Why would that stop him? Who’d enforce any rule?
Who’s to keep the President from doing anything that’s blatantly illegal? Ultimately, the courts and Congress. In this case, the likely outcome is that the courts would find any action of the illegally appointed Acting AG to be invalid. Multiple federal judges have found actions by Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf – including the suspension of DACA – to be invalid because he’s been kept in an acting capacity longer than the law allows.
True, but it’s a one month deal. Not much time for any legal action and Congress doesn’t care.
Just another celeb attention getting device.
The timing of Barr’s firing tells us everything we need to know. Barr was fired within minutes of the news that the electoral college confirmed Biden’s victory. I’m sure the hope is that the media would cover that story instead.
Traditional odds - so Biden 4/1 represents a 20% chance
Harris at 5/1 is 17%.
Combined odds for either Biden or Harris 1.7/1
40/1 bar - to be clear, this does not mean that you can back the entire remaining field at those odds, it means that all other contenders are individually 40/1 or longer.
After Charlottesville, would we consider this the next thing? Maybe not as large and orchestrated, but still making those fascist inroads…
Gosh, why aren’t Trump and other Republicans condemning this lawlessness? Isn’t that what they kept asking about Biden all summer?
(Not expecting a serious answer)
IOWRAOWI
*It’s Okay When Republicans Are Okay With It
What, no Kanye?
Ocasio-Cortez’s odds aren’t a hundred to one in 2024.
nm…
For anyone who thinks that yesterday’s official result is a cause for celebration, and that this is proof that “the system worked,” think again - think long and hard. As New York Magazine wrote, Wisconsin was a single hyper-partisan judge’s vote away from nullifying thousands of votes and stealing an election in Wisconsin.
Would this one outcome, had it been flipped, have reversed the electoral college outcome? Still probably not, but only owing to the fact that the House of Representatives is controlled by Democrats.
What likely would have happened, however, is 21 days of sheer political madness. Trump’s cause would have been radicalized and energized in ways we probably can’t imagine. It would lend credence - albeit on a completely false premise and through nothing more than pure partisanship - to Trump’s “lost cause.” The consequences for January 6th’s formal reading of the electoral college votes would have been two-fold:
-
This election reversal would not have merely inspired Mo Brooks and a few others to continue fighting their lost cause, it would have made it impossible for many others to resist. The right wing circus would be pointing to Wisconsin and saying “See, we told you! This election is rigged, and now courts agree with us.” The fact that WI has a hyper-partisan polarized supreme court of elected judges would have flown under some people’s radars.
-
What you’ve observed in the Senate today, with more and Republicans having the courage to come out and actually acknowledge Biden’s win, would probably not have happened. We’d be hearing more “Well, now that we know one state has found fraud, we need to consider whether other states have done the same.”
Republicans, you see, were not just waiting for the electoral college to give them cover; they were waiting to see if there was any possible way that Trump and his MAGA army could spin this into a political crisis that would become so white hot that they wouldn’t be able to touch it.
Biden still probably would have won, but we were one vote away from turning what has almost always been a formality on January 6th into a monumental shit show for the ages that probably would have resulted in Republicans boycotting the inauguration and continued hesitancy to publicly acknowledge Biden’s legitimacy in the post-inauguration period.
American democracy was potentially one hyper-partisan republican judge’s vote away from being irreparably damaged. And by no means are we out of the woods now.
This is still going to happen. Many elected Republicans are going to do this.
Bullcrap. All Wisconsin did was refuse to listen to Trump’s whining. If the vote had gone the other way, it just would have meant that they would have had to actually produce evidence in a court of law. This would be rather difficult, since they have none. So no, it didn’t signal the end of the world or anything like it.
Article headline does not match article text.
It would have meant that a lawsuit challenging the validity of potentially thousands of votes would have been considered legally valid - in a state that was decided by less than a percentage point. The election would have been certified, but its legitimacy would have been challenged.
Again, in more normal times, even that might not be an issue that would make it beyond the typical certification deadline. But these are not normal times, and it would have just thrown gasoline on the whole situation.
Devon and Future Devon break down the Texas lawsuit in a lengthy but engaging and informative video:
I agree with this sentiment, but not necessarily for the reasons in the article.
Fact is, this has been one of the cleanest elections in history. Despite repeated pleas for evidence from the trumpistas, they have shown up to court again and again with nada. (Serious question: have they shown conclusive evidence of one fraudulent Democrat vote?)
And yet many Republican voters still believe the election was “stolen”. This is a shocking state of affairs compared to pretty much any other world democracy.
Imagine if there had been a shred of evidence, somewhere, that, say, a handful of dead people had voted. There would be cover for Trump’s judges to show their loyalty, and certainly sycophants like Barr would have been all in.
And, this may well happen next time. This is the new normal for the Republican party.
So no, I’m certainly not of the view that it is a ringing endorsement of American institutions.
I’m afraid that the lesson the Republicans have learned from this debacle is:
“Next time we will MAKE SURE that there are fraudulent votes for the Democrat! Let’s get cracking on that plan!”
What’s even more dangerous than a cunning master “plan” is the normalization of political conspiracy theories and alternative truth. The fact that the Republicans pulled out all the stops to make the rubber stamping of an election must-see television is shocking in its own right, but what’s worse is if you believe polls, 80% of the 74 million who voted for Trump believe that what Republicans have done is perfectly legitimate and that Biden is not the legitimate president. We’re not talking about a fringe group; we’re talking about most people who voted for a candidate who lost, but came frighteningly close to winning, and close to winning within the well-established, agreed-upon rules of the game.
And if you listened to Mitch McConnell today, his floor speech wasn’t “the people have spoken;” he said “the electoral college” has spoken. So in other words, fuck the average voter - because they really don’t mean shit. Votes aren’t really how we decide a presidential election; the will of the people must be ratified exhaustively by hundreds of teams of lawyers in countless court battles before it can truly stand. If you consider Senate Majority Leader McConnell the presumptive leader of the party for the time being, then that’s a hell of a thing for the leader or co-leader of a major party to say on the floor of the upper legislative chamber. It resembles the ancient Roman senate more than a modern parliamentary body.