Are you worried about violence if Harris wins?

Politics & Elections
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41

To answer this question directly, no I don’t think you’re being pessimistic. I’d be very surprised if there’s even a single person on this board that has not considered the possibility of another January 6th or what have you. It’s a very reasonable concern to have.

I’ve noted elsewhere on the board that I have regular conversations with family members regarding politics and this election in particular. My own mother, (mostly non political, definitely leans liberal if you ask her opinion on most subjects, infrequent voter, sees Trump for what he is) asked me if I thought another January 6th was possible.

And this is essentially what I told her. My own take is that January 6th only happened as it did because Trump was president. He deliberately fomented that riot, and he had the pulpit and the gravitas to pull it off at the time. None of that is true now. And with Biden in the White House I firmly believe that there have to be plans in place to counteract another attempt similar to that. And we all know Biden is not going to sit idly by for hours while a mob attacks the capital.

That said yes isolated violent incidences at polling places and state houses and anywhere official election business is happening, I definitely expect that to be a thing. But as I said isolated, not widespread. And I suspect it won’t be more than local law enforcement will be able to handle for the most part. That is if Harris wins. If Trump wins, an increasingly unlikely event it seems like, I wouldn’t care to predict what would happen after that.

If you’re a poll worker, or an election official of some sort I might be concerned about my own personal safety, but again I don’t think widespread violence is likely.

All that said, the political environment in this country is a tinder box right now and it seems to be getting worse in certain areas while getting better in others. Frankly anything or nothing happening on election day or afterward would surprise me. And living in Michigan, a short drive from Lansing, I can’t forget about the occupation of the capitol building back in 2020, or the fact that our governor has had very real threats and plans made against her safety. Quite frankly anything can happen.

The best advice I can give people is to vote and pay attention to the local news. Maybe take the day off from work. Stay away from areas that look like they may have chaos brewing. But I think 99% of people aren’t going to see much in the way of direct violence themselves.

42

This. I’m not that worried about violence from the same folks who threatened violence if the FBI served a search warrant on Mar a Lago, or if TFG was arrested, or if he was convicted of a felony, or, well, you get the point. Even if I were worried about violence, I’d still be far, far, far more worried about the violence TFG intends to do to democracy.

43

Good advice, but with the following caveat: With respect to local news, make sure that your local affiliate is not owned by Sinclair News. All Sinclair stations are supporters of MAGA. Where I live, there is only one local news station that isn’t owned by Sinclair.

It’s easy to check online. Just query the call letters of your local channel followed by the words, “owned by?” If it’s Sinclair, avoid watching that channel if you can.

44

Great advice. We have a local news outlet that has always had pinged my right-wing-o-meter, but almost all of what it publishes is so innocuous that I wondered if it was my imagination. So I tried your suggestion of Googling the name with “owned by.”

It’s not owned by Sinclair News but it is owned by a company that has a hard right agenda, Pipeline Advisors LLC. Now I know my suspicions were correct.

45

I just did that. To the great surprise of nobody, our local Fox affiliate is owned by Sinclair. I watch that channel only when they are showing sports events.

46

It’s awful and very insidious. Many people tend to trust their local news because… they always could. Now we can’t.

I remember when Sinclair aggressively began taking over as many local stations as they possibly could in around 2013-14. When Trump got into the White House in 2017, one of his favorite henchmen, Boris Epshteyn, did regular propaganda pieces on all the Sinclair networks, and those networks were required by Sinclair to air them.

Just something to be aware of.

Re violence if Harris wins, I’m not so sanguine that I plan to flit about recklessly on or around November 5, 2024, through January 20, 2025. My parents really want me to come visit them, but I told them it would have to wait until the election had completely shaken out. That means it will have to wait until at least mid February or March.

I think @ParallelLines nailed it, as quoted by @Jihi. I volunteered to work my local elections this year precisely because I thought they might be short-handed due to potential threats. I guess not, though. They haven’t asked me to help. I guess that’s good…?

47

It’s not that date in particular I’m “worried” about (not actually worried, but that term is unnecessarily vague!), but the months between the election and the certification.

Last go-round, they filled that gap with lawsuits and bitching, only going for the violence at the last minute. This go-round, they know the courts won’t look favorably on their bullshit, and so may choose violence much earlier. So those looking to stop it must remain vigilant for months, not just days or weeks.

48

I concur.

49

ISTM it’s now accompanying the traitor flag as a signalling device.

That didn’t stop the craziness on January 6, 2021. Plenty of them were there with no other pllan than “let’s destroy stuff, let’s hurt people, let’s kill the Dems”. And they got mighty close to doing all of that.

Right. If the Harris wins, the right wing idjits will localize their attacks instead of trying to attack the federal capitol again. If Harris loses, the right wing idjits will go on a destruction and killing spree, killing the “usual suspects” (minorities, and anyone they believe “looks foreign” or “looks Muslim”).

50

I’m a whole lot more worried about violence if Trump wins, as his followers are likely to feel that they won’t be prosecuted for anything they get up to, and as Trump himself would be in a lot better position to get his vengeance plans going.

But I’m not worried about immediate violence in my immediate area. Longer run might be another question. Let’s elect Harris, and not find out.

51

I’m resisting the strong urge to go back to fall of 2016 and pull up the many, many threads about how Hillary is going to win and Trump fer sher has no chance whatsoever to win an election.

