Pragmatically Distributed

The Senate races in Georgia are what are known as negotiation leverage.

Continue reading “Leveraging The Precarious Georgia Senate Races To Trump’s Persuasion Advantage”

Trump should bypass the Governor and Secretary of State and apply pressure to Georgia’s GOP state legislators.

Continue reading “In Georgia Trump Should Apply Pressure to Georgia’s State Legislators”

What Trump needs the Supreme Court to do in order to win a vote in the House is not what most commenters think Trump needs.

Continue reading “To Win Trump Only Needs the Supreme Court to Fashion a Cover Story, Not a Binding Decision”

Giuliani’s message to Pennsylvania’s Republican state legislators – which was that if you don’t punish the Democrats for unprecedented mail/absentee ballot fraud they will do it again and be coming for you next time- applies every bit as much to all six Republican Supreme Court Justices.

Continue reading “A Friendly Thanksgiving Day Public Service Message to the Supreme Court from Pragmatically Distributed”

The low rejection rates for absentee and mail in ballots look like they can, quite simply, explain everything in terms of 2020 voter fraud.

The rejection rates for 2020 are at least 90% lower in swing states than in previous midterm and Presidential election cycles.

Continue reading “The Legal & Constitutional Implications of Low Mail Ballot Rejection Rates”

Because this all so much fun, the battle for the Presidency continues for entertainment purposes.

Continue reading “Punting the Electoral College Vote to the House”

Tomorrow Trump will carry Florida, Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, and Arizona by comfortable margins. Those states looked reasonably good three weeks ago on October 8th; and every trendline since has shown Trump fortifying his standing with all of them.

What will put Trump over the top in the Electoral College will be GOP wins in both Pennsylvania and Michigan.

The dynamic working in Trump’s favor in those states is that they will not follow a pattern most other battlegrounds will.

In other states, Republicans will vote Republican and Democrats will vote Democratic.

However, in Pennsylvania and Michigan Republicans will vote Republican but Democrats will not vote Democratic by the same margin as Democrats will be elsewhere.

Biden’s history of favoring outsourcing to China, his facilitating financial deals between Hunter Biden and Chinese officials and businessmen, and Biden’s pro-Green and anti-carbon energy policies will reduce normal Democrat margins among blue collar Democrats in those two Rust Belt states.

Previously, Michigan looked good for Trump.

Today, the fundamentals make Michigan still look good because it is more attuned to Protectionist messages, and suspicious of pro-China politicians, thanks to Michigan’s economic vulnerability to outsourcing.

But as of today, Pennsylvania looks even better.

The first reason is that Pennsylvania’s election day vote will be proportionally higher compared to other states where absentee ballots are more common as a percentage of total votes.

Because the election day vote will matter relatively more than in other states, Pennsylvania voters who were already wary of outsourcing will have had more time to fully adsorb the Hunter Biden scandal (which was, unintentionally, magnified in importance by the media trying to suppress the story in The New York Post).

Trump (as he is elsewhere) also has momentum in Pennsylvania, suggesting undecideds are breaking for Trump. Granted, some of the poll tightening is because pollsters have stopped overweighting Democrats like they did in early October; but not all of the tightening is explained by more realistic sampling methodology.

Some of this tightening is because undecideds are actually breaking for Trump in the final week.

With Trump outworking Biden, and outsmarting Biden in the Rust Belt, Trump will take Pennsylvania and Michigan to win reelection.

Now that Barrett has been seated, lawyers for Trump and the RNC should be put on high alert for any election “rule bending” by Liberal judges in any of the swing states.

True, Barrett was not my first choice to replace Ginsburg. I’m still worried she will go moderate as time goes on. However, she was mentored by Scalia, so if she does goes soft it probably won’t happen for years, maybe decades, down the road.

If she does, that is a problem for the future.

Today, the expression “the future is now” is never more applicable than the final week of a Presidential campaign.

As of today, Barrett’s confirmation has given Republicans a 6-3 advantage on the Supreme Court.

The timing for this partisan tilt couldn’t be better for Trump just a few days before an election where he can be 100% certain every Liberal judge with jurisdiction in every single swing state will try to bend state and federal election laws in favor of the Democrats.

The job for Republican election law attorney’s (at least through and during election day, and possibly for weeks afterwards) is to monitor and challenge any and all past, present, or current legal rulings on election law of a questionable nature with requests for emergency injunctions by the Supreme Court.

With Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch owing Trump their jobs, and with Thomas and Alito having impeccable Conservative credentials, there is every reason to believe the GOP can win any emergency injunction request with plausible justification by at least 5-4.

And with Democrats threatening to expand the Court, it is possible that Roberts will also be inclined to join emergency injunctions for fear that his vote as Chief Justice would be diluted on an expanded Court.

