When Trump refuses to commit to a peaceful transition Burr and Tillis must fire back

Transfer of power

President Trump stated he will not support a peaceful transfer of power if he losses the upcoming election. Why aren’t Sens. Thom Tillis, Richard Burr and more Republicans condemning him for this blatantly anti-American rhetoric?

On a daily basis Trump falsely claims that mail-in voting is tainted, casting doubt on the election results. He does this to erode confidence in the validity of the election process, which he will then claim is rigged if he losses.

Tillis, Burr and their party colleagues must stand up against Trump’s attempts to undermine the upcoming election. The future of this country depends on them taking the morally correct action.

Gary Hathaway, Durham

A useless debate

Tuesday’s debate between Sen. Thom Tillis and Cal Cunningham was nothing more than an extension of their commercials featuring false accusations, attacks, and unsubstantiated statements about what would happen if their opponent won.

Most of the questions were never answered and the moderators rarely demanded an answer. Perhaps the rules of debates should include not talking about your opponent, but rather talking about what you would do.

Tillis spent his time acting like a Trump clone, while Cunningham mainly talked about where he grew up. Little substance came across.

Joel Glassman, Cary

Shut down NC

The shutdown of UNC on-campus housing left many students devastated, but keeping all students on campus would have significantly continued the spread of the virus to a point where it would become even more out of hand.

North Carolina has already been significantly struggling with the effects of the pandemic. Gov. Roy Cooper must come to terms with the fact that the state’s reopening plan was unsuccessful.

It is vital that stronger restrictions be put in place to help slow the spread. The only viable option at this point is to shut down completely and only reopen when it is safe to do so.

This is ultimately the single-most effective way to slow the spread of COVID-19, rather than denying the dangers that it presents.

Kate Livesay, Raleigh

Supreme Court

A Sept. 22 Forum writer took issue with Sen. Thom Tillis’ statement that a Biden appointee to the Supreme Court would legislate policies. The writer correctly stated that courts are to interpret the law. If judges acted with humility and actually limited themselves to applying the law as written, rather than how they thought it should be we would not be in the contentious state of affairs we find ourselves in.

Gayle Robinson Snyder, Raleigh

This is not a game

Regarding “Tillis caves to Trump on court pick” and “Democrats should be consistent about the Supreme Court, too,” (Sept. 22 Opinion):

A big thanks to Associate Editor Ned Barnett for chastising Sen. Thom Tillis for flip-flopping. Tillis doesn’t have the guts to stand up for human rights or back a Supreme Court justice who would.

While NC Opinion Editor Peter St. Onge did a play-by-play of both parties “flip-flops” on the appropriate time for a president to nominate a Supreme Court justice, he doesn’t name the greater good that must supersede this type of umpiring.

We are talking about taking away civil rights and women’s rights with the next Supreme Court nominee and a continued attack on the environment, the poor, minorities, religious freedoms, governors’ rights, etc.

This is not a game of sports. It’s never the right time to pick the candidate who’ll remove over 150 years of hard-won civil rights.

Jesse S. Kaufmann, Hillsborough

Cherry-picking polls

J. Peder Zane’s “What are the never-Trumpers thinking?” (Sept. 24) highlights Republicans’ strange love/hate relationship with polling.

He says “Joe Biden enjoys no more support among his base than Trump does among his” and that “some polls show movement of African Americans and Hispanics toward the president.”

That’s true enough, if you believe the polls. But those same polls show that 1.) Biden’s base is bigger than Trump’s; 2.) the vast majority of voters of color still support Biden; and 3.) Biden is on track to beat Trump.

Republicans have responded to those inconvenient results by declaring polls are fake and pointing to 2016 polling errors. If the polls are unreliable, you shouldn’t be citing them at all. They don’t magically become more trustworthy when they show good news for Trump.

Personally, I think polls are more accurate than they get credit for. But if they are untrustworthy, the solution is to ignore them completely, not to trust them only when they show results you like.

Andrew Soboeiro, Raleigh