Election 2020 is going to be really rough, because Donald Trump wants it that way. He’s planning a coup d’etat and he’s sending signals to that effect. Today Jim Jordan said that the Democrats are going to steal the election and in Trump speak that means, “if I say Biden is going to do “x” it means I’m doing “x.” I’m stealing the election. I telegraph everything that I plan to do in advance, because I am the projector in chief.”
The electoral college is a creaky and outmoded system at best. This year we find it, and the election, taxed by plague, recession and polarized politics such as this country has never seen before. Name any polarized election, and the first one I ever saw was certainly that, but it was nothing like this. I was seven years old in 1960, so I remember Nixon v. Kennedy. The adults were in an uproar over Tricky Dick. I was born in 1953, on the day before Eisenhower took office, in fact, and the only recollection I have of his second go round with Adlai Stevenson was a picture of Lauren Bacall sitting on a piano while Stevenson played a tune. I think that was on the cover of Look or Life. I found out later that was in 1956.
But in 1960, Kennedy v. Nixon, it was an uproar and I have many vivid impressions from that contest. Dick Nixon was not too far removed from Satan in my Democratic parents minds, and as a college kid when he finally went down in flames, I knew how right they were. Henceforth, all elections have always tripped off a comparison with 1960 in my minid and I can tell you now, the stakes in 1960 were trivial, complete bupkis, compared to the stakes that we face today in this election. Trump is telegraphing on a daily basis his plans to stay in power, no matter what.
At a White House presser Wednesday a reporter asked about the peaceful transfer of power and here’s the answer he got.
‼️@BrianKarem: Do you commit to making sure there is a peaceful transfer of power?@realDonaldTrump: We're going to have to see what happens….Get rid of the ballots, there won’t be a transfer, they’ll be a continuation.
Words of a wannabe dictator.?
— Dr. Dena Grayson ?? (@DrDenaGrayson) September 23, 2020
“The ballots are out of control, you know that, the Democrats know that.” Trump is talking crazy and the GOP is divided into two camps: those actively helping him stage a coup d’etat (what happened to you, Lindsey Graham? Many more than the ghost of John McCain would like to know) and those who are standing by, waiting for the dust to settle, to see if he pulls it off and how it can benefit them (McConnell, Mittens) And then there’s the rest of the folks that Trump has shown that America is a nation of morons, and they want to see just how far he can get. They’re intrigued — except for Kelly Loeffler, whose idiotic Genghis Khan ad shows that she totally believes that Americans are morons and she’s counting on it. She’s fully on board the Trump crazy train. So are the QAnon candidates running for the House. And can you blame them? if Donald Trump can get elected to the highest office in the land, America has to be the land of the freaks and the home of the depraved. That’s how we’re looking to the rest of the world, in all events, as our “approval ratings” if you will, continue to tank every year in the last four.
Here’s how Trump plans to stay in office. John Stoer, the Editorial Board via Raw Story:
Now comes news this morning that the Trump campaign is “discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority.” According to The Atlantic’s peerless Barton Gellman, “With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask state legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly. The longer Trump succeeds in keeping the vote count in doubt, the more pressure legislators will feel to act before the safe-harbor deadline expires.”
This is the clearest picture of what many of us suspected might happen. We already knew the weeks and months between Election Day and Inauguration Day would be the tenderest and scariest any of us has witnessed, a period of deep uncertainty, insecurity, lawlessness and violence; that the US Department of Justice designated cities like New York and Seattle “anarchist jurisdictions”; that Attorney General William Barr urged federal prosecutors to charge dissenters with “sedition”; that the president and his Fox confederates are prepping heavily armed white-wing vigilantes to terrorize Trump’s opponents; and that mass protest against Trump’s power-grab would be called an insurgency “proving” accusations of voter fraud and justifying a government crackdown. There will be blood. This we knew. We didn’t know the ace in the president’s pocket—a future 6-3 supermajority ready to legalize a coup d’etat.
And he plans to play that ace. That’s what Mike Pence was saying about “litigation issues” after the election. We are at the crossroads and this is what we must do.
This is a time for respectable white people to stop wondering who’s to blame for “division,” “polarization” and “dysfunction” in Washington, and instead do what Bob Woodard did recently—come to a firm, final moral conclusion. Donald Trump and the Republicans are not trying to persuade a majority of the electorate to take their side in accordance with American custom, principle and law. They are instead trying to take power by force, using American institutions—the Electoral College in particular—to smash the republic itself in order to remake it in their authoritarian image. This is a time to understand that every accusation is a confession of what they have already done, that every allegation is a projection of what they are prepared to do. This morning, when Ohio representative Jim Jordan said Joe Biden and the Democrats are trying to steal the election, what he was really saying was the GOP is trying to steal the election.
