The Horse's Ass in Charge of the Bastards in Raleigh

 

Berger told reporters that he doesn’t think swapping political control of the elections board from Democrats to Republicans is about politics.

--Will Doran, WRAL 

Yeah, politics is disavowed. While naked power is in. And if you didn't give the horse laugh to the statement above by the chief horse's ass, then you've not been paying attention.

After the Republican-dominated General Assembly passed its newest power grab (details of which are here), Berger felt it necessary to cover his raw greed for autocracy with some wholly fictional rationalization, as reported by Will Doran:

Berger told reporters Wednesday he was concerned about the vote-counting process in North Carolina being rigged for Democrats .... Berger indicated Wednesday that he was concerned with how Riggs won. Griffin was leading on election night by about 10,000 votes when roughly 98% of the state's ballots had been counted .... Berger suggested not all the votes should’ve been counted, alleging the process was somehow rigged in favor of Democrats. He didn’t explain how .... "We're seeing played out, at this point, another episode of ‘count until somebody you want to win wins,’ ” Berger told reporters at the state legislature Wednesday.

The allegations of fraud certainly caught the attention of Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the State Board of Elections. (Berger's cynical lying ought to infuriate all 500 members of the 100 county boards of election, including the 200 Republicans who sit on them, who participated in all meetings where votes were counted and who signed off on the process and on the final numbers.) Brinson Bell wasn't having it. She wrote an outraged letter to Berger, calling him out for his potentially dangerous stirring of the (cracked) pot, offered to give him a refresher course in how NC elections actually take place, and she made the letter public. According to Doran:

“When you tell your fellow citizens that an election is being conducted fraudulently, they listen,” Brinson Bell wrote to Berger. "I fear for the people running elections in this state, including in your own community, that some misguided people will conclude from your statements that actions must be taken, perhaps through the use of threats or violence.” ...

...she reminded Berger that many people believe what he says and asked him to take back those remarks. “This is an accusation of wrongdoing that has absolutely no basis in fact,” Brinson Bell wrote. “You are a top leader of our state government. What you say matters.”

She used the 2020 elections as a cautionary tale, alluding to disproven accusations of rigged elections that fueled an exodus of seasoned elections workers.

Brinson Bell also told Berger she’d be happy to explain to him how elections work, if he’s feeling confused.

But of course the horse's ass leaders of the GOP in the Age of Trump do not take back anything, nor apologize, nor lose a scintilla of a half-step in their march toward total control over who gets to vote. 

Is Political Social Media a Paper Tiger?

“Digital spaces are not your friend anymore.”

--Leslie Mac, digital strategist and communications expert who works with grass-roots organizations

Political organizing on both Left and Right began to move online immediately after Facebook went live. Twitter, Instagram, Tik-Tok, and a host of other influencer networks soon followed. Came to pass quickly that no national party could survive without all brands of social media. We used it to raise awareness. Howard Dean taught us how to use it to raise money. Quickly. It was all about the speed of communication, the new efficiency of being in touch with dozens, then hundreds, then thousands, delivering intel, staging events, asking for money, recruiting volunteers -- people willing and wanting to do stuff to help. No individual candidate of either major party would dream of mounting a campaign today without social media. Why, our about-to-be President is wholly the creature of it.

But I'm hearing more and more from people smarter than me, that there is, however and of course, a big, fat, munching worm inside that digital cabbage. 

I'm a believer in the usefulness of social media (though I'm aware that its usefulness gets over-hyped). I experienced its rise and influence in political organizing as an incredible new tool to link the like-minded. to raise money, to raise a crowd, to get the attention of potential recruits who might recruit more people. Social media transformed all brands of community organizing -- and the old, antiquated, but totally effective drudgery of door-knocking, phone calling, elbow bumping began to atrophy. For too many of the new social media warriors, boots-on-the-ground activities became too much trouble, too time-consuming, too sweaty. So much easier to sit at our computers and move the world. 

Social media -- or rather the practice and habits of social media -- can exert a negative counterforce on mass movements because social media flatters the user, tickles their pleasure centers and ultimately creates the illusion that typing amounts to action. Hell! I do it too, press the "DONATE" button to seem like I'm doing something, and it is doing something. But money alone won't win it. It takes those boots-on-the-ground (a tired phrase, but I can't think of a more descriptive one) -- that old, antiquated, but totally effective drudgery of door-knocking, phone calling, elbow bumping. 

