We're Outnumbered

The lesson to be relearned from the 2020 presidential election is that we're outnumbered.  

Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020 with 306 electoral votes to 232 for Trump - virtually the opposite of Trump's electoral college win over Hillary Clinton in 2016 - 304 to 227.

Biden received 81,284,778 votes nationally compared to Trump's 74,224,501.  If you subtract the popular vote totals in California & New York Biden was still ahead in the total from the other 48 states by 36,327 votes.  In 2016, the same analysis showed Trump winning the other 48 states by over 3 million votes so there was definitely a stronger anti-Trump movement this time in the other 48 states.

Turnout was a very high 66.2% of eligible voters & 61.7% of the voting age population.

Based on Biden's actions the first few weeks in office it appears that Bernie Sanders/AOC won the election - or @ the very least has an oversized position in the administration.

Biden signed 29 executive orders & actions the first three days he was in office (actually a little over 48 hours) that showed the socialist far left turn of the Democrat party.  Astonishingly, or rather as usual, the Republicans filed no legal challenges or offered any response to any of these missives.  Counting on the Republican party is a losing cause.

Too bad for those who had the best healthcare insurance in the world under retirement policies from the Port Authority of NY/NJ who told me they voted for Biden but warned him "to keep his hands off my healthcare insurance" - as if Biden would listen.  A call to deaf ears as we shall see.  

Now despite Biden's calls for unity in his inaugural address I don't expect any - & there hasn't been any.  Such calls could only antagonize the significant majority that he won.  I know it would antagonize me if I was on the side with 81 million votes - why would I want to compromise with the people my side just defeated in an election whose purpose was to decide which direction the country would go - capitalist, socialist, or communist?  The statists are taking the country you live in away from you & they are playing for keeps not planning to give it back.  You will live in their world not yours.

Since 2016, Republicans have lost the House, the Senate, the presidency & the two senate seats in both the former GOP strongholds of Georgia & Arizona.  Before the romantic delusion with American conservatism becomes worse, it is time to take a firm grip on reality & stop bellyaching that the presidency was stolen from Trump when not a shred of evidence that could be proven in over 50 open court cases shows that it was.  If stolen, why did Trump leave the White House on January 20?  Trump could not admit defeat & certainly didn't remain in the White House to fight like he asked his followers to do - whatever that fight term means.

The majority of people who voted for Biden could not stand Trump, in fact they loathed him, & just as important they were more interested in security than liberty, never understanding or caring that it is liberty that provides security.  They just ignorantly know they want security. 

These people knew that voting for Democrats meant they were taking a chance on politicians, who to one degree or another, had supported defunding the police, had agreed with establishing sanctuary cities & states that protect illegal immigrants from federal law enforcement, & had turned a blind eye to the night after night burning, looting, & destruction of innocent residencies & businesses in Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, & Kenosha by Antifa & Black Lives Matter thugs.  There was no condemnation by the hostile anti-American media or any Democrat candidate, including Biden, for these violent acts so voting for a Democrat ticket was @ a minimum tacit approval of the aforementioned violent acts.

But is this what the 81 million Biden voters really signed up for all over America?

Probably not - giving them the benefit of the doubt.  But it is also fair to say that as long as the above destructive onslaught did not come to these 81 million Democrat voters' neighborhoods, & even if it did, not to their kitchen tables, they were willing to take a chance on Biden which meant getting rid of Trump.

Those 29 initial executive orders & actions (now 52 in the first 20 days) revealed Biden's real agenda - a tremendous lurch to the socialist left steeped in Green New Deal incentives & policies aimed @ making America weak by encouraging government dependence instead of the liberty that produces wealth & value.  When was the last time you heard a Democrat talk about liberty or creating wealth & value?  I can't remember it ever.

Within two hours of taking office, Biden, under pressure from environmentalists to take aggressive action, cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline permit thereby throwing 11,000 people out of work directly & 44,000 indirectly.  In addition, Biden also put a 60 day freeze on new leasing of fossil fuel production on federal land which the American Petroleum Institute estimates could cost 18,000 jobs in Colorado, 33,000 in Wyoming, & 62,000 in New Mexico by 2022 in the likely event that the 60 day pause becomes permanent.

