Biden: 2022 midterms "could be illegitimate"

[Occam's Banana]

Of course, the obvious subtext of all this is that the 2022 midterms could be considered "illegitimate" if and only if the Democrats lose.

Biden says elections might not be legitimate if reform bills aren't passed
https://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...lection-reform
Alex Gangitano (19 January 2022)

President Biden on Wednesday said the legitimacy of the upcoming midterm elections could depend on Democrats passing voting rights legislation.

“I’m not saying it’s going to be legit. The increase in the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these reforms passed,” Biden said during his second solo press conference at the White House, referring to the 2022 election.

He added that he hasn’t given up on passing voting rights legislation to counteract new voting laws being implemented by Republicans at the state level.

“You’re not going to see me, and I don’t think you’re going to see the Democratic Party, give up on coming back, assuming that the attempt fails today,” he said.

Senate Democrats are pursuing a doomed effort on the floor Wednesday to pass voting rights legislation.

The effort will not succeed because Republicans will block it, and two centrist Democrats — Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — oppose making changes to the filibuster to allow it to pass on a majority vote.

The president responded that it “depends” earlier in the press conference when asked if he thinks the upcoming election results will be legitimate if voting rights legislation doesn’t pass.

“Well, it all depends on whether or not we’re able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election,” he said.

Biden made the case last week in Georgia for Democrats to alter the Senate filibuster to pass voting rights bills, which was praised by civil rights leaders but also regarded as a belated push for legislation to counteract Republican state voting laws.

During Wednesday’s press conference, Biden also said he believes minorities will vote in the upcoming midterm elections, even if Democrats can’t pass voting rights legislation.

“No matter how hard they make it for minorities to vote, I think you’re going to see them willing to stand in line and defy the attempt to keep them from being able to vote,” Biden told reporters.

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/PhilipWegmann/st...70966708150273


Official White House press conference transcripts (source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-...-conference-6/):

[Occam's Banana]

Official White House spin / damage control:

https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/1484166808894640131

[Occam's Banana]

CNN Hosts Slam Biden For Suggesting Elections Might Be ‘Illegitimate’ If His Voting Agenda Not Passed
https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnn-h...nda-not-passed
Ryan Saavedra (20 January 2022)

Multiple CNN hosts slammed Democrat President Joe Biden on Wednesday evening after Biden said during his first press conference in months that elections might be “illegitimate” if his left-wing voting agenda is not passed.

A reporter first asked Biden, “Speaking of voting rights legislation, if this isn’t passed, do you still believe the upcoming election will be fairly conducted and its results will be legitimate?”

Biden responded that “it all depends on whether or not we’re able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election.”

Later during the press conference, a second reporter brought up the issue again and sought clarification from Biden on it.

“I just wanted to clarify: A moment ago, you were asked whether or not you believed that we would have free and fair elections in 2022 if some of these state legislatures reformed their voting protocols,” the reporter said. “You said that it depends. Do you — do you think that they would in any way be illegitimate?”

“Oh, yeah, I think it easily could be — be illegitimate,” Biden responded. “Imagine — imagine if, in fact, Trump has succeeded in convincing Pence to not count the votes.”

When he was asked if he thought that could be the case with the upcoming midterms, Biden said, “I mean, imagine if those attempts to say that the count was not legit.”

“You have to recount it and we’re not going to count — we’re going to discard the following votes,” Biden said. “I mean, sure, but — I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit. It’s — the increase and the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these — these reforms passed.”

The following CNN hosts responded to Biden’s remarks after the press conference:

• John King: “It is striking to hear an American president not named Donald Trump raise questions about the legitimacy and sanctity of our democracy.”

• Jake Tapper: “And quite strikingly, the President said that the upcoming midterm elections might not be legitimate if the election reform bills before the Senate are not passed. … President Biden just said, with Donald Trump’s history when it comes to the big lie on the elections, but he refused to say that the election results this midterm — in these midterms in November would be legitimate. He refused it.”

• Dana Bash: “Well, particularly the first part, Anderson, what he said, was — actually the entire thing, but the first part was probably the most jarring to hear a President of the United States who is not Donald Trump, even suggest ahead of time that an election isn’t legitimate.”

---

And yet, also at CNN (and noting that James Clyburn is the US House majority whip):

https://twitter.com/kasie/status/1484163150484316168

[Occam's Banana]

CNN Scrambles to Explain Away Joe Biden Saying 2022 Midterms Could Be “Illegitimate”
Well, this is awkward.
https://summit.news/2022/01/20/cnn-s...-illegitimate/
Paul Joseph Watson (20 January 2022)

CNN hosts scrambled to explain away Joe Biden’s remark during his car crash of a press conference when he said that the 2022 mid-term elections could be “illegitimate.”

