I really don’t see this happening, elections are done by the states with the actual vote usually being delegated to the county/parish/borough/what have you. To totally suspend elections the federal government would need to arrest something like 3100 county-like election officials and then ensure that they aren’t replaced which would involve arresting more local officials.
It’s one thing to intern thousands of people without power, it’s another thing entirely to do the same to people with power.
If the election result is close, Trump will not take the path of Gore or Clinton and gracefully admit defeat. He will kick and scream and tear things down to try to get his way. I have genuine worries about that.
This idea of canceling an election seems rediculously absurd. Trump is a deluded narcissist that honestly believes most americans love him. Admitting to himself that he couldn’t win the election, which is the premise of the tweets, is completely counter to his most core beliefs. When has he ever admitted to being unable to do anything? Ever?
The scenario he put forth begins on 10/25. If he pulled this only days ahead of elections, the courts could potentially not be able to counter before 11/3. Even delaying elections would be disasterous.
This is basically completely wrong. The idea that the framers didn’t anticipate an autocratic despot coming to power is laughable on its face. The issue here is that the Constitution is ink on paper. It isn’t going to manifest itself as a demon to drag Trump down to hell. No higher order exists to enforce it. Trump can do exactly what Congress and the courts let him get away with. The problem is that the Republicans in Congress are terrible anti American criminals with no principles except power and who don’t care about democracy or the Constitution and will let him do anything he wants and Trump knows that and has no principles himself either.
If there is a constitutional crisis it won’t be the fault of emergency powers or or the failure to forsee tyrants. It will be Republicans violating their oath of office and failing to hold Trump to account for his crimes.
True. What they didn’t anticipate was that the Senate would become as corrupt and antagonistic to liberal-democratic norms as it has under the current GOP majority, which is now enabling the right-wing populist executive branch and stacking the judicial branch with right-wing ideologues. Not that it was particularly friendly to such norms to begin with, and in its current form it still needs to be subject to serious reforms (e.g. the Senate should vote with the House as one body).
They are laying the groundwork now:
Yes. Again, I disagree with Eichenwald on his claim that this would be legal, while still acknowledging that Biff would try it anyhow.
From all of the GOP noise machine’s loudspeakers.
I’m trying to understand what Eichenwald is suggesting here. Is Eichenwald not a US Citizen or something?
Donnie doesn’t have the power to outright cancel any election, even in an emergency. Elections are organized on the state level, and he doesn’t have the power to do anything on the state level. Courts would allow the continuation of elections, period, in every state that could conceivably vote against him.
On the other hand,
Donnie really could compromise the elections by simply tweeting out that they were cancelled and asking his supporters to stay home in protest. That would allow him to call into question the legitimacy of any results, as they would exclude his supporters and the results would not reflect the actual voter base.
If he really wanted to be a jackboot, he could deputize supporters to “observe” the polls or “enforce” the cancellation of elections. That wouldn’t be enough to shut down elections, but it would be enough to taint any results in an effort to throw them out.
Sure. The Constitution and the framers had plenty of faults. But failure to imagine a tyrannical despot coming to power and refusing to leave wasn’t one of them.
The courts in question are the state courts. Do you really think that a state court in Massachusetts is going to give Donnie the power to shut down an election? Heck no, they’ll issue an injunction leaving the election to go on the established schedule.
If there’s an injunction from federal courts, local election officials will simply ignore it.
In my mind… I would like to believe a few hundred thousand or more people would descend on DC and peaceably but forcibly occupy the white house and that unlike other countries the military guarding the white house would reasonably refuse to fire upon us citizens. That’s the world I want to live in at least.
I would have liked to think that by the time we were putting kids in cages, I would be civil-disobedience-ing full time to bring this administration down.
I do post some outrage online though, so there’s that.
On the contrary, I see some state courts supporting, some blocking, and the election thrown into chaos. That would serve Il Douche just fine.
I can only reply Kent State.
And if this happens, what else is there to do but quote Joel Robinson:
“Yes! Thank god I’m white!”
Certainly getting rid of the partisan primary process and having an open instant-runoff system (or something) might make sense. The arrangement we currently have is really good at marshaling two antagonistic tribes, at least one of which has no real philosophy other than hating the other side.
But no, that’s too much thinking for old Kurt. He just wants us to shut up and vote for Uncle Joe.
