[DerpyBaby123]

"Nearly Died" yes, because the leadership guiding the riot wasn't particularly competent. If they had control of more institutions, it would likely have been more successful.

When saying "any other show of power other than that they managed to break through a few weakly-secured doors" you downplay the fact they the rioters interrupted a session of Congress and succeeded in their purpose of delaying the certification of election results.

[dang]

Please stop taking HN threads further into flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

You did it repeatedly in this thread - that's not cool. Please don't do it again.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29935954.

[gjsman-1000]

Wow... so you're saying our democracy could be overthrown if you, A) disrupt Congress and B) cause a day's worth of delays.

Amazing stability of our government that.

[tablespoon]

Your comment here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29935989) has been killed, so I couldn't post my reply there, so I'll post it here:

> Political theater by Democrats trying to make Jan 6th "The Day That Democracy Nearly Died" or something.

I agree there's been a lot of political theater around Jan. 6th, but if democracy does in fact die in the US, those events will have been an important milestone. Basically, the point where the breakdown of the respect for the institutions of democracy became in-your-face obvious. It also set some precedents/put options in people's minds that will be hugely destabilizing.

That said, I'm really disappointed that Democrats are basically making only small tactical responses (e.g. party-line voting rights legislation, some justice dept. unit to combat "extremism") to a strategic problem, which is that a large fraction of the population is losing/has lost respect for the system. The Democrats really need to get their act together and, being the less-degraded party, do their duty and make whatever sacrifices are necessary to fix that [1].

[1] As in when some asshole trashes some common area, you have the duty to spend your time and effort clean up after them. You don't have control over their behavior, but you have control over your own, and it's wrong to leave the common area trashed even though it's not "fair" you're the one sacrificing your time to clean it up.

[DerpyBaby123]

I didn't say that at all. However, taking control of the government is exactly how coups are executed, please look into it if you haven't.

[gjsman-1000]

We have a chain of command in our government for when people die. First the President, then the Vice President, then the Speaker of the House, then the Secretaries in a predefined order, and so forth. Plus, the Secret Service (which protects the president) includes considerations for, say, Nuclear Bombing of the capitol and who would take over leadership if such a disaster should happen.

If the rioters had succeeded in murdering every single person in the capital building, there would have been a protocol in place with the leader already determined. The only way this would have been successful is if the rioters killed every single elected official and secretary in the building, followed by having the support of the Army. They were absolutely nowhere near that.

[cnelsenmilt]

The president (and president-elect) weren't anywhere near the building and their safety was not at issue.

There is no federal procedure or "chain of command" for replacing individual Representatives and Senators -- that goes back to the states they represent, with either elections or appointments.

[ng12]

Yes coups require explicit support of the military and/or populace. They had neither.

[DerpyBaby123]

Many people in the populace would have supported it, look at how many now even today deny that it was a riot aimed at disrupting the peaceful transition of power of the government.

If they didn't do a good enough job at it, it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

[openasocket]

Around 75% of republicans believe Trump won the 2020 election, and that number has been substantiated by multiple polls at this point. I'd like to say that the coup attempt didn't have the support of the populace, but frankly I'm not sure.

[unabridged]

You are missing the most important point C) the outgoing president refuses to leave

The rioters wouldn't have ended democracy, but if they caused enough commotion to prevent certification there was a significant risk Trump would have taken advantage of the situation.

[ModernMech]

Kind of, yes. The people voted democratically to elect Joe Biden as President in November. The Constitution and laws say that he becomes President Elect on Jan 6. That's the law. People vote -> President elect on Jan 6, President on Jan 20.

What happened on Jan 6 was that the transition of power was, for a number of hours, prevented through violent means. Thank God two things happened on Jan 6: (1) Mike Pence refused to leave the Capitol and (2) Mitch McConnell refused to entertain the 10 objections that they wanted (which would have delayed proceedings for at least 20 hours). If either of those two things happened, we'd be in a political situation uncovered by the Constitution and law. That's when things get bad, because either side is just making things up at that point. It becomes a battle of wills and political power; whoever has the most power to reify their will, wins.

The plan on Jan 6 was to delay certification as long as possible, because there was a pressure campaign ongoing in which states were being pressured to "decertify" their votes, and Pence was being pressured to consider alternate slates of electors for Trump.

I think everyone needs to start getting clear on the facts here:

(1) Jan 6 was about stopping Biden from being certified as President Elect by any means, because that's a write only operation. There's no undoing that. Once he is certified by the House, Senate, and VP, the deal is done. Not even the Supreme Court can overturn that: separation of powers and all.

(2) The legal way to do that was spelled out in the Eastman Memo [1]: It argued Pence could just unilaterally refuse to consider slates of electors and cause a contested election, which favored the Republicans electorally. But Pence would not go along with this plan.

(3) Pence was aware of fraudulent certificates of the vote that had been submitted by various states, which purported to be legitimate votes for Trump. Pence could not go along with accepting those without a pretextual reason given by the states themselves. This was the last piece of the plan which was, supposedly according to Trump's lawyer, coming together at the last minute while the Capitol attack was ongoing.

Think of it this way: On Jan 6 the situation was that every state had certified their votes, Trump lost 62/63 court cases and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, the AG had said he found no fraud. There was no pretext for Pence to accept the alternative electors.

However, that could have changed very quickly had the pressure campaign continued. If Pence had left the Capitol on Jan 6, then the joint session would not have reconvened for several days while the Capitol was secured (actually the Capitol was correctly deemed insecure by Secret Service the day of Jan 6, so there's as open question as to why Pence was there in the first place). At this time, there was a pressure campaign going on to get one or more states to "Decertify" their certificate of the vote. Had one or more states done so, it would be very easy to see how this would have ended up at a contested election where Republicans would have all the votes needed to install Trump as President.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_memos

[Rebelgecko]

Didn't the certification end up taking until January 7th anyways? IMO the bulk of the impact was purely symbolic. Even though Congress didn't declare Biden president-elect on the assigned day, his inauguration still happened on schedule.

[ModernMech]

In fact they reconvened in the evening on Jan 6, and finished the proceedings by 3:30 am on Jan 7. And it's true they managed to get the confirmation done, but that's not quite the point -- the point is why they had to be doing it that late in the first place. The reason is, that this purely symbolic event is anything but; it transmutes the winner of the election into president elect. It marks the beginning of the transition of power, when the president elect begins assuming the powers of their future office. This preliminary title comes with real powers like the ability to see classified information, and increased protections.

It's also completely irreversible. It turns out, the easiest way to prevent a president from being inaugurated on Jan 20 is to prevent them from becoming president elect on Jan 6. There's a real question as to who would ever have the Constitutional authority to undo that, because all the objections are assumed to have been settled through the process on Jan 6. After that it's a done deal. I would say Jan 20 is the more purely symbolic event of the two dates, because by then the authority of the new executive is more firmly established.

And we can't brush past the fact that there was a delay, no matter how brief. The few hour delay could have easily been multiple days if Pence had left the Capitol, and it could have changed the political calculus in terms of states deciding to decertify their elections. Multiple days could have easily turned into multiple weeks as the Justice system moves at a snail's pace, and then suddenly it's Jan 20 without a decision on the election.

If that were to have happened, the House would have voted and with a majority of delegations Republicans would have chosen Trump.

[throwawaysea]

How many people do you think were actually there to delay certification of election results? The overwhelming majority of people who stepped onto the Capitol grounds are charged only with simple trespassing. Even most of the people who entered the actual building were just trespassing and did not take things further. There were nearly 10000 people who marched from the earlier Trump rally to the area outside the Capitol. A few hundred entered the Capitol grounds, and my guess is that most of the rioters were intending to be peaceful protesters and got carried away.

> If they had control of more institutions, it would likely have been more successful.

Isn’t this the pot calling the kettle black? The political left does control most of the institutions, including most mainstream press outlets, virtually all academic institutions, and all notable tech companies. The one thing I can take away from January 6th that is about the security of our elections doesn’t relate to the security of physical buildings. One political side was able to compel all these institutions to take up their political cause, and have engaged in state-motivated censorship of political adversaries. Hiding behind the legality of whether a private organization can censor is not really meaningful. Democracy begins a lot earlier than when we line up to vote. That to me is a much more direct threat to the stability of our country than anything else.

[magicalist]

> The overwhelming majority of people who stepped onto the Capitol grounds are charged only with simple trespassing

The overwhelming majority are being charged with class A and B misdemeanors (I assume by "simple trespass" you probably mean class C), but that's not the only charge that many of them have.

About half of those arrested so far have felony charges as well.