Posted: 12 November 2020 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | 9
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Jason, as to whether Pompeo was joking, I guess we are reading him differently.
I agree with your point about Pompeo being smart enough to know there will be no second term, which is why I think its likely there is more transition prep happening behind the scenes than we are aware of.
I think Republicans generally agree with the notion that Trump has the right to challenge the results, and that is all Pompeo is saying here. In fact, that is what I hear from most Republican politicians (with a few exceptions) I think very few people believe there is a realistic chance of the election being overturned.
To the extent there are enablers, the obvious ones are conservative media pundits. They are the ones pushing large scale conspiracy theories. If you want to accuse them of undercutting the public's faith in the election results, you would get no argument from me.
I would also lay some of the blame on Biden. In the first debate he was asked point blank: "Will you urge your supporters to say calm while the vote is counted? And will you pledge not to declare victory until the election is independently certified?" Biden's answer was: "Yes. Here's the deal. We count the ballots. And as you pointed out, some of these ballots in some states can't even be opened until election day. And if there's thousands of ballots its going to take time to do it." Clearly Biden has not stood by his commitment. None of the states have certified their counts yet. Most are not even done counting.
If Biden did what he said he was going to do, Pompeo and others wouldn't be in the position of having to justify why Trump hasn't conceded yet.
A lot of these legal challenges may be resolved by the time the election results are certified. Some suits have already been dismissed. A few were dropped voluntarily after the causes for apparent "glitches" were found to have reasonable explanations.
Yes the 2000 transition was more difficult than normal, but we are still a month away from the time when Gore conceded. If Trump hasn't conceded by mid December, then we'll have a problem. I just don't think there is a crisis on hand concerning the transition of power today.
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