Which is by the way, the only thing that matters as far as who is elected or not elected President/VP.
It’s a formality normally, but until Congress certifies the result, the election is not decided.
If they keep on refusing to accept returns from a Democrat state win, or what if there are two sets of electors one for Trump and one for Biden.
My point is that people need to stop treating Trump like he’s Lex Luthor. He’s not. He’s not smart enough and he’s not willing to work hard enough.
Do you think somebody like Vladimir Putin plays fifty games of golf every year? Of course not. If he tried, one of his subordinates would organize a coup and overthrow him. Being a dictator means you have to always be watching everyone around you and know what everyone is thinking and doing at all times. Does that sound like something Donald Trump is capable of? He wouldn’t last a week if he was a dictator and had to rely on his own abilities to stay in power.
The only reason Trump stays in power is because he was legally elected and people in this country generally respect the law. If Trump places himself outside of the restraints of the law, he’s also placing himself outside of the protection of the law.
Putin is legally elected. So is Xi Jinping. So was Suharto and Mubarak. What does that have to do with it?
People in those countries respected the law until they didn’t and the institutions were powerless to enforce them.
A tradition of rule of law is one which has to be constantly maintained,it not an eternal state of affairs.
keep your friends close and your enemies closer
And because he is useful to advance the conservative agenda.
As long as those he is useful to do not determine that their uses would be best served by supporting him.
That’s pretty much my point. Trump isn’t really in charge now. He’s basically a figurehead in his own administration. And that’s where the real power brokers want him to be. If Trump tried to take over and give out orders, he’d find himself locked up in a medical unit of some military hospital and the press would be told that he had a nervous breakdown and the 25th Amendment was invoked.
Exactly all this rioting and violence has done it waste the momentum of the peaceful protests. The left had a chance to gather some power votes against Trump, now they have alienated the moderates and have motivated the right. Biden campaigning live is another nightmare, he will sway few away from either not voting or Trump. I could be wrong but I just don’t see it. Europe had more people protesting and doing so peacefully and constructively than the US.
This is a red herring. No one who opposes Trump believes he’s a smart guy. No one who opposes Trump believes he has a master plan.
When someone writes ‘Trump will do X because he thinks it will keep him in office’ it’s NOT short for ‘Trump has figured out this master-stroke.’
It’s short for ‘Trump’s dumb-guy instincts, which to his mind have kept him in gold toilet seats all his life, even though the fact is that others such as his father and Vlad Putin have been bailing him out for decades for their own purposes, will lead him to do X, partly due to support from what Sean Hannity and Chris Ruddy have said to him, and partly because X fits Trump’s own predilections.’
They are not the same.
Inveighing against mythical opponents of Trump who supposedly think he’s a superb strategist–because there are no such opponents–is a waste of time.
Trump’s orders will be followed not because anyone around him believes his self-assessment as a genius, but because it’s easier to do what he wants. Most of the time.
Trump actually is responsive to what his handlers suggest to him; for example, there’s some reporting that claims that Hope Hicks came up with the ‘go to the church and hold up a Bible’ idea. Trump is also responsive to what actual power brokers such as Mitch McConnell tell him. And he’s certainly responsive to what he sees on FoxNews—as well as to what Vlad tells him to do.
However, some substantial percentage of what happens in the Trump Administration is coming from orders by the Big Moron himself. Those orders may largely be the result of how easily-manipulated B.M. is…but even so, technically they are coming from B.M. So “figurehead” is a relative term, here. Trump is not like the Emperor of Japan, or the British Queen, or the King of Sweden, who really are figureheads.
Trump in his lizard brain knows that if he loses the election, then he will spend the rest of his life in court if not in jail. Double for his kids. And we all know Trump doesn’t want to go to jail. He is a cornered rat that will do anything to survive, and that means do anything to stay in power.
I’m going to re-use a post I made earlier today in another threat. It was in response to somebody saying Trump was desperately trying to hang on to power for another four years.
Have you ever taken a life guard or water rescue class?
That is exactly how someone who is drowning acts.
Yeah, I think so. Trump is flailing out in any authoritarian-action direction that anyone suggests to him, on the theory that it will work to keep him in large-arena rallies and out of prison.
