State Representative Madinah Wilson-Anton joins Rob in the bunker to talk about how the last few weeks of the legislative session has gone, giving a deeper look into how several progressive priorities (and some corporate priorities) have failed. We then talk about how it might be possible to make real progressive change.
Show Notes:
I’ve included more than I should under fair use, but I don’t think Thom Hartmann would mind.
Six Republicans on the Supreme Court just announced—a story that has largely flown under the nation’s political radar—that they’ll consider pre-rigging the presidential election of 2024.
Republican strategists are gaming out which states have Republican legislatures willing to override the votes of their people to win the White House for the Republican candidate.
Here’s how one aspect of it could work out, if they go along with the GOP’s arguments that will be before the Court this October:
It’s November, 2024, and the presidential race between Biden and DeSantis has been tabulated by the states and called by the networks. Biden won 84,355,740 votes to DeSantis’ 77,366,412, clearly carrying the popular vote.
But the popular vote isn’t enough: George W. Bush lost to Al Gore by a half-million votes and Donald Trump lost to Hillary Clinton by 3 million votes but both ended up in the White House. What matters is the Electoral College vote, and that looks good for Biden, too.
As CNN is reporting, the outcome is a virtual clone of the 2020 election: Biden carries the same states he did that year and DeSantis gets all the Trump states. It’s 306 to 232 in the Electoral College, a 74-vote Electoral College lead for Biden, at least as calculated by CNN and the rest of the media. Biden is heading to the White House for another 4 years.
Until the announcement comes out of Georgia. Although Biden won the popular vote in Georgia, their legislature decided it can overrule the popular vote and just awarded the state’s 16 electoral votes to DeSantis instead of Biden.
An hour later we hear from five other states with Republican-controlled legislatures where Biden won the majority of the vote, just like he had in 2020: North Carolina (15 electoral votes), Wisconsin (10), Michigan (16), Pennsylvania (20) and Arizona (11).
Each has followed Georgia’s lead and their legislatures have awarded their Electoral College votes—even though Biden won the popular vote in each state—to DeSantis.
Thus, a total of 88 Electoral College votes from those six states move from Biden to DeSantis, who’s declared the winner and will be sworn in on January 20, 2025.
Wolf Blitzer announces that DeSantis has won the election, and people pour into the streets to protest. They’re met with a hail of bullets as Republican-affiliated militias have been rehearsing for this exact moment and their allies among the police refuse to intervene.
After a few thousand people lay dead in the streets of two dozen cities, the police begin to round up the surviving “instigators,” who are charged with seditious conspiracy for resisting the Republican legislatures of their states.
After he’s sworn in on January 20th, President DeSantis points to the ongoing demonstrations, declares a permanent state of emergency, and suspends future elections, just as Trump had repeatedly told the world he planned for 2020.
El Som points out that maybe I was being a little hard on Jennings, and as I think about it, I agree. The tough part of Jennings job in this case was prosecuting corruption that was so “ho hum” and run of the mill. In fact if McGuiness had committed all of the same crimes in ANY OTHER elected office it would not have caused a ripple. If ever discovered or discussed, the corruption would have been waved off. The excuse making on process grounds, and procedural technicalities would have held, as usual.
Kathy had the bad judgment to practice her waste fraud and abuse directly in front of a staff that perceives its job to be discovering instances of waste fraud and abuse. When over half of the office became whistle blowers the din of whistles blowing became much too loud to ignore.
And yet, if you gave Kathy a shot of sodium pentathol and asked her if she did anything untoward, she would happily say she didn’t. She thinks giving friends no-bid contracts, rigging up pretend make-work jobs for relatives, and paying for stuff with the company card is what is suppose to happen. They are typical perks. And chintzy, penny-ante perks at that. When Kathy peevishly slammed the $20 on the table to pay off part of her Sirius XM bill she must have been thinking, “Pete doesn’t have to deal with this nit-picky bullshit.” And looking around at legislators getting on boards and making bank from organizations that are funded by the very legislative body they serve on – would she be wrong?
Becoming involved in politics appears to be a huge pain in the ass these days. Aren’t people who go into it deserving of some little (and sometimes large) tangible perks? They clearly think they are.
Kathy’s trial concluded on the same day that John Kowalko served his last day in office. There is a symmetry to that. I’m not saying that Kowalko was a saint, but he was cognizant of the fact that his role as a public servant was to serve the public. It is a sentiment that must seem quaint and old-timely to McGuiness et al.
David Sokola, Bryan Townsend, Elizabeth “Tizzy” Lockman – Plainspoken truth: “…a brazen willingness to circumvent the same open government laws and accounting standards she was elected to enforce.” “Any public official engaged in these behaviors is unfit for public office, but especially the state’s top financial watchdog,”
Steve Wood – Mr Razzle-Dazzle took what looked like an open and shut case and created enough doubt in the jury room to beat the most serious charges.
Highlands Bunker (REV & BILL) – The daily coverage was really good. It was a great test case for their style of new media. Treading the razors edge between comedy and tragedy, they won admirers among Kathy haters and Kathy lovers alike.
Lydia York – Probably wouldn’t have been moved enter the Democratic primary for the office of Auditor of Accounts is the current auditor wasn’t so awful.
Peter C. Schwartzkopf – Even more exposed as corrupt a-hole for his tireless support for his corrupt buddy.
