JustOneMinute

Say Hello To Amy Coney Barrett

Cuomo's treatment of religious gatherings gets slapped down by the Supreme Court.

Cuomo's dodge of withdrawing the restrictions and then arguing the court did not need to rule did not work. The embittered among us recall that NY State successfully tried a similar ploy last spring with a gun related restriction.

Out Like Flynn

Trump to pardon Flynn?

To Be Fair, In His Professional Life Trump Has Presumably Had Good Lawyers

Trump is not happy with his legal team's performance, based on plausible leaks from folks familiar with his thinking. Well, nor is Rush.

I'm sure that in his earlier life as real estate mogul Trump dealt with top legal talent on a regular basis (and Mickey Cohen!). This isn't that.

Just A Head Fake

Hmm, the kraken appears to have been released from a hamster cage.

In scathing opinion, federal judge dismisses Trump campaign lawsuit in Pennsylvania

Republican party "leaders" are continuing their slow-rolling intervention. Rep. Senator Toomey of PA praises the Federal judge as "a longtime conservative Republican whom I know to be a fair and unbiased jurist", praises Biden and Harris as good people with whom he mostly disagrees, praises Trump's notable accomplishments in office, and says its time for Trump to move on.

The Trump-related passage:

“Make no mistake about it, I am deeply disappointed that President Trump and Vice President Pence were not re-elected. I endorsed the president and voted for him. During his four years in office, his administration achieved much for the American people. The tax relief and regulatory overhauls that President Trump enacted with Republicans in Congress produced the strongest economy of my adult life. He also should be applauded for forging historic peace agreements in the Middle East, facilitating the rapid development of a COVID-19 vaccine through Operation Warp Speed, appointing three outstanding Supreme Court justices, and keeping America safe by neutralizing ISIS and killing terrorists like Qasem Soleimani and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

 

“To ensure that he is remembered for these outstanding accomplishments, and to help unify our country, President Trump should accept the outcome of the election and facilitate the presidential transition process.”

Letting the process play out may eventually prove to have been a helpful approach.

That said, after staring at his description of Trump's legacy, there's no mention of tough on China, trade and immigration enforcement. IF those remain closer to the mainstream of American politics its an impressive legacy.

Well. As to immigration, right now the debate seems to be presented as "children in cages" versus "abolish ICE". Lots of ground in the middle but can out two parties meet there?

Affidavit From The North Country

Powerline looks at an affidavit filed as part of the Trump vote fraud case. The lede is deeply buried, but patient readers eventually get a shock - the analysis demonstrates vote fraud by showing that total votes exceeded registered voters and area population. Unfortunately, to reach that conclusion the analyst matched Michigan votes with Minnesota voting districts, or something.  Oops.

Here’s the problem: the townships and precincts listed in paragraphs 11 and 17 of the affidavit are not in Michigan. They are in Minnesota. Monticello, Albertville, Lake Lillian, Houston, Brownsville, Runeberg, Wolf Lake, Height of Land, Detroit Lakes, Frazee, Kandiyohi–these are all towns in Minnesota. I haven’t checked them all, but I checked a lot of them, and all locations listed in paragraphs 11 and 17 that I looked up are in Minnesota, with no corresponding township in Michigan. This would have been obvious to someone from this state, but Mr. Ramsland is a Texan and the lawyers are probably not natives of either Minnesota or Michigan.

Evidently a researcher, either Mr. Ramsland or someone working for him, was working with a database and confused “MI” for Minnesota with “MI” for Michigan. (The postal code for Minnesota is MN, while Michigan is MI, so one can see how this might happen.) So the affidavit, which addresses “anomalies and red flags” in Michigan, is based largely, and mistakenly, on data from Minnesota.

This is a catastrophic error, the kind of thing that causes a legal position to crash and burn. Trump’s lawyers are fighting an uphill battle, to put it mildly, and confusing Michigan with Minnesota will at best make the hill steeper. Credibility once lost is hard to regain. Possibly Trump’s lawyers have already discovered this appalling error, and have undertaken to correct it. But the Ramsland Affidavit was filed in Georgia just yesterday.

Not helpful. Trump's self-styled 'elite strike force team' picked a bad day to give up caffeine.

Jim Geraghty of NR does a good job every day. Today he tees up the classic line from A Few God Men:

Americans Deserve the Truth, Even If It’s Unpleasant

On the menu today: a blunt message about who is conning whom in the aftermath of the 2020 elections.

You Are Being Conned

You're being conned if you take Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell seriously, that is.

