Trump has still not conceded and, honestly, I don’t think he ever will.
This will not affect Biden’s ability to become president. Every expert out there knows that this effort by trump is not going to succeed. Maybe if it had been a closer election. Maybe if he was more savvy. Maybe if Rs controlled more of the swing states. Maybe if the judiciary was on his side. Maybe if the military was on his side.
The fact is that not one of those maybes are yesses — not one — so there is no chance of this. There are many things to be worried about in this crazy time, but who will become president on January 20th 2021 is not one of them. Joe Biden will be the president in less than two months time.
Nonetheless, it is distressing to see trump try so hard to subvert this process and it is horrifying to see so many republicans go along with it.
Lots of talk about how this is for fundraising or to plan for a 2024 run or to keep hope alive in Georgia for the Senate, but to me, it is increasingly clear that this is a move of desperation from trump. He is really looking for ANYTHING that will save him because when he leaves office he can no longer claim protection from indictments. Two different investigations by the state of New York into Trump and his businesses have expanded and are serious. These are just the things we know about. The man has a real (and logical) fear of prison.
I’ve seen a lot of panic on the left (and center) about how, even though this isn’t going to work for trump, this is something to be very worried about because in the future someone more savvy than trump will be able to take advantage of this and really steal an election and destroy our democracy. This is a dress rehearsal they say, for the real thing, and we should be very very scared.
What they fail to mention is that we have also been rehearsing for the real thing and we are very, very ready.
We are organized. When republicans in Michigan planned to not certify the results, locals stepped up by the hundreds and made their voices heard. They changed the vote. And by the time Cheeto Mussolini stepped out to try to change their minds, it was too late. Bell can’t be unrung.
When the post office tried to steal the election, we spoke up loudly and stopped the worst of the damage. We may very well have saved the election.
We are not the same people we were in 2016. We are organized. We are paying attention. We know what to do when things go bad.
This may have been a dress rehearsal for them but this was a dry run for us as well and *WE* were the ones who prevailed.
As much as we would like to all go back to not paying attention and assuming that Biden will just take care of things, we know we won’t do that. Once you wake up, there is no going back to sleep.
Biden will need us as much as we need Biden. Yes, dangers will still pop up from the far right but we are ready for them. We have learned a lot.
We will continue to be here and in Indivisible Groups and in Social Justice groups and on social media and in meeting halls all over this great country.
America needs us.
And we are up to the task!
Biden will be a great president (soon!)
People of color make up nearly half of Biden transition team
As President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office in January, nearly half of the transition team laying the groundwork for his administration is made up of people of color, and women are in the majority.
Forty-six percent of the transition staff are people of color, according to new diversity data of the transition team provided to CNN, and 41% of the senior staff are people of color. The majority of transition staff -- 52% -- are women, and 53% of the senior staff are women.
The new diversity figures come as Biden is set to announce his
Cabinet picks and senior staff for the White House in the coming weeks -- one of the first tests of his campaign pledge to build an administration that will "look like America."
Six things we can already tell about the Biden administration
To begin, the senior members of Biden’s White House who have already been announced are both remarkably experienced in federal government and with Biden specifically (e.g., Ron Klain, Mike Donilon). They are also diverse (five of the first nine are women).
Second, Biden consults experts, not cronies. Look at the national security panel he met with on Tuesday and his new covid-19 task force. Both groups are made up of sober, serious, well-respected people.
Third, traditional and bipartisan foreign policy seems to be the order of the day. Biden’s readouts of calls with foreign leaders seem like messages from a time capsule buried at Foggy Bottom before the Trump presidency.
Fourth, Biden focuses on a few, top-level policy issues: the pandemic, his economic “Build Back Better” plan and possible executive orders (e.g., rejoining the Paris climate accords, reversing Trump’s actions on DACA and undoing Trump’s travel ban targeting majority-Muslim countries).
Fifth, we do not hear from Biden every day. The tweets are generally announcements or pandemic-related advice. A president who understands that less is more — hallelujah!
Finally, Biden absorbs rather than magnifies chaos and conflict.
Even trump’s attempts at hurting Biden might help Biden
it could also backfire. Analysts and people close to the Biden transition argue the Trump team may act so aggressively that reversing some of its steps will earn Biden easy goodwill points and negotiating power with adversaries.
More cracks are forming
Tucker Carlson bashes Trump attorney Sidney Powell for lack of evidence in fraud claims: ‘She never sent us any’
As Fox News host Tucker Carlson noted on Thursday night, he’s more than willing to give airtime to outlandish claims. “We literally do UFO segments,” he said.
But even Carlson said he was fed up with the total lack of evidence produced by Sidney Powell, one of the Trump campaign’s attorneys, for her unfounded allegation that electronic voting systems had switched millions of ballots to favor President-elect Joe Biden.
“We invited Sidney Powell on the show. We would have given her the whole hour,” Carlson said. “But she never sent us any evidence, despite a lot of requests, polite requests. Not a page. When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her.”
Carlson also noted: “She never demonstrated that a single actual vote was moved illegitimately by software from one candidate to another. Not one.”
When you've lost Tucker….
and this asshole:
In the waning days of Trump’s presidency, White House press pool reports are getting snarkier
“The president has nothing on his public schedule today,” began HuffPost reporter Shirish Date’s pool report Tuesday. “He also has not posted any falsehoods on Twitter about winning the election or fraud or anything else, for that matter, in more than 11 hours. The day, however, is young.”
Joe Biden won, Michigan elector coup ‘not going to happen,’ GOP leader says
Democrat Joe Biden is the president-elect, and while Michigan’s Republican-led Legislature is investigating the election, it will not award the state’s 16 electors to GOP President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey told Bridge on Tuesday.
Rudy Giuliani’s post-election meltdown starts to become literal
“How many finguhs do I got up?” Giuliani said at the lectern, doing a terrible Joe Pesci, from the scene where he cross-examines an elderly eyewitness with bad eyesight. Giuliani was trying to analogize the claims of Republican poll watchers, who say they were too far away from ballot counting to adequately observe it. Fifteen minutes later, as he was describing the election results as “a massive fraud,” black liquid began to slowly streak from each of his temples, down his cheeks. It might have been perspiration liquefying his hair dye, or sluicing the black polymer off his eyeglasses. One Manhattan stylist told the New York Times that it might’ve been running mascara; perhaps Giuliani had applied it to touch up the color of his sideburns.
One Trump campaign adviser texted a Washington Post journalist as the black streaks inched toward Rudy’s jowls: “Is he deteriorating in real time?”
“I know crimes,” he said at the lectern Thursday. “I can smell ’em.”
On the lighter side
for all my Parks and Rec fans:
Finally, we have two senate runoffs to win.
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I am so proud and so lucky to be in this with you ❤️ ✊ ❤️