Democrats are falling for the Kansas City Shuffle.
No, neither Missouri nor Kansas are somehow in play in the 2020 Presidential Election. The Kansas City Shuffle is a con game that requires its marks to be aware that they are being conned but being wrong about how they are being conned. The fake con is actually a misdirection trap for the real con.
Here’s the set up: Excluding five states, the Electoral College count is pretty even at 233 for Democrats and 232 for Republicans. The five states, with their Elector counts and the popular vote differences as of 11/11 – ALL favoring Democrats – are:
We can ignore the facts that the deltas all show big leads by Biden and that all of the states except Georgia have been called for Biden. Facts, you see, are irrelevant to the con.
The Republican misdirection comes from four angles:
Misdirection #1: Fraud Allegations
Republicans – at least the ones with multi-digit IQs – know that they have zero proof of any significant fraudulent activity that could swing even one of the five states. If there was such evidence, we’d be hearing it repeated 24×7 on Fox News. Besides, if Democrats were brilliant enough to pull off widespread election fraud – changing the Presidential election results in five different states by over a quarter of a million votes – why the hell didn’t they swing the House, Senate, and State Legislative elections while they were at it? Were Democrats unbelievably clever enough to conduct the fraud but too damn stupid to realize that there were other races on the same ballots?
The answer is that Republicans aren’t actually trying to prove any fraud whatsoever. The substance of the allegations is irrelevant; only the volume of the allegations is important. They serve to keep the GOP base enraged that Democrats are trying to steal what they are being told is rightfully theirs. On the other hand, the involvement of the Justice Department to investigate these spurious allegations – blithely politicizing a department that is supposed to be apolitical and causing the resignation of career officials in protest – isn’t actually meant to identify any fraud. It serves only to further enrage Democrats and keep them occupied.
Misdirection #2: Process Lawsuits
Republicans are also in court with non-fraud lawsuits. The most public of these is in Pennsylvania where Republicans have challenged the arrival extension of mailed ballots that were postmarked by election day. This has gone through both the state and U.S. Supreme Courts and isn’t yet fully resolved. The fact that these ballots have been segregated and aren’t counted in the published totals doesn’t matter to Republicans.
The GOP is batting zero thus far with process lawsuits, but again, it doesn’t matter. They are only looking to generate noise, command news cycles, and keep both camps angry.
Misdirection #3: Recounts
Republicans will demand every recount they can. In some cases we’ll have recounts of the recounts. Under pressure from Republicans, Georgia is even conducting a very time-consuming manual recount that is much more prone to error than automated counts. No one, however, actually expects any results to change.
In the past 20 years, the average shift in votes from all statewide recounts nationwide is 430 votes. The largest shift was less than 2,600 votes. To change the results in the closest state (Arizona), Trump would require a shift of about 5X the largest recorded in two decades. To change the results in the state with the most Electors (Pennsylvania), the shift would need to be over 18X. Michigan would require a 56X shift.
No, the purpose of the recounts is not to win the recounts. They serve only to kill time and to enable bogus claims that even small count differences provide “evidence” supporting the narrative that all of the vote counts are questionable.
Misdirection #4: Transition Drama
Trump and Company are going out of their way to flip off Biden and the Democrats. By actively politicizing the Departments of Justice, Defense, and State, by withholding transition funding from Biden, by refusing to even provide briefings to Biden and his team, by not even putting a contingency plan in place for an Executive Branch hand-off, Republicans are getting a ton of media attention, feeding their base, pissing off Democrats, and issuing warnings to any Republicans that may feel wary about participating in the con. Governing isn’t on the table. It never was. The only thing that’s surprising is that this crap still surprises us.
All of the above misdirection attempts may themselves seem important. They are not. While trying to turn the U.S. military into a political tool is obviously concerning, I trust our senior military officers to defend the Constitution, not Trump. No, the misdirection attempts merely support the fake con. They are intended only to take everyone’s eyes off of what Constitutionally happens next.
Legislatures in each state need to certify their Presidential elections and choose which slate of Electors will represent their state in the Electoral College. Each state has their own date by which they are required to certify a Presidential election but none can be later than the federally-mandated “Safe Harbor” deadline of December 8. The Electoral College votes on December 14.