If the president gets away with swing-state electors handing him the election, he will spark mass protests the size and scale of which this country has never seen. Trump and his Republican confederates will accuse the protesters—all of them, even veterans, kids and grandmas—of being criminal or something terrible justifying a reaction they already want to take against public demonstrations challenging Trump’s legitimacy. Inevitably, they will allege “insurrection,” because insurrection is precisely what they are doing. They are advancing an insurrection step-by-step in coordination with a hostile foreign power that’s radicalizing Americans by the millions. Russia is now to the Republican Party what the United States was in the 1980s to Contra rebels. But instead of successfully destabilizing a democracy just getting started, as the US did to Nicaragua, the Kremlin is successfully destabilizing the world’s oldest democracy.
This is exactly what Trump and cabal are trying to do. We need to get out the vote and make sure that he is defeated by such a resounding margin that his pathetic machinations to hang on look exactly like that, just the impotent flailing of a crazy man who can’t handle losing. We need to come together as never before and vote out this metastasizing cancer in the body politic. He and the Party of Lincoln are planning to hang onto power any which way they can. Trump was their ticket to four years of chaos and horrific optics, but they got money, power, and stacked the courts in return. If he can buy them another four years — or, who knows, become an autocrat for life — they’re going to go for it. It’s not only Trump who needs to go, it’s as many complicit, enabling Republicans as we can possibly vote out.
A few months ago I would have thought the foregoing a bit hyperbolic, if not downright paranoid. But not with Bill Barr laying the groundwork that he is. And the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been like a red flag coming down at the track. Now they’re going to run for it. Trump is sure now that he has a path. He’s knows he can’t win, he’s known that for some time, but if he can just get within cheating distance so his stacked court can hand him the election on a platter, then he’ll be fine. So that’s his plan. Mary Trump was right about her uncle, he is the world’s most dangerous man and we must defeat him, because he’s a wanna be dictator. And he’s going to take his shot. Who knows what Vladimir Putin tells him during their private conversations? I certainly don’t but I know that Putin’s dream is to destroy democracy and Trump doesn’t care. He’s in it for show and he needs to stay out of prison.
He’s getting that “advice” from an anonymous “legal adviser”. He should be asked who it’s from, since the advice is going against *everything* in the Constitution.
Putin is his one and only advisor. He’s schooling trump on how to kill democracy
My mother took my little brother and me to see Nixon at the Jackson airport in 1960. My parents were Republicans. Even with the draft and the Klan the 60’s weren’t like this. There was a reason for the turmoil in the 60’s. There was optimism and hope that things would only get better and we were colorful.
There is no reason for this except racism. That is how Trump came to power. All other reasons stated are wrong. And it all feels gray and dark. Oh, Americans are very secure in their racism. It doesn’t consume them, it is them.
I agree. The 60’s were a great decade and I loved growing up then. The 70’s were bla by comparison. The 60’s were magic. I used to think that it was just me, thinking of my childhood, but that’s pretty much the judgement of history.
Didn’t Barr make a statement within the last month about sending in forces to seize ballots in Nevada? It didn’t get the attention it should have, and I feared at the time he was sending up a trial balloon to see whether there’s be a large freak out over the idea. I didn’t say anything at the time because I get enough crap already about being too “out there” with some of my commentary. But considering Trump’s comments, I have a sick feeling that since there wasn’t major league pushback on Barr’s little noticed comment he’s been quietly planning to perhaps deploy some of those “DOJ contractors” that he used a while back to “augment” regular federal LE (yes – I will go there and say Erik Prince!) positioned to storm in and seize boxes of ballot. I’d have been called crazy for suggesting this a few weeks ago, and may be called crazy now but am I? As you say, these wannabe fascists are so close to their goal they can taste it and at this point I fear they are so amped up on adrenaline that they will run through razor wire without feeling any pain to get to their objective.
No, the comment was made, many comments were made about voter fraud in Nevada. The way it was left, is that the Secretary of State is a Republican, so it was hard to argue that she was going to be part of the Democratic plot. Keep making your commentary. It’s not out there. I get accused of being fearful, so what?
Sorry but America was NEVER a Democracy. It was always a slavocracy built on the murder of of Native people, the enslavement of millions of Africans, Jim Crow, legalized segregation institutionalized racism, unfair white preference, murder, societal self-deception, historical lies, widespread denial and well, here we are- at the brink of the racist fascist dictatorship that many white people have always wanted. It’s sad really, because this country CAN be great and DOES have talent and multi-ethnic potential but this DNA NEED to be racist in order to “belong” to the white tribe by too many white people and those who wish they were white will KILL and destroy this country.
My take: they’ll try, they’ll fail, they’ll pretend they succeeded until the failure is undeniable and then they’ll try to make us forget that they ever tried. The pattern may as well be a proven scientific law by this point.
Absolutely they’ll try. Pence, Barr, Graham, they’re all trying now. And they’ll fail and ultimately they’ll all go down in flames. I can’t wait to see if Graham loses. That will be the most pyrotechnic self-destruct in political history, at least so far as I know.
I will celebrate wildly when Trump finally enters the prison and is escorted to the cell where he will die. I want to be there to turn the key in the lock of his cell.
You dems are all full of BS this vote is about being free or being Marxist Period