EXPLAINING THINGS ABSOLUTELY NO ONE WONDERS ABOUT: How Donald Trump Could Steal the Election.

The Atlantic has been on a real fever-dream streak lately, and it continues with this piece by Jeffrey Davis, a professor of political science at the University of Maryland.

The danger begins with the fact that, regardless of what people believe, the Constitution does not give Americans the right to vote for their president. Rather, the Constitution says that a college of electors votes for the president, and Article II of the Constitution gives states nearly unlimited power to decide how these electors are chosen. In the early years of the American republic, many state legislatures decided which presidential candidate the state’s electors would support. South Carolina used this method until 1868. Today, all 50 states grant their residents the right to vote for president, and the people’s vote determines which electors from each state will select the next president. However, any state could change its law and instead allow its legislature to decide which electors will choose the next president.

In other words, states have a lot of power in deciding how the election will run. Today, Republicans control 30 state legislatures and Democrats only 19, with one state divided. (Nebraska technically has nonpartisan legislators, but it is a reliably red state, so I include it with the Republican states.) These red-state legislatures control 305 electoral votes, and only 270 are needed to secure the presidency. Presumably, most red states, if not all, would appoint electors who would elect Trump for another four years. Of those 30 states, 22 also have Republican governors, which means in those states there would be no Democratic governor to veto Republican legislation taking away the people’s opportunity to vote for president. Those 22 states represent 219 electoral-college votes—perilously close to the 270 required for Trump to be reelected.

I wonder if Davis would accept a small wager. If Trump wins, I pay him $10 for every electoral college vote for Trump delivered in this fashion, if he’ll agree to pay me $10 for each one that isn’t.

OOPS: China Created a Fail-Safe System to Track Contagions. It Failed. “After SARS, Chinese health officials built an infectious disease reporting system to evade political meddling. But when the coronavirus emerged, so did fears of upsetting Beijing.”

After doctors in Wuhan began treating clusters of patients stricken with a mysterious pneumonia in December, the reporting was supposed to have been automatic. Instead, hospitals deferred to local health officials who, over a political aversion to sharing bad news, withheld information about cases from the national reporting system — keeping Beijing in the dark and delaying the response.

The central health authorities first learned about the outbreak not from the reporting system but after unknown whistle-blowers leaked two internal documents online.

Even after Beijing got involved, local officials set narrow criteria for confirming cases, leaving out information that could have provided clues that the virus was spreading among humans.

Resistance to sending bad news up the chain is typical of any authoritarian regime.

WELL, GOOD: Trump tells Prince Harry, Meghan Markle ‘they must pay’ for security amid reported move to US.

This is the next best thing to a government-ordered media blackout on the couple which would be unconstitutional.

AMERICA: More than 9,000 responded to the Army’s call for medical personnel.

SAN FRANCISCO VIRUS: Pelosi Blames Trump for Coronavirus Deaths.

“VIRTUAL BOURBON” IS MY FAVORITE NEW VIDEO BLOG: Tony Katz Drinks With John Rich of Big and Rich and Redneck Riviera Whiskey.

TAKE A BREAK FROM THE SERIOUS NEWS FOR A FEW MINUTES: Florida Man Friday: Illin’ and Chillin’.

TO BE FAIR, HE ALSO WOULD RELAX BORDER SECURITY AND KEEP TRAVEL OPEN TO CHINA: Biden Backed Pelosi’s Coronavirus Stimulus Obstruction as Millions Lost Their Jobs.

YOU WON’T BELIEVE THE DIFFERENCE: COVID-19: Boris Before and After Pics Stun Brits.

HEH: High-Risk Elderly Man Openly Defies CDC Coronavirus Guidelines. “Biden’s reckless face touching proves he’s not ready to lead.”

SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: China’s Defense Spending Is Larger Than It Looks.

If you account for differences in reporting structure, purchasing power, and labor costs, you find that China’s 2017 defense budget provided 87 percent of the purchasing power of American’s 2017 defense budget.

