Election Tracker, Nov 11, 2020
"Don't let it dominate your life...."
The post-election is playing out largely as predicted. Trump is actively priming his base to believe that the election was irrevocably tainted. The specific claims are besides the point, as the goal is to cloud everything so that the steps he eventually takes to stay in office are considered proportionate to the awful fraud that was perpetrated. It will once again be draining the swamp from a guy who actually swamped the drain. This is what I said he would do. I also thought he’d succeed and that Republican state legislatures would eventually change the way they choose electors to hand Trump another four years. This is apparently exactly the strategy now under consideration:
“One potential strategy discussed by Mr. Trump’s legal team would be attempting to get court orders to delay vote certification in critical states, potentially positioning Republican-controlled state legislatures to appoint pro-Trump electors who would swing the Electoral College in his favor, according to people familiar with the discussions.
So why, if I was so worried about this before the election, am I confident that Steven Miller will be buying spray-on-hair back in CA come Jan 20 rather than in the White House? Because of Fox News. Since they called Arizona on election night, the pre-primetime Fox News shows have stubbornly refused to peddle in misinformation, even pulling away from a Monday White House briefing once it devolved (quickly) into falsehoods. I was concerned that mainstream Republicans, including those in the Senate and on the Supreme Court, would watch Fox News and come to share the president’s view on the election. This would, in turn, inform the actions of state legislators. As long as Fox News continues to treat Biden as the president-elect, I think the odds of convincing the entire party that changing the rules does the “least harm” to the institutions is highly unlikely.
The bigger question is why Fox is acting this way? It could be that the network of the birther conspiracy thinks that stealing elections is a step too far. They might be satisfied with GOP control of the Senate, which seems likely post the double GA runoff (first prize, one week on GA, second prize, two weeks…). They might also be gearing themselves to become the channel of the center-right, should Trump enter the arena with a new TV offering. It’s interesting that since election day, ratings for the nascent conservative Newsmax channel, run by Trump pal Chris Ruddy, are soaring as they remind viewers that they have not yet called the race for Biden (never mind that they don’t have a decision desk). From Brian Stelter:
Over the summer, when I started to keep an eye on Newsmax's Nielsen ratings, the channel was averaging about 25,000 viewers at any given time -- a tiny number by any TV news standard. As the election was approaching, the audience ticked up, but it was still just a fly on the Fox elephant's back. In the final week of October, Newsmax was averaging just 65,000 viewers at any given time. Then came the election. Newsmax averaged 182,000 viewers during the election week that ended on Sunday. And it is growing even more this week. On Monday the channel averaged 347,000 viewers. On Tuesday, 437,000 viewers. Evening shows like "Spicer & Co" and "Greg Kelly Reports" are reaching 700,000 and 800,000 viewers. These shows struggled to hit 100,000 before the election! Something has changed.
There is clearly demand from some Republicans for Trump’s view of the race. I think, however, that the Fox narrative still has the majority of the party, especially elected officials. And it’s telling that partisan views on consumer confidence have shifted since election day, “confirming” that both Republicans and Democrats believe it likely that Biden will be President (and also reminding you never to put any stock in consumer confidence polls, because everyone lies or is biased, even if they don’t know it).
I’m concerned about the Newsmax ratings. But with Fox firmly on script, I think it will be hard for Trump to convince most Republicans that he deserves more than merely his day in court, which is how folks like McConnell have so far portrayed it.
Which brings us to the legal challenges. Any chance they work or at least sway elite republican opinion? We know that there is almost never any voting fraud. I was a law clerk in 2006 when some of the first voter ID cases made their way through the US courts of appeal. My judge felt that we lived in an age where you needed ID to do anything and why shouldn’t that apply to voting. The Supreme Court agreed. Years later, my judge took the rare step of publicly changing his mind, partially because after years of searching there was just very little evidence of any voter fraud while there was clear indication that voter ID laws suppressed the vote of poorer Americans. Remember the quote from longtime GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsberg:
The truth is that over all those years Republicans found only isolated incidents of fraud. Proof of systematic fraud has become the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican Party. People have spent a lot of time looking for it, but it doesn’t exist.”
Even if all of a sudden there was more clear fraud in 2020, it’s important to remember that Biden is winning in even the close states by thousands of votes. In Bush v Gore the Supreme Court used impending deadlines to end counting with Bush ahead by a measly 538 votes. None of the states today are that close and the Supreme Court would need to countenance the disqualification of thousand of ballots since Biden is in the lead. Stopping a count is much easier than tossing ballots. The latter would be more akin to the 2000 supreme court giving all the Holocaust survivors in Palm Beach County a redo for their mistaken votes for Pat Buchanan on the infamous Butterfly ballot that had been foolishly, yet legally, approved before the election. That was never even considered.
We likely have a couple of political hacks on the Supreme Court of the United States. I think many of Trump’s specious legal challenges will end up there. But with Fox News on the sidelines, I find it hard to believe that the Supremes would do all the hard work themselves of undoing the votes. If state legislators change the rules, and all the Court needs to do is approve those changes, then I think we’re in hotter water, as I did before the election.
So on the election, steel yourself, turn off your CNN or MSNBC and spend the day watching Fox. Tucker and Hannity are already auditioning for Trump TV, but get a afraid if you start to see that during daylight hours.