Checkmate in PA
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/11/checkmate-in-pennsylvania-for-the-trump-campaign/
Realistically speaking, the legal battle over the 2020 election is over. As I explained over the weekend, from President Trump’s perspective, that battle is beset by a fatal mismatch between (a) what his campaign is in a position to allege and prove, and (b) the remedy — i.e., the potential number of votes that could swing from Biden to Trump. That problem was already apparent last week, when the campaign filed its original complaint in the Williamsport federal court. It became insurmountable Sunday, when the campaign amended its complaint, stripping out the main fraud claims.
What is left of the lawsuit cannot conceivably change the result in Pennsylvania. For that reason, the court will probably not even rule on it — even if we assume for argument’s sake that the campaign and its two co-plaintiffs (voters residing in the Commonwealth) have standing to sue, which is doubtful. And, to repeat what I laid out over the weekend, without reversing the election result in Pennsylvania, the president has no chance to reverse the nationwide result (which would minimally require winning Pennsylvania plus two other states).
To cut to the chase, all that remains of the Trump campaign’s complaint is the claim that voters in pro-Trump counties were denied equal protection of law because mail-in voters in pro-Biden counties — mainly Philadelphia and Allegheny counties (Pittsburgh is in the latter) — were invited by election boards to cure defects in their ballots. Even if there were arguably merit to this claim (doubtful), it may only involve a few hundred votes, and certainly not more than a few thousand. That’s not enough. By current count, presumptive president-elect Biden leads President Trump by 83,000 votes. Since I’ve already made this point several times (see, e.g., here and here), perhaps it’s best to quote what the Third Circuit said just last Friday (my italics): For a party
to have standing to enjoin the counting of ballots . . . such votes would have to be sufficient in number to change the outcome of the election. . . . See, e.g., Sibley v. Alexander (“Even if the Court granted the requested relief, plaintiff would still fail to satisfy the redressability element of standing because enjoining defendants from casting the votes . . . would not change the outcome of the election”).
Even if a court were to ignore this fatal problem and entertain the campaign’s remaining claims, there are several other reasons why they would fail. Pennsylvania’s secretary of state argues that there is no equal protection violation because she advised all counties that they had the discretion to invite voters who’d submitted defective mail-in ballots to cure the defect. The fact that some counties availed themselves of this option does not mean the state violated the equal-protection rights of voters in counties that did not.
In addition, the Third Circuit reasoned that the Bush v. Gore equal-protection theory that the Trump campaign relies on is limited to the peculiar facts of that post-election recount scenario, and not really applicable to this one. More important, the Third Circuit held that equal-protection claims of the kind the Trump voters are raising are too non-specific and speculative to confer standing to sue.
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It doesn't actually matter how many dimensions the chessboard has when all you're doing is throwing all the pieces on the floor because you lost.
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I think the following paragraph is also interesting because it points out how absurd the requested remedy is.
Furthermore, there is, to repeat, that mismatch between the claimed injury and the remedy sought: Over what may be just a relative handful of ballots, the Trump campaign seeks to prevent the state from certifying its election result, which would disenfranchise 7 million voters — something no court would do, and which would result in the same kind of equal-protection harm (to lawful Biden and Trump voters) that the campaign complains of, except astronomically worse.
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I wonder what he's going to do when he runs out of time. Maybe he'll be like Bobby Fischer, who went to his grave claiming to still be World Chess Champion, despite not having played a top flight game since 1972.
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I wonder what he's going to do when he runs out of time. Maybe he'll be like Bobby Fischer, who went to his grave claiming to still be World Chess Champion, despite not having played a top flight game since 1972.
@Doctor-Phibes If this just sorta fizzles out - he may just walk around calling himself the "legal President" or some such.
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They should tell him he's won and put him in a replica Whitehouse, tell him Covid is too dangerous now for him to leave, and basically make a Truman Show about him. It would be freaking awesome.
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They should tell him he's won and put him in a replica Whitehouse, tell him Covid is too dangerous now for him to leave, and basically make a Truman Show about him. It would be freaking awesome.
@Doctor-Phibes said in Checkmate in PA:
They should tell him he's won and put him in a replica Whitehouse, tell him Covid is too dangerous now for him to leave, and basically make a Truman Show about him. It would be freaking awesome.
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@Jolly said in Checkmate in PA:
Time to do a rally in Georgia.
Didn't he say if Biden took the State he'd never go back to Georgia? Or maybe that was Dizzy Gillespie....
Link to videoAny excuse to play Manteca..
