We’ve already discussed, over in one of those threads about Trump and mail-in voting, the disturbing little fact that Trump now owns the entire USPS Board of Governors including the Postmaster General.
So if Trump signs an executive order that the Post Office should confiscate all mail-in ballots (in selected states only, of course), who would carry out that order? You needn’t ask.
Let’s take a collective deep breath. I know we like to imagine that all Republicans are the spawn of Satan around here but they’re not. None of the “ifs” are going to happen.
Senate will go along with Trump. No, not on something this extraordinary. When Trump floated the idea of delaying the elections, a much smaller deal than what you’re proposing, not a single establishment Republican supported it; they didn’t give it a sniff of respectability. No way they support a take-over.
SCOTUS goes along with it. We’ve already seen that SCOTUS does not rubber-stamp Trump. There’s no way they support something so blatantly unconstitutional.
The military supports it. I guess this could be the closest to actually happening but we’ve already seen a rift between the Trump administration and the career military. I suppose that between now and January Trump could attempt to fire all generals who aren’t his lackeys; that might be troubling. Until that happens, though, I’m not worried.
Yeah, I admit it’s not likely but we’re inching in that direction…
They didn’t support it because they want the election to occur during maximum chaos time. If they really cared about protecting the election, they could:
Fund the post office.
Provide funding to the states to harden the elections against foreign interference.
Impose additional sanctions against Russia for election interference in 2016.
Release the intelligence about what Russia is doing now to subvert the 2020 election to the public, so the public knows what to watch for.
Provide funding to people out of work so they don’t get evicted and have to move, again disenfranchising voters who won’t remember to re-register at their new addresses.
I have more faith that the military will hold, I don’t think John Roberts wants to hand Trump the title of Queen for Life and I do think there are still a few (a very few) Republicans who would join Democrats to try and stop this madness. But I believe we’re further down the track than perhaps you realize.
If the Republicans decide to anoint somebody President-for-Life, they’re not going to pick Donald Trump for the job. They’d wouldn’t want somebody who will contribute nothing and only cause them problems.
A safe assumption, now and always
Yes, there will always be some people who are fools or criminals. But I don’t feel they’re a majority; if they were, society wouldn’t exist.
That’s one reason why democracy is the best system of government. It lets the majority set the rules for everyone, including the fools and the criminals.
It’s true the deplorables are causing problems right now. But they didn’t spring up like mushrooms in 2016. They were there all along. They’re only out now because they have a leader figure. Get rid of their leader and the followers will no longer be a serious problem.
My bold.
They see him as helping them get re-elected and stay in office. If this weren’t the case, they would have kicked him to the curb already.
Indeed, we are a lot further down the track than most of us realize. People are looking around and saying, “Well, I don’t see the Gestapo outside. No tanks. No cancelled elections and rounding up of political opponents.” But that’s what happens in the end.
The first step to destroying a democracy is destroying confidence in the institutions that support it and make it work. We’ve already seen how the Department of Justice is being turned into a joke and how law enforcement agencies have been used as a kind of Praetorian Guard for the President. We’ve seen the president fire independent civil servants and inspectors general for doing their jobs. Now we’re seeing him actively taking steps to undermine faith and confidence in the election, and that’s a monumental next step.
Even worse, he’s now deliberately disrupting the official census, which could cast doubt on the political apportionment and legitimacy of the government for literally the next decade, and probably well beyond. He’s deliberately setting into motion a set of circumstances that will create perpetual controversy and conflict.
At the risk of milking the Nazi cliche as a reference, it took the Nazis about 10 years between the time of the Putsch in 1923 until the elections of 1932 and 33. Hitler was actually convicted of treason and jailed during that time. He only got stronger. His attacks on truth and on a liberal inclusive society only made them stronger. When the Nazis were not quite strong enough to form a coalition, they learned to use procedural warfare as a weapon. They walked out of the Reichstag so that a quorum could not be reached. The Nazis first paralyzed Weimar democracy. They paralyzed it, and then they strangled it.
