A Murmur Before the Buzz

Of course this feels inevitable:

Hillary Clinton is being urged by a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers to call for a recount in three swing states won by Donald Trump, New York has learned. The group, which includes voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, believes they’ve found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked. The group is so far not speaking on the record about their findings and is focused on lobbying the Clinton team in private.

(Sherman)

Two important caveats from New York magazine:

• It would take overturning the results in both Wisconsin (10 Electoral College votes) and Pennsylvania (20 votes), in addition to winning Michigan’s 16, for Clinton to win the Electoral College.

• The academics so far have only a circumstantial case that would require not just a recount but a forensic audit of voting machines.

There is a reason this feels inevitable. Still, though, neither are these signals that should be raising or dashing hopes, nor sounding alarms from sea to shining sea that the Russians have finally won.

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Image note: Photo by Charles Mostoller/Reuters

Sherman, Gabriel. “Experts Urge Clinton Campaign to Challenge Election Results in 3 Swing States”. New York. 22 November 2016.

Something Useless

Sometimes it happens that something strange and seemingly inconsequential occurs, and for some reason you can’t let it go. To wit, Steve Benen of msnbc, earlier today:

It’s generally been assumed that the Republican presidential field in 2016 wouldn’t just be competitive – it’d be enormous. The Huffington Post’s Pollster chart ranking the GOP presidential hopefuls by poll support shows literally 15 candidates.

Now, the truth is that Benen goes on to discuss what is wrong with that thesis, but I also think some of the problem is his own setup insofar as he seems to be simply reminding people of the obvious:

Looking ahead, it’s easy to imagine a Republican presidential field that includes (in alphabetical order) Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, George Pataki, Rand Paul, Mike Pence, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, and Scott Walker. That’s 17 people. It’s also easy to imagine a handful of fringe figures – John Bolton? Herman Cain? – dipping their toes in the water, too.

But I’d bet good money that some of these folks will do exactly what Paul Ryan did: think about running, have some serious conversations with their families and aides, enjoy some of the media attention that comes with being a possible candidate, and then stand down.

Every once in a while, I pause to wonder if Benen one-drafts his blog posts the way we often do in our insignificant corner of the world. And, yes, those occasions often arise because of something like this; one would expect him to tack the punch line onto that first paragraph like a proper thesis, or even in the guise of mere foreshadowing.

A Thought or Three About Thad

Before the conventional wisdom gets too confused—which, of course, requires presupposing that it has not already shown itself befuddled beyond function—it would behoove us to recall that there is nothing new, here insofar as some, when presented with bad choices, play chess instead of checkers. And in considering Mississippi, well, what, really, does anyone expect?

Last week, in a bit of a surprise, incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran survived a Republican primary runoff in Mississippi, thanks in large part to an unexpected group of supporters: African-American voters. Though many are Democrats, many in Mississippi’s black community saw Cochran’s right-wing rival as far more offensive.

Soon after the dust settled, many of those responsible for rescuing Cochran’s career, preventing him from suffering a humiliating defeat, had an idea on how the senator can return the favor: it was time for Cochran to support the Voting Rights Amendment Act, a bill to repair the civil-rights law gutted last year by conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court.

By some measures, the request seemed fairly modest. After all, Cochran had supported the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act quite recently. All his new-found African-American allies were seeking is support for a law the senator has already backed in the recent past.

It looks like Cochran’s rescuers may need to think of some other way for him to pay his debt.

(Benen)

It would seem the problem is that the Republican senator’s spokesman has shown himself insufficiently enthusiastic, which, in many cases, does not actually signify anything. The problem is that if Cochran is to deliver on any obligations to the Democratic voters who helped quash the McDaniel campaign^†, he will have to negotiate treacherous, shallow waters under stormy skies; regardless of whether the long arc of history bends toward Justice, the politics of a Southern white Republican bucking the Party in order to support minority voting rights would seem complicated insofar as having pulled off a spectacular feat of politics the Cochran staff must now try to plot a course to there from here. At the very least, we can expect this will take a little while, so perhaps it is unfair to expect the senator’s spokesman to know exactly what to say. These treacherous waters are also exceptionally unfamiliar to conservatives in the South.

Perhaps, then, Benen’s concerns are stated in too immediate a context. That is to say, it is not so much that he overstates a problem, but, rather, that in focusing on points like, “as of this morning, the Voting Rights Amendment Act still has zero co-sponsors”, we might accidentally undertake a myopic endeavor. The challenge would seem to be to keep pressure on Sen. Cochran to step up and make the policy change. And it might well be useful if that pressure is constructive. Cochran has dug himself something of a hole; refusing to pay this modest moral obligation has potential including the agitation and augmentation of the apparent racial divide in Southern politics. To the other, if the seventy-six year-old Mississippian son of educators can navigate the hazards and swing his policy argument in favor of the VRAA, he might well also open a route for dialogue toward reconciliation between the GOP establishment and black voters.

It is hardly the steepest of prices, but the need is immediate. Cochran just spent a lot of political capital on credit, and the lenders really, really need him to pay this back. And quickly.

And the professional hands know what to do, how to keep the heat up. Not only is the VRAA a big deal for those in need of its help, but this could lead to something even bigger for Republicans, minorities, and the nation in general. That potential return on investment simply reiterates the need for Sen. Cochran to put his hand to the helm, lash his courage to the mast, and find a way through the proverbial storm a-brewin’.

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^† Jamelle Bouie dissects the obvious: “Black voters had to choose between the man they knew—a relative moderate who deals in earmarks and largess—and a new man. If you know anything about Chris McDaniel, this wasn’t a hard choice.”

Benen, Steve. “Cochran already rebuffing those who rescued him”. msnbc. 30 June 2014.

Bouie, Jamelle. “Why Mississippi’s Black Democrats Saved an Elderly White Republican”. Slate. 25 June 2014.