Stop the (for real) steal
September 27, 2021 11:55 PM   Subscribe

@ThePlumLineGS: Reforming the Electoral Count Act as a key safeguard against a future stolen election [ungated] - "Democrats should push for ECA reform, and I expect they will. But nothing will pass as long as the filibuster remains." (via; previously)
In a great new draft paper, election law scholar Richard L. Hasen warns that we face “serious risk” of “election subversion” or an “actual stolen election.” Hasen discusses reforms that could avert such scenarios, which will also be the topic of a conference on Friday.

In the last election, no GOP legislature appointed rogue electors, a majority of Congress voted to uphold Biden’s electors, and Pence ultimately backed away from the plot. But some GOP legislators did consider this scheme, around 150 congressional Republicans did vote to subvert Biden’s electors, and Pence did explore the outer limits of what he might do for Trump.

And if the GOP controls the House and Senate on Jan. 6, 2025, Congress can simply count rogue electors sent by a given state, or refuse to count the rightful ones. If Republicans control just the House, Congress might deadlock, prompting a contingent election in the House decided by state delegations, and the Republican would win.
also btw...
posted by kliuless (43 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
Democrats seem not organized enough to do this and genuinely asleep at the wheel with efforts to ensure free elections. The warnings are getting more and more desperate, I think.

Hasen just made an appearance on the latest On the Media episode, The Subversion Playbook. Highly recommend, as the first segments are US focused and the last two segments highlight Russia, which I think is an appropriate analogue for how democracy could die here in the US.
posted by glaucon at 3:33 AM on September 28, 2021 [4 favorites]


I want to think that there is a plan. It's easy to mistake quiet, behind-the-scenes organizing for appearing to be asleep at the wheel, and it's certainly advantageous for Democrats to be coy about their strategy until the moment they're ready to proceed. The 1/6 Committee is slowly but surely rolling along and all indications are that everyone knows the gravity of the situation. I want to believe that the dam (filibuster) will burst and in quick succession the reconciliation bill will be passed, the voting rights bills are passed, Washington DC is elevated to statehood, and the Supreme Court is expanded/contracted before Republicans even have a chance to inject their usual disingenuous narrative-shifting bullshit. Just because Democrats haven't acted yet doesn't mean they aren't going to act.

But then Manchin keeps publicly doubling down on deficits and how much he won't ever vote to get rid of the fillibuster and I start to realize that we really are doomed by our devotion to maintaining a horribly broken status quo.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:27 AM on September 28, 2021 [12 favorites]


I'm a non-USian, so on the outside looking in. What disturbed me most about the whole thing is 6/Jan insurrectionists calling for Pence to be hanged.

It stands to reason that most of them voted for him just two months earlier.

That's some fucked up bullshit right there, and ignoring it is NOT going to make it go away.

From the outside looking in, it's not just an R vs D thing. It's much worse than that. I really don't know what else to say, other than do NOT pretend that it is okay. Do NOT enable that. Words like "dysfunctional" and "toxic" are not even adequate.
posted by swr at 4:36 AM on September 28, 2021 [16 favorites]


The US needed to go after the attempted coup organizers hard and fast, right after the failed putsch. They did not. They will pay a dear price for this failure.
posted by dazed_one at 6:09 AM on September 28, 2021 [10 favorites]


Dems may be forced to ditch the filibuster because the GOP is determined to put the government into default and crash the economy. If it takes nuking the filibuster to get around that, then suddenly things like electoral reform become possible again.
posted by rikschell at 6:13 AM on September 28, 2021 [7 favorites]


all indications are that everyone knows the gravity of the situation

Feinstein Doubles Down On Saying Democracy Isn’t In Jeopardy Ahead Of Election Bill Vote
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 6:17 AM on September 28, 2021 [6 favorites]


It's 3 days from October. The 1/6 Commission is not going to do anything of consequence, if they were that could have been done the 2 weeks following.

As for the debt limit, Congress doesn't _want_ another shutdown but well they also don't want to deal with the filibuster even less.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:18 AM on September 28, 2021 [3 favorites]


The thing that really worries me, and why I do think the Democrats are asleep at the wheel is that I think Ian Danskin, AKA Innuendo Studios, was right in his You Go High, We Go Low video. Not that the idea is new to him, but I thought he presented it well.