Biden placed a 100 day halt on deporting illegal aliens including felons with final orders of removal in a direct violation of his oath to enforce the immigration laws of the U.S.  

Biden's Executive Order on Preventing & Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation required that biological boys (i.e., transgender females) who self identify as girls be allowed to compete on girls' sports teams whether they had sex reassignment surgery or not, thereby ending the dreams of many young women.  No comment from feminists.

Biden overturned Trump's travel ban on several Muslim majority countries where terrorism thrives & moved to extend a pause on student-loan payments only to have AOC raise the anti to cancel them entirely.  Under such policies it is only the chumps who paid back their student loans.

Shortly after his 12 noon inauguration Biden also sent a memo to Congress outlining a proposed comprehensive immigration bill (a form of amnesty) that includes an eight year path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants in the U.S. who don't have legal status - thereby putting many of these people on a faster path to citizenship than those standing in line legally today.  Comprehensive immigration reform is of course the source of new Democrat voters that will keep the statists in power until everyone realizes what they have been throwing away.

Within hours of being sworn in Biden issued an executive order that abolished the 1776 Commision.  Click here to read the 1776 Commision Report that calls for a return to the unifying principles stated in the Declaration of Independence - a report that was condemned by the NY Times & the Washington Post.  Is Biden on your side abolishing such a Commision?  Your education return to excellence can start with the above report.

On the eve of the annual March for Life event (this year virtual) Biden signed a presidential memorandum that reversed restrictions on abortion access both foreign & domestic.  The new Biden policy rescinds the so-called Mexico City Policy (also known as the global gag rule) thereby allowing American tax dollars to be used for abortion businesses & promoters overseas.  Biden claims to be a practicing Catholic who until recently followed the Hyde Amendment, a legislative provision that barred the use of fedeal funds to pay for abortions with rare exceptions. 

Waiting in the wings is the socialist lure for free healthcare, high minimum wage paying jobs, & the general understanding that there will always be a government program to depend on for every eventuality millennials or generation Zers come across in life with of course the unspoken (& really never thought of) law that they will always have the freedoms they currently enjoy & mistakenly believe can be taken for granted.

Compare the above Biden policies that are being implemented with a pen & a phone (i.e., bypassing Congress) with Trump's list of accomplishments of appointing originalist judges & three Supreme Court Justices, promoting a pro economic growth tax cut that resulted in record, near record, & 50 year lows in black, Hispanic, & women's unemployment rates, cutting regulatory red tape that stymies productivity growth, reestablishing a strong national defense, recognizing the global threat posed by China, securing our borders, moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, brokering the Abraham Accords that have produced several months to date of normalized relations between Israel & both Bahrain & the UAE, respecting life in the mother's womb, & promoting religious liberty.

Biden's positions after taking office were no surprise - they were even predictable.  They really revealed his intentions all along although they were well hidden during the campaign while Trump's accomplishments over his four year term are a matter of record.

Trump's mistake was that he relied too much on the economy's performance for his reelection not realizing that youthful voters were not focusing on his above list of accomplishments & neither were older generations to some degree.  Generation Z is interested in mass shootings, racial equality, & immigration policy & treatment of immigrants.  Millennials are interested in healthcare, global warming/climate change, & mass shootings.  Generation X & older generations are interested in helathcare, terrorism/national security, & the national debt.

 

The graphic below shows that 50% of voters regarded healthcare related matters - 41% pandemic plus 9% healthcare - as their most important issue.

click on graphic to enlarge

Trump's pandemic briefings in March & April, where he took the bait & argued with young female reporters day after day, hurt him with the 50% of the electorate who tuned in on TV to learn something about how to protect their health from the Wuhan coronavirus - not to see Trump let these reporters get under his skin & make a shambles of the entire briefing thereby leaving viewers & voters feeling helpless & abandoned.

Biden won this most important healthcare point 47% to 38% thereby putting him in a commanding position to win the presidency - all other things being equal.

