best part of the Leonard Leo-conferred new presidential power to do criminal things if they involve his core official powers is that 100 such official duties rapes cannot be introduced in any other rape case against Donald, ever. Suck on that, libtard cucks!
[1]
[2] (from Wikipedia)
The settlement was officially approved in September 2014.[102][110] Santana, Salaam, McCray, and Richardson each received around $7.1 million from the city for their years in prison, while Wise received $12.2 million because he had served six additional years. The city did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement.[111]
We already know that Coach Tuber (Mr. Potato Head?) blocked hundreds of Biden military appointments on behalf of Christian Dominionists who were outraged that the US military condoned murder by allowing female soldiers to make healthcare decisions regarding their pregnancies. These radical Christians consider the military’s policy of allowing women in the military to murder the “unborn” a moral abomination. Tuberville was a one man filibuster, making the pious Christian ghosts of the old enslavers proud.
I realized just now that Tuberville, asshole that he is, is not the guy blocking Biden’s three nominations to the Postal Board of Governors. Those nominations, one dating back to February 29, 2024, have been hung up in the Senate committee, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, that must approve the nominees and send their names out for a full Senate vote. Fist raising/fleeing Josh Hawley could be blocking them, or Rand Paul, or perhaps Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, or maybe creepy looking Florida Senator Rick Scott, sassy Independent Kirsten Synema, or all of the above.
I called the number on the committee’s website and spoke to an intelligent sounding receptionist for the Committee who had no public information. She heard me out, took my number and held out the neutral hope that a supervisor would look into my five unanswered on-line contacts and possibly get back to me.
I guess the next person to contact directly is Chairman Gary Peters (D-Mi). Here is the contact information for this august body, our direct representatives in our great, if generally nonresponsive, corporate sponsored democracy. Give them a call, they are always delighted to hear from taxpayers.
Here’s what I wrote to the chairman:
I wrote to your committee numerous times in the last month looking for an explanation of why a partisan postmaster who has slowed mail delivery to all-time lows nationwide is allowed to decide when to deliver upwards of 50,000,000 mail-in ballots in 2024.
No news since March 2024 on the nomination of Marty Walsh to fill one of the vacancies on the USPS board of governors. Friday’s nominations of two more leave me no more hopeful.
Here’s some data. I would love to hear back from you.
In November 2020, when DeJoy had been postmaster for a few months, less than 50,000 mail-in ballots were delivered too late to be counted. Now it is four full years, full-steam ahead on “Delivering for America” (DFA), the Postal Regulatory Commission’s urging DFA be suspended until after the election be damned.
In 2020, during the depths of Covid, 66,000,000 votes were cast by mail, 43% of all ballots cast (US Census).
34,248,000 mail-in ballots were cast in the 2022 midterms, 31.8% of 107,700,000 total votes cast in that high turnout midterm election (Pew Research)
Beyond that, numbers for mail-in voting have been on the rise in all elections since 2008. (US Election Assistance Commission)
DeJoy claimed, in his recent PR piece in the Washington Post, that in August 2023 there was a 98% on-time rate for mail delivery coast to coast. He is silent about what the current on-time delivery rate is. I wonder why.
We note that Senator Jon Ossoff reported on-time delivery from the new Atlanta processing and distribution center was 98% in 2022, 52% in 2023 and 72% YTD 2024.
This is not something to be concerned about?
Do American voters not have the right to know how nominations are killed in a Senate committee?
Yours in the fight to preserve democracy, Eliot Widaen phone number (after 1 pm)
There is almost no current public information available about Louis Dejoy’s destruction of on-time mail delivery in the US or what anyone is doing to actually to stop it in time for tens of millions of mail-in ballots to be delivered on time to be counted in November. Try googling it and you’ll see what I mean. Why can’t the Postal Board of Governors fire Louie fucking DeJoy?
This is from a February 2021 article noting the then difficulty of Biden removing DeJoy (this was before several turnovers — and two ongoing vacancies — Tubervilled? — on the nine member Postal Board of Governors). It notes the tens of thousands of mail-in ballots delivered too late to be counted in 2020 as among the reasons for concern with having a corrupt, arrogant, defiant partisan mega-donor as US Postmaster General. Since then, mail service has been slowed considerably, and targeted by zip code, but even after six months in office, DeJoy’s achievements in slowing mail from selected “anarchist jurisdictions” was impressive.