Former President Donald Trump was vehemently monstered by the media both in 2016 and 2020 for suggesting the election outcome could be compromised.

Following the riot on January 6 last year, Trump’s so-called undermining of the election process was blamed for the raid on the Capitol itself.

Tens of millions of Trump supporters who believe the 2020 election was rigged have also been denounced as everything from dangerous radicals to domestic terrorists.

So when Joe Biden questioned the legitimacy of the upcoming election during a live press conference, the media was placed in an invidious position.

Biden was asked by a reporter if the election could be considered legitimate if he was unable to pass his voting reforms.

“It all depends on whether or not we’re able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election,” Biden responded.

https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/s...31218810970112


“I’m not saying it’s going to be legit,” Biden added, before noting, “The increase in the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these reforms passed.”

Both Maryland Senator Ben Cardin and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin quickly expressed concern at Biden’s rhetoric.

CNN hosts also scrambled to explain away Biden’s clumsy response.

“Well, particularly the first part, Anderson, what he said was–actually, the entire thing, but particularly the first part was, probably the most jarring to hear a president of the United States who is not Donald Trump even suggest, ahead of time, that an election isn’t legitimate,” said Dana Bash.

She continued, “Having said that, the important thing to keep in mind is what he was trying to say, and that is in places like Arizona and places like Georgia, especially, that will determine, votes will determine not only the governor’s race, but this balance of power in the Senate, you have another Senate race there. The laws that were put in place in Georgia were such that the legislature — the Republican-led legislature has the ability to take the power away from the secretary of state to determine an election.”

“That is what he was trying to say, but it’s not exactly how he said it, which is why it was so jarring. The people who know what he was trying to say get it. But still, with this kind of language, given where we are with the Republican party and how you have a former president trying to continue to sew doubt and claim that the election in 2020 was stolen, which is a total lie. That is an area where I know talking to Democrats they believe the president needs to be a lot more nuanced,” Bash added.

This serves as yet another reminder as to why Biden barely ever holds press conferences.

After she lost in 2016, Hillary Clinton also repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the election, blaming Trump’s win on the baseless Russian collusion conspiracy theory.

[Occam's Banana]

[A Son of Liberty]

So, 2020 was the most honest, accurate and transparent election in the history of elections, without these "reforms", but we can't have honest, accurate, and transparent elections going forward without these reforms?

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

[Brian4Liberty]

Elections will not be legit unless the Democrat voting standard is put in place across the nation. Therefore, all elections held in the US up to this point have been illegitimate.

[Occam's Banana]

Dr. Rand Paul on Newsmax: "I think it's dangerous for Biden to speak extemporaneously."

That's exactly why I wish he did it more ...

https://twitter.com/Reed_Coverdale/s...23239323586560

[69360]

So an old white guy says elections are not legitimate. Where have I heard this before?

[Anti Globalist]

Wonder if Biden will have this exact kind of statement in regards to the 2024 election.

[Occam's Banana]

h/t Glenn Jacobs

[CaptUSA]

Ok, so the leaders of both major parties are now saying that these elections are not legit. Maybe that because...

THE ELECTIONS ARE NOT LEGIT!

[RJB]

That bastard was born illegitimate

[Theocrat]

Biden and the Democrats already know that they're going to lose this next election, so he's trying to discredit it in order to justify their loss. I can't stand those people and their continuous propaganda, thinking that people won't see through their evil devices and decrees! They're either going to cheat by passing laws which fundamentally change the elections to keep Democrats in power, or they're going to run a campaign to delegitimize any Republican victory.

Also, Biden fails to realize what he has implicated. If the 2022 Midterms are illegitimate, then so were the previous elections, including his own.

[Brian4Liberty]

I'm not sure, but was the word "bipartisan" erased from the media's dictionary?

I have seen many stories about how "the Republicans blocked the voting rights bill", but nothing about it being a "bipartisan" effort. Seems like every single time they get a GOP Senator or two join with the Democrats, it is applauded as "bipartisan".

[TheTexan]

I have no doubt that the 2022 elections will be sufficiently "fortified".

[69360]

I wonder how pissed off Biden's handlers are that he went off script? It's got to be tough having a senile old man doing your pressers.

