On Tuesday morning, I am not going to refuse. I am going to say yes to messy imperfection, to sane discourse, to protecting the dignity of all Americans. It’s going to feel great. If you can’t get on board, I genuinely feel sorry for you. You’re not an ally, you’re not patriotic and you’re definitely not my friend. But it’s OK, you’re still a fellow American. And the rest of us are going to save your bacon anyway.
That paragraph does not name the Democratic nominee for President, but it doesn't have to. You recognized Mary Elizabeth Williams' preference when she wrote that if you vote to the contrary "you're still a fellow American." And that's not the way most conservatives speak.
This man is given by one expert a 30% probability of winning, whereas the day before the 2012 election Mitt Romney was given only a 9.1% chance of prevailing (projection less favorable to Trump, from Larry Sabato, in map below).
" When I get into that booth on Tuesday," Williams remarks, "I will be casting a ballot for the person who will best serve a recently incarcerated mom who’s trying to get back on her feet. Who will serve the undocumented immigrant trying to make a better life for his family. Who will serve my young daughters."
Fair enough. Additionally, Williams describes
a race between a Democrat and a demagogue who has emboldened angry, ignorant, violent people. This is one with a party that’s cool with voter suppression. This is a situation where one candidate’s supporters are actively promoting lynching and think it’s funny, who beat up protestors at their own events.
It is also a race in which the vast majority of Christian evangelicals will be part of the 48%-49% of the American people who will vote for the most vain, boastful, narcissistic, vindictive, nasty, and profit-driven major party presidential candidate in American history. But he's against abortion. Hillary Clinton, they will tell you, is "pro-abortion" and thus unworthy. Of anything.
If Hillary Clinton wins as most objective observers and I expect, we will hear that the USA has arrived, that the good people of our nation have risen up to elect the first female President in history. However, eight years ago we elected our first black President, and hostility toward the President quickly reached a fever pitch, and remained.
The victory today would be a narrow one in which her opponent, whose slogan has been Make America Great Again, has implicitly and explicitly maintained that this is not a great country. He is wrong, his supporters are wrong, and the rest of us will, as Williams noted, "save their bacon." There will be no acknowledgment of appreciation.
Robert Reich has identified three sets of "enablers" which have allowed Donald Trump to do "incalculable damage to America."
He notes "the term 'media' comes from 'mediate' between the news and the public" but "Trump removed the mediators." Additionally, "not only did the media fawn over Trump but it also failed to subject his assertions, policy proposals, and biography to the scrutiny normal candidates receive."
He holds responsible also the Democratic Party, which "abandoned the working class (thus) clearing the way for Trump" because it "failed to reverse the decline in working-class wages and jobs."
Reich blames the Republican Party for having "nurtured the xenophobia, racism, fact-free allegations, and wanton disregard for democratic institutions that Trump has fed on." He recognizes "Trump's disdain of facts," which is "preceded by a long Republican tradition- denying, for example, that carbon emissions cause climate change, and tax cuts increase budget deficits." "And Trump's threats," he writes,"not to be bound by the outcome of the election are consistent with the GOP's persistent threats to shut down the government over policy disagreements,and oft-repeated calls for nullification of Supreme Court decisions."
Citing remarks which "suggested Sytian refugees be divided into Christians and Muslims," Reich identifed three of Trump's primary opponents- Ted Cruz, John Ellis Bush, and Ben Carson.
Nonetheless, there is a Republican who has aided and abetted the rise of Donald Trump more than any other Republican- and arguably more than any other individual.
That man is Indiana governor Mike Pence. After winning the nomination- and especially after the two party conventions- Trump was a decided underdog to Hillary Clinton. Pence, a former member of the House GOP leadership, helped prevent widespread criticism of the presidential candidate by the Party's congressional wing. And as a theocrat, he salved the conscience of evangelical Christians, who previously had claimed the mantle of "family values" and more recently would never acknowledge that any pro-choice candidate, anywhere, possibly could be a "Christian."
Additionally, Pence may be indirectly undermining a health skepticism of entrenched institutions. Politico's Ben Schreckinger summarizes
Reacting to news that the FBI won't change its determination in the Hillary Clinton email probe, Republican nominee Donald Trump made it clear he still regards her as guilty and is convinced she will ultimately face justice. “You can't review 650,000 emails in eight days," Trump said Sunday in an appearance at the Freedom Hill Amphitheater. "You can't do it folks. Hillary Clinton is guilty.”
