The evolution of the idea that each election is illegitimate
The idea that Joe Biden floated yesterday at his press conference – that the next election might be illegitimate if Congress doesn’t pass the Democrats’ radical “voting reform” bill – would have once been verboten. But in the last two-plus decades, such challenges have become almost commonplace, although Biden’s innovation is to say it nearly a year before an election takes place, and to tie it to an act of Congress that would federalize election laws and actively work to make people distrust elections’ results.
Prior to the election of 2000, an illegitimate president was more of a fringe idea, at least in my lifetime. Some people thought Kennedy might have cheated in Illinois but I don’t recall any significant number of people calling him illegitimate as a result. Bill Clinton didn’t win a majority of the popular vote in 1992 because there were three candidates. But again, although plenty of people disliked him, I don’t recall many cries that the manner of his election made him illegitimate as a president.
2000 was a turning point; Bush was indeed called illegitimate (or some similar word), but that election was highly unusual. It really was a horse race with a photo finish and no real winner in the statistical sense, with SCOTUS having to step in. And in addition, Bush failed to win the popular vote. In 2008, a significant minority of people (at its height it was about 25%, but dropping later on) claimed that Obama wasn’t a natural born citizen. But again, although I seem to recall many of them did claim as a result that he wasn’t really president, most just wanted him to show what they considered the proper proof of United States birth.
Then there was Trump. Now, that was a real watershed. Not only was it a popular claim among Democrats and NeverTrumpers that he was illegitimate, but there was a huge effort to get rid of him as president by using the force of government agencies such as the FBI, combined with the MSM, based on the idea of this illegitimacy. It was something we heard about on a daily basis for Trump’s entire presidency, and it was a huge burden that lingers to this day.
Then came COVID and the relaxation of voting laws in many states, allowing Democrats to fulfill a dream of theirs (HR1 was first passed by the Democratic-controlled House in January of 2019, indicating their intentions prior to COVID). On election night of 2020 there were enormous anomalies that made at least half the country suspicious, and that suspicion remains. I probably don’t have to describe it here.
And that brings us to the present, when in a press conference Biden launches a preemptive strike on the next election just in case he doesn’t win it. It’s one of many pernicious signs that the republic is sinking, or perhaps has already sunk.
It drives me wild when the Dems and Fake News refer to that bill as “voting rights” or “voting reform.” It is policy by fake and misleading headline. It is a power grab in which the federal government will federalize all elections.
I have never once seen any evidence of voter suppression. What exactly is it? Waiting in line?
I just flew to Detroit and back. ID required to board the plane. But no ID required to vote in NE.
I’m convinced that the Dems are going to keep the covid fear going into November 2022 so they can steal that election. Zuckerberg needs his legislation passed NOW. Did he get it yet?
Just talked to a law school classmate and he had covid. Just a head cold with a bad cough. He and his wife didn’t even lose their sense of taste and smell.
All I can say is thank God for Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema. They are two real profiles in courage.
One must wonder how many on the right (or, more broadly, those in opposition to the destructive Harris/Biden regime) have much confidence at all that this fall’s election will be conducted in at least a reasonably free and fair manner. With the penchant of the Democrats for various sorts of chicanery undergirded by their unofficial motto/modus operandi “by any means necessary”, not to mention the likelihood of massive numbers of mail-in ballots (perhaps accompanied by “ballot-harvesting”), the oft-predicted “red wave” in the midterms may well prove to be elusive.
There are over 10 months until the 2022 midterms. The chances of at least one and possibly multiple major events happening in that time have to be nearly 100%. The chances of any of those events being good for Biden and the Democrats have to be close to 0%.
Mike
In the next 10 months to two years, Russia invades Ukraine and China invades Taiwan.
I complain about headlines, but slogans are okay.
