Questions from the “Ask Teri” button in blue. Others from Twitter.
Q: I’m already hearing chatter, both online and with friends, that Kamala Harris isn’t a viable presidential candidate for 2024. Do you have ideas on how can we move our country towards addressing and combating our unconscious (and all too often conscious) bias against women in power?
I remember when people said that Barack Obama couldn’t win. Also, the most reliable voting bloc for fairness and progress are Black women. Consider, too, that in 4 years the kids who are now 14 will be voting. These kids have grown up in a different world. Perhaps I’m optimistic about this but I believe 🎵The times they are a changin.’🎵
Q: Going forward, I am very concerned about how RW media has a death grip on nearly 1/2 of our society. What are your thoughts on effective strategies to combat this? I was hoping for legislation but given that the Senate may not turn blue, we need other strategies.
I, too, am concerned. In fact, I believe that the well-oiled right wing disinformation campaign is the greatest threat to American democracy. We’ve seen the past four years what it can do. We see now what it can do as Trump claims to have won the election.
I intend to treat this at greater length later. It’s a topic I’ve researched at length. (I actually have a book coming out on disinformation, to be published by Macmillan, probably in 2022.)
How quickly we can make progress in this area (and others) depends on whether the Democrats win those two Senate seats in Georgia.
Hi Teri – I just started reading today that the head of the GAO will not release funds, space, tech support or other materials to support the Biden/Harris transition team. By custom and practice this is supposed to be done promptly after the election but Trump’s appointed head of the GAO has put the ki-bash on the whole enterprise. Is there anything “we the people” can do to move this along and pressure the GAO ? I understand that time critical financial disclosure forms etc are also being held for folks who will need them completed in order to begin officially working for the Biden-Harris transition team.
There is really nothing we can do. Biden is not worried. In 2000, the transition didn’t begin until December 12 because of the Bush v. Gore litigation. It’s possible for the Biden transition team to privately fund some of the expenses and get reimbursed later.
Also, Biden knows the job. He can call on Obama and Bill Clinton for help. Between them, they have 16 years of experience in the White House. I suspect that once the elections are certified and electors are chosen, there will be enough pressure on Trump to allow a transition.
The real damage here is that all of Trump’s antics in refusing to concede and insisting that he won is that he is undermining public confidence in democracy and further eroding democratic norms.
A writ can be ignored the same as a subpoena. I’m not persuaded that involving the courts is a good idea.
With everything Trump/GOP are doing and saying right now regarding the election results, could it come back to bite them in the Georgia Senate runoff? Could they wind up suppressing the Republican votes by leading them their voters to believe that Democrats can successfully cheat at an election? I mean why bother voting if it’s rigged and your opponent can steal it anyways.
I haven’t figured out how this will affect the Georgia runoffs.
The kind of fraud that Trump is accusing the Democrats of doesn’t suppress turnout. He is accusing the Democrats of basically stuffing the ballot box with fraudulent ballots. This might make Republicans turn out in larger numbers.
When left-leaning Twitter talks about fraud, they claim that the machines can be manipulated and votes flipped. This can suppress turnout, particularly in places like rural Georgia. If no matter what you put into the machine, the vote registers for a Republican, why bother?
The GOP leadership is in a bind. Trump controls the “base.” The GOP leadership can’t get elected without them. That’s how Trump was able to force Loeffler and Perdue to attack the GA secretary of state. The GOP got into this mess when it outsourced voter mobilization.
Pierson and Hacker explain in “Let Them Eat Tweets.”
At first, the Fox-GOP partnership was a boon to GOP candidates, but what the authors call “outsourcing voter mobilization” has drawbacks. Eventually, FOX exerted control over GOP officials. They were forced to cater to Fox’s demands, which forced GOP officials to adopt more extreme policies.
Now it appears that Trump has taken over from Fox. Trump controls the GOP voters. That’s where he gets his power.
