If the USPS slows down, mail-in ballots won’t be the only collateral damage, says Philip Rubio.
On Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump took to Fox Business Network to say the quiet part out loud: He is holding up funding of the U.S. Postal Service because “that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.”
The idea that Trump might block emergency funding and hobble the U.S. Postal Service carried a special shock because of its impact on the election—but it’s only the latest shot that the venerable agency has taken from Trump during his presidency. Over the past two years, he has mocked the Postal Service as “a joke” and a “Delivery Boy” for Amazon. But lately there’s been real heat — blocking the USPS’s requests for billions in pandemic-related emergency funding, which has bipartisan support in the Senate, and installing as the new postmaster general a political loyalist who has reshuffled at least 23 senior postal officials over the last three months.
As a result, an agency as old as the U.S. government—which employs roughly 496,000 people, and which Americans count on for everything from utility bills to Amazon purchases—is suddenly, visibly struggling to do its job.
“Things are already going wrong,” says Philip F. Rubio, an expert on the U.S. Postal Service and professor of history at North Carolina A&T State University. There are “widespread mail slowdowns of all kinds of mail — first-class, marketing mail, parcels. Even the Veterans’ Administration has complained that veterans are not getting their medications on time.”
For the president to admit to deliberately trying to slow the mail process in order to curb mail-in voting is “stunning, because it is political sabotage,” says Rubio, himself a former letter carrier who spent two decades working for USPS. “He’s using his power of the veto [to hold up funding and] to interfere with the democratic process.”
……..
There is, says Rubio, a real political risk in all of this for President Trump and the Republicans who support his USPS defunding. In 1970, after President Nixon’s tough-love treatment of postal workers led to a wildcat strike among letter carriers, public opinion quickly swayed in against the president.
……..
All of this makes for a volatile election season: People stuck in their houses are increasingly reliant on the postal service to deliver purchases and medicine as they avoid in-person shopping, and increasingly aware of its problems. The president, meanwhile, appears to be betting that crippling the postal system will be more helpful to him on Election Day than it is politically harmful.
……..
- Discussion
-
For Trump to admit to deliberately trying to slow the mail process in order to curb mail-in voting is “stunning, because it is political sabotage,” says Philip Rubio, a history professor and expert on the U.S. Postal Service.https://t.co/x5KPnxhTfB
— POLITICO (@politico) August 13, 2020
President Trump said Thursday that he opposes funding for the United States Postal Service and election security grants in an effort to stymie mail-in voting for the upcoming presidential election https://t.co/qefQT6BbhZ pic.twitter.com/yOWBZ5qXJA
— POLITICO (@politico) August 13, 2020
A number of those for whom voting by mail is a godsend — the elderly and the sick, for example — are Trump voters. So if he is successful in preventing mail-in voting, he could be disenfranchising some of his own voters. He could lose just because those who would have put him over the top could not vote for him.
Wouldn’t that be ironic?
The idiot also doesn’t realize that problems with delivery also affect other aspects of many people’s lives. The article mentions veterans getting their medications, but the same applies to a lot of older people like yours truly. I get many of my meds by mail and these days, I can no longer wait till I’m down to a 10 day supply. For some I’m reordering the next refills 2 weeks after I get the previous refills.
The Dems have been smart enough to seize upon this matter and use it to their advantage. Look for attack ads depicting Trump as not caring for those who depend on USPS not only for voting, but for what they need to stay alive and healthy.
Now I read Trump says he might sign off on funding USPS if he gets certain concessions from the Democrats in this coronavirus relief bill mess. Basically, he is holding the USPs hostage — and by extension, those who depend on the postal service too. I hope that will be a theme of one of the Dems’ campaign ads. Or maybe the Lincoln Project?
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.