Since I generally hate video as a medium, here's the transcript. And here's the relevant quote:
Most people would say that “the ends justify the means” is a crap moral philosophy. Democrats would agree. But liberals often overcorrect to the point where thinking about the ends at all is thought of as - in a vague, reflexive kind of way - innately immoral. There’s a very Enlightenment way of thinking that implies that, with the right means, the ends take care of themselves, and immoral behavior becomes functionally impossible. [...]
[...] This is less The Key To Understanding Liberals and more one pattern of thinking liberals often slip into. But this idea of the perfect system that can only spit out justice is how liberals tend to think about democracy.

[...] We can call this Values-Neutral Governance, and you can see why it would appeal when you’re trying to sum all the demands placed on a politician. Under this thinking, you don’t need to engage with the needs and desires of your constituency, your donors, or even your opposition, because, if democracy is working, everyone deserving will get what they need as a matter of course. That’s what democracy is for: To divine what is right out of a cacophony of different voices. It’s okay for people - even people with power - to have bad ideas because bad ideas will always be outnumbered by good ideas. Checks and balances. Hell, you can have bad ideas and it won’t make a difference! Provided you commit to obeying a just set of rules, only justice will ever be produced by them.
TL;DR A lot of Democrats have committed, hard, to the idea that following the rules is more important than having goals and seeking to enact those goals. That, in fact, as long as the rules are good (and ours must be good) then goodness and justice are inevitable.

It isn't just Manchin protecting the filibuster, he's just the guy taking the blame. There's a lot of other Democrats who support the filibuster but aren't so public about it since Manchin is tanking the agro on the issue.

It isn't even that the Democrats are asleep at the wheel, they can see the looming disasater, but their core ideology (that ideology is bad and that following the rules is the most important part) means they can't take action without admitting that their ideology of values neutral governance is wrong, without conceding that the rules aren't going to keep us safe, without conceding that the rules don't always produce justice.

And people fear social death more than physical death, or losing office by fraudulent elections.

I really hope I'm wrong. I really hope there's a big enough vote that the R's can't cheat enough to defeat us. I hope that there's enough R's unwilling to go full authoritarian that they'll stop it.

But none of that seems likely.

The Republicans have taken the political approach of what might be termed civil war brinksmanship. They keep breaking the rules blatantly and rubbing our faces in it, but keeping it just **BARELY** inside the boundary that won't produce actual shooting civil war.

Keeping it just barely plausible enough, just barely holding out enough false hope that they can be reasoned with and really do believe in democracy, that the Democrats and the rest of the nation decides that it's better to take a loss in this election than it is to start a civil war. As Al Gore did in 2000 and the Obama victory in 2008 seemed to vindicate See, the system worked, we got 8 years of an illegitimate President who "won" by chating, but then the system righted itself! The system is good! Praise the system!

The time to have passed laws protecting elections was in February. It may already be too late.

I don't think the Democrats will abandon the filibuster and protect democracy. I don't think they're ideologically capable of it.

Which means its up to us, in theory, but I don't know what we can do. So many Republican states have already passed laws that guarantee their state lege can toss out any electoral result they dislike that no amount of voter turnout can overcome it, they'll just say any district that voted Democratic was fraud, replace the election board with one that will hand the election to the Republican candidate, and move on.

I doubt they'll do it quite so amazingly blatantly, nor everywhere. But they'll do it enough to take the House and Senate, and to hold on to power in the states they control.

And then what? We go back and march with Pink Pussy Hats again? That didn't really do much good you'll notice.

How can we save democracy when "our" party isn't all that interested in saving democracy?
posted by sotonohito at 6:25 AM on September 28, 2021 [34 favorites]


Well, it was fun while it lasted.
posted by briank at 6:30 AM on September 28, 2021 [1 favorite]


It won't change until we lose a war, and not just the quit-and-go-home Afghanistan kind but a real war with real stakes.

This is some weird optimism, borne of too many superhero movies, or mid-C20 American WWII movies. There is no incentive to change. In the twenty-first century an American "real war with real stakes" is the destruction of humankind.

So allow me my outburst:

Nation-states are bullshit. There is a class of plutocrats above governments. A lot of the latest weirdnesses are the tremors from tectonic power-shifts. Farage/Putin/Trump/Bezos/Zuckerburg don't give a shit about people who share their passports, they care about who shares their club memberships.
posted by pompomtom at 6:53 AM on September 28, 2021 [10 favorites]


Whoa. Note that what Republicans are threatening now is not just another government shutdown, it's actual debt default. That's a huge escalation with such far-reaching consequences that it may truly force the Dems' hand. I'm aware they really don't want to do this, that they REALLY really want to protect the status quo (if only the Dems could be the conservative party and we could have a real progressive opposition instead of a fascist reactionary opposition!), but I'm hopeful they won't just sign on to cratering the economy to save the filibuster.
posted by rikschell at 7:02 AM on September 28, 2021 [8 favorites]


Ron Howard: they will.

