Hi
Could Trump’s invoking the Insurrection Act be a stepping stone for eventually delaying/disrupting the current election campaign and the November Election? It seems that that is what he may be planning. I look forward to your feedback.
Off the top of my head, I’d say yes.
What about the past 4 years of Trump’s political ascendance suggests that he has a “plan”, ever? Trump is Eric Cartman - he lashes out.
His Via Dolo-Racist walk was him lashing out at being called a “Bunker Bitch” across social media.
The Insurrection Act threat is him lashing out at the Governors who oppose him at every turn.
Even if he could conceive of a plan, he hasn’t got the intellectual capacity or discipline to carry it out.
He’ll do a half dozen other outrageous things between now and the election just to change the subject of his inevitable crushing defeat.
How? The Insurrection Act is designed to ensure that law and order is maintained and civil rights protected. How would cancelling elections come under that.
And if he wanted to do so this is not the method. All tye elections do is select electors. Congress has refused in previous elections to accept the returns from specific states, why bother “cancelling elections” if they can simply refuse to accept any return from a Democratic voting state.
Y’know, we all thought he was gonna get crushed the last time out, too. I agree that he’s got a higher hurdle for reelection than most incumbents. He has to deal with there not being an “anyone but Hillary” faction, his own miserable record, and various and sundry other things, but let’s not get too overconfident here.
No. The president does not have the power to delay an election. Congress theoretically does, but the current Congress wouldn’t (for this reason, anyway – it’s conceivable they might vote to do so for public health reasons if there is a huge outbreak of coronavirus in the fall and extra time is needed to coordinate mail-in voting, but they certainly wouldn’t cooperate with a Trump-led plan to impose martial law!)
Also, if for some reason no election is held, it doesn’t stop elected officials’ terms from expiring, so Trump still wouldn’t be president after noon on January 20. Meanwhile, presumably we wouldn’t have had Congressional elections either, so the entire House of Representatives’ terms would have expired on January 3, along with 1/3 of the Senate. I guess that means the next person in line would be the president pro tempore of the Senate (Chuck Grassley right now, but maybe Patrick Leahy if enough Republican senators’ terms expire to leave the Senate with a Democratic majority?)
There are 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats (including two independents). There are 35 seats up in 2020, including special elections in Arizona and Georgia. The breakdown of those up for reelection are 23 Republican and 12 Democratic. So with no election we’d have 30 Republicans and 35 Democrats.
I hope I’m right and that he loses. But much more importantly and expositorily, Trump thinks he’s going to lose. That is what’s making him lash out.
So after a lot of drama and an epic Constitutional crisis, we would end up with President Leahy, who would be … amazingly similar to President Biden.
Of course I just remembered that many states allow the governor to appoint a Senator to fill an empty seat so the governors might be busy filling the senate up.
I don’t recall that thread ever concluding that Trump would and could just stay President by acting like a child. It was controversial even there.
Suppose this scenario happens. Someone from the Pentagon has highly classified info that needs the President’s attention. Who is going to direct him to Trump? Who is going to direct him to the former Speaker of the House? Who is that person more likely to follow? What about the next person who needs the president’s input? The next? Trump-the-not-President makes personnel changes in some department. Who is going to tell that department to implement the changes? Who’ll tell them to ignore him? Who is the department more likely to listen to?
Military and federal law enforcement directly strong arming other governmental entities is the only way I can see it happening, and that’s not usually part of these hypotheticals, for good reason. It could be a huge fucking mess, granted, depending on what Congress’s position was, but I just don’t see it happening this particular way.
He also lacks the self-control to keep any secret plan a secret. If Trump was planning on using the Insurrection Act to interfere with the elections, he would have already posted it on Twitter.
I’m pretty sure Republican party leaders have plans for interfering with the election. (Why would this election be any different?) But they’re not dumb enough to share them with Trump.
Probably not. The tradition is the longest serving Senator in the majority party is chosen as the President Pro Tempore of the Senate. But there’s no requirement for that.
The office is usually mostly ceremonial. But in this scenario of no election, the person elected President Pro Tempore of the Senate would become the President a couple of weeks later. So with all due respect to Pat Leahy, I think the Democrats in the Senate would choose somebody they feel is more Presidential.
By coincidence, a lot of the women who have been speculated about as possible Democratic VP choices happen to be Class 1 or 3 Senators: Tammy Duckworth, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren. So any of them would be eligible for the office.
Trump does a lot of things that “can’t be done”
Trump tries to do a lot of things that are beyond his abilities and fails.
There is no federal election for him to disrupt. There are 51+ states and other jurisdictions that hold elections. Maybe some of the red states would kneel before Zod, but the blues states won’t. There will be an election, and there will be a result. What happens after that is anyone’s guess, but postponing the election ain’t gonna happen.
I suspect Bijou Drains wasn’t referring to Trump’s abilities, but to the inescapable fact that he gets away with stuff.
Stuff such as having a massive buildup of US military forces, poised to shoot down anyone who protests:
Their remarks followed the build-up of troops in the capital region on June 1-2, in anticipation of deploying them in Washington, D.C., where presidential authority does not require additional steps before troops are deployed. National Guard helicopters flew low over Washington to disperse protesters who remained on the streets after a 7 p.m. curfew, while Esper and Milley walked through downtown D.C. observing the Guard’s work.
Many, many people are saying that Trump can’t do this.
But it’s done.
Trump doesn’t want to delay the election. The sooner we have the election, the sooner he can declare victory. Why wouldn’t he want that?
If the Associated Press projects Biden won, he won’t like that. But then he’ll ask for his elector slates to be sent to Washington regardless. And then, Mike Pence, when he presides over the counting of the electoral vote on January 5, 2021, gets to say who he thinks won.
Why would Trump want to delay that?
Trump doesn’t like being called a coward. That’s why he got out of his bunker and walked over and made sure that, for the second day in a row, St. John’s Episcopal Church would be desecrated. Delaying the election he’s determined to win, one way or the other, is the kind of cowardly deed he will avoid.
Correction to #19 – counting of electoral votes, before a joint session of Congress, is scheduled for January 6, 2021, not the day before.