Stephen Moore of the Club For Growth and now a White House counselor, says its time for Trump to move on. To be fair and IIRC he does say that Trump may have a 20% chance with his legal cases (I am now locked out of the article.)

Running The Double-Reverse

Two Republicans initially voted AGAINST certifying the controversial election tallies in Wayne County, Michigan. This would have kept Detroit-area votes off the board and created a narrow pathway to a Trump victory in MI. Wild, right?

Under enormous pressure (presumably including death threats) they switched their votes a few hours later, certifying the results and kicking the problem up to the state level. System working? Not so fast!

A day later they rescinded their reversal, or tried to. It appears they aren't legally entitled to a do-over here, but that is why we have courts and under-employed lawyers.

Whatever. Flipping Michigan will not, by itself, take the election back from Biden. But a few more hats, a few more rabbits, and who can say? As long as Trumps lawyers think they'll get paid this show will go on.

Flood The Swamp

The business-friendly, but mainly donor-friendly Clinton Restoration proceeds apace.

A Speedbump On The Democratic Road To An Eternally Emerging Demographic Majority

The NY Times reports on liberal puzzlement regarding their less-than expected supported among different ethnic groups.

My favorite insight - Asian-Americans in California do NOT favor Affirmative Action! How that could possibly surprise anyone who follows the college admission wars is beyond me, but I've never claimed to be smart enough to be a Dem strategerist.

The Hispanic panic is a but more intriguing:

Latinos, too, appear sharply divided. Prominent Latino nonprofit and civil rights organizations endorsed the affirmative action proposition even as all 14 of California’s majority-Latino counties voted it down.

Latinos make up more than half of San Bernardino County’s population, although significantly fewer turn out to vote. More residents there voted on the affirmative action proposition than for president, rejecting it by a margin of 28 percentage points. In rural Imperial County, in the southeastern corner of the state, 85 percent of the population is Latino. The voters there who gave Joseph R. Biden Jr. a nearly 27-point margin of victory went against the affirmative action measure by 16 percentage points.

I can think of several explanations for the Hispanic revolt but here's one that will never occur to the Times - the Democrats devoted the summer to "Black" Lives Matter, not "Hispanic" Lives Matter. Supporting Affirmative Action when the favored beneficiary is a different group may have struck some Hispanics as an own-goal.

I shouldn't knock this reporting as insight-free:

The results suggest that Democrats may need to adjust their strategy...

"Adjust their strategy"?!? NO WAY! I'd expect them to just scream "Stop Hating, Hater" a bit louder, but OK, that might be too dumb even for them.

Are You Ready For Some Football And Masters Golf?!?

Big day!

Running Out Of Ways To Win

Trump's legal team is not putting a lot of points on the board.

We Hear From Karl Rove / And John Yoo, Too

Karl Rove says this election is all over except the acceptance. He's more Rep Est. than Trumper but he does know polls and politics.

If that link is firewalled, below are some fair use excerpts. And I always like it when factoids align with common sense:

But the nature of this enthusiasm differed by party. The Fox News Voter Analysis found 51% of Biden supporters voted more against Mr. Trump than for the Democratic candidate, while 79% of Mr. Trump’s backers voted more for him than against Mr. Biden.

That suggests Biden may not be drawing in a deep well of personal support as he vexes us with policy announcements. On the other hand, he will satisfy half his voters if he can wake up in the morning and NOT be Trump. OK, "waking up" may not be easy (and how would we tell?) but Joe can handle the next bit.

More:

Mr. Trump is now pursuing legal challenges in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada, and there will be an automatic recount in Georgia, given Mr. Biden’s 0.29-point lead there. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is correct that Mr. Trump is “100% within his rights” to go to court over concerns about fraud and transparency. But the president’s efforts are unlikely to move a single state from Mr. Biden’s column, and certainly they’re not enough to change the final outcome.

There are only three statewide contests in the past half-century in which recounts changed the outcome: the 1974 New Hampshire Senate race, the 2004 Washington governor’s contest, and the 2008 Minnesota Senate election. The candidates in these races were separated, respectively, by 355, 261 and 215 votes after Election Day.

These margins aren’t much like today’s. Mr. Biden led Wednesday in Wisconsin by 20,540 votes, Pennsylvania by 49,064, Michigan by 146,123, Arizona by 12,614, Nevada by 36,870 and Georgia by 14,108.