However objectively true the above statements may (or may not) be, the reality is that there is a significant tranche of the population that wouldn’t believe it even if you could show it in a color-coded pie chart. There are people who think that Kamala Harris is Pure Evil Hillary Mk 2, and that Walz is a “Stolen Valor” scamster who has lied his way to the governorship, and no lack of evidence supporting those claims will deter them. Trump has certainly lost in popularity outside of his hardcore base but that doesn’t necessarily translate into gains for a ‘liberal’ (sort of) Democrat like Harris, who I’ll remind readers barely broke double digits in the 2020 primaries, and just because she has been given pole position and a virtually guaranteed candidacy this time around doesn’t mean she’s going to be able to sustain the wave of “joy and relentless positivity” through November.

The 06 January protesters were a barely organized rabble at best, and Trump’s last ditch efforts to stop the Senate from counting Electoral College votes after trying and failing to pressure multiple officials to change vote counts or find a way to invalidate votes were as inchoate as they were improvised. But this time around there is a large, better prepared effort to avoid the messiness of challenging Congress, and certainly of attacking what should have been a defensible single target, and instead undermine, pressure, threaten, and perhaps even attack the state-level legislatures and institutions who are actually responsible for certifying Electoral College votes. There isn’t going to be another 06 January insurrection, but expect a lot of shitfuckery, and perhaps even some storming and shooting on 05 November, plus a lot of baseless ‘challenges’ in the weeks following in states where officials may be amenable to throwing out absentee ballots, denying the regularity of voting in unfavorable precincts, and generally contributing to the erosion of democratic norms even if it doesn’t result in invalidating a legitimate presidential election.

And this is assuming that Harris actually wins the Electoral College; in polls, she’s now just far enough ahead of Trump that she’s slightly outside the margin of error (in most polls), and there is a lot of time to stumble or have some external factor compromise her lead and cause voters to respond in fear and sign away their civil rights (those who aren’t already eagerly doing so already). In a sane world, Harris would win easily, but I think it is increasingly clear that Sanity has taken a long term sabbatical for quite a while, and I’m not sure we can rely on His Eminence to return by November.

This isn’t the way voting—or anything—works, and regardless, the “Stop The Steal” contingent doesn’t care about laws, election protocols, or basic facts. Which is potentially an even bigger problem than sporadic violence and intimidation, because without some baseline agreement on what is a basic fact, there is no way to maintain civil society. What has limited these people is their lack of organization or coherence, which is where the cabal behind Project 2025 (and similar efforts on the state levels) comes in. Which is not to say they’ll be successful, but this self-congratulatory backslapping about what stupid idiots Trump supporters are is masking a more organized contingent looking for a way to leverage in and undermine democratic institutions whether lawful or otherwise.

Indeed:

And this is from six years ago; Sinclair has only expanded since. (The attempted merger with Tribune Media failed but Sinclair now owns affiliates in 40% of all American markets.)

Stranger

52

I’m sorry if I gave even a moment’s impression that I believe the election to be in the bag for Harris. Far from it. Your points are (as usual) well made and to be taken seriously.

I do think everyone who intends to vote needs to have a plan. I think we all understand some polling places are going to be dangerous this year. I hope people take advantage of vote-by-mail, only use a drop box instead of the mail (DeJoy). It’s going to be very difficult to vote in some places – intentionally made so. It’s crawl-over-broken-glass time, especially if you (generic you) live in one of the important swing states.

Good idea to make sure one’s voter’s registration remains in place, too. Republicans are purging like mad wherever they can. People can usually check their registration status online. Make sure to check in time to remedy the situation if you’ve been kicked off.

Harris has a lot of ground to gain to win, no question. I only meant that it’s been such a relief to feel my rib cage ease a bit after a decade of unrelenting clenching. I’m still anxious. But the sense of hopelessness has lifted some. I’ll take it.

Meantime, pedal to the metal all the way through to January 20, 2025 – and beyond, if necessary. We’re in scary times.

53

If Donald Trump and JD Vance got into a public argument on stage during a rally, and then pulled out knives and stabbed each other to death, and the Republicans nominated a sock puppet on Ted Cruz’s hand named Foot Fetish Fred for POTUS and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s hairbrush as VP, you’d still have a tight race with all the people who would vote for any Republican candidate.

54

This will keep me chuckling the rest of the night.

I don’t think there will be an issue where I live. It’s a pretty red area, but very small town, and not on anyone’s radar.

Edit to add: I might vote for, “Foot Fetish Fred,” :laughing: as long as he’s not trump. But he’d have to be a Democrat so probably not.

55

Word. Voting for a Republican is a sin, everyone knows that.

56

The circumstance I most wonder about violence is if Trump strokes out during a debate. That might inflame the imaginations of some MAGAts in a way most other events wouldn’t.

Even then, I’m not sure…

57

I’d like to go back to the OP and ask her what sort of violence she’s really expecting? A 100-million person mass armed uprising in nearly every county in the land? Tens of thousands of shootings of folks who look like they probably intend to vote D or actually did so? Unstoppable hordes of jacked-up pickup trucks flying traitor flags crashing into schools and mowing over crowds of pedestrians?

Also, how much violence is “a lot”? We’re 340 million people. 100,000 Americans being killed in post-election violence would be a pinprick on our headcount. And is also IMO 1000x the maximum plausible number of such deaths.

Someone who’d get their undies in a bundle over a dozen deaths is somebody who really doesn’t understand scale.

58

Dammit, @LSLGuy , why’d you have to go injecting logic and reasoning into the thread?

(Seriously, a very good post. It certainly made me rethink the OP’s question. Well done!)

59

I’m worried about right wing violence whether Harris wins or loses, because the American Right has always been violent. It rises and falls, but the violence is always there. The Civil War was an obvious peak in the violence, but they were violent before and they were violent after.

I don’t think we’re quite at the point of something like the Tulsa Race Massacre happening, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like the Oklahoma City Bombing. Whether Harris wins or loses. The big difference is I’d expect Harris to try to do something about it instead of cheer it on like Trump would.

60

This.