To Trump’s fans, victory isn’t just likely. It’s guaranteed
In the back corner of his small-town biker bar, Ty Poole gestures at a spot where he made what proved to be, in retrospect, a wise decision.
That’s where he persuaded his group of buddies to cancel plans to ride down to Washington for Jan. 6, 2021, the day the Capitol was stormed.
That choice kept them out of harm’s way. Poole believes that if they had gone, they would have been arrested, injured, or injured others.
Now, four years later, he’s feeling doubly vindicated. Now Poole is convinced his candidate, Donald Trump, will return to power anyway, the normal way: At the ballot box.
There’s no doubt in his mind. There was a moment of apprehension this summer, Poole says, as Kamala Harris enjoyed an initial burst of enthusiasm, but his worries have subsided. He’s now certain Trump will win.
“I am. More and more so,” Poole said in his bar in Carbon County, about 160 kilometres from Philadelphia.
“I’m seeing it like it was in 2016.”
His own history with Trump began eight years ago, when Poole and his fellow bikers provided security at rallies, before Trump got Secret Service protection.
He now senses a similar energy again, as a party volunteer, and as a participant in events like a recent town hall where he talked to Trump.
Reasons for Trump optimism
Trump’s fans have reason for optimism: election forecasters 538.com, Nate Silver and The Economist now all have Trump as a slight favourite, as do gambling sites. That’s amid a subtle uptick in national and state polls, strong voter-registration numbers for Republicans, and a historically good start to early voting for them in Nevada. Big investors are now steering cash to stocks expected to benefit from Trump policies, the Wall Street Journal reports.
It’s still a close race, as Silver himself cautions. Democrats can find glimmers of hope in bits of early-vote data and national polls.
Yet the confidence level is stratospheric in this area of Pennsylvania, which has undergone a drastic rightward shift in the Trump years.
Like many in this area, Bob Yevak voted for Barack Obama. When asked why he switched, the businessman, community volunteer, and mayoral candidate mentions a few issues – but, really, he likes the way Trump talks.
Now he’s such a committed supporter he has a photo of Trump surviving an assassination attempt fluttering on a flag outside his auto-body shop.
“He’s going to win with a Reagan-style landslide,” Yevak said in his garage in nearby Luzerne County, referring to the 49-state thumping of 1984.
“More than 40 states – I really believe that.”
There is, in his view, a zero per cent chance Trump loses this election. Literally, none. He doesn’t believe polls showing a paper-thin race.
“You’d have to be stupid,” Yevak says, to vote now for his longtime party, accusing Democrats of mismanaging the southern border, inflation, and global security.
The view from a formerly blue area
This area has, like Yevak himself, undergone a political realignment. It voted Democratic until 2012, then kept shifting right, joining the country’s roughly 2,500 less-populated counties where Trump dominates, versus the Democrats’ 500 urban-and-suburban strongholds.
In a local Republican office, a number of party volunteers used to be Democrats. When asked what changed, they don’t pinpoint one single reason.
A couple mention trade, as the area lost its textile industry after NAFTA. Some mention transgender issues. One refers to Supreme Court cases involving same-sex marriage and a wedding-cake maker. Another mentioned nostalgia – he said Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” tapped into a generalized longing for a bygone era, of patriotism, prayer, and everyone reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at school.
Here’s what all seven people in that office during CBC News’s visit one recent afternoon agreed upon: Rock-solid certainty Trump will win.
They insist they’ve been inundated with visitors requesting Trump signs, having handed out more than usual, at least 1,500. “[It’s] a constant parade. In and out. In and out,” says the party’s county chair, Lee Becker, who predicts Trump will do even better here than 2020.
And if he doesn’t? There’s only one explanation, several said. “Depends on the cheating,” said Darin Dotter, a party officer in Carbon County.
“The cheating,” concurred Alicia Kupec, another volunteer.
This idea resurfaces again, and again, in conversation not only with regular voters but also with members of the party organization who insist Trump cannot legitimately lose this election.
This certainty carries a dark undercurrent
It’s consistent with Trump’s own rhetoric and it foreshadows the turmoil that could follow if he under-performs the current forecasts, and loses.
That’s how the 2020 election aftermath unfolded: he delegitimized the result, his supporters agreed, and they mounted a pressure campaign to derail certification.