Tonight I will appear at the Omaha Public Power District meeting and use the following:
1. Nebraska is the Cornhusker state; not the Chinese solar panel state.
2. It is a terrible idea to turn the keys of the American economy over to the CCP.
3. Don’t crucify OPPD ratepayers on a cross of wind turbine blades.
Nebraska’s William Jennings Bryan was made famous by his “cross of gold speech.” Begley is famous for his “cross of wind turbine blades” speech.
That’s the way I took Sundowner yesterday, if he ( he has about a %3 chance of getting that far IMO) it must be because of vote fraud, after all he thinks he had more votes than any president ever.
On other hand as little to nothing was done for the vote fraud in 2020 even 2022 mid terms it will rear its ugly head again. Only good side is decent states will run good elections and Democrats are going to get beat. Cities the fraud is in the cake mix already so won’t much matter ( as in Philadelphia for instance)
}}} But again, although I seem to recall many of them did claim as a result that he wasn’t really president, most just wanted him to show what they considered the proper proof of United States birth.
In re: this notion.
I have seen a screencap of the Honolulu newspaper presumably announcing his birth at the time. This suggests to me that, indeed, he was a natural born citizen, since almost the only significant thing this matters at all to is if you can be PotUS, and I’m not buying the notion that a radical libtard like his mother would believe, in the late 50s, that her son would be president, if only because of pure racism. So, if the child was not born in the USA, there was no reason to suggest it by making that advert.
NOW, that said — why would he refuse to settle the matter, once and for all, by coughing up the long-form BC?
I can only speculate — but I am going to make a complete guess here, based on the kind of woman his mother appears to be — the father may be listed on that form as “unknown”. She was unconnected to the father that that point, and it seems like something she might do, given what I have read of her personality — militant liberal/Marxist/feminist in a time when that was not overly common.
It would be publicly embarrassing for such a BC to be made public, as the plethora of “bastard” jokes would be huge.
Not saying there is any data whatsoever to support this — only making a speculation on why it would be hidden away, as there really does not seem to be a logic to doing so otherwise, unlike, say, his college grades, which I’m betting are below par on more than one level — his editorship @ Harvard was more than likely a skin-color gift than anything he’d earned.
I assert the above based on this piece from during his first term
Stop It Already — He’s Not So Smart
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2011/06/stop_it_already_–_hes_not_so_smart.html
The author, a lawyer, makes a fact-based argument in favor of what I interpret as the above comment about his editorship: He did not earn the position, it was a racial gift.
So Biden was tacitly admitting that 2020 was fraudulent because the “reforms” they want for 2022 and beyond were not in place in 2020. Good to know.
A watershed, meaning the moment that waters overtake.
While true, the waters were building long before.
Two moments exists that lead to this … the righteous impeachment of Bill Clinton and the election of W.
Both caused the Democrats to seethe and hate. W gave power to Obama to abuse with the Patriot Act, which Obama and the Democrats used against Trump. The fact W sided with Obama and Hillary is just another amongst Legion confirmation that our country was lost long before Trump.
Trump was the result of massive population dissatisfaction from decades past. The next step, especially in light of the demonization of political opposition by the Democrats to the point that anyone, left, right, Dem, or Repub, is a domestic terrorist, will be civil war.
The Democrats fully caused the first Civil War over demanding to keep slavery alive. The Democrats today demand we kneel to them, period, no matter their stance.
I was a Democrat, come from a strong Democrat family. My family marched with Cesar Chavez and my uncle, white, a Democrat, was paid massive tribute by the blacks in North Texas when he died.
Today, I hate the Democrats.
My “just a thought” solution to all this is to end direct universal voting in favor an elector system. Each election cycle electors would be called randomly from the pool of eligible voters for elector duty. This would not be unlike jury duty where electors, after proper vetting and training, would agree to cast an informed vote on every item on their ballot. The number of electors would be large enough to statistically represent their precinct but small enough for ballot security. A state like Washington might call say 20,000 potential electors and down select to 15,000 or whatever. No vote suppression nor low turnout off year election games etc.
