Sorry. Fully disagree. What I’m not seeing is all of the predictions/projections on part of some of our Doper posts is that there’s no solidarity from the GOP on any type of anarchy.
The administration is not an administration. It’s idiots in a corner, the fat blonde and orange one the most scared of prosecution.
The only left wing CT I’ll go with is fat boy resigns, Pence pardons him, NYC files suit.
Yes, but in the 6 presidential elections since Oregon went to all-mail voting in 1998, the Democrat has won Oregon every single time. Same for Colorado, Hawaii, DC and Washington. Since Republicans have never won any of those states after they implemented all mail voting, that proves mail-in voting doesn’t work!! And don’t try to use Utah as a counter-example. You should never let facts get in the way of your narrative.
I wish I didn’t have to point out this is sarcasm
I feel pretty confident that Biden knows better than you, or any of us.
I saw this referred to as “between a cock and a charred place.”
If Trump Isn’t planning a coup d’état, he’s just trying to make it look like he’s planning a coup d’état
It’s possible that I am in love with you. I love level-headed. It’s one of the reasons I like Biden.
Yeah, it’s just a whiny baby refusing to admit he lost, and some Repubs hedging their bets because they don’t want to piss off his rabid followers. I’m not worried that there won’t be a transition of power, I’m mostly worried in what trump can do (and what he’s already done) in these 72 days in-between.
Interesting thought. I’ve been seeing a lot of right wing anger at Fox, saying they’re controlled by the mainstream media and therefore anti-Trump, etc – the last 4 years don’t matter, apparently.
These people are also leaving Facebook for Parler.
Speaking of Fox News, I have kind of a theory as to how things will play out after trump finally takes his ball and goes home:
There’s been talk of a trump News Network starting up. I said in another thread that I didn’t think trump had the focus or disciplined messaging to host a Limbaugh-style network, but @Crane said, maybe people will approach trump to use his name for a network.
This I think is very likely. trump was already making much of his money trading on his name before he became president. Now his name brand has gone from meaning “ostentatious luxury” to “far-right grievance politics with a big helping of conspiracy theories”. So a tNN starts up, and poaches wingnuts from Fox like the Hannitys, Tucker Carlsons, etc. Maybe they merge with OANN. trump is no more than figurehead and mascot, occasionally allowed to call in and rant.
Fox News then pivots to be a more legitimate news organization in the Chris Wallace mode. Still right of center, still playing right-wing grievance notes, but a more sane right-wing alternative to loony tNN.
Am I the only that thinks there won’t be an actual coup attempt, but is still concerned about this? About the long-term effects and the norms of transition of power when parties change? The susceptibility to coups or ignoring electoral results in the future? There’s always been people who complain or think the vote was stolen, but here we have high-ranking elected officials going along with it, validating the refusal to concede, etc. I hope it’s a one-off, but it doesn’t bode well for the future to me.
For the record, I think that Trump will ultimately forced to do a non-concession concession and leave office. He will fire people and use power plays until his last day in office, but like most people here, I think (hope is more like it) that one-by-one, states will be forced to certify their elections, legislatures will be forced to accept them, congressional republicans will be forced to accept them, and finally, Trump will be forced to confront the reality that his party has run out of reasonable explanations for his continued presidency and that they’re not quite ready to make the leap into an autocracy.
but the danger I’m seeing is that he is planting a seed in the minds of literally tens of millions of voters that this is another version of normal, that elections aren’t really over until the electoral college casts its formal votes in December. That has always been the technical truth but that’s not the understanding we’ve collectively had for at least the past century and longer. If people believe that there’s a legal alternative to elections, then the elections process becomes less meaningful going forward.
As a lot of us have said over the years, Trump isn’t exactly the brightest bulb and he operates on impulse and instinct. But if you were to have another populist in a few years who knows a little something about how power works on the back end, then we might have a real problem. But in the interim, the real problem is that voters could get to a point where they willingly vote for an authoritarian.
Yep, I’ve said this a bunch. Caesar wasn’t the first populist to show up in Republican Rome. He was the last in a long line of men who each seized a little more power, just to deal with this specific issue and fix it, then gave up that power; engaged in political violence just this once, to rectify some grave injustice; but the cumulative effect of these actions, generation after generation, was the erosion of the trust in the democratic system and of the norms that prevented people from siezing power beforehand.
