Given what I wrote in my last piece about the country being in cardiac arrest, Byron York’s effort to parse the meaning of “legitimate president” seems like so much whistling past the graveyard. It’s a game of gotcha where the idea is that anyone who sincerely believes that President Trump wasn’t elected in a fair, square, and constitutional manner must be some kind of half-mad far left conspiracy theorist.
It’s true that you can distinguish between folks who believe the election was outright stolen and people who think it was unfairly influenced. There are those who think that Trump won according to the rules but that rules should be changed so that the loser of the popular vote doesn’t win the election. There are those who think that the FBI director’s interference made a decision difference, and since Comey’s actions were illegitimate, that makes the result illegitimate. There are those who think that the drip-drip-drip of Russian-pilfered leaks fatally undermined Clinton’s credibility, bringing her down to Trump’s level. They don’t think a foreign power should be able to change the course of our history through criminal interference in our political process.
Only a small minority think that actual count was off. People voted how they voted.
Getting caught up on the word “legitimate” is a waste of time. The important thing is that we now have a president who wants to help Putin destroy the European Union, dismantle NATO, and crush the pluralistic, ecumenical, secular Western left in the name of white supremacy and a petro economy. The question shouldn’t be whether Trump was elected legitimately but who wants to go along with his program?
There are parts that the Republicans like. Most of it, however, is so hostile to American influence and any common conception of American interest, that’s there is little division between Democrats and Republicans in opposing it.
At least that was the case until, perhaps, now.
Byron York is playing by the old rules, but those rules are obsolete.
We choose whether what Trump wants to do is legitimate. And, for Republicans, now is the time to choose.
They have already chosen.
Where did they get this painting of my ex-wife?
It was Putin who destabilized the EU? Not the banksters and their behavior? Not what was done to Greece…over and over and over? Who knew????
Much to my chagrin, what was done to Greece was popular throughout the rest of the EU.
It’s immigration and the free movement of people that’s riling up the fascist right.
Austerity has been at work in the EU for almost a decade. You did not see significant strengthening in white nationalism before austerity began to bite hard.
The North African and ME refugee flood is more recent and is perceived as being militantly not pro-assimilation. This is serving to inflame the nationalism, too, imho. Even French liberals I know are having problems with that.
Yet the core countries that bailed out their own citizens at the expense of the periphery and haven’t suffered under the austerity regime are the countries where the power of the right is rising fastest. You’re just curve-fitting your prior preferences.
Germany has been at work unwinding their union power since the 90s. France just recently had general strikes forced upon them. They see the trends.
I think Northern EU is reacting to refugee crisis more than economic.
I also think what the EU does to Italy will have a hell of a lot more to do with EU stability than anything Trump or Putin can manage.
I think Northern EU is reacting to refugee crisis more than economic.
Well then.
For many, many yrs, Germany has had enormous numbers (2+M) of guest workers, Turkish and other ME minorities. There have been horrible incidents, but the general German public has supported them. The (un?)stated policy of the Turkish govt was for guest workers to fit in. Just recently, Erdogan has changed that policy to one of non-assimilation–don’t try to fit in. Great timing, eh?
Curious, where do you think Putin might put a weighted finger that would have effect? George Soros is more likely to attack their currency, no?
I think the EU will be responsible for their own fate in the choices they are making with the lives of their citizens.
Curious, where do you think Putin might put a weighted finger that would have effect?
The exact same way he did it in the US. What we already know he’s doing. Funding and supporting through propaganda and cyber-espionage the various far-right eurosceptic parties like the Front National and AfD.
George Soros is more likely to attack their currency, no?
Okaaay [backs away slowly]
LOL Really?? Google Soros and English pound sometime…
I’m well aware of how Soros made his money shorting the pound in the face of Britain’s ill-advised attempt at currency manipulation in ’92. I’m also well aware of the nutfuck conspiracy theories surrounding him. Did I take a wrong turn and end up on /pol somehow?
“Soros” was a throw away jab at conspiracy claims in general. Not obvious enough, eh?
I think we all took a wrong turn and ended up on /pol.
Er, what IS /pol?
4chan’s notorious “politically incorrect” message board.
thanks
In Spain and Greece, the left was credible enough to be an alternative to nationalist/fascist parties? Though once they are defeated by the banksters, I guess the right will flourish, like New Dawn has in Greece.
