Yet McConnell said that he would support Trump if he ran again, because he could be elected.
Where in the Constitution does it even hint at conflict of interest being an issue?
Unless the founders believed that every election would involve a totally new set of actors - which there is no evidence of, and plenty to the contrary - they must have realized that at some point VPs would count votes for their own election. They absolutely did not think this would ever be a problem.
Smarter but still anti-democratic Republicans like McConnell oppose a coup for the simple reality that they know enough about how the world works, and history, to understand that a coup fucks over people like them. A coup and a dictatorship leave very little room for a stage or power for lower level politicians. Dictatorships don’t suffer alternative politicians, the only people with power in a dictatorship other than the dictator are high ranking Generals and close apparatchiks of the regime, and McConnell realizes he would be neither of those. The long term end game is very bad for anyone in a McConnell style position in a coup. This is actually true for most Republican legislators and Governors, actually.
I’m one who does think American institutions are more resilient than most people here, but we’ve argued about that in other threads. The reality is the only defense against a Trump style autogolpe is violent resistance, that would be its nature be illegal. But under the same premise of our forefathers–a ruler who acts outside the bounds of justice and natural rights, is no longer worthy of their rulership, and we have an innate right to resist and reject them. This would, IMO, mean every Democratic Governor declaring that Federal authority no longer exists in their states, calling on as many members of their national guards as will answer the call to come serve them to defend against Federal incursions, and to seek to open negotiations with the fascists controlling the Federal government to see a peaceful dissolution of the union, in which states that wish to leave are allowed to do so, and states wishing to embrace fascism are allowed to do as they please as well.
I think that if Biden loses the 2020 election because of state governments overturning the clear will of the voters, he is actually bound by the foundational principles of our Republic to resist that outcome with the full powers of his office and powers beyond that as well. No different than Lincoln who exceeded the bounds of his power in time of crisis. It is a grave and serious thing, and I’d hate to see it, but you don’t just give up your democratic freedoms on a legal technicality and say “oh well.” You fight, you use the power you have. If we control the Presidency, the military and the Federal government the President and we are honor bound to use those organs of control to stop the coup.
At that point too it will be obvious our current form of government has ended, and it will be time for a new constitutional arrangement that respects democratic principles, but starts wholly anew, the old constitution would have to be seen as invalid, and Biden would have to declare that he was operating a caretaker government under the fiction that the old constitution still stands, and the states would have to begin to work out a political settlement. Failing that, we have insurrections and civil war.
The octogenarian activist George Lakey has some interesting ideas on organizing to stop a coup here Could the left withstand a coup attempt if it ever won the presidency? | Waging Nonviolence
and here How to face right-wing violence while defending the election — a conversation with George Lakey | Waging Nonviolence
Lakey is an interesting guy; during the Vietnam war, he worked with others to equip a ship with medical supplies and sail it to North Vietnam as part aid, part protest. He is committed to non-violence, but is not naive about the violence of the oppressor, and is good at thinking about links people can make to resist.
Sure…Mitch is twisting the tail of dragon because he think it will benefit him personally. He doesn’t want Trump-as-dictator because he doesn’t really agree with Trump, but he wants his base to elect a majority in the Senate, and regards Trump as a necessary evil to achieve those goals. Better Trump than Biden, who not only doesn’t agree with any part of McConnell’s agenda but knows well how the Senate works and why he shouldn’t pander McConnell beyond making performative gestures toward being open to discussions with Republicans. If the US ends up being a failed democracy in twenty years after McConnell is retired/deceased, he could not care less about that condition or any legacy he might leave.
Yeah, there is no identified restriction with conflicts of interest in the Constitution, and the Vice-President was originally the candidate who lost. The assumption is that everyone will act reasonably to maintain the democratic norms and in compliance with the Constitution even if it didn’t benefit them in the moment because the alternative was unpalatable. Now we have a party which panders to a chunk of the population that believes that it is democracy that is the fundamental problem, and their would-be demagogue whose feet they worship at even though—or maybe especially—because he is ignorant, corruptible, and base, like “one of our own done good”. That Trump has convinced these people that he is one of them is the true Big Lie; he’d never lower himself to living the way they do or holding himself up to any standard other than “winning”, but Trump is literally nothing if not a master salesman; selling himself and his schemes is the only thing he’s actually good at.
