vimothy

yurp
the ultimate question is, how can the process maintain (or obtain) legitimacy? and that's a question that can be asked to either side
 

sus

Well-known member
Ah yes, I do remember a discussion of betting odds that was quietly dropped cos the person making the book admitted they didn't understand how odds work.

Ahem, I understand odds perfectly well, I just don't know how to format it in correct conventions, there's a world of difference.

It's like understand what photosynthesis is vs spelling it correctly.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
And I do think there will be a fair amount of unrest from assorted militia types, proud boys, Qanon nerds etc in 2021
that would not surprise me at all. it's basically what I did predict at the beginning of this thread, so ~2.5 months ago.

this is what I said then. I probably should've been clearer that they were longer/more open-ended possibilities, not immediately tied to the election like a coup.

now if you're talking about increased domestic terrorism in the Oklahoma City tradition, that sounds plausible

more Kyle Rittenhouses, but with foresight and coordination (and possible law enforcement collusion) i.e. death squads, sure

actual civil war, no

but I also said

even that - while I'm certainly not ruling it out - people would have to actually do it

it's no small undertaking - getting all the materials, carrying out the acts themselves, living in hiding always worried about law enforcement infiltration

not that it couldn't be done, just that it's a commitment orders of magnitude beyond showing up to marches with assault rifles etc

which still seems right to me. streetfighting and "more Kyle Rittenhouses", with an outside possibility of more organized/committed domestic
terrorism.

although the more I see of hardcore MAGA/QANON Civil War II fantasies, the less I think of their abilities to carry out serious organized violence (tho also, presumably the dangerous ppl wouldn't be the ones publicly fantasizing about Civil War II)
 

john eden

male pale and stale
the ultimate question is, how can the process maintain (or obtain) legitimacy? and that's a question that can be asked to either side

I think all systems of governance (even my favoured ones) are flawed so cast iron legitimacy is a pipe dream.

But most people will come round to the idea that Biden is the President quite quickly.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
But most people will come round to the idea that Biden is the President quite quickly.
I think they will too, tho even if 5% of the country didn't that would be a huge number

more generally I'm waiting to see how Trumpism lives on or doesn't without Trump

the man himself - his fanbois' Caesar fantasies aside - is a bad dream, but the issues his rise to power exposed are all still v much extent, in most cases have only gotten worse and are likely to continue to get worse
 

Leo

Well-known member
even if trump doesn't run again, he will continue to fan the flames of trumpism. he'll tweet every day, he'll torment republicans who he deemed were insufficiently loyal, he'll continue to say the election was stolen, wouldn't surprise me if he continues to do some rallies. he's a narcissist who's grow accustomed being at the center of the world stage, and isn't about to lose his craving for attention.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
the ultimate question is, how can the process maintain (or obtain) legitimacy? and that's a question that can be asked to either side
the process's illegitimacy is an ideological position that one side started aggressively pursuing ~10 years ago as a long-term preemptive strategic response to unfavorable future demographics. there's not really a way to fix that with procedural changes.

in terms of the populace at large, addressing the root causes of ressentiment to the extent they can be addressed would be great, if unlikely to happen for numerous reasons
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
even if trump doesn't run again, he will continue to fan the flames of trumpism
of course. I know what Trump will do, and I'm not particularly interested in it.

I'm interested in what everyone else will do with him no longer in office

what will his ppl do - his Executive Branch ppl, those parts of his base who never followed politics before MAGA, his online fanbois

will the GOP establishment be able to regain control over American conservatism

will the Senate ever pass major legislation again in our lifetimes
 

Leo

Well-known member
much of his base will probably peel away, I imagine a small but non-insignificant percentage, egged on by trump, donny jr., OAN, Newsmax, etc., will remain engaged and supportive of candidates trump blesses. also depends on what biden does, and how well or poorly things work out.
 

vimothy

yurp
the process's illegitimacy is an ideological position that one side started aggressively pursuing ~10 years ago as a long-term preemptive strategic response to unfavorable future demographics. there's not really a way to fix that with procedural changes.

in terms of the populace at large, addressing the root causes of ressentiment to the extent they can be addressed would be great, if unlikely to happen for numerous reasons
legitimacy is obviously an ideological matter, but it's not one which is only an issue for trump supporters - e.g., supposed russian interference in 2016, trump planning a violent coup in 2020, etc.
 

vimothy

yurp
I think all systems of governance (even my favoured ones) are flawed so cast iron legitimacy is a pipe dream.