That is what a lot of Republicans want to do, not just Trump. You’re kidding yourself if you think that Mitch McConnell’s refusal to hold hearings on Merrick Garland was a defense of senate tradition; it was the weaponization of procedure and an assault on democracy, laid even more bare by the fact that he’s on record as saying he’s more than willing to seat a republican nominee under precisely the same circumstances. It’s a party that is committed to undermining democracy as we know it.
In the near term, the Republicans won’t do away with democracy outright. As I tried to explain, they will retain the characteristics of a democratic republic. There will still be elections. There will still be democracy; it just won’t be the same democracy we’ve known and participated in. They will do what they can to make sure that the wrong people don’t vote and that the right people do. They might overcount Florida, Texas, and Iowa in the census and undercount New York, California, and Washington state. Little tricks like that.
People assume that authoritarianism means totalitarianism, and they’re not the same. Russia and Iran actually have multiparty elections in which real opposition candidates challenge the system. This is allowed for the same philosophical reasons that monarchs tolerated a parliament of barons – it doesn’t mean they necessarily have the final word, but they exist as a release valve. Smart authoritarians allow some democracy to serve as a warning when they have gone too far.
But it’s in the republicans interests to maintain the characteristics of the current system so as to make it recognizable and semi-legitimate to the people participating in it. The republicans don’t necessarily want to rewrite an entirely new constitution - at least the smart ones know how contentious that would be. Instead, they’d rather just use this constitution and interpret it however they see fit and drain every last drop of it until it no longer functions. At that point, it’s probably military junta time, but we might be decades away from that. Still, in the interim, the average American loses.
Kim Jong has, for all intensive purposes, has a country of slaves.
Putin has an army of assassins to control the public. And Trump is clearly his puppet.
Trump has an army of morons. Trump can’t find his ass with both hands. Putin and Mitch tell him what to do. No doubt some are trying to control his irrational bullshit, but that seems impossible.
Putin, I’m sure is having a great laugh every day.
We may overcome this. But things get worse every day.
“We become members of the Reichstag in order to paralyze the Weimar sentiment with its own assistance. If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and per diem for this “blockade,” that is its own affair.”
“We do not come as friend nor even as neutrals. we come [Page 202] as enemies: As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come.” – Joseph Goebbels, 1928
As @ThelmaLou said, all evidence points to the contrary. Trump has already caused them problems. He remains their standard bearer. They have the power and could have gotten rid of him at any time over the past 4 years. Don’t you wonder why they haven’t?
If we don’t get rid of the lot, including the Republican majority in the Senate, it’s going to get worse a lot faster.
I never imagined after the nearly unfixable mess left to us by Bush the Lesser in 2008 that another Republican could be elected again so soon. But the country never appreciated just how much Obama accomplished in his 8 years, even in the face of unprecedented Republican opposition, and so they were Ready for a Change™ in 2016 – no matter how unfit the candidate was for the job.
Even a cursory review of Trump’s sketchy history with Russia reveals a lot of red flags (pun intended) that should have served to give a thinking public significant pause at handing over the reins to such a one. But we are an ignorant, impatient, self-entitled bunch, so Mr. Apprentice became a viable option to too many. Even as Russia dumped Clinton campaign ill-gotten emails, no one bothered to question how those emails had been obtained, or what the purpose was in releasing them. “At least he’s not Hillary!” came the feeble retort, revealing not only ignorance of Trump but ignorance of Clinton and her qualifications/accomplishments as well.
They dropped a sack of shit on Obama in 2008, and Republicans are dropping an even more massive sack of shit on Biden now. If they’re going to lose – and all evidence points to a major loss in a fair election – they’re going to leave the biggest mess imaginable for Dems to have to clean up. Again.
And if it takes longer than we thought (rather like fighting ignorance), well… that’s a feature, not a bug, from their perspective. They can pick away at democracy from the sidelines with their newly-installed judges, suing the Biden Administration over every little thing, while Biden struggles to put the train back on the track. They know Americans will give them another chance in 4 years or 8. And the slide into autocratic governance will resume.
In 2008, the entire tea party erupted in spontaneous outrage (later helped along by the Koch brothers) because Democrats approved a 780 billion dollar aid package to bail out banks and businesses so as to avoid a global depression. Much of that was paid back. Today, Steve Mnuchin thieves 500 billion outright with no accountability to the taxpayers, the Fed prints money to keep the stock market afloat and most Americans barely seem to notice.
It’s all going according to plan for Republican oligarchs. They’re not worried about the outcome in 2020. If they can’t steal this election, they’ll just steal the next one.
Trump’s analysis of the great job he is doing.
…But [AXIOS’ Johnathan] Swan, given one of the few opportunities for a non-sycophant to interview the president, revealed them for what they were. Trump was left fumbling, unable to rationalize his repeated claims that all was well. Because, of course, it isn’t.
…[Trump] then went into his standard patter about ventilators and protective equipment. This has emerged as a standard defense mechanism for the president: What he’s done is the best that could have been done, and nothing he hasn’t done would have been useful to do until such time as he does it. The number of tests completed is an unalloyed success, although the slow ramp-up in testing allowed the virus to spread without detection for weeks this spring, spurring massive numbers of deaths. To Swan, Trump blamed this on his having taken office without there being a test for the virus — a virus that emerged in humans more than two years after Trump became president.
…
My bold. Had to leave that in–hehe.
It gets worse. It’s a window into this.
…Even within the confines of Trump’s bounded successes, though, it quickly became apparent that he didn’t have a grasp on what was happening with the pandemic. He was holding numbers in his hands, but didn’t understand what they showed and, importantly, what they didn’t.
“Right here,” he said at one point, showing Swan a chart, “the United States is lowest in— numerous categories, we’re lower than the world.”
“Lower than the world?” Swan asked. “What does that mean?"
“We’re lower than Europe,” Trump continued. “Take a look. Take a look. Right here.”
He handed Swan the sheet of paper, allowing the reporter, at least, to actually understand what Trump was claiming.
“Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases,” Swan said. “I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etcetera.”
“You can’t do that,” Trump replied.
“Why can’t I do that?” Swan asked.
“You have go by—” Trump continued, fumbling with his papers. “You have to go by where— Look, here is the United States— You have to go by the cases of death.”
“It’s surely a relevant statistic,” Swan said a bit later, “to say if the U.S. has X population and X percentage of death of that population versus South Korea—”
“No, you have to go by cases,” Trump interjected.
“Well, look at South Korea, for example. Fifty-one million population, 300 deaths,” Swan said. “It’s like— it’s crazy.”
“You don’t know that,” Trump replied, suggesting that South Korea was perhaps hiding its true death toll.
…The Swan interview certainly suggests that someone is keeping Trump from understanding what’s actually happening with the pandemic. The odds are that the person who is doing so is Trump.
A comment on Swan’s much-lauded interview from elsewhere in the Washington Post:
…Again and again, Swan practically pleaded with Trump to demonstrate a shred of basic humanity about the mounting toll under his presidency, and to display a glimmer of recognition of responsibility for it. Again and again, Trump failed this most basic test…
Here’s the interview, if you can stomach it…
No, I disagree. Trump has been a problem child for the Republicans. The fact that this thread exists is evidence of that. Incumbent Presidents normally have an easy time getting re-elected for a second term. With Trump, we’re having a discussion about he might have to stage a coup to stay in office. And the Republicans have already had to save his sorry ass from one impeachment. The Republicans see Trump as a burden not an asset.
As for Trump’s voters, the Republicans would like to take them back out of Trump’s hands and have somebody more dependable giving them their orders. Turn them back over to somebody like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck who will steer them in more acceptable directions.
Worst of all, Trump is damaging the brand. When people start voting against Trump, there’s a carryover effect and they start voting against other Republicans along with him.
For all intents and purposes.
In this particular case, I think enipla has it right.
Yo, Semites!
Absurd.
Holy shit. There’s surely a pun in there somewhere.