I get that elected Republicans need these voters. Do Repubilcan judges? (Serious question.) I’m including all judges from the Supremes on down. These are career people who don’t have to worry about the next election.
I would say that they will become more dependent on them the more that this cancer grows. For instance, right now, the justices might have still a fair bit of their independence, but that independence depends a LOT on a bipartisan or multipartisan political structure and environment. If that tilts too far in one direction, particularly if the tilt is in the direction of a strong faction that is authoritarian, then the judiciary will, over time, become less independent.
Doubt me? Look at what Republicans did in Kansas toward the end of the Sam Brownback and right-wing nuttery. They began impeaching judges, including some who were at least thought to be conservative. They just weren’t conservative enough, and they were too independent. That is what could start happening in 5-10 years if the Republicans regain the presidency but only this time, under an even more partisan Q-Anonish type congress and fundraising apparatus backing them.
They do not give a flying fuck about our rights and our democracy. It’s in their way. We’re in their way.
You do not need “the millitary”, you need whatever unit is guarding the Pentagon and whatever unit is closest to the White House. Take over (keep) those two locations and you can issue orders to the rest. “The millitary” will follow orders from the pentagon if they kinda sorta seem legit. Taking over the command structure, looking kinda sorta legit, is more than enough to complete a coup. Remember : You start this little game as Commander in Chief. A stooge as Secretary of Defense certainly helps if that is your goal.
If you are, in fact, the lawful commander and your SoD is doing exactly what you want, is it even a coup? you just have to make sure everybody stays where they are.
Fortunately it doesn’t work that way. You don’t need 270 electors, you need a majority of appointed electors. From Article II:
The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed;
If those 3 states don’t appoint, then the threshold to win drops to 247. If Biden wins Georgia, he still wins.
That right there is where this breaks down: Trump couldn’t issue orders from a Chinese restaurant menu and make it “kinda sort seem legit.”
I suspect this may be the route they hope to take. Kayleigh McEnemy may have signalled that in the press conference that FoxNews cut short:
Now, ostensibly she was talking (lying, really) about their poll watchers not having access, but to me the intent of this statement, that last point in particular, is to convey the fact that state legislatures have very broad and immutable power over their own state elections.
All three of them? Each with their own laws about vote tallys? I don’t see that. You have to taylor each lawsuit to the individual state laws, and the higher the appeal process goes, the greater the chance that one or all of the suits gets thrown out because e.g. PA says green, WI says blue, and the court isn’t going to get behind unilaterally forcing one state or the other to (figuratively speaking) change color.
I learnt today the delightful word “autogolpe” which is what this is, rather than a coup d’état.
Perhaps, but, again, they can simply prevail upon the state legislatures to determine the election didn’t produce a clear winner. Guess what party controls the legislatures of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona?
And can you imagine the bad optics if all five unilaterally threw out thousand of ballots and handed Trump the election? You really would need to call out the Army…but I wouldn’t take bets as to whose side they’d be on…
Gun sales have dropped since the election.
Plus it seems like political suicide. Biden won those states so the legislature would be overriding the plurality; the pissed-off voters would outnumber the happy ones. Has any important member of these state legislatures made any noise that they would consider overriding the vote?
From what I’ve read, they expect to be done by Thanksgiving. Not including the inevitable recount demanded by Team Trump, of course.
…the lawsuits are theatre: but not in the way most here think. It’s all about setting a narrative.
And they aren’t setting the narrative for the audience of one. 71 million people voted for Donald Trump. 57% of white people who voted voted for Trump. And if you are an administration that is effectively a white supremacist regime: then that 57% gives you a mandate.
I want everyone to cast your minds back to 2016 and to remember the mantra we all repeated at length: “we can’t allow this to be normalized.”
Now look back at the last four years. And look at what, as a society you have allowed to be normalized. The Trump regime is run by “acting heads of departments” to escape congressional oversight in appointments. Normal. Two of those appointments were declared illegal and we shrugged our shoulders. The postmaster general oversaw the destruction of sorting machines, lied to the house and defied the courts. Barely raised a shrug. Multiple hatch act violations that don’t even break into the news cycle. “Too boring and complicated” for the news To care about.
