Reforming the Electoral Count Act: Listen to Admiral Akbar

 As you may have read by now, several Republicans, including Sen. Mitch McConnell, and even Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who is angling for Lindsey Graham's job of Trump's first-gimp in the next administration, have said that they are willing to consider reforming the "Electoral Count Act."  This is one of the smaller reforms Democrats have been considering in order to prevent something like the scheme Trump tried to pull in 2020.  The title of this post gave it away, so let's just do this thing.

Anyway, we have a phrase for this kind of tactic.  "Pointlessly obvious reference beaten into the ground through over-use."  Wait, that's not it.  OK, it is, but that's not where I'm going here.  Let's go for a more pithy cliche.  "Fighting the last war."  So here's the deal.  What is Congress's role in counting the electoral votes?  What is the vice president's role?  Are they purely  ceremonial?  Yes.  The answer is yes.  However, if you recall, Trump hired a loony-tunes conspiracy theorist lawyer named John Eastman, who wrote a loopy memo saying otherwise.  On the basis of this batshittery, the whole cadre of kooks tried to browbeat Mike Pence into throwing out the electoral votes that Trump didn't like, accepting a slate of phony electors handed to him by Rudy Giuliani, and declaring Trump the winner 'cuz.  How insane was this plan?  Words cannot express the lunacy of this plan.  What they can express is how fundamentally undemocratic, how totalitarian this plan was.  Had this plan succeeded, it would have been the end of democracy.  Period.

Fortunately, Dan Quayle of all people, intervened, and convinced Mike Pence of how blinkered this plan was, and so... Dan... Quayle helped save democracy.  At least for a little while.  A stay of execution, perhaps.  Pence continues to delude himself that he can ever worm his way back into Republican good graces after saving democracy, but saving democracy is heresy-most-high in the GOP.  Ain't no comin' back from that.  You either go Liz Cheney after that, or nothin'.  (Lemme swoon over Liz for a moment...)

So that happened.

What's happenin' now?  Most Democrats have finally gotten it through their skulls that their federal election legislation will not pass.  Can anything pass?  Something might!  Why?  Republicans, even their leaders, appear to be on board with reforming the Electoral Count Act, clarifying that the roles of Congress and the VP in counting the electoral votes are merely ceremonial.

Please refer to the sage advice of Admiral Akbar.

Or if you prefer, "fighting the last war."

Compose some hypothetical legislation that constrains Congress and indicates with crystal clarity that neither Congress nor the VP can do what Eastman, Giuliani, and the rest were pressuring Pence to do.  No January 6!  Right?  Sure, Trump is still just as insane, telling just as many lies, filing just as many frivolous lawsuits, and yadda-yadda-yadda, but the Pence-pressure-campaign was predicated on the ambiguity of the roles of Congress and the VP in counting electoral votes.  And the riot and insurrection were, themselves, tactics to flip Congress on the count.

Of course, even imagining such hypotheticals, there is no alternate universe in which Trump peacefully cedes power, but one may, in good faith, think that reforming the process of counting the electoral votes is a simple, clear, obvious thing that would help democracy, and close off one path to tyranny.

Actually, it's fighting the last war.  The 2020 war, which was fought with actual, literal violence, blood and death, thanks to Donald Trump.

Don't fight the last war.  See:  Akbar, ___ I don't actually know his first name.  Do they have first names?  Fuck it.  His name is Admiral.

So what will happen in 2024?  Those of us who have been blaring the alarms about Trump, risking the "alarmist" label, may sound a little less outside-the-mainstream right now, when talking about 2024, because you can see exactly what Republican state legislatures are doing.  Fuck drop boxes.  Fuck extended voting hours.  Fuck all that.  I do not give a rodent's rectum about any of this.  One interesting moment in Biden's press conference was when he asserted that if some people have to wait in line longer?  They will.  And when Trump is back on that ballot?  They will.  I'd rather nobody have to wait.  I'd rather it be easy to vote.  But at the end of the day, this is not the stuff that matters.

What matters is that Republican state legislatures are setting up vote counting and vote certification processes that will throw out the votes if the Democratic nominee wins, and hand a slate of Trump electors to Congress on a fraudulent basis, thereby overthrowing democracy.

This.  Will.  Happen.

We are watching it play out.  We are watching them put the pieces into position for this.  We are watching them not only lie about the supposed voter fraud about which they have zero evidence, but create the procedures by which Republican legislatures and election administrators will have the legal authority to do this, and the 2022 elections will give the GOP across-the-board control of fucking everything because it is a midterm election with a Democratic president.

Period.

This isn't a secret.  It isn't a conspiracy.  It's all happening in the open.

So play this out.  In 2024, if the economy sucks, Trump just wins.  And let's be blunt here, Trump is the GOP nominee.  If the economy sucks, Trump wins outright.  At the moment, Biden's approval rating sucks, and if you held the election right now, Trump would beat Biden.

What will the state of the country be in 2024?  I have not the foggiest clue.  Statistically, the incumbent president wins about 2/3 of the time, so statistically, you have a baseline expectation that the incumbent party wins.  And you may note that I am talking about the incumbent party, the Democratic Party, and so forth, rather than just Biden.  We do need to consider the fact that Biden is... how shall I put this?

