I remember way back in 2019 or early 2020 (I think), when there was first starting to be discussion on thèse Boards of « what if » scenarios, and many posters would respond by citing the Constituion as an immutable system.
@AK84 had the very interesting comment, coming from a country that has gone through political upheavals: « Americans seem to think their Constitution has the same status as the laws of physics. »
[my memory version]
I think positions may have changed since then.
I don’t think it has; there still seems to be a sense of “Well that can’t happen, it’s unconstitutional.”
The law doesn’t really matter. What matters is if people WANT the law to matter. And when a pretty good chuck of the population doesn’t care about the law, the country is in trouble.
From the AP yesterday:
So? Franco had served the Spanish state loyally and well for decades. George Washington was a patriotic Englishman, who had served his King well. Napoleon was the savior of the Republic. Nothing more dangerous than a lifelong military man, convinced of the righteousness of his cause.
The US military isn’t any more immune from political ambitions than other armed forces in other times and places. No, one of the main reasons it has’t happened in the US is that the system allows for a politically ambitious officer to gain political power fairly easily. So many of your generals have gone on to gain the Presidency or high office, that the incentive for them is to work within the system.
The trick is ensure that said incentive never breaks down.
A University of California - San Diego Political Science professor (who, it should be noted, has a book coming out) had some very interesting things to say about the state of our Democracy:
Good points. And of course if Trump (or someone Trumpish) succeeded in getting military and law-enforcement support for a 'we really won the 2024 election no matter what the electoral votes and courts say’ effort, the result could well be a declaration that Trump or Hawley or De Santos or whoever is President-for-Life. And that would NOT be a good situation for ambitious right-wing military guys.
In that scenario we’d likely enter an era of coups and counter-coups and assassinations.
By the way, the “law enforcement” mentioned in the thread title is at least as relevant to the discussion as is the military (I just had the recent op-ed, centered on the military, to hand when writing).
A strong possibility: the 2024 popular vote AND electoral vote count are close. GOP state legislatures, using their new laws permitting them to declare any result they dislike “fraudulent,” tell slates of electors for the Democratic candidate that they are not legitimate—and local law enforcement rounds them up and does…whatever with them. (“Jails them temporarily” if they’re lucky.)
That’s not even counting what state and local L.E. entities could do during the elections themselves, from making it clear that if the ‘wrong’ people try to vote they will be arrested, to simply standing outside polling places with “Trump” (or whoever) regalia plus assault weapons-at-the-ready.
Who would stop this from happening?
COVID could help prevent it. There are going to be a lot more missing Republican voters in 2024 than Democrats or Independents.
Undoubtedly true. There is very likely to be a smaller number of registered Republicans voting in 2024 than in 2020.
But will the drop be enough to overcome the ‘discourage Democratic-leaning voters’ and ‘ignore actual votes and just declare whichever winner we prefer’ tactics already put in place in many red states?
And if it’s close, will that encourage people with weaponry (whether military or law-enforcement) to decide that putting their thumbs on the scale could work out well for them?
I’ve never been in the military, so I would defer to the thoughts of those who have. However, after many years working with ex-officers, mostly Colonels, my experience is that these are people who take their office and oath seriously, and are not likely to support any illegal activities. These are people who value American democracy and in my experience care about it.
(I’m in an industry that seems to have an inordinate portion of ex military)
Edited to add that I am sure there are some officers who would go down this route, but I doubt anywhere near enough.
Yes, but no coup can succeed in a place like America without a good veneer of legitimacy. The reason 2020 failed for the GOP was because it was perceived as illegitimate, as sore losers who couldn’t swallow the truth.
In 2024, a much more skilled GOP could or would pull it off in a way that would seem much more legit, in fact, maybe even have some constitutional backing to it. The trick would be to seize power in a way that made it seem like Democrats were the sore loser insurgents who couldn’t accept their loss. It’s all about perception, and it’s all about the first 24 hours following Election Night. Those 24 hours would be utterly crucial in determining the perception of who was the “entrenched” and who was the “challenger.”
