But I’m starting to think the Inauguration itself may go relatively smoothly.
The massive buildup of security forces is all over the news, the manhunts for right wing extremists are all over the news. Stories of the high-tech investigation around the attack are all over the news.
The groups planning serious violence may pull back and wait for an easier opportunity. They’re under a microscope. The security may keep the crowds of Trump supporters that aren’t bent on organized violence away, they’re paranoid about all the surveillance and troops and stuff.
I think they see the opportunity for a win on the optics, and boy, do they need one.
Joe Biden, surrounded by 20,000 troops and their gear, surrounded by trucks full of high-tech surveillance equipment, the illegitimate President being kept safe by the mighty power of the terrible deep state.
And no protesters, no rioters, no assassins. I can hear the chorus of jackals and hyenas now. FAKE NEWS persecuted Trump supporters with FAKE NEWS stories of how we are all terrorists, it all part of their authoritarian campaign to cancel us!!!
Because when you’re faced with an upcoming crisis and address it so it doesn’t happen, you just wasted a bunch of time and money because nothing happened. Trump Administration playbook - derailing potential disaster before it happens in boring and doesn’t make for good TV.
Yes, it might go okay, at least in DC. It’s only two weeks after the insurrection, so the kitchen lights are on and the roaches are scurrying back under the fridge for the time being. Can’t keep the Guard activated forever, though.
There was absolutely no reason for him to appear. I was actually shocked that he was going to, because all of the other demonstrations were just him waving to his adoring fans as he went to bury his head in a sandtrap at his golf course. That he actually spoke was even more inciting on top of actually appearing.
I believe that if he had not appeared at all, nothing would have happened. Anyone can have a reason to dislike the election or believe erroneously that it was rigged, and you could demonstrate about it all you like. But his appearance made the difference. I really don’t even think it would have mattered what he said unless it was to say, that although disappointed it was legitimate, then it might have actually had a calming effect. What he said was much worse, of course, but even if he had just continued to say that it was illegal and unjust without saying anything about going down to congress, that would have been enough. His appearance + his speech + his actual violent rhetoric are what caused this to occur, though that last one I think would have not made any difference in the outcome.
Thinking like “the enemy” for a moment, if I were part of the radical Republican party and wanted to regroup, I would start with states, but I would attempt to use and attempt to exhaust legitimate, or semi-legitimate means first. One ominous development that is largely overlooked is that in spite of Dems’ successes in electing Biden and two senators from Georgia, they blew their chance at taking the power of the gerrymander away from Republicans. So Republicans will have the ability to rig districts in their favor for another 10 years. That’s a problem.
Another problem - a challenge - is that Democrats are going to be perceived as the party in power at a time when there is going to be tremendous strain on our country. Moreover, the Republicans can still do what they do best when in the minority position: they will simply obstruct.
What I suspect going forward is that they will double and triple down on voting restrictions, but they’ll go further than that. I would not be at all surprised if they use their AGs to prosecute even minor cases of possible voter fraud. They will go after ‘community organizers’ and use the criminal justice system as a weapon against them. They will remove polling stations. They will do everything in their power to try to rig the vote. In fact, this is probably why Georgia’s governor and Sec of State were so pissed off, and maybe why McConnell is, too: part of the plan all along was to try to win back the Senate using semi-legitimate but anti-democratic means. Trump’s ego got in the way.
There were pics/vids of Trump’s crowd getting psyched up before the speech, w/ Trump looking especially ridiculous wearing a pair of boxing gloves. Sure didn’t appear they were intending a measured presentation. Not sure it is actionable - or anything other than further evidence of their assholishness.
FWIW I’ve not read or heard anyone thinking this is over … excepting of course who (I hope hyperbolically) say that our whole democracy is over.
Most everyone understands that those who support Trump have been there all along and that he merely empowered and activated them. Marginalizing them will take time.
I’ll FWIW one step more. If Trump was just a small bit crazier and braver this could have been a lot worse. Given that significant numbers of those in law enforcement and the military accept the crazy conspiracy theories of stolen elections and would follow any commands he gave, an alt world shade nuttier Trump would have given more explicit calls for violent action nationwide with its partisans a bit better organized and better advised to not wear their ID badges and such.
Another thing Republican state legislatures are trying to do and which is flying a little under the radar is changing the way their states allocate electoral votes. Bills have been proposed in Wisconsin and Michigan that will award those states’ electoral votes by congressional district, in the same way that Nebraska and Maine already do. I fully expect the radical Pennsylvania legislature to join in shortly.
The result will be watering down Democratic statewide wins (the Michigan proposal, e.g., explicitly states as one of its purposes to counteract the outsized influence of Detroit metro) without giving up any red state voting in its entirety (Texas won’t do this until the state turns blue as a whole while the legislature remains red). It’s an effective, although tawdry, tactic, in part because I don’t believe there are any similar states on the other side (blue legislatures but red voting for president) who could do this in response. And the gerrymandering for the next decade is only going to get worse in favor of Republicans as they desperately seek to regain power with a minority of the national vote.
I think we need to be careful with this line of reasoning. Biden is notorious for being late. After the election was declared he and Harris were late–albeit not an hour late–for their acceptance speeches and rock music was playing while we waited. We should focus on what was said.
If every state did this I think it would be good but it’s definitely a problem if only states with a certain lean do it. Are the bills getting much traction?
It would be more fair if every state enacted this change but it would still be subject to the ridiculous gerrymandering going on, mostly by the GOP (waves to my legislators down in Annapolis).
I agree. They’ve been working from the ground up, often in concert with groups with Christian theocratic aspirations, to fill state and local office and state legislatures with extremists.
Because of the pandemic, Democrats managed to roll back years of voter suppression. Not that it fixed the gerrymandering or anything, but they managed to make it easy to vote.
But I’m going to make a wild prediction. I don’t like making wild predictions, it makes me sound as crazy as they are. I think I’ve been pretty good at predicting the broad arc of post-election events but even I never would’ve guessed “Trump musters an army on the White House lawn to attack Congress.” That would’ve sounded crazy, right!
But their are two things that I believed happened in addition to Trump riling up the mob who then stormed the Capitol, as per my earlier post.
One is that some people connected to the Trump campaign and the Republican Party arranged for some supporters to gain access to the building, because they thought they’d make a lot of noise right outside the chamber.
We see someone waving a group in. There is that early picture of a group lining up and entering through the velvet roped path. There was story of a cop politely asking a Trump supporter not to smoke. I believe these things happened before the rest of the crowd stormed the place and people with STOP THE STEAL arranged for them to gain entrance.
The other is that some people in that crowd had a very real and serious plan that involved mass assassinations.
And I believe these two things, once connected, will utterly destroy the Republican Party. The remnants will have to regroup somehow, but it’s going to slow them down.
There is an epic financial crime here, and I love studying financial crimes. Republican fundraising is so so dirty, I started looking into it these summer and it was like looking for hay in a haystack. The dumbest thing the Republican Party ever did was quelch the IRS investigation into Tea Party groups, it gave them cover for a massive grift scheme and they probably would’ve won if they hadn’t stolen most of the money they raised.
His latest speech makes it 100% clear that he is capable of coherence. The bumbling, half sentences tumbling from half point to inference are 100% a purposeful affectation that are to insure prosecution would be a challenge. He has weaponized ineptitude, ‘Don’t know him, never spoke to him…’, and ignorance to make him Teflon in court. He’s masterful at it, has raised it to an art form. All his dodgey phone calls? More of the same! The inference is clear, but the words/grammar/sentence structure are a hot mess.
The charges against Sanford are not related to the widely publicized attack on Officer Brian Sicknick, who also was attacked with a fire extinguisher during the siege and died.
Thanks guys, I appreciate the feedback and I’m enjoying the writing.
I’ve always loved to read and sometimes I’ll find a subject that interests me and drill down. So I have some fairly deep pockets of knowledge on certain subject including
Right wing extremism
American religious cults and fundamentalist groups
Corruption in Russia and Ukraine
Financial crimes and schemes of all sorts
The reign of King Henry the 8th
All of that has been really helpful in this moment.
Several election-related bills have been filed by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle — though their aims are in direct opposition, with Democrats looking to ease up laws they see as suppressing the vote and Republicans trying to curb the opportunities for the fraud they say plagued the 2020 election.
It occurs to me that this could be a way for some women to get rid of their useless asshole husbands.
“Yes, officer, I came home and found that my husband had stabbed himself in both eyes with my stiletto heels and shoved my hot curling iron up his ass.” (wipes tear) “Also, here are the passwords to all his social media and cloud storage accounts. Bye.”