But that really is a false equivalence, as you state. Hawaii created a slate of alternate electors, in case the recount changed the result. But only one slate was endorsed by the governor; only one slate was presented at the Electoral College.
Having "alternate electors", who were not endorsed by the governor, and who didn't win the recount (or the court case), show up at the electoral college anyway, claiming to be the real thing... that is a whole different deal. It's not a good-faith contingency plan for if you win the recount; it's a bad-faith attempt to overthrow the vote after you lost the recount.
Wikipedia is an aggregate of "reliable sources" (read: left wing media outlets) and as such cannot be trusted as a source of fact in political matters. My spin is that I don't trust most of the claims made in the article.
For the sake of argument I will assume the article is entirely accurate. I don't care overmuch, honestly. I am not the biggest fan of democracy in general. It doesn't seem to work very well. China is running circles around us and they are not worried about voting for parties.
Not a supporter of him, but fairly conservative, in a very red, very pro-Trump area. Really wouldn't even consider myself a Republican. But until someone decent on the Democrat side comes along I'll probably hold my nose and vote red, and I can honestly say I've never voted for Trump.
Trump appeals to a large swath of the disenfranchised. Mostly white (though quite a few black and latino - at least in my area), blue collar, conservative, Christian, mostly middle class. In the mid to late 00s the Democratic party had built a minority coalition with support from upper middle class white people. And it worked pretty well for about a decade. But they took it too far. I think Obama is largely to blame for this - his 2012 campaign was seen as being based entirely on denigrating middle class white people (not my words - the sense I've gotten talking to neighbors and from listening to talk radio). Then it compounded with Hillary's run in 2016. "A basket of deplorables" and so on. So all those middle class white people - they got fed up with constantly being called racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic colonizers. They got angry. Trump was the response to all that.
The other thing you should know is that Trump is an insult comic - same beats, same tenor. You probably don't think he's funny but if you talk about him he's going to come back and insult you in the worst ways possible (which can be funny if you like insult comedy and aren't the target). Not presidential AT ALL, and most on the left don't know how to handle that. But the disenfranchised he's catering to - they are eating it up. Thus he's built an army of diehard supporters. He's saying the things they like to hear, making fun of the people who have made fun of them, coloring the landscape with the right things (a decent economy in his first term, highly patriotic themes like renaming DoD to DoW, hating on the left, etc). THEN you had the insanity of draconian and unscientific COVID responses, BLM riots, trans issues, safe spaces and micro-aggressions, and a Democrat president that was sadly and effectively a dementia patient. The response to the first Trump term by the left was not healthy. All they had to do was not go insane, but they did, and now you get him again.
All that to say that his base is going to back him up. If Trump says that there were fake electors his base is going to believe him. He could say (and has) just about anything and a large MAGA contingent will happily follow along. Not only do they feel represented by him but the left has acted so foolishly in response they feel justified in doubling down on that support.
kevinfiol|5 days ago
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_United_States_presidentia...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot#1960_...
AnimalMuppet|5 days ago
Having "alternate electors", who were not endorsed by the governor, and who didn't win the recount (or the court case), show up at the electoral college anyway, claiming to be the real thing... that is a whole different deal. It's not a good-faith contingency plan for if you win the recount; it's a bad-faith attempt to overthrow the vote after you lost the recount.
eudamoniac|5 days ago
For the sake of argument I will assume the article is entirely accurate. I don't care overmuch, honestly. I am not the biggest fan of democracy in general. It doesn't seem to work very well. China is running circles around us and they are not worried about voting for parties.
microsoftedging|5 days ago
> I am not the biggest fan of democracy in general
So fraud is an acceptable vehicle to uproot it?
slater|5 days ago
brodouevencode|4 days ago
Trump appeals to a large swath of the disenfranchised. Mostly white (though quite a few black and latino - at least in my area), blue collar, conservative, Christian, mostly middle class. In the mid to late 00s the Democratic party had built a minority coalition with support from upper middle class white people. And it worked pretty well for about a decade. But they took it too far. I think Obama is largely to blame for this - his 2012 campaign was seen as being based entirely on denigrating middle class white people (not my words - the sense I've gotten talking to neighbors and from listening to talk radio). Then it compounded with Hillary's run in 2016. "A basket of deplorables" and so on. So all those middle class white people - they got fed up with constantly being called racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic colonizers. They got angry. Trump was the response to all that.
The other thing you should know is that Trump is an insult comic - same beats, same tenor. You probably don't think he's funny but if you talk about him he's going to come back and insult you in the worst ways possible (which can be funny if you like insult comedy and aren't the target). Not presidential AT ALL, and most on the left don't know how to handle that. But the disenfranchised he's catering to - they are eating it up. Thus he's built an army of diehard supporters. He's saying the things they like to hear, making fun of the people who have made fun of them, coloring the landscape with the right things (a decent economy in his first term, highly patriotic themes like renaming DoD to DoW, hating on the left, etc). THEN you had the insanity of draconian and unscientific COVID responses, BLM riots, trans issues, safe spaces and micro-aggressions, and a Democrat president that was sadly and effectively a dementia patient. The response to the first Trump term by the left was not healthy. All they had to do was not go insane, but they did, and now you get him again.
All that to say that his base is going to back him up. If Trump says that there were fake electors his base is going to believe him. He could say (and has) just about anything and a large MAGA contingent will happily follow along. Not only do they feel represented by him but the left has acted so foolishly in response they feel justified in doubling down on that support.