. . . Improving the Postal Service would have an immediate, beneficial impact on almost every American’s life. But it can’t happen while DeJoy is in charge, and there’s no easy way for Biden to get him out of office. The new president will remain saddled with Trump’s postmaster general for at least a year—unless he decides that rescuing the Postal Service is more urgent than respecting its independence. . .
. . . In the week of Dec. 26, [2021] the last period for which USPS publicly disclosed its delivery rates [as of this Feb. 2021 article], only 63.87 percent of first-class mail made it to its destination on time across the U.S. The on-time delivery rate was even worse during that week in certain localities: It was only 29.97 percent in Baltimore, 32.32 percent in Central Pennsylvania, and 27.82 percent in Northern Ohio. Overall, in the fourth quarter of 2020, USPS never came close to the 96 percent on-time delivery standard that the agency sets for itself. . .
Here’s an April 2024 letter signed by a bipartisan group of 26 senators, urging DeJoy to consider the recommendations of the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) that he pause his Project 2025 Postal Service Rescue Plan (“Delivering for America”) until its delaying effects could be fully studied. DeJoy would not commit to abiding by the PRC’s recommendations. He did not.
Here is the sneering piece of shit’s May, 2024 reply to the policy-driven deterioration of mail delivery:
“Has anyone in Congress or the PRC ever worked to stem $160 billion in projected organizational losses, while overcoming the devastating impact to an organization that nearly $100 billion in previous losses inflicts?” DeJoy asked, before emphatically answering his own question. “The answer is no.”
He apologized for the “deteriorated performance” that has occurred and vowed to soon reverse it, while adding the change that is necessary is “hard, uncomfortable for everyone and encounters errors of varying magnitude.”
If USPS does not see a turnaround quickly, Congress’ patience could run thin and opt to take matters into its own hands. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., has introduced legislation that would place new restrictions on the Postal Service’s changes.
In the face of mounting pressure from lawmakers of all political stripes, watchdogs, stakeholders and even members of its own governing board, as well as another financial quarter in the red, leadership of the U.S. Postal Service is doubling down on its controversial plan to overhaul the agency.
Didn’t one of our greatest genius billionaire job creators buy the newspaper whose slogan is “Democracy dies in darkness”? While Democrats and anti-fascists celebrate Biden’s selfless decision to let Harris run for president, and many are flushed with excitement over her record fundraising in just a day and a half, there’s more than enough darkness here to allow a quick, choking death for democracy, come election day, when delivery tens of millions of ballots is in the hands of the psychopathic, partisan CEO pictured above and below.
Those who need to control others always use force to inflict their will on the resistant. Whatever force is at their command will be used to crush the will of others. The ultimate weapon is making people good and dead — either physically or by destroying their good name among the people who love them. The terror of death is the last thing you want to have visited on you, once you see it in action. It tends to keep the ones not brutally killed, not made gruesome examples of, in line with the leader.
You will grimace at the soul ripping power of this violent force if you’ve ever had your good name assassinated. You will also know the force of maniacal will if anyone you love has been bullied, beaten or killed, physically or spiritually, after insane accusations of defiance or heresy. There is only one kind of sick fuck who gladly inflicts pain on others, though there are many variations in style. The common theme is force, and their willingness to use unlimited amounts of it against others in the user of force’s desperation to command obedience.
Use force to make ten year-old victims of rape carry the rapist’s baby to term and deliver it alive. Use force to punish any doctor who performs the abortion on the already traumatized girl. Use force on the cab driver who takes her across the border to a state where abortion for rape victims is still available. Use force to rip children from the arms of their asylum seeker/migrant parents at the border. How about this for force — keep no records of where you send these poor kids so the parents have no hope of ever seeing them again. Revive the death penalty, make it as common and normal as political lobbying. Use force to make people obey your religion, post its Ten Commandments in every classroom while you abolish the Department of Education. Forcefully abolish affordable health care for millions because, just because — if a poor person wants health care, beg your boss for it, bitches. Abolish the right of labor to organize, while we’re at it. Permanently end a child tax credit that took millions of children out of poverty while that credit was lawful. Promise to take millions of people, at gunpoint, to concentration camps for mass deportation.
