Political Blue Gene

June 1, 2020

Lies, Lies and More Lies

(Even as we are in the throes of protests, rioting and a President who once again abdicates his responsibility to reassure and heal a nation, there are other issues that we should not forget.  This post addresses two of those issues.)

As we all learned (or should have learned) in high school, totalitarian regimes are built on fear and lies, often referred to as the ‘big lie”.  Our wannabe totalitarian in the White House has spent much of his public life following this prescription, especially when it comes to lies, starting with what has come to be known as “birtherism”.  Now, there are 2 more big lies he and his enablers are propagating to help his re-election prospects.  One is about the American response to COVID-19 and the other is about mail-in ballots.

Big Lie #1

Republicans like syndicated columnist Marc Thiessen (in a recent column), are claiming that all the measures taken to limit the spread of the virus were not meant to save lives and reduce suffering, rather “(t)he objective of the lockdown was never to stop every American from getting COVID-19, which is impossible; it was to buy time to learn about the virus and prevent our health care system from being overwhelmed.” And he claims that, “(w)e have accomplished those goals.”

He (and other Republicans) are also claiming that “(t)he costs are not just in lost jobs, but in lost lives.  Americans have been forced to put off care for non-COVID-19 illnesses such as cancer and cardiac disease – forgoing screenings, surgeries, chemotherapy and emergency room visits.  While the government is speeding clinical trials for COVID-19 treatments and vaccines, trials for many non-COVID diseases have ground to a halt.”  He also claims that we might see an additional 40,000 deaths due to suicides and drug overdoses among the jobless, as well as an additional 2 million people addicted to drugs.  Of course, he neglects to mention that health experts have repeatedly stated that without the measures we have undertaken, millions of Americans could have died.

These claims are supposed to lead to the conclusion that President Trump has not shirked his duty to lead the country during the pandemic.  Rather, efforts to control the spread of COVID-19 were not to protect people but to protect our health care infrastructure; there is only so much anyone could have done and we did it, and the cost for saving untold lives was probably too high, economically and in other health-related areas.  In other words, Trump did what was necessary in the beginning, the responses to the virus were often overblown and counter-productive, and it is now time to stop all this shelter-in-place and other nonsense and get back to work.  We just have to accept the deaths and severe illnesses related to COVID-19.  But mostly that Trump did a fine job vis-a-vis COVID-19.

Big Lie #2

The second big lie, as we are constantly hearing, is that mail-in ballots are guaranteed to produce massive voter fraud.  As anyone who has looked at the evidence knows, this, too, is nonsense.  Six states currently vote entirely by mail with no evidence of voter fraud and considerable evidence of increased voter turnout.  Of course, this fits in with the extensive voter suppression efforts that Republicans have undertaken for many years. 

Two related notes:  First, shortly after his inauguration, President Trump formed a commission to look into voter fraud that had been committed in 2016.  After a few months, the commission was disbanded because they could not find any evidence of voter fraud anywhere in the country.  By the way, Kansas Republican Kris Kobach was chair of that commission.  When he ran for Governor of Kansas last year, the Democrat was elected.  He is running for the U.S. Senate this year and Democrats hope he wins the primary to give Democrats a chance to flip that seat.  The primary is August 4.

Second, the Republican Party has filed suit in California to prevent the State from mailing ballots to all registered voters.  70 percent of all registered voters in California are already “Permanent Vote By Mail” voters; in other words, more than two-thirds of California voters would be voting by mail in November, even without the new rules.  In addition, before COVID-19, there were already 15 counties that were going to vote only by mail (with supplemental drop-off locations), including 4 of the largest counties, Los Angeles, Orange, Sacramento and Santa Clara.  And when you add in these counties’ registered voters who were not previously vote-by-mail to the permanent vote-by-mail Californians, more than 75 percent, perhaps as high as 80 percent of all votes to be cast in the State already would have been by mail, even before COVID-19.

So why would the Republican Party file this lawsuit?  Either because they believe the claim of voter fraud is a winning issue or this is just another example of how out of touch California Republicans are with the rest of the state.

Gene on the Radio

On April 15 and then again on May 6, Gene appeared with his good friend and long-time political consultant, Larry Levine, (author of the always interesting blog, thepoliticaldish.com), on “The Uncommon Sense Democrat,” a one-hour show hosted by long time Democratic activist Eric Bauman on KCAA radio.  Below, are the links to those 2 shows.  (Note: About 5 or 6 minutes into the recordings, the shows begin with Eric’s coronavirus updates.)

We are scheduled to appear once again, on June 10 at 2pm PDT.  If you are interested but cannot listen live, the link afterwards will probably be: podcasts.kcaastreaming.com/uncommondemocrat/20200610.html

April 15:   podcasts.kcaastreaming.com/uncommondemocrat/20200415.html

May 6:   podcasts.kcaastreaming.com/uncommondemocrat/20200506.html