The argument that the Maine vote was just a "beauty contest," and that the real contest takes place according to an arcane process — involving district conventions and then a statewide convention at which the actual credentialed Maine delegates going to Tampa will be chosen — misses the point. As Rachel Maddow explained so cogently the other night, the narrative going into Maine was that Romney’s hot-air balloon was in danger of imploding. Having just been relegated to third place in Minnesota – behind Paul, who came in second – and been gobsmacked by Santorum in Colorado, where he expected to win, Mitt Romney limped into Maine exuding a narrative of decline. Paul’s second place showing in Minnesota set the stage for an upset the GOP establishment could ill afford at that point, and so they took measures to make sure it didn’t happen.
In short, they stole the election fair and square – and that’s just a hint of things to come. Because if Maine’s delegate selection process is exclusively an internal party affair, one that takes place behind closed doors — and is subject to the dictates of the pro-Romney state leadership — then the shenanigans are going to be more like a Soviet party congress circa 1939 than anything resembling the American electoral process.
There are two conclusions we can draw from the mysterious case of Maine’s vanishing voters: first and foremost is that it isn’t a mystery at all, but the result of a deliberate effort to steal the election for Romney. Secondly, if they’re doing it in Maine, they’re doing it elsewhere: indeed, there is plenty of evidence that’s just what they tried to do in Iowa.
If we project the case of Maine’s disappearing voters nationwide, onto all states holding caucuses instead of primaries, then the fraud takes on a scale that threatens to delegitimize the entire process. This at a time when the entire political system is distrusted and even disdained by large portions of the electorate: turnout in the GOP primaries has been significantly lagging this time around, hardly what one would expect from the rank-and-file of a party supposedly eager to overturn the Obama administration. With billionaires buying elections, and both parties under the thumb of the Money Power, ordinary Americans just don’t take elections that seriously anymore. The idea that the electoral process confers any kind of real legitimacy on the victors is a fast-dissipating myth.
Moved by a mindless faith in the future and abject ignorance of the past, the American people are driving themselves and their civilization right over a cliff. Whether this is due to some lemming-like instinct, or the sheer momentum of accumulated past errors, is for the historians of American decline to sort out. Suffice to say here that no single election is going to turn back that process: the disaster awaiting us has been too long in the making.
BATR 2020 Election News