The party of personal freedom, local control of government, limited government, law and order, no regulations on businesses, the MAGA party, embraces the violent coercion of people they hate. Americans are free to obey, or die. Local government is perfect, if it agrees with our pious national will. Limited government is necessary to command obedience, for those who would be obeyed. Strict, inviolable law and order for the poor and dispossessed, complete immunity for the ruling elite. Agents for the super-wealthy will decide if anti-pollution policies cost their patrons too much to be enforced. Religious Christians will decide what can be taught in schools, publicly debated, and what is heresy that will be strictly punished. Argue with the will of God on pain of death, accursed heretic!
We’ve seen fascism in many places in the last hundred years. It is an updated variation on the absolute right of history’s bloodiest Divine Right kings, fighting Popes and the unquestionable rule of our superiors and the armies that enforce their will. The main demonstrator of political superiority, as far as I can tell, is an open willingness to use deadly force to destroy anyone who would contest your incontestable will. I have seen these motherfuckers in action many times in my own life, and in the end, once conflict arises (and this taype can only react to conflict with aggression and threats of force) each must be met with rejection. To tolerate someone forcing you to abide by their beliefs, violently requiring you renounce what you know is right, is a worse death than the one those who must be obeyed will try to inflict once you walk away from them.
It is impossible not to notice the ungodly strength of irrational “arguments”. Just scan the alarmingly skewed headlines and editorials of the fucking New York Times. Once an irrational belief is embraced, that’s all she wrote, boys and girls.
A person of unquestioning faith cannot be persuaded by facts, videos, secret recordings, written evidence, sworn testimony, a mountain of reasonable arguments for doubt or skepticism. This is the beauty, and unparalleled horror, of true belief. If you believe, say “amen”, and you no longer need to care in the least about the so-called “truth”.The truth you now believe will set you free (from ever needing to argue about truth again.)
That other truth, let us be clear, is the truth of heretics, infidels, God deniers, Christ killers, pedophile cannibal left-wing billionaires, libtards, cucks, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.
Every tyrant, every leader around whom a cult of personality is built, every psychopathic CEO, every greed demented luster after thousands of millions of dollars, requires a belief system in which their quirks and abuses are seen as unquestionable virtues. You may not question this belief system without being portrayed as [insert your favorite dismissive expletive]. Now let us all say “amen”, it is so [1].
The horror is that humans, under pressure, will act as cleverly as lemmings in their desperation to save themselves, to survive, thrive, be part of something bigger than themselves, part of a true religion, true cult, true family or true couple. There is no human collective too small to be immune to this unilateral imposition of will, and demand for unwavering faith, from someone claiming the right to rule.
It is the shame of being human, witnessing the constant, thoughtless embrace of angry, sometimes murderous, irrationality. The worst of it is that these murdering mobs truly believe that all-mighty, all-powerful, all-merciful GOD told them it is their holy duty to slaughter. Holy shit, my friends.
[1] amen (interjection): used to express solemn ratification (as of an expression of faith) or hearty approval (as of an assertion). [Merriam Webster]
These radical right wing activists are always referred to as “conservatives”. They are radical reactionaries, determined authoritarians, future American Nazis who have waited since 1954 (when an “activist” court ruled American apartheid in education unconstitutional) with saliva on their fangs. Check out Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, his casual remarks in the Wall Street Journal’s explainer about Project 2025 translated directly from the German.
The following is from one of very few recent articles about our partisan postmaster, who comes across as pugnacious in his dealings with the Postal Regulatory Commission, and whose disruption of dependable mail service has, apparently, even aggravated House Republicans. This is from an organization called Government Executive, [govexec.com] (link below)
. . . The [Postal Regulatory Commission, PRC] commission made its recommendation after finding in the report that USPS in fiscal 2023 missed most of its goals for high-quality service performance; three of its eight goals related to customer service; and all of its goals related to maintaining a safe workplace, engaged workforce and financially healthy organization.
DeJoy and PRC have been at odds for years, as the postmaster general has accused the regulators—and other stakeholders—of standing in the way of essential steps he must take to save the agency from insolvency. The new recommendation, however, marks the first time PRC has called for a pause to DeJoy’s signature plan. It follows the introduction of bipartisan bills that would restrict the Postal Service from carrying out its changes.