Although seniors were very concerned with the Covid-19 issue Trump still won them over 52% to 47%.  This was however 2 percentage points less than he won this cohort in 2016 & as I will illustrate later in this post it was large enough that it could have cost him the election if this 2% was distributed in just the wrong manner in Arizona, Georgia, & Wisconsin - that's how close the election actually was.

It was widely thought among Republicans during the campaign that Trump would win 15% to 35% of the black vote - he won 12% (19% black men & 9% black women).

Likewise it was widely thought among Republicans that Trump would win a significant portion of the Hispanic vote - he won 32%.  An election expert I follow said in 2012 that a Republican needed 30% of the Hispanic vote or he could not win.  As the Hispanic portion of the electorate increased since 2012 the 30% figure could only be higher now so 32% was no real accomplishment & probably a negative for being able to win the presidency.

Trump lost Independents 41% to 54% & first time voters 32% to 64%.  Sixty percent of the electorate thought the country was going in the wrong direction & by a 58% to 42% margin people think the government should do more to solve problems thereby confirming the socialist trend in America.  By 68% to 32% people thought the federal government should increase spending on green or renewable energy.  The electorate was very or somewhat concerned about climate change by a 70% to 30% margin.  By a 60% to 40% margin the electorate thought that abortion should be legal in all or most cases & by 70% to 30% thought that Roe should stay as it is.  And in the ultimate insult 43% of the electorate thought the economy was excellent or good & 57% thought it was not so good or poor thereby reflecting the shutdowns by Democrat mayors & governors under the excuse of protecting people from the Wuhan coronavirus - right under Trump's nose.

The last post pointed out that young voters preferred Biden 61% to 36% & provided Biden's margin of victory in the crucial states of Michigan & Wisconsin. 

Starting in the early morning hours of November 4 Trump refuted the election results when I heard him say "frankly we did win" - a claim that turned out to be false in that Trump could never prove one such allegation or even win a case to give him a toehold to credibly proceed with legal challenges including many cases before judges he had appointed.    

Trump's lawyers (Rudy & Sid) presented one conspiracy theory after another on TV & social media but time after time would not bring these same charges to court knowing there are penalties for speaking falsely before judges - i.e., they feared losing their law licenses.  Trump's lawyers' supposed eye witnesses of fraud & irregularities & election experts repeatedly failed to produce evidence or testimony that could satisfy judges @ all levels - state, federal & the U.S. Supreme Court - & frequently drew sharp rebukes for the flimsiness of the claims from several judges, including Trump conservative appointees.  Have you seen any of these supposed eye witnesses on TV in the past two months?  They washed out.

But Trump set the stage for his post-election court appeals starting in July 2020 when one poll after another continuously & repeatedly showed Biden winning the presidency by large margins.  I believe Trump's internal polling showed him losing also, especially in the important swing states that Trump had won in 2016 by very narrow margins - & as the polls indicated eventually lost in 2020.

The stage had been set for Trump's loss as early as December, 2019 when a WSJ/NBC News poll showed that 34% of voters said they were certain to vote for Trump & 48% said they were certain to vote against him, leaving Trump no room for error eleven months before the election.  Eighteen percent reserved judgement until they knew who the Democrat nominee was.  Trump would have had to pick up 17% of this 18% to win.  The die  had been cast.

At one of his signature rallies in July Trump presented an out of character scenario in which he presented the possibility of him losing the election - he presented the excuse of losing because of voter fraud.  I remember, watching live, thinking to myself, if he knows all of these details of potential fraud why doesn't he do something about it now - months before the election?  This way he could win.

Trump's position was that he could only lose if his opposition cheated with mail in ballots not being counted properly or if the voting machines were programmed to change votes in Biden's favor.  These allegations ultimately centered on six states - Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, & Pennsylvania.  All states that Trump lost in 2020.

Students of the Constitution know that presidential electors are appointed as directed by each state's legislature.  Trump was on his firmest ground of protest when he claimed that governors & state judiciaries overruled state legislatures in extending legislative deadlines for receiving mail in ballots as well as the details regarding how ballots were filled out or received such as unverified signatures, improperly placed signatures on the ballot or envelope, as well as ballots received late or with no postmarks in violation of the legislative rules.

