What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Barrister]

Any discussion of the Kangaroo Court decision on Wisconsin?

Can you be more specific please? This is Wisconsin we're talking about. They're just this side of Florida.

The Supreme Court, by the most improbable margin, ruled that voters in Wisconsin who didn't get the absentee ballot in time because it wasn't sent out in time due to some viruses and stuff have to schlep it to the polls or not vote.  I looked into it more and discovered that's what the Republicans wanted.

I don't understand what they get out of it.

So I listen to The Bulwark daily podcast.  The Bulwark is a #NeverTrump website that formed about a year ago after the collapse of the Weekly Standard magazine.  The Podcast is hosted by Charlie Sykes, who for decades was a Milwaukee-based conservative radio talk-show host, but who had his own #NeverTrump moment in 2016, lost his radio audience and his job.

Anyways, through Sykes, I have this absurd depth of knowledge about Wisconsin GOP politics.

This all has to do with a state supreme court position.  GOP are convinced they would lose it (together with it's 10 year term) because it's a Democratic primary election, which would boost Dem turnout.  But, like always, they're convinced that low turnout elections help the GOP and hurt the Dems (and not without some reason).  So they're willing to go through this absurd debacle of an election... all for the sake of a Wisconsin supreme court seat.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Republicans play to win with no holds barred.

[Oexmelin]

Winning at all costs may end up coming up with the Republic itself as a hefty price tag

[Habbaku]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-malaria-drug.html

You know, the drug that Trump is pushing at every possible opportunity?

[...]

If hydroxychloroquine becomes an accepted treatment, several pharmaceutical companies stand to profit, including shareholders and senior executives with connections to the president. Mr. Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.

[...]

So, without defending Trump--because who does that and can sustain their soul?--I would want to know what that "small personal financial interest in Sanofi" looks like. Just about anyone who owns a piece of an index fund (which is an immense number of people worldwide) has a "small personal financial interest" in Sanofi. I doubt Trump is promoting the drug so that his ETF holdings will go up by 0.1%.

[garbon]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-malaria-drug.html

You know, the drug that Trump is pushing at every possible opportunity?

[...]

If hydroxychloroquine becomes an accepted treatment, several pharmaceutical companies stand to profit, including shareholders and senior executives with connections to the president. Mr. Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.

[...]

So, without defending Trump--because who does that and can sustain their soul?--I would want to know what that "small personal financial interest in Sanofi" looks like. Just about anyone who owns a piece of an index fund (which is an immense number of people worldwide) has a "small personal financial interest" in Sanofi. I doubt Trump is promoting the drug so that his ETF holdings will go up by 0.1%.

Yep, same here.

[Sheilbh]

This all has to do with a state supreme court position.  GOP are convinced they would lose it (together with it's 10 year term) because it's a Democratic primary election, which would boost Dem turnout.  But, like always, they're convinced that low turnout elections help the GOP and hurt the Dems (and not without some reason).  So they're willing to go through this absurd debacle of an election... all for the sake of a Wisconsin supreme court seat.

I think there's a theory that one of the reasons Michigan has such an unusually big outbreak (bigger than other mid-Western states like Illinois etc) is they had a lot of voting in the primary at just that point.

As with the keeping churches open for Easter(?!), this strikes me as potentially quite dangerous. Especially as voting does involve contact with a screen or a pencil or something that presumably won't be cleaned between each voter.

[The Minsky Moment]

Head scratchy decision from the USSC in an opinion that was very testy and defensive.
To get a sense this is an actual passage from the opinion:

Third, the dissent refers to voters who have not yet received their absentee ballots. But even in an ordinary election, voters who request an absentee ballot at the deadline for requesting ballots (which was this past Friday in this case) will usually receive their ballots on the day before or day of the election, which in this case would be today or tomorrow. The plaintiffs put forward no probative evidence in the District Court that these voters here would be in a substantially different position from late-requesting voters in other Wisconsin elections with respect to the timing of their receipt of absentee ballots. In that regard, it bears mention that absentee voting has been underway for many weeks, and 1.2 million Wisconsin voters have requested and have been sent their absentee ballots, which is about five times the number of absentee ballots requested in the 2016 spring election

In that regard?  The last sentence  contradicts the first.  The voters are in a different position because many are going to receive their ballots AFTER election day due to delays in sending them out as opposed to the day before or same day.

