Trump is playing the campaign brilliantly. Kamala claims to have worked at an unspecified McDonald's; her opponent just gets on and does it:
President Trump is truly a man of the people pic.twitter.com/y52mNqSXZj
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 20, 2024
So with only two weeks to g...
Whoops, I fear this website is getting rather more seduced by who's up nought-point-two per cent in Wisconsin than we have traditionally been.
As I used to lecture readers in Britain's Telegraph, Canada's National Post et al, the great advantage of America's uniquely interminable presidential election process is that it tests a candidate, sorts the wheat from the chaff, determines who can go the distance, from pancake-flipping in the snows of a New Hampshire winter to last-minute swing-state whistlestops almost two years later. Well, this summer's Biden/Harris switcheroo put an end to that thesis. So, if the first year-and-three-quarters is now agreed to be just a bit of throat-clearing boob-bait for the rubes, that still leaves the final three months...
Which only matters if the Democrats are prepared to permit a free-and-fair election to be held - because (to reprise my old line) it doesn't matter if you have the best constitution in the world if you also have the worst election system in the world.
So how's that going?
NEW - 500,000 more people are registered to vote in Michigan, than those old enough to vote. Democrat officials say they'll purge over 600,000 "inactive voters" after this election. pic.twitter.com/xeMpHk2Jsj
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) October 19, 2024
Great! So they'll wait till after the election to purge all those "inactive voters", and that'll give members of the Inactive-American community a full twenty-three months to bulk up the voter rolls all over again just in time for the incoming "red wave" of the 2026 midterms. Lather, rinse and repeat.
Last time round Joe Biden "won" Michigan by 150,000 votes. So the above numbers provide a luxuriously upholstered Margin of Steal. Furthermore, in 2020 the now fondly missed Dead Husk of a Moth-Eaten Sock Puppet won just eleven of Michigan's eighty-three counties. The other seventy-two went to Trump.
So, when the then Attorney-General assures us that he saw no evidence of widespread fraud four years ago, that's the beauty of the American system: you don't need "widespread" fraud, only narrowspread fraud in just an eighth of precincts in a handful of states. And presto - you've changed the result in a nation of a third of a billion people.
Incidentally, how does Bill Barr know there's no evidence of widespread fraud. In most American states there's zero evidence of a non-fraudulent election. From the Golden State:
BREAKING: California man uncovered nearly a dozen ballots stuffed in a storm drain while doing yard work. pic.twitter.com/jlDeQlXe12
— Leading Report (@LeadingReport) October 18, 2024
Hmm. As a certain prominent Yank talk host at CRTV used to upbraid me, Americans have no interest in foreign countries. Which is why no reporter would seek to determine how many storm drains in Sweden, Croatia or Papua New Guinea have ever been stuffed with ballots. (Answer: none.) So here's a snapshot of Mr Barr's uniquely unique "election integrity" on the streets of Minnesota:
Do these ballots look secure to you? Photo outside Edina City Hall. @MNSteveSimon @GOPMNCD3 @MNCD5GOP @gop @EdinaMN @EdinaPatch @edinacityman @EdinaPolice @EdinaMag @lizcollin @AlphaNewsMN @Sd46G @SD50DFL @billglahn pic.twitter.com/SF03NMdpXL
— SD50MNGOP (@SD50MNGOP) October 18, 2024
Half-a-lifetime ago, when I was emigrating to the United Sates, I flatly refused an immigration officer's demand that I provide the original copies of my birth certificate and other documents. Why? Because a month or two earlier I'd chanced to notice that, due to a backlog of cases in their somewhat misnamed "Vermont Service Center", the agents were keeping the confidential files of applicants piled up in the back seats of their vehicles in the highly accessible parking lot just off Main Street in St Albans.
But at least those immigration officers closed the car doors.
The only reason we have the above photograph is because a "Republican election judge" happened to be passing. A friend of Powerline's John Hinderaker raises a couple of obvious points:
1. Why are they ever unattended?
2. Why would they require one Democrat and one Republican to transport ballots on election night but let one courier do it alone during the day?
3. The red/blue zip ties seems like such a dumb choice that would invite controversy. Do they think we are that stupid? Pick any other colors! Probably best to just pick one color?
The last observation is particularly well-taken, but I'd start with a more basic one: what's with this weird obsession in US elections with driving ballots around from one place to another? In functioning systems, votes are counted where they're cast. Jimmy Carter and his election observers wouldn't countenance such a thing if the Sudanese did it, so why are the Minnesotans already doing it weeks before the election?
Forget it, Jake, it's Bollockstown. However, if you are planning on stealing an election, it's important to prep the battlespace. So the court eunuchs of the American media are dutifully filing their stories on why there's zero chance we'll know the results on Election "Day". Pick a swing state, any swing state. Wisconsin? From The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Desperate for election to be over? Too bad we'll have to wait days for results.
