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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We are recording go ahead.
Rick Rosner: Yes, right before we started recording in the previous session, you asked if I’m relieved now that things are better. And I said I’m not relieved because things are not better. And so, let me expand on that. Things are better in that we have a president who’s not incompetent and a terrible person and stupid and insane. What’s not better is that the Republicans are pushing for massive voter suppression. And it’s not clear that they can be beaten back; the push for voter suppression is rooted in most Republicans’ minds who are pushing for it and in people who are honestly going for it versus the people who are cynically going for it. Who would, which includes most of the Republican elected officials who are pushing for it? It’s rooted in the big lie that Biden didn’t win and that there was massive fraud that needs to be fought back with all these voters. All these laws are for voter security.
And it’s clear to anybody who’s not a Republican that there was no sympathy or, at least, no more fraud than there’s been in just about every other election, which means some minor shenanigans here and there, not affecting most races. For instance, among the known shenanigans in Florida, the Republican brand, several found people, not even politicians, just people with names similar to Democratic candidates, and they ran these people in tight races versus the Democratic candidates, like Dennis Vasquez, who is hoping that the similar name people would draw off enough votes from people who weren’t paying attention that the Republican won. And that happened in a couple of states; I think a couple of races in Florida for state offices. But in terms of affecting national offices, it’s unlikely. There’s been no evidence. No legitimate evidence of anything, any massive fraud enough to tip an election has occurred.
Nevertheless, the Republicans are insisting that they won by seven million, won the popular vote by seven million votes. I used to know the statistics. I know there were 57 presidential elections in the history of the U.S., and this was in the top 10 largest popular vote margins. It wasn’t a tiny victory in the popular vote. And so many Republicans are claiming that they’ll just disclose enough fraud to overturn the election. They’ve found nothing. It’s been, what, seven months since the election? No, eight months. There’s nothing in the Constitution or the laws of the U.S. for overturning an election, even if they did discover fraud. There’s just nothing. There’s no reasonable way for the election to be overturned and no reason for it to be overturned. Yet there’s still pushing, and more than 50 percent of people who identify as Republicans are saying that Trump won.
So, reality has had no impact on a big chunk of the electorate, a shrinking chunk because they keep losing Republicans because the Republicans are so terrible. But it’s had no effect on elected Republicans who are pushing voter suppression. The Democrats right now narrowly hold the House. Historically, the party that has the president loses the House in the midterm elections. That’ll likely happen with voter suppression and historical trends that people just kind of vote against whatever party is in power. And if the Republicans take the House, they may be able to push through a bunch more voter suppression. And these laws that they’re trying to push are unlike any laws that have been passed in the history of the U.S., as far as I know. That these laws say that a state legislature, if they find the results in their state in a national election suspicious, can overturn those results. If a Republican Legislature and, say, the state of Oklahoma and a Democrat wins the popular vote, the Republican Legislature can overturn those results and send a different set of electors to vote for the Republican in the Electoral College for president. This means that if some of these laws pass in enough of the U.S.. We may never have a non-Republican president again in the near and medium future. Even though Republicans tend not to win the popular vote because they’re so fucking terrible.
I think they’ve won the popular vote for president once in the last eight elections, but they’ve won the presidency four times out of the last eight presidential elections. My numbers are a little off, but it is not good. So, things are still dire. We bought some breathing room for roughly 18 months to get some legislation passed. The Supreme Court overturned the Voting Rights Act, which was an act that was passed, I believe, in the 90s or, maybe, before it had to be overturned. So, the states that have a record of suppressing votes, particularly of minority and poor voters; that legislation in those states have to pass the national. They have to be examined by some national legislature or the courts or something to make sure that the law is passed in these states with a history of prejudice. The Civil War states and the similar states can’t just pass laws that suppress minority votes. Five years ago, the Roberts Court said that the Voting Rights Act no longer applies because the problems in voting in the Civil War states had been fixed, and that turned out to be not true at all. The problems are perhaps worse than ever, and the U.S. needs to pass another vote right now, and that may not happen. And if it doesn’t pass, then we are probably fucked. But maybe worse than we were when Trump was president. The end.
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Authors[1]
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Founder, In-Sight Publishing
Scott.Douglas.Jacobsen@Gmail.Com
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Rick Rosner 