Morning Coffee with Dan - Is Vote by Mail that Much of a Challenge?

As I sip my java this morning, I am troubled by the inconsistencies in the whole Post Office fiasco.

First of all, Cheeto said on Wednesday that the USPS does not have enough funding to manage a vote by mail surge if states went to vote by mail. He than said he will not release the funds to increase their capability to be successful. To quote Cheeto, "They don't have the money to do the universal mail-in voting. So therefore, they can't do it, I guess," Let's see, if you have the capability to fix the problem and refuse to do so, what is inference of that? Maybe I want to underwrite failure because I cannot win reelection if too many people vote. Of course if I keep talking about failure, I will scare off those that would like to do mail in voting during the pandemic which is just as good as a mythical failure that I keep talking about.

What I don't understand about the who mail issue are the numbers. The USPS handles 472 million pieces of mail every day. There were about 158 million registered voters in the 2016 election. If every one voted (wouldn't that be grand), that is still about one third of the mail handled every day by the post office. BTW, the USPS handles about 15 billion, yes with a "B" at Christmas. Why the hell would mail-in ballots be much of a hill for a high stepper like the USPS? I would think the Post Office workers would make the vote by mail as success just to spite him, hoping that a change in the presidency would bode well for their future.

As I said in an earlier post, Cheeto has multiple issues here, including his dispute with Jeff Bezos, and in his petty way, is determined to "take his ball" and stop playing the game. Putting a party loyalist as the chief Post Office assassin raises the stakes in this game to a new high. But you know what? His lemmings in congress won't do a damn thing and we, the taxpayers, will watch a respected organization like the USPS go down the tubes until the Democrats win back the Presidency and Congress. This, like many other institutions Cheeto has disemboweled, will take years to straighten out again.

I'm off to a second cup this morning accompanied by my fresh bagels.