But corporatists don’t seem to fear the far right as much as the left, no? Downright useful at times.
Our left is so weak, it never stood a chance against Wall Street…and so here we are.
I think you are both making excellent points; economic squeeze + immigration = trouble. The neoliberals inadvertently invited the Euro-Right to breakfast.
I agree, but the EU was flawed from the start since it was built on the idea of austerity and each nation had to fit its fiscal policy into the prearranged mold. That worked out well for the lead countries, especially Germany but the southern tier has had continuing problems. And now the ME conflicts and refugees are even more unsettling, along with Brexit and now the Trumpster. It also seems Putin has messed around in those waters as well. So now the question is: can the EU survive?
I think that we should also note that Trumps attacks on NATO fits right in with Putin’s objective. That is a destabilizing force since the loss of NATO would be one more cog in the collapse of the EU. And then we have every man for himself, just like we had for those two World Wars.
You’re omitting that Nato/US itself has been a destabilizing force these last 25 yrs, since Poppy Bush and subsequent admins broke the 1990 Bush-Baker verbal promise to Gorbachev not to expand Nato “one inch eastward” in return for the reunified Germany going into the Nato camp.
Nato has now expanded all the way eastward to Russia’s border despite strong protests public and private from Gorbachev and successors. Putin rightly considers all this a direct threat to their national security, and so he reacts accordingly. We would do the same — probably much more — if Russia decided to arrange for a military alliance with Canada or Mexico. We would go into a crisis, red-stage war-footing alert. A freak out. Putin has been rather patient and restrained under the circumstances.
True.
It should be repeated though that NATO provides a common security blanket to Europe. And it loss will unleash relatively less security. I suspect the move to the Baltics and the possibility of Ukraine were bridges too far. Trump is playing into Putin’s hand by suggesting to disband NATO.
OT, but another example of the misuse of NATO after her adventures in quasi-legal(?) ME regime change…
Imagine the fun down in South America…Colombia is inviting it.
The EU as such is not the main problem, the euro is. In classic EU style the euro was formed as a flawed compromise with an idea of future development. Both the budget requirements and the social protocol was there from the start.
But as the future developed, the ECB took control through the creation of the interest rate crisis with cover from the informal eurogroup. And then only austerity was possible. And with the ECB able to sanction governments and to far removed from the voting public for any meaningful reform from the ground, change looks unlikely.
Unfortunately, the EU lacks mechanisms to back up, so the euro seems likely to take the EU with it to the grave.
The EU has other flaws, but austerity as such is a consequence of the euro. Or, in the case of UK, a self-selected strategy to destroy society.
I agree. One must have a sovereign currency OR a federated union with transfer payments to the disadvantaged. As our confederated states have.
Otherwise, beggar the neighbor ensues.
The major problem was the lack of a fiscal policy other than austerity. So a,country like Greece could not spend enough to improve its GDP except under strained conditions for deficits. It was ill conceived on that score from the beginning,
Yes, but up until the 2008 crisis the usual EU-style compromise worked. Much in the EU works under the theory that as long as it is good enough for now, future crisis will lead to more integration. The 3% deficit rule was treated as a recommendation (and broken at times) and the 60% debt/GDP rule as a future target.
Of course, those that wrote the rules for the politicians that enacted it might have figured this out in advance (it follows a common pattern of moving power away from the people). Or maybe it was just ideology and opportunity, future historians will ahve fun with that.
The core had the option of fiscal transfers and debt forgiveness but instead they chose to beggar the periphery to protect their own financial interests. The core didn’t really suffer from austerity, they just imposed it on everyone else. So ultimately it’s a political failure driven by a lack of EU-wide solidarity.
you can say it like that but to me it is even simpler. When you do not control your own currency, like us and several other countries, you are at the mercy of the market and whatever rules are in place. A country with a their own currency can never be made insolvent.
The problem is not the Russians or Comey per se because the election should never have been so close. The problem is an insular Democratic party that thinks a Martha Coakley (for instance) is a good candidate or that thinks it appropriate to clear the field for Hillary Clinton. The problem is a Democratic party that plays footsie with corporate interests and has, among its highest lights, idiots like Corey Booker or my senators, Canwell and Murray, who cast meaningless votes in which they make clear their bottom-line allegiance. The problem is also a party that has no clue how to message and doesn’t see the need to cast that message out into every county and village and hamlet across the land.
