Explain to me how someone sees his quote and makes that comment. I mean, I need to know the process.
Not without the governor’s signature, and the swing states of Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all have Democratic governors. Furthermore, according to the National Task Force on Election Crises paper A State Legislature Cannot Appoint Its Preferred Slate of Electors to Override the Will of the People After the Election
Although the power to choose the manner in which electors are appointed means that state legislatures theoretically could reclaim the ability to appoint electors directly before Election Day, they may not substitute their judgment for the will of the people by directly appointing their preferred slate of electors after Election Day. Nor may they use delays in counting ballots or resolving election disputes as a pretext for usurping the popular vote. Doing so would violate federal law and undermine fundamental democratic norms, and it could also jeopardize a state’s entitlement to have Congress defer to its chosen slate of electors.
Do you understand why “have you stopped beating your wife” is a bad question? Because it’s meant to trap you either way. If you say no, because you never beat her in the first place, that’s interpreted as “no, I haven’t stopped beating her”, or if you say yes to say “yes I’ve stopped since I never beat her in the first place”, your answer is interpreted as “I used to beat her but I stopped”
It’s designed to be a question where no answer is a good one.
The question they asked Trump is absolutely nothing like that. Asking that if you lose the election, will you give up power peacefully? is not a trick question at all. It has a very easy answer. The answer is “yes”
You cannot seriously be shocked at the idea of asking such a question. It was asked to a guy in 2016, before he was elected, if he would accept the results of the election, and even then he said only if he won. He’s a guy who has said, when Xiping became president for life, that we should try it here. He’s said that he deserves 8 (or 12) more years. And you think it’s some sort of absurd liberal conspiracy to ask the guy if he’s going to give up his presidential powers peacefully if he loses the election?
The very fact that he could not answer “yes” to that question proves that the question was well beyond necessary.
You cannot be serious.
And as well all know, the Republican party would never be so uncouth and unsportsmanlike as to undermine norms.
That actually happened once. In 1876, two sets of electoral votes were sent in from 3 states. They reached a compomise solution where the Republican won, but Reconstruction in the South was ended.
To avoid that problem in the future, they passed a law that the governor of each state had to certify the electoral ballots. Assuming the governor is not playing games or suffering from dementia, he or she will only certify a single set of ballots.
I’m watching the 1989 film “The Final Days,” about Nixon’s fall, and, at least the way the film presents it, he was surrounded by punctiliously ethical lawyers always telling him he must do this or could not do that.
Different time.
I’m talking, BTW, about the lawyers who advised Nixon on how to handle the Watergate investigation. There’s nothing to suggest anyone ever sought legal advice about the matters under investigation.
Although per the Atlantic article that is making the rounds, the law in question is widely considered to be “convoluted and impenetrable,” “confusing and ugly,” and “one of the strangest pieces of statutory language ever enacted by Congress.”
The article goes through the various scenarios in which a state’s governor, Secretary of State, or state legislature could still try to certify different slates of electors.
It is a sobering article and well worth reading:
Well I remember, as a child, hearing my parents discuss ‘if President Eisenhower would allow the Democrats to put that Catholic Kennedy in the White House instead of Richard Nixon’. (As a mixed Catholic-Protestant marriage, it was relevant to them.) Apparently his answer was ‘Absolutely – I spent years & thousands of my soldiers’ lives restoring democracy to Europe; I’d never dispute it in the United States’.
To be fair, there’s never been an incumbent president for whom this was a realistic worry, who ever really implanted this thought in people’s heads. Nobody thought Obama wouldn’t leave the White House if he lost to Romney, or Bush if he’d lost to Kerry.
While this is true, it’s also worth bearing in mind that a governor or legislature that defied the will of their own constituency would be putting their own jobs in jeopardy. After all, as much as federal Republicans are pathetic toadies for Trump, state Republicans are much more removed and need to keep their own voters happy. The next time a politician does something that doesn’t threaten their re-election chances… well, it’s not a common thing. In a super tight race it’s a coin flip, but if one candidate or the other clearly won, even in a 51-49 scenario, saying “to hell with what the people said” is a huge risk to take with one’s political future.
State Republicans are elected by the exact same people as federal Republicans, and many state Republicans aspire to become federal Republicans. Republican politicians of all stripes seem to be taking their cues from Trump and only catering to Trump himself and his base. Check out the current governor of Florida for a good example of this.
I have been repeatedly disappointed over the last four years by virtually all Republican politicians, even ones not running for reelection. I don’t have a lot of confidence that now is the time when they will finally do the right thing.
I realize that many are suspicious of whites who adopt Black children.
It never will be that there is a perfect match in the percentage of children needing adoption, of each race, or other identity group, and the percentage of adoptive parents. I find being judgmental about this unfair to all involved.
Non-cross-racial adoption is also, sometimes, a sign of racism. Except that there is no way to know when it is, and it is again unfair to all involved to be judgmental.
Not everything is about racial justice, or should be.
I’m with PhillyGuy: that’s a crass accusation without anything to back it up.
I’ll provide a single counterexample, but that’s because we only have one statewide office held by a Republican. Bev Clarno is Oregon’s Sec of State. Just recently she made a statement strongly supporting Vote-by-mail, which is counter to many, many negative statements Trump has made about it. But VbM is very popular here; it’s very rare to find a voter of either party who doesn’t like it. At any rate, I don’t expect Clarno to do some heinous act just because Trump tells her to.
Oooo! Ooooo! Mistah Kottah!!
“Were you born in Kenya?”
What do I win?
This is true, and I did not say that everything is about racial justice, or should be.
Some white individuals adopt black kids to make a statement and are fairly straightforward on that point. Those people make me suspicious about the others, such as the wave of celebrities proudly showing off their newly acquired virtue symbols.
Again and again, Trump states explicitly what he is going to do and again and again, we debate what he means by his words. Then we ask ourselves when will the good Republicans come back and stand up for democracy and again and again, Republicans go along with Trump’s crimes. Then we reset, wait for the next outrage and again wonder where the good Republicans are.
Trump will not accept losing. His base will go along with it. It is why he is actively undermining faith in the process and why he is rushing to put another corrupt crony on the bench.
Meanwhile, the “peddlers of false hope” keep saying that our institutions will save us based on nothing but a toxic cocktail of naïveté and smugness.
Mad Monk is 100 percent correct. Trump has no intent to give up office, one way or the other, there are millions of people willing to help him do so, and THERE ARE NO GOOD REPUBLICANS who hold any power today. We are in for some really big shit, and no one should expect anything but the worst from Trump, his supporters, and Republicans.
Absolutely. Any republican with anything like a conscience resigned, retired or was fired. Or died, in the case of McCain.
If the result is anywhere near close, Trump will refuse to leave and the GOP will be in lockstep behind him. The only question is how much of the Trump-appointed judiciary will also follow orders.
Interesting article in the New York Times by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind, based on interviews with senior Trump officials: