Because in 2017, they were like the dog that finally caught the car. Okay, you’ve got it. Now, what do you do with it? They had no clue.
This time, they do. Maybe not a clearly-enunciated clue (ignoring Project 2025), but enough of one after the first term that they now know how American government works, and just as importantly, how it can work for them.
It’s still not going to let them do the impossible. They’re not going to cancel elections or say that women can’t vote or declare Trump president for life, because there’s no constitutional mechanism by which they can do so and there’s no “suspend the Constitution” button they can press. They won’t even be able to restrict abortion unless they get rid of the filibuster (which they won’t, because it’s how they keep power when they’re the minority) and even then it’s not a given that they’d find enough votes within their own caucus.
If Trump were to declare on Twitter that the Constitution is now null and void and he can do whatever he wants, the Republicans will issue some mealy-mouthed excuses on Fox News and then go back to holding hearings about gas stoves and refrigerators. You know, exactly like what they did when Trump ACTUALLY suggested cancelling an election.
Who’s going to stop them?
The same people who stopped them last time.
He didn’t have the ability at the time. He hadn’t yet reshaped the judiciary, the Supreme Court was still 5-4 and he couldn’t count on them yet. And most important, the people hadn’t yet been prepared for it.
4 years later his cult ushers him back into office triumphantly, several million fewer people voted which indicates their indifference, and he suffered no consequences for his myriad transgressions. Everything has been normalized, the US citizenry was properly prepared and conditioned to accept it.
At this point it’s easy. All the hard work has been done. We had one chance to stop it and instead we embraced it. That was the genius of the Nazis, the people not only never saw it coming but they actually wanted it to happen. We just saw an almost flawless running of the Nazi playbook, and now we get to see the aftermath, because there’s no reason for them to stop now.
And he still doesn’t. You might as well say that he’s going to eat the Moon.
Not as long as Canada allows it. Travelling to Canada might not be economically feasible for many American women, but for those in the northern states, it’s certainly possible.
True, for American women, it would not be free at point of procedure, the way it would be for Canadian women, but at least it remains an option. I doubt very much that any US state that restricts travel for an abortion could argue with, “Susie went to visit her Aunt Jane in Toronto for a family reunion,” for example.
A lot of those people - those guardrails - are either gone or will be gone as per Project 2025.
I’m not saying he will snap him tiny fingers and ban all free and fair elections in an instant, but you will see them continue to erode every check and balance that keeps them from doing what they’re doing.
Because they’ve discovered that “But what if we didn’t?” is an effective strategy.
You have more faith in the omnipotence of Project 2025 than I do. Trump’s already thrown them under the bus once and he isn’t the kind to let other people take credit for anything. Trump gives zero fucks about keeping any of his promises - he can never run again and doesn’t care about the future of the Republican Party, and regardless of what does or doesn’t happen he’ll stand there and declare that he’s the greatest president of all time and everything bad that happens is someone else’s fault, and if anyone complains that he hasn’t made good on his promises he’ll say he’s gonna make an announcement in two weeks. He’ll appoint some of those people to positions of power, then fire them a little later when they tell him they can’t just throw Taylor Swift in prison or order people to eat hambeders on Thanksgiving instead of turkey, or says something that makes people mad at him.
Who’s going to stop him? The Supremes? He has them in his pocket. Congress? It’s loaded with his cultists. The military? They voted for him.
The only thing that could possibly stop him is the Constitution and the belief that they will comply with its provisions. And until now, that was a perfectly reasonable thing to expect, until you remember that not two weeks ago the monster said that “he should never have left the White House”. Just another dumb thing he said, right? Think again.
Leave aside the fact that the buffoon actually thought that the power of the Presidency was derived from the occupation of a building or an office in the building. The important part is that he thought that if he stayed in the White House he would have remained the President. Do you really think that, given a second shot at it, he’s not going to spend the next couple of years ensuring that this time it’s actually true, the Constitution be damned? He has never cared one bit about it, and now he has the people in place to launch the coup that failed four years ago from the inside.
We’ll revisit this in 4 years. Nothing would make me happier than to be wrong.
Then why did we just have an election at all? Why didn’t they overturn the 2020 election and declare him president for life then and there, if they’re nothing more than a rubber stamp that will obey his every command?
Many of whom would like to run for president themselves someday. Hard to do that if you’ve turned the presidency into a hereditary monarchy. And most of the rest have comfortable positions of power that would become meaningless in a dictatorship. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain.
Which is why Mattis and Kelly said “Yes sir” and went along with his demand to use the military on civilians in 2020, right?
The only way he can do something about it is to convince two-thirds of both houses of Congress and the legislatures of 37 states to go along with it. And that’s not going to happen.
A lot of people did turn out to vote for reproductive rights, and good work was done. They just didn’t vote for Harris. So they were still selfish.
Because even Nazi Germany took several years to dismantle all checks against Hitler’s power, destroying one norm at a time.
None of that matters. They can simply ignore the law. The Constitution isn’t alive and can’t do anything on its own.
They no longer count - they’re gone. And any people LIKE Mattis and Kelly will be pushed out and replaced with people that will have no problem with using military on civilians.
That’s what will happen first - the Orange Shitbag will gut the military and federal workforce and replace them with his own loyal sycophants who will do whatever they are asked, regardless of what is Constitutional or not.
Yup. Who’s going to stop them now?
America has given the Orange Shitbag a blank check. If the Orange Shitbad doesn’t have the wit or vision to do anything with it, his “advisors” sure do.
I wasn’t so worried about such things until Smapti was so dead-certain it wouldn’t come to pass…
I for one welcome our new Orange Shitbag worshipping overlords!
Millions voted for the Orange Shitbag. Many millions more didn’t vote at all. Both of those sets make up a large majority of possible American voters that don’t give a rat’s ass about the Constitution.
The Orange Shitbag and his “advisors” know that The Constitution is just a piece of paper, and a large majority of Americans agree or don’t care.
One important consideration in what may happen is structural: the federal government cannot cancel any elections, because it doesn’t run any elections. All elections are run by the several states (where “several” means each of them on its own, not collectively).
If a state cancels elections in obedience to the fascists, that’s a major constitutional crisis. But plenty of states will still hold elections and the fascists can’t shut down all elections in all states. They can try, and when they do it’ll be war.