I believe Manchin and Sinema when they say that they will never, under any circumstances at all, ever vote to end our weaken the filibuster.

Manchin will say the R filibuster is proof that the Democratic budget is to big and that the D's have an obligation to slash their budget (to $0 if that's what it takes) to get the R votes.

When they tell you what they are, believe them. They've told us.
posted by sotonohito at 7:14 AM on September 28, 2021 [14 favorites]


> TL;DR A lot of Democrats have committed, hard, to the idea that following the rules is more important than having goals and seeking to enact those goals.

Yep, even though the other team is blatantly violating them or changing them on the fly to their advantage. Hopefully they will find comfort in the fact that they followed the rules, maintained decorum and weren't too partisan when the United States slides into full-blown fascism.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:17 AM on September 28, 2021 [9 favorites]


There is no incentive to change.

Nothing will change until there is a sweeping, undeniable and overwhelming need for change, something that cannot be bargained with, swept under the rug or handed off to the other party for blame.

And, right now, the typical American voter is not seeing any consequences for their vote, regardless of whom they support. A Republican gets in, and the Republican voters hear lots of stuff about Tax Cuts and Patriotism and God and Freedom and Fighting Socialism but they don't see their personal status change in meaningful ways. A Democrat gets in, and the Democratic voters hear lots of stuff about Reform and Change and Fairness and Restoring Democracy but they don't see their personal status change in meaningful ways. Bad actors in high positions suffer no consequences because their fellow bad actors refuse to police them.

Those who have paid for the privilege of owning the current system will cling to it like barnacles because they benefit from it significantly, until something cataclysmic knocks them from that perch. And make no mistake, anything sufficiently brutal to shake the powers that be will do more than that to the rank and file of America.
posted by delfin at 7:35 AM on September 28, 2021 [6 favorites]


So this cataclysm would have to be at least an order of magnitude or two worse than the pandemic, yeah?
posted by ryanrs at 7:46 AM on September 28, 2021 [2 favorites]


And, right now, the typical American voter is not seeing any consequences for their vote,

And that right there is the Republican game. They want to force terrible, terrible consequences on America for the sin of voting for Democrats. If the Democrats don't end the filibuster (or keep firing Senate Parliamentarians until they find one who will sign off on just about anything under reconciliation) and the US defaults on its debts, the economy will tank hard and Republicans will blame Democrats: "here are the consequences of voting for Democrats. We told you they'd be bad for the economy." And the Republican base and millions of other low-information voters will buy it.

(And if the Democrats do end the filibuster or cycle through Parliamentarians then Republicans will campaign on "Democratic tyranny". From their point of view it's a win either way.)

Congressional Republicans are absolutely willing to harm hundreds of millions of people and irreparably damage America's economic position in order to win reelection.
posted by jedicus at 7:51 AM on September 28, 2021 [13 favorites]


So this cataclysm would have to be at least an order of magnitude or two worse than the pandemic, yeah?


Do you see significant systematic reform happening?

That would be a "yes" to your question, then.
posted by delfin at 8:07 AM on September 28, 2021 [2 favorites]


Do you see significant systematic reform happening?

Kinda, yeah. But not in the direction I'd like.
posted by ryanrs at 8:31 AM on September 28, 2021 [3 favorites]


I cannot understand the reluctance to tamper with or eliminate the filibuster. Maybe someone can clarify that.

It can't be that getting rid of it could end up benefiting the GOP. If they see an advantage in eliminating it, they will do so at their first opportunity, and they won't agonize over the wisdom or prudence of doing it.
posted by Flexagon at 8:32 AM on September 28, 2021 [1 favorite]


I mean, there is a virus affecting the world and a non-insignificant number of Americans are still deluding themselves that this is somehow a Democratic hoax. And they’re dying for it. Proudly.

The GOP is using this as their loyalty test for who is willing to die for them, and they’re getting the answers they want.
posted by glaucon at 8:32 AM on September 28, 2021 [4 favorites]


> Just because Democrats haven't acted yet doesn't mean they aren't going to act.

