Leaving The Office

Leave peacefully?

1. Yeah, he'll leave peacefully no matter what. I do not believe fascism can take root to that extent in America.
0
No votes
2. He'll probably leave peacefully as long as a Republican wins 2024, but if a Democrat wins, I'm not sure.
0
No votes
3. He'll probably leave peacefully as long as a Republican wins 2024, but if a Democrat wins, he won't.
1
5%
4. He won't leave peacefully if he wins 2020, even if a Republican wins 2024.
0
No votes
5. He won't leave peacefully if he loses 2020. He'll claim illegal votes or some other thing.
6
29%
6. He'll declare himself President for Life if he wins 2020 and preclude any further elections period.
2
10%
7. I have no clue. Anything could happen.
6
29%
8. I feel uncomfortable clicking 1 because it makes me seem naive but have a hard time imagining Trump actually refusing to leave office, so I guess I pick some weird "1.5" middle ground
6
29%
 
Total votes: 21
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Friday
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Leaving The Office

Postby Friday » Sat Jun 29, 2019 9:00 am

So The Office is leaving Netflix and people are upset about it

If Trump wins 2020, do you think he'll leave peacefully in 2024? (Well, Jan 2025.) By "peacefully" what I mean is "without massive civil unrest and/or the application of violence."

Answer both in the poll and and here if you want, but please click the poll at least because I am gathering data for my own edification.
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beatbandito
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby beatbandito » Sat Jun 29, 2019 9:37 am

season 8 just wasn't the same without him
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François
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby François » Sat Jun 29, 2019 12:13 pm

I'm sort of inclined to go with 7, but I ended up picking 5, because I can't ignore the notions that Trump is fundamentally incapable of admitting defeat, and that the system is rotten enough and he has enough fanatical supporters that he could get away with all kinds of low shenanigans, even if only for a time.

EDIT: I previously said I picked 8, but I meant 5. Whoops.

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Mazian
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby Mazian » Sat Jun 29, 2019 12:45 pm

Needs an option for "whatever Fox and Friends tells him he should do at the time".

Low shenanigans are highly likely, but I don't know if he'd be able to keep them up all the way from Election Day to Inauguration Day. He doesn't have the raw power or the personal focus of an Erdogan; he doesn't have the military support for the worst-case coup option. For more conventional election disputes, while the Supreme Court would presumably give him the win in a re-run of Bush v. Gore, I don't see him getting more than three votes in favor of proclaiming himself God-Emperor. (and isn't THAT a terrifying line to write.)

Direct interference with the Electoral College is the scenario that really worries me. The electors are known, and there's enough time between the general election and the EC formal election to lean hard on a handful of them.

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Thad
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby Thad » Sat Jun 29, 2019 12:56 pm

If Trump gets a second term, I think it's going to look a lot like Bush's: a Democratic landslide in 2022, increasing and increasingly visible failures, a probable financial collapse, and an approval rating in the high twenties. Assuming the Democrats still don't fucking impeach him at this point and he's still in office in 2024, we're looking, much like 2008, at Republican candidates scrambling to distance themselves from him. His closest loyalists will never leave him, and Hannity and Fox and Friends will do their best to thread the needle between supporting the new nominee while trying not to alienate Trump, but the Republican narrative around Trump in 2024 is probably going to look a lot like the narrative around Bush in 2008.

Trump will be 78 years old by this point. His mental state will have continued to deteriorate. I really don't know what he does under these circumstances. The best move would be to delusionally declare that this is a total vindication of his presidency and swagger on out. But if that's the best move, Trump probably won't make it.

Of more immediate concern is what he does if he loses in 2020. He'll almost certainly declare the vote rigged. Whether he goes so far as to refuse to leave, or just takes off to rant about it and hold rallies, I really don't know.

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zaratustra
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby zaratustra » Sat Jun 29, 2019 1:00 pm

voting for "he'll die or be permanently disabled before 2024"
i lost my pre-2020 prediction but i have faith

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Thad
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby Thad » Sat Jun 29, 2019 1:12 pm

Though if I'm the president-elect and Trump's refusing to leave the White House? I ignore his tantrum. When anybody asks, I say I've got better shit to do than deal with that petulant toddler.

Hold the inauguration; the minute it's over, have the staff change the wifi password, cut off the cable TV, and stop bringing him food. No need to drag him out kicking and screaming; no need for a confrontation between the Secret Service and his private security team. Without Fox News, Twitter, or food, he'll leave within a day.

Once he leaves, have the DOJ send everything it has on him to the Manhattan DA's office and let them prosecute.

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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby IGNORE ME » Sat Jun 29, 2019 1:35 pm

Trump won't do anything if he loses 2020; a civil war will break out before January 20, and the Southeast will somehow be surprised that instead of opting to lead them to glorious years of environmental destruction, eventual unconditional surrender, systemic removal of basic rights and generations of even greater poverty, Trump and his family disappear into the Caribbeans somewhere, and their eventual individual captures and summary executions end up as a byline in a Pacifican newsfeed underneath a list of 20 new regions marked as civilian-uninhabitable drone zones.