[unknown]

Right, unless the Dems can make it easier to cheat, the election results may be illegitimate, only if the Dems lose.

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/statu...35272754884611


Supercut: The Hyperbolic ‘End of Democracy’ Prophecies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrwTxIJ5qRs

[PAF]

Darn. Be it the Left Jack Boot, or the Right Jack Boot, I was so looking forward to voting for more government.

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/jackhunter74/sta...27328782364683

Democrats torn over pushing stolen-election narrative
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/...tion-narrative
Alexander Bolton (22 January 2022)

Senate Democrats say they share President Biden’s concern that the results of the 2022 midterm elections may not be legitimate because of restrictive voting laws passed by GOP-controlled state legislatures and the empowerment of state-level officials allied with former President Trump.

But the senators are torn over how hard to push a stolen-election narrative ahead of the November election in which Republicans are expected to make big gains in Congress.

While Democratic lawmakers are worried that Republican state officials are seeking to suppress Democratic votes, some are leery of sounding like Trump, who made predictions of widespread election fraud before the 2020 presidential election and continues to do so on a regular basis.

The key distinction is that Trump hasn’t been able to back up any of his fraud claims in court and they have been dismissed by members of his own party.

Democrats believe there’s plenty of evidence that Republicans are trying to steal future elections and feel bolstered by extensive reporting by CNN, NBC and other media outlets on the state-level machinations of Trump allies.

“I think many of these laws, especially those that end the bipartisan counting of votes, are intended to seat people who lost the election. If Herschel Walker wins in Georgia because all the Fulton County votes got thrown out, that’s not a legitimate election,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).

“It’s all circumstantial but I think at some point you got to listen to what Donald Trump and his allies are saying. They don’t believe that Democrats can ever win legitimately and they’re prepared to go to extraordinary measures to throw out a Democratic win,” he added. “I’m very worried the changes in these laws will ultimately result in a loser being declared a winner.”

Democrats cite what they say is a disturbing trend in several states where Republican-controlled legislators have empowered partisan officials who don’t usually have a role in administering elections to access and review ballots from the 2020 election.

“If you start having local or state certification agents start overruling actual votes. That’s when things quickly move into the illegitimacy area,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.).

“I don’t want to start calling into question elections ahead of time, that’s not productive whatsoever. We saw that with the whole, ‘It’s all rigged,’ thing with President Trump,” he added. “We need to see what actually plays out.

“What I worry about is when you have scenario like what happened in Michigan but the certification agent chooses to overrule the voters, that’s when you would move into a problematic area,” he said.

Democrats will be seeking to defend their 50-50 majority in the November election and political handicappers say that Republicans are improving their chances of picking up seats because of Biden’s low approval rating.

Several Democratic incumbents face tough races, including Sens. Raphael Warnock (Ga.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.) and Maggie Hassan (N.H.). Republicans will have to defend retiring Sen. Pat Toomey’s (R) seat in Pennsylvania, vulnerable incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), as well as open seats in Ohio and North Carolina.

“Our democracy is in a 911 state of emergency and I’m going to keep fighting for us to put the fire out,” said Warnock.

Kelly noted “there’s been legislation passed in Arizona where the permanent early voting list can be purged without giving any rationale why you take one person off and leave somebody else on.”

“It makes it really hard for some folks to vote if you’re one of the people that were taken off,” he said.

He said more than 80 percent of voters vote by mail in Arizona and “people want to continue in that direction.”

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed into law a bill that stops sending absentee ballots automatically to people if they don’t cast an early ballot for two election cycles.

Senate Democrats are especially concerned about the election certification process for close races.

The certification of Biden’s victory over Trump in Michigan in the 2020 election was delayed when the two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers initially voted against certifying the county’s election results.

The two GOP officials later backed down and agreed to sign off on the vote tally after sparking an angry public backlash and being accused of disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of predominantly African American voters.

The officials, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, claimed the poll books at Detroit’s absentee-ballot county boards were out of balance but later agreed to certify the results after the secretary of state promised to conduct an audit of Wayne County.

The Brennan Center, which describes itself as a nonpartisan law and policy institute, has tracked the changes at the state level and is warning that partisan reviews of election results “have typically been designed to set the stage for future efforts to suppress votes and subvert election outcomes.”

Those states include Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. Four of those states are Senate battlegrounds that could determine what party is in the majority in 2023.

