The Big Lie and the Big Liars Telling It

 

Sen. Rand Paul linked to an interesting thing over at The American Conservative which is sort of an amazing read on how programs to educate voters about how to cast a vote in an election where there were some changes to the usual process due to COVID-19 accommodations and where efforts were made to recruit younger election workers for the same reason, are viewed in a sinister light. Paul, for some reason, chooses to characterize the following as how to steal an election: 

“Seeding an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results.”

The so-called "absentee ballots" are just mail-in ballots that some states just use as a matter-of-course. So that isn't sinister. GOTV is not out of the ordinary--people should be encouraged to participate in their civic duties and take notice of their civil rights! The ballots are being completed in a legally valid way. And then they get sent in and counted, and somehow, in Rand Paul's mind, this is a steal? 

But I know why-- "an area heavy with potential Democratic votes". The process is legitimate, but Rand Paul feels like the voters are not. Wow, Rand Paul thinks that, really? How not-shocked can I be?

But this thing about some voters having more rights than others is just GOP kay-fabe right now, and folks like the Schmeckle have to read statements of faith about it on Steve Bannon's podcast, for some reason. Bannon himself makes bizarre statements about "someone standing up to Marc Elias" , which is very WTF--of course there is, it's called the opposing attorneys. They just don't win if the law isn't on their side? Elias isn't winning because he has some weird advantage--he's just really good at reading the constitution and voter suppression is not good small-d democracy or very Constitutional. 

It's not new. But let's be clear--the supposedly sinister steal Rand Paul is talking about has its opposite and more contentious twin on the Republican side. The Liberty Center for God and Country went out of their way to promote the idea that the election was being stolen. They weren't alone. Maybe if instead of figuring out ways to promote the Big Lie ahead of the election, Trumpers tried to GOTV themselves, but oh, maybe they knew the polling would never make that work! Oops! Trump lost fair and square because he sucked. He was impeached and his COVID-19 response was sad. The end. It was simple. He blew it on his own merits. It really didn't require the Democrats acting in any concerted way, and thank goodness, because we barely do. 

And let's never forget, Trump spread the Big Lie early and often, before 2020. Where he went with it after losing the election shouldn't surprise a single soul, and the veracity of his claims should be as doubted as a very doubtable thing. Of course, it's a self-serving lie!  In the real world, we know, the claims the dead vote are lies. We know Trump's alternate electoral slates would have been forgeries. 

He lost. He lost fair and square. The mail-in advantage was only that legitimate voters for once weren't circumscribed by the scarcity of voting places and long lines created by state legislators trying to target voters based on their zip code, ethnicity, and social class. But the voters were still legitimate. 

Any politician claiming the Big Lie this hard, needs to go. I don't care where, they just don't need to be in office. That's who Rand Paul is. He needs to go.