[toyg]

These people live on manufacturing crisis after crisis in order to exploit the manic status that they generate. Why worry about how the midterms, if you can create a situation where elections cannot be held at all...?

Yes, it sounds crazy right now, but a lot of things sounded similarly crazy 10 years ago, and here we are.

[malfist]

There is no crisis in the US that results in canceled elections

[lesuorac]

We're talking about the same guy that sent a second slate of electors for the 2020 election.

The same guy that told the government of Georgia to add 10,000 votes to his total so he'd win.

The same guy that received 0 punishment for either action.

Why wouldn't he try something for the mid-terms?

[spwa4]

Let's hope next year we laugh about this with the question with "And why did he have any expectation it was going to work?".

[wheelerwj]

No man, thats not going to fly. No one ever got anything done by just hoping. Get started now.

[1-more]

Started doing what? Distributing Maoist literature and rifles, or donating to Act Blue, or something in the middle?

[mrbombastic]

Not recommending first point 3 letter agencies! but if we all did something, volunteer, protest, donate, boycott, we would win tomorrow. Boycotting seems particularly effective, would start there.

[epistasis]

Of course Trump will try something outrageous that would result in prison time for any other person. But I think that the states are also still independent, mostly ruled by law rather than man, and there's limited troop power to interfere.

Trump is not all powerful, unless everybody gives up their power. Not everybody is as weak as the SV elite, and the failures of Big Law and others that bent the knee were very instructive to everybody else. Bowing down to the king makes you his servant, but it does not protect you in any way.

[Hikikomori]

This time he has his own brown shirts, even fast tracking to to service without any training. DoJ had been getting their hands on voter rolls from swing states. Bondi and other trump top advisors and relocated to living on military bases. Idk where it's going but it's really not looking good.

[epistasis]

Yes, it's going to look bad, and Jan 6 was just a trial run. Now all those criminals that have been freed are in the ranks of a supposed "police" force that self-equips from US Patriot Tactical.

But there's not enough of them. Even for Minneapolis, a mid-size city. There might be a few targeted attacks, lots of voter intimidation, but the US is a very big place, and the ranks are too small, and their popularity is tiny compared to other authoritarian regimes.

It's going to be ugly, maybe really really ugly with violence and innocent voters hurt, but the forces of democracy will win out. Minneapolis shows that there's a strong backbone to this country still, even if some swing voters were tricked.

[Timon3]

There's more than enough of them to materially affect election outcomes. The number of votes you'd have to change to flip the outcome of the last few elections was very small, and the parties have a very good idea of which locations they'd have to disturb to achieve the greatest effect.

Now imagine you're a voter who shows any signal of potentially being Dem-aligned - for example a slightly darker complexion, or maybe dyed hair. On your way to the polling station, masked ICE goons "scan your face" with their AI apps, and the apps tell them you're illegal, so they put you into a van and drive you to a holding facility.

What recourse do you have? Even if they let you go the next day, you've lost your vote. And that's not a given, what if they hold you for weeks or months? How many people have others who depend on them, so they can't risk this?

I don't mean to sound dramatic, but if anything like this happens (and there's basically no way it won't) the fascist takeover is complete, and your only recourse left is civil war.

[Hikikomori]

Might be true if you didn't have the electoral college.

[skywhopper]

Yes, and Georgia refused. American elections are a lot more complicated than you seem to believe. There’s plenty to worry about in specific locations, but the federal government has no direct control over any of the voting processes or policies.

[bryanlarsen]

The Federal government has some direct control and lots of indirect control. Relevant right now is the horrible Save America act.

[malfist]

It doesn't. This is a power specifically granted to states. The Save America act is unconstitutional.

[lamontcg]

More than half the SCOTUS is corrupt and bought off, and the Republican Party in congress is just rubber-stamping what Trump wants. I don't have a lot of faith in the word "unconstitutional" anymore.

[FireBeyond]

> The same guy that received 0 punishment for either action.

and

> but the federal government has no direct control over any of the voting processes

Coming soon, to polling booths near you, "random" ICE activity.