The problem is also rank and file Democrats who expect perfection and don’t go all out for those best-available options when the alternative is far worse. We ought to fight like hell in the primaries and then, whomever wins, fight like hell to keep Republican sociopaths nowhere near the levers of government. I’ve been watching circular firing squads my whole life. This is probably our biggest obstacle. The perfect is the enemy of the good, even of the pragmatic, even of the achievable.
Sure, fight like hell in the primaries when the Democratic Party manipulates the process in favor of its favourite and throws in super delegates to boot.
Yes. Why not? Or do you have another proposal that you think would be more effective?
I voted for Bernie (it was a close choice for me), but if he had the votes, the superdelegates would have come around…
It was striking to me the degree to which the you that wrote the first graf seems at odds with the you that wrote the second.
Beginning with singling out Cantwell and Murray for condemnation.
Living in a purple-leaning-red state (MT), I’m often frustrated and dissatisfied with my Dem Gov (who just won re-election) and Dem Senator (who wasn’t up). Yet I recognize the political realities that currently govern what sort of Dem can be elected here, and that both are vastly preferable to any conceivable GOP opponent. I’m no expert on Cantwell or Murray, but my overall impression from what I do know is that they’re nowhere near the top of my list of deficient Dems.
From that perspective, the you that wrote your second graf seems to contradict/condemn the you that wrote the first?
Or maybe not, if you did
i.e., in this context, for Cantwell/Murray after they won their primaries?
I would support a more progressive opponent against either of them. If that opponent lost, I’d put my full support behind them despite my disappointment with some of their votes. Politics requires a stiff measure of pragmatism.
Cuz, indeed,
Looks like a question dodged.
Sorry to have to be the one to point that out.
For decades upon decades, it was presumed by American political scientists that a constitutional crisis of serious magnitude would result if the electoral college up-ended the popular vote in “modern times”. Then it happened (sort of) in 2000 and immediately Repubs began to see the anti-democratic electoral college as the most critical component of the Founders’ vision.
And now we can see where we are at in 2017—it is apparently considered crackpot to question an electoral college prez’s “legitimacy”. Of course, I question if any other society on earth would see Trump as “democratically” legitimate.
If one wants to challenge the legitimacy of where Der Trumper “wants to take” the country, then it seems one shouldn’t dispense with an argument that he does not have democratic legitimacy for a variety of (pretty compelling) reasons. Repubs never gave up portraying Obama as illegitimate, and that buttressed their strategy of 100% opposition to everything he proposed.
Far from throwing that away as lifelong propagandist B. York is praying we do, we should establish an acknowledged narrative of why Der Trumper is not democratically legitimate—especially as the appalling spectacle of Der Trumper’s inauguration looms. Fuck Trumper! Honor to all who march against his swearing in!
Highly doubt those poli sci folks were referring to the national popular vote in that presumption. And probably not the electors of a single state either, but that could have happened in 2000. If all the votes in FL had been counted (and why the Bush team immediately ran to the federal courts and did everything else possible to shut down a legitimate recount of the votes). Had those votes been counted and Gore won the popular vote in FL (and the evidence suggests that he would have) and then the FL electors voted for GWB (assuming no restriction under FL law on their electors and all of the electors were Bush loyalists), that would have been a scenario of the EC up-ending the election. Would it have led to a Constitutional Crisis? I’m sure the Bush gang feared it would.
Did any of those poli scientists ever consider a scenario in which a legitimate recount might change the results (and be unfair to the winner from the first count of the ballots) and the Supreme Court interfered and order that no recount be done? So, the SC instead of the EC upended the 2000 election and no Constitutional Crisis developed. (The SC covered their butts on this by including that the decision may not be used as a precedent.)
Before the 2000 election, pundits and the GOP were most concerned about an outcome where GWB won the national popular vote and Gore won the EC vote. (Team Bush may have constructed a contingency plan for that outcome.) If not for the extremely late surge in enthusiasm for Gore and NH flipping to Gore, that wasn’t such an implausible scenario. How many Democrats would have screamed that Gore wasn’t the legitimate winner? Any?
Trump is IMHO a despicable human being, but unfortunately that doesn’t make him an illegitimate president-elect. If there had been enough “red-state” faithless electors to give the win to Clinton was closer but still not the scenario those poli scientists had entertained. Had 2004 OH electors bolted to Kerry, that would have been it.
Trump lost the election by 3,000,000 votes. He will become President because of archaic and faulty election laws. Something achieved by bad law – like preventing African-Americans from voting due to their race – is illegitimate.
No, he didn’t lose the election. He lost the national popular vote by nearly three million, but voters in most states understand the rules and that along with pre-election polling exert an influence on those that don’t vote religiously.
What was the incentive for a casual “conservative” voter that wasn’t wild about Trump and didn’t like any of the other candidates and lives in a solid red or blue district and state to show up and vote? She/he knew full well what the results in his/her district and state were going to be. If it had been a nationwide presidential election, the equation for voters like that is different. As it would be for casual liberal voters that weren’t wild about Clinton. We don’t know what the results of such an election would be because it wasn’t held.
Well, no, not quite. A legitimate recount would have revealed the actual results, not changed them.
Five conservative SCOTUS justices made sure that didn’t happen.
The SCOTUS majority reasoning was that it would be unfair to Bush to recount the ballots based on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. They knew that was BS and it’s why they included the “this is not a precedent” in the decision.
how it’s responsive to what I wrote (near as I can tell, it isn’t).
But no argument with any of that.
Give the boy some credit –Bush II remains the only American president to have won 100% of the African-American vote….
This time, not so much.
Think he means Thomas on the Supreme Court.
When we hear about “draining the swamp” this is what is being discussed:
These are the words of Alexander Dugin; sadly an immensely influential prophet of trans-eurasian white supremacy. I am warning everyone here that this is what lies at the bottom of the Pandora’s Box that the GOP have opened. Having read his stuff for a while I recognise its fell shadow cast across the whole of the alt-right; Bannon is his acolyte. Be warned; this is an ugliness more terrible than your worst fear.
My greatest fear is that the economy improves at the same time as he pursues some of these policies.
It is easy to overstate the importance of government decisions on the economy. Nothing he has proposed is going to tank the economy in the short run, though I think most overlook the fact that the ACA did help increase economic activity.
I respect you immensely and appreciate your contribution here but I am suggesting a radical change of frame from political preference to literally a fight for our physical survival. These inarticulate, misinformed people look forward, gleefully, to a Mad Max dystopia where, they imagine, their guns will speak for them at last:
Did you actually read the Dugin piece I linked to? They want to murder us and burn it all down then piss on the ashes. Seriously; the orcs are on the march.
Yes, this is the rights ultimate do over. The right get to rid us all of income/real estate/corporate taxes. Which means there will be no revenue for health ins or SS…just the military. They might allow the local gov to collect a little sales tax. But there will be steep fees plus a 30% VAT to finish off the middle class.
What I don’t understand is their vision for this country after they burn everything down and piss on the ashes, or to use another metaphor, drown government in a bathtub. Do they want to be like Afghanistan, Ethiopia or Congo? All of them failed states. Or perhaps China, Russia or one of the “stans,” all authoritarian or fascistic?
Yeah, I never understood that either. The Norquist types probably imagined they would be living in a Galtian utopia. This new lot seem to have a much more realistic agenda. In it’s pure form Dugin’s vision is ‘traditional’, that is anti-technological and primal; ‘year-zero’ thinking. To a nihilist the range of acceptable outcomes broadens considerably. If all goes according to plan the heads of the Norquist types will be up on pikes right along with bankers, liberals and the media.
“I respect you immensely and appreciate your contribution here I respect you immensely and appreciate your contribution”
Right back at you.
“Present fears are less than horrible imaginings”.
Macbeth.
I have now deleted 2 long responses to your comment: something pretty rare for me. Right now my concern is that we are doing a poor job identifying arguments against Trump.
The longer term danger you highlight I am less clear about. It is worth emphasizing that Trump has the most conservative Senate and House since at least 1930. Part of the reason he is so dangerous is that the restraint centrist Republicans one placed on Republican Presidents is largely gone. If he proposes radical change, and his cabinet nominees suggest that he is, he will get it.
