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US Politics: Georgia on Our Minds

Fragile Bird

By Fragile Bird,
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Fragile Bird Council Member

Fragile Bird

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Woah baby, the WaPo has obtained a one hour tape of a conversation between Trump and Brad Raffensperger about the vote count in Georgia. The Post is trying to get the script and the tape up ASAP.

CNN is interviewing the reporter right now about it, having played some brief excerpts. He asks Raffensperger to find more votes to tilt the election. He asks if Republican votes were shredded. He warns him that he’d better be careful about what he does.

”It is criminal if you don’t do more”. It’s sounds like Trump is asking for criminal actions to be taken by Georgia officials.

Wow. The tape excerpts are extraordinary. Check both websites to listen to it as soon as it posted. It hasn’t been yet. The tape is very, very clear.

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Martell Spy Council Member

Martell Spy

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35 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

“You sure want to have an accurate election”

”We believe we have an accurate election.”

“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal offense.”

I do wonder if that's bluster or an actual threat. The part about it being a criminal offense. Trump has talked a big game about jailing his  political opponents, but as of now it has not happened.

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ThinkerX Council Member

ThinkerX

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article about Trump's infamous Georgia phone call.  If the article is credible, then Trump might have additional legal issues.  What especially stands out is the sheer denial on Trumps part.  Anyhow:  

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/i-just-want-to-find-11780-votes-in-extraordinary-hour-long-call-trump-pressures-georgia-secretary-of-state-to-recalculate-the-vote-in-his-favor/ar-BB1cqNSk?ocid=msnclassic&li=BBnb7Kz

Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s assertions, explaining that the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

Trump dismissed their arguments.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

Raffensperger responded: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”

At another point, Trump said: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

The rambling and at times incoherent conversation offered a remarkable glimpse of how consumed and desperate the president remains about his loss, unwilling or unable to let the matter go and still believing he can reverse the results in enough battleground states to remain in office.

“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said, a phrase he repeated again and again on the call. “There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

...

Trump said he plans to talk about the fraud on Monday, when he is scheduled to lead an election eve rally in Dalton, Ga. — a message that could further muddle the efforts of Republicans to get their voters out.

“You have a big election coming up and because of what you’ve done to the president — you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam,” Trump said. “Because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote, and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative, because they hate what you did to the president. Okay? They hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected, really respected, if this can be straightened out before the election.”

Trump’s conversation with Raffensperger put him in legally questionable territory, legal experts said. By exhorting the secretary of state to “find” votes and to deploy investigators who “want to find answers,” Trump appears to be encouraging him to doctor the election outcome in Georgia.

But experts said Trump’s clearer transgression is a moral one. Edward B. Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University, said that the legal questions are murky and would be subject to prosecutorial discretion. But he also emphasized that the call was “inappropriate and contemptible” and should prompt moral outrage.

 

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Mr. Chatywin et al. Council Member

Mr. Chatywin et al.

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1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

That is not the music I would have posted about Georgia, but it’s certainly appropriate. :) 

Why? The Atlanta based rap and entertainment community has been going gangbusters to rock the vote. 

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Week Council Member

Week

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Seems amazing to think that this call just happened - almost 2 full months after the initial election. I'm sure there have been other, equally batshit, calls though it really does underscore how lucky we are that Trump is a dumb, lazy dotard. This full court press from 11/4 would have been much more likely to succeed or at least more thoroughly cloud the issue. At this point it's clearly insane and indefensible to all except the most devout/deranged deplorables.

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Myshkin Council Member

Myshkin

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You know who aren’t crybaby losers hellbent on destroying the very foundations of American democracy in a feeble, pathetic attempt to cling on to power because their entire sense of self relies upon a lie that they’ve told themselves over and over since early childhood while seeking to earn daddy’s withheld love? Jon “No H” Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. Ossoff and Warnock are complete humans with emotional intelligence, who have taken to heart the lessons of Harry Chapin’s Cat’s in the Cradle, and further know that it is not a Cat Stevens song, though they have also taken to heart the lessons of Cat Stevens’ Father and Son. Ossoff and Warnock have announced that they are proud of you, and will always love you no matter what. That’s why on January 5th I’ll be voting for Ossoff and Warnock for Senate. Ossoff and Warnock; good for Georgia, good for America, good for you son, I love you.

