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This reminds me of my previous post on the brutal NPR fact check of Trump.
Really though, I think it was a poor choice by Vance to even remotely accept the frame as a "fact check". His answer is excellent and correct. When speaking to me, I will hear "fact check" in this context as meaning "pedantic bullshit that's irrelevant to the core claim". I will hear his explanation of how these migrants have become technically temporarily legal, and think, "exactly, the fact that this has a veneer of legality is the core problem, we must stop this". But yeah, other people still believe that a media "fact check" is actually just them checking the facts, so I think it would have been smarter to say something like, "you agreed to not argue with Governor Walz and I about our statements".
My stance on January 6 and the quality of the 2020 election has already been articulated at length. I think it's politically unfortunate that the more popular position is that January 6 was a calamity and that the 2020 election was good and fair. I suspect that Vance's honest position is much closer to mine that Trump's, which is that the 2020 election was bad and unfair, but not exactly "stolen". Either way, he's kind of stuck because he can't directly contradict Trump, but also doesn't want to say very unpopular things. I'm not sure what I would say in his spot. I suppose pretty much the same things - his opponents egged on riots all through 2020, insist on keep elections insecure so we can't actually trust them, and want to censor anyone that questions the quality of elections. Maybe that's a losing position, but it's one that I do sincerely believe is basically accurate.
If Trump represents an existential danger to American democracy and an imminent threat of fascist tyranny, then it would be irresponsible for patriotic Democrats and all upstanding citizens to not to cheat or bend the rules in any manner they could get away with. Democrats should not hold election integrity and fairness as a terminal value--not when the stakes are this high. Besides, the amount of lies, disinformation, and election interference coming from Trump, and malefactors like Russia, is artificially boosting Trump's popularity among low information voters. If Democrats have an opportunity to put their thumb on the scales without completely invalidating the election, then it should be their duty to do so. One or two somewhat shady elections is a small price to pay for stopping Trump. The remaining question is just whether it will be enough to make a difference.
This is the death spiral though isn’t it? Responding to norm violation by violating more norms just leaves us with weaker norms overall. It’s one-step-ahead thinking.
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I don’t believe it.
Most people aren’t Raskolnikov. They don’t make decisions like this. At most, they use such a ghoulish, utilitarian calculus as a post facto justification.
No, if there was cheating, it was banal. The first thought was “hey, I can get something I want.” The second, if it happened at all, would have been “no one will notice.” That’s sufficient to explain the kind of crimes that @Walterodim suggested. Fudging counts, encouraging false statements. Voting for your dead parent.
But the “existential danger” theory proves much, much more. If you’re convinced Trump is Turbo Hitler, why are you stopping at a fake ballot? Where’s your manifesto and your one-dollar stamps? How did you suddenly become amazing at judging risk, such that no one gets caught in the act?
The Venn diagram between Trump haters, principled utilitarians, and election officials has to be vanishingly small. Perhaps that’s why he’s had such an hard time finding evidence of fraud.
I see it as more a prospiracy, and it's mostly small actions on the margin by many individuals. There are almost certainly some more bold cheaters, but I just think they must have gotten away with it. It's not like it's easy to prove, and it has recently gotten even harder. The people who are most able to investigate are uninterested in doing so, because they don't want to discover cheating for various reasons. Easier to leave the "investigation" to a bunch of wingnuts who can easily be discredited and ignored. So long as the Democrats aren't cheating too much, and they are doing it to hurt Trump, I think most of our institutions are quite happy to turn a blind eye (including a lot of Republicans). This kind of cheating is itself less dangerous than people beleiving it is happening, so it's tolerated so long as it is simultaneously denied. There are limits to this, but I think activists have gotten quite savvy about how to game these election systems.
Assassination attempts are kind of a proxy here. For every one person who is willing to try and assassinate Trump, how many are willing to cheat if a good opportunity presents itself? Probably a lot, and a lot of those people will get themselves involved in the electoral process.
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My issue with this line of thinking is that this bold part just seems incoherent to me. There's no such thing as putting one's thumb on the scales without completely invalidating the election. The thinking that it's possible to slightly invalidate the election but not completely or not enough to count for whatever enough might mean here is just pure motivated reasoning if it's coming from the party that would stand to gain from such subversion (which is to say, a Democrat who supports putting the thumb on the scale in order to get a Republican to win so as to save democracy might have some credibility in their reasoning, as well as vice versa, but not if the same sides are involved).
If we accept that being really really sure that the opposing side will destroy the whole game means that cheating is justified, then all that means is that everyone will always be, in good faith, really really sure, cross their heart, no cap, on god sure that their opponents will destroy the whole game, thus justifying their own cheating. This is the exact same sort of phenomenon as the whole "tolerance doesn't mean tolerating intolerance" leading to everyone concluding, in good faith, that [position they don't like] is some form of intolerance, so as to justify being intolerant of it.
It is pretty incoherent, which is why I doubt Democrats actually believe it.
Well. I should never underestimate the lunatic fringe, but I don’t think Twitter sloganeers have an actual plan to cheat.
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I'm confident that every election ever has had both parties' thumb slightly on the scales (why wouldn't they and how would one completely stop them?), so either no elections ever were legitimate or there is a way to slightly invalidate the election.
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Yes, I think this is a good explanation for why Democrats are fine with electoral shenanigans and blatant First Amendment violations. I couldn't have said it better myself. When people are convinced that their opponents are honest-to-god fascists, they can convince themselves that they're actually patriots for some minor foible like counting ballots received after election day in violation of black letter law or telling people that they should just list themselves as indefinitely confined so they don't need to provide ID to vote. Most of the people articulating these sorts of ideas really believe it, they really think they're the good guys saving the Republic.
Of course, much of what I said could be flipped around and also said about Republicans. The difference is that I think Republicans are far less often in a position to do actually do anything, and also much less likely to get away with it if they did. I believe Democrats cheated because, from my perspective, they all but said they would (and will). They had motive, means, and opportunity, meanwhile laws were and are being actively changed to make any kind of foul play harder to prove. It also helped that many of their most outspoken accusers, while correctly intuiting the dishonesty and shenanigans, cast around crude and ridiculous theories about how this kind of thing happens. Trump must be stopped by any means necessary. Democrats are already openly bending and buckling norms and laws of election integrity, often defying the spirit if not the words themselves, so stepping over the line into outright cheating is not a big leap. After all, Democrats are the party of outcomes, not procedure. Democrats frequently target traditional procedures and processes to be dismantled because they do not have the outcomes that Democrats support. I do not expect the side that is most in favor of completely reorganizing how elections are conducted (e.g. abolishing the electoral college) to regard the particulars of the current electoral system to be especially sacrosanct or inviolable.
The idea that the 2020 election is beyond reasonable doubt is absurd, but they have been very effective at tabooing the notion. Somehow, the 2020 election, perhaps the most obviously questionable election in recent history, is the one election that is also uniquely unquestionable. This does not inspire trust. I fully expect Democrats to cheat harder and more successfully than Republicans this coming election, but I don't know whether it will be enough.
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