By the time that plan failed on Jan. 6, 2021, the Capitol had been attacked, and election officials across the country had been deluged with death threats.
“It was kind of a frightening time,” said Marian Moskowitz, a Democrat who was a member of the electoral college in Pennsylvania four years ago.
She said the threats forced electors to meet at a secret location. On Dec. 14, 2020, she parked her car in a garage, was picked up in a van, and was transported to the site where she helped certify Joe Biden’s win in Pennsylvania.
Michigan isn’t just a crucial battleground state, it’s also become the epicentre of election denial after a 2020 counting error was torqued into ‘proof’ of widespread voter fraud. CBC’s Nick Purdon goes there to learn more about the fallout and how election officials are fighting to restore trust in the system at the heart of American democracy.
Once again, she insists her party has a shot at victory.
Her optimism stems, in part, from where she sits: She’s a county official in a place that has undergone the exact opposite political transformation, away from Republicans.
Her county is the wealthiest in Pennsylvania, and close to Philadelphia, and, in the Trump era, has seen the biggest swing toward Democrats of any of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties.
She predicts the recent pattern will continue: More college-educated voters, especially women, will keep shifting to the Democrats in places like Chester County, where she lives.
Over coffee on the brick-colonial main street of quaint Kennett Square, she says she’s personally spoken to 40 or 50 Republican women who won’t support Trump.
“It’s not easy for them to say they’re voting Democratic – but they are,” Moskowitz said.
“They’re standing up everywhere.”
What if Harris wins?
Democrats admit they’d rather be posting better party registration numbers: Republicans have had their best year in memory, with a whopping 52 per cent edge among Pennsylvania voters who switched their registration from one party to another.
But they insist that stat can be misleading. For starters, Democrats still hold an edge in Pennsylvania’s total registrations. Also, Moskowitz says, some of those registered Republicans are the women voting for Harris.
“[I’ve been asked], ‘Do I have to change my registration to help the Democrats?’ And I say, ‘No – absolutely not!’ We hope you all have a party someday you can go back to,'” she said.
There are other reasons for optimism if you’re a Democrat – women are casting way more advance ballots than men in some swing states; in Pennsylvania, Democrats are not only requesting more mail ballots but returning them faster.
What would happen if Kamala Harris defies the forecasts, and wins this election?
Americans appear braced for a volatile election aftermath, with a high potential for turbulence in the 11 weeks until inauguration day, Jan. 20, 2025.
Three-quarters of Americans doubt Trump would concede defeat if he loses, according to a Pew survey; only one-quarter said the same about Harris.
Another poll found one-third of Republicans said American patriots might need to use violence to save the country.
“If [Trump] loses that’s all gonna come out bad,” said Yevak, who believes only cheating could deprive his candidate of victory.
In a bellwether county an hour east, outside an early-voting site, Pennsylvania voter Nataley Perry, predicted trouble after Nov. 5 – no matter who wins.
She’s another staunch Trump supporter who insists he can’t lose a fair election. Perry pegged Trump’s likelihood of victory in unconditional terms: “100 per cent,” said the woman, who runs an assisted-living facility for Pennsylvania seniors.
If he wins, she expects his opponents to riot in cities. If he loses, she said, Republicans wouldn’t riot like Democrats. They’d do something else, she said.
“There could be a civil war again. I really have no idea what to expect, but something’s going to happen,” said the resident of Monroe County, as she cast a mail ballot.
“I don’t think that the majority of America, if they really, truly voted for Trump, will be quiet, stay silent, at this point.”
Published at Wed, 31 Jul 2024 21:58:04 +0000
In Nikopol, Ukraine, even fire trucks aren’t safe from hostile drones.
That’s why two of the city’s newest fire trucks have anti-drone jammers mounted on them.
A German non-profit group, Ukraine-Hilfe Berlin, donated the trucks and jammers to help replace vehicles and equipment lost in drone attacks.
“Russian drones have been attacking fire-trucks in Nikopol … for some time now,” and have wounded some firefighters, said Vitali Olijnik, a member of the group, via email.
Nikopol sits on the north shore of the Dnipro River across from an occupied portion of Ukraine, meaning the city and its residents are in easy range of incoming drones. The same is true of the city of Kherson, on the same side of the river, about 200 kilometres southwest.