While the selection of Electors has always mirrored a state’s popular vote, states are not Constitutionally bound to do so. Note at this point that both legislative chambers in all of the above five states are controlled by Republicans. Current legal theory suggests that a state legislature would have had to claim the right to select Electors themselves prior to a popular election that was specifically conducted to select them. However, a final ruling on that would be made by the U.S. Supreme Court – which was recently stacked by Republicans. While the Court might be at least a bit hesitant to produce such a blatantly partisan ruling, they could claim that the above chaos dictates that each state should be allowed to set their own rules as they see fit, and Trump would be re-elected.
Alternatively, if the chaos in a given state isn’t sufficient for their legislature to avoid the political fallout of completely reversing the will of their voters, they could simply fail to certify the election and thus choose no Electors at all. If enough states fail to identify Electors, it is possible that neither Biden nor Trump would get the necessary 270 Electoral votes to win. In that case, the election would be thrown to the U.S. House – with each state getting one vote. Since Republicans have a majority in a majority of the state delegations in the House, Trump would be re-elected.
The bottom line is that the Republican Party holds the necessary cards to simply disregard the will of the voters. They just need everyone to be looking elsewhere while they do it.
The Republican con is to delay, obscure, enrage, and delay some more until the state legislatures need to certify their Electors. Everything they are now doing is purely to provide cover for the Republican-controlled legislatures to claim that, since the popular vote count isn’t yet resolved in their state, they are “forced” to act themselves and will expect the U.S. Supreme Court to back them.
Republicans only need the con to succeed in enough states to get them to 270 or to make sure that no one gets to 270. That implies legislative action – or inaction – in at least three of the five states. If they can do it, Trump gets a second term.
So what can be done to derail the Shuffle? It may not be sufficient, but Democrats at least need to recognize the fake con and focus exclusively on the real one.
The Democratic response should not be to fight fraud allegations in the media, delay lawsuits with legal tactics, oppose recounts, or demand transition assistance. In fact, the Democratic response should be exactly the opposite. They should loudly proclaim: “Okay. Bring it. Bring it now!”
- You have serious allegations of fraud? File as many lawsuits as you want. Just file them now and we’ll concurrently file to expedite the cases in court. If there really is widespread fraud that can be proven, we want to know about it just as much as you do. We’re not fully convinced we didn’t win by even bigger margins. In fact, we’ll go to court ourselves in each of the five states – and to the U.S. Supreme Court – to force the quick filing of all fraud lawsuits so that there will be sufficient time to resolve every last one of them well before the Safe Harbor deadline.
- You want to do a manual recount in Georgia? Cool. Let’s concurrently do an automated recount as well so that we’ll have three totals. We want the most accurate count as well. We’ll also go to court here to require that all state recounts be highly transparent and completed by the Safe Harbor deadline. That’s already the law – we’re just making sure. In fact, if there’s a cost issue, we’ll pay for the recounts.
- You want to argue about ballot arrival extensions? Fine. In fact, let’s fast-track all process issues directly to the Supreme Court right now. We want every issue quickly resolved.
- You don’t want to provide any transition assistance? Okay. It’s not a law. A smooth transition is certainly in the best interest of the country, but yeah, we know you don’t give a shit. We’ll do just fine without your help. We know you intend to burn the place down if you’re forced out. Do what you’re going to do. We’ll rebuild.
In no case should there be any Democratic obstruction of any of the Republican delaying tactics. Democrats won and have nothing to hide. By the time each state legislature needs to certify the election results, Democrats will have done everything in their power to finalize the popular vote totals in each of the five states while shining a spotlight on everything.
Unfortunately, Democrats can’t take away the Republican cards. They can only make Republicans pay to play them and hope that’s enough.
One of my first posts in this iteration of my blog was an open letter to Trump. I stated my opposition to both his agenda and his approach, but I also explicitly noted that, despite a closer election in 2016, I was “not looking for ways to call into question the legitimacy of your presidency. That’s the way our democracy works.”
I may be seriously naïve, but I want to believe that enough Republicans still understand the meaning of democracy as well. Republican “leadership” appears to be gleefully complicit in the execution of the con since its success would be best for them. All of them were apoplectic over Hillary Clinton having the audacity to wait until the day after the 2016 election to concede; all of them will remain fully supportive of Trump’s refusal to do so for as long as he wants.
Perhaps, however, enough of the rank-and-file still believe that accepting the results of free elections is a cornerstone of the American experiment.
We’ll see.