There will not be 67 Democratic senators - or close to it.
The only way to remove the President by impeachment, or, for more than a couple days, by the 25th amendment, is for the President’s own party to turn on him or her. Anything else is fantasy.
Impeachment without GOP concurrence was a Democratic own goal. Trump’s polling lows before it have never been matched since.
Pence has his own desire for power. The fish and guests stinking after three days aphorism applies.
You are correct on the first count, but perhaps not on the second.
Hope we won’t have to find out the hard way.
President Donald Trump “will do anything and everything” to win the 2020 election, according to Michael Cohen.
The president may manipulate ballots and “even go so far as to start a war in order to prevent himself from being removed from office” if he loses, Cohen told NBC’s Lester Holt in a clip released Friday.
“My biggest fear is that there will not be a peaceful transition of power in 2020,” added Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer.
Cohen’s memoir about the years he spent as Trump’s fixer, titled “Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump,” is set to be released this week.
…
He is correct. Trump will do anything, legal or illegal, to (1) win, and failing that, (2) to stay in the White House. Including starting a war. He has clearly shown that he doesn’t know what war is or even what a country is. He looks at a cemetery full of soldiers killed in war and says they were suckers, or (sounding even more trumpish):
…during a Memorial Day visit in 2017 to the grave of then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly’s son, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2010, Trump asked why anyone would volunteer to serve in the military. “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” he asked the fallen Marine’s father. (source)
My bold.
A CIC who can say that wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about starting a war to serve his purposes.
I think Pence and McConnell would probably begin picking up the pieces of the Republican party once Trump is gone, but don’t for a moment believe that the Republicans are going to have a come to Jesus moment and start being bipartisan or democratic again.
A lot of what is happening now started in the early 2000s and really got underway starting in 2009 and 2010 as a counter-revolution to the ‘revolution’ that was the Obama presidency. The Republican party has gone from being a mostly partisan ‘base’ party during the Karl Rove era to being a hyper-partisan tribal party during the Ted Cruz and Trump era. The factions will still be there if Biden is president, with or without Trump himself.
I take heart in the fact that at least now some of what seemed like bat-shit crazy talk a few years ago is being taken seriously now, including by members of Trump’s own party, no less. That’s a good thing. That’s awareness of what’s happening, and it’s vigilance, which is what we need.
I still disagree.
Do you feel Trump could go on TV and announce “I’ve decided to cancel the election. And the 2024 election and all the others. I am declaring myself President for Life.”?
Do you feel that if he did this, people would simply accept it and there would be nothing that could be done?
I don’t. I feel that if Trump broke the laws so publicly, he would be removed from office. I feel that Trump and the Republicans still need to observe the appearance of obeying the law because they recognize people will not follow them without that appearance.
So, no, I do not agree that “the conspirators can do their thing out in the open”.
Trump’s problem with fighting a war to stay in power is he needs an army. How many people are willing to stand and fight for Trump? (Not the shooting unarmed people in the back attacks that his supporters love. I’m talking real fighting where people are shooting back.) Trump’s supporters are like Trump himself; they’ll ask what’s in it for them?
To start a war, you not only need an army…you need an enemy.
Three weeks before an election, the American public will rally round a president who attacks an identifiable enemy. But right now, there is no enemy whose picture Fox news can put on the screen with a target painted over his face. (like Saddam Husein or Osama bin Laden)
So the talk of Trump starting a war to remain popular is not going to happen. If he wants to win more votes, he needs public support.Where would he start this war, and who would he attack? Trump would need graphic pictures of US warplanes bombing something which his supporters agree is worth bombing. If Osama Bin Laden was still alive, Trump could manufacture a lie about attacking the evil enemy, and his public would buy it.
But right now there is no such enemy.Attacking, say, some vague place with an unpronounceable name that ends in stan won’t do it. Even for fox news.
Who says he has to go outside the borders of the USA to find an enemy that needs attacking?
I don’t think he would do it in quite this way. To begin with, if we’re talking about 2024 that means he “won” in 2020, likely through cheating. By the time that 2024 comes around, it’s more likely he will say “We’re going to have fair elections in 2024, with me running for re-election. If I lose that means the election was unfair, and I’ll order the arrest of those who say I Iost.” Which amounts to the same thing.