JFK stole 1960. His cousin wrote a book about it. Theodore White described Daley stealing Illinois. And anyone curious about LBJ’s role in stealing Texas need only read Robert Caro’s third volume on LBJ where he chronicles the theft of the 1948 senate seat.
Even a rabid left-wing partisan like Tom Wicker (opinion columnist for many years with NYTimes) said 1960 was stolen. He hated Nixon. The only good thing he was willing to say about Nixon was to praise him for putting the nation’s interests first by not challenging and exposing the theft of the 1960 election.
Something I had forgotten about until recently was that the left rioted violently in DC when Trump was inaugurated. We are supposed to have all forgotten about that, just like we are supposed to forget the 2020 summer riots and deny $2 billion dollars in property damage and multiple deaths.
I have never once seen any evidence of voter suppression. What exactly is it? Waiting in line? — Cornhead
How about a row of New Black Panthers holding clubs in front of a polling place in Philly? (2008 election IIRC)
_____
It really was a horse race with a photo finish and no real winner in the statistical sense, with SCOTUS having to step in. — Neo
People tend to forget (but not Neo I’ll bet) that the primary reason the SCOTUS had to step in was because the Florida Supreme Court had come down with a decision for a selective and biased recount. A decision that the FL Chief Justice referred to in his dissent as one of the worst of his Supreme Court career.
______
As an aside … Can we and politicians specifically please stop referring to this stuff as shenanigans? I probably wouldn’t call it treasonous, it is closer to that end of the spectrum than it is to shenanigans.
JFK stole 1960.
There’s a satisfactory argument that the electoral votes of Illinois were stolen. They would not have been enough to put RN over the top. You needed those of Texas or Missouri as well.
My “just a thought” solution to all this
It is irrelevant to what the problems are.
The way things are now, when an election is stolen it pretty much stays stolen. And then the Dems assert that anyone who challenges their theft is a threat to democracy.
The Dems are real pros at this as evidenced by Molly Ball’s “Time” mag article. They spent millions and spent thousands of man-hours planning the rigging. The GOP and Trump were asleep.
NOW, that said — why would he refuse to settle the matter, once and for all, by coughing up the long-form BC?
His long-form certificate was released 10 years ago.
WRT Bush and Florida.
The DNC sent several hundred lawyers to Florida to contest votes locally. CSpan had some footage of one in front of a local board trying to use franking dates and suchlike to dismiss overseas military votes. Lot of the going around.
A judge had 1500 of the latter in a kind of escrow–implication is that they would be counted eventually–when they became moot..
“…when in a press conference Biden launches a preemptive strike on the next election just in case he doesn’t win it.”
But…you may recall that Hillary did EXACTLY THE SAME THING before the 2020 elections, claiming first that Trump intended to steal the election and second that should Trump be ahead before “all” the votes are tallied he should NOT DARE to say he won it…demonstrating beyond a doubt that she, too, was in on the grift. (Similar to the Honarable Secretary of State of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania claiming in full confidence that there was NO WAY that Trump would win the vote in that state…)
Well it worked for them then; why shouldn’t it work for them now?
(Which may well be THE reason for Trump to work behind the scenes but ultimately allow DeSantis to run for POTUS in 2024. I.e., let the Democrats tie themselves up in knots of insane hatred toward the new poster boy of the “24/7 hate”.)
– – – – – – –
“So Biden was tacitly admitting that 2020 was fraudulent….”
Actually, one wag commented that with that “brilliant” statement, what “No-Mo’-Malarkey” Joe really said was that EVERY US elecction in history was fraudulent….
– – – – – – – –
“Today, I hate the Democrats.”
Of that they are entirely deserving…though to be fair, the party is not by any stretch of the imagination the same one it used to be—even, I’d venture to say, the one it was even during the Bill Clinton presidency. In other words, the bolshie gangsters have hijacked the party lock, stock and barrel—except for two stalwart holdouts, bless them both and give them strength….