I really would love to believe this.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:47 AM on September 28, 2021


Anybody who votes Republican during an era of plague is at least accessory to murder, and anybody who votes Republican after January 6th is accessory to treason. But they've been fed super propaganda their entire lives, convincing them that they truly are at War against half the country that supports stuff like, human freaking rights and legitimate voting. I don't know what finally tipped the Republican party into acting so overtly, a black president enabling the worst of the Rabble to come out without fear of reprisal? They finally got their shit together with enough groundwork laid that they can stage a (mostly) bloodless coup under the guise of enough legality to convince the stupid and apathetic?

They've completely tainted the supreme court. They've tainted a lot of the judiciary. They've been gerrymandering for decades. The massively corrupt last president committed crimes with impunity often on national television. There's no rules in Monopoly that say you can't pull a gun on the banker and win the game that way. If there's two groups and one is abandoning all pretense of civilization, you can't have reasoned debate. All's fair in war, right? If the other side is evil and immoral and attacking your freedoms and deeply held foxfed beliefs, what wouldn't you stop at to win the war?

America's not going to take to the streets like we need to to stop this. There won't be any general strikes, no blocking of freeways or forming human peaceful walls around government buildings. This is how fascism starts, and I don't see the Democrats pulling any magic saves out of their hats. Be prepared for things you hold dear to simply vanish. Voting rights? Gone. Safe and legal abortions? Gone. LGBT rights? Gone. Women's education? Well, good luck. Mandatory religion? Wouldn't surprise me. Wage slavery, indentured servitude, forced pregnancy, forced sterilization of the quote undesirables? Wouldn't surprise me. Environmental protection? Hah. No. No way. Education and social safety nets? Gone. Sacrificing people on the pyre of anti masking, of course.

This is the future. Now is the time to stop it. Good luck and God help us all.
posted by Jacen at 8:51 AM on September 28, 2021 [5 favorites]


I decided to see how many years the GOP has had control in government over the last 20 years because of their constant crying that all ills are the fault of democrats. Here is what I found:

House - Republicans 12/20 years
Senate - Republicans 10/20 years
President - Republicans 12/20 years
Supreme Court - 10/14 in my lifetime Republican
US State Governorships - 16/20 years
US State Senates -9/10 years
US State Houses - 9/10 years
Ohio governors -16/20 years
Ohio senate -16/20 years
Ohio house - 16/20 years

I couldn’t easily tabulate for state governments longer than 10 years, and control in that area means more GOP than Dem for all 50 states. Supreme Court I looked at active justices by appointment in my lifetime. 12/20 years means control for 12 of 20 years.
posted by glaucon at 8:58 AM on September 28, 2021 [6 favorites]


America's not going to take to the streets like we need to to stop this.

Some did! It was striking to me how quickly the alt-right convoyed into Portland, Seattle, Berkeley, Charlottesville, and other blue cities to suppress dissent and incite fights. After last summer, it's seems to me that if a shooting war happens, that's where it'll start.
posted by ryanrs at 9:00 AM on September 28, 2021 [2 favorites]


Democrats know that the Senate filibuster prevents radical change from happening from either side. If an artificial threshold of sixty is required to get anything done, it lets them stand in the path of extreme Republican policy and lets Republicans stand in the path of, well, anything Democrats propose. Each side can point fingers at the other as to why very little of substance sees the light of day, and the status quo continues.

Take that away, and the voices urging Senators to take what might be politically risky actions grow much louder. Why haven't you passed a higher minimum wage, or set it to zero, or banned abortion nationwide, or legalized abortion nationwide, et cetera?

Opening that door is politically hazardous, particularly when you may be in the minority again soon. Mitch may not want that door open, but if it opens, he wants the other side to take the blame for its opening, so he can shake his turtle head ruefully and sigh, "They MADE us do this" as he dismantles what is left of the law.
posted by delfin at 9:05 AM on September 28, 2021 [2 favorites]


They say that, and it's true that the Democrats filibustered a lot in Trump's first two years.

But it didn't appear to actually stop any harm from being done.

I get the argument, but from my POV it seems to only prevent Democrats from doing, litreally, anything at all while it doesn't prevent the Republicans from wrecking the country.

If 2016-2018 was what we get with the filibuster then it's so useless to us we might as well throw it away.
posted by sotonohito at 9:23 AM on September 28, 2021 [6 favorites]


> This is the future. Now is the time to stop it. Good luck and God help us all.

