Sunday, August 14, 2016

Gaming the Blame

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Alleged billionaire and benevolent-despot-wannabe Donald John Trump is already trotting out his excuses in case the most beloved human in the universe actually loses the presidential election in November.  The tagline in the event of that unseemly outcome:  "Crooked Hillary cheated.  The election was rigged."   And that makes a certain amount of sense.  Somebody as thoroughly wonderful and deeply loved as Trump could not possibly lose, and a victory by Hillary must necessarily be due to fraud.

By blowing that smoke up America's skirt Trump does two things:  he maintains his image as the consummate winner even though he may actually lose, and he de-legitimizes Hillary's potential win.  She can spend the next four years fighting off the constant attacks by the country's endless supply of morons as they wail that she is not the real President because she did not win the office fairly - in much the same vein as Obama was not the real President because he was not born in America.  It will be just one more unnecessary and useless diversion along the road to good governance.

Trump unveiled his ready excuse for losing weeks ago.  Now he is refining it and shaping the whine to fit individual states.  This past week he applied it to Pennsylvania saying essentially that he could not lose Pennsylvania, so if he does lose it will be because the other team cheated.  Then he issued a call for concerned citizens to be at the polls actively looking for those sure-to-be-there cheaters. 

Getting to the polls in America is already like walking the gauntlet as prospective voters have to navigate through hardcore, last-minute campaigners littering the sidewalks and parking lots in order to get inside the buildings where they cast their ballots.  Now add to that mayhem the presence of the Trumpettes pushing in as they try to "observe" and intimidate voters.

It will be a zoo.

Some people may leave in disgust, without voting - much as their grandparents did in the 1950's when they had to deal with obstacles like poll taxes, literacy tests, and white supremacist poll workers.  The concern then, as now, was not with voter fraud - it was with keeping certain people from voting.

Trump continues to be a bully.

1 comment:

Xobekim said...

Trump's claim of system rigging as a predicate for having poll watchers to challenge Democrats may violate a consent decree the RNC has consented to. See, http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2013/0114/At-Supreme-Court-no-reprieve-for-GOP-in-voting-rights-consent-decree.
At issue is voter caging of Black and Latino voters by Republicans. Voter caging uses
so-called undeliverable mail as the sole reason for challenging a voter. The GOP has been in the voter suppression business for a long time.