I go back to the Convention and the steady hand argument. It was a defense of the status quo at a time when the status quo is unpopular and discredited. The advocacy I see here and at other liberal blogs seems oblivious to this fact.
“As our case is new we must think anew and act anew” said Lincoln. The case is surely new. Counsel for the defense however seems unable to think anew.
Are we really going to offer the “American Interests” argument?
Is Sam Nunn now running the opposition to Trump?
This advocacy scares the living hell out of me – and makes possible the horrible imaginings you outline.
My present fears are more than enough to focus my attention, though I confess the horrible imaginings are all too real.
There are a lot of fault lines here; your concerns regarding the dangers of the legislature are well founded and I am assuming we lose some or all of the ACA, malicious surgery to Medicare, an erosion of Social Security. Supreme Court appointments as well. I expect we will suffer significantly as a consequence. It is hard to judge internally what constraints will emerge among the Republican legislative cohort but in a worst case abortion, even contraception, might face challenges depending on the mood of the electorate. We’ll see.
My concern, having done a deep dive in to the ideological underpinnings of Putin’s Russia, the European neo-fascists and the American alt-right, is that we have failed, by several orders of magnitude, to identify the threat levelled against liberalism in general and the status quo of Western democracy. Under the thin veneer of alt-right sloganeering and creepy frogs lies an absolutely abysmal miasma of white supremacy, violence and nihilism. We are dealing with an ideology, if not individuals, as ruthless, implacable and malevolent toward the culture of social justice and inclusiveness of Western society as the jihadists. We shall see if they live up to their aspirations.
We have opened the Pandora’s Box of violent white supremacy and it has already spent considerable time infecting our own societies as well as Europe. Even worse, like jihadism, it has been embraced as a strategic weapon by a foreign power which reinforces it and is clearly dedicated to the overthrow of the West. In the event that Putin, or his fellow travellers in Eastern Europe, wrest control of some unfortunate state or provinces I fully expect to see ethnic cleansing and perhaps even a violent purge of Left intellectuals. It is what these people are talking about and plotting now; whether it is in their power to do so remains to be seen.
I have recently come to believe that white supremacism is the common thread through all of these players; that Trump himself and his band share these aspirations and that it is the litmus test for their allegiances and appointees. I think we are dealing with a venomous and lethal reptile. Where Congressional Republicans fit in to this calculus is a concern; I have no doubt there will be many who sympathise sufficiently to enable this project, at least in its earliest formulations. After then their objections may come too late.
But I have no doubt that the aim is to sink the state as we know it; the rule of law, egalitarianism, civil liberty and freedoms we have, frankly, taken for granted.
I believe bad things are going to happen – mostly to poor people and immigrants who are marginalized to begin with and whose stories will largely be untold.
This won’t, of course, make their unnecessary suffering any less real.
Beyond that I do not believe we have reach some moment of immediate existential crisis in democracy.
I could be very wrong about this. It is easy enough to note the comparisons to the 30’s. Attacks on Wall Street from the right (often tinged with anti-Semitic language) were common on the racist right in the US. The anti-immigrant tide that is sweeping across Europe and the US. The collapse of traditional parties of the center and an establishment that has lost credibility all are common signs of trouble.
Actually happy to hear that as I respect your ability to take our statistical pulse; there are some improving trends in recent polling. I am more concerned that we have, probably already, permanently eroded the intangible trust placed in the US by liberal democracies worldwide. It is hard to see when living Stateside but wonderfully although America is constantly criticised it is also quietly revered among other nations and people. That intangible trust has taken an immense blow. Here’s a long read along those lines:
I think we’ve turned a corner and will long look back to what we’ve rejected with nostalgia and considerable regret. I blame the Republicans as the architects of this decline. Sorry, I really hope you are right and I am wrong.
Frankly, if economy does well Trump benefits but if it doesn’t it plays into his hands also. Used to think it mattered but my appreciation of Trump’s agenda has darkened considerably.
There are those undefined American interests again. It’s a shorthand for something few agree on. We’re going to have to do better. America cozies up to thugs and dictators all the time… unusually for no good reason at all.
True. Trump will be a cinch.
AG
You write:
I wonder…
I wonder a lot of things. Here are a few:
1-With that kind of financial power…and the financial power of the dark money that undoubtedly exists, probably in somewhere near the 1 to 7 ratio of a visible iceberg to its hidden mass…who really decides whether a given program is “legitimate” or not? You use the word “we.” Who “we”, Booman? There is not even a “we” on this supposedly progressive site.
2-If the massed power of all of the big money-controlled mass media could not…and still apparently cannot, on daily evidence…stop the onrushing “legitimacy” of the Trump steamroller, has big money on that level lost its juju?
Could be…
3-Or…will they attempt to co-opt him and in the process risk the danger of being co-opted themselves. They certainly must be aware by now that their lying media has lost its hold on at least 1/2 the U.S. population. Given the number of people who sat out the election, maybe more like 7 out of 10. (For Every 10 U.S. Adults, Six Vote and Four Don’t NY Times)
4-Or…will they use the ever-popular “other means?”
One thing for sure…the people and forces that resisted Trump did so out of self-interest. One way or another, Gates, Buffett, Carlos Slim, Bezos, Ellison and Zuckerberg have a lot to lose if Trump ‘s policies become law. Stasis is in their self-interest. Why? It’s been working for them, that’s why. Movement is dangerous. You never know which way the pile is going to tumble. That makes betting very risky. The usual fix hasn’t worked. What’s next? It certainly won’t be that “moral” choice that you seem to espouse. It may well be anti-Trump, but there’s that old Scylla/Charybdis problem with which we all will be forced to deal. Anti-Trump actions are not morally driven if it they supports an equal but opposite evil. At best, they are simply stupid.
At worst?
Yup.
AG
P.S. Dunno about Ortega…he’s already made a fortune since Trump won. Not very sanguine about the dark money, either. Putin alone is sometimes estimated to be worth $200 billon. Fold in drug profits, the hidden wealth of people like the Saudi royal family and various other gangs that run things elsewhere all over the world and add the Vatican and the CIA for good measure? I just don’t know.)
I watch Vikings now to get an idea of what 2017 will be like.
It gives me the creeps watching it but you are totally on point. I fear we are failing to see the end-game here.
I’m willing to say that Trump was elected in a constitutionally valid manner, but am unwilling to say that it was fair.
The Constitution is broken. Perhaps the left’s goal should be to precipitate a constitutional crisis that will leave the country with no choice but to rip up the Constitution and start over.
What’s that? Yesterday’s framing. Power is naked and absolute:
Having studied the origins of Nazism this makes my skin crawl. This kind of occultist, bug-juice gobbledy-gook serves a vital purpose in underpinning a movement which is at once nihilistic and radically violent.
The ideological line from Dugin to Putin through Bannon to Trump is straight as a die. I think I now understand Trump’s motives; his actions are consistent with those of a committed white supremacist who is concealing his true agenda. Immigration, Putin, debauched Europe; this is the guy who first came to our attention as a racist landlord in Queens.
From an academic precis in 2004:
Twelve years on we can probably answer that question with an affirmative “yes”. Dugin is no longer walking the corridors of Kremlin power but in many ways his work there is accomplished. For those with the stomach to browse the alt-right one will find Dugin’s nihilistic fascism in specific and widespread evidence; here, in Europe and elsewhere. Ironically the extreme Left is also suicidally participating in this bonfire.
That about sums it up.
I think a lot of people on the left are getting their news from places that don’t expose them to the insanity of the alt-right. And worse some are wedded to places like RT which repackage a lot of alt-right memes into a “leftist” frame.
If you’re not terrified of the organized rise of global white christian fascism you need to spend some time on places like /pol and r/trump and watch the new crusaders promoting their global crusade. If you think the promotion of “pepe” as a weird fixation of some clueless liberals that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the real world you need to get out of your bubble. Popular image macro sites like funnyjunk were completely taken over in the run-up to the election by European neo-nazis supporting anti-Muslim pogroms, Putin’s personality cult, bizarre imaginary Clinton crimes, and the election of Trump. Always sourced to Brietbart or one of the fake news farms that popped up in the run-up to the election. This garbage reached a huge online audience, and it can’t be overstated how violent and illiberal it is.
To the extent that the GOP vote caging operation in North Carolina and other states succeeded in removing voters from registration with not enough time to contest it, voter suppression more makes Trump illegitimate than what Russia did.
