The Big Lie

The Big Lie of the 2020 election -- by far the most significant catalyst for the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection -- is President Trump's claim that there was widespread voter fraud in November and that he, in fact, won the election. This claim is false. Period.

Promotional graphic used by ABC News ©

Trump has made a maddening habit of spreading lies before and during his presidency, but The Big Lie is important because the nation will have a difficult time unifying until the truth -- that Biden's election is legitimate -- begins to be accepted by Trump supporters. 

If there were any evidence that the election was stolen or that there was significant voter fraud in Biden's favor the President's lawyers would have presented it in court. Attorneys can claim anything they want in the media, but they had better have solid evidence to bring these assertions into courtrooms or they risk being punished, including threat of disbarment.

Following are a few good news stories summarizing outcomes of the Trump Administration's fruitless push to challenge free and fair election results in some key swing states:

• By the numbers: President Donald Trump's failed efforts to overturn the election. Trump and allies filed scores of lawsuits, tried to convince state legislatures to take action, organized protests and held hearings. None of it worked. (USA Today, Jan. 6, 2021)
• These Are The Voter Fraud Claims Trump Tried (And Failed) To Overturn The Election With (Forbes, Dec. 17, 2020)
• Republicans Are Facing Very Real Legal Consequences From Trump’s Voter Fraud Lies. A new lawsuit accuses Trump and the Republican National Committee of conspiring to violate the rights of Black voters. (Buzzfeed, Dec. 22, 2020)
• Election Fraud Claims: a State-by-State Guide. President Trump’s campaign and its allies have lost dozens of court cases challenging President-elect Joe Biden’s win. (Wall Street Journal, Jan. 6, 2021)

It's been observed that it is far easier for one to be fooled than it is to admit one has been fooled. Even so, once a significant set of Trump supporters are ready to accept the empirical reality of Trump's defeat -- I would never presume all of them will escape the deception -- then we can begin to unify and move on from the unfortunate dark years of the delusional presidency.

Oxford Dictionaries names "post-truth" Word of the Year

This is an astonishing reflection of the state of public discourse in 2016:

Oxford Dictionaries on Wednesday said 2016 was best characterized by a word that questions the concept of facts themselves: post-truth. The dictionary publisher defined post-truth as "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."

Sigh.

Again: "Objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."

He says he's going to build a wall and Mexico is going to pay for it. It's not true. It's not going to happen. It doesn't matter. It makes a frightened soul feel good to hear him say it.

He says he's going to deport 11 million people. It's not going to happen. But to some non-marginal segment of the population, it's a thrilling idea. Ban all Muslims from entering the country? Nice. Lock her up for something the FBI publicly states is not a criminal act? Sure, feels great to hear.

Global warming is a hoax. Never mind that the science is proven. If you don't want to hear it, you don't have to believe it. Welcome to post-truth.

Thankfully, there are still hard-working citizens, public servants, journalists, academics and institutions that are pushing back against this crazy notion. A clear majority of Americans voted to repudiate such toxic beliefs, despite what the electoral college has decided.

But the era of post-truth is upon us. Let it be short-lived.

Americans chose Clinton, but got Trump

At the moment, Clinton's lead in the popular vote is only about 200,000+ votes. But it will certainly grow as additional votes on the West Coast get counted.

NBC News makes an important point regarding this stunning election result.

• Trump's popular vote loss likely won't constrain his effective power as president, especially with the unified GOP control of Congress — just as it didn't seem to hem in George W. Bush. But if the candidate who got fewer votes wins the White House for the second time in five elections, it could put a new spotlight on the peculiar way that America picks its presidents — one not shared by any other democracy.

The only time a Republican candidate has won the popular vote since 1988 was 2004. Yet the GOP has managed to win the White House two other times -- in 2000 and now 2016.

The biggest takeaway from this election is the furthering of the much-discussed polarization problem between urban and rural voters. It's two countries in one united map. Diverse, educated urban voters in metropolitan areas and less-educated and less-diverse voters in rural areas have enormous differences of opinion.

If President-elect Donald Trump has any ambition to find ways to bridge this gap and solve this threat to our great nation's unity and character, he hasn't exhibited it yet. Let's hope we see signs through staff and cabinet appointments (and public statements going forward) that he is less vindictive and more committed to bringing us together.

Is he at all humbled by the weight of his place in history after losing to Clinton among a majority of Americans? Only time will tell.

Here's an informative U.S. electoral map from TPM

Today TPM announced the debut of its 2016 Electoral Scoreboard. The map allows a user to hover over and click through on each state for updated polling data that reveals the state of the race on any given day. The data is provided by PollTracker, the poll aggregating service that proved to be the most accurate of any of its kind in 2012.

