The Trumpeter is Terrified of Voting by Mail

(and hates the Post Office Bigly and wants it privatized)  Let’s call this by it’s name: Catch-22

‘Trump holds up coronavirus aid to block Democrats’ bid for election funding’, msn.com, Aug 13, 2020

“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Thursday said his team was rejecting Democrats’ bid to include funds for the U.S. Postal Service and to shore up election infrastructure in a new coronavirus relief bill, as he vowed to block money to facilitate mail-in voting.

Congressional Democrats accused Trump of trying to damage the struggling Postal Service in an effort to improve his chances of being re-elected in November.

Trump said his negotiators have resisted Democrats’ calls for additional money to help prepare for presidential, congressional and local voting during a pandemic that has killed more than 165,000 Americans and presented severe logistical challenges to organizing large events like the Nov. 3 election.

“The items are the post office and the $3.5 billion for mail-in voting,” Trump told Fox Business Network, saying Democrats want to give the post office $25 billion. “If we don’t make the deal, that means they can’t have the money, that means they can’t have universal mail-in voting.”

‘Just Comes Out and Says It’: Trump Declares Postal Service Can’t Handle Mail-In Voting Because He’s Blocking Funding;“This is crazy by any standard. The president of the United States is actively trying to sabotage the election.”, Aug. 13, 2020, commondreams.org (Creative Commons)

“President Donald Trump proclaimed Wednesday that the U.S. Postal Service doesn’t have the capacity to handle an unprecedented increase in mail-in ballots because it lacks funds that his administration is blocking, remarks that were immediately viewed as an open admission of election sabotage by a president who has previously called USPS “a joke.”

In talks over the CARES Act in March, Trump threatened to veto the sweeping relief legislation if it included a $13 billion direct grant to USPS that lawmakers originally agreed to provide. The bill ultimately included a $10 billion loan—to which Trump’s Treasury Department attached conditions that critics warned will give the administration unprecedented access to USPS operations.

Stephen Wolf of Daily Kos Elections said “Trump is stripping the U.S. Postal Service for parts both to thwart mail voting that threatens his re-election and so his cronies can profiteer off of it as the GOP has long wanted to.”

Ahead of the president’s briefing, the entire Senate Democratic caucus sent a letter slamming Postmaster General Louis DeJoy—a major Republican donor to Trump—for “considering changes that would increase costs for states at a time when millions of Americans are relying on voting by mail to exercise their right to vote.”

Watch Trump’s remarks: [as if anyone could stand to watch and listen for an hour and 31 mins.]

Let’s also call this what it is: Drivel plus: Don’t Vote Third Party

‘A Message to the Left About Kamala Harris—And Us; If Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are elected, they’ll still be influenced by the powerful forces that have shaped their careers. All the more reason progressives cannot sit this one out’, Richard Eskow, commonreams.org, Aug. 12, 2020

Okay: one outtake:

“As a candidate, Harris never seemed to be wedded to any particular policy proposal. Like Biden, she appears to lack an ideological core. While that can be seen as a character defect, it actually affords an opportunity. Biden and Harris may turn out to be malleable on policy in ways that the more ideologically neoliberal Bill and Hillary Clinton, for example, were not.”

(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)