By Chauncey Devega
The Guardian (6/15/20)
As Election Day 2020 approaches, it would appear that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his party have much to celebrate.
Biden leads Donald Trump by an average of eight percentage points in national polling, with some surveys showing Biden ahead of Trump by as many as 14 percentage points.
Biden also enjoys huge leads among the Democratic Party’s key constituents, including black voters, Latinos and other nonwhites, college-educated white women and younger voters. Polls also show Joe Biden making gains among older white voters, a group that consistently supports Republicans and has been especially loyal to Trump. Biden also leads Trump in key battleground states such as Michigan and Wisconsin.
On closer inspection, however, matters are more complicated.
Election Day is still more than four months away, almost an eternity in electoral politics. Previous Democratic nominees such as Hillary Clinton and Michael Dukakis are object lessons in the cruel and mercurial ways of the political fates: Both appeared to hold big leads over their Republican opponents at this approximate point in the cycle, only to lose on Election Day.
There is also a not-insubstantial gap between what prospective voters tell pollsters and how they will actually decide to vote — if they vote at all.
Greg Palast is an investigative journalist whose work has been featured by the BBC, the Guardian, the Nation, Rolling Stone and here on Salon. He has become one of the nation’s foremost experts on vote suppression, vote theft and vote fraud. He is the author of the bestselling books “Billionaires & Ballot Bandits” and “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.” His new book is “How Trump Stole 2020: The Hunt for America’s Vanished Voters.”
In our most recent conversation, Palast warns that Joe Biden’s chances against Donald Trump are worse than the polls suggest because millions of Democrats will have their votes thrown out on Election Day. Moreover, many of those voters will have no idea that their votes were purged and therefore not counted.
Palast explains how the Republican Party has refined its strategy of voter suppression, voter intimidation and vote theft in elections across the country. Palast also highlights how the planned chaos during the recent Georgia Democratic primaries is a preview of how the Republican Party intends to steal the 2020 presidential election for Donald Trump.
Using the 12th Amendment
Finally, Palast issues an ominous warning: Trump and the Republicans, he believes, are plotting to use the 12th Amendment to the Constitution to declare the popular vote and Electoral College results invalid, so that the 2020 presidential election will be decided in the House of Representatives — which, believe it or not, may well vote in Trump’s favor.
You can also listen to my conversation with Greg Palast on my podcast “The Truth Report” or through the player embedded below. …
Read The Rest And 23-Minute Audio
- Defeat Repeat 2020: How Lazy Democrats Are Working Hard To Re-Elect Trump — Ralph Nader Radio Hour (6/13/20) Ralph welcomes “the world’s greatest political adman,” Bill Hillsman, to discuss what Joe Biden and the Democrats need to do to beat Trump. And Susan Clark, author of “All Those In Favor: Rediscovering the Secrets of Town Meeting and Community” joins us to talk about the virtues of direct democracy. … Read The Rest, Related Articles And 1-Hour, 16-Minute Audio
(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2017. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )