The truth about those Trumpista voting machine conspiracy theories
Well, it looks like I was right not only about the outcome of the election but about the nature of President Trump's whining thereafter.
"Blueshift" did, indeed, result in the ballots of the COVID-careful, overwhelmingly Democratic voters who cast them early or by mail being counted in most states after the largely pro-Trump same-day votes had been counted. Inevitably, as expected, this resulted in Trump opening up leads on Election Night, which were wiped out when the huge number of early and mailed-in ballots were included.
It should be remembered that this happened only because, in nearly every other battleground state, Republican legislators had refused to allow early and mailed-in ballots to be prepared early and counted simultaneously as the others, as they were in Florida.
This was not only predictable but widely predicted, and not only by me. Just as predictable- and just as widely predicted- was the inevitable attempt of our outgoing president's supporters to claim that the election was "rigged" because of it.
Here's a page of links from The Dispatch systematically refuting the conspiracy-mongering lies. The radical right has been peddling about rigged voting machines, Trump votes being converted to Biden votes, yadda, yadda, yadda. The articles linked to explain why these complaints are simply the ill-informed bleating of sore losers cannot accept the fact that their guy lost, and lost fair and square.
Of course, the problem is that no amount of evidence will convince the denizens of TrumpWorld because- as we've seen over and over these past four years- evidence simply doesn't matter to them. They simply believe what they want to believe, no matter what the evidence says.
ADDENDUM: And here's more!
ADDENDUM II: For those deluded enough to actually believe that any of that spaghetti is going to stick to the ceiling, check this out. And this. And this.
This kind of sums it up.
The reigning champ in the legal tantrum-throwing world, emotional infant class, is on a roll. It's quite an indictment of the American people that we allowed somebody this immature, this unstable. It this frivolous to be President of the United States for four long years.
But alas, the Republican rank-and-file seem to be eating it up. Sadly, Mr. Trump is by no means the only Republican who has completely lost contact with reality.
ADDENDUM III: Another update.
And those who are blinded by the fog of whining and outright lies aren't only Republicans. If the reasons (aside from disqualifying and stubborn ignorance, an unfit temperament, a longstanding adversarial relationship with the truth, disturbing evidence of placing the interests of unfriendly nations in which he has huge financial holdings, and the general lack of a moral compass) could be compressed into a single incident, it would be the aftermath of this election.
Donald Trump is willfully and willingly undermining the nation's faith in the democratic process, the rule of law, and the Constitution, and dishonestly undercutting the ability of his successor to rally the support of the nation, simply in a fit of pique. Not only that, but he's willing to cripple the ability of the American government for months by refusing to cooperate with the incoming Biden administration or even allow the President-elect to receive the briefings to which he's entitled by right and which the country has the right to have him briefed on.
He cares about literally nobody and nothing other than himself- including his supporters, and including America. And more than a third of the country has been so badly conned that it simply cannot allow itself to see the clearest and most obvious political reality of the Twenty-first Century.
Had Mr. Trump won this election, it would have been hard not to question whether Americans were still capable of self-government. The Monmouth poll linked to a few paragraphs ago spells out in bold relief how close to that point we are even now, in a universe in which Joe Biden won not only fairly and honestly, but decisively- but so many are so easily and so willingly deceived by obvious nonsense they should be able to see through with no particular effort or motivation, and is just as clearly harming the nation for absolutely no good reason.
To coin a phrase, "Sad."
This was not only predictable but widely predicted, and not only by me. Just as predictable- and just as widely predicted- was the inevitable attempt of our outgoing president's supporters to claim that the election was "rigged" because of it.
This kind of sums it up.
But alas, the Republican rank-and-file seem to be eating it up. Sadly, Mr. Trump is by no means the only Republican who has completely lost contact with reality.
And those who are blinded by the fog of whining and outright lies aren't only Republicans. If the reasons (aside from disqualifying and stubborn ignorance, an unfit temperament, a longstanding adversarial relationship with the truth, disturbing evidence of placing the interests of unfriendly nations in which he has huge financial holdings, and the general lack of a moral compass) could be compressed into a single incident, it would be the aftermath of this election.
Donald Trump is willfully and willingly undermining the nation's faith in the democratic process, the rule of law, and the Constitution, and dishonestly undercutting the ability of his successor to rally the support of the nation, simply in a fit of pique. Not only that, but he's willing to cripple the ability of the American government for months by refusing to cooperate with the incoming Biden administration or even allow the President-elect to receive the briefings to which he's entitled by right and which the country has the right to have him briefed on.
He cares about literally nobody and nothing other than himself- including his supporters, and including America. And more than a third of the country has been so badly conned that it simply cannot allow itself to see the clearest and most obvious political reality of the Twenty-first Century.
Had Mr. Trump won this election, it would have been hard not to question whether Americans were still capable of self-government. The Monmouth poll linked to a few paragraphs ago spells out in bold relief how close to that point we are even now, in a universe in which Joe Biden won not only fairly and honestly, but decisively- but so many are so easily and so willingly deceived by obvious nonsense they should be able to see through with no particular effort or motivation, and is just as clearly harming the nation for absolutely no good reason.
To coin a phrase, "Sad."
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