This is where America is at. With four senior officials either fired or resigned a few days ago and the news media giving equal time to a story about Biden not being as open as he could be in regards to read outs. Nothing about any of this is normal. But we all collectively gave up the battle against “keeping things normal” a very long time ago. Authoritarianism creeps up on you. Its sneaky like that.
All of this was predicted by experts in authoritarianism well before Trump won the presidency. There is a good chance this could all fizzle out. But there are big flashing warning signs and you would be foolish to ignore them.
Here’s a way it could play out.
Both McConnell and Pompeo gave speeches a few days ago that I think gave the game away. They both mentioned waiting for the electors. I’m not quite sure what the plan will be but a few people here have elaborated. But if they are going to make a play for retaining power then they are going to make their stand here.
Trump declares victory and McConnell & Co back him. People hit the streets in protest. What happens next?
Well we’ve already seen how this plays out. The protests are called “riots” by the administration. The police do what they did before but escalate. Most police unions will back Trump. They get reinforced by ICE, the border patrols and prison staff. They’ve collected dossiers on protest leaders and they all get grabbed preemptively .
This might sound farfetched. But we’ve already seen this play out this year already. It’s been normalized. 57% of white people who voted voted for Trump. They will support this.
All of this happens without the military getting involved. The courts will by an large support Biden. Trump and Co will do what they’ve always done though and ignore them. So what happens after that?
Well it gets messy.
There was plenty of people upset by these things.
The problem was we needed the DoJ to enforce the laws which they did not do because Trump co-opted the DoJ. This was all abetted by a compliant senate.
That leaves no room for people to do much short of an armed insurrection.
I just like to point out that for the last 4 years no military coup has taken place (they kinda sorta accept him as their commander) and that all that is needed to nullify the government “being perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out” is a couple of hundred goons in the right position. Having a friendly SoD makes orchestrating such trivial. “battalion so-and-so will go to the pacific for extensive submarine maneuvers” the guarding of the Pentagon will be done by #####" (fill in name of the Portland goons). When you have done that: You have successfully couped the fucking états unis. 99.9% of the military will never blink an eye.
Much of the government “being perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out” depends on “soldiers” following orders. Whose orders? If their orders come from the Pentagon and yours from a phone booth: Who gets to call in the airstrike on who? Right now, Trump is manning the phones.
…but just being upset doesn’t change anything. In the early days of the Muslim ban people filled the airports to protest. Lawyers lined up giving out free services. A year later the ban, sufficiently modified was passed into law and nobody really cared. It happened with barely a whimper. People stopped caring. Being upset wasn’t enough.
The Democrats hedged all their bets on the elections. They could have impeached Bill Barr. They could have continued to impeach the President. They could have had those refusing subpoenas hauled before the courts. But they didn’t, they just let it all play out and here we are now, pretending that Trump and Co aren’t planning on doing what they’ve already admitted they are going to do.
As I understand it, if the election goes to the House, it’s the House that has sole power and the Senate doesn’t come into play. If the Republicans win in the House vote, they win the presidency, period. Even a blue Senate couldn’t veto them.
(I don’t think there are even 1-in-a-million odds the election would wind up in the House to begin with. Nevertheless, the Senate would have no power.)
The Senate picks the VP, though.
In any case the plan is probably to win the Electoral College by having Republican legislatures overrule the popular vote. Sure, that would anger many of their constituents - but only a little bit more than half. The other tiny bit less than half would be delighted. Republicans don’t care if they gain power democratically, only that they gain it.
The U.S. republic is probably over.
If it is, the best thing to do is to write, call or email the major corporations of this country, the ones who donate to the Republican Party, and politely inform them that you probably won’t be around to patronize any of their products or services because you are likely not going to survive once the armed forces put down the insurrection that will happen if the Repubs overturn the results of the popular vote. Civil war is not going to be good for business. The least you can do is give them a head’s-up, as a loyal customer.