I think things will be ok (for certain values of ok).
Over turning the election and retaining Trump as president would end Democracy in the United States period. The federal judges know this, as do the vast majority of law makers, even on the Republican side. And while Republican lawmakers are generally not the most ethical lot, they have adapted themselves to the current system. They have their comfortable life style, they have, at least for now, the power they crave, and they have they bright golden parachutes all set up to go get on the lobbying gravy train if things go bad. They aren’t going to throw this all out, to be some secondary functionary in the Trump dictatorship in the midst of brewing civil war.
Sure they will mouth the right lines to mollify Trumps base, but in the end they aren’t going to go down with the ship.
The real problem is what to do with the Tens of millions of Trump followers who actually believe his bullshit.
You’re both calling for forces external to the opposition party to dissolve it. That’s not strawmanning. That’s a direct reading of what you wrote, based on the context of the sentence you were supporting. It’s no leap to find a totalitarian call for the disbandment of the opposition party by the left to be equivalent to the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat. I’m not building up a false analogy and burning it down. I’m taking your words exactly as you wrote them.
If you meant something different, feel free to explain yourself. But don’t pretend you’re supporting democratic principles while agreeing with “they must be disbanded if democracy is to survive”.
I’ve been watching Biden make, shall we say, exuberant speeches for years. I think he is trying very, very hard to come across exactly as you say, and is doing a superb job of it. This is not meant to disparage his earlier styles of speech-giving, in obviously totally different situations.
ETA: OP, you are a fool. Trump’s lawsuits are getting tossed everywhere. All will be well.
It’s not about the lawsuits anymore. Giuliani’s crack legal team has moved on to the court of public opinion, while Trump is pressuring elections officials responsible for certifying the vote and hoping to get state legislatures to overturn the popular vote. All is not well.
Courts are not supposed to decide elections, votes are. The fact that now we have to hope that our courts don’t collapse like almost every other American institution is a sign of how deeply eroded our democracy is.
There’s little reason to believe this. Regardless of whether Biden is allowed to assume office, Trump will stay active In subverting American democracy while he lives and even after he dies he will leave a legacy of a strong authoritarian racist fascist movement bent on maintaining minority rule over the country at any cost.
Blue and red America are not geographically distinct. This is a ridiculous notion. Any attempt to separate will trigger a civil war in which the two sides exist in almost every county, town, and village in the country.
I think we are essentially in a low level civil war now and that it will continue. The idea of the first civil war was ridiculous to a lot of people until it happened. The fact is that red and blue America do not share the same culture or the same values. Given that they consume different news and red state America’s hostility to science, we are not even living in the same reality. Our visions for America are inherently incompatible.
I think Americans as a whole are far more interested in prosperity than they are in demagoguery, whether it comes from the right or the left. Trump may have a bit of a personality cult among his supporters, and I think the populist element in American politics and culture is becoming stronger, which benefits the Republicans. However, don’t forget that pre-Covid, the US economy was doing pretty well. Biden’s challenge is going to be to be putting together a plan to minimise the future effects of the Covid disease, hopefully through vaccinations, and then leading the US to economic recovery. That’s a big challenge, but he’s got a very good base to work from. The US and global pharmaceutical industries are working all out to implement a rapidly deployable vaccine, and are apparently pretty close to releasing one. The economy’s weaker than it was, and there will be shifts due to changes in consumer habits and industry changes, but the 2022 economy won’t be fundamentally different than the 2019 economy. If Biden gets the US back on track in the next two years, he, or his successor shouldn’t have any problem picking up the prosperity vote. He/they will still need to avoid polarising the US voting populace into us and them camps. But that’s just the re-establishment of usual politics. It means the system is working - not fundamentally broken.
And this is why the Republican senate will do everything, EVERYTHING it can do destroy the economy of the United States in the next two years. They have made it very clear that they do not care about the country. They care about seizing and keeping power, no matter what they have to do.
This will (once again) be their number one priority; To destroy Biden. Number one. If this means preventing a vaccine from being distributed, or promoting anti-vaxxer lies so that more people die, they’ll be OK with this. If it means deliberately crashing the economy - Republican politicians will be fine with this.
The problem is that he/they aren’t the ones polarizing the US populace into us and them camps. Deomcrats have all along been willing to compromise and work with Republicans towards a common goal. The problem is that led by McConnell the Republican agenda has primary been to prevent any and all legislation that might be viewed as a win for Democrats, and to twist the norms to the just below limit of legality in order to maximize partisan advancement.
Biden can (and will) be as nice friendly and co-operative as could be, but so long as McConnell supports party over country, and the rightwing media finds it most lucrative to fan the flames of fear and hatred against the opposition, there is little he can do. How can he avoid dividing people into us and them, when many of “them” think he literally eats babies?
Also not to speak for Gyrate and BobLibDem, but I think that they aren’t saying that the party should be forcibly disbanded by law, but that it should be rejected forcefully by public opinion and go the way of the Whigs, and the Know nothings.
Read a history of World War I. Some wars make some kind of sense. I think US Civil War and World War II make some kind of sense as to the sides. World War I was awful and basically made no sense.
With WWI you had the usual escalating tensions over quite some time. But the actual events that started it, people basically, stupidly, wanted to fight the war and thought it would be some larks. Then millions were killed, half the heads of state lost their jobs, countries reconstructed. Complete, tragic, stupidity, and “no one stepped into stop it.”
Amazon is not going to step in to stop this. They won’t. If Trump pulls this off, on 1/20/2021 you and I will all have jobs, capitalism will continue. Amazon isn’t going to rock the boat then.
Trump has puffed himself into a place where he can’t back down. That is very bad. That is how bad shit like this starts. We are basically hoping that the right combination of levers doesn’t exist or Trump can’t find them.
You will have riots here and there, followed by probably a militarized left doing domestic terrorism. The blue states could try to secede. Trump could be Lincoln II and pull out the troops to stop them. It will be a lost democracy, decades of corruption, strife, and death, probably bad actors in other countries are emboldened because who’s going to stop them now? All for Trump. Capitalists are NOT going to step in and stop it.
Did you see that press conference yesterday? Sure, some people will buy it hook, line and sinker. But there is not a chance in hell that Trump pressure is going to accomplish anything, especially when the truly moronic and/or deluded Rudy Giuliani is in charge. That of course is my opinion, but I’m sticking to it.
Exactly. Unfortunately, it isn’t going to happen. Over 70 million people voted for fascism, racism, and bigotry. They aren’t going anywhere and they aren’t about to change their minds. As long as they control the Republican Party, the party should be disbanded. But popular opinion is never going to be so overwhelming as to make it happen.
It is not a question of faithless electors. It is a question of getting the state legislators to ignore the votes of their constituents and appoint the slate of Republican electors as the state’s official electors. Then the governor will certify the Democratic slate and each house of congress will chose which to accept. The senate will accept the Republican slate; the house the Democratic slate and the state will lose its vote. Do this to enough states that voted Democratic and suddenly Trump’s EC vote is a majority of what’s left. At least that’s the threat. Whether the Republican party is sufficiently depraved to go along is a different question.
Exactly, the GOP will sabotage any Democrat president and blame him for the failure. Red state America will go along. We will lurch back and forth between a red and blue state president as we continue our decline. The mandate of each president will be to undo the work of the previous president.
Trump being reelected would be SAVING the American experiment, my friend. He will keep communism out of our country and allow free enterprise to continue. He will maintain a strong military to prevent future wars. He will lower your taxes. What else do you want?
If you are a socialist, read up on socialism. It kills.
So you don’t consider the peaceful transfer of power through elections to be part of the American experiment? I look forward to your answer in five years.
