Tag: electoral politics
Coup Update
Obviously, the Trump regime’s claims that the election was fraudulent are in and of themselves part of the coup. But this is the kind of deception that has been a continuous feature of Trump, so it’s not particularly compelling. But there’s a lot more than that going on.
Trump still has a path to legally winning the election thanks to the fact that states are not legally bound to respect the result of the vote. They may send electors that have agreed to vote for Trump even if the popular vote in their state favors Biden; these are commonly called “faithless electors”. If the accepted procedure for counting electoral votes is used, it looks like Biden would win with 303 electors, and Trump would get 232 electors. However, if the states where Biden won but the governor is a Republican send electors who favor Trump, then Trump gets 288 electors and Biden loses, with 247 electors. Please feel free to check my math!
The states where this could happen are: Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. (Again, please check my work!) I waited to bring this up until I saw the mainstream media covering the issue because I didn’t want to give the Trumpies any ideas. Despite this being technically legal, we would consider this to be an obvious violation of the will of the people, and therefore an insurrection. Such an outcome would go to the Supreme Court; I have no idea how that would turn out, and the interim conditions in the US would be dire.
In addition, Trump has been firing military leaders and presumably replacing them with Trump regime loyalists. Specifically, he has removed Pentagon leadership (including Secretary of Defense Mark Esper) and two top Homeland Security officials. Esper did not back Trump’s desire to use active duty troops to quell uprisings in US cities, and Homeland Security has been used as a Trump goon squad at uprisings (includes ICE, FEMA, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and more).
Related: Trump purges Pentagon leadership, ‘something that should alarm all Americans’
Related: Two top Homeland Security officials forced to resign by White House
So you can see that in addition to the standard flow of propaganda from the White House, they are also making material preparations for the coup, and it’s clear that the Trump regime is in an extremely good position to succeed. The only thing that can really stop a coup at this point is for almost all of the Republican political elite to reject the coup. That still seems likely at this point. Trump could also chicken out; right now, it looks like he can leave office and continue his con man lifestyle, but if he attempts a coup, the stakes become much higher.
Related: Navarro: White House’s operating ‘assumption is a second Trump term’
Related: Not a Coup but a Cover-Up and a Con Game
Below, you’ll find the table I used for this. I assumed that states controlled by Democrats but won by Trump would not send faithless electors. Columns 3 and 4 are the electors if the accepted procedure is used. Columns 5 and 6 are if the Republican-controlled states that Biden won send the wrong electors.
| State | Governor Party | Biden Electors | Trump Electors | Faithless Biden | Faithless Trump |
| Alabama | Rep | 9 | 9 | ||
| Alaska | Rep | 3 | 3 | ||
| Arizona | Rep | 11 | 11 | ||
| Arkansas | Rep | 6 | 6 | ||
| California | Dem | 55 | 55 | ||
| Colorado | Dem | 9 | 9 | ||
| Connecticut | Dem | 7 | 7 | ||
| Delaware | Dem | 3 | 3 | ||
| Florida | Rep | 29 | 29 | ||
| Georgia | Rep | 16 | 16 | ||
| Hawaii | Dem | 4 | 4 | ||
| Idaho | Rep | 4 | 4 | ||
| Illinois | Dem | 20 | 20 | ||
| Indiana | Rep | 11 | 11 | ||
| Iowa | Rep | 6 | 6 | ||
| Kansas | Dem | 6 | 6 | ||
| Kentucky | Dem | 8 | 8 | ||
| Louisiana | Dem | 8 | 8 | ||
| Maine | Dem | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| Maryland | Rep | 10 | 10 | ||
| Massachusetts | Rep | 11 | 11 | ||
| Michigan | Dem | 16 | 16 | ||
| Minnesota | Dem | 10 | 10 | ||
| Mississippi | Rep | 6 | 6 | ||
| Missouri | Rep | 10 | 10 | ||
| Montana | Dem | 3 | 3 | ||
| Nebraska | Rep | 1 | 4 | 0 | 5 |
| Nevada | Dem | 6 | 6 | ||
| New Hampshire | Rep | 4 | 4 | ||
| New Jersey | Dem | 14 | 14 | ||
| New Mexico | Dem | 5 | 5 | ||
| New York | Dem | 29 | 29 | ||
| North Carolina | Dem | 15 | 15 | ||
| North Dakota | Rep | 3 | 3 | ||
| Ohio | Rep | 18 | 18 | ||
| Oklahoma | Rep | 7 | 7 | ||
| Oregon | Dem | 7 | 7 | ||
| Pennsylvania | Dem | 20 | 20 | ||
| Rhode Island | Dem | 4 | 4 | ||
| South Carolina | Rep | 9 | 9 | ||
| South Dakota | Rep | 3 | 3 | ||
| Tennessee | Rep | 11 | 11 | ||
| Texas | Rep | 38 | 38 | ||
| Utah | Rep | 6 | 6 | ||
| Vermont | Rep | 3 | 3 | ||
| Virginia | Dem | 13 | 13 | ||
| Washington | Dem | 12 | 12 | ||
| West Virginia | Rep | 5 | 5 | ||
| Wisconsin | Dem | 10 | 10 | ||
| Wyoming | Rep | 3 | 3 | ||
| TOTALS | 303 | 232 | 247 | 288 |
Preparing for Electoral Unrest and a Right-Wing Power Grab
Crimethinc has a very nice analysis of unrest that is likely to occur in the US after the 2020 election, and you should check it out.
