Yes, this is what would work. You need a massive work stoppage.
For example if Biden wins but Trump refuses to leave and somehow isn’t removed.
You tell people, stay at home, don’t work at home, await further instructions from president Biden.
There’s no insurrection, nobody to shoot at, just a grinding halt.
It’s a fantasy really, you wouldn’t be able to get enough people to do it.
It doesn’t, but as the maxim (“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”) states, it is vastly easier to take the actions that will lead to an overwhelming victory than to try and undo the damage of a stolen election. Maybe I was fighting the premise of the OP, but since all the previous replies were proposing cures, I thought I should at least mention the prevention option.
And I’m sincerely urging all my fellow Dopers who value American democracy to take some action to help all Democratic candidates now, and through election day. Don’t just hope someone else will fix it! Do your part! Volunteer, donate, organize, urge friends, especially young people, to register and vote. Save our country.
This is, without a doubt, the most important election in the history of the United States.
I wouldn’t agree with this - 2016 was the ‘ounce of prevention’ that would have prevented 2020, and should Democrats lose in November, they will undoubtedly bring out this mantra again in 2024, claiming that 2024 is the most important election in history.
And people said 2004, 2008, 2012 were the most important elections, too.
But I digress.
Just because it was the most important election in history doesn’t mean that the next one won’t be more important. It just means that the stakes are higher.
It is possible that circumstances may make the stakes even higher in 2024. I don’t know how that it possible, but I wouldn’t have thought that the position that we are in right now was possible either.
If we are in the world series, and it is game 4, and I am sitting on 3 wins, then this game will be the most important game of the series so far. If I lose that game, then the next one will be the most important game. It doesn’t mean that the last one was less important, it doesn’t mean that it was hyperbole, it just means that the stake have gotten higher.
Let’s say you are at dinner, and a guest spits on the main course. If someone says that’s the most disgusting thing they’ve ever seen at a dinner table, is that hyperbole? If the guest then gets up and takes a shit on the table, are they just bringing out a mantra when they now say that this is the most disgusting thing they have ever seen at a dinner table/
You probably couldn’t even get me to do it, and I’m the one that mentioned it. (Though I didn’t come up with it myself - I read it in this article in the ‘judiciary coup’ thread in Elections.)
Like I said, I’m in the minority of people who could stop working for six months without risking starvation or homelessness, but I would still be risking the loss of my job if my employers didn’t agree that an economic shutdown was worth the loss of half the year’s income. And I don’t feel comfortable risking my job.
I agree, but I see it as a two-parter. First we have to do everything we can to win big, so no semi-reasonable person could argue that Trump refusing to leave would be anything but a naked coup. Then, if Trump tries to pull the coup anyway, claiming the size of the margin just shows how massive the “deep state” conspiracy/fraud was, we have to be ready to resist. As I said upthread, I don’t think the resistance would have much chance of prevailing in the case of a narrow and contested election—so the first part, making sure the margin is huge, is absolutely a crucial component. Necessary but perhaps not sufficient.
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Mr. Esper held an extraordinary news conference in which he broke with the president and said that active-duty troops should not be sent to control protests. His words so angered Mr. Trump that the president had to be persuaded not to fire him, aides said at the time.
General Milley publicly apologized for the walk across the park. “I should not have been there,” he said in a video address to National Defense University. His apology also infuriated Mr. Trump.
Both men are still in their jobs for now. On Thursday, the general reiterated his position on keeping the military out of the 2020 election when he urged American service members around the world during a video question-and-answer session to “keep the Constitution close to your heart.”
His words were subtle, but those watching knew what he meant.
————
Emphasis mine.
Reassuring to hear these words being sent out from the top brass to servicemembers across the world. But alarming to think that we are actually in a situation where this type of reassurance would even be needed!
ETA: I could not get the quote function to work on my phone, so I added in dashes to set off the quoted text from the article.
So let’s say Trump steals the election. What targets do Biden supporters go after exactly? (Or vice versa, a Biden win)
Do they hold the 9 Supreme Court justices at gunpoint and demand they issue a new ruling?
Do they hold Congress at gunpoint and demand that 26 House delegations vote for the candidate of their choice?
The U.S. electoral system is so decentralized that there is no single point of failure or linchpin, hence no one specific target to go after.
I object to the constant framing of this as about using guns and violence. No one IIRC in that crowd in Moscow in 1991 had guns or took anyone hostage. But you can’t continue to run government if the streets of DC are filled with millions of protesters. You can’t run the economy if there is a general strike (including a mass walkout of teachers like my wife). Etc.
You certainly can when you use the secret police and allied white terrorists to enforce order, and the good guys’ attention span lasts all of a week before moving onto a new crisis you’ve created.
The American public has shown that all they’re willing to do is join an occasional protest. And when that clearly doesn’t do anything, join another one and post on social media. That’s not fighting for democracy, that’s just political masturbation.
Protests don’t matter. Voting doesn’t matter. Phone calls don’t matter. Donations don’t matter. Volunteering doesn’t matter. Mailing doesn’t matter. Because the popular vote doesn’t matter, and none of the Democrats’ electoral tactics meaningfully challenge the gerrymandered corruption of Congress and the Electoral College or the authoritarian corruption of the Executive branch or the self-imposed surrender of the Supreme Court. When they had power the democrats did nothing except appeasement. When the GOP had power they moved society decades backward, because they were willing to use scorched earth tactics. It’s time for the good guys to stop trying to place nice.
This country is fucked not because the masses are evil, but the masses aren’t willing to do what it takes to save the country. The GOP is certainly willing to do whatever it takes to destroy it in order to cement power.
There’s no winning this without mass destruction. A general strike would count, but that’s even less likely than mass violence. Americans at least have a passing understanding of successful uses of violence in our history. Economic sabotage is hidden away from decades of propaganda.
Recent history suggests that Americans aren’t prepared to make that kind of sacrifice even when it might save human lives. I don’t think saving democracy will be any more of an incentive.
If they were serious about saving the country instead of themselves, Democrats would be rallying their considerably pissed off base into mass direct action, walking out of congress, mobilizing national guards against white supremacists, divesting from Republican businesses, encouraging the occupation of essential government buildings and processes, etc. But instead they’re just doing business as usual and begging for another Obama. They have absolutely no vision for the future or any long term strategy for power. They are outmatched and outgunned, and really in complicit in the death of the USA through their continued legitimization of a broken and corrupt system. Fighting for democracy will not happen under their watch.
It’s true, you can’t get them off their asses when you need to and you can’t get them ON their asses when you need to.
Maybe promising everybody a new 5G iPhone would do it.