You'll see that the current state of the Electoral College on this map heavily favors Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Keep in mind that this reflects polling data coming directly after the Democratic National Convention, a point in the election cycle where it would figure to be favorable to Clinton after the expected polling bounce following four days of orchestrated positive programming touting the Democratic message.

By most accounts, the race is predicted to tighten during the final three months of the campaign, with the debates now looming as the events that will have the largest impact of any other presently planned occurrence.

The colors of the states on the map are as follows:

• Dark blue (strongly Clinton, 10 percent polling lead or more)
• Light blue (favors Clinton, between 5 and 9 percent polling lead)
• Lightest blue (lean Clinton, between 2 and 4 percent polling lead)
• Off-white (Toss-up, between -2 and +2 percent in polling)
• Lightest red (lean Trump, between 2 and 4 percent polling lead)
• Light red (favors Trump, between 5 and 9 percent polling lead)
• Dark red (strongly Trump, 10 percent polling lead or more)

Nate Silver: Larger convention bounce for Clinton

New data collected since the end of both conventions suggest Hillary Clinton currently leads Donald Trump by mid- to high-single digits, according to Nate Silver's analysis at FiveThirtyEight.

Additionally, Silver's forecast model that predicts the percentage chance of which candidate will win the presidency in November today sits at 63.3% for Clinton compared to 36.7% for Trump.

Both the forecast model and the polling numbers will change over time. The Free Press will check in and report on significant developments from now until Election Day, now less than 100 days away.

Below are some specific data representing the most recent national polling used by Silver in his updated analysis:

• A CBS News poll has Clinton ahead by 5 percentage points, in the version of the poll that includes third-party candidates (which is the version FiveThirtyEight uses). Trump led Clinton by 1 point in a CBS News poll conducted just after the RNC, so that would count as a 6-point bounce for Clinton.
• A Morning Consult poll also showed Clinton up by 5 percentage points, representing a 9-point swing toward her from a poll they conducted last week after the RNC.
• A RABA Research national poll, conducted on Friday after the convention, has Clinton with a 15-point lead. RABA Research’s national poll has been something of a pro-Clinton outlier. Still, the trend in the poll is favorable for Clinton. She’d led Trump by 5 percentage points in RABA Research’s poll just after the RNC, meaning that she got a 10-point bounce.
• Finally, a Public Policy Polling survey has Clinton up by 5 percentage points. Because PPP did not conduct a post-RNC poll, we can’t directly measure Clinton’s bounce. But their previous national poll, in late June, showed Clinton up by 4 percentage points. Therefore, their data tends to confirm our notion that the conventions may have reset the race to approximately where it was in June, which was a strong month of polling for Clinton.

What is the T doing to that P?

Donald Trump announced today, not unexpectedly, that Mike Pence (Republican governor of Indiana) is his choice for running mate. Soon after, the Trump campaign released the official Trump-Pence logo.

Twitter immediately reacted. Fun was had by all. One observer wondered how parents were to be expected to explain the logo to their children. Others marveled at how the T and P brought forth immediate images of branding for toilet paper.

From NPR:

In minutes, it seemed, one logo turned all of the Internet into 12-year-olds. Perhaps it is fitting. In an election where candidates on both sides of the aisle have been acting like adolescents — trading petty insults, getting into Twitter fights, discussing the size of their manhood, riffing on Pokemon — we should have expected at some point for all of us involved to totally take this whole thing back to middle school.

Has the time for a tax on financial trading arrived?

The New York Times editorial board takes a stand today on the assertion that a trade charge on the buying and selling of stocks, bonds and derivatives is warranted.

The next president, in order to achieve progress on this issue, will have to be one that is willing to take on Wall Street.

Bernie Sanders has campaigned on engaging the investor class on terms such as this -- and has attempted to portray Hillary Clinton as too ensconced in Wall Street culture to be a reliable champion for Main Street.

Clinton, of course, would take exception to this characterization.

Donald Trump, unlike his Republican rivals, has spoken out -- perhaps surprisingly -- about the lack of fairness in the tax code regarding investor-class elites.

From the editorial:

"Critics ... contend that a financial transaction tax would have damaging effects on trade volume, volatility and the ability of markets to determine asset prices. That is debatable, and setting the tax rate low at first, and raising it gradually, would help avoid potential damage. But the possibility of unintended consequences is not the real obstacle to a broad and prudent financial transaction tax. It is that a majority of lawmakers are not willing to challenge Wall Street’s power."