The fatality rate of COVID is still far less than the Spanish Influenza. The bitter irony of COVID is that it’s just deadly enough that it couldn’t be ignored as just another respiratory infection, while not so devastatingly deadly as to scare doubters into supporting pandemic measures.
I don’t have a specific citation, but it seems to be conventional wisdom that extremism is found mostly in the ranks and not so much at the officer level (with obvious exceptions such as Mike Flynn).
One of the reasons for using the phrase “black box” in the thread-title is that there is a certain paucity of hard data on the topic. Heads of armed forces would be unlikely to be pleased by poll results that say, for example, ‘46% of the enlisted ranks would support a violent coup’—so they, in all likelihood, decline to authorize such studies.
So we just don’t know.
The problem is, we may find out in a way that offers no way of going back.
Yes, all of that is, alarmingly, quite plausible. And obviously the choices made by the major media outlets will have a lot to do with perceptions created.
And (to be Captain Obvious again), those perceptions will have been built up over the weeks and months before the election–weeks and months in which the business interests of the media lie in “getting eyeballs.” How do they get eyeballs? By making sure that the message is 'what’s happening is that two perfectly-legitimate sides are engaged in high-stakes conflict.’
So for media profits, it’s crucial that whoever the GOP runs–Donald Trump, or Ron DeSantis, or whoever–is seen as Perfectly Legitimate. Any hint that the GOP candidate’s side is 100% going to claim that the election is rigged must be downplayed, because obviously anyone with such a plan is not interested in upholding the Constitution–they are merely power-grabbing. But that must not be mentioned on the evening news, lest viewers start to think this is NOT a horserace between two equally-lawful, equally-justifiable sides.
Just the opposite. Back when the President was frequently called a liar, ratings were much higher:
CNN loses nearly 70% of its viewers since Trump left office
Saying that Trump or DeSantis was illegitimate would goose television ratings and national newspaper subscription revenue.
P.S. I don’t think mainstream media, at least the newspapers — which is what I know about — have such a low wall between the business and news sides as you imply. The reason they said Trump told untruths wasn’t because they wanted to make more money, but because Trump did lie with unusual frequency.
Well, it’s a matter of opinion. Mine is that if CNN and MSNBC adopted the message ‘Republicans, including Presidential candidate ____________, have already declared war on democracy by stating that a free-and-fair election is an impossibility’----which in my view is tantamount to stating ‘Republican 2022 candidates have made themselves illegitimate by refusing good-faith participation in the democratic process’—ratings would tank. Hard.
A bit of a test of our competing theories is now underway, due to new anti-democracy messaging from Rand Paul. He said, in effect, that legal-and-valid voting and counting of votes is, by definition, Bad and Wrong:
Paul is, here, stating an illegitimate position for a politician in a democracy: that “democracy” and “stealing elections” are indistinguishable.
We shall have to wait and see whether coverage of Paul increases (which would signal that his illegitimacy is attractive or compelling, and thereby driving viewership).
What he wants is “democracy with republican party characteristics”.
Your own quote says this:
So in other words, CNN already did what you claim they wouldn’t do because it’d make their ratings tank…
Sounds very much like something he’d say, and consider it perfectly reasonable. Be careful–Rand will want to hire you…
No, I didn’t claim that CNN et al would avoid making observations about what a politician said; my claim was about the unlikelihood of the networks characterizing the politicians themselves. (Look at my post.)
In other words, if Harwood had said “Rand, with this remark, reveals his unfitness to hold office” or anything similar, that would have been an instance (of pointing out illegitimacy) that would have contradicted my claim. But Harwood did not characterize Rand at all. He simply pointed out the illogic of the position Rand had taken.
You can probably guess what I line I amended there, even if you didn’t already know I live in China.
Yes, and it’s a good comparison, these days.
One wonders if, in five years, anyone in power in China might still believe that claiming to be a “democracy with Chinese characteristics” lends any legitimacy at all.
For decades, claiming to be a democracy (of some stripe) did lend legitimacy to a government. But now that the American Republicans are joined with Putin’s Russians and others in striving to make “democracy” a dirty word, perhaps claims will change. “We are an autocracy with Chinese characteristics” may seem like a trendier thing to claim. (And would be more honest, if that’s of any interest.)