Trump's Coup d'état.

[Thermal]

I think you and I disagree about how much traction Trump is getting with this. If I had to bet, I would probably say that Trump won't be successful in swaying enough of the right people over to his plot, but that's not to say he hasn't already swayed some.

It seems to me you are seriously downplaying how much success Trump has had in persuading powerful elements of our political system to at least take a "wait and see" approach, if not outright endorsement of his claims of fraud.

I hear that, but my impression is that power players and supporters will ride the coattails of this train wreck and get whatever they can out of it while an R is next to the President's name, and quickly bail. They have no real loyalty to him and will drop him like a bad habit at the first whiff of trouble. You think they are rabid and loyal, and I think they are sniveling and weak

 

[TurkeysGhost]

If more of the mob lawyer thing, the whole...

"Why my client didn't actually shakedown the shop owner for protection money, he just walked into the shop with his two associates, mentioned how nice of a place it was and how much of a shame it would be if anything were to happen to it. Surely there is no law against that?"

... routine.

That's the whole "Oh it's not technically a coup because he's just asking" routine really is, just that.

Indeed.

I think the coup deniers are really underestimating how much of our system is reliant on people doing what they are supposed to do. The end of our system is as simple as people just choosing not to follow these expectations.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

I hear that, but my impression is that power players and supporters will ride the coattails of this train wreck and get whatever they can out of it while an R is next to the President's name, and quickly bail. They have no real loyalty to him and will drop him like a bad habit at the first whiff of trouble. You think they are rabid and loyal, and I think they are sniveling and weak

I don't think they are loyal, but I think they understand that a perception of disloyalty means the end of any chance of ever having support from the vital Republican base. In many of these districts, being seen as insufficiently loyal to Trump means the end of a political career.

I'm sure there are plenty that would privately breathe a sigh of relief if Trump exits the scene, but they won't do anything that can be publicly seen as crossing him. When push comes to shove, the cowards path may very well be to fall in line behind Trump.

I think we see a lot of them waiting for a dam-burst moment, some precipitous moment where suddenly it's safe to betray Trump and accept the Biden win. But nobody wants to risk being the initiator and there have been several notable failures like the sudden fall from grace of Fox News and Tucker Carlson. It's entirely possible that such a moment never comes, and these people just keep going along with it until it's too late to matter.

 

[gnome]

Sooner or later it has to come down to that--no matter how airtight the paper process is, at some point it's a person with free will doing so. What separation of powers does is make sure those opportunities are spread out and not unified. But it's not foolproof.

Process could use some work though, to ensure that such decisions are clearly counter to law at an earlier stage in the process--so that a naked power grab must be revealed before anyone planning a coup has a chance to do a lot of maneuvering of power under pretense of still being within the law.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

I hear that, but my impression is that power players and supporters will ride the coattails of this train wreck and get whatever they can out of it while an R is next to the President's name, and quickly bail. They have no real loyalty to him and will drop him like a bad habit at the first whiff of trouble. You think they are rabid and loyal, and I think they are sniveling and weak

Usually, I would agree.

But Trump#s history suggests that, for whatever reason, he has managed to keep a few loyal henchmen all his life.
And many people have been willing to make deals with him despite his past performance.

I think the GOP will have to let Trump freeload on them for a good while longer, because not doing so would be worse for them.

 

[Vixen]

Some people are claiming Trump is not capable of attempting a coup. He's painted as a clown. Let's compare and contrast him with Vidkun Quisling, who gives his name to the notorious puppet Nazi-German government in Norway during WWII, allowing German occupation and hundreds, if not thousands, of resistance fighters to be executed. As a politician, Quisling, like Trump was considered completely useless. He attempted a coup d'état by radio broadcast. (=Could be a parallel with Trump's and Pompeo's tweets.) As expected, Quisling failed miserably. He had split from the Farmers Party to form a Fascist one but the people weren't having it. Enter the Nazi's, who awarded Quisling a dream job of being the Prime Minister of Nazi-Germany's sock parliament. Yes, he was considered a twit and a buffoon but look at the irreparable damage he did to Norway, lasting generations (cf the Nazi babies).

In 1933, Quisling left the Farmers' Party and founded the fascist party Nasjonal Samling (National Union). Although he achieved some popularity after his attacks on the political left, his party failed to win any seats in the Storting and by 1940 it was still little more than peripheral. On 9 April 1940, with the German invasion of Norway in progress, he attempted to seize power in the world's first radio-broadcast coup d'état, but failed after the Germans refused to support his government. From 1942 to 1945 he served as Prime Minister of Norway, heading the Norwegian state administration jointly with the German civilian administrator Josef Terboven. His pro-Nazi puppet government, known as the Quisling regime, was dominated by ministers from Nasjonal Samling.

Wiki

We might think Trump is bungling along. However, his letting the elderly and weak die of Covid19 as 'nobodies' isn't his being a buffoon but a very serious deliberate political act of negligent manslaughter. His appealing to the Proud Boys was a serious call to treason and lawlessness. He is a psychopath and monster and not a joke.

 

[cosmicaug]

I'm sure there are plenty that would privately breathe a sigh of relief if Trump exits the scene, but they won't do anything that can be publicly seen as crossing him. When push comes to shove, the cowards path may very well be to fall in line behind Trump.

I think we see a lot of them waiting for a dam-burst moment, some precipitous moment where suddenly it's safe to betray Trump and accept the Biden win. But nobody wants to risk being the initiator and there have been several notable failures like the sudden fall from grace of Fox News and Tucker Carlson. It's entirely possible that such a moment never comes, and these people just keep going along with it until it's too late to matter.

Yes. Exactly. It's this moment where every GOP politician suddenly realizes that every other GOP politician is going to defect that I have been waiting for. Trump is in an incredibly weak position & I doubt that he can bluff his way through this but he is trying. I think that this moment of mass defection will come but it is disconcerting and worrisome that it is taking so long.

Maybe the Georgia vote certification will serve as a trigger for this.

 

[gnome]

I guess the real question is "Does he have McConnell?"

That's really who we're all waiting for, isn't it? He's the person that can play the Senate games that change the outcome while still appearing legal.

I don't think he does, but I'd feel a lot better if ol' Mitch would just make a solid public statement that Trump is running out of viable challenges, and that he has no objection to logging the electoral votes.

I think he likes making everyone nervous and may have some incentive to keep the "stolen" narrative active. I just hope it's not to justify another obstructionist move.

Someone help me analyze this possibility--no matter how unthinkable it would be, isnt it his job to tally the electoral votes officially? What if he simply refuses to do so, so that on whatever key date there is not an EV majority for Biden? Not whether that would ruin him politically--just simply can it literally be done if he wants to be that bull-headed?

 

[dirtywick]

I guess the real question is "Does he have McConnell?"

That's really who we're all waiting for, isn't it? He's the person that can play the Senate games that change the outcome while still appearing legal.

I don't think he does, but I'd feel a lot better if ol' Mitch would just make a solid public statement that Trump is running out of viable challenges, and that he has no objection to logging the electoral votes.

I think he likes making everyone nervous and may have some incentive to keep the "stolen" narrative active. I just hope it's not to justify another obstructionist move.

Someone help me analyze this possibility--no matter how unthinkable it would be, isnt it his job to tally the electoral votes officially? What if he simply refuses to do so, so that on whatever key date there is not an EV majority for Biden? Not whether that would ruin him politically--just simply can it literally be done if he wants to be that bull-headed?

The only people pushing the stolen election narrative are idiots. Mitch knows how to game the system, but he's also very smart and has two runoff elections in GA to worry about. If those go badly for R he won't be doing much of anything. I'm sure he's waiting for the legal challenges to play out while keeping the R base in GA motivated, and legal challenges are all but done with.

 

[Emily's Cat]

In the absence of an actual Monarch, plenty Americans have the instinct to assume that if POTUS asks, it must be legal, and refusing would be illegal.

Where are you getting this from? What statistically valid and representative survey are you using to back up this assertion?

I suspect (note I'm not asserting it as true but openly admitting my speculation) that all you're doing is assuming whatever it is that allows you to defend your previously accepted belief that we're in the midst of a coup.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Famous actor or something.... Separate from that, however, he has a good point, which I have often made, which is that people often overthink Trump (though usually not as badly as Scott Adams).

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1329728889296355328.html

The core of it is that he knows he’s in deep, multi-dimensional legal jeopardy & this defines his every action. We’re seeing 1) a tactical delay of the transition to buy time for coverup & evidence suppression 2) above all, a desperate endgame... which is to create enough chaos & anxiety about peaceful transfer of power, & fear of irreparable damage to the system, that he can cut a Nixon-style deal in exchange for finally conceding.

I can agree with this. Makes perfect sense of the evidence.

I have wondered if the change in the head of the Homeland Security Department wasn't just a move to review anything confidential Krebs wouldn't share with Trump, much of what Trump believes is there may or may not actually be there.

And riling up the crowd to make Biden fear the reaction if he takes legal action against Trump is clearly within Incompetrump's competencies.

 

[gnome]

The only people pushing the stolen election narrative are idiots. Mitch knows how to game the system, but he's also very smart and has two runoff elections in GA to worry about. If those go badly for R he won't be doing much of anything. I'm sure he's waiting for the legal challenges to play out while keeping the R base in GA motivated, and legal challenges are all but done with.

I completely agree this is his most likely play. I'm just asking if technically he can. I don't intend to panic about it.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Indeed.

I think the coup deniers are really underestimating how much of our system is reliant on people doing what they are supposed to do. The end of our system is as simple as people just choosing not to follow these expectations.

And the coup-mongerers are really overestimating how fickle people are, and how much many people actually believe in and value integrity.

The "end of our system" requires a LOT of people to blatantly disregard everything they believe in and become literal traitors with no thought at all.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Why are you so goddamn happy that Trump only mostly screwed up the country instead of totally screwed it up so you can dance all around us for being worried as if the worry wasn't justified?

Why do we make you more angry then him? Why does our "over dramaticness" trigger you but his evil get a "meh?" And don't you goddamn dare sit there and try to claim that isn't what's going on.

For me, it's because BOTH SIDES of this stupid thing we call politics in the US have been leaning on raw emotion for many years. They preach interpretations of facts, inferences of meaning, and assumptions of motive. The news, BOTH SIDES OF IT, feeds you a set of mostly innocuous objective facts, but wraps them up in a narrative that leads you to an apophenic conclusion of OMG HE'S THE MOST EVILEST THING EVER in which your ability to critically think and to weigh evidence and recognize speculation has simply evaporated.

I'm an atheist, in all possible senses of the term. But for a great many people here on ISF, politics has become their religion. They are dogmatic about it. They proselytize their beliefs, and they decry a lack of agreement with their religion as heresy. And anyone who dares to point out the down sides and the risks of their crusade are demonized as infidels who support the great evil which only their true faith can combat.

ETA* This is the royal "you" at play here, although I am not excusing you from my tirade.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

99.99% of them will.

But these are already people who shot up a pizza parlor to save the child sex slaves in the basement it didn't even have and Pizzagate was nowhere near as mainstream as the election fraud / deep state conspiracy has gotten.

Spare me the "They are nothing to worry about" routine.

I'm pretty sure Trump is a loser is not synonymous with "nothing to worry about". In fact, I distinctly remember saying the things we should be worried about are people blowing up federal buildings.

 

[phiwum]

Hmm.


America’s Problem Isn’t Too Little Democracy. It’s Too Much.

I read this one. I thought the author made interesting points. I don't know that I buy it, but it is an interesting argument that democracy tempered by reasonable folks nudging the nomination process along is stabler and better.

I think it's fair to say it's somewhat anti-democratic. It is not much like having state legislatures overturn the voters' will. I don't think this comparison is apt at all.

 

[Emily's Cat]

It's been covered already what' Trump's likely intended path here is.

Let's translate this into objective skeptical terms.

"Some of us already used our imaginations to speculate about what we assume that Trump really means to do"

It gets dressed up with "it's been covered" as if there's actually some solid evidence involved. There's not, it's speculative. It gets dressed up with "likely" as if there's an objective means of gauging the probability. There's not, there's only fear of a possible path.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I read this one. I thought the author made interesting points. I don't know that I buy it, but it is an interesting argument that democracy tempered by reasonable folks nudging the nomination process along is stabler and better.

I think it's fair to say it's somewhat anti-democratic. It is not much like having state legislatures overturn the voters' will. I don't think this comparison is apt at all.

It was intended as a counter to The Great Z's framing that Republicans are aiming to reduce democracy so they can get their way. All of the linked articles (and the review) are from left-leaning sources and authors, all of them bemoaning the fact that the problem with the US (which led to Trump) is that we have too much democracy, and that we'd really be better off if we took away some of that democracy so that people who know better can make sure we don't get into trouble.

Some of them do have good points with respect to risks in a democratic system. But my point was that it's not the Republicans pushing the "too much democracy" narrative.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Again I'm done with being talked down to because people are more concerned with how "dramatic" I'm being verse how evil they are being.

If you're looking at the world as a whole and go "Yeah know what the problem is? People saying coup instead 'undefined possible takeover of the government via illegal means that doesn't technically count as a coup because it didn't come from the Coup Region in Southern France" you're part of the problem.

First, I didn't notice you were being dramatic until these last few posts.

Second, it's not the word "coup" that is the issue. So unless someone else is making the bolded argument, it certainly isn't mine.

So I'll wait to see if you are addressing someone else here.

In the meantime, the issue is, said refusal to leave office is Trump's con. The news media fell for it yet again starting months ago with asking Trump if he would concede if he lost. Why did they even ask given it wasn't credible. It still isn't.

 

[Garrison]

So id Trump asks officials in various states to just ignore the popular on his say so that there's been massive fraud and they say no some people here seem to think that means everything's fine and that's not a problem because it didn't work?