Yes, the 63 million people who voted for Hillary Clinton have the choice as to whether Trump is legitimate. This whole post-election period of controversy is aiming to convince that audience.
The ability of an authoritarian to rule with an iron fist depends on how quickly his followers can establish order over the very many who are not his followers. Leadership depends on followers, which is why despite an eight-year legitimacy crisis continually whipped up by Republican operatives and led by Mitch McConnell, President Obama still succeeded in major accomplishments. The people who counted — the military, the intelligence community, the federal civil service — did not in bulk consider him illegitimate in the way he was elected. And they did not slow-walk his initiatives other than usually happens in changes of administration.
It is going to take public support of those institutions against Trump’s direction to ensure that he gets the message that this still is a democratic republic.
Well, I don’t think it’s even close — at least sufficient evidence for concern or discussion or investigation on our side over the suppressed vote/voter caging/Interstate Crosscheck-ing of mostly Dems eligible to register and vote, by the hundreds of thousands in blue states controlled by the GOP, which ended up for Donald, versus slim-to-no evidence, only unsubstantiated rumor and hearsay and far-fetched anti-Putin conspiracy mongering, offered by our IC, probably to deter Donald from engaging in any ideas about rapprochement with the Russkies. But thanks for raising the caging issue anyway.
Our curious IC community, especially the NSA, CIA and FBI, might also need reminding that this is still supposedly a democratic republic, that they are not the unofficial rulers of the land, and that they are not supposed to determine who takes and keeps office. But with no oversight, from both parties, in 40 years, they might understandably have the impression they can call the shots with impunity. Comey for instance. Jimmy Clapper another. Brennan too.
Two of those three will shortly be gone and on the outside looking in, unless they prove of value to the Trumpster.
Even if one is willing to concede that voter suppression in NC flipped that state from Clinton to Trump, there are still several problems with that conclusion:
You can’t fix a race in which the governor because unpopular with some Republicans because of the way he handled a Duke Energy coal ash spill in their neighborhoods. Nor can you fix a race when the business oweners of a major city in your state have lost revenue because of your moralizing. That goes to the man, not the party.
The number of votes caged were in the tens of thousands. It is not sure how many of those voted with provisional ballots that wound up being counted. The front-end suppression of deregistering people shortly before the election was the major factor in my analysis.
I would look at Wisconsin and Michigan in particular. And in Georgia. Those three flipping might have flipped the electoral vote. NC, GA, WI, MI could have decided the electoral vote differently.
Various forms of voter suppression are serious problems in almost every state even when they were not reinforced by law as they were in NC. The judicial decision came much too late to redress this.
Is this the Trump Blog? “All Trump, all the time”
The election is OVER! Time to move on and not fixate on Trump, but the country’s problems.
Guess what the country’s biggest problem is.
FTW.
You!
From a city-planning perspective, what’s wrong with this picture?
Herpes? I once ducked herpes in 1984. Want to talk about that? The woman was gay. Does that help?
I want to talk about this country’s problems and what to do about it, not engage in a four year hissy fit because the most corrupt candidate ever lost an election because she openly disdained the voters and wished they would be unemployed.
If “Progressive” means nothing more than “Impeach Trump and let Pence be President” than I am no longer a Progressive as I am no longer a Democrat. You won’t have to worry about me in the next primary election because I am DONE with the Wall Street Party.
Apparently none of you are concerned with Medicare, Social Security, Global Warming, Abortion Rights, the forever war in the middle east, poisoned water, poisoned chemical food, astronomical medical costs, massive underemployment/unemployment, workplace rights or anything but TRUMP! TRUMP! OMIGOD! TRUMP!
You know, Hillary Clinton was not the only begotten daughter of God crucified by a Russian hacker. Stop fighting her battles and fight your own!
Just because focusing almost exclusively on how horrible Trump is and is going to be for over a year didn’t defeat him doesn’t mean that more of the same will be ineffective in taking him down. The rationale is that that was what the GOP/rightwing did to Obama for eight years. (We’ll ignore that Obama is still standing, but maybe it was the ‘secret sauce’ that led to huge gains for the GOP in Congress and state houses and legislatures; so, it’s worth a shot.)
