I always admire human qualities I don’t possess. Such as the unbridled self-confidence of columnists like Piers Morgan who, before any investigation has been conducted, know for sure that no electoral fraud was committed.
This reemphasises that, like everything else in life, vote counting has become a matter of ideology, not fact. For, other than ideological bias, what makes those chaps so sure?
Do they believe that American democracy is immune to cheating, or that the Democratic Party is incapable of it? If so, they must have played truant when political history was taught.
The Tammany Hall machine of the Democratic Party in New York controlled both the voting and, especially, the counting nicely for the better part of two centuries. Closer to our time, in 1948 Lyndon Johnson won the Senate race in Texas by a whopping 87 votes, which earned him the nickname my title above borrowed for Biden.
Much of Landslide Lyndon’s enthusiastic support came from supporters who had been dead for decades at polling time, but even that wouldn’t have worked had a box of uncounted ballots not been mysteriously discovered at the last moment.
Incidentally, that’s how fraud is usually detected. Here investigators use the forensic method developed by casino pit bosses to spot the card counters at the blackjack tables. What gives those intrepid individuals away is their irregular betting patterns, tipping the balance of probability against them and leading to their expulsion or, in times olden, worse.
Sudden and massive changes of statistical fortune may happen, but they are exceedingly unlikely. When they do occur, fraud is usually involved.
Thus, when JFK’s 1960 election was hanging by a thread, and Illinois was the key swing state, Chicago mayor Daley made a solemn pledge to the candidate: “Don’t worry, Mr President,” he said, confidently using the title to which Kennedy wasn’t yet entitled. “Your friends will deliver Illinois.”
He was as good as his word. Kennedy’s friends bussed hundreds of hirelings from one polling station to another, where they voted with equal gusto each time. Kennedy moved to the White House, and Nixon, displaying the kind of dignity that has since gone out of fashion, refused to mount a legal challenge. That, he said, would diminish the institution of the presidency.
Now, if Kennedy’s friends could deliver Illinois, what makes Morgan et al. so sure Biden’s friends couldn’t deliver, say, Wisconsin? After all, political morals are now considerably less robust than in 1960, and ideological passions much more febrile.
I’m not saying Landslide Joe has stolen the election, but any Las Vegas pit boss would be wary of certain statistical irregularities.
For example, some magic wand was waved in Wisconsin and 112,000 ballots suddenly came Biden’s way within just one hour. In a similar pattern, 138,000 ballots went into Biden’s boxes in Michigan at the same time when not a single one was cast for Trump. How likely is that?
Also, Virginia, citing a clerical error, switched 100,000 votes from Trump to Biden. Clerical errors do happen. But then so does fraud, let’s make no mistake about that. Why, even a country worshipping at the altar of Democracy (always implicitly capitalised) is capable of it.
If the Democratic Party has some form in winning elections by sleight of hand, the hard left ideologues who are beginning to dominate the party live by it. After all, their founding ideology is fraudulent, and they’ve never shied away from upholding it in delinquent ways. In fact, their lacerating self-analysis, backed up by experience, must have led them to the realisation that people can only be cheated, not persuaded, to support left causes.
None of this will stick in court, and neither, I’m afraid, will Trump’s lawsuits. But between us girls we aren’t going to insist that legally provable and true are always the same thing, are we?
Nonetheless, I agree with Richard Nixon. Even an election fraudulently won is less damaging to the country than one decided by the Supreme Court. Especially since even that august body can no longer be confidently trusted to be guided by facts rather than ideology.
So, grudging congratulations to Landslide Joe – and especially to President Kamala Harris, who’s doubtless looking forward to a 12-year rule, first de facto and then de jure. God save America.
Even if all the votes counted were as cast, maybe the election was invalid due to people not knowing what they were voting for.
You know, like the Brexit vote here in 2016.
That sort of argument can be used against all popular voting systems. It is nonsensical.
Certainly I knew what I was voting for/against where Brexit was concerned, and also in all the general elections since 1945.
Sorry, Bernie, I was being ironic.
I must say I’m somewhat surprised by your relaxed attitude towards potential electoral fraud, Mr Boot. Surely it would be treason?
My attitude isn’t so much relaxed as cynical. Fraud fixes elections, but then so does media bias – and God knows in this election there was plenty of it, almost exclusively in Biden’s favour. So does demagoguery on the part of the candidates, and there was no shortage of that either. So do shameless promises no one intends to keep, although Trump’s record in that department is better than most. So does education that doesn’t educate, resulting in an ignorant electorate unqualified to elect. In short, our (and by our I don’t just mean American) democracy run riot is manifestly incapable of elevating to government those fit to govern. Just about every election boils down to the evil of two lessers, so what’s a little fraud among friends? I feel like a grown-up smiling at children playing silly games.
Clever Democrats have used the vote by mail system with maximum efficiency. The chain of custody is so weak that ballots can be easily lost by malevolent postal workers like one did in Buffalo, New York. The lawsuits will fade away and Biden will get the old cronies back into office with a dash of SJW ideology.
Postal votes are are just as suspect in UK elections. If the voter is illiterate, blind, brain-dead or even actually dead, the vote could be the choice of the person actually filling in the paperwork and done on an industrial scale. Voting in person at a polling station was open to fraud in my youth because there were no checks against voting more than once.
‘Vote early, vote often’ used to be the joke. However, fraud is only worthwhile (and also likely) in marginal seats.
Your answer to Isaac Thompson is sublime and I totally agree. However, I think you may be underestimating Trump in this.
Nixon was the ‘gentleman’ who accepted the imperfect reality for the sake of the common good, but Trump is a Manhattan street hustler who absolutely hates to lose.
Those of us conservatives who are utterly sick of the gentlemanly, conservative elite’s continual retreat from the left’s onslaught – resetting the pendulum ever leftward – applaud the fact that we now have our own bully.
I agree, mostly. In fact, much of my time is spent bemoaning the disappearance, or at least enfeeblement, of the conservative gentleman as a viable political force. However, conservatism isn’t all about politics and economics. Above all, it’s a matter of intuitive predisposition and style – of thought, behaviour, tastes, even dress. Hence I find it hard to see a barbaric street hustler as a fellow conservative. That he’s seen as such is, to me, testimony to the demise of conservatism.