By a “surprise attack” I do not mean monitoring Iran for sending spam emails and Facebook posts that will influence no US voters.

I mean putting the US military on extra high alert for a real, military and/or terrorist, attack.

Because the election stakes are so high for Iran they would be willing to endure the significant counterattack Trump would retaliate with, even if Iran knew Trump would respond by striking multiple Iranian targets like their nuclear program, naval forces, and senior Iranian political officials.

Since the Iranian objective behind a pre-election attack would be political, not military, in nature, they will probably go after high profile military targets to embarrass Trump as much as possible ahead of the vote.

Potential “high visibility” targets would include (but are not limited to) a US aircraft carrier, the Naval Headquarters for the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, US airfields, US military bases, or some other US warship besides a carrier.

The odds of a conventional attack (most likely with Iranian ballistic missiles, possibly naval forces) are about equally as good as a “non-conventional” terrorist attack.

They may even prefer a conventional attack since it can be organized faster and their last missile attack against Saudi oil fields was unexpected because the Iranians used conventional forces directly against another country: The Saudis associated Iranian military strategy with terrorism so closely that the Kingdom deployed its anti-missile defenses towards its Southern border with Yemen.  When Iran launched its missile attack, Saudi anti-missile systems were caught out of position to attempt an intercept.

A large missile attack on a single, or handful, of high profile US targets could be pulled off if multiple Iranian missiles are fired at once because that would overwhelm American anti-missile systems.

Trump should try scaring Iran away from a military strike by warning them he is monitoring them closer than ever.  If Iran believes an attack would be broken by US air and missile strikes before Iran was ready to strike, it should scare off Iran from doing anything before the election.

But if the military detects that Iran is preparing to attack despite Trump’s warnings, Trump should not wait for Iran to shoot first because when they attack they may go so big at a high profile target that it would overwhelm any American anti-missile systems.

Instead Trump should order the military to destroy the attack completely before Iran can fire at any US forces, and before they can make Trump look weak on election day.

State polls look reasonably good for Trump. Good enough to be considered indicators of a 50-50 race in the Electoral College.

The national polls dipped for Trump only because of news he tested positive for coronavirus.

But that dip won’t last because the news was about a surprise event that isn’t clearly related to anything people will vote on.

Whenever there is a surprise election event that isn’t clearly tied to a factor in voter’s decision making, the polls swing erratically.  Eventually it could work to Trump’s advantage because it shows that his Administration is bringing powerful new treatments for the virus onto the market.   But it will take time for voters to make sense of it.

Since Trump looks like he is well on his way to recovery thanks to these breakthrough treatments the impact it had on the race will probably fade in, more or less, a week.

The first debate appeared to change nothing for either candidate.

Battleground polls, however, have been fairly stable.

Whatever the average for each state is in the RCP average I would add +2 points net for Trump as a cautious estimate to account for the effect of “shy Trump voters” and the general polling tendency to overweight Democrats.

Using a net 2 point adjustment for Trump the President looks to be in good shape in Florida and North Carolina. Arizona has been steadily improving to a point where I think it can be considered tied.

That leaves the Rust Belt swing states as the tie breakers. Trump remains only a few points behind Biden in Pennsylvania. If Trump is within striking distance of Biden in Pennsylvania then Trump is probably safe in Ohio because it is usually 4 to 8 points more Republican than Pennsylvania. Michigan looks almost as good as Ohio, and Wisconsin is within Trump’s reach.

To get over the top, Trump should turn his focus on turning Biden and Harris into a single composite Democratic candidate that combines the worst policy weaknesses of both candidates, while ignoring their strongest policy positions.

Trump should continue attacking Biden for outsourcing industry and medical supplies to China (especially because the outsourcing issue has eroded Biden’s standing in the Rust Belt), his senility and the risk of him handing power to an incompetent Harris, flip flopping on fracking, as well as continue going after Biden’s crooked deal making for his drug addled son, Hunter.

Outsourcing is not much of a weakness for Harris because she opposed the TPP while Biden supported it.

To further raise Biden’s personal negatives Trump should bring up the Benghazi fiasco and pin that disaster on Biden being asleep at the wheel.

Biden’s strength was that he isn’t easily linked to radical Left rioters because Biden was never known for having firm ideological convictions.

But Harris is associated with the far Left wing of the Party.

Therefore, Trumps should start emphasizing Harris in his attacks by pointing she is linked to far Left policies on climate, her weakness and incompetence which was put on display by Mike Pence, crime, California blackouts, rioters, California homelessness, etc, etc, and just about any other far Left issue that Trump can’t clearly pin on Biden.

Emphasizing Biden on the issues where Biden is weakest and Harris is strongest, while emphasizing Harris on issues where Harris is weakest and Biden is strongest, will have the effect of turning Biden and Harris into a single, composite candidate that combines the worst weaknesses of both politicians.