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Myshkin Council Member

Myshkin

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4 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Brad’s team leaked the tape, right?  I assume?

Well considering it came out shortly after a Twitter exchange wherein Trump said Brad refused to answer questions about the rigged election, and Brad replied with basically you’re lying and I got the receipts, I’m gonna guess that he did indeed leak the tape.

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DMC Council Member

DMC

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1 hour ago, Myshkin said:

Ossoff and Warnock are complete humans with emotional intelligence, who have taken to heart the lessons of Harry Chapin’s Cat’s in the Cradle, and further know that it is not a Cat Stevens song, though they have also taken to heart the lessons of Cat Stevens’ Father and Son.

I will take the very controversial stance that Father and Son is better.  To be clear, this opinion does not necessarily represent the views of Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.

@Kalbear Total Landscaping

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Furthermore, you act like Democracy vs authoritarianism is some kind of easily changeable sliding scale that constantly goes back and forth - but you know better than that. Democracies, once turned into authoritarian systems, do not revert back to democratic systems as a rule except under very specific conditions - namely, outside influence usually in the form of a major war. 

Just gonna respond to this because other than the pissing match it seems to be the only main point of contention.  More importantly, you appear to have a deeply juvenile view of "democracy vs. authoritarianism" that deserves some edification from somebody.  Liberal democracies do, often, backslide into authoritarianism and then recover.  It is a scale and certainly not a dichotomy or anything close to it like you are portraying.  Just in our own country, there are periods of democratization and then a backsliding authoritarian reaction.  The most obvious one would be the Reconstruction Era.  But also the progressive era. 

Hell, if one is to adopt a more..liberal (sorry) definition of the "liberal" part of liberal democracies - which includes the the rule of law, and open society, and equal protection of human, civil, and political rights/liberties - you could easily argue there was a backsliding there from the New Deal era to Reaganism to recent important improvements with the ACA (not to mention extension of political and civil rights with SSM, adoption of early voting and other mechanisms to make voting easier, combating gerrymandering, etc.).

There are myriad examples across the globe and throughout recent history.  Just off the top of my head, Indira Gandhi's tenure included backsliding into authoritarianism that India later recovered from.  Since that brings it to mind, Pakistan, too, has obviously had had rather volatile shifts on the democratization scale throughout its existence.  Hell, if you broaden your scope to about a century - which isn't that crazy considering we're talking about a descending period of polarization that's gone on for forty years now - almost every country has had ebbs and flows between authoritarianism and democratization (albeit, yes, wars are obviously involved and that big one is rather unavoidable).  This maxim you have does not exist and is decidedly laughable from an empirical standpoint.  Where we're at right now with our Freedom House score - 86 - can easily go either way (or stay the same) and it'd hardly be unprecedented.

This speaks to the pissing contest.  You're citing mostly some election predictions done right before the election, what I'm talking about is how deeply and consistently wrong you are - such as your high confidence Trump would be reelected for a period of years.  Capped, for a specific example, by you saying you were something like 80-85% confident Trump would be elected before Ginsburg died - and that was raised by, like, 15% with her death, meaning six weeks before the election you were almost sure Trump would win somehow.

But, sure!  I was very wrong about Florida.  And Ohio and North Carolina and a whole bunch of Senate seats and House seats.  It was an intentionally optimistic prediction.  Certainly nothing I would put money on - I said repeatedly and while making the predictions FL, GA and NC were all tossups (and Ohio was openly silly).  As for "Trump going away," this is something you've lied about before - I said repeatedly if he was close to an EC win a la Clinton he'd have a very good chance at a comeback.  I also never said he'd go away in the first place, you're just flagrantly misrepresenting the discussion there.  The argument was about whether or not he'd get the GOP nomination in 2024, Trump continuing to seek attention was obviously always a given.  I honestly don't know what you're referring to with Trump's approval.  Only argument I remember there over the years is me saying Trump couldn't win the election if his approval was at 45% or lower and hey, look, he didn't.

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