Greetings & Salutations,

If this email is reaching you, it is because you either recently subscribed to my new website, The Cycle-On Substack, or I have your email address from you signing up on a previous listserv indicating your interest in following my work. New subscribers to The Cycle, I cry your pardon, there was no way to separate out this email and in anycase, I want to give you very warm welcome and thank you again for subscribing! You may disregard the information that appears below.

For the rest of you, this email invites you to jolin us by subscribing for The Cycle-On Substack for either a free subscription, or for paid subscription, which adds some additional bells & whistles to the already jam-packed awesomeness of the free account.

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Of course, if you are familiar with my work, you’ll recall there is quite a bit of irreverent humor and profanity mixed into seriously wonky election and voting analysis. Registering for a subscription is your tacit acknowledgment that you’re cool with HBO level material as opposed to public airwaves content.

For those who’ve not been able to follow along on my work (I realize a great many people are not on Twitter, where up until now, all of my activity has been centered) the launch of this website corresponds with another significant venture I’ll be launching in the next couple of weeks- a Super Pac.

That’s right, Im going from teaching about Super Pacs to helping to run one as I seek to put my theories and ideas into practice starting with the Virginia 2021 gubernatorial and state legislative cycle.

That means The Cycle-On Substack is going to present an unprecedented fusion of election analysis and election commentary with actual electioneering. It’s sure to make for some interesting content, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how these two projects unfold and grow from each other.

It’s a journey I hope you’ll want to join me on. To say that 2020 was a challenging year would be an understatement. From a once-a-century pandemic seemingly managed to maximize, rather than minimize, death, to President Trump & the Republican Party’s “plain sight” coup attempts, America, and her people, are limping into the New Year.

Almost immediately, 2021 throws us into a toxic stew. It first features an epic clash for control of the Senate with nothing less than the entire capability of the Biden Administration to govern on the line. The very next day what should have been a formality, Congress certifying the Electoral College, has been turned into a clown show. It’d be funny if it didn’t symbolize the Republican Party’s willingness to cancel the results of the 2020 presidential election, to simply throw out the votes of 81+ million Americans because they went to your opponent and beat you.

Stripped of the comedy, it’s a concept so absurd you know that no American, five years ago, would believe that we’d be in this position. I had trouble convincing people who were already deeply distrustful of the the modern Republican Party that they would be willing to allow Donald Trump to take things this far in terms of these wild coup attempts. And yet, here we are. Perhaps the reddest of all red lines, completely blown by. Blown apart.

Regardless of the fact that President Trump’s efforts in contesting this election were always destined to fail due to the size of Biden’s victory, the fact that he was trying to overthrow our democratic election and largely being supported in that effort by the Republican Party should concern every American. The lies President Trump tells about 2020 are so outlandish his lawyers dare not utter them in any court of law for fear of losing their law licenses. Giuliani and the rest of the legal team ended up with a 1-60 lawsuit record because even Trump appointees stood up for the rule of law, in the great traditions of our legal system.

But Trump and Giuliani didn’t need to win a single lawsuit to cause the damage that they’ve caused to our democracy. In an election described by our nation’s top cyber security official as the most secure in our country’s history and which Attorney General Bill Barr twice reassured the public that there was no evidence of mass voter fraud, 77% of Republicans believe there was fraud in the election.

The counting process in the Midwest was set up to force Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin to hold back the counting of hundreds of thousands of mailed-in ballots until midnight on election night (something the Trump campaign sued these states to ensure would happen). This was done to intentionally allow the the Trump campaign to build engineered suspense around their so-called “red mirage-” which refers to the fact that for awhile, when only 50% or 60% of ballots had been counted, Trump held a small, but distinct lead in the Midwest.

If you listen carefully to Trump now, you’ll hear him refer to this time period. He’ll say something along the lines of “we were winning! We had a big advantage and then all of the sudden Biden is winning?! He’ll be incredulous that counting the other HALF of the ballots impacted the race and asserts over and over that these ballots (again half of the total ballots cast which were received before Election Day and held at election offices by mandate of state law) led to Biden’s victory- but you can see why the courts have uniformly affirmed Biden’s win and often summarily rejected Trump’s appeals. Excluding half the legal ballots from a contest is the roughest of legal arguments to make. And when all the ballots are counted, even just the ones that arrived before Election Day, it is clear that just as my theory predicted way, way, way back in 2019, Trump got his ass kicked.

Between their vote counting shenanigans and their outright lies, Trump and his Republican enablers have done great damage to the already struggling institution of American elections. Yet, though America is deeply wounded with polarization and hyperpartisanship, her Constitution still stands strong and true against those that seek to betray it.

That said, we are about to endure a presidential transition unlike any the country has ever endured in its history. At noon on January 20th the powers of the American presidency will be divested from Donald Trump and installed in Joe Biden. That moment will, without a doubt, present a significant reduction of imminent danger for our nation and because of our unique role in the world, for the world. But, as our problems pre-date Donald Trump, they will remain beyond his tenure as president. The behavior of the Republican Party, post-election, makes this clear. Depressingly so.

It has been, and it remains, an all-hands-on-deck moment for our fragile democracy. I hope you will join me in its defense.

Rachel

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