John Carney – Such weak Tea. Doesn’t call for her removal but…“He finds it difficult to understand how the auditor, who swore an oath to place the public interests above any special or personal interests, can continue to serve the people of Delaware effectively given the circumstances,” said spokeswoman Emily Hershman.
Kathy Jennings – Her office didn’t come off great with the win. Does Woods really have grounds for appeal? He sure seems to think so.
Kathy McGuiness – Says it was “political” which is ironic because she didn’t do a goddam fucking thing in office that wasn’t “political”.
Delawareans – We’ve had a self-aggrandizing, do-nothing auditor for years and still do.
Get a load of this picture. He’s a fucking child. He is a giddy, unashamed collaborator. Here are his Republicans friends he was so happy to be partying with in Madrid:
Thom Tillis (R-NC) “Democrats are pushing radical legislation that would go beyond Roe v. Wade and allow abortion up until the moment of birth”
I wonder if Coons took a second away from partying to ask Tillis why he was lying about Democrats so much?
Roy Blunt (R-MO) One month after the election Roy Blunt repeatedly declined to refer to Joe Biden as the “president-elect”
I wonder if Coons ever called his good buddy on supporting the coup?
Deb Fischer (R-NE) Re Roe V Wade being overturned: I am grateful for our Supreme Court Justices who showed courage in making this landmark decision. I’m very optimistic about the future of this country and the future of the pro-life movement.
I wonder if Coons… oh fuck it. Coons didn’t do anything except enjoy the tapas.
Joni Ernst (R-IA). This fucking whack job, Coons is just busting with pride to work with this nut.
If you are wondering if KMcG suffers from narcissistic personality disorder, this quote is illuminating:
When McGuiness was asked, as a recurring theme her actions had been simply to raise the profile of the Auditor’s Office and was she concerned with what Friday’s conviction might mean for the impact on public perception of the office, she said: “I think more people will know that Delaware has a State Auditor.”
McGuiness beat the felony charges of theft and witness intimidation, but was found guilty of Structuring, Misconduct, and Conflict of Interest.
Hopefully her political career (as a Democrat anyway) is over.
It took long enough, but nevertheless – it is nice to see my position (that I’ve held consistently for the past 20 years) being widely adopted as the conventional wisdom.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the underwhelming reaction from senior Democratic leaders to that huge defeat, make the case even clearer that the party’s too-long-in-power leaders — including President Biden — need to move aside. On their watch, a radicalized Republican Party has gained so much power that it’s on the verge of ending American democracy as we know it.
(snip)
Pelosi, Biden and other Democratic leaders of course don’t sit on the Supreme Court or in state legislatures. But too many of them have been major players in the party over the past two decades as it has failed to create an apparatus of media, think tanks and other institutions to rival what exists on the right. They have been deeply involved in bland Democratic campaigns and candidates who often lose key races to Republicans, even as the GOP has much less popular policy goals.
Get off the fucking stage, you losers.
We may have a verdict this afternoon, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Today’s podcast covers yesterday’s events. No matter what happens, vote for Lydia York for Auditor.
In a miraculous turn of events, the trial of the century is now running ahead of schedule. The defense rests, but not before bashing MLB Hall of Famer Frank Robinson a few more times and trying to determine what Kathy knew and when she knew it. Ahead of closing arguments and a potential verdict, Rob and Bill discuss the their thoughts on the case so far.
Trump’s bizzaro pre-election messaging in Georgia doesn’t seem to come up, but this actually happened.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Tuesday (11/17/20) that President Donald Trump would have been victorious in Georgia’s election had he not discouraged people from participating in mail-in voting.
During the campaign, Trump claimed that mail-in voting would lead to widespread election fraud on the part of Democrats. Instead, Trump told people to show up at polling places on election day to cast their votes in person. Georgia’s electoral process has come under scrutiny after an audit of the ballot revealed two ballots in two counties that were not originally counted. The margin between Trump and President-elect Joe Biden remained thin on Tuesday with Biden leading Trump in the popular vote by over 12,000 ballots.
In an interview with WSB, Raffensperger said there were 24,000 Republicans in Georgia who voted in the June primaries, but “did not vote in the fall either.”
Vice President Kamala Harris seems to be making the argument that the Democratic Party should just go into receivership. Let’s just sell off the desks, computers and shit and call it a day.
CNN:
What do you say to Democratic voters who argue “Wait a minute, we worked really hard to elect a Democratic president and vice president, a Democratic-led House, a Democratic-led Senate. Do it now.”Harris:
Do what now? What now? I mean, we need, we, listen, what we did, we extended the Child Tax Credit.CNN:
I’m sorry, when I say “Do it now,” yeah, act legislatively to make abortion rights legal.Harris:
We feel the same way. Do it now. Congress needs to do it now in terms of permanently putting in place a clear indication that it is the law of the land that women have the ability and the right to make decisions about their reproductive care and the government does not have the right to make those decisions for a woman.
The state finally rested its case today after calling a few more witnesses. After trying to get the whole case thrown out again, the defense begins with its slate of hardcore Kathy-heads and their favorite person: former Pennsylvania auditor Eugene DePasquale. Also, more phone calls from MLB Hall of Famer Frank Robinson.
Last week, even before the coming holiday rush, about one-tenth of all scheduled flights at Boston’s Logan Airport were canceled, and more than a third were seriously delayed. Most observers expect next weekend to be much worse.