Tag Archives: 2020 election

The 2020 Election Was Not Stolen

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I continue to see reports of Republicans claiming that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Republican talking heads are being given air time on the networks and, of course, on cable, to continue arguing about this. They are wrong. It’s time to move on.

Republicans claiming the election was stolen due to rampant voter fraud are wrong for multiple reasons.

Belief is a choice. If we are to be rationally and coherently connected to the world, we must have a basis for that choice. There are several options.

One option (Evidence Principle) is: evidence. I believe X because there is sufficient evidence that X is true and insufficient evidence that non-X or anti-X is true, when both X and non/anti-X cannot be true at the same time.

Another option (No Evidence Principle): I go by the “absence of evidence rule” that the “absence of evidence is not evidence of the absence.” Thus, if there is no evidence from which to adopt Belief X, I still may choose to believe X because of the “rule.” Don’t try to tell me X is not true; I believe it because there is no evidence to disprove X. Bear in mind, however, that this option is only rational and coherent if there is no evidence. If there is evidence that X is not true, one cannot use this “absence of evidence” rationale for asserting X is true.

Another option (Don’t Know/Don’t Care Principle): I have no idea whether there is evidence or not regarding the truth of Belief X, but I choose to believe X anyway, because I believe a lot of things for which I have no evidence: (1) there is too much evidence to cope with, (2) evidence exists but we just don’t know what it is yet, (3) I know a lot of other people who believe X and I like them/respect them/want to be seen as one of them, so I really don’t care what is true. I believe what I believe.

What do we know regarding the 2020 election?

    1. After more than 60 legal challenges, the Republicans supporting Trump prevailed in exactly none that would have changed the result of the presidential election – NONE. Trump’s counsel and experts were never able to produce evidence that X was true, where X is the fact that the presidential election was stolen by rampant fraud in the handful of battleground states that decided the election.
    2. Since the legal battles ended and the Electoral College results were certified, the pro-Trump crowd has still not produced evidence of X, that the presidential election was stolen, despite months of opportunities to do so.
    3. During the multitude of legal challenges prior to January 6, the pro-Trump contingent was never able to explain how the presidential election was stolen (X was true) while Republicans continued to have electoral success in other races in the same battleground states (Belief Y, that would be expected to be concurrently true if X were true).

It appears that the Evidence Principle and the No Evidence Principle must be rejected as rational and coherent explanations for the continuing claim that the election was stolen.

We are left with the Don’t Know/Don’t Care Principle that, I suggest, means that there is no rational or coherent basis for the claim that the election is stolen. The apparently widespread belief in the QAnon Conspiracy and some of the other nonsense being spread on cable TV, most notably FoxNews, Newsmax and OAN, including but not limited to shows like Breitbart, are examples of the Don’t Know/Don’t Care Principle in practice – large numbers of Americans choose to belief utter nonsense for which no evidence exists or even could exist.

To be clear, I am open to being shown the error of my thinking on this but, absent such proof, this is where we are.

I am happy to have settled this problem for the nation. The subject should be considered closed. The media can now stop giving air time to the proponents of the Don’t Know/Don’t Care Principle. They have nothing useful to contribute to the national dialogue about how we should govern ourselves and therefore no more valuable air time should we wasted on them.

The End. Roll the credits. Blackout.

Congressional Hall of Dishonor

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This space will be filled in tomorrow with a complete list of members of the United States Congress who vote to overturn the 2020 presidential election by rejecting the vote of the Electoral College. The plan is to republish this list periodically until the next elections, and perhaps beyond, in many places. The hope is that it serves as a reminder to voters everywhere that these elected representatives violated their solemn oaths of office and placed the desires of a deranged aspiring dictator ahead of the will of the people as expressed by their votes. This action to undermine American democracy will not be forgotten or forgiven.

Impeachment – Who Should Testify?

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In keeping with their desperate and ill-conceived defense of the indefensible president, Republicans have submitted a list of proposed witnesses they claim should be called to testify in next week’s public hearings on the impeachment of Donald Trump. Not surprisingly, the list includes the heretofore anonymous whistleblower who first revealed the president’s treachery in trying to leverage Ukraine’s president to publicize an investigation of Joe Biden by withholding Congressionally-approved aid. Republicans also want testimony from Biden’s son and random others.

Of particular interest, however, is the omission of most of the administration personnel with actual knowledge of the president’s demands, including, most notably, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney and appointed “fixer” to replace the disgraced and jailed Michael Cohen.

How should Adam Schiff, who chairs the House investigation, respond to these requests?

The issue in the hearings – the only issue – is whether the president of the United States committed impeachable offenses. The witness list, therefore, should consist only of people who can present factual information about that question. The whistleblower is not such a person because his report of the president’s wrongdoing was obtained from others who almost certainly will testify about their firsthand knowledge of what transpired.