“Apart from artillery fire and missiles, there are a lot of drones which attack [Kherson] on a daily basis,” Tatyana Orgakova of the Ukraine Media Crisis Center said in a recent video after visiting the city.
A local paramedic told the Globe and Mail he receives 10 calls per day about drone attacks on civilians.
Mounting reports from Ukrainian areas along the front lines say civilians are frequently being hurt or killed by Russian drones. The United Nations says “a large portion” of civilian casualties in front-line areas last month involved drones — including roughly half of those in the Ukraine-controlled parts of the region of Kherson.
“This is, tragically, a daily reality for Ukrainians,” said Wayne Jordash of Global Rights Compliance, a non-governmental organization focused on human rights.
“Every day, Ukrainian prosecutors’ offices open criminal cases concerning the suspected use of drones in violation of international humanitarian law,” Jordash told CBC News by email, referring to the intentional targeting of civilians or when aggressors fail to make the necessary distinctions when attacking.
Some reports cite the use of small, first-person view (FPV) drones, which can be rigged to drop explosives on targets below.
Jordash says FPV drones “are an incessant threat” for civilians living near front-line areas, where some have reported “being subjected to sadistic ‘human safaris’ in which they are the target of Russian forces hunting them down.”
More and more drones
Russia launched its wide-ranging invasion of Ukraine 32 months ago, leaving both sides in all-out conflict ever since.
Ukraine has increasingly looked to drones to strike back, using an assortment of types to hit targets near and far from the front lines.
Oleksandra Molloy, a senior lecturer in aviation at Australia’s University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra, says Ukraine had a small number of domestic companies involved in drone production and services at the war’s outset. Today, there are scores of companies working in this space.
“It was absolutely exponential growth,” Molloy said, noting Ukraine needed to not only develop and test the drones, but ramp up production and make them available on a continuous basis to the military.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said early this month the country can now produce four million drones annually. He said last week said that Kyiv has purchased and provided one million of them for the front.
Yet alongside Ukraine’s own advancements, Russia has developed drone capabilities of its own.
Molloy says there are changes on the battlefield all the time, with new drones and new counter-measures being rapidly invented and implemented.
“It’s all evolving and developing as we speak,” said Molloy, the author of a newly published paper on the lessons learned from the use of drones in the Ukraine war.
Dangers across Ukraine
Bigger and longer-range drones can also wreak havoc — including in areas farther afield, like in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, where authorities say a child and two other people were killed on Tuesday in an overnight attack involving what Ukrainian media identified as Shahed-type drones — a type of kamikaze drone that’s considerably larger than an FPV drone.
Earlier this month, in the Black Sea port city of Chornomorsk, another attack involving similar drones saw at least one slam into an apartment building and cause a fire.
Chornomorsk Mayor Vasyl Huliaiev said the attack had hit “a peaceful city” and that “everyone understands that they target civilian infrastructure, which is very bad.”
Russia has denied targeting civilians, but its missiles and drones have routinely struck Ukrainian population centres.
Jordash said Russia has “weaponized drones extensively in attacks on civilian targets,” and he pointed out that incoming drones pose dangers even if they do not reach their intended targets.
“There are devastating consequences that may still occur due to falling debris of intercepted drones,” he said.
Ukraine’s own long-range attacks on Russian soil have tended to strike military and industrial targets — including air bases, oil refineries, fuel depots and naval ships. But its drones have also made appearances in Moscow.
‘There is no single answer’
Many variables come into play when defending against drones.
“There is no single answer for that,” said Molloy. The specific attributes of the attacking drones, their ability to evade detection and the tools the defending side has at its disposal, all factor into the mix.
She says stopping smaller drones can be challenging — because large-scale air defences aren’t necessarily the right tool.
“We can’t really spend those air missiles and air defences systems against … one or a few drones, it won’t be really sustainable,” said Molloy.
Jordash says forcing Russia to end the war is the most effective way to stop the harms that civilians are facing.
He said the invasion is “an illegal act of aggression,” which leaves states obliged under international law to work together to stop it.
“It seems quite obvious that the Ukrainian people have suffered the brunt of this unjust reality for long enough, and appropriate measures must be taken to remedy this serious breach,” Jordash said.
Published at Thu, 11 Apr 2024 22:52:23 +0000
