How Trump can lose and stay on. Opinions?

Politics & Elections
81

Although adding another justice to the bench would certainly help, Trump doesn’t necessarily need the Supreme Court to steal the election. The presidential election is 51 individual contests. It’s what happens at the state level that could give Trump a victory, as hard as it might be to conceive.

Let’s suppose coronavirus explodes out of control and people don’t feel like voting. Or let’s suppose that due to massive funding shortages, states decide they can no longer open up voting polls in areas where democrats outnumber republicans. What can the supreme court do then? Shit, the president is basically defying the Supreme Court ruling on DACA right now as we speak, or threatening to at least.

What if, one day, Americans elected a president who decided he could ignore the constitution completely? President Trump is the answer to that question.

82

ThelmaLou, again, people are fixated on whether Trump is physically present in the White House or not after noon on Inauguration Day, but his location has nothing to do with whether he still has power or not. By law, once noon strikes on that day, President-Elect Biden becomes president and all important people (i.e. the Pentagon) take orders from him instead. Trump could declare “the White House is mine, mine, mine” until his death and Biden could shrug and say, “Sure, have it your way” and Biden would be the one issuing all the presidential orders of importance for the next 4-8 years, the one delivering the State of the Union address, signing all the bills into law, the one getting red-carpeted at events as POTUS.

83

You have to get people to agree on the outcome first. A lot of dying or fledgling democracies have found this out the hard way.

84

I’m not fixated on that. I know that he won’t be president any more. That’s not really my point. Trump’s fanboy army is looking for a reason to show off their long, stiff, loaded weapons in the name of following the orders of their hero. The point is this could get very ugly and violent. And furthermore, when a couple of years ago I first brought up the topic of trump resisting giving up the presidency, I was laughed out of town. Now the idea has taken hold in mainstream publications. This is part of how we have normalized his outrageous behavior.

I’m cranky and having a really hard time this morning. :anguished:

85

So let him stay there. Hell, let him stay in the same bedroom. Being in the White House isn’t what makes you President or else I was President for about half an hour in 1984.

The man does not leave the office; the office leaves the man.

86

Again, not the point.

87

My general prediction: After Trump loses, he will find something to blame his loss on, or more likely, while not finding anything with even flimsy evidence to back it up, invent something out of whole cloth. He will then leave the office like every other president has, all the while saying he was robbed. Trump is a coward. No way he has the guts to try something like this.

QQ: Haven’t been here a while. I curious as to why Ditka and Shodan were banned. Please PM me if you like. no need to muck up this thread

88

I’d love to hear more about this but I hesitated bringing it up, so as not to set off a hijack. I suppose it’s relevant, though, right?

89

Questions that once up on a time seemed absurd and unthinkable-- MSM are asking:

President Trump’s refusal to commit to accepting the results of the November election, paired with his penchant for plunging the military into the partisan fray, has prompted scholars and legal experts to ask a once-unthinkable question: How would the armed forces respond if pulled into a disputed election?
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“If the president is willing to thrust the military leadership into so damaging a set of circumstances during the protests, just imagine what he would be willing to do if he wants to prevent an electoral outcome that would be damaging to him,” said Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “So yes, they should be absolutely worried about it.”
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Although Trump did not follow through with threats to invoke the Insurrection Act and use the ­active-duty military against protesters, active-duty troops were dispatched to the outskirts of the nation’s capital. The appearance of National Guard troops on the streets of D.C. as part of the federal response heightened concerns about whether the Pentagon was allowing itself to be used for political ends. Trump has also deployed active-duty troops to the southwest border and diverted Pentagon funds for his border wall project.

“First there’s a president who seems totally willing and eager to utilize instruments of national power in pursuit of his reelection and, second, a president who’s willing or indeed eager to utilize the military on domestic soil,” said Joshua Geltzer, a former official in the Obama administration who serves as executive director of Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. “We should be really worried if we see those things coming together.”
…

Nevertheless experts said they are most worried about a handful of hypothetical situations, including a scenario in which Trump might refuse to concede victory to Biden, or a legal challenge to the outcome might remain unresolved by Inauguration Day, prompting him to assert presidential authority beyond Jan. 20.

In that scenario, experts hypothesized, the White House might call on the military to protect the president or, more likely, respond to potential protests on “law and order” grounds, possibly leading the president to follow through with earlier threats to send active-duty troops to American cities or take control of state-commanded National Guard members.
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Here’s something I didn’t know. Did you?

The president also has special powers in the U.S. capital. Because D.C. does not have a governor, he acts as commander in chief of the city’s National Guard force. In June, other states sent their Guard units to augment the D.C. Guard, creating a military force answerable to the president operating on U.S. soil in a law enforcement role.

