Congress, at least the Senate and the current House (Bob Goodlatte I’m looking at you) are already lackeys.
Oops.
Extreme theoreticals like this belong only in political novels, where the author can control the myriad of reactions and consequences and - most importantly - explain how we got there in the first place. (Example: Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America.) In a forum like this, all anyone can do is proffer individual novels, none of them corresponding to the images going through all other posters’ heads. No one answer can be meaningful, so none can be taken seriously and none can be better than others. It’s an empty exercise in invention.
Maybe this should go into the Game Room.
The federal agencies that he inherited wouldn’t be inclined to support him. But he has had time to change the character of those agencies, and he has yet more time to do so to an even greater degree. If Trump wins in 2020 and if he has a Republican senate to work with, this country will probably lose its democracy (as we’ve understood it in modern times, anyway) - perhaps permanently.
In that case, I would see some states not only resisting Trump’s America, but forming separatist movements to break away from it. But then these states would probably have pockets of Trumpland who would demand to be ‘rescued’ by the military. In short, it would get ugly, and it would be too tempting for Russia and China to remain merely spectators for too long.
What’s he going to do in 2021 that he can’t already do in 2019? And how does any of that lead to “this country will probably lose its democracy” in your mind? Do you think he is going to cancel the elections in 2022 / 2024 or something like that?
There probably won’t be any canceled elections, but there will be additional efforts to make it harder for people who live in cities and minorities to vote.
Are you saying that you think voter ID laws lead to “this country will probably lose its democracy”?
No, I’m pretty sure what was said was
Clear enough for me.
I’m seeking to understand if he agrees with asahi’s “this country will probably lose its democracy” post and is seeking to provide some supporting evidence of that argument, or if he disagrees with it. That wasn’t at all clear to me.
Asahi’s statement was that we would lose our democracy as we know it in modern times. IMHO this means the idea that both parties encourage the idea of everyone that is eligible should vote and then whoever gets the most votes wins. Folks like Brian Kemp, Cindy Hyde-Smith, and Ron DeSantis are undermining this approach with inspiration from Trump himself. With 6 more years of Trump instead of 2, there will probably be a whole lot more Brian Kemps around in 2024.
It’s not just a question of what Trump will do but also what kind of support he will have in the Senate over the next 2 years and beyond. He can demoralize the Department of Justice and federal law enforcement agencies. He can push out more of his opposition and replace them with loyalists. He can replace retiring justices with right-wing ideologues.
People probably won’t recognize the damage done initially; it’ll take some time before they realize what’s happened.
No, it’s not necessary to suspend elections and impose martial law; it’s only necessary to make it easier for the “right” side to keep winning elections. Look at the successful voter purges in Georgia as an example.
Yes, and as we already know, this is already happening. I think we can expect oligarch-backed republicans to expand and double down on these efforts in other important states.
Keep in mind that expanded authoritarianism doesn’t necessarily preclude the occasional push-back and political upsets in elections here and there. Kansas, sick and tired of Brownback’s experiment, voted for a Democrat, but before we congratulate ourselves, this was probably only because Kobach was repugnant and he promised to use Brownback’s political playbook.
In modern times, authoritarian regimes have the look and feel of imperfect democracies. There are still elections. There are still judiciaries. There are still functioning civil servants. It’s just at that the elections are tilted to favor specific types of voters, the judicial and civil servant posts are filled with ideologues who have connections to well-funded political “think tanks”.
The “appointment” of Mathew Whitaker is a classic example of the dangers that lie ahead the longer that voters fail to see the dangers that the Trump administration pose. Constitutional questions aside, Whitaker clearly auditioned for the AG job and was promoted almost certainly because of his signals to the Trump organization that he was willing to accept his promotion in exchange for loyalty. Before Whitaker joined the Dept of Justice, he was the executive director of a nonprofit that essentially targeted Democratic lawmakers for ethics complaints, and thanks to the Citizens United ruling, we know little about the organization’s benefactors. This is the first major step to hyper-politicizing the criminal justice system at the federal level. The implications of this go beyond just potentially stifling the Mueller investigation; it almost inevitably invites loyalists within the AG to use the federal criminal justice system as a weapon to investigate and jail political enemies of the oligarch-backed right wing.
What will result, if left unchecked, is that the right wing will be allowed to engage in rather significant criminal conduct with virtual impunity whereas the loyalists in the justice system will prosecute left-wing politicians for relatively minor infractions. Do this for a year? Sure, maybe this can be overturned with a single blue-wave election. But allow this to fester for 4-6 years, and a rigged system becomes much harder to undo without incurring the risk of incarceration or worse.
He badly missed his first shot if his goal was to move towards a rubber stamp Supreme Court with the Gorsuch appointment. While Gorsuch is clearly right his key decisions before appointment include questioning Congressional delegating of authority to the executive branch and strong support for limiting search and seizure powers under the Fourth Amendment. (Scalia, who he replaced, also tended to side with Democratic appointees on 4A issues so that wasn’t really a swing.) Gorsuch looks more like an obstacle to a President For Life Trump scenario than an aid.
It might be possible for Trump to have found a right-leaning judge that would be worse for the hypothetical coming to pass. He still managed to find one that was pretty bad if that was his goal.
And what will we do? We will persist, and we will endure. Trump is afraid, his power is crumbling before his eyes, he resorts to ever more extravagant displays of power. The more expensive the display, the more he needs it to stave off his fear. He fears humiliation and poverty. He fears a thousand lawsuits for fraud and tax evasion that he would be powerless to halt.
(Perhaps it is less than truly just that he is brought to account for crimes he had pretty much gotten away with. Darn shame about that. The Law is the handjob of Justice, but sometimes its the best we can get.)
He is like the main character of the “Scottish Play”, finally, he has no one but scoundrels, fools and the pampered rich. He will fall, he is falling. When a clever man who has genuine power fails, he can recover. When a fool who has the illusion of power fails, that’s when the little boy notices that the King is nekkid, fat, and his shriveled winkie looks like a Circus Peanut. And then comes the day when he calls a press conference, and no one is there but Sean Hannity, Breitbart, and the Tri-County Observer and Coupon Bonanza.
The damage is done, it will be long time fixing. And while it is true that the strong are seldom good, and the good, seldom strong…perhaps there are enough of us who are nearly strong and almost good. And he is neither.
Gather together all those he has cheated, pore carefully over his taxes. Build a gigantic case. death by a thousand Muellers. Let it be known, by whispers and hints, that if he bails, he will not face life as a fat old man living in an efficiency and buying his dinner at the Dollar Store. Also, convert his golf courses into wind farms. A little salt for the wound. A really good person is not vindictive, I suppose. Oh, well.
This isn’t what I meant this thread to be about. I’m asking more about the SCOTUS’ extent of powers (since, technically, there is no higher legal power that can serve as a check and balance on SCOTUS itself) than about Trump - how far can a SCOTUS go before its rulings simply become openly flouted or rebelled against?
Imma read this once a day for keeping up my spirits. Damn I hope it works out this way. You get a Mulligan on the vindictive stuff, a person has their limits.
Trump doesn’t necessarily need a rubber stamp supreme court. We can’t just look at the growing constitutional and political crisis as a being caused singularly by Trump. We have not a Trump problem, but a larger oligarch problem. Even if they don’t succeed at getting rubber stamps, they can get a court that agrees with them on 90-95% of the legal issues they care about, with many decisions negatively impacting the general population on everything from collective bargaining rights to voting rights. If you stack the deck against the middle class on these two issues alone, then it’s difficult to have a truly democratic society, regardless of whether Trump has a sufficient number of rubber stampers or not.
This unworthy one grovels in apology.