Every possible outcome of the struggle over the 2020 election involves considerable risks. No matter how it occurs, a Trump victory would further polarize the country, radicalizing many liberals and leftists, but it would also likely lead to a tremendous amount of bloodshed and repression. If Biden wins the election in a landslide without significant resistance from Trump’s supporters, he will surely crack down on radicals and introduce policies that are oppressive to poor, Black, brown, indigenous, and undocumented people in order to placate the right-wing forces with whom he hopes to re-establish a truce. If Biden ends up in office thanks chiefly to the efforts of social movements in the street, it could discourage him from immediately cracking down on them, but this path involves passing through a very dangerous period of open conflict in which victory is by no means guaranteed.
Republican, Democrats, the KKK, and Richard Nixon
If you’ve spent much time online, you’ve probably seen a Republican claim that the KKK were Democrats. It’s a clever oversimplification that furthers the Republican party’s most popular defense: “I know you are but what am I?” — aka, the Peewee Herman Defense.
This deception works because it is technically true: At the time of the KKK’s founding (1865), and up until around 1968, KKK members were Democrats — over 100 years. Then, Richard Nixon and his advisors decided that to beat the Democrats, they would make a sharp right turn into white supremacy and authoritarianism. First, they devised the Southern Strategy. The plan was to dog-whistle white supremacy, without saying anything overt. That is still the policy of the Republican party today, though Donald Trump tends to say the quiet part out loud. By 1980, there were no KKK members who were Democrats — they had all switched to the Republican party.
One easy way to defuse this insincere argument is to simply ask, “And what party do the KKK belong to now?”
The other thing the Nixon adminstration did was to start the War on Drugs in 1970 — which was intended as a war against Black people and the left.
“You want to know what this was really all about?” Ehrlichman asked, referring to the war on drugs.
Top Nixon adviser reveals the racist reason he started the ‘war on drugs’ decades ago by Alex Lockie, Business Insider
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.”
“Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did,” he concluded, according to Baum.
It’s not that Black people and leftists were using more drugs. Rather, the government could use selective enforcement to turn the law into a weapon. Selective enforcement is when you create a law that applies to everyone, but then you almost exclusively enforce it against a group of people you don’t like. Conservatives are big fans of selective enforcement, and that is why they are terrified that selective enforcement might be used against them — for example, with the creation of new gun laws. It’s the inverse of the Peewee Herman Defense — accusing their opponents of what they themselves are doing, or have explicitly expressed that they plan to do.
Oath Keepers Prepared for Civil War
Not only are the right-wing Oath Keepers prepared for civil war, but they believe that war is already here.
A Pro-Trump Militant Group Has Recruited Thousands of Police, Soldiers, and Veterans
Mike Giglio, The Atlantic
An Atlantic investigation reveals who they are and what they might do on Election Day.
And BTW, one of the most important missions of the Mid-Missouri JBGC is gun safety, so let me tell you why the founder of the Oath Keepers has an eye patch. Was it a dramatic fight with antifa? Maybe he lost it battling a ferocious drug dealer? Maybe a desperate gun battle in the wilds of Afghanistan? Nope. He dropped his gun and thereby shot himself in the eye. It’s really a metaphor for the entire Republican party, and much better than if he’d just shot himself in the foot.