The accommodations made by election officials to get these mail in ballots counted, the great majority of which were in Biden's favor, show the poor quality of the voters who could not get their ballots in on time and filled out properly.  And in every one of these cases the courts sided with counting every ballot that could be found to ensure the will of the voters was tabulated making sure that no voter was disenfranchised.  This practice has a long history & precedent of not shutting out voters.  In short, judges rarely throw out ballots because of minor errors or defects.

Readers of this blog in New Jersey will recall the 2002 Senate race when Republican Douglas Forrester ran against Democrat incumbent Robert Torricelli who was forced to drop out 36 days before the November 2002 election due to an ethics probe & more importantly to Democrats because of poll numbers showing Torricelli losing.  The New Jersey state legislature had directed that each party would select their candidate no later than 51 days before the election so the Democrats were in clear violation of this legislation & it would have seemed that Forrester was in the driver's seat.  The Democrats nominated former 3-term senator Frank Lautenberg to replace Torricelli, Forrester sued, & the New Jersey Supreme Court said the people of New Jersey had a right to have a choice in selecting their senator in spite of the timeline in the legislation, invoking "the public interest", "the general intent of the election laws'', & "the two party system."  

Republicans insisted that under state law, it was too late for Garden State Democrats to strike Torricelli's name from the ballot & replace him with Lautenberg, who had retired from the Senate two years earlier.  But the state's top court disagreed, saying the need to give voters a genuine choice in November out weighed administrative deadlines set in election laws.

Despite having only a few weeks to campaign before the election Lautenberg won by 9.9% & today there is a train station in Secaucus, just outside of NYC, named for Lautenberg.  In this case the court certainly knew the will of the people & prevented someone from becoming a U.S. senator that the people of the state clearly did not want. 

Although the New Jersey Supreme Court did not follow the New Jersey legislation's strict time deadline in their decision they did respect, in their opinion, the voters' higher right under the Constitution to not have their vote denied or abridged by any state, in this case New Jersey.

Forrester filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the unanimous NJ Supreme Court decision based on the Democrats missing the legislative deadline for replacing Torricelli.  The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case paving the way for Lautenberg's victory. 

The same principle follows here with Trump.  All of the decisions made against Trump's claims ensured that the votes were counted whenever they came in & when they eventually did come in & were counted Trump lost.  Five of the six states that Trump contested have Republican legislatures & none of them (all of which have standing) challenged counting votes over not counting votes because of legislative deadlines.  What legislator, looking to stay in office, would take another position?

The Wuhan coronavirus & its effect on the mail delivery played a role but I am disgusted when I think about the caliber of voters who could not ensure their ballots were received on time cancelling out the ballots of the majority of readers of this blog.

One of Trump's biggest claims of voter fraud that cost him the election involved the voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems & to a somewhat lesser degree Smartmatic USA Corporation.  

Trump's claim against Dominion was that it was a front for communists, specifically Venezuelans who followed the destructive ideas of the late dictator Hugo Chavez, & that it used software from Smartmatic that had a secret vote flipping algorithm that converted Trump votes into Biden votes.

On December 1 Dominion President & CEO John Poulos wrote an op-ed in the WSJ that received no rebuttal from Trump or his attorneys.

Mr. Poulos's op-ed pointed out that "third-party test labs, chosen by the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission & accredited by the National Institute of Standards & Technology, perform complete source-code reviews on every federally certified tabulation system," & that "postelection canvassing & auditing also exist to provide additional assurance of the vote totals' accuracy."  The op-ed went on to say that Dominion's work is highly regulated & certified.

Now this is only so many words.  But it still could have been challenged by Trump attorneys, but wasn't.

Larger to me, in the crucial Pennsylvania contest, was that Mr. Poulos pointed out that Philadelphia county & Allegheny county (Pittsburgh) didn't even use Dominion voting systems & that in the 14 Pennsylvania counties that did use Dominion systems Trump won 52.2% of the vote.