And

To win, Mr. Trump must prove systemic fraud, with illegal votes in the tens of thousands. There is no evidence of that so far. Unless some emerges quickly, the president’s chances in court will decline precipitously when states start certifying results, as Georgia will on Nov. 20, followed by Pennsylvania and Michigan on Nov. 23, Arizona on Nov. 30, and Wisconsin and Nevada on Dec. 1. By seating one candidate’s electors, these certifications will raise the legal bar to overturn state results and make it even more difficult for Mr. Trump to prevail before the Electoral College meets Dec. 14.

TV networks showed jubilant crowds in major cities celebrating Mr. Biden’s victory; they didn’t show the nearly equal number of people who mourned Mr. Trump’s defeat. U.S. politics remains polarized and venomous. Closing out this election will be a hard but necessary step toward restoring some unity and political equilibrium. Once his days in court are over, the president should do his part to unite the country by leading a peaceful transition and letting grievances go.

I don't think his departing idea that Trump should let grievances go is a serious suggestion reflecting his understanding of the man. I am not sure of his goal there.

UPDATE: Legal hard case John Yoo is bringing the cold water:

“He has the right to mount legal challenges, but we should be clear that these are Hail Mary passes we might think of in American football".

Doug Flutie! But several times over, since Trump needs to flip several states.

“None of these cases really look like they have a very high probability of winning,” Yoo said. “On the other hand, I think that Trump has every right to and demand that all the states be sure about the votes, so that we all have confidence in the election. But I’ll say, looking at past cases, these are very hard cases to prove and generally they don’t result in changes in the votes totals on the order by which President Trump lost to Joe Biden.” 

Well. Rep Est. is circling. As they should, BTW, and for the 2015 establishment survivors this election was Liberation Day. Or week.

Tom Brady, What?!?

What did I see last night? Brady and the Bucs were ghastly.

OH, YEAH: Very encouraging news on the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trials:

Pfizer, BioNTech say Covid vaccine is more than 90% effective—‘great day for science and humanity’

The Stalemate Rally continues!

Dow futures surge more than 1,700 points, putting Wall Street on track for a record-setting open

Yea. Timing is everything.

Is There A Winner?

Seems like its Contention 4, America 0, but who knows?

Biden been declared the winner, there are too many states that aren't that close, but Trump hasn't quit.

Maybe Trump will follow the Hillary 2016 playbook - after conceding the race she joined a no-hope recount effort just to assure her supporters that every stone had been turned and then thrown.

Team Trump should spend a few minutes in Philly. Cobble together a Steal Dossier, fire up the FBI for some ludicrous FISA warrants, and away we go! Flip the House in 2022, impeach Biden... never gets old. [Uhhh, it was old the first time..]

The Center Holds!

The Blue Wave Good-Bye wipes out - losing House seats, failing to flip the Senate and getting shut out at the statehouse level was not quite how the Dems drew it up.

From the WaPo:

“We need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again. . . . We lost good members because of that,” Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), who narrowly leads in her reelection bid, said heatedly. “If we are classifying Tuesday as a success . . . we will get f---ing torn apart in 2022.”

The WaPo links to a tape of the Spanberger call. She is actually impressive, and its fun to hear her ask her colleagues to keep this off the record and not leak it. Ooops. (Although she may have leaked it herself. Hall of mirrors here.)

Its nice to learn that Tlaib of the Odd Squad is as impossible with her colleagues as she is with Republicans. Everyone who disagrees with her is racist!

Liberals, meanwhile, fired back. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, argued that Democrats shouldn’t single out people and ideas that energize the party base. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a self-described democratic socialist, grew angry, accusing her colleagues of only being interested in appealing to White people in suburbia.

“To be real, it sounds like you are saying stop pushing for what Black folks want,” she said.

Assemble the circular firing squad.

As to What It Means - right now the Republicans have 48 Senate seats with four undecided. They lead in NC and Alaska and face two run-offs in Georgia.  They need to win three and might win all four.

However! If they manage to only creep to 50 seats, that means Kamala Harris breaks ties for Senate Majority LEaser and control of the Senate calendar and committee chairs. Not Good! But not a disaster! The parade of horribles people feared - ending the filibuster, adding DC and Puerto Rico to lock down four new Senate seats, packing the Supreme Court, and granting amnesty/citizenship to 10 million undocumented future Democrats - won't be happening after this chastening Election experience. Too many Dem Senators, starting with Manchin and the newbs from NC and Georgia, will be having a "there but for the grace of God" moment.

So, divided government. Not so bad. And given Biden's obvious infirmities, both parties can start jockeying as if its 2008 and both fields are wide open. (Yes, that should have been 2016 as well if not for the Hillary cram-down. Bygones.)