Trump Will Use Coronavirus To Steal The 2020 Election

[Celerity]

It’s the nightmare scenario we’ve all been thinking about since November 9, 2016.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/trump-will-use-coronavirus-to-steal



WASHINGTON, DC -- One of the ongoing issues with liberal activists, not to mention Democrats in general, is that we tend to be a little slow-on-the-uptake when it comes to either Republican shenanigans, or liberal causes that deserve more attention. Specifically, we too often jump on board with an event, court decision, or scandal after it’s too late to reverse the course of whatever’s happening. I’m not a futurist, but this last-minute reaction time on the left is one reason why I sometimes warn about possible catastrophes perhaps a year or more ahead of schedule. I’m not always right, but I figure if we have a road map -- some sort of heads up for what’s next, it’s easier to be prepared when some of these eventualities hit the fan. Donald Trump is a crook, and as we’ve seen with performance-enhancing-drugs in sports, the crooks are always one step ahead of the regulators. We need to reverse that, especially given the political stakes of the November election.

Specifically, one of the most terrifying things I’m seeing on the horizon is the possibility that Trump will somehow exploit either the courts or the coronavirus or both to disrupt the November 3 election. It’s the nightmare scenario we’ve all been thinking about since November 9, 2016, and now, there are circumstances that might allow it to come true. It’s important to note here that the president doesn’t have the authority to simply postpone or cancel an election. But he can certainly disrupt an election. Hell, Trump disrupted the 2016 election and he wasn’t even president at the time. Instead, it was his boss, Putin, who handled that as Trump’s proxy. This year, however, he’s got Putin, plus his disinformation “Death Star” accosting Facebook users with agitprop, and now he’s also got the coronavirus and our collective urge to protect ourselves from getting it. Trump also has the federal courts, which have been stacked with hundreds of Trump loyalists, thanks in part to Moscow Mitch.

There’s no way of knowing exactly how he’ll do it, but it could involve all of those things as well as a propaganda campaign that’s already underway by the White House and the conservative entertainment complex to drive down voter turnout by demonizing mail-in balloting. For the past several episodes of the Trump Show, he’s been falsely suggesting that mail-in ballots are corrupt, and the only method of voting he’ll accept as valid is Voter ID supported in-person voting. Ironically, the most notorious example of absentee ballot “corruption” was by North Carolina Republicans who criminally tampered with mail-in voting to elevate Mark Harris in the 9th congressional district race back in 2018. It’s also worth noting here that voter fraud is statistically nonexistent here, leaving Voter ID as nothing more than another way for Republicans to suppress turnout. And suppressed turnout tends to benefit the GOP.

Nevertheless, Trump’s talent for repeating the same bullshit on endless loop will help to inject his anti-mail-in nonsense into the softened skulls of at least 40 percent of the voting population, perhaps more, given how Voter ID has also been confoundingly popular among some Democrats. Meanwhile, knowing that coronavirus cases could surge again when the weather turns cold, say mid-October in many parts of the nation, Democrats and secretaries of state will be planning ahead with alternative methods of voting on and before November 3, including mail-in ballots. It’s safe to assume that many of the states run by pro-Trump governors or states controlled by pro-Trump courts will repeat what happened with the state supreme court in Wisconsin, refusing to accommodate alternative balloting and forcing people to the polls, despite the harrowing circumstances. In other words, many of the traditionally blue states will roll out alternative voting systems, while Trump states will insist on in-person voting, even if the virus returns for another round.

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