Fewer person-to-person interactions. More keyboard. It's a trap, warns Leslie Mac (quoted above). Mac was speaking specifically of certain social media oligarchs like Zuckerberg and Musk, who own many of the most influential social media sites and whose druthers might not be advantageous to the rest of us. Mac also points out that “social media turned activism organizing into a kind of public relations job, where your follower count and where you were quoted mattered as much as the tangible work that was being done.” 

More than two years ago we published an essay here by Jon-Dalton George, the 23-year-old (at the time) Mayor Pro-Tem of Boone, "Twitter Ain't Real," which offered pretty concrete proof that social media activity does not match up necessarily to winning a race. It's wise to be reminded of that from time to time. I say that as an 80-year-old hanger-on whose activism is pretty much limited these days to a keyboard. Just saying.

The Bastards in Raleigh

 

The elections which Republicans did not win in North Carolina -- governor, lieutenant gov, attorney gen'l, superintendent of public instruction -- have hardly been settled, including the one that broke the Republican veto-override super majority in the NC House, when Phil Berger & Co. realized they only had a month to pass a new law limiting what newly elected Democrats can do in office. They cleverly called the bill "Hurricane Relief," but those provisions aimed at recovering Western NC amount to less than 20 pages, while the bulk of the 130-page bill is blatant and unashamed power-grabs.

The most egregious of the power grabs applies to the governor's power to appoint the State Board of Elections, the agency which the GOP has been trying to take full control of for years. The new law, which passed the House last night and now goes to the Senate today -- fast-tracked, you betcha! -- takes the appointment power away from Governor Josh Stein and gives it to the newly elected Republican Auditor Dave Boliek, who's all too eager to carry partisan water for the bosses.

The new law also makes a project of dismantling the independence of our new Attorney General Jeff Jackson:

Republican lawmakers want to prevent the attorney general, an office that the GOP hasn’t won in an election for more than a century, from taking positions on state laws being challenged in court that are different from the position maintained by GOP legislative leaders. 

The bill also specifies that the attorney general can’t take positions in court that would lead to a state law being struck down. 

This proposal comes as outgoing Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, who voters chose to serve as the state’s next governor in this month’s election, has recused himself or refused to defend the state against a number of high-profile political lawsuits involving abortion, elections, gerrymandering and other issues. 

Stein, who has served two terms as attorney general, has defended his decisions to refuse to defend laws passed by the Republican-controlled legislature that he believes are unconstitutional. 

GOP leaders have criticized Stein in those instances, and accused him of refusing “to do his job.” They have frequently intervened in lawsuits challenging the laws they’ve passed, and defended them in court. 

Liz Barber, the director of policy and advocacy at the ACLU of North Carolina, said in an interview Tuesday morning that the changes were an “unconstitutional, undemocratic power grab.” [NewsObserver]

In what crazy universe is it all right for the Republicans to be doing this? Reducing the dimensions of a public office only after they fail to win an election to that office?

Let the lawsuits fly.

GOP Attempts Again To Grab All the Access to Voting

 

Hilarious. No matter how much power you've got, you can always choke down some more. Kyle Ingram, reporting Tuesday morning, November 19

RALEIGH Draft legislation from North Carolina lawmakers proposes stripping incoming Democratic Gov. Josh Stein of all appointments to the State Board of Elections and giving them to a newly elected Republican official.

If I were cynical enough to make this up, I would have.

Till Us Do Part

 

North Carolina's senior senator Thom Tillis has been listed as one of six Republicans "who could sink Trump's nominations" for cabinet secretaries. Watching that play out will provide us with some tawdry entertainment and an index of just how big -- or puny -- are Tillis's balls.

After Trump nominated Matt Gaetz, Tillis told reporters, ominously, "The president deserves to put forth a nominee. [But!...] The president has an obligation to make sure that that nominee is gonna pass vetting and have the votes on the floor." He also said that the public "should not be shocked" if Gaetz is not confirmed.

"I will consider Matt Gaetz like I will anyone else, but if they don't do the homework, don't be surprised if they fail. Maybe they've already done that work," he added. "Nothing surprises me in politics, nothing. And I'm okay with this. But at the end of the day we have a process, and we'll just have to run through it."

Tillis added that he cares about "a defensible résumé, and a really clean vetting. Produce that, he's got a chance. Don't, and he doesn't."

We've seen those odd moments when Tillis has disappointed MAGA, but we believe that he, along with the other five senators who might vote against Trump's wishes, are weak reeds that will bend to the breaking point. After all, Susan Collins is a part of this doubtful cohort, and we certainly know how strongly committed to virtue she is!