[gdulli]

Well he and his people are far too stupid and incompetent to have come close to succeeding. While it's not great that there was no punishment, we should at least be thankful that they act on emotion and can only loosely follow playbooks for corruption from the past rather than write new ones for modern times.

[nemo136]

They still kill a lot of people and, through their actions/inaction, let many others be killed.

[Gud]

Yeah so stupid he managed to become president

[krapp]

Yes. He wasn't elected for his intellect, because Americans don't trust intellect. He was elected for his attitude and personality.

[xbar]

I am surprised to see that this kind of complacency remains.

The corruption competence of this body of actors is as impressive as it is horrific.

[scruple]

What's the basis for this war in Iran? Did that stop this administration? This is akin to pointing out that it's actually illegal to drive 30 mph over the speed limit.

[jagged-chisel]

I’m keeping a link to this comment to see how well it ages

[margalabargala]

It's currently historically accurate. It's aged 250 years so far.

Civil war? Elections. WWII? Elections. Covid? Elections.

[Teever]

In your world view is it possible for empires to fall?

If so, why do you think this is not relevant to this particular empire at this particular time?

[margalabargala]

Obviously. All empires either have fallen or will fall.

That doesn't mean all extant empires are currently actively falling, and soon, will have fallen.

The US is less divided now than it was during the Civil War, which it survived. Why would it be more likely to fall now than then?

[fc417fc802]

Certainly it's possible that could happen to us. If it does I fully expect to have elections throughout the process.

We have the highest concentration of weapons per capita in the world and a deeply ingrained expectation of voting. In a very dark humor sort of way it would be absolutely hilarious if someone was stupid enough to attempt to intervene in the process.

We might go down in flames but you can be absolutely certain we'll have collectively agreed to light them ourselves.

[financetechbro]

Wake up. Things are different this time in case you haven’t noticed

[malfist]

Things are absolutely different, but there is no mechanism in the constitution for canceling elections.

[hypeatei]

> no mechanism in the constitution for canceling elections

Sure, but there's mechanism in real life that allows cancelling elections like sending your newly funded ICE goons to polling places. Ideally everyone follows the constitution but in reality (even looking at past administrations) there's nothing stopping the executive from taking an action and saying "oops guess we'll let the courts figure it out!"

[margalabargala]

Yes, of course they are different. We're not embroiled in an active Civil War with tens of thousands dead and a third of the country having seceded. Most things are different from that.

[nostrademons]

They may be, but if there are no elections, there is no United States. Constitutionally, its government is predicated on having elected representatives.

I could see Trump trying this, but I also can see dozens of other people or groups, some richer, more powerful, more competent, and more ruthless than Trump, just waiting in the wings for the guardrails to come off to make a play to rule the territory of the former United States. If he tries and succeeds at this it's open-season. It's not a Trump dictatorship, it's a civil war, akin to the Chinese Civil War after the emperor fell or the Syrian civil war after the Arab Spring.

[toyg]

Fascist Italy also held "elections", like China and Russia do today. "Elections" is not a magic concept.

Free elections, on the other hand...

[margalabargala]

Sure, but we're discussing what you said:

> Why worry about how the midterms, if you can create a situation where elections cannot be held at all...

[toyg]

The two concepts are not exclusive. You could have "elections" but with heavy ICE presence at the polls "to guarantee security", effectively ensuring only the "right kind of people" will vote. That's not free elections.

[AftHurrahWinch]

Agreed. The United States had an election in 1864, while the states were literally at war with each other.

[miltonlost]

Yeah... because Lincoln wasn't a wanna-be tyrant like Trump. The leaders in charge of the elections are diametrically different people. Lincoln fought to keep the Union together; Trump tried to cause a coup to stay in charge in Jan 2020. My god.

[Imustaskforhelp]

The name of Lincoln and Trump cannot and shouldn't be used within the same sentence. Lincoln's story is inspiring and you can see him worried about his country and he grew up learning law books being poor and rose up to power.