(OTOH, pretty sure that there’s no obligation to be fair to bolshie gangsters…)
I addressed Texas in 1960. Read Caro’s book. Then we can talk.
The Democrats did everything possible to steal Florida in 2000. There was a federal injunction requiring each county election commission to count military ballots from overseas even when they lacked a postmark (because military post offices often failed to mark them for a variety of reasons). The injunction had been in place since the 80s (IIRC).
Gore sent lawyers to every county controlled by Democrats with a legal memo which instructed them that the law required those military ballots to be thrown out. It was a blatant lie and in direct contradiction of the federal judge’s injunction. The Dem county officials did as Gore lawyers instructed and trashed the military ballots (didn’t even keep them available, but segregated).
The networks called the election for Gore before polls closed in heavily Bush panhandle. This cost Bush over 10,000 votes as people in line with no other contested elections that mattered went home when the news was announced. Does anyone really want to argue that the election would have been called early for Bush? Of course, not. They won’t even call a state for an R with 100% of precincts reporting until they sit on it for an hour.
And then the liberals on the Fla Supreme Ct endorsed a blatantly unfair resolution of the counting dispute re: chads that gave Gore all disputed votes and none to Bush. That unfair result was found unconstitutional by a 7-2 vote of the Supremes. Even some of the liberal justices were unable to stomach that kind of unfairness.
I don’t know of a Presidential election won by a Republican in which, as she was a Representative, Sheila Jackson Lee didn’t lodge a protest in the House of illegitimacy exactly of the type Republican members of Congress did in 2020.
You forgot Rutherford B Hayes, who was often referred to as your fraudulence.
I saw a headline on another blog’s website that Trump has commented that, if Biden thinks that way about the next election, he’s impliedly acknowledging that the 2020 election was illegitimate. Makes sense. It doesn’t make sense to insist that the 2020 election was legitimate but that if the proposed changes in the election laws don’t go through the next one will be illegitimate.
I’m not sure how to stop this train now that its started, but if we don’t find a way to satisfy everyone that our elections are legitimate, we are going to lose our republic.
A good, old-fashioned landslide would certainly help.
I just flew to Detroit and back. ID required to board the plane. But no ID required to vote in NE.
Obviously, you are an American citizen. Had you been an illegal “migrant” you would only need an arrest warrant as ID.
The “long form birth certificate” that Obama finally produced was not the original. I was able to get a copy of my 1938 birth certificate original a couple of years ago. The Obama “birth certificate” was a “copy.” Probably because of the father item.
Bauxite:
Back in 2004 Hugh Hewitt wrote a book entitled, If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat..
Watt:
In my post yesterday about Biden’s speech, I said that he’s actually implicitly acknowledging that ALL US elections except for 2020 were illegitimate, because the rules of HR1 have never been in place on a national level before.
In every state where it is possible, constitutional conservatives need to be actively supporting efforts to tighten and enforce election laws. In NC, for instance, before the 202 election, Dems tried the “sue and settle” scam to try to bypass election law on absentee ballots. The Republican party sued and stopped it.
Robert Shotzberger:
Note that I carefully said, “in my lifetime.”
Leland:
And that’s why I wrote that previously it was a “fringe” idea. Lee didn’t have a whole lot of other politicians in the House chiming in with her.
stan:
You write:
That was not the reasoning SCOTUS used. The basis of the decision was not the unfair result, it was this:
Barry Meislin:
Hillary wasn’t president in 2020 nor was she running. Biden is president, and he’s talking about the 2022 midterms which reflect very much on him and will either enhance his power as president or detract from it.
In 2016, however, it was candidate Trump who preemptively challenged the results of the 2016 election by saying it was “rigged.”