Laughing Between Clinched Teeth

A friend said about the election, "I can't afford to cry. If I start, I'll never stop." 

Then the teenaged son of another friend, grinning big and slapping his knee, said, "Don't you see how funny Trump is? He's the drunken fist. Gotta love how he keeps everything unpredictable and totally superlative! Sick!"

The drunken fist. A bunch of 1970s movies explored the Kung-Fu fighter who uses a style of footwork and surprise strikes developed out of the stumbling gait of a drunken fool to confuse and trick his opponents into thinking he is incapacitated, insignificant, and unworthy of attention. Yep. I get it. Trump is the master of that. Whether it's a deliberate ploy of his or not is another question altogether.

Why can't I be like a teenaged boy and just enjoy the show?

No one is more flummoxed by Trump's drunken fist than Republican senators. Their cowardice, inanity, and fecklessness do yield abundant, albeit dark comedy, especially when they make throat-clearing sounds about the dignity and power of the U.S. Senate as a coequal branch of government. Ha.

The Resistance Lawyers Up

 

Lisa Lerer, in the NYTimes:

Democracy Forward, a liberal-leaning legal organization that frequently battled the first Trump administration in court, on Thursday unveiled a large-scale new effort aimed at thwarting President-elect Donald J. Trump’s second-term agenda from his first day in office.

More than 800 lawyers at 280 organizations have begun developing cases and workshopping specific challenges to what the group has identified as 600 “priority legal threats” — potential regulations, laws and other administrative actions that could require a legal response, its leaders said. The project, called Democracy 2025, aims to be a hub of opposition to the new Trump administration.

Unlike in 2017, when Democratic lawyers were unprepared for the onslaught of conservative policies, the intent is to be ready to unleash a flurry of lawsuits immediately.

“We’re leveling up and lawyering up,” Skye Perryman, the chief executive of the organization, said. “This wasn’t something that just everybody woke up the day after the election and started to plan.”

 

Trump 2.0 Beginning To Pupate

Humiliation is the price of admission to Trump’s GOP. It’s still a bit shocking to see how low once-proud Americans will stoop. Incompetent and unethical people are about to take over our government. Republicans like Thom Tillis [made] it possible.

--Thomas Mills, "Hey, Thom Tillis, joke's on you!"

Matt Gaetz for attorney general

Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense

Tulsi Gabbard for Director for National Intelligence

Elon Musk for Captain Moonbeam

Vivek Ramaswamy for Moonbeam's Deputy

Robert F. Kennedy Jr for ... Omigod

What he's not preparing to loot for himself, or hand over to his rich cronies, Trump's paving the way for Russia to bear it away, and for the law to look elsewhere, perhaps search for "the enemy within," and leave the thieves and frauds to their necessary work.

But this is clearly what people want in their government. And welcome to it!

Young Men Lost This Election

 

By Jack Yordy, guest-posting:

Given what women lost in this election, what queer and trans people are likely to lose, among many other groups, and given the urgency of the impacts of these losses, young men should be at the bottom of our list for sympathy. In an election post-mortem meeting, I razed young white men’s propensity for bigotry and betrayal of their peers. But after giving it some thought and remembering one of my biggest hopes about the effect of a Harris presidency, I think young men have lost much as well. 

If you’re a young man with any hobbies or interests and a connection to the internet, much of your life is spent being exposed to right-wing content. A sizable portion of this content is radical and incredibly bigoted toward queer people, black and brown people, and women. Many of these men have been lied to -- that their prospects are dwindling, DEI has taken their job opportunities, feminism has taken their dating options, LGBTQ+ people are trying to take their masculinity. These myths have formed young men’s bigotry, but they have also had an impact on their view of themselves. Ironically enough, young men have been indoctrinated with what conservative influencers would call a “Victim Mentality.” 

Once this mentality has supplanted the self esteem of these young men, no longer believing they can be successful or happy, the influencers swoop in with advice: Go to the gym and buy my multivitamins to get big, learn how to hustle and grind with my online course, isolate yourself  -- swear off women -- and read my self-help book. These recommended behaviors actually do instill in some young men a sense of purpose through effort. But that trajectory also comes with a vindication of hatred. They begin to believe the only way to be happy is to follow the advice of wise right-wingers and practice the same ideological rituals of bigotry. The influencers never take credit for "helping" these young men, which allows the young men to believe that the reason they began to feel better about themselves is because they did it themselves, without help from anyone else. They can believe that they did all that alone while hating women and other marginalized groups. So why would they ever stop being hateful? 