Resuscitating the Cold War has been an amazing trick to observe. As if nothing has happened since 1968 and nothing subsequently revealed about the Cold War. There was enough consciousness among Democrats back then to reject Scoop Jackson to take over the Democratic Party even as Jackson was a New Dealer. Is there something deeply distorted in the American psyche that life has no meaning if we don’t have a big bad enemy, regardless of how fictional, to conquer to subdue the quaking in our boots? War is, still, a racket.
Of course, once you discount any evidence that Russia has engaged in any problematic behavior the only possible explanation that fits the facts is that a nefarious conspiracy of US intelligence agents is trying to whip up a new cold war against them.
Moving the goalposts much? From “Russia interfered with the US election and that resulted in Clinton losing” to “Russia has engaged in problematical behavior.”
btw, I’m not in the camp that claims a “nefarious conspiracy of US intelligence agents is trying to whip up a new cold war against them.” Far more actors than US intel agts have been involved in resuscitating the Cold War and like the original, there are divisions among the actors in their various factions. Institutions are rarely monolithic. However, only a fool would believe that Cold War warriors disappeared from the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, the Hill, and various private sector institutions when the USSR was no more.
The evolution of this revival goes back a decade. Were you with Bush/Cheney, McCain/Palin, and Romney as each of them adopted and attempted to exploit it? Egads, if you did, some might label you a Republican. Hillary Clinton most blatantly began publicly pushing this in 2011, but publicly Obama held back until after he received applause for mocking Romney on it. After that the worse Obama and the DP did foreign affairs and foreign wars the more this revival was ramped up. Of course, it’s much easier to buy into what is mostly hogwash, if one is totally blind to all the “problematical behaviors” of the US around the world, both recently and in the decades since WWII.
I’ll change my tune as soon as the US stands down as Russia invades and occupies a mid-sized country that has had a long-standing decent relationship with the US and is in the western hemisphere.
Moving the goalposts much?
I didn’t feel the need to spell out all the problematic Russian behavior but obviously intervening in our election is among the most serious affronts, and among the many behaviors you choose to defend and dismiss.
…like the headline says.
No one thinks Trump is legitimate, unless they’re lying. Lying to themselves; lying for gain; lying as a matter of habit; however they lie; but I don’t think Trump is illegitimate for any of the reasons listed, unless I missed the one about the illegitimacy of gerrymanders and illegitimate vote and voter suppression laws. I think the way money has essentially bought the rule-making apparatus of democracy over the past 35 years, is the only way a Trump could ascend. The system that prevented millions from voting at all in Republican dominated states last year was illegitimate, so Trump as president and his presidency is illegitimate as well.
Different reason altogether, but I stand with Lewis and the other Democratic leaders boycotting the inauguration all the same and, as a Democrat, I’m proud they’re protesting it.
You are nuts if you believe this. There is ZERO evidence of votes being altered, added, or deleted. Recounts occurred and the overall results not changed.
You all sound like the crackpots that claimed Obama was not legitimate because he wasn’t a native born citizen. Look in the mirror and get a grip on yourselves. Your mental health is failing.
what’s even being discussed here (hint: NOT “votes being altered, added, or deleted”).
Which is all the more remarkable given that it was explicitly stated in the comment you replied to (“gerrymanders and illegitimate vote and voter suppression laws”)!
I wasn’t talking about vote manipulation, I was talking…
The gerrymanders are not in question. They happened in Republican governed states after the 2010 census. Likewise laws passed by Republican state legislatures that in effect severely restricted the freedom of voters to cast their votes in elections (chief among them I believe to be voter ID laws). Courts seem to be taking these arguments seriously, so it’s a reasonable concern.
The recount here in WI set my mind at ease about direct vote tampering by Republicans in Republican operated districts, though I continue to worry that there’s no way to actually audit voting in most of these places, so it’s impossible to know whether vote totals were tampered with. Doesn’t matter; that wasn’t my point.
If you want this, go after the NSA that actively works to create the security holes through which anybody is able to hack. You could demand that having failed to protect your democracy NSA in its current form should be closed and instead their R&D division offered jobs at a new government agency with the task to find security holes and alert the owners. Couple it with legislation that holds companies at fault for not fixing holes they are made aware of, and suddenly you could have the government and private companies working to keep communications safe instead.
Democracy at home comes over spying in the order of things, right?
Heck, when you put it that way maybe we should just outsource signals intelligence altogether.