Again, Trump attorneys offered only general defamatory statements, rather than specific rebuttals regarding the Pennsylvania results.

As for the Georgia results that Trump contested, Mr. Poulos presented many safeguards there were in place such as bipartisan witnesses & a certified third party testing lab that audited a random sample of Dominion machines.

Although Trump claimed fraud regarding the Georgia November presidential election it was extremely odd to me that no one claimed fraud after the two senate run-off elections on January 5, that both Republican candidates lost, that were every bit as close, & almost as important to the future of the country as the presidential election, & used the same equipment, people, & procedures.  What was the difference between the presidential & runoff senate elections?

But the ultimate effect of fake news regarding the supposed fraud of the presidential election occurred when Smartmatic USA Corporation sued Fox News Media (FNC & FBN) seeking $2.7 billion for alleged defamatory on-air comments about Smartmatic's voting machine software following Trump's claims that the election had been stolen from him.  Specifically named in the suit were Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, & Jeanine Pirro.  The day after this story broke Lou Dobbs was fired by FBN making me think the allegations came a little too close to home ringing true.

Smartmatic barely participated in the U.S. 2020 presidential election providing technology services only to Los Angeles county.  Dominion was much more involved in the election than Smartmatic & jumped on the defamatory band wagon sending letters to FNC, Newsmax TV, & OANN asking the networks to preserve records of their election coverage as it relates to Dominion - in an obvious preview of a lawsuit.

Newsmax ran a clarification saying it found no evidence that Smartmatic used software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election but did not comment on Dominion.

This looks like a sloppy case of mistaken identity between Smartmatic & Dominion without a shred of legal evidence to implicate either company.

Trump also personally joined the Texas lawsuit that asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, & Wisconsin from casting electoral votes for Biden when members of the Electoral College met on December 14.  The lawsuit was supported by 17 other states & 106 members of Congress.

The Texas lawsuit claimed that the four states violated their own election laws while processing mail in ballots similar to claims detailed hereinbefore.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case which would have voided over 20 million votes if the Justices ruled in Trump's favor.

Please note that in a technical point that concerns the Court's case management Justices Alito & Thomas said they would have taken the case as a "bill of complaint."  They did not vote on the merits of the Texas claims.  There was no 7 to 2 decision in favor of Biden.

To this day Trump claims to not have lost the 2020 presidential election - this position will only get the country into deeper trouble like the two Georgia senate candidates found out.  They ran under the burden of looking like they supported Trump's false claims thereby bringing out every anti-Trumper that could be rounded up to vote against them.

In a biting irony for Trump, Georgia has launched a criminal investigation into possible election fraud - but the investigation concerns the efforts by Trump & his supporters to overturn the results of the Fulton County election.  Couple this with investigations into Trump's income tax returns in Manhattan & possible criminal lawsuits regarding Trump's involvement in the riot @ the Capitol & there is nothing but trouble ahead.  There is also a Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment card regarding disqualification of Trump from holding office that the Democrats have talked about playing. 

It is way past time for everyone who did not support Biden to move on from complaining about the 2020 presidential election & start educating people about the miseries of socialism that Biden is bringing to America double time - a government dependent system of false security that the majority of voters have been brainwashed into mistakenly preferring.  We're outnumbered & the only way to change that is for the citizenry to understand the benefits of America returning to her founding principles of limited government, personal responsibility, & free enterprise.  The burden for doing this lies with those who know better.   

The 2016 presidential election was extremely close with Trump exceeding the needed 270 electoral votes by winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, & Wisconsin by a combined total of 77,736 votes thereby setting up the potential for a Biden win in 2020.

But the 2020 presidential election was even closer with Biden exceeding the needed 270 electoral votes by winning Arizona, Georgia, & Wisconsin by a combined total of 42,918 votes.

If Trump had won these three closely contested states both Biden & Trump would have each had 269 electoral votes. 

Readers of this blog who are students of the Constitution know what would have happened, in this event, to Biden & Trump as well as to Harris & Pence.