We exist in a time where the corporate owned media has dramatically failed to live up to it’s responsibility of keeping the citizens of this country informed in an unbiased and educated manner. Because of major consolidation of media outlets, our usual sources of news and information has been transformed into a partisan propaganda tool of money hoarding billionaires. To be honest, the corporate owned media has always been a propaganda tool of the wealthy.
Who else has the ability to convince 90% of the population to embrace bigotry and the illusion of class status over their own economic, environmental, and social interests? The oligarchs or ‘Robber Barons’ can. They maintain their power and control even more of the wealth by feeding the general public a lot of disinformation, like don’t open your eyes and see how we are misleading you. Don’t become ‘Woke’!
The thing I love about doing my own blog, is that I can ignore the political and cultural narratives of the corporate media and give you a different perspective on what I am seeing by focusing on things we might be missing. It’s been a really intriguing three weeks. Things are happening at a very fast pace. Let me drop some thoughts that have occurred to me recently.
President Biden comes up lame in a debate everyone was sure he could not lose. He and the Democratic leadership outmaneuvered the MAGAverse, the media, and this misguided electorate into thinking he is too old and feeble. As this narrative was being pushed by Trump and the MAGA bench players in Congress, he set out to accomplish more in one term than other Presidents have achieved in two terms. He sat back as VP in the Obama administration and discovered just how much more racist the people he worked with for years really were. Now he understands that McConnell, the Supreme Court, and corporate heads don’t care about the ideals of Democracy. They will burn it all down as long as they can control the economy and the public policies that support their views.
So I have a speculative consideration. This nomination of VP Harris for President was a play set in motion when Biden turned to South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn for his endorsement in 2020. Clyburn drove a hard bargain, he wanted a Supreme Court nomination, and he wanted the first Black woman at the head of the ticket when Biden’s term was up.
You may recall Biden originally stated that he would only govern for one term. Consider, the possibility that Biden announced that he would seek a 2nd term so he could gauge Trump’s electability. During the GOP primaries, Trump underperformed. Despite the media narratives, Biden over performed. He had no serious Democratic competition. He was able to prove that Trump is beatable because he cannot grow his coalition beyond his core base of MAGA fanatics.
Biden knew that the GOP has been working to tear down VP Harris the way they did Hillary Clinton. So by announcing his candidacy for reelection in 2024, he was able to draw the fire of the GOP establishment, the corporate media, and force the next generation of democratic leaders to stand on the sidelines temporarily. Take note, that while many voices aligned with Progressives pushed for Biden to step aside, the main Progressive leaders in Congress said nothing. Bernie Sanders, AOC, Pramila Jayapal, Ilhan Omar were careful not to step into that effort.
When the chatter for Biden to step aside intensified, it was rumored that Nancy Pelosi and former President Barak Obama were also pressuring Biden. Many large dollar donors are reported to have floated the notion that VP Harris should step aside also. But look what transpired. After that inexplicable debate performance, those on the outside became part of the ‘Step aside Joe’ chorus. But what did Biden do the next day after the debate? What did he do in 19 public events after the debate?
He gave very forceful, detailed, and extemporaneous policy speeches. He gave fiery speeches against Trump. The media ignored those speeches. The RNC nominating convention and Trump announced his VP pick, JD Vance. This has been the worse pick of a non-consequential elected official in history.
So what did Biden do? He announced that he was withdrawing from the 2024 Presidential race. Then he cut off all the nonsense about a mini-primary before the DNC convention. Understanding that Democrats cannot have a repeat of the 1968 convention in Chicago, he quickly endorsed VP Kamala Harris.
In less than 72 hours, VP Harris had secured the support of the Democratic Party and Congressional leadership. She got the commitment of the convention delegates to vote for her nomination on the first ballot and she raised over $200 million dollars from largely small dollar donors. She had over 17,000 new volunteers sign up to work the ground game to turn out the vote leading up to November 5th election day. As of August 1st, her campaign has raised over $320 million dollars. That is more than twice the amount Trump raised in July.
In two short weeks the person who was being maligned and portrayed as unpopular by the political punditry class has put into place a Presidential campaign ‘Juggernaut’ that looks to be more prepared to win than the presumed winner of the debate. That did not happen out of circumstance or serendipity. I believe this was a quietly crafted and orchestrated outcome.
Biden and Clyburn have run this better than Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s characters ran the ‘Sting’. If we end up addressing VP Harris as Madame President the reward will be knowing that Trump got played, The RNC got played, corporate media talking heads got played. They have become such unreliable propaganda agents that alternative sources for creditable objective news have emerged.
We’re not there yet, but the enthusiasm for Harris is palpable. The frustrations and exhaustion from the threat of MAGA maniacs and Privileged White Christian Nationalist Theocratic Fascists is also palatable. These folks were so arrogant that they published a manifesto for taking over the governance of the country with Trump as their figure-head.
Thanks to that arrogance we now know that election officials in small counties all over the country plan to withhold certification of their election numbers in hopes of stopping their states from certifying the results for any one but Trump. These folks will now be subjected to law suits and potential arrests for ‘Election Interference’. It’s going to unfold very quickly because the Justice Department now has an idea of where to expect resistance.
As for the the next generation of Democratic leaders, they will be in waiting in preparation for 2032 Should VP Harris win in 2024 and decide to seek a second term in 2028.
“In the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, Rolling Stone and American Doom identified at least 70 pro-Trump election conspiracists currently working as county election officials who have questioned the validity of elections or delayed or refused to certify results. At least 22 of these county election officials have refused or delayed certification in recent years.
Certification of election results is what legal experts consider a “ministerial task,” and one required by state and local law. But as Trump’s lies about the 2020 election have taken hold, Republicans nationwide have decided that certification provides them an opportunity to hear fraud allegations – and refuse to officially count their local votes. Republicans have refused to certify election results at least 25 times since Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
“I think we are going to see mass refusals to certify the election” in November, says Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias. “Everything we are seeing about this election is that the other side is more organized, more ruthless, and more prepared.”
While refusals and delays of certification have not held up in court, in Georgia and Arizona, pro-Trump local election officials are seeking to make certification discretionary – lawsuits that are currently being decided by state judges – in order to give his campaign another method to challenge election results in November.
Polls indicate that the race between Trump and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris will be close. If employed on a large scale, the certification refusal movement would have disastrous consequences, fueling the fire of election conspiracies and delaying the tallying of votes crucial to determining the next president.
Nineteen states have varying levels of local election administration, with county election officials numbering in the thousands. Rolling Stone and American Doom focused on the pivotal counties in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
Elias, the Democratic election lawyer, believes the findings in this investigation only represent “the tip of the iceberg,” because Republicans “are counting on not just that they can disrupt the election in big counties, they are counting on the fact that if they don’t certify in several small counties, you cannot certify these statewide results.”
The beliefs and behavior of the election officials discovered by this investigation are part of widespread efforts to call the results of November’s election into question, Elias and swing state Democrats say. Those efforts include mass voter challenges, implementation of unreliable hand recounts, restriction of voter registration rules, Republican takeover of local election boards via legislation, and certification refusals.
With an army of Republican lawyers and state lawmakers crafting voter suppression rules and laws across the country, pro-Trump Republicans can also count as allies some of the thousands of men and women currently serving as local election officials. Most of these officials carry out their duties with little to no fanfare. It’s only since 2020 that the routine, often boring, work of administering local elections has become the target of robust right-wing electioneering, with efforts to place pro-Trump zealots on election boards who are increasingly refusing to certify results in pursuit of bogus fraud allegations. “
A Reasonable Point of View 