Another low point for the Court.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Winning at all costs may end up coming up with the Republic itself as a hefty price tag

Agreed. I'm not saying Dems should to. I don't know what the solution is. 

[The Minsky Moment]

There many been many bad Supeme Court decisions over the years, but rarely any that posed a direct and immediate danger to human life and public health.  Bravo Justice Squee.

[Oexmelin]

Winning at all costs may end up coming up with the Republic itself as a hefty price tag

Agreed. I'm not saying Dems should to. I don't know what the solution is. 

The GOP must be destroyed. Give some time and energy to seeing it crushed in your local and national elections. Support candidates who see it for the danger it is. Transform your local Dem branch from the likely ineffective and milquetoast organization it is into something much more militant. This is a danger that will not be dealt with through tsk tsking and comfortable claims of moral superiority. 

[Habbaku]

Oex, I almost posted something very similar to your recommendation and eventually backed off it. I think you're 100% right, and I say this as someone who voted for a lot of GOP candidates as recently as 2012. The Republican Party needs to be isolated, quarantined, and left to rot for the 8-12 years it will take to purge it of its disease.

[Sheilbh]

Oex, I almost posted something very similar to your recommendation and eventually backed off it. I think you're 100% right, and I say this as someone who voted for a lot of GOP candidates as recently as 2012. The Republican Party needs to be isolated, quarantined, and left to rot for the 8-12 years it will take to purge it of its disease.

Yeah I totally agree. There needs to be electoral consequences down the ballot paper or they'll continue down this path and not learn (it's another thing where I think the real comparison isn't Johnson = Trump, but Corbyn = Trump).

I'm not confident that'll happen.

[The Minsky Moment]

looking more carefully at the USSC decision in Wisconsin, it's even worse than at first glance.

The lower court extended the deadline for municipal clerks to receive absentee ballots until April 13.  That extension itself was not challenged.  Rather the parties seeking the stay sought to impose a proviso that absentee ballots must be "postmarked" by April 7.  Heres the court's explanation:

That extension, which is not challenged in this Court, has afforded Wisconsin voters several extra days in which to mail
their absentee ballots. The sole question before the Court is whether absentee ballots now must be mailed and postmarked by election day, Tuesday, April 7, as state law would necessarily require, or instead may be mailed and postmarked after election day, so long as they are received by Monday, April 13.

I bolded the key phrase "as state law would necessarily require" because state law requires no such thing.  The Wisconsin election law says  nothing about when absentee ballots need to be postmarked, only when they need to be received.  The "postmarking" requirement was just invented out of whole cloth by the Supreme Court to justify the result.

This is blatant results oriented activism in action.  The Court just made up a new state law on the spot to justify a result and then lied about it.

This is bad news for the Democrats in Nov. 2020.  It appears that 5 justices of the Court may be willing to rubber stamp even the most blatant voter suppression initiatives from the GOP.  The Court just gave a road map to Trump to impose restrictions just ahead of Election Day to deal with a second coronavirus wave for the purpose of voter suppression.

[Oexmelin]

Yeah I totally agree. There needs to be electoral consequences down the ballot paper or they'll continue down this path and not learn (it's another thing where I think the real comparison isn't Johnson = Trump, but Corbyn = Trump).

I'm not confident that'll happen.

It will not happen, because they have learned what they needed to learn: that their conservatism has become synonymous with their identity. That whatever comes next will not be them. They have been saying for years it's a fight to the death, and have make it so. It's the culmination of a 30 year movement that has refashioned Conservatism itself.  Therefore, it needs to die. To reinvent themselves, Conservatives will need to reinvent Conservatism.

[Razgovory]

Trump just fired another inspector general, this one was the guy that suppose to oversea corona virus money.  It was attacking the Inspector general for health and human resources and will probably fire soon as well.