That contrasted sharply with the reaction, as Politico's Matthew Nussbaum reported, when
Mike Pence responded to FBI Director James Comey’s declaration that its decision not to indict Hillary Clinton remained unchanged after reviewing newly found materials by continuing his own assault on Clinton’s ethics. “The American people have had enough and they’ve especially had enough of the fast and loose ethics of Bill and Hillary Clinton,” Pence declared, and was met by loud chants of “lock her up!” from the crowd of a few hundred. “The FBI last summer concluded that Hillary Clinton having classified documents on that private server was ‘extremely careless,’” Pence said. “And I guess today, I don’t know if you heard, today they announced that they had not changed that conclusion.”
Nussbaum explained "The conclusion the FBI reaffirmed in a letter to Congress on Sunday was its decision not to prosecute Clinton." (Score one for fair and accurate journalism, whether balanced or not.)
When Comey in June announced that Mrs. Clinton had been "extremely careless" in handling e-mails but that the FBI lacked a case to indict her, Clintonites commended the Director and Trumpists denounced him. When Comey recently stated that he was re-opening a review of e-mails from Huma Abedin's account, Trumpists cheered while Clinton supporters- with a far stronger case than had Trump supporters when they criticized Comey- were very critical.
Now that the FBI has reiterated its decision not to recommend prosecution of Mrs. Clinton, Trump maintains "you can't review 650,000 e mails in eight days."
Maybe, maybe not. But properly channeled (as Trump, admittedly, will not do), his criticism of the FBI, as well as Democratic jabs at Comey both for announcing a new review so close to the election and intially holding a news conference rather than issuing a simple statement indicating there will be no prosecution recommended. can serve a useful purpose.
Into that morass steps GOP vice-pesidential candidate Mike Pence. On a day in which he blasts the "fast and loose ethics of Bill and Hillary Clnton" and added "you know, mishandling classified information is a crime," he chooses to defend the very instituion which has fumbled the entire matter. "I don’t know if you heard, today they announced that they had not changed that conclusion," pompous Pence remarkably concluded, assidously avoiding any criticism of a faulty institution in his partisan attack on the Clintons.
In the year preceeding Pence's selection, Donald Trump just over the past year had
-argued John McCain was no war "hero" because he was captured;
-advocated closing down some mosques;
-referred to Megyn Kelly's "blood coming out of her wherever;"
-recommended supporters at a rally "knock the crap out of hecklers;"
-proposed to change libel laws to make it easier to sue media organizations;
-publicly bragged about the size of his penis;
-suggested the father of Ted Cruz as being involved in the assassination of President Kennedy and threatened to out Ted's wife for a speculated mental health problem;
-mimicked a reporter for his disability;
-commended "the power of strength" of the Chinese regime in its Tianamen Square crackdown;
-referred to "my African American over here;"
-demeaned military members and veterans with mental health issues;
-declared "our great African American Preisdent hasn't exactly had a positive impact on the thus who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore;"
-blamed Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for creating Al Qaeda;
-re-tweeted a brazenly anti-Semitic image.
And that's not including Trump's public praise of authoritarians including Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan, North Korea's Kim Jong-un, Iraq's late Sadaam Hussein, or Russia's Vladimir Putin. Nor does it consider Trump's business dealings with La Cosa Nostra, defrauding students at Trump "University," nor false claims of donating to veterans' groups. There also were "low-energy JEB," "Little Marco," and "Lyin' Ted."
No statement of the candidate, nor his ridicule of fellow Republicans, brazen misogyny, racial bias, ignorance about basic issues, and repeated lies could deter Mike Pence. He accepted the role of normalizing the presidential candidacy of Donald J. Trump. Nobody put a gun to his head (which wouldn't have convinced the NRA to drop its opposition to all gun safety measures, anyway).
On Tuesday (and earlier in states with early voting), Donald J. Trump, authoritarian, will be on the ballot. So will Mike Pence, authoritarian enabler-in-chief.
