Known Unknowns

Cannon here: Despite the polls -- and despite the obvious fact that the majority of American voters are pro-Biden -- I remain a pessimist about this election. Either Trump will win this thing through some form of election rigging or he will signal the outbreak of Civil War 2. I doubt that Trump wants to continue as president, but I also doubt that he can weather the legal storms that await him. So win he must, through foul means or fouler.

 

This Slate piece on the Supreme Court goes a long ways toward explaining my bleak attitude. 

One week out from the 2020 election, four Supreme Court justices have launched a scorched-earth mission against voting rights. They teed up a Bush v. Gore reprise that could hand Donald Trump an unearned victory. These justices are in open revolt against voting rights, abandoning the pretense of “voter fraud” and embracing state legislatures’ right to disenfranchise their constituents. 

These Supreme Court nominees were tapped in youth by the Federalist Society, which I consider a front for (or arm of) the pro-fascist wing of the Catholic Church. Most Catholics, including most Catholic clerics, are anti-fascist -- but a powerful minority within the church has never accepted the Enlightenment, and fascism is really just another term for anti-Enlightenment.

 

The Federalist Society's seemingly-limitless finances remain mysterious. Leonard Leo, the leader of the Society -- and the man who chose Trump's three Supreme Court picks -- belongs to both Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta, both of which may be considered part of the post-war international fascist movement. I've written about this network in previous posts: See here and here.

And now, I hand you over to D-Jay. He's almost as cynical as I am.

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Known Unknowns

Remember Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush’s notorious Secretary of Defense?  While helping to ramp up the catastrophic Iraq War, he gave us one of the all-time best examples of bureaucratic gobbledygook ever uttered, “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.”

Awkwardly phrased as this construction might be, it does apply just as well to our situation here in 2020, a few short days before November 3rd.

There are a lot of “known knowns” we can point to.  Donald Trump really could shoot someone on 5th Avenue without losing any support from his die-hard fans, for example.  No matter how lopsided a victory Biden might achieve, Trump will never admit he lost.  A lot more people will die from Covid-19 because of his maskless – and shameless – rallies.

These things are known.  Well.  No need to discuss them further here.

Lurking in the shadows at the other end of the scale are the “unknown unknowns.”  Lord knows that with Donald Trump involved, there are bound to be a lot of them out there.  Since we can’t even imagine what they might be yet – by very definition – however, no point in talking too much about them, either.

Which brings us to the “known unknowns.”  There are any number of things that could have a drastic impact on the eventual outcome of the election.  Issues we know are out there, but we don’t yet know how they will play out. 

Let’s take a quick look at a few of those.

 

1.  Are there still a large number of “silent Trump voters” out there?  People who are going to vote for the orange madman, but are reluctant to admit it in polite company.  In 2016, a huge number of these folks surfaced and played a large role in confounding the pollsters.  Trump himself is said to be convinced that a similar thing will happen in 2020, but is he right?  I wonder.

2.  Could there be, on the other hand, a significant group of “silent anti-Trump voters” this time?  In case you hadn’t noticed, Trump supporters haven’t exactly been shrinking violets lately. They haven’t been reluctant to try and bully or intimidate anyone who disagrees with them.  If you were a Trump hater living in a Trump territory rural town, married to a brainwashed member of the cult, or a member of a conservative white evangelical church all in with the new messiah, would you want to speak out too loudly about it?  Lots of people wouldn’t…but what will they do in the privacy of the voting booth?  Might we actually see a higher than expected number of votes for Biden in some rural communities?

3.  Aside from the mail-in ballot shenanigans, have the Democrats largely – by accident or design – found a way to neutralize a lot of the normal Republican voter suppression tactics?  With so many people voting early, we haven’t heard much at all about problems with photo IDs, cancelled registrations, provisional ballots, and the like.  Is this a real thing…and will it have any impact on the election?

4.  We can be pretty sure that Trump will stop at nothing to try and keep himself in power, in spite of the actual results…but just how far are the people around him really willing to go?  Especially if it is quite obvious on the evening of November 3rd that a LOT more people voted for Biden, will a critical mass of Republicans really join Trump in tearing the country apart?  In particular, where will key members of the military and security services stand?

5.  How much hanky-panky will go on related to counting and tabulating of the votes?  Will all the attention being paid to possible foreign interference actually make it more difficult for domestic Republican operatives to pull off a significant “red shift?”  Alternately, will the Russians (or Iranian, or whoever) find a way into some of the systems and either flip a number of votes Trump’s way, or just cause chaos and sow doubt in the basic fairness of the vote?

6.  Will Trump overplay his hand?  Subtlety isn’t exactly his thing, so with his back against the wall -- and likely looking at major jail time and loss of most or all of his assets if he loses -- will he try something so outrageous that even his sycophants on Capitol Hill or in the courts won’t be able to go along?

7.  If the Republicans push it too far, will people respond with massive action in the streets?  How about a French style general strike?  To my mind, this might be the best way by far to fight back against any executive, judicial or other coup d’etat.  How well would Republicans really be able to deal with a complete stoppage of almost everything?

8.  Will people really start shooting at each other?