But most people will come round to the idea that Biden is the President quite quickly.
the legitimacy of the establishment is restored, phew
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
legitimacy is obviously an ideological matter, but it's not one which is only an issue for trump supporters - e.g., supposed russian interference in 2016, trump planning a violent coup in 2020, etc
right, I see now - you're falsely equating different kinds of legitimacy issues based on the word "process". Democrats (and tho no examples come to mind, presumably Republicans) have questioned specific elections for specific reasons. what the Democrats have never done is pursue a general strategy of delegitimizing the electoral process itself - not just Presidential elections, but at every level of American govt - for ideological reasons. there is no Democratic equivalent of the GOP narrative about "voter fraud", or of people like Kris Kobach passing stringent, and generally unconstitutional, voter ID laws as a means of disenfranchising likely opponents.

specific charges could potentially be addressed. GOP deligitimization can't be addressed bc it's the active pursuit of illegitimacy as an electoral strategy.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
restoring legitimacy in the establishment and restoring or maintaining legitimacy in the electoral process are two very different things

Trump going and a Biden caretaker Presidency will probably help restore some of the latter, but faith in the post-WWII establishment is probably just fucked

too many bad choices over too long a time causing too much damage in a world changing too much for that establishment to continue making sense
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
As I see it, Trump made an all out assault on democracy using everything he had available to him.
First he tried to make it as hard to vote as possible. Fought in the courts to give him as many options later to throw things out. When trucks intimidatingly drove by Biden in Texas he encouraged that and I expect he was hoping that some Proud Boys or whatever would try and intimidate voters in some places. He tried to slow down the post office and so on - and he again and again undermined the perceived security of postal votes. Which we can see was a deliberate tactic to make as many of his own supporters vote in person. Democrats were more worried about covid and more likely to vote by post - and he presumably hoped to put some of those off. But they also passed laws to say that the states couldn't count votes received by mail until after the election. So this was a deliberate attempt to get his votes counted first and to be ahead in most (swing) states on the night of the election.
And this is what happened, he then announced that he had won the election and that counting should stop. He tried to make it sound as though it was somehow unusual for states to be counting after the election night. He tried to claim that the large blocks of late votes coming in for Biden were evidence of fraudulent voting patterns even though it was totally to be expected given the way that the votes were gonna come in and be counted.
The problem was that on the night, Arizona was called for Biden by Fox and this put a bit of a spanner in the works. Instead of being able to say "Stop counting everywhere" he had to say "Stop counting where I'm ahead but keep counting where I'm behind" and this is why Fox calling Arizona enraged them so much. I think that their announcement that they had won Pennsylvania was a kind of response to this unexpected early loss.
The strategy was there, it was clearly not dreamed up by Trump cos he couldn't understand it properly and he kept saying thing like "stop voting" which made no sense (cos voting had long stopped obviously) or at one point he demanded that no more votes should be counted - only to have advisors tell him that if that happened right then and there, then he would lose. So basically he changed his slogan to "count every legal vote" - which no-one could really disagree with, but which therefore didn't really mean anything. But obviously it meant "count my votes".
Then after that he just kept alleging fraud, knowing that his base would swallow it whole and give him enough of... if not exactly a win, but something in PR to justify staying in the White House and pretending that he'd won. He then launched countless spurious court cases and had his lawyers and spokespeople and pet TV channels all talking about various types of massive fraud; counting dead people, counting people twice, people voting in both states, no observers allowed to watch the count, Dominion machines changing votes and so on - and so stupid people were left the impression that a) there had been a huge amount of fraud and b) Trump's campaign had evidence of it and was about to produce it in court.
However, in court they were talking about tiny technical details - two people weren't allowed the option of repairing their damaged votes in this county, so the votes of all the people in counties where they could should be thrown out... or one state changes their rules unilaterally and so the votes of all the people who had voted according to the rules when they voted should have their voices taken away...