Democrats are in federal court this week to prevent voter intimidation by the Republican Party in Ohio, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. The Chicago Tribune reports that a federal case in New Jersey, however, involves a consent degree obtained in 1982 when
The consent decree was created after Democrats alleged that the RNC helped intimidate black voters during New Jersey's 1981 gubernatorial election. The RNC and New Jersey's Republican Party allegedly had off-duty law enforcement officers stand at polling places in urban areas wearing "National Ballot Security Task Force" armbands. Some had guns visible. The RNC admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to the decree to settle the case. The decree only regulates work done by the RNC and is scheduled to end next year. The Democratic National Committee wants it extended another eight years, but needs to convince a judge that the RNC has violated the 34-year-old rules.
The Democratic Party is a little nervous, facing a presidential candidate who on October 1 told supporters in 96% white Mannheim, Pennsylvania
You’ve got to go out. You’ve got to go out. And you’ve got to get your friends. And you’ve got to get everyone you know. And you got to watch your polling booths, because I hear too many stories about Pennsylvania. Certain areas. I hear too many bad stories, and we can’t lose an election because of you know what I’m talking about. So go and vote, and then go check out areas. Because a lot of bad things happen. And we don’t want to lose for that reason. We don’t want to lose, but we especially we don’t want to lose for that reason. So go over and — watch. And watch carefully.
Not surprisingly
Joshua Kaul, an attorney representing the Democratic National Committee, told the judge in Newark, New Jersey, on Friday that Trump has "repeatedly encouraged his supporters to engage in vigilante efforts" in the guise of ferreting out potential voter fraud. Kaul said the RNC is participating. Bobby Burchfield, an attorney for Republicans, told the judge that party volunteers are engaging in normal poll-watching and that Democrats haven't found one instance in which someone was intimidated or prevented from voting.
Not even one? Off the top of my head- and not even in the six states in which the Democratic Party is litigating- we learn from The Huffington Post
A man wearing a Donald Trump shirt and carrying a weapon stood outside a voting location in Loudoun County, Virginia, on Friday. Authorities in the nation’s richest county are apparently OK with that. Erika Cotti encountered the man when she went to vote at the county’s registrar’s office, she told The Huffington Post. Virginia doesn’t have early voting per se, but voters can cast in-person absentee ballots for a host of reasons, like if they’re going to be out of the county or city on Election Day. “I had my 9-year-old son with me. I felt intimidated,” Cotti said. “And I had to explain to my 9-year-old why a man with a 357 magnum is standing outside the polling station.” Cotti said the man offered her a Republican sample ballot, which she declined. “He’s like, ‘Who are you going to vote for, crooked Hillary?’ And I was like, that’s really none of your business,” Cotti said, adding that the man was standing in the sidewalk outside of the office when they left and blocking their path. Judy Brown, Loudoun County registrar, confirmed that the man was standing outside her office in Leesburg and handing out GOP literature. “There is a gentleman standing outside the office with a holstered gun,” Brown told HuffPost. “According to law enforcement, because Virginia is open carry, he’s allowed to have it.” Brown noted that the man was “being nice” to people, and that he appeared to respecting the observed 40-foot no-canvassing zone outside of the entrance. “They said that there’s nothing they could do, that he was well within his rights to be carrying his weapon,” Brown said.
The county registrar called the county GOP, "which got the man to agree to pull his Trump shirt over the weapon so people couldn’t see it." Yet this was (presumably,) no fascist or psychologically deficient Trump supporter, for
Loudoun County Republican Committee Chairman Will Estrada told HuffPost that the man was a former law enforcement official and veteran with a concealed carry permit. “’We don’t want to startle anyone,’” Estrada said he told him. “He felt really bad, he pulled his T-shirt over it, and I think everything was fine after that.”
Couple that with the remark this morning of RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer to CNN's Michael Smerconish, a steadfast advocate of bipartisan comity. Asked whether he'd accept the results of the presidential election- one which most polls currently indicate will be decided within three percentage points- Spicer responded "assuming that there's a clear and decisive victory, sure" (a reply which went over Smerconish's head).
Short term, the best antidote to the GOP's challenge to representative democracy is the big victory- both in the popular vote and electoral college- which most observers believe highly unlikely. Even then, Donald Trump, most of his supporters, and a huge chunk of one Party wil lnot accept the election as legitimate.
