Election 2020 - Here we go again

[Thad]

My prediction remains the same: Trump's most viable path to doing a coup is to do a coup.

But I also think any attempt will fail. I also think it's more likely that an attempt will not be made then one will be made.

But, you know. I also think that if there was going to be a coup from a President, it's a lot more likely from this one than any other.

He's been attempting a coup for the past six weeks. As I said over in the Biden thread, that's a serious problem, even if it's been laughably incompetent and failed at every step.

If you mean a military coup, I suppose the odds of Trump attempting one are nonzero but they're near-zero. His actions over the past weeks indicate that he's worked out that nobody who can actually make a difference has his back on this; not swing-state governors or legislators and not the courts. Everything he's doing now is performative; it's to rile up his base. I don't think it's a sign that he's ramping up a plan to tell the military to ignore the election and keep him in power.

Also, motherfucker can't keep a secret like that. If that's what he were planning to do, he'd have said so on TV by now.

Last I heard, he was planning to hold a rally at the same time as Biden's inauguration. I don't think that's subterfuge; I think that's exactly what he's going to do.

Also, I think we should start talking about the very real possibility that he declares himself the true government in exile. Or rather, not if he will (because he will, regardless if he leaves the country, is jailed, or just starts his own news network) but how seriously people are going to take it, at all levels of society.

Yeah, that's the question. He's already thrown the next election into disarray, because no Republican wants to start ramping up for a 2024 campaign while Trump's still raging about this election and threatening to run again in 2024.

How much people treat Trump like he's really the president-in-exile is a very good question. I think most people will ignore his nonsense, but enough could go along with it to cause real trouble.

[Brantly B.]

The only reason why I've stopped using the word "secession" is because parts of Texas started using it. Seriously, I think the main reason there isn't going to be a Florida-led push to establish a literal Trump Country now is because they don't want to deal with Texas trying to join in. Nice to see a "Please stop helping" situation on the villain side for once.

[Thad]

Next step in the crackpot scheme is for congressional Republicans to challenge the EC results. It won't work, and Mitch and the party leadership are purportedly against it, but all it takes is two people, one in the Senate and one in the House, to challenge the result, and it looks like they might have those two votes (Mo Brooks and Tommy Tuberville, both from Alabama).

Again, this won't change the outcome of the election, because both houses would have to agree to reject the EC results, which ain't gonna happen. It's just more theater, one more symbolic show of fealty to Trump. One more step along the path of delegitimizing the election and keeping the spotlight on Trump.

I don't think McConnell and the rest of the party leadership want to keep the spotlight on Trump. He's been extremely useful in pushing their agenda, but he's also volatile, prone to shifting stances, sandbagging his own party and going scorched-earth on anyone who doesn't sufficiently kiss his ass. And the biggest thing that's helped the Democrats in '18 and '20 is that they were running against Donald Trump -- they'd love to be able to run against him again in '22.

Meanwhile, it appears that Pence has planned a trip abroad for immediately after he certifies the vote.

[Mongrel]

BoingBoing (inner quote is from the Texas Tribune):

Everyone seems to know that MAGA is going to melt down in January when it sinks in that Trump isn't going to be president anymore.

But what everyone doesn't know is that the meltdown will have a budget.

Prosecutors say Aguirre's election fraud claims were baseless and that he was paid $266,400 by the group Liberty Center for God and Country, whose CEO is prominent Texas right-wing activist Steven Hotze.

The meltdown continues. Whoever's on security detail for SCOTUS is probably drinking heavily right now.

(MAGA Chuds ranting about "their" judges, slurs etc. aplenty)
⇳ Click to Expand Summary

[Thad]

Mongrel. Buddy.

I know that you subscribe to the "hey, smell this, it smells really bad" school of online sharing.

But when you happen across a deranged, slur-fulled Reddit meltdown, and you feel that this is something you need to share with everybody*, you think maybe you could just link to it instead of embedding it?

That'd be...well, not great, exactly, but the next-best thing to not doing it in the first damn place.

* it is not

[Mongrel]

Mongrel. Buddy.

I know that you subscribe to the "hey, smell this, it smells really bad" school of online sharing.

Okay, I laughed. Yeah, I do that too much.

But when you happen across a deranged, slur-fulled Reddit meltdown, and you feel that this is something you need to share with everybody*, you think maybe you could just link to it instead of embedding it?

That'd be...well, not great, exactly, but the next-best thing to not doing it in the first damn place.

* it is not

Yeah, noted and post edited.

[Cait]

You need to edit it better, the click-to-expand doesn't actually have the offensive content inside it.

[Mongrel]

You need to edit it better, the click-to-expand doesn't actually have the offensive content inside it.

Is it just displaying the screenshots for you, or is the click-to-expand part just empty?

Because I just looked at it twice and the image tags are definitely between the summary tags.

EDIT: Not blaming, just trying to troubleshoot.

[Grath]

You need to edit it better, the click-to-expand doesn't actually have the offensive content inside it.

On my end, the offensive content is inside the click to expand.

[Cait]

You need to edit it better, the click-to-expand doesn't actually have the offensive content inside it.

Is it just displaying the screenshots for you, or is the click-to-expand part just empty?

Because I just looked at it twice and the image tags are definitely between the summary tags.

EDIT: Not blaming, just trying to troubleshoot.

There's a "⇳ Click to Expand Summary" sitting above the screenshots, but they're fully visible regardless of if I touch that button or not, it doesn't appear to do anything.

EDIT: Interesting. If I switch to BrontoTheme, it works, but the summary tag on prosilver is completely nonfunctional.

[Thad]

Next step in the crackpot scheme is for congressional Republicans to challenge the EC results. It won't work, and Mitch and the party leadership are purportedly against it, but all it takes is two people, one in the Senate and one in the House, to challenge the result, and it looks like they might have those two votes (Mo Brooks and Tommy Tuberville, both from Alabama).

Who had Josh Hawley in the pool?

I look forward to his editorial in the New York Times.

[Friday]

Well, it looks like we won the runoffs. Knock on wood, it's incredibly close and only 98% of votes have been counted.

The real interesting thing though? 4.4 million voters in this, which is more than the 2016 general. People are -engaged- in politics now. Even if they finish counting the votes and it turns out the dems lost, that's still an incredible number of votes.

Looks like that 2016 shower I had the night Trump won where I thought "well, God, if your plan is to get people to care more about politics, I hope you know what you're fucking doing cause a lot of people are going to die" was pretty much right on the money.

Haha, do you remember 18 years ago when I argued that voting is pointless and Thad and the rest of the boards bitchslapped me like the fuckhead I was

[mharr]

Sadly a lot of people dying is the only thing that ever properly engages us in politics. Anything less is too abstract, too compatible with the Somebody Else's Problem field.

Anyway congrats again America. Keep drip feeding that desperate trickle of hope. Ya bastards.

[Büge]

[Thad]

News outlets have called it for Warnock; latest info I'm seeing is that they haven't called the other race yet but Ossoff is up and I wouldn't expect too many people to vote split-ticket under the circumstances (though it's possible Perdue gets enough of an incumbent advantage to make the difference while Loeffler, as an appointee, doesn't get that bump).

I've got no intention of counting any chickens just yet, and even the best-case scenario still sucks. If the Dems do pull off a majority, well, at least that means Republicans can't stonewall Biden's appointments; we can get a cabinet that won't be ideal but should at least be competent, a functioning FEC, and all that shit the Republicans just pulled to deadlock the FCC will have been for nothing.

But expect basically no legislation to pass, and for whatever passes to be the usual neoliberal rich-get-richer stuff with maybe the occasional $600 check if we're lucky.

I'll say again that what they should do is immediately push Puerto Rican statehood and when the Republicans filibuster it (despite it being part of the Republican Party platform -- at least, the old, pre-"whatever Trump says" platform), pass filibuster reform and do it anyway. Manchin has vocally opposed any kind of weakening the filibuster, but then again so did McCain right before voting to do it, so who the fuck knows. "Democrats won't do what needs to get done" is usually a pretty safe bet, but "politicians swearing they won't do something are probably lying" is too. (A couple possible face-saving alternatives that could allow Manchin to vote for filibuster reform but still say he didn't vote to eliminate the filibuster: they could vote to bring back the standing filibuster, or they could vote to eliminate the filibuster for statehood votes but keep it intact for ordinary legislation.)

Course, all that assumes an Ossoff win in the first place, which I think is still premature.

[Thad]

Georgia Secretary of State shows 100% of precincts reporting, with Ossoff up by about 18,000 votes.

Still not the final count; doesn't include provisional or overseas ballots. The final count could still be close enough to trigger a recount. But Ossoff's probably got this.

[Friday]

10:06 AM <JD> how did the election go
10:07 AM <@Silversong> we're not sure yet JD, but Biden might have won

[Thad]

I'll go ahead and put this here since I don't think it's an appropriate digression for the other thread:

I've been rereading the old, fossilized boards (the politics section) recently and it blows my mind how accurate you are in your predictions. For example, like a month after Obama was elected in '08, you predicted that Romney would win the primary but lose in the general.

Eh, that was an easy guess. I was dead-nuts wrong about Trump in '16 enough times that I try to stay humble about my ability to predict things.

Elections are popularity contests writ large (with some various antidemocratic hedges that prevent them from being full-on popularity contests). Name recognition really is the key to a primary.

You look at the nominees under the modern primary system (1972 to present) and we've got sitting VPs (HW Bush, Gore), former VPs (Mondale, Biden), candidates who came in second-place in the previous primary (Reagan, McCain, Romney, H Clinton), family of former presidents (W Bush, H Clinton), and people who were famous from movies or TV (Reagan, Trump). Not to say there weren't some names in there that didn't fit any of those patterns (Carter, B Clinton, Obama, and, on the losing side, McGovern, Dukakis, and Dole), but for the most part, the nominee's usually the candidate with the best name recognition.

But the incumbent usually wins the general. Hence, Romney wins the primary but loses the general. That was the safe bet.

I don't know who the fuck the Republican nominee's going to be in 2024. I'd say Trump's the frontrunner at this point but I'm not convinced he still will be in four years. Or that he'll actually run. If not him, it's hard to say. Options for the "second-place last time" and "former VP" patterns would be Cruz and Pence, respectively, but both of them are candidates who are popular with evangelicals and not other demographics. 2024 could be another weird primary season.

But if we're looking at patterns and past as prologue? Republicans probably take Congress in the midterms. I hope I'm wrong about that and '22 bucks the trend (I know I don't need to tell anybody here how important it is to vote in every election), and Trump continues to be a wildcard; I think there's a strong likelihood he continues to make himself the center of attention and the face of the Republican Party. If 2022 ends up being a proxy campaign between Biden and Trump, well, it may end similarly to how the actual campaign between Biden and Trump did.

I think the GOP leadership would really prefer that not happen, but they may well wind up in the same spot they've been for the past four years, going along with Trump no matter how much he hurts their general election chances, because if they don't he'll kill their primary chances.

[Friday]

I don't know who the fuck the Republican nominee's going to be in 2024. I'd say Trump's the frontrunner at this point but I'm not convinced he still will be in four years. Or that he'll actually run. If not him, it's hard to say. Options for the "second-place last time" and "former VP" patterns would be Cruz and Pence, respectively, but both of them are candidates who are popular with evangelicals and not other demographics. 2024 could be another weird primary season.

"Those #brunch fools want you gone so they can get back to the way things were... but I know the truth. There's no going back. You've changed things. Forever."

[Thad]

Also, Stacey Abrams deserves a hell of a lot of credit for her GOTV efforts. Obviously you can't lay this at the feet of any one single person, but she's been out there fighting the good fight.

Listened to David Tennant interview her a few weeks back. I like what she has to say.