The Weakness of Trump's Election Lawsuits

Donald Trump has been involved in over 4,000 lawsuits in his life, many of them frivolous, as when he sued a writer for defamation for writing that he, Donald, was not as rich as he claimed he was. But the flurry of lawsuits over the recent election have to be among the most frivolous of all.

The decision Friday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Cicuit in a Pennsylvania case illustrates just how weak Trump's position is. The decision, written by a Trump-appointed judge, threw out the Trump campaign's appeal as being totally without merit.

The opinion stressed that PA state law governs how PA elections are to be held, and that law was followed in the recent electoin. The law requires that election law be interpreted liberally to apply the public policy of having every vote count; i.e., technical violations are supposed to be overlooked. The court made clear that it is not the province of a federal court to rewrite state law.

The Trump campaign complained about county-to-county variations in how mail-in ballots were handled, in that some counties allowed voters to correct technical problems, like a signature being in the wrong place. The court held that this presented no constitutional problems.

The Trump campaign complained about restrictions placed on poll-watchers at some polling places. The court held that there is no evidence that Republican poll-watchers were treated any differently than Democratic ones; therefore, there is no Equal Protection case to be found here.

It should be noted that a whole series of attorneys for Trump dropped out of the case, ending up with the clownish Rudy Guliani taking over, even though it had been twenty years since he'd seen the inside of a courtroom. Guliani made a complete fool of himself by repeatedly alleging fraud in press conferences, while inside the courtroom he said forthrightly, "This is not a fraud case". The fact is, this was the freest and fairest election in our history, with cameras everywhere overseeing the proceedings.

Yesterday Trump said that he wanted the Supreme Court to take the case, saying it was "the best case ever". I seriously doubt the Supreme Court will touch this case, as it really presents no significant issues.

The Crown

 Season four of the great Netflix series 'The Crown" has just come out.  I am again struck by the loving care with which the secondary characters are portrayed.  The Duke of Edinburgh (the queen's husband), Princess Anne (the rambunctious tomboy), Prince Charles (who we get to actually sympathize with), and, most of all, Princess Margaret.

I realized that one of my favorite episodes was the episode in season 3 in which Margaret and her husband visit the U.S.  The relations between the two countries were quite strained at the time, and Britain needed U.S. help to stabilize its currency.  After initial efforts to repair the relationship fell through (Johnson was not enthused about visiting Balmoral Castle, an honor never extended to JFK), the queen called Margaret, who was then in San Francisco, and asked her to visit the White House to try to repair relations.  Margaret said no way, that her husband was opening an art exhibition in New York on that day, and she had to be there for him.  Eventually the queen had to tell her straight out that this was not a request, it was a "command".

Well, Margaret and her husband did visit the White House, and they were feted at a black tie dinner.  Accounts at the time confirm much of what is depicted in "The Crown's" telling of it; the president and the princess did dance, and the president did give the advice to Lord Snowdon (the husband) about how to keep a wife happy:  "First, let her think he's having her way.  Second, let her have it."  There is no mention of the dirty limerick contest, but it is thought that that is not something that reporters at the time would have publicized.  

The depiction in "The Crown" shows Margaret making a snide comment during dinner about the late President Kennedy.  The whole room grew silent with horror, and then Johnson broke the silence with a comment and things moved on.  The Princess then made a private comment to Johnson about how stifling it was to be the number two, always subservient to a higher-up.  This definitely boke the ice and the two of them bonded from there on out.

In thinking about what it would be like to be living your life under a microscope, as the royal family does, I keep going back to a comment Gloria Steinem made when I heard her speak in the early 70s.  She said, "A pedestal is just as confining as any other small space."  That's always stuck with me.

Missed Tactics

 An instructive game I played recently showing tactics I missed, as uncovered by an engine analysis.

1 d4 d5 2 e4 de 3 Nc3 Nf6 4 f3 e3  This move is payed only 4% of the time.  My response has not been seen at all, but I like the idea of securing e5 or g5 for a knight.

5 Bxe3 e6 6 f4 Bb4 7 Nf3 Nbd7 8 Bd3 BxN 9 bc Nd5 10 Bd2 f5?  This move, weakening the P/e6, boosts my advantage by a full point, to 1.62.  The bot likes 9 0-0.

11 0-0 0-0 12 Qe2 Qf6 13 Ng5 N7b6 14 Rae1 Re8?  Black fails to appreciate the weakness of having an unguarded Rook on e8.  Unfortunately, by my response I also fail to appreciate this weakness.  I should have played 13 Nxh7.

15 c4? h6? 16 cd hg 17 fg Qxd4+ 18 Be3 Qxd5? 19 g6?  I miss 19 Qh5, dropping my advantage from 8 points own to less than 5.

19...Kf8 20 Bg5 Nd7 21 Qh5 (missing 21 Rxf5+, winning) Nf6 22 Qh8+? (BxN) Ng8 23 Rf3? (Bxf5) Bd7 24 Rfe3 e5 25 Qh4? (Be4!) Bc6? (e4) 26 Rg3? (Be4!) e4 27 Bf1 Re6 28 Bf4  After numerous blunders and second-best moves, I am now at a slight disadvantage according to the bot!

28...Rd8 (Be8) 29 Bxc7 (Bc4!) Rd7 30 Bf4 Bb5 31 BxB QxB 32 Rb3 Qd5 33 Qf2 Rc7?? 34 c4?? Rxc4 35 Qd2 Qc6 36 Qd8+ 1-0  And here he runs out of time, while I have less than a second left!

