David Axelrod, Barack Hussein Obama’s chief strategist, was clearly worried about Donald Trump’s prime time speech about election integrity last night. Hyperventilating on X Tuesday, he warned that “If @POTUS really trots out Pulte, Patel and a crew of political apparatchiks posing as intel experts… to announce they’ve uncovered ‘evidence’ of foul play in 2020, it’ll only heighten fears that he’ll claim an ‘emergency’ down the line and claim extraordinary fed power over elections. If so – and there are plenty of other signs of manipulation brewing – the most important battles of the midterms may be in the courts.”
Let’s begin by considering Axelrod’s rhetoric. Are the directors of the CIA, the FBI and Homeland Security people who “pose as intelligence experts?” Or are they, you know, intel experts, no posing involved? We all know about the potential of semantic sabotage inherent in carefully deployed quotation marks. Just as “fresh” fish is something quite different from fresh fish, so “evidence” is not the same thing as evidence. Axelrod hoped to provide a little proleptic prophylaxis against whatever revelations the President might provide about election interference and election corruption in 2020. If all he had was “evidence” of an “emergency” then we could all rest easy, right?
If voters cannot trust that elections are on the up and up, then the social contract is broken
In the event, POTUS provided in his 30-minute speech chapter and verse about two great threats to America’s electoral system: foreign interference, especially by China, and systemic vulnerabilities of the processes through which our elections are conducted. Those vulnerabilities are of two sorts: active efforts to manufacture fake votes and bureaucratic efforts to conceal the truth about election fraud on the part of those entrusted with policing our elections. There was no “evidence” on view in his speech or the mountains of declassified documents he released at the White House website, no “evidence,” only evidence, reams and reams of incontrovertible evidence of election interference by China and other countries as well evidence of various weaknesses in our election infrastructure.
President Trump began his speech with a little pep talk about his successes during the first 18 months of his second term. It was an impressive litany. The legacy media wanted none of it, neither the list of the President’s many achievements nor the accumulated evidence of election interference and manipulation. Several major networks declined to cover the speech at all. That’s a pity, for their behavior simply underscored their increasing irrelevance.
Crime and illegal immigration are way down – illegal immigration is essentially zero now, as President Trump noted – as are taxes, while investment in America and the stock market is at historic highs. The President’s many domestic policy initiatives – from TrumpRx for prescription drugs to Trump Savings Accounts to give children under 18 a head start on accumulating wealth – have made the country safer, richer and more secure.
At the same time, his robust foreign policy – think, for example, of Venezuela and Iran – has shown the world that the United States is not to be trifled with. At the same time, the President said, it has become clear that our elections have been “catastrophically” compromised. In many ways, he said, US elections are as bad or worse than elections in third-world countries where corruption is rampant and elections go to the highest bidder.
And here’s the rub: if voters cannot trust that elections are on the up and up – that votes are counted accurately and only those eligible to vote are allowed to vote – then the social contract, the assumption of legitimacy bestowed by the people on their government, is broken. In a phrase that I hope will gain currency, the President summed up the situation: “No Trust, No Greatness.”
President Trump outlined several ways in which America’s elections have been compromised. The details are there for all to see in the cache of declassified intelligence findings contained on the White House website: Vulnerabilities in Electronic Voting & Ballot-Counting Systems, China’s Acquisition and Exploitation of American Voter Data, Michigan Voter-Registration Investigation, and Noncitizens on State Voter Rolls.
It was a sobering recitation that the president provided. But it was not simply a news report. It was also a practical call to action. Following up on his slogan “No Trust, No Greatness,” he ended with a plea that Congress pass the “Save America Act.” And what does that act require?
- Voter ID. Those presenting themselves to vote must produce a valid picture ID. This is a requirement if you want to check into a hotel, enter most city buildings, board an airplane or send a FedEx package. How could it not also be a requirement to vote?
- Proof of citizenship. Only American citizens may vote in American elections. Some proof of citizenship must be provided, just as it must be provided if you want to work in the United States
- Finally, since mail-in ballots are more susceptible to manipulation than regular ballots, their use must be limited to clearly defined categories of voters: those who are ill or disabled, those who are traveling, and military personnel who are deployed overseas
“But that’s all just common sense,” you say. You are right. It is just common sense. But it is one of the great, if also most corrosive, features of our age that common sense is one of the least common virtues. President Trump was correct: the only reason to be against the Save America Act is because you want to cheat. There is no other reason. Let me end as did the pPresident with a recommendation: call your congressman and let him or her know that you do not like cheating in elections and therefore you want Congress to pass the SAVE America Act. It’s the patriotic, also the rational, thing to do.
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