Re: “The evolution of the idea that each election is illegitimate”
Not quite. The evolution of the idea is that elections are only illegitimate when the left’s opposition wins. It’s quite simple; 2000, 2004 and 2016 were illegitimate. 2008, 2012 and 2020 were legitimate.
After learning that Biden was reasonably coherent during his press conference, I’m leaning toward the conclusion that he’s not merely corrupt but evil. He knows that he’s lying in service of evil.
“I’m convinced that the Dems are going to keep the covid fear going into November 2022 so they can steal that election.” Cornhead
I think that likely. Their ideological blinders prevent them from grasping that the only thing that is preventing the ‘powder keg’ from exploding is the right’s hope that the left will not succeed in stealing the 2022 and 2024 elections. Should they succeed once again, that hope will be gone and there will remain no doubt that the republic is dead. That’s when the D.C. gulag will move from a great injustice to a symbol of the intolerable.
Robert Shotzberger,
Just to set the record straight. Despite the controversy over his selection, Rutherford B. Hayes proved to be an excellent President. He’s criticized by some for ending reconstruction. Which while ending “all federal efforts to bring racial equality to the South” also ended the reign of the thieving ‘carpetbaggers’. Nor could the racial mindsets prevalent in the South (and North) be forcibly changed.
An honest reformer ahead of his time, he did NOT want to be President, who after incessant pressure, stated that he would only serve one term having done his best. Which is exactly what he did, “Hayes kept his pledge not to run for reelection, retired to his home in Ohio, and became an advocate of social and educational reform.”
A political Cinncinatus.
When a close loser of an election has _time_ because votes received after the election day are allowed to be counted (because of dozens of reasons like mail in ballots received late, or need to match signatures, or ballots discovered in back rooms…ad infinitum) then he is necessarily made aware of the votes needed to catch up and win. This is the key mindset that allows cheating: knowing how many votes you need to catch up and win together with a loose time deadline.
Laws that set deadlines for ballot counting that are on, or slightly post-proximate, to the date of the election are going to contribute much to election integrity. Laws that make these vague or blurry are going to contribute to election fraud.
The “long form birth certificate” that Obama finally produced was not the original. I was able to get a copy of my 1938 birth certificate original a couple of years ago. The Obama “birth certificate” was a “copy.” Probably because of the father item.
He released the long form which has all the data fields of the long form and which lists his father. The original was in the state archives. It had previously been inspected by the commissioner of health and the registrar of vital statistics who found it in a looseleaf binder precisely where it was supposed to be.
My supposition is that he did not release it before because the controversy was sucking up oxygen and diverting attention from the pursuit of documents he actually did wish to conceal. Not sure what those were, but a satisfactory hypothesis would be transcripts and financial aid applications from Occidental and Columbia. Another would be his medical records &c. Students of Obama have offered that some of his turns of phrase suggest a man who has been through cognitive therapy; another possibility would be ailments and injuries which suggest undergraduate homosexual activity. John Kerry allowing only lickspittles from the Boston Globe to examine his service records suggest they also contain dirt, and a history of psychotherapy would be one’s single best guess as to what that was.
I addressed Texas in 1960. Read Caro’s book. Then we can talk.
Neither Kennedy nor Nixon were on the ballot in Texas in 1948. Johnson and his minions were able to orchestrate the theft of that primary election in Texas by stuffing 202 ballots into a single ballot box in a precinct in Alice, Texas and drawing up a forged register of signatures. The gap between Kennedy and Nixon in Texas in 1960 was around about 56,000 votes.
I’ve been working intensively with the full Acrobat app since it first came out over three decades ago out and have considerable familiarity with the attributes of the PDF format back when it was completely proprietary and still closely held by Adobe Systems. Following finally, after months of uproar over Obama’s birth nationality, and he finally released a PDF version of the putative Honolulu birth certificate, I was amazed to see that it had never been “flattened”, and the composite layers of its construction were completely evident. Normally, a PDF made from a photocopy —or even from the original document— would have been a single un-composited image, and the layering, as discernible from opening it under the actual Acrobat app, rather than just a PDF reader —either from Adobe or various other non-proprietary developers— was the result of retouching and image manipulation/assemblage. There was zero media recognition of this telling anomaly!