The Coming Election

 Only two more days now till the country reverses course and starts the healing process from the four-year disaster it embarked on in 2016.  

In the presidential race, Hillary won 232 electoral votes last time, so Biden needs to add 38 to reach the magic number of 270.  His leads in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are all outside the margins of error, and these states will give him 46 votes, more than needed.  The closest of the three is Pennsylvania, where Biden leads by only six; hence, both candidates are concentrating mainly on this state in these final days of the campaign.

In addition to the three rust belt states just mentioned, Biden also has slim leads in five other states--Arizona, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida, totaling 77 electoral votes.  Ohio is currently tied.

CNN's John King presents a plausible scenario that has the final result tied 259-259 without PA, and whoever wins PA then becomes the winner.  Hence the importance of PA, where legal teams on both sides are ready to pursue challenges in that state.

In the Senate races, eight races are close, with the rest splitting 49-43 for the Democrats.  I have to believe Susan Collins is toast in the Maine race.  Her masquerade as a moderate in a blue state has worked for her for 24 years, but it has fallen apart for her in 2020.  She has alienated liberals by her votes for Kavanaugh and on other matters on which she has either toed the Trump line (as with impeachment) or remained silent.  And of course her moderate approach on other issues has alienated conservatives.  Adding in this race gives the Dems 50 seats.

I also think David Perdue in Georgia is toast.  Jon Ossoff simply destroyed him in their last debate, so badly that Perdue canceled their last debate which was scheduled for today.  Ossoff called him a crook to his face for insider trading, and criticized him for doctoring a photo to make Ossoff look more Jewish, making fun of Kamal Harris's first name, minimizing the virus (even as he was making stock transactions based on his inside info that it was bad), and voting four times to do away with protection for pre-existing conditions.  Ossoff stayed on message and was quite focused, while Perdue flailed away, repeatedly using the phrase "radical socialist agenda" (I counted five times in the part of the debate I watched).  This puts the Dems to 51.

Even if the GOP wins all of the remaining six close races, the Dems will control the Senate, with a total of somewhere between 51 and 57 seats.

The Georgia Senate Races

Quite an interesting debate the other night between the incumbent Senator, David Perdue, and his Democratic challenger, Jon Ossoff.  Ossoff so eviscerated Perdue that Perdue refused to go ahead with the last debate scheduled for tomorrow, basically waving the white flag of surrender.

Ossoff did a great job of staying on message, pointing out repeatedly that Perdue has voted four times to take away protection for pre-existing conditions, and had said CoVid-19 was no worse than the flu.  Perdue had no answer for Ossoff, except to repeatedly use the phrase "radical socialist agenda".  Perdue is the guy who made fun of Kamala Harris's first name recently.  Surely a man so shallow and ignorant has no place in the United States Senate!

But what stung the most for Perdue is when Ossoff called him a "crook", for his insider trading.  Perdue also was skewered for altering the face of Ossoff in an ad, to make it look like Ossoff's nose was bigger than it is.

In the other Georgia Senate race, Republican candidate Kelly Loeffler also made a fool of herself recently, when she claimed she was not familiar with Trump's infamous Access Holly wood tape.  Loeffler is also guilty of insider trading.

What should we do about the Supreme Court?

 A thoughtful article in the latest issue of The New Republic discusses what the Democrats should do after the election (assuming of course that they win the presidency and the Senate).  

The article argues against "court-packing" by adding justices, as this will only serve to make the Court even more partisan than it already is.  Rather, Congress should  limit the jurisdiction of the federal court system.  One way to do this would be to require a "super-majority" for invalidating a federal law.

How the Court handles the ongoing challenges to state election laws will determine the attitude the Congress will take next year.  Will the Court do the right thing and let validly-enacted state election laws be enforced?  Or will the Court take an "activist" approach and invalidate state laws?  And, most scarily, will the Court uphold state laws enacted by Republicans, and strike down state laws enacted by Democrats?

Time will tell.

The State of the Race

 The second and final debate took place last night.  Biden supporters are breathing a sigh of relief, as the notoriously gaffe-prone Biden held his own, and in fact three overnight surveys had him as the winner.  CNN had eleven undecided North Carolina supporters give feedback afterwards.  They had Biden winning 9-0, and all seven that made up their minds based on the debate were for Biden.

Trump actually restrained himself and did not interrupt like he did during the first debate.  However, the CNN fact-checker had him spouting even more lies than in the first debate.  He insisted we were "rounding the corner" on the virus, when in fact the virus is on the rise in most states.  He falsely claimed Biden would take 180 million people off their health insurance, when he has always been for a public option, and this was actually a bone of contention during the primary season.

There is still angst that the polls might be wrong, as they were thought to be in 2016.  However, I believe Biden will win, for three reasons.  First, the pollsters have adjusted for the demographic weighting errors which skewed the results four years ago.  Second, Clinton arguably lost because of the infamous Comey letter, saying the FBI investigation of her emails had been re-opened, and there is no such "October surprise" on the horizon here.  Third, Clinton supporters were notoriously lacking in enthusiasm, and many stayed home.  This time around, Biden supporters are quite enthusiastic, and the "enthusiasm gap" which we saw in 2016 has disappeared.