This runs counter to the conventional wisdom that the United States spends more on its military than the next 12 countries combined or that China lags annual U.S. military spending by close to $400 billion. Those misleading comparisons are based on simply converting Beijing’s reported defense budget from yuan to dollars by applying a market exchange rate. That produces a distorted picture. We must take into consideration several key factors to arrive at an accurate understanding of just how much Beijing is investing in its military.

One key factor—and perhaps the main one that makes accurate comparison so challenging—is how Beijing accounts for its military research and development. Put simply, it doesn’t include it in any of its reports on military expenditures.

On the other hand, Communist QC has never been any good.

WALTER DURANTY, CALL YOUR OFFICE: New York Times Goes Into Full Chinese Propaganda Mode As U.S. Coronavirus Cases Exceed 80,000.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Kevin McCarthy: ‘History Will Not Be Kind’ to Pelosi’s Coronavirus Shenanigans While Millions Lost Jobs.

BLUE ON BLUE: Joe Biden’s description of two gay dads is dripping in homophobic tropes.

I’M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER WHEN HE WAS LITERALLY HITLER: Trump Is an Authoritarian Weakman. “Coronavirus would be the perfect opportunity for an autocrat. Trump isn’t taking it.”

Are you kidding me with this, John F. Harris?

The notion of Trump as authoritarian strongman, however, has been cast in an odd light in this pandemic. Would-be tyrants use crisis to consolidate power. Trump, by contrast, has been pilloried from many quarters, including many liberals, for not asserting authority and responsibility more forcefully to combat Covid-19. Rather than seizing on a genuine emergency, Trump was slow to issue an emergency declaration, moved gingerly in employing the Defense Production Act to help overburdened local health systems, and even now seems eager to emphasize that many subjects—closure of schools and businesses, obtaining sufficient ventilators—are primarily problems for state governors to deal with.

Trump’s apparent personal affinity with Putin, and other dictators, has caused foes to conclude that he has an aesthetic attraction to leaders who don’t let procedural niceties of democracy or law get in their way. But he has shown passivity in what by all rights would be a dream scenario for an authoritarian strongman.

Perhaps the way to think of Trump is as an authoritarian weakman.

I guess the argument here is that we’ve been cursed with a dictator who won’t dictate.

Our chattering class has collectively lost its damn minds.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Beer Blog Fridays Until the Plague Is Over. “We need a respite from this real problem, and I am glad that I have the skills to provide that.”

THAT’S BECAUSE HE’S DOING A GOOD JOB, AND NO AMOUNT OF MEDIA GASLIGHTING CAN HIDE THE FACT: A lot of Americans like Trump’s handling of crisis.

WOW: Billionaire James Dyson Confirms His Company Will Make An Initial Order Of 10,000 Ventilators In The U.K.

PITCHING IN: MIT is developing open-source, $100 ventilators in response to COVID-19 shortages. “The manual ventilator is already being tested by the FDA. Hopefully it will be approved quickly enough to save lives.”

What I’d like to see is all this regulatory cruft shoved out on an ice floe for the retirement it deserves.

PRIVACY: Zoom iOS App Sends Data to Facebook Even if You Don’t Have a Facebook Account.

Also: “Zoom, one of the most anticipated tech IPOs of the year, has one key profit driver: engineers in China.”

Makes you wonder who else Zoom might be phoning home to.

THAT WOULD BE NICE: Game-Changer: Trump Releases Plan to Free Americans Stuck in the House Due to COVID-19.

Here in Colorado, Governor Polis ordered a statewide shutdown just two days after I praised him for sticking with moral suasion.

STUFF JUST GOT REAL: Jobless Claims Last Week QUADRUPLED Previous Record.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Joe Biden Took Four Days to Set Up a Lousy Videoconference and I Didn’t Even Get a T-Shirt.

JIM GERAGHTY: The Comprehensive Timeline of China’s COVID-19 Lies.

Indispensible.

THE CAMPAIGN ADS PRACTICALLY WRITE THEMSELVES: Senate Passes Coronavirus Bill, Proving Pelosi Gambled With Americans’ Lives and Lost.