Not to condone media manipulation, but to forfeit one’s vote based on a media report is a feckless dereliction of civic duty.
OBloody Hell on January 20, 2022 at 3:02 pm
” … indeed, [Obama] was a natural born citizen …”
I know Article II says “natural born” but it strikes me that it really should be “native born”. Doesn’t natural born really mean via a vaginal birth, rather than via caesarian section? Neither mode of birth detracts from the expectation that a candidate’s love for, and dedication to, his/her country, is great if his/her birth is also native.
And given the Lightbringer’s predilection to be a Caesar, he might well prefer to have entered the world via a “caesarian” delivery.
@ Mbunge > “There are over 10 months until the 2022 midterms. The chances of at least one and possibly multiple major events happening in that time have to be nearly 100%. The chances of any of those events being good for Biden and the Democrats have to be close to 0%.”
NPR could up that percentage if they really tried just a little bit.
https://notthebee.com/article/npr-is-fake-news-npr-publishes-bogus-story-about-neil-gorsuch-refusing-to-wear-a-mask-after-request-from-sotomayor
Everything Totenberg said was totally false, according to the three justices involved.
Not The Bee has some things to say about that.
So did John Hinderaker.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/01/npr-doesnt-care-about-truth.php
I think “NPR delenda est” is probably sufficient.
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neo – I didn’t read Hewitt’s book, but I do remember it. This is just another reason that it would be madness to go into 2024 with a hugely polarizing candidate who has never broken 47% of the vote.
I think a large part of our problem with election legitimacy is that neither party is willing to run candidates who are capable of winning a solid victory that represents actual consensus. Democrats are beholden to their radical base, and mesmerized because they can win the popular vote by a few points, even while losing the Electoral College. Republicans were such a mess before Trump that people have convinced themselves that 46% of the vote and a chance to sqeak by in the EC is the best we can do.
And I don’t think the base of either party would be happy with the consensus that is actually acheivable – i.e., fix/maintain the economy, keep the border secure without putting crying children on the evening news, don’t let the debt cause a crisis, keep foreign policy from affecting everyday life, and (most of all) keep the crazies from both parties at bay. After the last few administrations, a candidate who ran on that platform would win 55% of the vote, crush the EC, and silence the vandals in both parties who delegitimize our elections.
I’ll add – it will be interesting to see how Youngkin and his ticket-mates fare in Virginia. So far, they seem to be better at Trumpism than Trump, at least in terms of action. If it is the case that Republicans who sound and act like Glenn Youngkin can win campaigns and then govern effectively while doing all of the things that Trump promised (and mostly failed to deliver), there is absolutely zero reason to run Trump again.
R2L,
“I know Article II says “natural born” but it strikes me that it really should be “native born”. Doesn’t natural born really mean via a vaginal birth, rather than via caesarian section?”
Was cesarean birth an option in 1789? If not and that’s my impression, then in the minds of the founders “natural born” could only have referred to being born in the U.S.
Bauxite,
Is a plurality in consensus achievable? Your statement, “I don’t think the base of either party would be happy with the consensus that is actually acheivable – i.e…” indicates otherwise.
BTW, Trump won 2020 handily.
(…Oops. Forgot to add, “had it been an honest election.”)
File under: But “Biden won in 2020 with a RECORD number of votes”…oh, let us count the ways….
There was zero media recognition of this telling anomaly!
Criminy. Sheriff Arpaio hired a set of technicians to ‘prove’ it was phony.
What is your thesis? That Gov. Lingle’s appointees were lying? That having an original in the state archives, he has technicians concoct a fraud just to be cute?