It's Canada's future, too, because once the U.S. goes down that path there won't be anything stopping them from invading and taking whatever they want, probably in tandem with Russia.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:24 AM on September 28, 2021 [1 favorite]


I agree wholeheartedly that the filibuster needs to go.

But that is scary, and I don't blame anyone for being terrified of that. We don't have a country designed to work like a parliamentary democracy where one party takes power, pretty much totally until the next election. The filibuster has been used to stop some really awful things, some explicitly, others it made unthinkable just by existing. Yes, executive orders and actions can get around that gridlock - but it is all undone quickly by the next administration while legislation takes more time to reverse, if at all. Think about all the yoyoing with the global gag rule, vs the ACA or post-office pension pre-funding,

Killing it does mean that Democrats could make real change. But it also means that Republicans can do real harm without checks when they come to power as well - and a Republican advantage is baked in to our electoral system at the constitutional level.

I absolutely believe that the Republicans will kill the filibuster themselves when they need it. But the pain, the dramatic irony of killing it yourself and watching as they smirk while using that against you, mentioning it every step of the way? That is terrifying.

Again, I agree wholeheartedly that the filibuster needs to go. The only way things can go well is if we get rid of it, and a lot of other things turn out ok too. But that doesn't make it less scary.
posted by Garm at 9:31 AM on September 28, 2021 [4 favorites]


"We can't get rid of [arcane anti-democratic Senate rule] because McConnell will just take advantage of that when he has power" was and still is completely useless as a justification when history has repeatedly shown that McConnell will just get rid of the rules when he has power and take advantage no matter what the Dems do. Might as well do it when they may have the power to stop a fascist takeover rather than, you know, wait until the takeover happens.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 9:41 AM on September 28, 2021 [11 favorites]


D's have an obligation to slash their budget (to $0 if that's what it takes) to get the R votes.

One thing different about this debt ceiling fight is that Republicans have made no demands. They've been saying for months that it will get zero R votes, period. Bernie on this: "I think Republicans may be a little bit crazy, but they’re not that crazy."

I kind of understand why Democrats seem so asleep: the Republicans play at breaking norms before they actually do. There's a lot of grumbling and feints before they actually cross a line. Objecting to states' presidential votes was pretty normal, so they did that even after the riot, but actually installing Trump was a bridge too far. The problem is they're just talking themselves into it, and next time it won't be too far.
posted by netowl at 9:44 AM on September 28, 2021 [3 favorites]


It's going to be "we cannot permit the Democrats to get away with another stolen election, stolen from Trump" unless Trump actually wins the thing, which is, I am afraid, quite possible.
posted by thelonius at 10:03 AM on September 28, 2021 [4 favorites]


the Republicans play at breaking norms before they actually do. There's a lot of grumbling and feints before they actually cross a line.

Democrats aren't nearly as performative as Republicans in telegraphing what norm-breaking moves they want to make, but.....
On January 26, 2021, Tom Carper of Delaware introduced a similar bill, S. 51, "A bill to provide for the admission of the State of Washington, D.C. into the Union" into the United States Senate with a record 38 co-sponsors. Additional co-sponsors have since signed on, totaling 45 as of April 17, all of whom are Democrats or Independents.
I really hope this is all set and ready to go an hour after the fillibuster is done away with. If the Republicans are daring Democrats to blow up the fillibuster in order to raise the debt celing, they should have to eat a heaping bowl of DC Statehood.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:48 AM on September 28, 2021 [3 favorites]


The filibuster has been used to stop some really awful things, some explicitly, others it made unthinkable just by existing.

This is often stated but, outside of _Mr. Smith Goes to Washington_, I'd really love a concrete example.

The filibuster post-Civil War, for example, was almost always about fighting against civil rights. Like, *at best* one might point to Huey Long's filibuster of the New Deal for being too watered down, but that stand was taken for political, not moral, reasons.

Maybe some of "Fighting Bob" La Follette's filibusters? Seriously, though, the history of the filibuster is the history of fighting against civil rights reform.

Honestly, the idea that the filibuster is key to keeping minority rights from being trampled upon is 100% American mythology that is not born out in any appreciable way by actual American history.
posted by absalom at 11:18 AM on September 28, 2021 [5 favorites]


I really hope this is all set and ready to go an hour after the fillibuster is done away with.

More likely, several Democrats will vote against statehood and some will even say it's because they disagreed with removing the filibuster.
posted by ryanrs at 11:26 AM on September 28, 2021 [5 favorites]


It's Canada's future, too, because once the U.S. goes down that path there won't be anything stopping them from invading and taking whatever they want, probably in tandem with Russia.

