Back on May 11, 2016, more than fiver months
ago, I penned a post entitled, “Fact Free Universe: The Quintessential Trump
Advantage” (https://thesphinxofcharlotte.com/2016/05/11/fact-free-universe-the-quintessential-trump-advantage/). In that post, I elaborated on the degree to
which Mr. Trump, in framing his campaign’s narrative, was not constrained by
even a fleeting appearance of truth. Neither
his surrogates nor his supporters seem the least bit interesting in
establishing any foundation for veracity or fact-based accountability when it
comes to defending and repeating ad nauseam the often-groundless assertions
uttered by their candidate. It is as if
he operates in what I have deemed, a fact free universe.
To complicate matters further, the media has
largely taken the position that it is utterly incapable of taking Mr. Trump to
task for his every deviation from the truth table. Even one of the journalists responsible for
moderating the Presidential Debates wants no part of monitoring Mr. Trump’s
aversion to facts. Fox News’ Chris
Wallace, who will moderate the final debate of the 2016 Campaign tonight has
said, “I do not believe it’s my job to be a truth squad. It’s up to the other (Nominee) to catch them”
if they lie during the debate.
In deed, that may sound reasonable on it’s
face. The moderator isn’t running for
President, after all. However, the
reality is, when one is dealing with Mr. Trump that can be problematic. Several organizations have concluded Mr.
Trump is a veritable voracious arbiter of fact free assertion. At some point, it is conceivable that if Mrs.
Clinton is tasked with fact checking every Trump truth violation, she will be
left with little or no time to answer the moderator’s questions or to promote
her own policy prescriptions. That is
not a desirable outcome, neither should it be an acceptable one.
As I noted in the May 11th post, Joseph
Heller asserted “In his 1984 tragicomedic
novel
God Knows, “The truth is whatever people will believe is the
truth. Don’t you know history?” In that light, Mr. Wallace is on point, and
Trump is simply channeling Machiavelli, and doubling down on Malcolm X, in a,
“The end justifies the means,’ and a “By any means necessary” kind of way,
respectively. But. Lest you missed my
previously referenced blog, or in case you have forgotten one of its essential
points, reflect upon this passage from that post:
“In the
March 13 Edition of Politico, in an article entitled Trump’s Week
of Errors, Exaggerations and Flat-out Falsehoods, the magazine makes
the case that Donald Trump is a veritable truth avoidance machine. This was a
month ago, and several weeks before Trump was elevated through a series of
convincing Primary wins to the GOP’s presumptive nominee status. The magazine
in effect fact-checked a week’s worth of Mr. Trump’s verbal stump speech
stylings. This amounted to 4.6 hours of speeches and press conferences from
North Carolina to Missouri.
In summary,
what they found was more than five dozen statements deemed
mischaracterizations, exaggerations, or just flat out false. These were deemed
material that would not have made it into one of the magazine’s stories, or in
some instances would have lead to scuttling a story altogether. According to Politico,
it amounted on average to roughly one misstatement every five minutes.”
Let Hillary
fact check Trump? Good luck with that! Of course I can understand why that would be among Team Trump's fondest desires.
So much for
the preamble, let’s move on to the meat of today’s topic. As we enter the final 20 days before the 2016
Presidential election, the elusive set of values and data that the pundits,
analysts, and candidates refer to as the “fundamentals of the campaign” are
settling fast. As they do so, Mrs.
Clinton holds a small lead in most national polls, a lead by varying amounts in
most of the swing sates, and a substantial lead among several key demographics,
including:
·
Women
overall
·
College
educated white women
·
College
educated whites overall (a
group that Democrats
have never have won in exit polls dating to 1976)
·
Nonwhites
·
Democrats
·
Democratic-leaning
Independents (who supported Bernie Sanders)
·
Registered
voters
·
Likely
voters
At the same
time his opponent is solidifying critical support among those important
segments cited above, Mr. Trump is amassing an ominous collection of
unfavorables. Recent polling shows:
·
79
percent of Americans polled say he doesn't show enough respect for people he
disagrees with
·
70
percent express anxiety about a Trump presidency
·
67
percent think he lacks the personality and temperament it takes to serve
effectively
·
64
percent doubt his understanding of world affairs
·
63
percent see him unfavorably overall
·
62
percent say he's not honest and trustworthy
·
61
percent think he's unqualified for office
·
60
percent think he's biased against women and minorities
Furthermore, on
his handling of his dispute with the parents of fallen Muslim U.S. Army Capt.
Humayun Khan: 73 percent disapprove, including 59 percent of Republicans. All this was underscored by the
revelation that Mr. Trump, who refuses to reveal his taxes, took a nearly
billion dollar write-off on his taxes, likely went nearly two decades without
paying federal taxes, and was accused by several women of sexual assault.
As he is someone
Mr. Trump would cast into the rigged media category, I doubt the candidate follows
his work, but based on yesterday’s data, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight forecast
put the chance of winning the Presidency at the following:
·
Hillary Clinton
– 87.4%
·
Donald Trump –
12.6%
One might say
the rudiments of a trend are developing.
With these elements as a backdrop, Team Trump has conceived, and he
especially, is promoting a catchall explanation for what in his own mind, and no doubt the minds of those who support him, is the unthinkable…the fact that he could
possible awake the morning of November 9th as something other than a
winner. I used that awkward phraseology
in honor Mr. Trump’s personal conviction that he never loses…or fails.