The whole birther discourse presumed that Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr, a pair of impecunious college students, would undertake expensive and time-consuming international travel to avail themselves of the spendour of Kenyan obstetric care (and to introduce Ann Dunham to BO, Sr’s legal wife). A more sensible variant had it that Ann Dunham had returned to Seattle and gave birth to him while visiting Vancouver, which avoids the logistical hurdles but assumes facts not in evidence. A third variant has it that he’s the issue of Frank Marshall Davis. Obama was conceived five months after the Dunhams arrived in Honolulu. Davis at that time lived 15 miles away from the Dunhams, was 37 years older than their daughter, and was not engaged in any enterprise which would have readily brought him into contact with any of the three Dunhams. (He is known to have been a friend of Stanley Dunham ca. 1971). By contrast, both Ann Dunham and BO, Sr. were enrolled at the University of Hawaii in 1960/61 and had friends in common who attest to their association, among them Neil Abercrombie.
My “thesis” was, Mr. Deco, simply that when the birth certificate was finally released, I opened the widely distributed PDF under the full Adobe Acrobat app and it was immediately evident that whoever assembled it had neglected to run the final flattening step, so the composite layering was all still discernible. Sheriff Arpaio and Gov Lingle’s machinations (or not) weren’t in the picture. Nor were the later speculations that one or both of the Obama couple’s families were longstanding CIA assets. And why on earth was there zero media questioning or critical unpacking of exactly what Obama had in mind —chapter and verse— when just a week before the presidential election that brought him into the White House, he declaimed that the United States of America was due for a “fundamental transformation”?
I agree with Art Deco on Obama. He was born in Honolulu. I suspect we would also agree that the way Obama handled the controversy was very strange. Refusing to disclose documents, dragging out the disclosures, giving exclusive information to the Daily Kos – – his behavior looked like it was designed to feed suspicion on the right (and it did).
Maybe Art Deco is on to something about the whole thing being intended to distract from something else in his records. (Maybe that he falsely promoted himself as a “Kenyan-born author” to sell books?)
This isn’t exclusive of Art Deco’s theory, but I think it was, at least in part, an application of the Obama “stray voltage” theory. I think that they deliberately acted like they were hiding something in order to set off people on the right. To ordinary folks who don’t follow politics, the whole birther movement sounded crazy, and that allowed Obama’s team to portray his opposition as crazy and racist. I think the Obama team was happy to keep it up until Trump fought fire with fire in 2012 and actually started convincing people that Obama was born in Kenya. Obama released his “long form” birth certificate after Trump started moving polls on that issue in 2012.
To neo’s original point – it is that kind of cynicism that is ruining our republic.
Geoffrey Britain; R2L:
Macduff in “Macbeth” was “from his mother’s womb untimely ripped.” Not “man of woman born.”
Obama released his “long form” birth certificate after Trump started moving polls on that issue in 2012.
IIRC, it was in 2011 and after Gov. Abercrombie suggested publicly that he should do so.
My “thesis” was, Mr. Deco, simply that when the birth certificate was finally released, I opened the widely distributed PDF under the full Adobe Acrobat app and it was immediately evident that whoever assembled it had neglected to run the final flattening step, so the composite layering was all still discernible. Sheriff Arpaio and Gov Lingle’s machinations (or not) weren’t in the picture.
“It’s obvious” isn’t much of an argument.
Biden’s skill is lying to the expectation of his audience. But that only works when the audience has a lot in common.
Cognitively, he is a worn out husk. In terms of being a moral agent, he has been an empty shell for his whole political career. I don’t believe he is capable of prudent action because he cannot predict how adversaries will react to him. He cannot even tell who his adversaries are, or what his oath of office means.
neo on January 21, 2022 at 1:54 pm — untimely ripped.
Agree, and that was what I was thinking in making my comment. However, even as late as 1789 I suppose that if the baby survived, the mother would not have.
R2L:
Apparently, even a long time ago a few mothers survived: