2024 Elections

My family and friends tell me I'm too pessimistic, but I have this awful fear that through a combination of Biden missteps, Saudi election interference through gas price manipulation, Russian election interference through misinformation and AI fakes, Trump's popular lies, Department of Justice sloth & inaction, and possibly some actual vote counting shenanigans, Trump will ostensibly win in '24.

I don't think anyone realizes how bad that will be.

All of this hand-wringing about "the end of democracy" isn't the half of it.  All of this stuff about the Insurrection Act and posse comitas isn't the half of it.

Protests and riots won't be avenues open to us, and re-running or waiting until the next election won't be open to us.  Americans are used to having options, used to being able to correct mistakes.  I don't think anyone realizes what a sinkhole we're headed toward.

Quote :

...built on an edifice of a spectacular falsehood

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/04/politics/trump-presidential-power-2024/index.html

Word is getting out. Finally. Will it prevent the loss of our democracy? Hitler was popularly elected too. Pundits need to make that comparison.

NoCoPilot wrote:

All of this hand-wringing about "the end of democracy" isn't the half of it.  All of this stuff about the Insurrection Act and posse comitas isn't the half of it.

Liz Cheney was very forceful on The Rachel Maddow Show tonite.  It Trump is re-elected, it'll be the last American election ever.

She raised a point I hadn't really heard before. It has been mentioned before, as I noted here, that invocation of the Insurrection Act effectively makes Trump a dictator, because then he'd have the entire US military at his beck and call.

But it's worse than that.  Trump also has unfettered pardon power.

That means the judiciary branch of the government, 1/3 of our tri-parte system of government, would be completely neutered.  Anyone charged with abrogating their oath or going against the Constitution would simply be pardoned by Trump -- and there isn't ANYONE ... ANYWHERE ... who could do a damn thing about it. Judicial rulings are voluntary, in that we all agree to abide by them. If Trump decides to not abide, the pardon power gives him absolute immunity from repercussions.

Unfortunately... Cheney's warning on Rachel Maddow probably won't make it onto Fox or Breitbart or OAN or Newsmax. Those people consume only their brand of "news" and nothing outside their bubble makes a dent.  Jen Psaki, in the show before Rachel's, had a segment with Jordan Klepper where he talked about interviewing Trump voters outside his rallies and CPAC, and their level of ignorance is gobsmacking.  Most of them AREN'T EVEN AWARE JANUARY 6TH EVEN HAPPENED.

I had an idle thought this morning, while swimming my laps.

Maybe Trump is EXACTLY what we need, in this era of extreme climate crisis. Congress is too slow to act, industry is not self-motivated to act. Maybe a dictator is the only way to wrench society into some kind of action to prevent further destruction of the planet.

Then I realized, fuck no. I had that exactly backwards. It is precisely because the world is turning to shit that dictators are emerging everywhere. They want to protect themselves, and their rich benefactors, from the masses of the poor. The people who will be most affected by rising sea levels and shortages of food and the collapse of industry. Can't give THEM the vote; they might want everyone to share in the pain.

Better to set themselves up in their high castles where they can watch it all on TV.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I have this awful fear that ... Trump will ostensibly win in '24.

Let's game out what this would look like.

1. Trump wins in 2024, through a combination of the factors previously mentioned
   
   
2. As promised, on day one he suspends the Constitution and declares martial law
   
   
3. Uproar, riots, hand wringing. Some riots are forcibly put down, but compliance with the new dictatorship is not 100%
   
   
4. Trump's attempts to rein in the press are his most unsuccessful
   
   
5. Trump attempts to delay or eliminate the 2028 election meet fierce opposition
   
   
6. Despite jailings and some political assassinations, Trump's hold on the country slips. His mismanagement and incompetence are impossible to ignore
   
   
7. What forces are strong enough to take back the country from authoritarian dictatorship, given that not 100% of the forces are within his hold? The military.  Local and state police. Large public protest movements / strikes / occupations / disruptions, large enough that the compliant military and police wouldn't feel right jailing and/or shooting that many people
   
   
8. The "American Spirit" (whatever that is) wouldn't suddenly disappear under a Trump dictatorship, and wouldn't take lightly to being under authoritarian rule.  It's just a matter of how fast they can get organized, and how fast Trump's tinpot dictatorship collapses under its own Keystone Kopism
   

Probably by 2028 or 2030 we'd have a second American revolution to throw off the yoke of the oppressors.  That's my prediction.

It DRIVES ME NUTS that the news coverage always talks about Trump's plans for his second administration, or Trump's plans to lock up millions of immigrants in detention camps, or Trump's plans to eliminate all taxes on people making over $200,000.

No.

That's not Trump. Trump has ZERO interest in policy or governing or doing the job of president. Trump just wants above-the-fold pictures of himself every day, that's all he cares about.

No, these catastrophic policy proposals are the work of the puppet masters pulling Trump's strings, the ones who found a likeable boob (kinda like Ron Reagan) to front for their highly-UNPOPULAR policies. These people include Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Kash Patel, Jason Miller, Brian Jack, Dan Scavno, Boris Epshtyn. More importantly, it includes the Russia-funded think tanks who funnel Putin-approved policy talking points to his campaign: MAGA Inc., The Heritage Foundation, America First Action, Preserve America, Our American Century, American Crossroads (are you noticing that Putin likes the word "America"?), Club For Growth, Americans For Prosperity, Peachtree, Restoration, etc.

Trump himself couldn't tell you ANYTHING without a TelePrompTer.

I'm trying to mentally prepare myself for a Trump victory in 2024. I think the odds are better than not, given the absolute depravity of the Congress and the Supreme Court, and the unforgivable sloth and laziness of the lower judicial system. I mean, there was AMPLE evidence to arrest the MF on January 21st, 2020.

So here's my current rationale.

Rich people have always been in charge.  The oligarchy might not always have been so blatant, but we little people have NEVER been captains of our own destiny.

Probably not that much will change.  Life will get harder and more dangerous and more expensive, and dissent will no longer be a right (it won't do anything anymore anyway) but our day-to-day lives will continue under a new regime.

Plus, I'll be dead in 10-15 years anyway.

Trump and Biden are tied among immigrant voters
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/22/politics/analysis-trump-biden-immigrants/index.html

Somebody explain this to me.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/05/supreme-court-trump-appeal-colorado-state-ballot
On February 8 SCOTUS will hear arguments on whether DJT should be on the ballot in Colorado. Whatever they decide will apply nationwide.

I don't see this SCOTUS following the law -- which in this case is crystal clear -- they've proven themselves to be nakedly partisan and unashamed.

Therefore, either:
A) They will decide, against all law, that Colorado over-reached, or (more likely)
B) They'll take the matter "under advisement" and make a ruling, if necessary, after the election.

Ran across an interview with a couple of Trump supporters on YouTube, similar to the hilarious ones done by Jordan Klepper.  In this one the couple talks about all the murderers and rapists pouring across the southern border, and how we need Trump to build the wall to keep us safe. This narrative of course is relentlessly pushed by FNC, despite not a shred of evidence.

The couple had maybe three teeth between them, and if either one graduated the sixth grade I'd be surprised.

It struck me as I was watching: their reverence for Trump is the same as god-addled people have for Jesus.

Yes, Trump is the "Trailer Park Jesus."

NoCoPilot wrote:

If Republicans run the disgraced twice impeached single term former president again in 2024, Democrats should run Obama again.

Quote :

To put this argument in a real filing with the Supreme Court is, in layman’s terms, absolutely bonkers. Trump’s lawyers are saying that there is no time that would be appropriate to have a potential presidential candidate removed from a ballot, whether they’re qualified or not. Under this logic, former President Barack Obama could — or even should — rightly be placed on a Democratic primary ballot as the 22nd Amendment’s term limits could not be properly judged ahead of voters making their decision.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-supreme-court-colorado-ballot-14th-amendment-rcna132323

Latest Sisters-In-Law podcast raises a new, unlikely possibility I hadn't thought of.

Say Trump is ruled ineligible due to the 14th Amendment, but not until after he wins the primaries for the nomination. With only one party having a qualified candidate, the 2024 election could be postponed until a valid Republican candidate emerges.

Unlikely, but a possibility.  We are in uncharted waters.

Was listening to some candidate prattle on this morning about what the next president will need to be working on.

One item in the list was "fix the global climate crisis."

Uh....

NoCoPilot wrote:

Trump and Biden are tied among immigrant voters.

Somebody explain this to me.

Trump is winning huge margins among evangelical voters in Iowa.

Somebody explain this to me.

MSNBC is always willing to spin bad news, so they pointed out Trump's win of 51% of the caucus-goers means that 49% voted against him.

I dunno. It's still a win.

It's for the Republican candidacy. So it means half of the Republicans don't like him.

Professor Heather Cox Richardson spells it out.

Quote :

In yesterday’s Iowa caucus, 51% of Republican caucusgoers chose former president Donald Trump as their preferred candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Twenty-one percent of Republican caucusgoers chose Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Nineteen percent chose former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. Seven percent chose technology entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. These results mean that 20 of Iowa’s 40 delegates will go to Trump; 8 to DeSantis; 7 to Haley; and three to Ramaswamy. An apparent Trump surrogate in the primary debates, Ramaswamy suspended his campaign after the caucus and endorsed Trump.