As long as Trump controls the base, he has everyone by the throat. One purpose served by the “the election was stolen from me” narrative is that he remains relevant. He keeps the base loyal to him. If he concedes and says he lost, he loses that power.
Perhaps this is about the Georgia runoffs. If they anger Trump by forcing him to concede, he refuses to help (or promises to hurt) the Perdue and Loeffler races. Control of the Senate right now is up in the air.
Do you believe there are sealed indictments awaiting The Donald upon his departure from office, and/or that SDNY is waiting to pounce?
New York State prosecutors are certainly ready to pounce. Manhattan D.A. Cyrus Vance either has or soon will have Trump’s tax returns and bank records. I doubt there are sealed indictments, but I suppose there could be.
Can you please do a Twitter thread and/or article about the Electoral College, & that part of how elections work? It would also be helpful to hear your thoughts on abolishing the electoral college.
Basically, the states elect their delegates to the Electoral College, who then elect the president. The original idea behind the Electoral College was distrust of uneducated masses and the belief that educated men must be able to override a disastrous popular choice of the people. It was not one of Alexander Hamilton’s better ideas.
While the Constitution gives states the authority to allocate their electoral votes as they wish, every state has laws giving that power to the voters. For that matter, each state has laws for how their elections will be monitored and certified, and how the electoral votes will be cast. The legislature cannot suddenly reallocate that power without amending their laws. If they want to amend the laws, they have to follow their states’ procedures — which includes the possibility that governors could veto such legislation, which would certainly happen in a state such as Pennsylvania, which has a Republican legislature and a Democratic governor. Republicans there don’t have enough statehouse votes to override a veto. Similar problems would arise in other states with Democratic governors, like Wisconsin.
There is actually a dramatic counting of the electoral college votes in Congress. At this point, it’s for show. We already know how all the electors will vote because their votes are controlled by state law.
For a long time now, we’ve talked a lot about how the GOP demographics are shrinking. Yet, here we are with a very close Presidential election. I wonder if perhaps the evangelical numbers are shrinking, and the white supremacists are growing. I know you don’t have a crystal ball, but if you have thoughts about what “shrinking” means, I’d appreciate hearing them.
Have the results of the election (granted they aren’t final but we have “ballpark” numbers) caused you to rethink the part about the GOPs demographics aging and shrinking? 70+ million people voting for them is quite a lot.
Reagan had no trouble winning a majority of voters. In the Reagan era, whites were more than 70% of the voting population.
Since 1988, the Republicans won the popular vote in only one election, 2004. Think about that. The Democrats won the popular vote in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. During the next decade, whites are expected to drop below half the voting population. If the Republicans continue as a white nationalist party, they will have to find it harder and harder to win national elections.
The Republican share of non-college educated whites is going up. Educating more of the population could help that.
The Hispanic vote for Trump is probably explained by how frightened they were of the talk of socialism and how effectively Trump linked Biden to socialism.
Q: How would you assess the likelihood that The Donald defects, in advance of the end of his term?
I honestly don’t know. My only prediction is that Trump will insist as he’s walking out the door that he won the election, but was robbed because of massive fraud.
It’s hard for me to imagine him leaving in exchange for a pardon because that seems so much like an admission of guilt, and moreover, he knows that a pardon won’t help him with state crimes or shield him from civil liability.
At the same time, I can’t imagine him waiting to be called a trespasser. I also don’t believe he has the character to attend Biden’s inauguration. One thing I am sure of is that unless his health gives out, he will make a dramatic exit and do as much damage as possible on his way out.
Is there any possible way to ding a sitting, unraveling president with the 25th amendment?
The 25th Amendment isn’t a realistic option because the burden is even higher than impeachment and removal. To begin with, the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet has to declare Trump “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” When Trump challenges it, 2/3 of both houses are needed.
Also, “unable to discharge the duties” is usually taken to mean something like “in a coma.” It certainly doesn’t (and shouldn’t) mean “exhibits signs of dementia.”
The closest we came to the 25th Amendment in Trump’s presidency was when he was taken to the hospital with COVID.