I think of the whistleblower as similar to a person who hears others shouting “fire” and calls 911 for the fire department to report what he heard. He can’t say there was actually a fire or any details because he didn’t see it. He heard from others who saw it and he took action to help. Therefore, in the ensuing investigation of the fire, his testimony would at most establish that someone shouted “fire,” but he could not testify about the details of the fire he didn’t see. His testimony would be essentially useless on the origin of the fire, how it spread, who fought it, etc. If he chose to be identified, he might be hailed as a hero but his information about the fire itself would be useless. An imperfect analogy, I suppose, as most analogies are, but sufficient to make the point.

The Republican demands for exposure of the whistleblower are an essential element of the only “defense” Trump has – distraction from the central and only real question: the president’s conduct in connection with aid to Ukraine and the 2020 election interference he sought from a foreign government. The same is true about the demand for Hunter Biden’s testimony. Republicans want to create a sideshow about alleged corruption in the Biden camp which, even if true (and it has not been shown by evidence from any credible source), is not relevant to the president’s attempt to obtain foreign interference in the election. It is the president’s conduct, and no one else’s, that is at issue in the impeachment process.

I well understand that, when push comes to shove, Trump’s defenders will argue it was a legitimate exercise of presidential foreign policy authority to try to ferret out corruption by a person who was Vice President at the time. However, the evidence is clear, and mounting with every passing witness, that the sole purpose of Trump’s Ukraine maneuver was to help him defeat a domestic political opponent in 2020. Absent Biden’s prominent standing among the top challengers in 2020, Trump would have had no interest whatsoever in Biden’s involvement in Ukraine.

The answer to the question posed, then, is straightforward: individuals with direct knowledge of Trump’s conduct should testify. This is the investigative phase of the impeachment process and the sole issue is the president’s conduct. If Republicans want to produce witnesses to testify about Trump’s character, in mitigation of the possible penalty, that testimony will only be relevant in the Senate trial where the issue is conviction (or not) based on the evidence adduced in the House process. It is laughable, of course, that Republicans would introduce character evidence in the Senate, as that would create the opportunity for full exploration of Trump’s personal conduct in a host of areas, including defrauding charities, cheating the military and many others. Such a development would not deter the Republican majority from finding Trump “not guilty” but it would add to the ammunition available to the Democratic nominee in the 2020 campaign. The Senate trial, managed by #MoscowMitch, will be a brief affair with a foregone conclusion.

An overarching question remains as to how broad the House articles of impeachment should be. There are reported indications that Democrats are planning to limit the articles to the Ukraine situation. I am speculating, but must assume the rationale for that is to anticipate and undermine the argument that the impeachment process is just political revenge and an attempt to undo the election of 2016.

That would be a huge mistake. It would allow Trump to escape the findings of the Mueller investigation that Trump committed at least 10 acts of obstruction of justice. Prior posts in this blog covered the details. If the issue is going to be presented of criminal acts by the president, and there is an entire bag full of evidence of at least 10 such crimes in addition to the Ukraine scenario, limiting the charges will be interpreted by Republicans, and possibly the electorate, as proof that the Mueller Report was wrong and that Trump is innocent. The evidence of Trump’s guilt is overwhelming and he has thus far produced nothing substantive and relevant that could defeat that evidence.

Of course, in anticipation of the public hearings next week, Trump has announced he “may” issue a “transcript” of another Ukraine call. When? Why, Tuesday, of course, the day before the hearings begin. Classic Trump deflection and distraction. The first release of the “notes” from the call with President Zelensky were a disaster for Trump as those notes established the very crime he had denied. The second release will be more suspect since Trump is now in more serious trouble than he ever imagined and he likely will use the second call notes to try to repair the damage. I have previously written about the problem of calling these reports “transcripts” and the concerns expressed there are even more serious in the promised second release. CNN, among others, continues to misuse the term “transcript” to describe these notes, the original source of which are locked away in an ultra-secure computer somewhere in the White House.

A final point – the refusal of the Trump administration to produce witnesses subpoenaed by the House committees has led to multiple legal proceedings designed to test the extent to which the Executive Branch can claim, as this administration has, “absolute immunity” from Congressional oversight. Those cases are generally being decided against the administration that will certainly want a final ruling from the Supreme Court before complying. Democrats, wisely, I think, have not taken that bait entirely. Schiff has said repeatedly that the House will simply assume that the evidence that would have been adduced from non-appearing witnesses would be adverse to the president.

Schiff’s position is entirely consistent with the way legal presumptions operate. A party who claims “Proposition A” to be true but refuses to produce evidence of the truth of “A” risks a finding that “A” is not true. Withholding evidence is, in effect, an admission. The House has every right to draw adverse conclusions from the refusal of administration witnesses to testify, especially since those who have done so have uniformly supported the conclusion that Trump did indeed try to leverage Ukraine as charged for the purpose of unlawfully securing foreign interference in the 2020 election.