Turnout was much lower than expected, with only about 110,000 people voting. That’s about 15% of Iowa’s three quarters of a million registered Republicans out of a population of just over 3 million people.

On Friday, January 12, in Des Moines, DeSantis blamed right-wing media for Trump’s continued popularity. “He’s got basically a Praetorian Guard of the conservative media—Fox News, the websites, all this stuff,” DeSantis said, referring to the elite unit of the Roman army that protected the emperor both physically and through intelligence collecting. “They just don’t hold him accountable, because they’re worried about losing viewers and they don’t want to have the ratings go down. And that’s just the reality.”

For his part, true to form, Trump has shared a story that Haley is not eligible to be president because her parents were not citizens when she was born in the U.S. in 1972. This reflects both his “birther” history and his promise to end the birthright citizenship established in 1868 by the Fourteenth Amendment. Also true to form, he made no accusations of voter fraud or rigged voting last night as he has done in the past when he lost elections; indeed, he told supporters this was his third win in Iowa. The truth is that in 2016 he lost Iowa’s caucus vote to Texas senator Ted Cruz.

The Iowa results pretty much told us what we already knew. Trump remains the dominant leader of the hard-right older Republicans who turn out for caucuses, but is so generally unpopular that 49% of Iowa caucusgoers—the party’s most dedicated supporters in a deeply Republican state—chose someone else. The Trump base is older—entry polls showed that only 27% of yesterday’s voters were under the age of 50—and Trump won most handily in the rural, white counties that look least like the rest of the country. His greatest increase in support since 2016 came among white evangelicals.

This is funny, not least because it might be true.

Quote :

Was Ron Desantis Running on ChatGPT This Whole Time?Florida Governor Ron Desantis, who often sounds like an AI chatbot, dropped out of the 2024 Presidential Election on Sunday, just a week after OpenAI banned ChatGPT for political campaigns. It begs the question, was Ron Desantis running on ChatGPT this whole time?

Nikki Haley participated in a skit on SNL last night. All week she has made news throwing zingers at the orange clown. She might be emerging as a viable & likable candidate, especially if she wins her home state of South Carolina on the 24th and especially if the Supreme Court rules against Trump next Thursday (which they won't, even though the law is cut-and-dried).

If Trump has to declare bankruptcy and/or is convicted in any of his 91 federal charges before the election and/or is ruled ineligible to run, we could see a Biden/Harris vs Haley/Scott race: a woman VP versus a woman P and a black VP.

However.  A substantial bloc of the GOP would never vote for a woman or a Black, so Biden would win pretty handily.

The RNC is out of money, and without Trump's grifting the campaign spending will be terribly lopsided, so Biden wins again.

Trump, being the great big 5-year-old that he is, would likely tell his MAGA-idiots to write him in on the ballot, further sinking Haley.  Biden wins again.

It's just POSSIBLE that 2024 won't be a great big screaming disaster afterall.

Trump sez he'll pull out of NATO.

The NATO treaty calls for a coordinated joint defense of any NATO country that is attacked.

Maybe France, England, Germany, Spain and the other 26 member nations will attack the United States to throw out our oppressor.

If Putin attacks a NATO country before Trump has a chance to pull out of the alliance, then a state of war will automatically exist between the US and Russia. So if Trump refused to defend the country attacked, he would be guilty of treason, even by the US constitution's narrow definition. At that point, maybe he could be summarily removed from the White House and installed in Camp X-ray, awaiting trial and execution.

You're assuming norms apply.

70% of Democrats don’t want Biden to run again.

100% of Democrats will not vote for Trump. About 55% of Republicans too.

There are TONS of Democratic candidates who would be more popular than Joe, with both Democrats and Republicans.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I don't think anyone realizes what a sinkhole we're headed toward.

Trump won the Republican primary in South Carolina, Nikki Haley's home state, by 20 points.

Americans have apparently decided elections are too much trouble, democracy is too messy.  They're all in on a fascist dictatorship.

Democrats apparently don't have enough brains to replace Biden.

Ergo, November will see the end of the United States as we know her.

What can be done starting January 2025 to resist?  Well, there might be a tax revolt.  If everyone refused to pay their income taxes in April the government would be crippled. 

Of course by then Social Security could well be eliminated.  Millions of seniors will face dire circumstances, and paying taxes will be the LEAST of our worries.

Under a tax revolt, martial law would be declared and businesses and industry would be "nationalized" as happened under the kleptocracy of Putin.

Would the military obey the new regime?  It's a question.