The point is they tried every technicality they could in the close states (and even some that weren't really that close) and they demanded recounts in all those that were close enough for a free recount and even paid for some where they were near enough. They did everything they could to deny certification - all the while Trump claiming it had all been rigged and refusing to concede.
He also insisted that Biden couldn't receive privileged information and directed the woman who controls the White House's administration to NOT go through the steps that would acknowledge Biden as Pres-Elect. He's completely forgotten about running the country, dealing with Covid etc etc in fact he won't even let Biden start preparing to deal with covid or run the country, all he cares about is hanging on to the presideny.
But it was all such a massive con on Trump's own supporters who thought that Trump's lawyers were alleging fraud in the courts and that they had proof and that all the defeats were due to biased judges. But they thought that those cases would all get kicked up to the Supreme Court which would obviously side with Trump.
And also, most egregiously of all in my opinion, Trump invited the people who had to sign off the votes in Michigan - ie to certify that the state was indeed won by the person who got the most votes - to Washington to lean on them and demand that they somehow block this last step. And I think he tried the same with the guys from Penn state too.
So it's not at all true, for those who say "oh he didn't a coup after all" cos he tried every fucking thing he could below asking the army to form a ring of steel round the White House*. It's now three weeks after the election and despite losing the popular vote by more than six million votes, being soundly thrashed in the electoral college and with no evidence at all of electoral fraud, he is still refusing to concede, claiming that he was cheated and refusing to call Biden president elect.
I just think, imagine if the election had been close. Imagine if there was only one state that needed to be overruled and change colour - now there are four or five and it seems too much - and Trump focused everything on that. Suppose he had some lawyers who weren't useless and crazy - imagine if there was a small instance of fraud in the disputed state and when it came in front of a tame judge he ruled that that could be used to throw out thousands of votes... suppose that got kicked up to the supreme court eventually. We can see that the GOP (even those who know he was crazy and lying) would have done nothing to stop him. Suppose he'd won the electoral college but won the popular vote or something like that. This was a huge thrashing (ultimately) although at times it seemed touch and go... and yet for the weeks after, we've genuinely had to ask ourselves at times, if he was gonna leave. We had to celebrate when Michigan electors or whatever they're called, did what they're legally required to do. It's been terrible.
I think it reveals how frightening delicate the system is and if it had been close I think it would have been worse. And if Trump had been able to flip a state and the election by judges (win by cheating in other words) then I think he would make it even harder to defeat him next time.
But anyway, the upshot is that about half of his party now don't trust the voting system and think that Hugo Chavez and Soros are flipping votes to the Dems and that problem aint gonna go away... so, yeah, it definitely wasn't a whimper, the way he fought on, tooth and nail after being so badly defeated. I think it's very worrying.

*or otherwise calling for violence, as opposed to tacitly condoning it.
 
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padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
incidentally I'd like to see evidence of these widespread predictions of a violent coup that vimothy keeps casually referencing

what I saw were widespread concerns that he'd try to steal the election, which happened, and of violence related to the election, which mostly didn't

what I did not see were predictions of a violent coup, which makes sense bc he clearly doesn't have the support of the entities you actually need - i.e. the military and the intelligence services - to carry out a violent coup

in fact the only ppl I saw predict a violent coup were hardline MAGA types and even that was all apocalyptic QAnon nonsense
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
not quite. he certainly dog whistled it but he never crossed the Rubicon into open illegality and violence. that's an important distinction to make.
Yeah later on I specifically said "everything up to the army/violence" (or I meant to anyway, I hope I wrote that cos I fully intended to and it is important distinction which was supposed to be a big part of my post) - which I suspect he stopped at cos it wouldn't work rather than from any moral compunction.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Actually I didn't make it as explicit as I should. But I will highlight it and add in a bit because yeah, what my mini-essay was supposed to be about was how he did everything except that.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Pleased to see that Xi has now congratulated Biden - I can imagine that that went down like a bucket of sick with the Republicans, I only wish that Biden had replied with "Thank you my lord and master, I await your bidding" or something like.
 
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