The viability of the Republican Party depends on obstruction and suppression. In the mid- and long-term, the Democratic Party will have to fight tooth and nail to establish the right of American citizens to vote.
If you've waited in a supermarket checkout line recently, you've seen some of the headlines:
- Hillary Clinton Hooked On Narcotics - Hillary Clinton's Satanic Inner Circle - Watch: 'Sick And Tired' Hillary Erupts At Bil Clinton Rape Protestor - Top FBI Agent: The Clintons Are A 'Crime Family' - Stumblin' Hillary: Candidate Trips While Boarding Plane- Again - Hillary Clinton Drinking Crisis: 'Sober Her Up!' - Bill & Hillary- Their Mob Tactics To Intimidate Investigators
And those are merely from the last ten days, all from the National Enquirer. Politico's Alex Weprin writes
the Enquirer endorsed Trump, and pushed for him to run back in 2011. Trump has also written numerous columns for the tabloid. During the Republican primary, the Enquirer published a number of stories about Trump's opponents, accusing Dr. Ben Carson of leaving a sponge in a patient's brain, and Ted Cruz's father of being involved in President Kennedy's assassination. Trump, meanwhile, has been spared as a target of the tabloid.
No surprise, there, because
Trump is friends with the CEO of American Media Inc., David Pecker. Pecker and Trump's relationship goes back to Pecker's tenure at the helm of Hachette Filipacchi Magazines,which published a magazine called 'Trump Style" that was distributed at Trump's hotels.
So it's not surprising that, as Weprin notes
The National Enquirer paid $150,000 to a former Playboy playmate for exclusive rights to her story about having an affair with Donald Trump, but it never published the story, according to The Wall Street Journal. Karen McDougal, Playboy's 1998 playmate of the year, claims to have had an affair with Trump from 2006 to 2007, while he was married to his current wife, Melania Trump, according to the report. American Media Inc., which owns The National Enquirer, confirmed the payment, but said it was for a column.
Nonetheless, Pecker is trying to keep up appearances, some sort of veneer of impartiality, for we learn
"In a written statement, the company said it wasn’t buying Ms. McDougal’s story for $150,000, but rather two years’ worth of her fitness columns and magazine covers as well as exclusive life rights to any relationship she has had with a then-married man," the Journal reported. "'AMI has not paid people to kill damaging stories about Mr. Trump,' the statement said." A Trump campaign spokesperson told the Journal that the claims of the affair were "totally untrue."
It's possible there was no affair. There must be doubt about virtually any story for which an accuser is paid. But that's how the National Enquirer does it, and among the reasons their absurd stories (and headlines, especially) are one step below ludicrous.
Still, some people read the rag and a tremendous number scan its headlines. The story demonstrates the importance of the left developing a media network that can at least almost, sometime rival that of the Republican right of Limbaugh, Fox News, Drudge, Breitbart News, the National Enquirer, and others. And it gives me a legitimate excuse to run this photo:
Ronald Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan writes that Hillary Clinton
is the nominee because the Democratic Party, which used to fight about great issues of war and peace, of the deeper meaning of foreign and domestic policy -- it was a vital thing -- is now kept together by one central organizing principle: the brute acquisition of power, and holding on to that power no matter what. The worst members of the party appear to care almost nothing about what that power is used for, how it will be wielded to achieve higher purposes. They’re just making a living. They’re just on a team.... The Democratic Party and its lobbyist/think-tank/journalistic establishment in Washington have long looked to me to be dominated by people devoted mostly to getting themselves in the best professional position and their kids into Sidwell Friends School. They want to be part of the web, the arrangement. They want to have connections, associates, a tong. They want to be wired in.
Is this Democratic Party you recognize? We're at the end of an eight-year democratic presidency. What do you remember about it? A concern with the rights of women, LGBT people, and non-whites. An effort to bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows. A struggle to wrap up two wars, even if that struggle was often one step forward and two steps back. An end to government-sanctioned torture. A slow process of trying to close Guantanamo. A nuclear deal with Iran. Increased taxation of the rich. And, of course, Obamacare. Really? None of that qualifies as "fight[ing] about great issues of war and peace, of the deeper meaning of foreign and domestic policy"? Preventing the privatization of Social Security and Medicare, which Democrats have done successfully for the past generation, doesn't count? Denouncing the racism and anti-Muslim bias of the opposing party and its nominee this year -- that doesn't count?