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Mongrel
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby Mongrel » Sat Jun 29, 2019 1:42 pm

His lack of military support is the key.

You don't become president-for-life in any country without the force to back that up, and that means the military. Even in the US. Mercifully, the US military remains coup-averse, and political positions are still individual ones among senior US military leadership.

I doubt senior generals were big fans of Trump before, but I imagine his treatment of Mattis has cooled even those generals who might theoretically have supported him.

I generally figure military involvement is a long shot for the time being, as the US military still draws so much of its identity from the Union army (regional nods to old Confederacy units notwithstanding), and WWII. A 250-year institutional memory isn't indestructible of course, but it counts for something.
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Friday
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby Friday » Sat Jun 29, 2019 5:23 pm

I agree that his lack of military support is the most important factor in keeping him from becoming god-emperor, because, well

Imagine if he had military support?

Personally, I think he'll absolutely pull something whether he loses or wins 2020, I just don't know exactly what.
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby IGNORE ME » Sat Jun 29, 2019 7:42 pm

At this point I think it's generally agreed that the real question is "Will it matter?"

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Grath
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby Grath » Sat Jun 29, 2019 9:07 pm

Brentai wrote:At this point I think it's generally agreed that the real question is "Will it matter?"

No, the Republicans will just gerrymander someone else corrupt in and let him run rampant.

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Bal
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby Bal » Sat Jun 29, 2019 10:22 pm

I had to go with 7, and it seems like most agree. He's so unpredictable in every facet that I could imagine anything. His physical and mental health seem to deteriorate at a rate visible in real time, he varies between basking in the attention and power that the office gives him and loathing every second he spends there. So fuck it, who knows?

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Thad
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby Thad » Sat Jun 29, 2019 10:23 pm

Grath wrote:
Brentai wrote:At this point I think it's generally agreed that the real question is "Will it matter?"

No, the Republicans will just gerrymander someone else corrupt in and let him run rampant.

You...can't gerrymander the presidency.

I mean, I guess technically you could gerrymander the two states that split their electoral votes. Or split Texas, Alaska, and Montana up into more states.

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Blossom
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby Blossom » Sat Jun 29, 2019 10:57 pm

Thad wrote:
Grath wrote:
Brentai wrote:At this point I think it's generally agreed that the real question is "Will it matter?"

No, the Republicans will just gerrymander someone else corrupt in and let him run rampant.

You...can't gerrymander the presidency.

I mean, I guess technically you could gerrymander the two states that split their electoral votes. Or split Texas, Alaska, and Montana up into more states.


Or gerrymander your way to total control of the legislatures of every state, and proceed to lock down the state's voting process and ramp up the suppression such that it guarantees a republican majority.

But this is well underway already.
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Mongrel
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby Mongrel » Sun Jun 30, 2019 1:01 am

Military involvement aside, I could DEFINITELY see something that ends in someone trying to arrest someone, or some other legal fiasco that goes past mere lawsuits to clarify federal law and into people being sent to prison, or at least someone trying to have someone else imprisoned.

But I have noooooo clue who those various "someones" might end up being, much less on what basis charges might be demanded or laid. Or even which particular law enforcement agencies might end up being dragged in.

For the record I was torn between 7 and 8, and voted 8.
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mharr
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby mharr » Sun Jun 30, 2019 1:16 am

Does anyone really have a hard time imagining Trump actually refusing to leave office? That seems like the easiest thing in the world to picture. I'd wake up, look at those headlines and be all "well of course, what else were we expecting?"

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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby Upthorn » Sun Jun 30, 2019 1:22 am

I was torn between 5, 6, and 8. I voted 7.

I have no trouble picturing 45 refusing to leave office.
But I also have no trouble picturing 45 leaving normally.
Or leaving like Dick Nixon with a "You won't have old Donnie to kick around anymore" type quip.

I feel like 70% of my predictions about him are off the mark in some direction. At this point I feel simultaneously like he's been so much worse than I ever imagined, and like he's been not nearly as bad as I was expecting. About the only thing I can be sure of is that whatever he does will shock me, and none of the listed options on the poll actually would.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

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Mongrel
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby Mongrel » Sun Jun 30, 2019 1:56 am

I can see him potentially making a lot of noise, but I agree with Thad that if you have a president-elect who just starts treating him like a squatter he'll go and hole up in Mar A Lago in a big huff. What comes after that, who knows.

I mean, it's not like the White House is some sort of sanctuary that protects you from prosecution - that's the office itself. Beyond that, he and his cronies are entirely too stupid to actually be able to somehow execute anything even remotely resembling a competent attempt to set himself up as any sort of President For Life. Like, could you imagine Kushner trying to put together some kind of coherent legal argument to keep Donnie in office?
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Re: Leaving The Office

Postby IGNORE ME » Sun Jun 30, 2019 4:25 am

Upthorn wrote:At this point I feel simultaneously like he's been so much worse than I ever imagined, and like he's been not nearly as bad as I was expecting.


I feel like it needs to be repeated, again, and preferably to the guy's face, that he can be as awful as he wants because he's really not all that important.

I mean, he's more important than me, sure. But not as much as, say, Kim Kardashian. Sorry, Donny.

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