Meanwhile:
White supremacists and militias have infiltrated police across US, report says
Sam Levin, The Intercept
A former FBI agent has documented links between serving officers and racist militant activities in more than a dozen states
Trump Refuses to Denounce White Supremacy
At the first Presidential debate of the 2020 election, Donald Trump again refused to denounce white supremacy. Instead, he took the opportunity to denounce “the radical left” (again) and give a shout-out to the Proud Boys, an organization of fascist thugs, who have become Trump’s de facto brownshirts. You’d think that would be the end of him, but it won’t be. At least 38% of voters are happy to have an open white supremacist in the White House.
Trump’s entire debate strategy was based around fascist principles — basically, attempting to bully Biden to make himself look strong without any interest in substantive issues.
“When asked what he will do about racial injustice in America, Trump reverted to boasting about the extremist and law enforcement groups that support his campaign. Moreover, when presented with the simple task of condemning white supremacy and white militia groups, he couldn’t – a stark insult to the millions of Black Americans and people of color facing police brutality, the overwhelming brunt of the coronavirus pandemic, and systemic racism in our schools, prisons, and workplaces every day in this country, and their allies who believe in justice and want to move the nation forward. In fact, he issued a rallying cry to one violent white nationalist group, telling them to “stand back and stand by,” Byrd said Tuesday night in an email. “His callousness toward millions of Americans and complete disregard for the systemic injustices our communities face is more than enough proof for why we must come together to vote him out of office. Another four years of Trump means another four years of shameless white nationalism and fascism. Our democracy cannot survive that.”
Jessica Byrd, of the Frontline, an election initiative from the Movement for Black Lives’ Electoral Justice Project and the Working Families Party
Trump himself is not what we need to focus on, however. We already knew Trump was a white supremacist before he was elected; in fact, he was clearly a white supremacist years ago, when he considered himself a Democrat. Instead, we need to consider those Americans who think fascism is a good idea and address the conditions that led them to that horrible opinion.
‘Stand By’: Trump Refuses To Denounce White Supremacy As Debate vs. Biden Spirals Out Of Control
From refusing to denounce white supremacy to shouting out the Proud Boys, the president dug deep into his shameless bag of racist tricks during the first debate against Joe Biden.
by Bruce C. T. Wright
2020 Election
Here’s a brief summary of what’s going on with the 2020 US Presidential election.
There’s no chance that Donald Trump will accept the outcome of the election if Joe Biden wins.
Trump could win “legitimately” (to the extent that a legitimate win is possible with the electoral college system), but here is the most likely scenario:
The election outcome will be close, and because Democrats are slightly more likely to vote by mail, the odds are extremely high that the day after the election, Donald Trump will have more electors than Joe Biden. Trump will claim victory, but the count will continue.
At this point, Trump will lean into his claims that mail in ballots are being used to steal the election. Over the following week, those mail-in ballots will reveal that Joe Biden has won more electors. However, Trump and his followers will reject that information — they’ve been primed to do so by Trump himself. That’s the whole reason he’s been doing it, and his followers understand that.
Most Democrats are claiming that this will be the end of the controversy — Biden has won, and so on January 20, Biden will take office and Trump will be physically removed. That’s not how this is going to go at all.
Instead, Trump will be working every possible angle to create excuses for Republican-held states to reject the outcome of their state’s votes. Even if Biden has the popular vote and the electoral college by virtue of those votes, the states can reject the popular vote in their state and send a different set of electors that support Trump. This has happened in the US before, and it is completely legal for a state legislature to choose the electors for their state rather than leaving it to the voters. Republicans will say this is just because the mail-in ballots are tainted.
Then, Mike Pence will announce that Trump has been elected based on the electoral certificates that he decides are worthy to count. Trump will have stolen the election, but it will all be perfectly legal. There certainly might be an extended bureaucratic tussle at this point involving the House of Representatives and the courts, up to and including the Supreme Court (which is Trump’s primary motivation for rushing confirmation of his new Justice).
I’m going to try not to editorialize too much, but it really comes down to how much disruption the Republicans are willing to create (total) and how much disruption the Democrats are willing to tolerate (very little). In terms of state violence as a solution, the military has already vowed to stay out of it, and US law enforcement backs Trump. It really appears as if the Trump regime has the upper hand.
Even if Trump loses the game, it’s very unlikely that he will be escorted out of the White House. If it looks like Trump’s gambit won’t pay off, he will attempt to escape to Russia with his family members. He’ll move millions of dollars into Russian banks before that, so US intelligence will see it coming, but they won’t be able to stop him from leaving because he will still be President at that time — he might even fly there on Airforce One.
Here’s a much more in-depth narrative about the problem that this election presents:
The Election That Could Break America
If the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result. Who will stop him?
by Barton Gellman, The Atlantic