Election 2020 – The Color Revolutions Are Coming Home

DISPATCHES FROM MOON OF ALABAMA, BY "B"
This article is part of an ongoing series of dispatches from Moon of Alabama

THIS IS A REPOST>
Yesterday the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party Joe Biden was allowed to leave his basement for a "campaign event" in Pittsburgh.

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Here is one of the curious things he said (vid):

"Covid has taken this year, just since the outbreak, has taken more than 100 year, look, here's, the lives, it's just, when you think about it."

Gotta re-up the adderall and seroquel ASAP pic.twitter.com/P1vkiUbslQ

— Secular Talk (@KyleKulinski) August 31, 2020

As Caitlin Johnstone sarcastically commented:

It's a good thing Obama intervened to coalesce the party against Bernie Sanders during the primaries or else they might have nominated an unelectable candidate.

During his speech Joe Biden rejected accusations (sic) that - if elected - he would implement policies that most Democrats favor:

"I am not banning fracking," Joe Biden says in his speech in Pittsburgh. "Let me say that again. I'm not banning fracking, no matter how many times Donald Trump lies about me."

A pro-Trump super PAC has aired ads in Pennsylvania falsely claiming Biden wants to ban fracking.

The same holds of course for Medicare for All.

Biden also said:

"Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting."

To which Kyle Kulinski remarked:

No normal human being with half a brain thought Joe 'crime bill' Biden was pro rioting and looting. But now he breathes life into the smear with this crap.
They have the political instincts of a dead gopher.

And Alan MacLeod snarked:

2020 election is like:

Trump's team: "Biden is a radical who'll give you healthcare, promote racial justice and fight the billionaires."
Biden: "I promise you I will do none of those things."

Biden is taking political positions that are way more conservative than his party's base. That may win him some republican votes but it also makes sure that the more progressive voters will not turn out or will vote for some third party candidate. 

Asides from that it is obvious that Biden has some mental problem. That is likely the reason why the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi urged him not to debate Donald Trump:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Thursday that former Vice President Joe Biden cancel his three scheduled debates with President Trump because the commander-in-chief would "belittle" the forum and engage in "skullduggery."

"I don't think that there should be any debates," Pelosi said out of the blue at a news conference at the Capitol, saying she doesn't want the debates to be "an exercise in skullduggery."

"I wouldn't legitimize a conversation with him, nor a debate in terms of the presidency of the United States. Now I know that the Biden campaign thinks in a different way about this."

The Biden campaign indeed wants three debates between Biden and Trump:

"As long as the [debate] commission continues down the straight and narrow as they have, I'm going to debate him," Biden said, adding that he'd call out any Trump lies in real-time.

"I’m going to be a fact-checker on the floor as I’m debating him," he added.

The quotes above demonstrate that such a "fact checking" strategy for Biden comes close to political suicide. If there are live debates between Biden and Trump the more confused old man will lose out. That is - for now - Joe Biden.

The Democrats know that. They are preparing a well known tactic to snap some victory from the likely defeat. As we described in a piece about Belarus some months ago:

Color revolutions are usually launched over controversial elections. The results are publicly put into doubt even before the election begins. When the results finally arrive western media will claim that they diverge from the expectation it created and therefore must have been faked. People will be pushed into the streets to protest. To increase the chaos some sharp shooters may be put to work to fire at the police and at protesters like it was done in Ukraine. The revolt ends when it is flogged down or when the U.S. favorite candidate is put into place.

If one replace 'U.S. favorite' with 'borg favorite' one can foresee how such a situation might develop.

Democrats under Hillary Clinton advisor John Podesta have war-gamed such scenarios. Their "Transition Integrity Initiative" report presumes, without much basis, that Trump will steal the November election:

Like many authoritarian leaders, President Trump has begun to lay the groundwork for potentially ignoring or disrupting the voting process, by claiming, for instance, that any mail-in ballots will be fraudulent and that his opponents will seek to have non-citizens vote through fraud. Similarly, he has frequently expressed the view that he is entitled to additional time in office and that his opponents are seeking to steal the election.

Diana Johnstone has looked at the details of the report. She concludes:

The classic regime change scenario involves a contested election, mass street demonstrations including civil disobedience and finally, military intervention.

So, to start with, the gamers posit an authoritarian leader who won’t step down. That’s Trump.

Next, “a show of numbers in the streets – and actions in the streets – may be decisive factors in determining what the public perceives as a just and legitimate outcome.” In an interview, stressing “the flaws in our electoral system,” Transition Integrity Project organizer Gilman saidthat what we need “is for people to be prepared to take to the streets in nonviolent protest” if appeals to officials do not suffice.

“We’ve learned over the last couple of months, since the Movement for Black Lives protest really took off again in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, that taking to the streets and showing commitment to a democratic process beyond just the ballot box is a really important part of driving change.” The demonstrations must be nonviolent, Gilman stressed.

As the Transition Integrity Project report put it, “the scale of recent demonstrations has increased the stakes for the Democratic Party to build strong ties with grassroots organizations and be responsive to the movement’s demands.”

The Democrats are ready to litigate the election as long as possible:

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden told supporters Wednesday night his campaign assembled a team of 600 lawyers to fight against efforts he expects from President Donald Trump to limit voter participation in the upcoming election.

The former vice president made the remark when asked at a fundraiser what he planned to do to address the "very real concern" that the president would try to suppress the vote.
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The team of 600 lawyers, along with 10,000 volunteers, would be in every state to figure out if any "chicanery is likely to take place."

A week ago Hillary Clinton urged Biden to not concede the election "under any circumstances":

[Clinton] said this year’s election day results might point to Trump having a narrow advantage. But in that case, Clinton said, “Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is going to drag out.”
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“Eventually I do believe he will win if we don’t give an inch and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton said.

The task to preemptively seed doubts over the election results fell to a company that serves the Democrats' campaigns:

A top Democratic data and analytics firm told "Axios on HBO" it's highly likely that President Trump will appear to have won — potentially in a landslide — on election night, even if he ultimately loses when all the votes are counted.
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Way more Democrats will vote by mail than Republicans, due to fears of the coronavirus, and it will take days if not weeks to tally these. This means Trump, thanks to Republicans doing almost all of their voting in person, could hold big electoral college and popular vote leads on election night.
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"When every legitimate vote is tallied and we get to that final day, which will be some day after Election Day, it will in fact show that what happened on election night was exactly that, a mirage," [Hawkfish CEO Josh] Mendelsohn said. "It looked like Donald Trump was in the lead and he fundamentally was not when every ballot gets counted."

It seems clear that the Democrats will contest the election unless Joe Biden wins an electoral college majority. If Trump wins they will draw out any concession until the last mail in vote is counted and litigated through the last level of jurisdiction. They hope that the accompanying media attention, social media marketing and street action will wear down the support for Donald Trump.

The Democrats have already bought an echo chamber that will amplify whatever claim they will make:

The group, Defeat Disinfo, will use artificial intelligence and network analysis to map discussion of the president’s claims on social media. It will seek to intervene by identifying the most popular counter-narratives and boosting them through a network of more than 3.4 million influencers across the country — in some cases paying users with large followings to take side.

The large tech companies will work on the Democrats' side:

Facebook is preparing steps to take should Mr. Trump wrongly claim on the site that he won another four-year term, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Facebook is also working through how it might act if Mr. Trump tries to invalidate the results by declaring that the Postal Service lost mail-in ballots or that other groups meddled with the vote, the people said.

Street action will be implemented by well financed groups:

The Open Society Foundations, the philanthropic group founded by the business magnate George Soros, announced on Monday that it was investing $220 million in efforts to achieve racial equality in America, a huge financial undertaking that will support several Black-led racial justice groups for years to come.
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Of the $220 million, the foundation will invest $150 million in five-year grants for selected groups, including progressive and emerging organizations like the Black Voters Matter Fund and Repairers of the Breach, a group founded by the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II of the Poor People’s Campaign. The money will also support more established Black civil rights organizations like the Equal Justice Initiative, which was founded by the civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson and depicted in the 2019 movie “Just Mercy.”

The Open Society Foundations will invest an additional $70 million in local grants supporting changes to policing and criminal justice. This money will also be used to pay for opportunities for civic engagement and to organize internships and political training for young people.

With so much money in play a lot of people can be incentivized to take to the streets. These will be 'peaceful protests' but rioting may happen alongside them just as it did for the last 95 days in Portland and in many other places.

The Democrats have chosen an extremely weak candidate. To still have a chance to regain the presidency they are preparing for a strategy that is similar to the color revolutions the CIA has for many decades used against unwanted foreign governments.

Just like the weapons and tactics of foreign wars have found their way back into the streets of U.S. cities the color revolutions the U.S. applied elsewhere are now coming home.

I see no sign that Trump will sincerely contest the election should the vote be clearly against him. But the race is tight and the outcome will likely be decided in a few contested states. The Democrats are willing to battle for each of them. How can Trump respond to their plan to win a contested outcome by the means of a color revolution no matter what?

The best policy is likely to take the high ground and to expose the Democrats' campaign for what it is.

But Trump being Trump will not have the patience to sit through the process. He, and his supporters, will likely counterattack with all the means they have.

The lively street actions of the recent weeks may in retrospect look like the quiet before the storm.

Posted by b on September 1, 2020 at 18:09 UTC | Permalink

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