It should, obviously, and the current Administration's concern for the rights of women, non-whites, LGBT people, and illegal immigrants, and even its effort to shut down government-sanctioned torture have led to the point at which Donald Trump now has a serious chance of winning the presidency.
Noonan's claim that the Democratic Party "is now kept together by one central organizing principle: the brute acquisition of power, and holding on to that power no matter" is a splendid example of psychological projection. As one commenter wrote Steve, "Conservatives can't look at themselves in the mirror, and see their own failings. So, they project those failings onto liberals and Democrats."
In January, the Director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project explained his organization has "been on the ground" in five (Wisconsin, North Carolina, Kansas, Texas, Ohio) of the ten states which recently had enacted restrictive voting laws ranging "from new hurdles to registration to cutbacks on early voting to strict voter identification requirements" (map below from the Brennan Center).
On Wednesday, US District Judge Loretta Biggs, presiding over a lawsuit filed against the State of North Carolina by the NAACP, said the process used by some counties to purge voting rolls sounds "insane" and "like something that was put together in 1901." The arguments come four months after a federal court "struck down much of a 2013 elections law, saying the GOP-controlled General Assembly had disproportionately targeted black voters. The ruling lengthened in-person early voting by a week and eliminated a photo ID requirement for in-person voting." That Court then ruled Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist.... We can only conclude that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions of the law with discriminatory intent.
Of course, a problem does exist- the vote of African-Americans. They overwhelmingly vote Demcoratic and threaten the Party which actually does exist for "the brute acquisition of power, and holding on to that power no matter what."
When the memoir of former U.S. Representative Ray LaHood (R-IL), President Obama's first transportation secretary, weas published a year ago, he claimed that the alleged decision by the White House to pass economic stimulus legislation without Republican votes was the "beginning of the end of bipartisanship."
That's a little odd, given that then-House Minority Leader John Boehner on January 17, 2009 had told his caucus to condemn the incoming President's stimulus bill on television, social media and the House floor as "another run-of-the-mill, undisciplined, cumbersome, wasteful Washington spending bill … I hope everyone here will join me in voting no!”
If anything, Boehner was late to the dance, having missed the meeting of over 15 Republicans, most of them Representatives and Senators, on Inauguration night, in which the partisans agreed to "show united and unyielding opposition to the president's economic policies" and "begin attacking vulnerable Democrats on the airwaves."
Even some of them were late, given that Vice President Biden stated that during the transition, he
spoke to seven different Republican Senators, who said, `Joe, I’m not going to be able to help you on anything,’ he recalls. His informants said [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell had demanded unified resistance. “The way it was characterized to me was: `For the next two years, we can’t let you succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back,’” Biden says.
If Hillary Clinton is elected, she'll have the advantage of being warned even before she is chosen by the American people. The Associated Press reports "I would say yes, high crime or misdemeanor," GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said this week in an interview with the Beloit Daily News, arguing that with her handling of emails Clinton had crossed the constitutionally established threshold for impeachment proceedings. GOP Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, in an interview Wednesday on Fox News Channel, suggested that the Clinton email investigation might lead toward indictment. "At that point in time under the Constitution, the House of Representatives would engage in an impeachment trial," McCaul said. Those comments follow recent remarks by GOP Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Richard Burr of North Carolina and John McCain of Arizona suggesting that they will oppose any and all Supreme Court nominations Clinton might make. McCain walked his comment back, saying any nominee would be considered. But Burr told GOP volunteers, in private remarks leaked to CNN, that he would aim to keep the existing vacancy on the Supreme Court open throughout Clinton's term.
There no longer is any need to speak in hushed terms, to hold conversations in dark alleys, or to pretend (although McCain evidently is still doing so). It's upfront now. Hillary Clinton, witness to the last eight years, has been forewarned, and how she confronts this challenge from the Party of victory first, ideology second, and country a distant third will be a major factor in determining the success of her presidency.
