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Tarb's avatar

There are a lot of good points in this, but I have a few qualms about the argument that Trump did better in the Democratic/urban areas and worse in the Republican/rural ones, which cost him the election. If true, this is an extremely powerful argument. But there's something you claim that I'm not sure is right:

"If Trump’s performance in cities improved compared to 2016, then that probably isn’t because of fraud. It would be really weird for Milwaukee County officials to fake an election result by giving more votes to Trump than he got the last time. Even if they did do fraud there, it would be the most incompetent fraud in history!"

Looking at the results in Milwaukee County, in 2016, I see 126,069 (28.58%) for Trump, 288,822 (65.48%) for Hillary, and 26,162 (5.94%) for other candidates. In 2020, we see 134,482 (29.25%) for Trump, 317,527 (69.07%) for Biden, and 7,714 (1.68%) for other candidates. And it is true that Trump got more votes and a higher percentage this time. But Biden also got more votes and a higher percentage, and got a bigger percentage increase. So does this really demonstrate that there was no fraud, given that Biden made out better than Trump did? I don't believe there was fraud, but I'm not so sure how well this example serves.

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Phil H's avatar

Hi James. I appreciate your exhaustive list of reasons why we can know with certainty that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, a fact I never had reason to doubt.

However, I have to take issue with your statement that "it's a sin to vote for Joe Biden". I don't think it can ever be a sin to vote for any particular candidate so long as you are reasonablly knowledgeable about the candidate (and not simply his stated positions) and you are doing so for reasons that are not sinful.

And there is a great non-sinful reason to vote for Joe Biden: as you correctly observice, Donald Trump is a threat to the Constitution. More directly, he is an enemy of the Constitution.

I once served in the US Army. I still consider myself bound my my oath to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic". (God help us, I never thought the last 2 words were anything but a formality).

There is a separate reason that voting for Joe Biden in 2024 is less onerous than voting for him in 2020: The Dobbs decision, the culmination of 49 years of prayer and effort, put the protection of the unborn back into play, making realistic progress possible. I can't imagine a future Court trying to reinstate the legal mess of Roe/Casey even if Biden is lucky enough to replace 2 originalists with 2 liberals.

But I can all too easily imagine what Trump could do if he gets another term. I'm pretty sure you can, too.

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