By that time he’ll likely have enough votes on the SCOTUS that any case will go his way. It would likely be Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and RBGs replacement on one side. Roberts and the other three liberals would be on the other side, and Gorsuch the swing vote. Of course if Breyer has passed by then, he’s even more likely to win any court case.
I’m not talking about 2024. I’m talking about now; September 2020.
I asked why doesn’t Trump just cancel all future elections and declare himself President for Life? According to many of the people in this thread, he can openly break any law he wants to and do whatever he wants.
No one here has said that. He can break many laws, and has used executive orders to directly contravene extant legislation. He has raised and lowered taxes, expended funds, and has used federal property to aid his election campaign. The Republicans don’t care.
However, even they have limits, and, no, they would not accept Trump discarding the US Constitution completely. (Shooting big holes in it, yeah, they’re fine with that.)
This might not be a prediction, but it seems to me that it is a very bold (and wrong, IMO) assessment of American democracy. Given that we haven’t had an election, and there is NO evidence of any widespread plot by Republicans to undermine the one in November, I’d say you are a bit over the top here. That’s just my impression. We’ve had bad presidents, senators, Supreme Court justices, etc, etc, in the past, and I see no reason why we won’t also get past whatever problems Trump has caused.
Believe me, this is one time I’d love to have you come back in a year or so and laugh at how wrong I am (was).
We shall see, I reckon. In the meantime, vote, and get others to vote.
Okay, but you ignored by point, I think. That there is no evidence of widespread attempts to literally steal the election, so the prognosis of American democracy being in grave danger in this respect is unfounded. IMO.
Well, I wonder frankly what news you’re looking at and reading. As I said, I’m not going to spend hours Googling and copying links to prove my point - the evidence is clearly out there. I think you just don’t recognize the evidence of an attempt to steal an election for what it is. You probably see it as merely politics as usual, two sides employing dirty tactics and tricks. We agree to disagree, I reckon.
We shall see.
The most blatant is Trump literally telling his supporters in North Carolina to vote twice. A close second is the removal of mail sorting machines in areas where Democratic voters are likely to vote by mail in higher numbers. Not just the talk of removing them, it’s under consideration, we didn’t really mean it, etc. The machines have already been removed.
Those are the most blatant, but there are many others as well.
Trump can say what he wants, but it’s just words. People can’t vote twice. It’s nonsense. As for the machines, can you show where this is politically motivated, rather than just a “business” decision by the USPS? Because if you can’t, it’s not evidence of a widespread attempt to steal an election.
Yes, the machines have been removed by order of Trump’s own politically-appointed hack who has absolutely zero experience (or demonstrated interest) in running a post office, let alone the postal system.
I think when Fiddle_Peghead and Little Nemo hear talk of “stealing an election,” their eyes roll because they assume we’re talking about some outrageous scenario in which the counting stops, results are certified, Biden is declared president-elect, fellow Republicans concede losing the House and Senate, and Trump says “No, I’m not leaving.”
No, not that. I think most of the worrywarts here would agree that Trump wouldn’t get that far in that type of scenario.
We’re talking about a situation in which the election is close, with multiple key states still too close to call on election night - so close that the election counting continues into the early morning. Republicans lose even more seats in the House and lose some seats in the Senate, but are close enough to hang on to power or at least get a tie in the Senate. The counting continues across multiple states, and we go hours, days, or longer without a known winner. Consider that this is a very, very real possibility. In the past several election cycles we’ve had several state races that weren’t called until a few days after election night. By that point, the projected winner had been declared, so the result was inconsequential. But we all remember Florida in 2000.
From CNN: The Postal Service said in a statement that it “routinely moves equipment around its network as necessary to match changing mail and package volumes. Package volume is up, but mail volume continues to decline. Adapting our processing infrastructure to the current volumes will ensure more efficient, cost effective operations and better service for our customers.”
Seems reasonable to me, and there’s more at the article to support the idea that this is a reasonable effort by the Post Office to adapt to modern times. This is not to say I dismiss the idea of voting shenaningans outright…
As for your scenario, that is at least a possibility, but it is not evidence of a current, ongoing attempt to steal the election. So the people I am speaking to here are those who say that such a thing IS going on now, nothing more.