In a recently introduced fiscal 2025 spending bill, House Republicans said they were “deeply concerned about the potential negative impacts” of DeJoy’s reforms.
PRC flagged other aspects of DeJoy’s plan, including suggesting USPS consider whether its decision in recent years to increase prices twice annually “may accelerate electronic diversion resulting in adverse volume effects.” While postal officials have repeatedly highlighted its efforts to engage with its customers and employees over its plans, the commission said it has concerns about the “limited transparency” regarding the DFA and their “effects on service performance.” PRC recently pushed back on DeJoy’s rate increase strategy, saying postal management should exercise more discretion before continuing with its approach that “may be unprecedented in the history of the Postal Service.”
Many lawmakers and stakeholders across the postal community are imploring PRC to go further, calling for it to issue an “advisory opinion” on the totality of DeJoy’s DFA plan.
Large-scale mailers and others that interact with the Postal Service regularly are hopeful an advisory opinion—while not enforceable—would provide a third-party assessment of the agency’s plans, evaluate its assumptions and potentially offer additional fodder to motivate either the USPS board of governors or Congress to intervene.
My concern about the power of a pugnacious partisan postmaster to not deliver millions of ballots, a guy who has already crippled mail delivery nationwide, has been met by silence or dismissal from every one of my elected officials and everyone in progressive media I’ve contacted. Here’s what a Democratic strategist I contacted wrote back to me.
I’ve read the proposed headlines below. This is out of my area of expertise, but these sorts of fears were very prominent in 2020 when Trump was president and Covid was making mail in ballots central to the election. When we looked into them then, they didn’t materialize. I don’t have more information than that.
Here were my proposed headlines:
headline one: Trump megadonor Postmaster General has the ability to halt delivery of millions of mail-in ballots from selected zip codes
headline two: Federal Voter Suppression Scheme, under color of law, in full effect
This guy clearly suffers from smartest man in the room syndrome. There’s a lot of that myopia going on among our best and brightest public champions of democracy these days. Dismissing concerns about a corrupt partisan postmaster using his discretionary power to help his candidate, since it didn’t happen four months into his now four year reign, is as asinine as insisting that, clearly, since the January 6th attack on the Capitol didn’t bring democracy down, there is no reason to be concerned about it or anything like it anymore.
I intend to write back to him like so:
Subject: Instant expertise:
You dismissed this concern when I raised it the first time, since, in spite of similar fears, it didn’t happen in November 2020 when DeJoy had been postmaster for a few months. Now it is four full years, full-steam ahead on “Delivering for America”, the Postal Regulatory Commission’s urging DFA be suspended until after the election be damned. You conceded a lack of expertise in this matter. Here is some information you need:
In 2020, during the depths of Covid, 66,000,000 votes were cast by mail, 43% of all ballots cast.
34,248,000 mail in ballots were cast in the 2022 midterms, 31.8% of 107,700,000 total votes cast in that high turnout midterm election source Beyond that, numbers for mail-in voting have been on the rise since 2008. source
DeJoy claimed, in his recent PR piece in the Washington Post, that in August 2023 there was a 98% on-time rate for mail delivery coast to coast. He is silent about what the current on-time delivery rate is. I wonder why.
We note that Senator Jon Ossoff reported on-time delivery from the new Atlanta processing and distribution center was 98% in 2022, 52% in 2023 and 72% YTD 2024.
This is not something to be concerned about, smartest man in the room? Do sixty seconds of research by clicking the links above to become an instant expert.
Please pass this on to your contacts, I can’t get anyone in government or media to give a rat’s ass about it and I’ve been trying for a solid month. Hopefully someone in your network has a connection that can break through and get this issue public attention. Otherwise we just have to trust that a MAGA partisan will not bend any rules, laws or norms to get his candidate elected.
Your best, most brilliantly targeted campaign donation advice will be in vain if my concern is even 20% true. We’re talking about nationwide, easily targetable vote tallies 5-10 times larger than Biden’s robust margin of victory in 2020 (leaving aside the slim Electoral College margin).
Yours in the fight to save our fragile, problematic experiment in democracy,
gratuitousblahg 