With America so divided politically and upended by the pandemic there’s a widespread thirst for normalcy. We want to leave home without a mask, go back to the office, put the kids on the school bus.
The year started with our president awaiting trial for committing impeachable offenses. It saw the world grapple with volcanos, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, locusts, and the emergence of a global pandemic. And this was all in the first 100 days.
Throughout it all, one hope has lingered. In November, America will vote on whether or not to retain Donald Trump as its president.
But, if 2020 stays true to its nature, the election won’t bring clarity, but a true constitutional crisis.
Barton Gellman, writing in the Atlantic, explains how events might unfold if there isn’t a clear winner on Election Night:
The Twentieth Amendment is crystal clear that the president’s term in office “shall end” at noon on January 20, but two men could show up to be sworn in. One of them would arrive with all the tools and power of the presidency already in hand…
…We are accustomed to choosing electors by popular vote, but nothing in the Constitution says it has to be that way. Article II provides that each state shall appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” Since the late 19th century, every state has ceded the decision to its voters. Even so, the Supreme Court affirmed in Bush v. Gore that a state “can take back the power to appoint electors.” How and when a state might do so has not been tested for well over a century.
Trump may test this. According to sources in the Republican Party at the state and national levels, the Trump campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask state legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly. The longer Trump succeeds in keeping the vote count in doubt, the more pressure legislators will feel to act before the safe-harbor deadline expires.
If Trump wins the most Electoral College votes, these maneuvers will be unnecessary, and he will ungraciously accept Joe Biden’s concession. However, if he is clearly behind or slightly ahead but predicted to lose once all the mail-in, absentee and provisional ballots are counted, this strategy of manipulating the election in selected states could be utilized.
Imagine Iowa, where the polls show a deadlocked race and the Republicans control the legislature and the governor’s mansion. Rather than concede that he has narrowly lost the state, Trump-loyal state legislators could have the Biden electors thrown out and declare him the winner. Their excuse would be that irregularities in the vote make it impossible to determine who actually had the most support.
Obviously, Democrats across the country wouldn’t accept this. But the plan doesn’t contemplate acceptance. The point is to stay in power despite losing, and that requires a willingness to rely on the power of the state to crush all resistance.
Joe Biden has expressed confidence that the military will escort Trump out of the White House if he is defeated and refuses to leave. That’s probably a safe bet. But what if the election is truly undecided because it’s unclear that it was constitutionally impermissible for, say, the Iowa legislature to choose their pro-Trump electors?
Will the military not defer to the Courts?
The country is crying out for normalcy, but time and again it gets chaos. It some ways, it seems completely on brand for 2020 to extend this chaos all the way to Inauguration Day in January 2021. Why would this year from hell be content with staying within its own boundaries?
The question is, what plans are Democrats (the national party, state, and local affiliates, as well as lawmakers) planning to do if this happens? I keep reading articles like this one–and this was the most detailed and disturbing of them–and yet I hear nothing from Biden, his campaign, or any other actors that could mobilize resistance to a power grab. Are we on the left, and the Democrats in particular, so demoralized and depressed that we can’t act, or there something else going on here that I’m missing?
I commend to all those interested in squeeze’s question—and particularly to those in any position of leadership in the Democratic party and other political, labor, civic, and social organizations concerned for democracy Gene Sharp’s brilliant essay, “From Dicatatorship to Democracy”, and in particular the short section (see p. 74) titled “Blocking Coups”: https://www.aeinstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FDTD.pdf
Both campaigns have hired armies of lawyers. I read Biden has at least 600 of them and I think I saw something said Trump had thousands?
Remember the Gore loss? He had lawyers and still lost, but not bc he had piss poor lawyers. Authority wins every time. Same this time. Trumps lawyers “prove” a few set up frauds and that extra supreme justice rules against Biden. This time they got a precedent. So once again funny pink knitted caps or what?
So Trump may impound all the uncounted ballots in selected states and especially the mail in votes and declare them illegal. And the Supreme Court will agree and what a you know Trump wins. Then starts the civil war. Maybe the only way to fight this is make it head on. You take the ballots or declare yourself the winner, we fight.
Would there be a civil war or would people just go to work on Monday. Maybe there’d be a big protest with funny pink knitted hats and then everyone would go back to work.
There well could be a civil war as Martin earlier suggested. At the moment, I rather think there would be lots of pink knitted hats. It depends, I suppose, on the level of outrage. How did Putin do it? At this point there is no leadership or implied retaliation with resistance.
I hope the Dems have a clear strategy to deal with the potential mess. What should it be? Lord give us the courage to protect our democracy. I cry, at age 87, seeing what is going on. Help!
These are things that “could” happen. But I dont think they will. trump is too much of a coward to play the game of thrones. And as you know with that game, you either win or you die. He’s proven that doesn’t have the stones for it. Thank God.
