So riddle me this: CA, NY, MA go ahead with elections, AZ, TX, MS do not. Trump loses, but was this an election? Is Warren a legitimate pres? Did Donnie boy lose? Where are we as a country? Chaos, multiple court rulings, Trump stacked USSC, more chaos. The only saving grace would be that, for a while at least, Putin would be too drunk from celebrating to take advantage. I do not actually think this is a likely outcome, but hell, with this administration could you really rule it out?
8 Likes
Beyond the plain text of the Constitution, the most helpful source of insight is probably
5 Likes
so far is functional part of that sentence. You know how Il Douche love to be THE BEST, THE GREATEST. This is gonna hurt.
ETA damn 81% voter turnout? How the hell do we get that now?
6 Likes
Agreed but being President is saving him from prosecution at the moment. So he may not be able to back out of it.
Oh and also, say he loses the 2020 election, what is in place to push him out after the new president is inaugurated?
2 Likes
That’s true, but he’ll never admit that he bit off more than he could chew. His ego won’t allow it. If he goes voluntarily, it’ll be on the back of some con-man’s excuse about his health, but I don’t see that happening until after he proves he’s the best, really the greatest, believe me by getting a second term (and maybe not even then, if being in office makes him immune from prosecution).
7 Likes
The issue is who the Electoral College votes for, and whether Congress acknowledges that vote
If those two things go smoothly, Trump is simply not president anymore on 1/20/21
Physically evicting him from the White House is relatively unimportant
Presumably the Secret Service and the Marines put his shit out in boxes on the curb
8 Likes
A reply on Eichenwald’s thread also points out that presidential elections aren’t organised by the federal government, but by the states. In fact, there’s no constitutional requirement for a popular election at all: the state legislatures can (and, formerly, in many cases did) directly appoint their delegations to the Electoral College.
11 Likes
Ummm, please don’t say that too loud. ALEC will hear you! They already want to do away with elections as is!
5 Likes
I get that, but my point is, should Trump actually try to cancel the popular election because of purported widespread electoral fraud, then (a) he can’t because it’s not a federal matter and (b) even if he could, Dem-controlled states – and any Rep-controlled states who no longer want to hitch their wagons to Trump’s, if such exist – could appoint anti-Trump Electors anyway (assuming they can get the necessary changes to their own electoral laws passed in time).
5 Likes
STOP AGREEING WITH ME!
It makes it very hard to argue that you’re wrong when both you and I are making the same arguments!
As I’ve said before, and now said multiple times, if Donnie wants to delegitimize the election, all he has to do is tell his own supporters to stay home because he’s cancelled the elections. If he wants to go the extra mile, he can send people out to intimidate people from voting, but that’s not strictly speaking necessary.
The elections will have less legitimacy because large sections of the electorate were prevented from voting (even if they were intimidated by the person that they wanted to vote for).
I think we both agree with the above (but let me know if that’s not correct).
The place that I disagree with Eichenwald is that he says it will be legal. Bullshit. The Constitution specifically delegates the rights to administer elections to the states, and the 10th Amendment specifically precludes the federal government from having anything to do with those rights.
Further, state courts would rule against any attempt to cancel elections or change dates. Because of the lead time in creating ballots, any attempt to cancel an election would probably have to start in July if they want to remove the presidential race but leave the rest of the downballot races. Unless someone wants to claim that Donnie will cancel not just the presidential election but also the city assessor race for Rancho Cucamonga.
I can’t even begin to imagine the sort of legal rationale that you’d have to work up to claim that federal emergency interest exists to cancel local races. Even if a court were so inclined to listen to such an argument, it would request that voters use the already printed ballots and decide what to do with the markings for presidential races later.
The courts just aren’t going to go along with a last minute request to cancel elections, even to order a preliminary injunction. And a request that has enough time to actually make any changes would wind up expedited to the Supreme Court, where they would just laugh it out of court.
So no, the courts would not be complicit in cancelling elections. But Donnie doesn’t need them to be in order to delegitimize the elections, and in fact, that would only make cancelling or delegitimizing the election harder.
5 Likes
The chokepoint is the electors.
There are only 538 of those.
2 Likes
Really like to see money transactions directed at those 538.
A far more plausible scenario.
2 Likes
For a much simpler path to having the election compromised, imagine these three tweets:
And as a result, the entire election would be thrown into chaos.
4 Likes
the popular vote does not matter
it’s not how our presidential elections work, or where their legitimacy comes from
if some fool tells his supporters to boycott the election, then he’ll just lose
losing is not a form of winning, and it won’t keep him in office
9 Likes
And as we saw in 2016, if the Dems run a complacent and backward-looking candidate (like Eichenwald’s preferred choice) with an incompetent campaign staff, the regime won’t need to turn to extreme measures to win in that fundamentally broken institution.
10 Likes
That would be a good chunk of Trump’s staunchest supporters.
3 Likes
I agree but the objective isn’t to win the election. If Donnie’s numbers go down and it’s obvious that he won’t win, his goal will be to sow doubt in the election results and establish a basis for his followers to use physical force to keep him in power.
2 Likes
"Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace.
Where this is not the case, there is no help in any parliamentary Opposition or any Platonic appeals to the constitution. One compels respect from others when he knows how to defend his dignity as a human being. This is not only true in private life, it has always been the same in political life as well. The peoples owe all the political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength."
– Rudolph Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism (1938)
8 Likes
Oh, fuck this fatalistic clickbait noise. If Trump pulls that bullshit, there’s a good chance someone in his security detail will shove him down a flight of stairs.
We need to stop being afraid of these morons, and start feeling angry, indignant, and motivated. Get ready to kick the GOP out of every damn office in the land. Donate, volunteer, canvass, phonebank, organize, offer rides, whatever it takes.
25 Likes
On the bright side, it would wipe away the electoral college, once and for all!
3 Likes