From that perspective, Trump is halfway down a path that began long ago. When FDR strong armed the Supreme Court; when Nixon tried to cheat; when Bush and Clinton and Bush and Obama and Trump each signed more executive orders than the last; when President after president engaged in foreign wars without bothering to ask congress; when the Supreme Court became views as more and more partisan; when Mitch McConnell declared that he would make it his task to make Obama a one term president…
Each of these (and as you can see these are actions taken by both sides, though not equally, at least lately…) has irreparably damaged faith in America’s democratic institutions. Trump’s latest shenanigans are by far the worst, and may do more damage than the rest of his presidency combined, but this is a progression that began long ago.
Where does it end? In Rome, it ended with a populist demagogue seizing absolute power from the democratic institutions to cheers from the people. His assassination followed, but it was too late. The Republic was dead. Trump isn’t a Caesar, but he’s definitely making it easier for a Caesar to destroy democracy and argue he is doing us all a favor. THAT is the scary part.
ETA: I see that @asahi ninja’d me with the same argument minus the historical allusions. I could have beaten him to the punch if I dropped those too! 
Yep, this is the real legacy of the trump administration-- as a test run for a real, effective populist authoritarian ruler in the future. With no shame, morals or integrity trump pushed a lot of boundaries, and bent or broke some, but didn’t really know what to do after that.
trump is like a dumb but brazen bank robber who decides to blow up the side of a bank. Then he has access to piles of money but didn’t plan transportation to haul it away, so he ends up just stuffing a few $100 bills in his pockets and runs away. The next bank robber will bring explosives AND a cargo truck.
What do you mean, “…could get to a point”? 
Over 70 million Americans just willingly voted for an authoritarian in this past election.
People keep hedging their bets that Trump merely exhibits “authoritarian tendencies,” but I am not so sanguine about this.
^ So much this.
Yes, that is the danger - the cumulative effects of normalizing anti-democratic behavior. I actually believe it when I read that Republican senators are privately congratulating Biden, privately wishing Trump would just go away, privately wishing they could take back the reins.
The problem is, they are contributing to a dangerous normalization of antidemocratic behavior. Democracy requires that not only the partisans accept their defeat at the ballot box but that the people who support them do the same. The Republicans are now saying it’s okay if half the country refuses to cooperate with the other, and that it’s okay to refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the other having won a free and fair election.
We’re not talking about a few cranks saying things that the overwhelming majority of people regard as nutty; we’re talking about a mainstream party, amplified by both mainstream and alternative media, and supported by potentially tens of millions of voters, a fair portion of whom might even countenance violent extremism.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that there’s a powder keg waiting for a match light.
I think this is a good summary of the Trump legacy. Trump is not a smooth criminal. He invariably steps on his own dick (which is a feat in itself given credible witness testimony) every time he attempts to pull off a new caper. Like with Hitler, we many end up having to give much of the credit to Trump for stopping Trump from getting away with the worst of what he had hoped to accomplish. I think a good title for a book that I’m certain will be written in the near future describing this long history of incompetence would be – TRUMP: The Disorganized Crime Family.
You’re not wrong. If a few people at the Pentagon were different Trump may had gotten his wish to deploy US troops inside the country during the BLM protests.
Imagine a more competent and well connected version of Trump, that had the foresight and charisma to install more loyal men in the Pentagon; to stoke the fires a little higher quietly before bringing up the idea of deploying troops (I’m sure a competent Trump could find willing agitators within this nation’s police forces – the FBI warned as much years ago); and to go about it more tactfully – maybe start off by saying “I will not deploy troops on American soil unless absolutely necessary” while letting other politicians argue that maybe he SHOULD deploy troops; and only once things have gotten REALLY bad (thanks to your own agitators) do you reluctantly ask your patsies in the Pentagon if they think this is doable…
Damn, that is well put! I’ve really appreciated so many of your posts recently. Thanks!
Is it ironic to take pleasure in Ann_Hedonia’s posts?
ISWYDT.
Also well played.