But once he is out of office, the Dems have to initiate institutional changes so that this will never happen again. Otherwise the repugs WILL nominate someone much worse and competent. And we really will be in tbe soup then.
And before I forget; a hardy “fuck you” to those who put us in this position to begin with.
Yeah, my head tells me the reason he’s doing all of this is because he knows he will lose and he needs to delegitimize it for his own brain so he didn’t ‘really lose’, and can then continue to make money after his presidency ends. Fact is if they want to steal the presidency they could do it now, just pass law in the swing states that the electors will be for Trump. Nothing unconstitutional about that, it’s perfectly legit actually. Such is the ridiculous nature of the democracy here.
another key piece from that Atlantic article explains why there is almost no chance of normalcy
that’s where it starts, then we have weeks of previously unimaginable ratfuckery trying to prevent Biden from being certified the winner. Trump doesn’t have to mastermind the plot, just keep shouting his one line.
Four National polls out today have Biden up by at least 10 points. Fivethirtyeight says Biden is now a 77% likely winner. I don’t check that site everyday but I believe that’s the highest I’ve ever seen it. Only the left could be staring at this kind of data and be in a state of panic about losing. Yes, they will try to cheat. Yes, Trump can win and that prospect is terrifying. But holy shit can, we just for once stop acting like scared little children and maybe flex our muscles and act like a bit of a badass once in a while.
The election is going well. Biden is doing well. I believe he is going to have a really good debate. The left just needs to get out of their own heads and stop constantly spending their days running every permutation of every horrific act of malfeasance that can possibly happen.
Trump is not a super villain. He’s a putz. People like to make Trump out like he’s Mike Tyson circa 1988 stepping into the ring against Michael Spinks. And for some reason Democrats are more than happy to demonstrate the same demeanor that Michael Spinks did. But Trump is no Mike Tyson. He’s not even Tony Tubbs. He’s a tomato can. He’s a guy who won his last election by a fluke and then got slaughtered in the midterms.
So let’s stop spending our time going over every single horrible potential outcome that might occur, and spend more time on saying how can we get that 10-point lead up to 15. We’ve got this guy in the corner. We’re beating him. That should excite you. It should make you want to pummel him more not curl up in the corner in a fetal position. So let’s get busy taking a sledgehammer to the head of this rectum hole who unfortunately has speech capability. Let’s just simply kill the f***.
He might be a putz, but he is also a super villain. The worry isn’t about what the polls are showing or whether more people plan to vote for Biden. It is whether or not their votes count, whether or not pro-Trump-controlled state legislatures subvert the will of the majority in their states. They have already calculated how many votes have to be tossed in order to win the states they need. I am not certain their plans will succeed, but it is certainly something to be concerned about and to plan for, and we know part of their plan involves confirming a pro-Trump ideologue in place of RBG, relying on ideologues in state legislatures, the US Senate, and of course the biggest ideologue of them all, Bill Barr, at the top of the justice system.
Bingo.
Everyone still harping on as if a fucking poll that someone answers on their cellphone in August means a god damn thing is driving me insane.
Trump is a Fascist. Not a moron, not a clown, not an idiot. A Fascist.
Trump is going to try to STEAL THE ELECTION.
Polls don’t mean a fucking thing to someone who doesn’t care about winning the election.
There’s mathematically no way they “have already calculated how many votes have to be tossed in order to win the states they need.”. I ran in an election in NY whose primary took place WAY after Biden was already the de facto nominee, and we had though turnout might be up by like 10-20%… it increased 120%. We had no idea that many people would turn out, we got 4x the number of confirmed votes we were able to contact. And this is in a blue state, where the presidential was a non-factor.
No one knows what turnout will look like yet, and no one knows what the preferences of the individual states’ voters are yet (though we can at least make informed guesses). Trump is scrambling, and his team is doing what they do best: bullshitting and talking non-stop to reporters to get THEIR version of the truth out – no matter how little it resembles reality.
Iowa doesn’t matter. Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin do and they all have Democratic governors and PA and MI are very closely split. I think everyone understands that if Biden has a clear win in those states (plus maybe NC and FL) then it’s over. Trump’s bullshit legal team can speculate on destroying American democracy, but most Americans have every intention of abiding by elections (if they are clear).
This sort of panicky flopsweat is honestly the INTENT of leaking this plan to the press. They WANT voters to despair (I don’t think it will work), but they are floating this because they know they are getting hammered.
This isn’t a sign of Trump’s authoritarian cunning, it’s a sign of his democratic weakness.
There’s a lot of pass the salts comments, but I think Martin’s increasingly darkening view is responsible for some of this here.
The worst weak assed constitution has resulted in this chaos!