Nevertheless,
for several days now, Mr. Trump has flatly, vociferously, and consistently insisted that the election is rigged. He claims that
there is widespread voter fraud, and he maintains that the media is complicit in
carrying out what would be (if it were in fact so) a patently illegal scheme. Monday he tweeted, “Of course there is large
scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going
on? So naïve!”
His fellow New
Yorker, surrogate, and former New York City Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, has taken to
the airways to parrot Mr. Trump’s paranoia.
Sunday, on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper, Mr. Giuliani said,
“Dead people generally vote for Democrats instead of Republicans. If you want me to tell you that I think the
elections of Philadelphia and Chicago are going to be fair, I would have to be
a moron to say that.” My unscientific
guess is there are those who believe he is a moron, based in part on what he
said above.
While I am in no position to speak for them, I
have the impression that many self-respecting Republicans are flatly
embarrassed by this ridiculous, and more important, unsubstantiated claim. It is nonsense such as this that poses an
existential threat to our Democracy. Mr.
Trump actually seems to be inviting his gaggle of avid supporters to activate
and revolt, should he lose, which appears more of an inevitability each passing day.
Fortunately, a cross-section
of individuals who have claimed the GOP for longer than the current political
cycle has come to the defense of the functional operation of the American
electoral system, both historically, and contemporarily. A veritable Who’s Who of GOP elected
officials has dismissed the idea as utter tomfoolery. Four of the notables who have distanced
themselves from this absurdity include:
·
Jon Husted, Ohio
Secretary of State – It’s important to note, Ohio is not only a swing state,
but a state no Republican has ever won the Presidency without winning. Mr. Husted says, “I can reassure Donald
Trump, I am in charge of elections in Ohio and they are not going to be
rigged. I’ll make sure of that.” He went on to say, “It’s bipartisan, it’s
transparent, and there’s just no justification for concern about widespread
voter fraud.”
·
Marco Rubio,
Florida's Junior U.S. Senator – Florida is the poster child for concerns about voting
tabulation, dating back to the 2000 Election of George W. Bush, when he
ostensibly won the election by beating Al Gore in the state of Florida by 537
votes. Senator Rubio summarily rejected
Mr. Trump’s claim, saying, “This election is not being rigged. We have 67 counties in this state, each of
which conduct their own elections. I promise you there is not a 67-county conspiracy to rig this election.”
·
Paul Ryan,
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives – The nation’s top elected Republican
has disavowed the Nominee’s claim.
Speaker Ryan said in a statement released by his spokesperson, AshLee
Strong, “Our democracy relies on confidence in election results, and the
speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with
integrity.”
·
Mike Pence,
Candidate for Vice President of the U.S. – Mr. Pence, the Nominee's own running mate, parsed words with, and
pushed back on the President’s Press Secretary, Josh Earnest. After Earnest said Mr. Pence wasn’t
concerned about voter fraud, Pence haggled, but still managed to land on a spot dismissing the
issue. He ultimately said, yesterday,
“I’ve got a news flash for you, the President’s press secretary doesn’t speak
for me. They’re not worried about it
(speaking of voter fraud) because they are denying it’s happening, I’m not
worried about it because I know the American people are not going to let it
happen.” While his comments seethed with
an undertone of inviting Trump supporters to engage in acts of voter intimidation, in the final analysis, he still refused to
give credence to this travesty of a deception.
While the counter narrative
emanating from GOP mavens, which represents a break with the Nominee, may be
somewhat surprising, it comes as no surprise at all President Obama offered
direct and terse pushback to the notion of voter fraud upending the election. During a news conference in the Rose Garden
yesterday, President Obama said Donald J. Trump should:
·
“Stop
whining and go try to make his case to get votes.”
POTUS, noting that though
the history of America’s democracy is filled with stories of spirited, if not
contentious contests, when they are over, regardless of the victor’s Party, the
loser congratulates the winner, reaffirms our democracy, and moves forward. He added:
·
“That’s how democracy
survives.”
Let me put a bow on this by
citing contemporary research on the subject.
Justin Levitt, Professor at the Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, and an expert in
constitutional law and the law of democracy, with a particular focus on
election administration and redistricting, conducted a study on voter fraud. Levitt tracked both allegations and
prosecutions for voter fraud from 2000 to 2014.
He looked at incidents that included general, primary, special and
municipal elections. More than 1 billion ballots
were cast in that period in general and primary elections alone. Of those billion + ballots, he found 31
incidents, anywhere in the country, that rose to the level of “possibly” having been voter fraud.
Some of the cases have been
thoroughly investigated, and a few resulted in prosecutions. A number of the others have not. Professor Levitt opines that some will be
debunked due to a problem with matching people from one computer to another, a
data entry error, confusion between two people with the same name, or someone
signing in on the wrong line of a pollbook.
Voter fraud is illegal and
should be taken seriously. In fact, the
record seems to indicate that by every reasonable assessment, that is exactly
what is happening. Thirty-one instances
out of one billion ballots cast over nearly a decade and a half would suggest
all due care is applied in running our election system, and there is no viability to Mr. Trump’s claim of election fraud.
So here we are, less than 3 weeks until the election, and the integrity
of the election system is under assault.
Fortunately, it would seem, this is a true case of false alarm for the
nation. Perhaps, though, the concern is
valid for a campaign that has for sometime chosen to operate in its own fact
free universe. To that end, as I conclude, this is what we know…”Trump Spin: Democrats Are Trying to Steal the Election ThroughVoter Fraud!”
I’m done; holla back!
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