In all this discussion of what is being done to keep Trump in power, it’s worth remembering that there are a lot of minds–sharp as well as dull–working to accomplish that goal. And some of what they are doing on Trump’s behalf----vote-suppression; hacking of local and state databases and election infrastructure; social-media efforts to motivate the base and keep everyone else home----some of that will work.
Does Trump deserve the credit for thinking of any of it? No, of course not. Might it work to keep him in the White House? Sure.
In the hours before the election, right wing militias and/or armed blackguards under the direction of Barr will break into and occupy polling places in heavily democratic districts in swing states anywhere they think it’s necessary. Or if the governors order them patrolled in advance, they will show up on election day to effectively keep them closed. You live in those areas and you want to vote, you better do it by mail.
That’s my point. This is not how somebody who has a plan acts. It’s how somebody who is dying acts. We shouldn’t be looking for a rational pattern to what are irrational acts.
I still say he didn’t expect to win in the first place.
You don’t believe that Barr has a rational plan? You don’t believe that McConnell has a rational plan? You don’t believe that the major GOP donors have rational plans?
When people post about things they believe the Trump Administration might do to further erode the rule of law and so remain in power, those people are not posting claims that Donald Trump is smart. That’s not what anyone is saying.
You seem very focused on the idea that because Trump is stupid, therefore there’s no reason to think ahead to try to counter anti-democracy tactics that might be used in coming weeks and months.
But Trump’s stupidity isn’t the deciding factor here. There are lots of people who are not stupid and who are rational, who want very much to keep Trump in power. Why should we stop discussing things they might do?
In other words, Trump’s stupidity does NOT make him harmless–because Trump’s stupidity does not stop his minions and allies from trying to keep him in office. So why keep bringing this up?
People giving Trump rational advice only matters if Trump heeds the advice. And does Trump ever listen to people telling him to do something he doesn’t want to do?
I pointed out above an example of how Trump could have done something that probably would have gotten him re-elected. I’m not a genius. If I figured this out, I’m sure there were plenty of political professionals who did the same and tried to convince Trump to follow the script. He obviously refused to listen.
I don’t care how brilliant Trump’s minions and allies are. They can’t win the election without Trump’s co-operation.
Trump’s stupidity make not make him harmless; we can all see he’s hurting a lot of people. But Trump’s stupidity is going to cost him the election. Because Trump is too stupid to listen to smart advice.
I really do oppose DJT and really do think he is smart.
Why doesn’t he use the N word? And why does he try to make out that he’s on the side of the late George Floyd and family? Because he’s got an excellent sense of how far he can go.
As a businessman, he was highly successful at cheating suppliers. In lawsuits, “where there was a clear resolution, Trump won 451 times, and lost 38.” It takes smartness to hire the kind of lawyers who can win that much.
An A student? He probably never was that. But there are other kinds of smartness.
If he loses the election, it will be because of the economy, not some alleged lack of brains.
Another thing that they teach you in water rescue is that a drowning man is very dangerous, and will attack anything within his reach.
If you let him get ahold of you, you are done for.
I don’t think that he is acting rationally, and if it were just left to him, he’d be floundering around in a rubber room by now. But he does have those around him to turn his irrational demands into actions. He has those who justify, even if completely disingenuously, his words and deeds.
We are all within his reach. He doesn’t need a plan to do a tremendous amount of damage. He just needs people to act on his orders.
Little known secret (which my only corroboration is in two different water rescue classes, with different sponsors and instructors, so possibly grain of salt time*), the reason that a lifeguard rescue can is made out of hard plastic, rather than soft foam, is so you can wack them in the head if they become too dangerous (though that is last ditch option). If you daze them or even knock them out, you are both better off.
That’s the 25th amendment now. We can only hope that those around him are wise enough to use it.
*I tried to find corroboration online, but couldn’t. Anyone else ever take water rescue where they taught this “technique”?
Yes, I was taught that. Once, I was playing the drowning victim, and my rescuer was supposed to go underwater, grasp my hips and turn me around so he could do the cross-shoulder grip. Instead, he pulled me underwater by surprise before I could catch a breath, then proceeded to hold my head underwater as he “rescued” me. I finally started punching him in the head before he let me go.