It matters that every single vote is counted. So hold tight, do some breathing exercises and unclench your jaw.
Yeah, but other countries count "every single vote" and you don't "have to wait days for results" - anymore than you did in America in the old days. Wisconsin has a population around six million, about the same as Denmark, a little more than Finland or Norway - all of whom are able to announce their results a few hours after polls close.
So what's up with America that the conduct of its elections is now more comparable to those in the Congo or the Central African Republic? The Journal Sentinel's Kristin Brey explains:
Why? Because mail-in ballots take a lot longer to count...
Okay. I can see that, because they have to be removed from envelopes and their legitimacy "verified" after the vote as opposed to before. In 2020 Arizona took nine days to be, officially, called - because two-thirds of its votes were by mail. Does it really take thirteen-to-fourteen times as long to count a mail-in ballot?
If so, America has just entirely abolished the very concept of "Election Day". So much for all those "checks and balances". And, for some reason, the wankercon right has acquiesced in it. In Georgia, for example, a Republican Secretary of State is so anxious to "count every vote" that he's apparently waiting for the votes of people who've yet to cross the Rio Grande. As Mollie Hemingway notes:
Is Georgia Sec. of State claiming that 25% of his state's voters don't live in this country? https://t.co/PB8JSzRhgV
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 20, 2024
The enterprising New York Post found a "forensic lip-reader" from University College London to analyse the Biden-Obama conversation at Ethel Kennedy's funeral:
BIDEN: She's not as strong as me.
OBAMA: I know... That's true. We have time.
Indeed. When it is accepted as normal by the wankercons that it takes a week after Election Day to get the result, you have all the time you need. The reason why, in self-governing societies, voting is confined to approx seven in the morn to seven in the evening is because anybody minded to steal the election only has twelve hours to do it in:
Here's what we need: single day voting on Election Day, as a national holiday, with paper ballots & government-issued ID. But we have to WIN to get there. Don't be shy about voting early this time. Gotta win by the rules we have now, to ever change them to what they should be.
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) October 20, 2024
But such reforms run contrary to notions of American exceptionalism, which with respect to elections means exceptionally crap. Hence, a "constitutional republic"'s descent into Shenanistan. The actual "Election Day"'s actual votes are now the equivalent of a mechanical hare at a London greyhound track - they matter only insofar as they tell the Dems what they need to catch up:
Red counties need to stop releasing their voting day numbers early. It informs the blue counties what numbers they need to get the state a Democrat win. (What I'm saying is stop helping them cheat)
— Eddie Scarry (@eScarry) October 20, 2024
So you go to bed at twenty past eleven with Trump 20,000 votes ahead and then that van from some Minnesota town hall starts tootling around and you wake up to find the Dems 4,000 votes ahead.
The only way to overcome that is to vote vote vote in sufficient numbers to put your guy so far ahead the shenanigans are left in the dust. The evidence suggests that, while Trump is supersizing your fries, the Democrats are already supersizing the Margin of Steal. What's it up to now in those swing states? Five points? Overcoming it is do-able, but only with massive, record-breaking turnout.
The Dems control everything else - legacy press, Social Media, the courts - so only real votes count. In a free society, it should not be necessary to have to win the actual vote and then pile up an additional bunch to out-vote the fraud.
And that's just to get to Wednesday morning. If you thought the 2016/2017 Obama-Trump interregnum was bad, a GOP victory this November is going to drive the Deep State and its court eunuchs in the media to hitherto unseen levels of frenzy and make America's uniquely unique three-month "peaceful transfer of power" like nothing we've seen before.
But that's America 2024. And, if there's going to be an America 2028, they're going to have to figure out a way to bring a post-constitutional republic back within democratic norms. My old friend Roger Kimball had a column this weekend headlined:
Trump Is Going to Win and Dems and the Media Know It
If that last half is correct, they'll be moving on to the mid-November surprise. Final thought from Elon Musk:
With their relentless hit pieces, legacy mainstream media are actively encouraging the assassination of @realDonaldTrump and now me https://t.co/rHPrF6HlYZ pic.twitter.com/fuPrWUqS3X
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 20, 2024
~We had a very busy weekend at SteynOnline, starting with my thoughts on the post-joy Kamala. My Saturday music show explored some byways of Bond. For his weekend movie date Rick McGinnis opted for a Quatermass classic, while Steyn's Song of the Week went full hip-hooray and ballyhoo. If you've yet to hear our latest Tale for Our Time, Jack London's account of the rise and fall of China, you can find Part One here, and the conclusion here.
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