Stranger
I don’t think any of that is really relevant to the discussion, its more an issue of semantics. Black people lived in a society without freedoms, where they were subjected to state sponsored and state condoned terrorism, where they were prohibited from having the skills to defend themselves or amass power, and where they were not protected from mistreatment. It was a dictatorship to them, even if there was no single person in charge. I’m not sure what the proper semantic term is for a democracy that is actually an authoritarian regime for a marginalized group, but its not the first time its happened in America. These discussions about how to stop American from becoming an authoritarian regime neglect to mention that it has been a dictatorship and authoritarian regime for large chunks of the public for a long time.
Also I don’t see how you need a single person to have a dictatorship. Myanmar is a military dictatorship and there isn’t one person in charge. There have been many authoritarian regimes where there wasn’t a single person who was solely in charge.
Technically a dictatorship is ruled by a dictator, who is a single person theoretically unaccountable to anyone else. There are authoritarian regimes that are ruled by committee or special group; the First Triumvirate of the Early Roman Republic was effectively one such regime despite the trappings of republicanism, and the post-Stalin Soviet Union (ruled by the Central Committee of the Communist Party as effectively a shadow government to the ostensible republican government) was another. Authoritarian military or paramilitary regimes ruled by committee rather than a single powerful figure are technically a junta or an oligarchy rather than a dictatorship.
Stranger
In an effort to return to my question, how would the US government respond to a coup attempt?
I would imagine that if there were no plans-and I cannot believe that the US Army has no plan for that, as they have a plan for every international problem-has been making plans since January 6.
If they are making plans and announcing them publicly, I’d have them impeached, fired, court-martialed, or dragged by their hair through the streets of Washington, whichever is appropriate.
If there’s anything we should have learned from the past five years, it’s that establishment figures like McConnell are not always in control of the dynamic. The Republicans dismissed Trump’s campaign as a joke in 2015. Then he started winning. Then they thought, “Okay, but he’ll see that he needs us to legislate.” And then he basically took over the party.
Look at the rise of strongmen like Hitler (on the right) or Hugo Chavez (on the left) and you’ll see a common refrain, which is that establishment characters are shocked - shocked that these seemingly comical, silly characters attract attention. They stand around and look at each other as they gradually increase their power. People perpetually underestimate them, underestimate their capacity to destroy norms and institutions. They constantly tell themselves “We’ll be okay as long as they don’t go too far” – and when they finally go too far, it’s too late. They’ve rigged the system in their favor and there’s not a fucking thing anyone can do to stop them then.
The United States Army (and Air Force) is prohibited from involvement in domestic law enforcement or other activities by the Posse Comitatus Act (codified as 18 U.S. Code § 1385). The Department of the Navy is not specifically covered by the Posse Comitatus Act (which is the source of a lot of conspiranoia) but maintains directives consistent with it. The act can be suspended by invoking provisions of the Insurrection Act (codified as 10 U.S. Code Chapter 13) but this has to be invoked by executive authority, e.g. the National Command Authority, which, unless the 25th Amendment is invoked, is the President. This has only been done in the modern era to allow the military to address natural disasters, civil unrest, and enforcement of the Civil Rights Act. The last time it was invoked was in 1992 to federalize the deployment of the National Guard to the Los Angeles Riots following the acquittal of officers charged with violating the civil rights in teh beating of Rodney King.
It seems, unsurprisingly, that nobody ever seriously considered a sitting President of leading an insurrection against the government he is the head of, although it was an issue discussed by pols following revelations about the later Nixon White House.