Canada's obsession with what it means to share a border with the global superpower of our time has spawned an entire branch of analysis and literature, as I'm sure you are aware. Living my entire adult life in Alberta I have seen what the explicitly close ties with Houston have meant for provincial politics, but it wasn't until I came late to Pierre Berton's "The Promised Land" that I realized the extent to which US Americans have played such a prominent role in this province. I get that Berton is deemed far too popular to be taken seriously by many historians, but if you don't have a lot of time you can do worse than read his books for an engaging and broad ranging perspective on the nation's history.
posted by elkevelvet at 1:57 PM on September 28, 2021


After government pledge of 'best summer ever,' COVID swamps Alberta hospitals, premier - "The western Canadian province is often called 'the Texas of the North' for its oil and gas wealth, cowboy culture and conservative, independent mindset."
"Our job is to save lives, not choose who gets to live and die," said Shazma Mithani, an emergency doctor at Edmonton's Royal Alexandra Hospital and the Stollery Children's Hospital.

"We are in the absolute worst situation we have ever been in, and it was entirely preventable, all of it."

The only reason intensive care units have room for new patients each day is because people already there are dying, said Verna Yiu, chief executive of Alberta Health Services.

Kenney apologized on Sept. 15 for mishandling the pandemic and imposed a requirement for proof of vaccination to enter certain businesses. He got Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a frequent political foe, to agree to provide military help to airlift patients to other provinces.

Kenney, 53, tapped into Alberta's populist streak when after years as a Cabinet minister in Ottawa, he returned west to lead the newly created United Conservative Party (UCP) and win the 2019 provincial election.

In July, the province lifted nearly all restrictions in time for the Calgary Stampede rodeo, one of Canada's most popular tourist draws. The following month, the UCP printed "Best Summer Ever" ball caps, even as cases spiked and Kenney disappeared on vacation.

He returned in September to offer unvaccinated Albertans a C$100 cash incentive to get inoculated and unveil a vaccine passport system, despite previously promising that would never happen.

Kenney replaced his health minister, but many Albertans remain furious.

Some political commentators blamed a dip in Conservative support in last week's federal election on frustrations with Kenney, once tipped as a potential federal leader of the party...

Saskatchewan, whose right-leaning premier, Scott Moe, has mirrored Kenney's approach to the pandemic, is also buckling under a fourth wave as intensive care beds filled up and its only children's hospital began admitting adult COVID-19 patients.

But Moe is not facing similar backlash within his party. His Saskatchewan Party formed 24 years ago, unlike the UCP, which is only 4 years old and prone to conflicts between its center-right moderates and far-right rural members.
a land of contrasts, meanwhile down south...
What If 2020 Was Just a Rehearsal? - "American democracy is in the midst of a waking nightmare, says Rick Hasen. And Democrats aren't taking it seriously enough."
posted by kliuless at 1:11 AM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]


And, right now, the typical American voter is not seeing any consequences for their vote,

Why would they? The legislature spends half its time strangling itself, the court is packed for the next couple of decades, and the presidency is now the seat that that daiper guy shat in (or possibly was stolen from the daiper guy by aliens or something).
posted by pompomtom at 8:32 AM on September 29, 2021


"I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." -- Will Rogers
posted by kirkaracha at 8:53 AM on September 29, 2021


What If 2020 Was Just a Rehearsal?

I honestly don't know why people are asking this question. The country had an attempted coup and none of the key organizers suffered any form of consequence and were instead allowed to roam free, broadcasting their falsehoods.

Of course this isn't over. This is merely the beginning.
posted by dazed_one at 8:21 PM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]


Naked hatred is on the march
posted by Jacen at 8:46 PM on September 29, 2021


As Trump hints at 2024 comeback, democracy advocates fear a 'worst-case scenario' for the country [ungated] - "Scholars grapple with what would happen if the former president runs again — and wins."
posted by kliuless at 8:53 PM on September 29, 2021


This is what you do to former presidents who pervert the democratic process.
posted by dazed_one at 6:31 AM on September 30, 2021 [1 favorite]


"Scholars grapple with what would happen if the former president runs again — and wins."

Everyone freaks out about the fascism, but that turns out to be a curious irrelevancy due to the lack of survivable regions on the planet. Trump, Putin and Johnson are among the last survivors.

Somewhere there is a warehouse of unused guillotines.
posted by pompomtom at 5:54 AM on October 17, 2021 [1 favorite]


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