Consider what Doug Emhoff and Tim Walz as role models could have done for these young men. We had a chance to show them, by example, that they could be happy and successful without being bigoted and angry. They might have asked themselves, “If the vice president of the United States can be happy without being hateful, can I?” They might have asked, “If a man can be happy taking a back seat to his powerful wife, can I?” Instead, they are alienated, isolated, and strangely vindicated. They look up and see the most powerful person in the world is a man who hates women, a man who rapes women, a man who gleefully oppresses and bullies people with less power. They will see him and want to be like him. Many of them will live unhappily, chasing validation from grifters, finding enjoyment in hurting others. They don’t know it yet and maybe some never will, but young straight men, like the rest of us, lost everything in this election.

Will Josh Stein Join the Resistance?

Reid J. Epstein, in the NYTimes:

In the first of what is likely to be several groups that sprout to resist the next Trump administration, two Democratic governors announced on Wednesday that they were forming a group to help protect state-level institutions of democracy.

The group, Governors Safeguarding Democracy, is meant to serve as a mechanism for Democratic states to coordinate efforts to oppose the right-wing policies of President-elect Donald J. Trump.

Its leaders, Govs. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Jared Polis of Colorado, are among a group of ambitious Democrats likely to try to fill a party-wide leadership void once President Biden leaves office.

“Donald Trump is going to bring people into his administration who are absolute loyalists to his cult of personality and not necessarily to the law,” Mr. Pritzker said. “Last time, he didn’t really know where the levers of government were. I think he probably does now. And so I think that the threat remains great.” ...

...the group’s top staff member, did not say how many governors had agreed to join the organization.

I'm Optimistic

 

Pam and I have been working political campaigns full-time since 1990 -- the first Harvey Gantt insurgency against Sen. Jesse Helms. I was a political fetus in 1990, so I believed Harvey was going to win because of what was happening in Watauga. (Our winning margin for Harvey turned out that year to be 1,000+ votes.) But Gantt still lost statewide, and I was caught completely unprepared for loss. I hibernated in a dark place for days and thought I'd never get involved in a political campaign again.

But the bite of the political bug is deep and fairly incurable. We were back in 1991, working municipal races, and then we continued every year afterward, often at a fever pitch that never let up. County commission campaigns, Sheriff campaigns, Congressional campaigns, everything campaigns.

There've been plenty of losses since 1990, both in this county and in statewide races we worked on. So, duh! I certainly learned the foolishness of predicting victory prematurely, though after 30+ years in political organizing, I've come to appreciate the "feel" of an election contest as E-Day approaches.

Right now, and at the most crucial moment, things feel right. Things feel aligned. God's in his Heaven... (I'm not going to finish that famous line from Robert Browning*, because I'm not actually insane.)

I saw numbers this morning from Buncombe County, probably the most devastated real estate in North Carolina from the Helene floods, but yet Democratic performance is UP there over 2020, while Republican performance is down by over 7%. It's a different story in Watauga, granted, with Republicans currently outpolling Democrats by some 545 votes, but the Unaffiliated vote has both parties beat by over 11,000. That makes me feel good, because the vast majority of those Unaffiliated are under the age of 25, and women are out-voting men in Watauga by 2,720.

Then comes the Iowa poll (and I know, I know -- I don't like polls, especially when they make me nervous in a bad way) which shows Kamala Harris leading Donald J. Trump by 3 points, a shift from 2020 of some 11 points. Trump took Iowa in 2020 by +8. That's a huge shift. Mind-blowing in fact. The Economist applied some math, and because of the famed accuracy of Selzer Polling, they (just for giggles) applied that shift of attitude to other states and came up with a possible Harris/Walz landslide of 416 electoral votes. (Selzer Polling is the outfit behind the final Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll of Iowa. Selzer is "a high-quality pollster. It is rated as one of the best in the country by FiveThirtyEight, which tracks polling accuracy. The Selzer Poll is recognised for its success projecting the Iowa caucus.")

Maybe my clincher for optimism is the spirit of the volunteer corps that has arisen against the prospect of another Trump presidency, an absolute and honest-to-gawd coalition of some unlikely allies and the most dedicated, persistent cohort of enthusiastic volunteers we've seen since 2008. It's real, this surge of psychic energy, this will to act, to do something, to stop a real and dangerous wrong.

*The year's at the spring,

And day's at the morn;

Morning's at seven;

The hill-side's dew-pearl'd;

The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn;

God's in His heaven,

All's right with the world!