Lincoln says, "With malice toward none, with charity for all"

Trump is the exact opposite of Lincoln being "With malice towards all, with charity for none"

The irony of the situation is that they are from the same party.

He believed that the greatest danger to America came from within, warning that if the nation faltered, it would be due to self-destruction rather than external forces

Lincoln's famous speech: , "At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."

Lincoln was ahead of his time and might as well have predicted something like Trump.

[augusto-moura]

In the current laws you mean, dictatorships usually start by throwing current laws out of the window. Not that I believe Trump would do that, but it is not unheard of in other parts of the world

[readthenotes1]

If they have one, First they start by replacing the Supreme Court with their own minions.

Start to worry of the Republicans start talking about expanding the Supreme Court to add their own to it

[NetMageSCW]

That play already showed its limits with the tariff decision. They can’t stuff the Supreme Court with followers.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> They can’t stuff the Supreme Court with followers.

Can't? They already did.

[toyg]

They can and they did. What the tariff decision shows is simply that, on very specific topics (in this case, big business), their base is significantly split: on one side the populist masses, on the other the wealthy elites. When the chips are down, the current USSC is connected the latter more than to the former, and will vote accordingly.

[esalman]

Yet.

[margalabargala]

The US held elections during the Civil War.

There is no crisis that would create a situation where elections "cannot be held".

That is to say, if the current admin attempts to suspend elections, the legality of that and the magnitude of the reaction will be the same, crisis or no.

[cotillion]

Some of the states held presidential elections, not all, but the winners write history so it worked out fine in that case.

[margalabargala]

Every non-Confederate state held elections. Two recaptured Confederate states (TN and LA) held elections. The only states which did not are the ones that had seceded, and thus were not US states at the time.

That's not precedent for the federal government declining to hold elections in any way.

[miltonlost]

Account created Jan 6 2020. Now downplaying the current admin attempts.... hmmm.....

[margalabargala]

Please explain how saying "there is no crisis which could justify suspending elections" downplays anything the current admin is doing.

[malfist]

How are they downplaying it? Trump can try all he wants, but there is no mechanism in the constitution that allows him to do that. He wasn't successful in 2020 and he won't be successful this time.

The GOP won't even kill the fillibuster in the senate because they know change is coming.

[coffeefirst]

I really think this gives them too much credit.

They keep making the same mistake: underestimating that your adversary gets a vote, whether it's Iran, trade partners, colleges, Colbert, the Kennedy Center's audience, or Minneapolis.

[amelius]

> Why worry about how the midterms, if you can create a situation where elections cannot be held at all...?

But they claimed "flawless victory".

Both things cannot be true at the same time.

[toyg]

They also claimed Iran's nuclear threat was no more, last year. And still here we are.

Their concept of truth lasts only as long as a single news cycle (sometimes even less).

[disqard]

I think you're failing to recognize that we essentially live in a post-Truth world. Two opposite statements can be uttered by the same person on the same day, and it won't matter.

[1234letshaveatw]

The only way you could do something like would be to "appoint" someone as the presidential candidate in a two party system without holding a primary

[gzread]

I heard a theory that since someone told Trump that Ukraine wouldn't hold elections until after the war, he thought America had the same law.

[Jtsummers]

He has lived through multiple wars where elections were held. I do not think highly of the man, but he would have to be pretty bad off to come to that belief.

[Marsymars]

If you listen to him talk and the things he actually says, it's hard to escape the conclusion that he's losing his grip on reality as he ages.

The mainstream media is incredibly generous to him, they parse out the non-crazy from his word salad and report on that.

[FireBeyond]

Which "war"? While there are the current "debates" about whether this is a war, the US hasn't declared war on anybody since WW2.

> but he would have to be pretty bad off to come to that belief.

Well, did you hear that the dead are walking around with no arms and no legs because they were blown off? Trump said that, a few days ago.

[MisterTea]

I would wager that someone as selfish as narcissistic as he is would have been oblivious and unconcerned with the day to day affairs of the plebeians unless it effected his income.