“If officials were to disregard the vote count, a legitimate vote count, I can see the argument that the result would be illegitimate,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “Some of the most frightening aspects of some of the voter suppression laws are not only blocking access to the ballot box but then actually discounting the recording [of] the count of the vote.”

Missouri, New Hampshire — another Senate battleground — and South Carolina have pre-filed voting bills that would allow for partisan reviews of the 2022 midterm election results, according to the Brennan Center.

Biden emphasized this as a major concern when he spoke to an audience at the Atlanta University Center Consortium.

“Now Republican legislatures in several states have already announced plans to escalate the onslaught this year. Their endgame: to turn the will of voters into a mere suggestion, something states can respect or ignore,” he said. “It’s no longer about who gets to vote. It’s about making it harder to vote, it’s about who gets to count the vote.”

Biden at a press conference Wednesday said it’s possible the results of the 2022 midterm elections won’t be legitimate, depending on whether restrictive voting laws can be reversed and how the vote is counted.

“I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit,” he told reporters. “The increase and the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these reforms passed,” referring to the voting rights bill that failed in the Senate the following day.

Some Democrats, however, felt a little uncomfortable with Biden directly questioning the legitimacy of the 2022 election results, especially after Trump and his allies spent more than a year trying to undermine the legitimacy of the 2022 election.

“I would not have used those terms,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.). “But I do think voting rights is very important in regards to the integrity of our election process and it’s an urgent issue."

“I very much believe it does impact people’s ability to effectively get their votes cast,” he said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki later sought to clarify the president’s comments on the legitimacy of the upcoming election.

“He was explaining that the results would be illegitimate if states do what the former president asked them to do after the 2020 election: toss out ballots and overturn results after the fact. The Big Lie is putting our democracy at risk. We’re fighting to protect it,” she tweeted.

[ClaytonB]

Deadmocrat voters showing up to the polls for the 2022 midterms...

[phill4paul]

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/s...13965177589770

[Okie RP fan]

Just to be clear:

This is right after 2016-2020's "The Russians Did It!" Campaign that said the 2016 election was illegitimate followed by:
2020 being the fairest election in history while a record 81 million + Americans elected a senile pedophile with:
Mail in ballots, of which there have been numerous reports of ballot harvesting, people being sent up to 5-10 ballots to their personal addresses, etc.



Oh man, they aren't even trying anymore, people. This regime, this empire, is a complete and utter joke. They are illegitimate.

[Anti Globalist]

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/s...13965177589770

Anybody want to bet that what Gingrich said is a bunch of fluff talk and won't actually come into fruition?

[Occam's Banana]

Anybody want to bet that what Gingrich said is a bunch of fluff talk and won't actually come into fruition?

Of course it's fluff talk. But it will come to fruition - albeit likely not in the time, place, and manner that Gingrich describes.

They keep jacking up the rhetoric, and sooner or later, the brinksmanship is going to become more than just fluff, and someone's going to do more than just talk [1].

Not Gingrich, of course. Nor probably Pelosi or McConnell or the like - given their vested interests in maintaining the status quo, they just don't have the balls to take things too far (for some value of "too far").

And certainly not Trump (we've already seen what a paper tiger he is).

But someone ...



[1] In fact, this process has already tentatively started with the reactionary "Capital Riot" and the counter-reactionary "J6" prosecutions/persecutions. Whether that particular course will escalate or eventually peter out remains to be seen. But even if it does peter out, the impulse will remain and will manifest in some other way. Barring more or less peaceful secession/separation, this ain't gonna end well. Mass democracy at present scale is a pathetic, feeble, and severely dysfunctional joke.

[Occam's Banana]

[... T]his process has already tentatively started with the reactionary "Capital Riot" and the counter-reactionary "J6" prosecutions/persecutions. Whether that particular course will escalate or eventually peter out remains to be seen. [...]

THREAD: Trump says he will pardon supporters if he wins in 2024

https://twitter.com/BillKristol/stat...07921270497286

[Occam's Banana]

Republicans celebrate the overturning of a Republican-passed vote-by-mail law.

Democrats celebrate that the same Republican-passed vote-by-mail law is likely to be upheld on appeal.

You just can't make this $#@! up ...

Court throws Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law into doubt
https://apnews.com/article/pennsylva...079c8aa3c3b121
Marc Levy (28 January 2022)

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A court declared Friday that Pennsylvania’s expansive 2-year-old mail-in voting law violates the state constitution, agreeing with challenges by Republicans who soured on the practice after former President Donald Trump began baselessly attacked it as rife with fraud in his 2020 reelection campaign.

Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration swiftly appealed to the state Supreme Court, immediately putting the party-line decision by a panel of three Republican and two Democratic judges on hold and stopping it from overturning the law.

Still, it throws Pennsylvania’s voting laws into doubt as the presidential battleground state’s voters prepare to elect a new governor and a new U.S. senator in 2022.

Just over 2.5 million people voted under the law’s expansion of mail-in voting in 2020′s presidential election, most of them Democrats, out of 6.9 million total cast.

Wolf’s office said its appeal means the lower court ruling has no immediate effect, and criticized Republicans as trying to kill the law “in the service of the ‘big lie’” of Trump’s baseless election fraud claims.

“We need leaders to support removing more barriers to voting, not trying to silence the people,” Wolf’s office said.

Trump and Republicans quickly lauded the decision.

“Big news out of Pennsylvania, great patriotic spirit is developing at a level that nobody thought possible. Make America Great Again!” Trump said in a statement through his political action committee.

The mail-in voting law has become a hot topic on the campaign trail, with nearly every Republican candidate for governor — including two of three state senators who voted for it — vowing to repeal it.

Even Republicans who avoid repeating Trump’s baseless election fraud claims have perpetuated the idea that Democrats cheated in the 2020 presidential election, routinely distorting the actions of state judges and officials as “unconstitutional” or “illegal” in settling legal disputes and questions over the mail-in voting law.

In Friday’s decision, the three Republican judges agreed with GOP challengers — including 11 lawmakers who actually voted for the law — and ruled that no-excuse mail-in voting is prohibited under the state constitution, until the constitution is changed to allow it.

The two Democrats on the panel dissented. The state Supreme Court — which will hear the appeal — has a 5-2 Democratic majority.

Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who is running for governor, said he is confident the state Supreme Court will uphold the mail-in voting law as constitutional.

He criticized the lower court’s opinion as “based on twisted logic and faulty reasoning” and “wrong on the law.”

Ultimately, any decision to throw out the law would not affect the millions of votes already cast under it in the past four elections.

In 2019, the Republican-controlled Legislature authorized no-excuse mail-in voting for all voters, expanding upon a provision in the state constitution that required the state to provide the option for voters in specific circumstances.

Those circumstances include being out of town on business, illness, physical disability, election day duties or religious observance.

Every Republican lawmaker, except one, voted for the legislation in a deal with Wolf, who had sought the mail-in voting provision. In exchange, Wolf agreed to get rid of the straight-ticket voting ballot option that Republicans had sought as a way to protect their suburban candidates from an anti-Trump wave in 2020′s election.

The constitution does not explicitly say that the Legislature cannot extend absentee voting to others.

However, Republican challengers say the constitution intended that absentee voting be strictly limited, citing a passage that says voters must live in an election district for at least 60 days where they “shall offer to vote.”

In the opinion, the three Republican judges agreed, saying that passage had been cited in two prior state Supreme Court decisions invalidating laws passed in 1839 and 1923 to expand absentee voting.

The dissenting Democrats say a separate provision of the constitution empowered lawmakers to provide no-excuse mail-in voting. That provision says elections “shall be by ballot or by such other method as may be prescribed by law.”

Raff Donelson, an associate professor of law at Penn State’s Dickinson Law School who teaches constitutional law, said he disagreed on a couple points with the majority opinion.

One point, Donelson said, is that it doesn’t make sense to read the constitution as restricting the right to cast an absentee ballot. On voting matters, that’s not how the constitution typically works, Donelson said.

Besides, the constitution seems to bluntly give lawmakers the power to prescribe voting by any method, and that cannot be negated by another provision in the constitution, he said.

In addition to baselessly attacking mail-in voting through much of 2020, Trump also later claimed, without evidence, that the election was stolen from him in critical battleground states including Pennsylvania.

An Associated Press investigation into potential cases of voter fraud in Pennsylvania and the five other battleground states where Trump disputed his loss to President Joe Biden in 2020 found a minuscule number of cases.

Election officials in 11 of the state’s 67 counties identified a total of 26 possible cases of voter fraud, representing 0.03% of Biden’s margin of victory. He defeated Trump in Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes.

In one post-election lawsuit in 2020, Republicans sought to invalidate the mail-in voting law and throw out all ballots cast under it in a bid to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania.

The state Supreme Court threw it out, saying the plaintiffs “failed to act with due diligence” in waiting to challenge the law until after Trump lost the election.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused appeals to intervene.