Crucially, a contested outcome lasting beyond Jan. 20 would force the military to make an implicit decision about who is commander in chief.
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“In so many ways it looks like the military is going to have to be thinking about its role in domestic politics in ways it normally doesn’t,” said Risa Brooks, a Marquette University professor who studies civil-military relations across countries.
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Really long article. I’ve quoted what I thought were the most interesting parts.

90

I highly doubt that the military has in any way prepared for this type of outcome; it’s trained to follow the chain of command. I know some vets reading this will talk about how they took an oath and are obliged not to follow unlawful orders - whatever. I think we’ve seen how that imaginary layer of protection against constitutional abuses of power works in actuality.

Here’s the problem that any general with the thought of taking sides against the incumbent in a power grab: there’s no guarantee others would join him. An even bigger problem is that republicans could play constitutional hardball and engage in procedural warfare in such a way that produces a semi-valid constitutionally sanctioned outcome that favors the incumbent, even if it appears the will of the people says something different.

91

IMHO there’s virtually no chance that the election will end up with tanks in the streets and the military needing to choose sides. No, Trump’s play is legalistic. He will sow fear, uncertainty and doubt (he launched this campaign in earnest, yesterday). He will challenge the validity of every mail-in ballot. He will file lawsuits against the Secretary of State in every state he doesn’t carry. His goal is to either tie up the decision in the courts, and in an extreme Hail Mary turn the election over to the House of Representatives…or the worst case scenario is that he gives himself an “I was robbed! Fraud at the polls!” rationale that will soothe his ego and allow him to sleep at night. The fact that this scorched earth campaign will ruin the electorate’s faith in our democracy means absolutely nothing to him.

92

Remember when those words used to mean something?

93

Yeah, that was back when we lived in precedented times.

94

And you don’t think the opposite is equally true? Everyone who isn’t a hard core right winger would show up at the polls just to make sure Trump doesn’t have a chance to appoint Barr to the Supreme Court and set things up to declare himself President-for-Life.

This is Trump’s biggest handicap; he’s demonstrated all year that he can’t lead in a crisis. The status quo right now is Biden is going to win. But any sudden dramatic change in the status quo right now that makes people panic will just make them more likely to vote for Biden.

95

Trump’s no Putin.

I don’t mean this as a compliment directed at Trump. I’m not saying he is more principled than Putin. I have no doubt that Trump would love to be a dictator and would happily take the position if it was offered to him.

But that’s the point; somebody would have to offer the position to Trump. He’s not competent enough to take it. Trump has spent his entire life being handed things.

Putin worked. He came up through the system and knew what he needed to do to become dictator. Putin is smart and ruthless. None of this applies to Trump.

Some people say this doesn’t matter. The Republicans will do the work of setting up the dictatorship and announce Trump is President for Life.

But if the Republicans do the work, why would they pick Trump as their figurehead? They’re going to pick one of their own, not some bloated idiot. Somebody like Dick Cheney might be America’s Putin but not Donald Trump.

96

Putin is competent at gaining power, not necessarily governance. Don’t assume that competence is a prerequisite for gaining political power. Whether Trump has enough political acumen to maintain power the way Putin has is a different thread of discussion, but Trump has out-competed 18 other seasoned politicians in the most brutal political contest we have in this country. We underestimate him at our own peril.

The Republicans already picked one of their own: Trump. Again, the Republican base of voters identifies with Trump more than any other member of their party.

97

I disagree. Trump didn’t create his path to power. He jumped on board a system that had been build by other people. Abolishing elections would not be the same; this would require Trump to build up a new political system.

Trump’s base is irrelevant in something like this. They are essentially sheep. They’ll do what they’re told but you can’t seize power with a crowd of followers. You need some wolves.

You have to give up this illusion that Trump is secretly a mastermind. He really is as incompetent as he appears. If Trump was a political genius, we wouldn’t be talking about how he’s going to seize power in 2020; he’d win his second election in a normal way like past presidents have done. He’d be plotting for how he was going to seize power in 2024.

98

So your default assumption is that military leaders would support a president trying a “power grab” generally? Under particular circumstances? These particular circumstances?

99

I’m saying, it’s not clear what anyone would do. We assume that an constitutional usurpation (“power grab”) would the result of an election in which there is an incontrovertibly clear winner and loser; the reality that plays out might be more ambiguous. What if it merely seems like Biden won several close statewide elections but state governors or secretaries of state refuse to certify the election. What if something shocks the system and we really have questionable results thanks to a massive foreign intrusion?

100

Nope, it just requires that he and his allies destroy this current political system, which they’re actively in the process of doing. They don’t necessarily need a new system; there would still be elections and democracy, just not the kind we’re used to.