Republicans Ramp Up Election Denial in California Just Before Suspiciously Related SCOTUS Decision Drops<\/p>\n
Two things are happening at the same time: 1) President Donald Trump and his stooges are becoming increasingly shrill about the \u201celection fraud\u201d that they insist explains a very liberal city advancing two Democrats to the general election and 2) the Supreme Court is going to release a decision that\u2019ll likely curtail voting by mail nationwide any day now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Coincidence?\u00a0<\/p>\n
While election denial is depressingly old hat for Republicans by this point, the fixation with the Los Angeles mayoral race is odd. Yes, Republicans ran an attention-attracting candidate in reality television star Spencer Pratt, and yes, California takes forever to count its ballots. Conservative media covered Pratt in the runup to the jungle primary as if he stood a real chance of defeating the Democratic candidates. But Los Angeles County has three times more registered Democrats than Republicans \u2014 it\u2019s a poster child for a big, lib city. It\u2019s like feigning disbelief about Curtis Sliwa losing to Zohran Mamdani \u2014 if Sliwa was a proud Trump sycophant.<\/p>\n
Republicans are training their denialism on a race their party hasn\u2019t won for over 30 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This very plausibly could boil down to the fact that some gullible but influential people online thought Pratt could win, and cynical Republican electeds are weaponizing their na\u00efvete to further the election denying agenda, softening the ground for a future attempt to steal a more important race. California could be crucial for determining control of the House.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But it also sets them up very nicely to be \u201cvindicated\u201d by the Supreme Court in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re awaiting the Court\u2019s ruling in Watson v. RNC, an odd bedfellows case<\/a> where national Republicans are trying to outlaw Mississippi\u2019s (and 30 other states\u2019) grace periods, during which ballots mailed by Election Day but received afterwards can still be counted.\u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s Justice Brett Kavanaugh at the March oral arguments picking quotes from a 2020 article by New York University Professor Richard Pildes<\/a>: \u201cIf the apparent winner the morning after the election ends up losing due to late-arriving ballots, charges of a rigged election could explode.\u201d \u201c\u2026The longer after Election Day any significant changes in vote totals take place, the greater the risk that the losing side will cry that the election has been stolen.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Funnily enough, he quoted the same lines in his 2020 concurrence<\/a> with the Court\u2019s ruling not to reinstate a court-ordered extension of the deadline for receiving mailed ballots in Wisconsin at the height of the pandemic.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you have an election and the election is going to turn on late arriving ballots in a way that means what everybody kind of thought was the result on Election Day ends up being the opposite a week later, 21 days later, the losers are not going to accept that result,\u201d Paul Clement, attorney for the RNC, said during the Watson oral arguments. \u201cFull stop. They won\u2019t. And that is bad for our system.\u201d<\/p>\n Compare that to Trump\u2019s Truth Social: \u201cNot possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had. 3rd World Nation. Rigged Elections!\u201d<\/p>\n Lacking any proof of fraud in voting by mail \u2014 because they are making it up \u2014\u00a0Republicans from Kavanaugh to Trump argue that the mere \u201cperception\u201d of fraud justifies making it harder to vote. Losing Republicans are the only ones perceiving this fraud, creating a pretext to allow fewer voters (who they assume to be Democrats, or at least more Democrats than Republicans) to cast a ballot.<\/p>\n Elected Republicans\/influencers and those on the Court are in a perfectly symbiotic relationship here. The Court will almost certainly rule in their favor at some point in the next two months, perhaps even pointing to the hysteria Republicans have whipped up in recent days as evidence of the need to cut off voting earlier. Republicans, in turn, will point to the Court\u2019s ruling as \u201cproof\u201d that their denialism was correct.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to imagine that the LA mayorship is the real race they\u2019re gunning for in perfecting this system.<\/p>\n A Dull Maine Senate Primary Becomes Interesting<\/p>\n We\u2019ll be watching Tuesday night for the first big indicator of how badly, or not, Democrat Graham Platner has been wounded by the recent dribble of scandals. Platner will almost certainly win the ranked-choice primary, but by how much? If his numbers come in precipitously low \u2014 Democrat Sara Gideon got 71 percent of the vote in 2020 Senate primary \u2014\u00a0calls to replace him will grow louder.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bari Weiss Fails Upwards to New Heights<\/p>\n The Trump toadying editor-in-chief of CBS News is reportedly in line to also take over CNN\u2019s editorial operations, should Paramount\u2019s acquisition of Warner Bros. go through, per Axios<\/a>. She is failing in her tenure at CBS \u2014 ratings are dismal<\/a> for both the morning and evening shows, and she\u2019s gutted<\/a> 60 Minutes, a unicorn in profitable broadcast journalism \u2014 if you consider her job to be running the network. But since her job is actually to grease the skids for the Paramount-Warner Bros. deal, withering CBS and CNN in the process, she\u2019s succeeding beyond anyone\u2019s wildest dreams.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Case You Missed It<\/p>\n Church, Merch and State: What the Pentagon\u2019s Snub of Mormons Was Really All About<\/a><\/p>\n Morning Memo: The Most Important Nomination the Senate Has Ever Considered<\/a><\/p>\n On the midterm primaries so far: Trump Sees The Primaries As Proving His Strength. He May Come to Regret It.<\/a><\/p>\n TPM Cafe: Why Are Any Democrats Supporting a Bill That Was Championed by the Crypto Industry?<\/a><\/p>\n Photo Gallery: Behold the Freedom 250 Celebration Prep in All Its Tacky Glory<\/a><\/p>\n Yesterday\u2019s Most Read Story<\/p>\n DOJ to Courts: Don\u2019t You Dare Touch the Already-Dead Slush Fund<\/a> \u2014 David Kurtz<\/p>\n What We Are Reading<\/p>\n \u2018Unbelievable how accurate\u2019: How paid influencers hype Polymarket\u2019s odds<\/a> \u2014\u00a0Jason Beeferman,\u00a0Maya Kaufman,\u00a0Jessie Blaeser\u00a0and\u00a0Declan Harty, Politico<\/p>\n