Here is a very interesting report from the Congressional Research Service about the use of the military in domestic affairs:
The Posse Comitatus Act and Related Matters: The Use of the Military to Execute
Civilian Law
“But the fact that some clowns were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are clowns. They laughed at Bozo, they laughed at Chaplin, they laughed at the Marx Brothers. But they also laughed at Hitler and Chavez.” — Carl Sagan, (slightly mangled in the retelling)
Stranger
The point is there are lots of non-perfectly-free societies, and in political science terms we haven’t historically called all of them dictatorships. Like no one refers to pre-Parliamentary reforms UK as a dictatorship, it was just a limited democracy with a very restricted franchise. The key polisci element of a dictatorship is that the dictator is not accountable to any other organs of the state, there’s lots of unfree societal configurations where the leadership is accountable to some legal bodies they don’t directly control. While it shifted back and forth depending who was on charge, most of the time after Stalin died the USSR for example had a Premier but he was ultimately responsible to the Politburo who could push him out of power, and did on a few occasions. China operated that way after Deng Xiaoping’s death, although Xi has gone back to more of a Deng model.
I am aware countries ruled by juntas are often called “military dictatorships”, but I don’t think it’s a very good/precise term. “Military Junta” usually more appropriately expresses it. Anyway there is no real reason to call pre-Civil Rights Act America a “dictatorship”, it is incendiary, not a mainstream political science belief, doesn’t hold up to easy logical scrutiny, and isn’t necessary to make the point you were making.
It’s the complacency, the perpetual underestimation that is so deadly. People fail to recognize that their constitutions are words on paper; that when you get right down to it, it’s not words on parchment and men or women in robes that decide whether a republic lives or dies. It’s the organic chemistry of democracy itself, the people - they/we are the ones who determine its fate. People far too often outsource their civic responsibilities to others, and the more that we do it, the more alienated we tend to become from the system. But rather than recognizing that we should get more involved, more ‘civic’, we get more detached. And it becomes a deadly spiral: the more distant we become, the more we outsource, the more that other, bigger, more powerful stakeholders step in and fill the gap between representatives those they represent (i.e., us). Frustrated, we throw up our hands and say “Fuck it, a clown could run this country.”
Eek premature post nm
Were there to be a coup d’état, what makes you think the US military will be on the side of the angels?
Noting Stranger_On_A_Train’s salient point on Posse Comitatus
I think you’re thinking of coups in very black/white terms. One of the things I was trying to point out for years was that when there’s an assault on a democracy, there’s some ambiguity involved.
Whenever someone mentioned that Trump could possibly lose an election and still retain power, the default scenario was one in which everyone acknowledged Trump’s defeat except for the man himself. Sure, if that’s the scenario, if there’s a consensus on the outcome, then Trump looks like a candidate for a straightjacket and the appropriate officers escort or carry his ass out on January 20.
The question people failed to ask is, what happens when there’s not a consensus? What happens when one of the two major parties essentially entertains the idea that they’re not going to accept the election results? What happens if there are enough people in positions of power who are loyalty to the outgoing CiC, and who would be willing to defy political norms to keep him in power.
The Constitution doesn’t have language to anticipate every possible coup scenario. No constitution is airtight in that regard. Constitutions are actually fairly easy to break
In fact, the Constitution, like any agreement or bylaw, has only the authority acknowledged by the participating parties. If Trump said, “I won the election, and the vote is wrong (if you discount all the votes I don’t like)” AND a Senate GOP majority went along with that schema AND the US Supreme Court refueled to hear any challenges, Trump would be President. That such a decision would have to go through multiple gates is the “checks and balances”, but those only work when there are honest and/or competing interests.
If everybody in the chain of certification and litigation collectively agreed that Hannibal Lector should be the duly elected President, Anthony Hopkins would have to put on his most devilish tone and tell Americans how much he would enjoy his opponent’s liver with favs beans and a nice Chianti, even though Hannibal Lector is a fictional character and Anthony Hopkins is not a natural born citizen.
Stranger
They are supposedly taught that they defend the Constitution, not a person or office. It is all the more disturbing that some of the January 6 arrested were former military.
Were the government about to fall, I imagine military officers would act to preserve it despite not being able to legally operate inside the US.
The really disturbing part is that those guys seem to have convinced themselves that they were defending the Constitution.
Which is the actual problem with the US today - we really are operating on two different versions of perceived reality.