The American Coup: 11.9.2020 -

Being Democrat. :smiley:

Of course none of them have committed any crimes. My point is that if the Big Doofus who will soon not be president had half the mystical powers to get away with anything that he’s ascribed, it wouldn’t matter. Everyone keeps assigning him these godlike powers - he doesn’t have any. He’s just a big dumb rage monster… which is plenty dangerous on its own! But there seems to be this perception that he literally does whatever he wants and is never blocked, which I think is factually not true. He gets blocked plenty, which is good, and which - this is important - should keep us all off the ledge right now, at least to some degree. I’m not sure it benefits us to give this deeply stupid man more credit than he deserves.

This. I think the transition may well be done only after Trump departs the Whitehouse in a petulant snit. This will probably happen well before Jan 20, possibly as early as December. He will cry and whine about “cheating”, as he leaves the whitehouse. He’ll probably literally take a piss on the Resolute Desk when he leaves.
I’m pretty sure that Putin is stroking his ego, and is orchestrating all of this garbage. Russia is the main beneficiary of this.

Except for going on 5 years now, we’ve all been asking the same question: How has this fucking moron got this far? It seems Chance-The-Gardner-esque. Except pretty much everyone is in on the joke, including the GOP members of congress and members of his administration, that he’s a fucking moron. Yet, here we all are. No closer to having the answer to the question. Surely there is going to be some cosmic reveal to this joke, right?

I think you make a good point.

But somewhere along the line, the calculus changes for CFSG and his supporters, minions, Cabinet, and enablers.

“Freedom’s just another word for … nothin’ left to lose.”

Where we’ve been for the last four years has been awful. But I’m not sure we’ve yet been … where we are now.

Will that change the willingness of Trump, Inc. to accede to his monomaniacal sociopathy ? TBD.

I think they’re going to wait until January 6, when Congress counts the Electoral votes and Pence announce Biden and Harris won, before they finally admit the election is over.

His wife, for starters! But a number of GOP congress folks have already called Biden “president elect”.

Which is, coincidentally, the day after the Georgia run-off elections.

I think that is the biggest piece of the puzzle. The Republican senators are scared to death that he’ll kill their chances in Georgia with a tweet if they don’t support him sufficiently.

But I think all this noise is going to be good for the Democrats in Georgia. They aren’t going to be able to placate Trump and gaslight the nation until January 5th.

And if they get ridiculous enough, the Dems may even get some of the borderline Trump voters back. Not many, but I figure 5% or so might be swayable if the Republicans get too insane.

:question:
Ain’t nothin’ there.

That’s what she said.

I guess they pulled it down as quick as they could! It was Melania’s announcement about the White House Christmas decorations (which, you know, who gives a fuck about those?). The announcement stated that 2020 would be their last in the White House.

It can be punished by up to six months in prison. It’s not nothing.

Screwing up the whole country to score cheap political points would suffice for six months in prison in my book.

Thank you. I did not realize that. Ignorance fought.

Oh my God, that’s hilarious!

How are there no screenshots of the tweet anywhere??

It was fake news – the lady who retweeted it in the link you posted took her retweet down and posted this:

https://www.twaku.com/sfpelosi/tweet/1326998307835502593

Eta: the edit history strip the context here – I was genuinely excited at first but as I looked into it I was disappointed to learn it wasn’t true. :frowning:

Do you mean, if you did that, you’d be happy to serve six months? Or that you’d be satisfied seeing that person serve six months? Because for a crime with that kind of impact I think six months is about 19.5 years too short a sentence.

Again, though, winning the lawsuits isn’t the point. The point is to rile up half the population into thinkingthere must have been some fraud. Then, pointing at all the “unresolved questions,” claim the result of the election in PA, WI, MI, AZ and GA cannot be accurately ascertained. Republican legislatures invoke federal law:

And appoint Trumpist electors. There’s nothing you can practically do to stop them.

For this to happen, states would either have to fail to certify the results of the election for some reason, or the courts would have to give an order to stop states from certifying the results.

Not sure how the first hypothetical would play out, but if a court gave such an order, it would be quickly appealed up to the state Supreme Court and/or the U.S. Supreme Court.

In any event, if the state legislatures try this anti-democratic move, I believe the relevant SoS and governors would also have to cooperate. And the courts could step in here as well.

One good thing is that all of this is out in the open. If state legislatures try to pull this, the public will know who is responsible.

I don’t mean to sound so sanguine here. I’m still very concerned about how this is all going to play out.

If it was that easy Republicans would have done it long ago.
The National Task Force on Election Crises, in its paper A State Legislature Cannot Appoint Its Preferred Slate of Electors to Override the Will of the People After the Election goes into great detail to explain how failure requires more than delays or disputes in vote counting

I don’t get “the lawsuit failed, but the Legislature gets to count it as evidence” line. In that case the lawsuit is irrelevant. The legislature can just choose to override the election on their own.