Through tapes of President Lyndon Johnson's phone calls, declassifed in 2013, we learned of Lyndon Johnson's chicanery, Richard Nixon's utter disregard for his country, and Hubert Humphrey's extraordinary integrity. More significantly- at this moment- the 2013 article from BBC News throws some light onto the upcoming presidential election. David Taylor wrote
It begins in the summer of 1968. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign. He therefore set up a clandestine back-channel involving Anna Chennault, a senior campaign adviser. At a July meeting in Nixon's New York apartment, the South Vietnamese ambassador was told Chennault represented Nixon and spoke for the campaign. If any message needed to be passed to the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, it would come via Chennault. In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris - concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. This was exactly what Nixon feared. Chennault was despatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal. So on the eve of his planned announcement of a halt to the bombing, Johnson learned the South Vietnamese were pulling out. He was also told why. The FBI had bugged the ambassador's phone and a transcripts of Anna Chennault's calls were sent to the White House. In one conversation she tells the ambassador to "just hang on through election."
(President Johnson found out but divulged the information only to Democratic nominee Humphrey because the information had been gleaned solely from the FBI wiretap of the South Vietnamese ambassador. Humphrey, having been told he would win the election, withheld the information because it would disrupt the country. Nixon won by less than 1% and as President expanded the war.)
Fast-forward 12 years to the events of 1980, which investigator Robert Parry wrote about five days ago under the headline "The Modern History of 'Rigged' US Elections." He explained
President Jimmy Carter was seeking reelection and trying to negotiate release of 52 American hostages then held in revolutionary Iran. Ronald Reagan’s campaign feared that Carter might pull off an “October Surprise” by bringing home the hostages just before the election. So, this historical mystery has been: Did Reagan’s team take action to block Carter’s October Surprise? The testimonial and documentary evidence that Reagan’s team did engage in a secret operation to prevent Carter’s October Surprise is now almost as overwhelming as the proof of the 1968 affair regarding Nixon’s Paris peace talk maneuver. That evidence indicates that Reagan’s campaign director William Casey organized a clandestine effort to prevent the hostages’ release before Election Day, after apparently consulting with Nixon and Kissinger and aided by former CIA Director George H.W. Bush, who was Reagan’s vice presidential running mate. By early November 1980, the public’s obsession with Iran’s humiliation of the United States and Carter’s inability to free the hostages helped turn a narrow race into a Reagan landslide. When the hostages were finally let go immediately after Reagan’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981, his supporters cited the timing to claim that the Iranians had finally relented out of fear of Reagan. Bolstered by his image as a tough guy, Reagan enacted much of his right-wing agenda, including passing massive tax cuts benefiting the wealthy, weakening unions and creating the circumstances for the rapid erosion of the Great American Middle Class. Behind the scenes, the Reagan administration signed off on secret arms shipments to Iran, mostly through Israel, what a variety of witnesses described as the payoff for Iran’s cooperation in getting Reagan elected and then giving him the extra benefit of timing the hostage release to immediately follow his inauguration.
We know that Trump operative and career dirty trickster Roger Stone contended on August 8, 2016 that he has "actually communicated" with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has leaked DNC e-mails which the intelligence community has strongly suggested were hacked by force(s) associated witht the Russian government. But even five days ago Parry himself did not make the connection that, according to Michael Crowley, Senator Harry
Reid himself has led the charge since late August, when he sent Comey an open letter imploring the FBI to investigate what he called “evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.” That letter cited a Trump campaign adviser who traveled to Moscow in July and who, according to Reid, “met with high-ranking sanctioned individuals” there. That was almost surely a reference to Carter Page, an investment banker who has worked in Moscow and whom Trump has publicly named as a foreign adviser. Page has denied meeting with sanctioned Kremlin officials in Moscow, where he delivered economic remarks at a think tank. The Trump campaign says Carter plays a minimal advisory role.
History, it is claimed, repeats itself. Still, neither Taylor, Parry, or Politico's Crowley even mentioned the Brooks Brothers' riot which stopped vote counting in Miami-Dade County, Florida in 2000 nor in 2004 vote switching, pre-punched ballots, voter suppression, and hacking of the touchscreen voting machines in Ohio by controllers of the SmarTech computers.
Donald Trump whines about the election being "rigged" and diverts attention from GOP voter suppression. But through the decades, the Republican Party has practiced in close elections a a subtler, more sophisticated, and more realistic effort to subvert the election process than he imagines.
