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Given the significant interest around the 2020 stolen election claims (definitely my favorite hobby horse topic), and the serious accusations that I have been weakmanning the overall category of election fraud claims, I would like to extend an open invitation to anyone interested in exposing the errors of my ways to a real-time discussion for a Bailey episode.
Here are the conditions I would suggest:
Are any of the above unreasonable or unfair? Do you have any suggested additions/changes?
I've been trying to set a conversation like this for years but haven't found any takers. @Dean, @jfk, @motteposting are the ones I know are sufficiently motivated and informed about the topic, and whom I'd most look forward to dissecting this topic with. Feel free to nominate anyone else you think would be good.
I'm curious as to what makes you so passionate about this issue. I have to admit it's just not that interesting to me. It just feels like Daily Show level dunking on the proles.
The equivalent might be multiple effort posts trying to argue against flat earthers, Nation of Islam, Bush did 9/11, or astrology.
I just don't feel a strong need to make arguments for or against low status belief systems.
I’ll back @ymeskhout here and say that there’s a pretty significant amount of motte-and-baileying going on, where people retreat to ‘obviously the Deep State didn’t literally hack voting machines and the people who claim to have evidence of large-scale ballot stuffing are grifters, but there was still a widespread effort across the country to swing it for Biden using unsavoury methods’. And then the minute pressure is relaxed, people go back to ‘the deep state literally stole the election’.
So I understand why he’s being a hardass and saying, ‘can any of you provide any evidence at all that the election was literally, actually stolen’. And he gets crickets, or attempts at sanewashing.
I do actually believe that the combination of censorship, changed voting rules, and keeping Biden in a basement so his senility wouldn’t show add up to ‘an election that should shame a first-world country’. But the American Right has an amazing ability to take valid, compelling critiques and convert them into obviously wrong factual claims.
When it comes to "hacked voting machines", I remember that being the explanation for how Trump beat Hillary coming from the liberal/left side. My go-to example of that is the otherwise reasonable and sensible Jane on the old SSC who provided accounts of how the Russians had hacked the machines and stolen votes and meddled in all kinds of elections to give Trump the victory.
What's that saying again, 'what goes around, comes around'? If you've been going on for years about how obviously voting machines are insecure because the operators/owners of the software are all Republican donors, then you can't expect to swing round now and go "no, this election was 100% secure" when it's the other side making the complaint.
Obligatory disclaimer: I don't think there was voting machine hacking by Russians or Republicans or Venezuelans or Democrats (even though the attempt to introduce electronic voting in my country in 2002 faltered and ended up a total fiasco), but what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If, when your candidate lost, you had 'reputable' sources going on about 'this is how the machines could have been hacked', you don't get to call it conspiracy theory when the other side do it when their candidate lost.
I'll say three things about this:
I have professional familiarity with voting machine security, enough to know that most people would be horrified to realize how insecure they are.
If I were Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, I would fire my intelligence chiefs if they weren't trying to influence American elections to our advantage.
It stands to reason, therefore, that any sufficiently motivated and financed group could be (and has probably at least considered) trying to hack elections.
That doesn't mean it's actually happening, of course, but the concerns are not crazy moonbat conspiracy theories.
I think we'd have to be concerned with the likely motives of such actors.
I think Russia and China etc don't have much reason to care whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge - the outcomes on things they actually care about are probably within a standard deviation of outcomes regardless of which party is in charge of what. What they are likely to care about more is the overall levels of tribal division and conflict.
Low internal conflict means that anything we do or intervene in overseas is likely to be broadly supported, consistent over the long term, decently well-planned and robust against setbacks. High internal conflict means that anything either party does will be opposed by the other for tribalistic reasons if nothing else. Interventions will tend to be the opposite - inconsistent, weak, poorly-supported, poorly-planned, likely to be canceled at minor setbacks.
As such, they probably don't really care about actually hacking voting machines, except in as much as half-assed and ineffective attempts to do so reduce everyone's confidence that whoever gets elected won legitimately. They are probably much more interested in backing extreme activist groups on both sides to amp up the overall level of division. Which IIRC is pretty much all they've been credibly accused of doing.
??? That is clearly not true. Trump intends to collapse NATO and let Russia do as they wish to their neighbors. Biden doesn't.
Well, he said that at one point, but he also threatened to bomb Moscow if they attacked Ukraine. Whatever any of us might believe, it's pretty clear that Putin started planning his invasion of Ukraine right around when Biden was sworn in. Not exactly a sign that they thought Biden and the Democrats would be much more effectively tough on him. Seems more like American chaos is what they really want.
I mean you can twist this the other way too.
Perhaps Putin felt he needed to take decisive action because of the potential for Biden administration policy to make the geopolitical situation worse for Russia.
It’s possible Trump was deterring Russian aggression against Ukraine by being a bit of a wildcard and also Putin not wanting to put him in a hard place, vs. having him as about the friendliest US president he could hope for. Once Trump was out the calculus changed. Trump was also extremely unpopular with basically all of our allies, in and out of NATO, and that division was generally good for Russia.
But also they do love American chaos.
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Iran also really hates Trump and the GOP has more hardliners on Iran than the Dems.
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