That'll work.  Anyway, by 2024, Harris may be president.  Or maybe Biden declines to run because he's busy arguing with that nice gentleman up there.  Then you have a primary contest in which the Dems get themselves worked up into a froth about who's wokest.  I don't know.  Regardless, the economy tends to grow, the incumbent party tends to win a second term but not a third, and these facts are related, and blah-blah-blah.  Point being, if you simply look at 2024 from the perspective of a Bayesian prior, as of January 22, 2022, your expectation should be a Democratic victory, regardless of all the hand-wringing about Biden's approval rating.

But as I said, if Biden, Harris, or whoever beats Trump, the probability that Republican state legislatures, Sec.s State and other officials at the state level certify that victory is absolute, mathematical zero.  They will find no fraud.  It won't matter.  Trump will tell them to declare him the winner.  It'll play like the Raffensperger phone call.  But the 2024 crop will do exactly what their living god tells them to do, and they will have the semblance of legal authority at the state level to do it.

I'm going to say this again, because it is important.  There is zero chance that Republicans will certify a Democratic victory in 2024.  Zero.

We don't live in that country anymore.  Donald Trump destroyed it.  He burned it to the ground.  His lies, his constant lies burned through the dry tinder of Republican credulity, and we don't live in that country anymore.  The Republican Party is not a political party.  It is an authoritarian personality cult, which will do literally anything, including kill, to install Donald Trump as dictator of this country.

That is the Republican Party, and that is the country we now have.

So when the Republican Party throws out Democratic victories at the state level, fraudulently, and hands a slate of electors to Congress to cheat, and overthrow democracy...

...

... in 2024...

... what will you want Kamala Harris to do?  Will you want her do to what Trump tried to get Pence to do?  If the answer is yes, then you don't want the Electoral Count Act reformed.

Why do Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy suddenly seem like they're OK with this?  Because it will constrain Kamala Harris.

Go back in time, rewind the clocks, and retroactively apply a reform to block the whole, cockamamie Eastman plot?  Sure.  Yes.  Absolutely.  The role of Congress and the VP should be purely ceremonial.

But right now?  This is a trap.  Don't fight the last war.  Don't tie Kamala Harris's hands, when you know exactly what the GOP is going to do at the state level.

Here's what Harris will need to do in 2024.  (Or, I suppose, 2025.)  Biden/whoever wins.  Statistically, that is the most likely thing.  Republicans are idiots and liars, but that's what the data say.

Republican administrators from the county level on up to the Sec.s State, to the legislatures throw out those totals, with no evidence of fraud, based on batshit crazy conspiracy theories floating around on the dark web.  The state legislatures appoint Trump electors, at Trump's order.

Both chambers of Congress will be GOP-controlled.  Why?  2022.  This has nothing to do with the failure of Biden's legislative goals, or anything like that.  It's a midterm.  Period.  Anyway, the Republican-controlled Congress is set to certify a slate of fraudulently appointed electors.

Harris will need to claim the power that Pence was told to claim, and refuse to certify the results.  She will need to make something like a 14th Amendment argument that equal protection is being violated through this whole scheme.

What happens?  Constitutional crisis.  Do not let Trump get anywhere near the White House.

This is going somewhere bad.  The alternative is that Trump seizes power.  There are no good options here.  The Republican Party has been turned into an authoritarian personality cult.  There's no coming back from that, and fighting the last war is the wrong move, tactically.  We can see what is happening next.  A lot needs to happen.

GOTV.  Mobilization.  All the normal stuff, the old way.  Stop whining, and do it.  The problem, the new problem is the knowledge that Republicans will never certify a Democratic victory again.  Their journey to the Trump side is complete.  They're gone.  This isn't even like Darth Vader, where there's still a bit of good in them.

There's no good in them.  Except Liz.  The rest are cartoonishly evil.

Which means that it is time to plan for the fact that Republicans are going to cheat.  That means... don't tie Kamala Harris's hands!

No!  Stop that!

If this were part of a full package of reforms that prevented GOP state legislatures from throwing out their election results and installing party hacks at the county level to fix everything for them, and all that?  Yes.  Then take away Kamala Harris's power to mess with the count.

But remember my current motto.  Move and countermove.

We know the GOP's intended move in 2024.  If the Democrat wins, throw out the vote totals, and send Congress a slate of Trump electors anyway.  They're not being sly about it.

McConnell and McCarthy are on board with reforming the Electoral Count Act because it takes away the Democratic countermove.

What kind of system do I want?  I want a system with neither moves nor countermoves once election day is upon us.  Votes happen, they are counted mechanically, and the mechanical process is converted into an outcome with no games.

But the GOP doesn't see it that way.  Why not?  Because Trump doesn't see it that way, and the whole party is nothing but a Trump cult.  If he loses, that just leads to the next move for them.  Cheat, and send a slate of fraudulently appointed electors to Congress.  This is how Trump sees the world, and since the GOP is a Trump cult, this is what they will do.

Since this is the world in which we live, Harris needs a countermove.  I'd like a world without anthropogenic climate change, without COVID, without waterborne pathogens, malaria, a world in which people think rationally, read and consequently see through the lies of obvious con-men like Donald Trump.

And if that were the case, we wouldn't be here anyway.

But we are.

And given that we are, those opposed to Donald J. Trump and his authoritarian cult masquerading as a political party need countermoves.

Kamala Harris will need to do what Trump tried to get Pence to do.

Why is the GOP sounding like they'd go along with taking away her ability to do so?  Because their plan is to steal the election, and they don't want her stopping them.

What part of this is not clear?

Lee Morgan, "Trapped," from The Gigolo.