How Trump Could Steal The Election

[John Cuthber]

1 hour ago, geordief said:

Can we start to enjoy ourselves yet?

With appropriate social distancing.

[Janus]

 

3 hours ago, MigL said:

The only way to save his ass, is to quit the Presidency before January, have the Vice-President, M Pence, take over until January, and grant him a pardon.

 

Any pardon Pence issued could only cover federal crimes, It can't apply to cases being prosecuted at a state level such as those in New York.

Oh, And I can make at least one prediction for the Biden Presidency - Obama will finally get his portrait hung in the White House.

Edited November 7, 2020 by Janus

[OldChemE]

Back to the op-- I don't think he will be able to steal this election.  Good thing.  As some here may realize I am a political conservative who values honest dealing.  I had high hopes for the past four years and it most definitely did not work out.

[StringJunky]

1 hour ago, Janus said:

 

Oh, And I can make at least one prediction for the Biden Presidency - Obama will finally get his portrait hung in the White House.

Trump will be 'delighted' to have his two favourite people flanking him on the WH wall. 

[J.C.MacSwell]

1 hour ago, John Cuthber said:

With appropriate social distancing.

...and after January 20...

plus they have to get him out of there:

 

[Alex_Krycek]

14 hours ago, OldChemE said:

Back to the op-- I don't think he will be able to steal this election.  Good thing.  As some here may realize I am a political conservative who values honest dealing.  I had high hopes for the past four years and it most definitely did not work out.

I have been relieved at how effective the judiciary has been in neutralizing Trump's attempted illegality.  Despite all the bluster and hot air from the bully pulpit, at the end of the day all Trump's actions have to go before a judge and must align with the law.  Thank heavens for the courts.

[John Cuthber]

16 hours ago, OldChemE said:

Back to the op-- I don't think he will be able to steal this election.  Good thing.  As some here may realize I am a political conservative who values honest dealing.  I had high hopes for the past four years and it most definitely did not work out.

Most people knew it wouldn't work out.

Must republicans chose Trump.

Does that tell you anything?

[dimreepr]

1 hour ago, John Cuthber said:

Most people knew it wouldn't work out.

Must republicans chose Trump.

Does that tell you anything?

Yes, it tells me; we're not out of the woods, yet...

22 hours ago, MigL said:

D Trump will be very busy during the next 4 years.
Fighting indictments, lawsuits, bankruptcies and trying to cover loans from foreign sources

I do hope you're right, otherwise he will build his legacy; and no-one wants that... 

[iNow]

8 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

no-one wants that... 

Actually, at least 70 million Americans do. Trump will be a kingmaker. He will almost single handedly be able to appoint those he thinks should run and win primaries and broader elections for the GOP. 

As we speak, millions of republicans are deleting their Facebook accounts bc they block their lies and are replacing those accounts with new ones on the far right social platform Parlor, a cesspool of lies and algorithms amplifying groupthink and conspiracy acceptance. 

[dimreepr]

3 minutes ago, iNow said:

Actually, at least 70 million Americans do. Trump will be a kingmaker. 

Now he will, is 4 more years such a big price to pay? 

[iNow]

I don’t follow

[dimreepr]

4 minutes ago, iNow said:

I don’t follow

What more damage could he do, if he won?

[iNow]

11 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

What more damage could he do, if he won?

I shudder to think

[John Cuthber]

1 hour ago, iNow said:

Actually, at least 70 million Americans do. Trump will be a kingmaker. He will almost single handedly be able to appoint those he thinks should run and win primaries and broader elections for the GOP. 

As we speak, millions of republicans are deleting their Facebook accounts bc they block their lies and are replacing those accounts with new ones on the far right social platform Parlor, a cesspool of lies and algorithms amplifying groupthink and conspiracy acceptance. 

I rather hope that one of Biden's priorities is to get some sort of "if you tell lots of lies on line you get closed down" legislation up and running.
With luck Trump will be in jail or in exile.

[iNow]

8 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

I rather hope that one of Biden's priorities is to get some sort of "if you tell lots of lies on line you get closed down" legislation up and running.
With luck Trump will be in jail or in exile.

He might, and I bet Pelosi could pass it through the House, but McConnell would block it in the Senate and it’d never get to Biden’s desk for signature. 

I cannot emphasize this enough. The failure of democrats to take the senate is a really big effing deal.  

[Alex_Krycek]

3 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

Most people knew it wouldn't work out.

I don't agree with this at all.  I know a few Trump supporters.  They were convinced it would be a "landslide" for Trump.  In no way did they anticipate him losing.

I'd say they are out of touch with reality if the genuinely thought it would be a landslide, but this was an extremely close election - perhaps you could say the same for the Democrats and the "blue wave" theory. 

This was by no means a repudiation of Trumpism.  If anything, it reinforced it.  More people voted for Trump this time than in 2016.  They weren't planning on losing.  

Who will run next under the Trump brand?  Ivanka?  Don Jr?  Trump again?  The support is still there.  If the corporate Democrats play their "meet in the middle" games of non-change, Trump 2.0 is waiting to happen.  And next time it won't be some bumbling oaf who broadcasts his fascist takeover.  Next time they might succeed.  

Edited November 8, 2020 by Alex_Krycek

[joigus]

52 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

What more damage could he do, if he won?

He would have the benefit of time. Americans would get used to this "new style," until American democracy would be distorted beyond recognition.

[Alex_Krycek]

This is an excellent interview with AOC.  

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/08/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-ends-truce-by-warning-incompetent-democratic-party

She makes the obvious point that the Progressive vote won Biden the election.  

[StringJunky]

1 hour ago, Alex_Krycek said:

This is an excellent interview with AOC.  

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/08/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-ends-truce-by-warning-incompetent-democratic-party

She makes the obvious point that the Progressive vote won Biden the election.  

Why is it obvious? My feeling is they won because they didn't message too far to the left, given how close the races were,  Sanders in this this race instead of Biden would have been a straigghtforward win for the GOP..Another thing is, Ocasio-Cortez'-types wishes are probably dead in the water, given the likely layout of the Senate. The results don't seem amenable to a future progressive agenda. Just imo, of course.

Edited November 8, 2020 by StringJunky

[J.C.MacSwell]

4 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Why is it obvious? My feeling is they won because they didn't message too far to the left, given how close the races were,  Sanders in this this race instead of Biden would have been a straigghtforward win for the GOP..Another thing is, Ocasio-Cortez'-types wishes are probably dead in the water, given the likely layout of the Senate. The results don't seem amenable to a future progressive agenda. Just imo, of course.

Agree with that. Also IMO they lost an opportunity to regain the Senate for venturing as far to the left as they did.

I think a reasonably progressive agenda may still be alive and well, just not the AOC version.

The battle for the Senate, however, is far from over:

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/politics/andrew-yang-moving-atlanta-help-democrats-win-senate-runoffs/BTGI65ATNZHTJMJWFXRLAZV4HU/

Two more Senate seats and the Dems control the Senate, given Kamala Harris has the VP tie breaking vote.

(I was quite happy to see Susan Collins win in Maine though)

[StringJunky]

27 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Agree with that. Also IMO they lost an opportunity to regain the Senate for venturing as far to the left as they did.

I think a reasonably progressive agenda may still be alive and well, just not the AOC version.

The battle for the Senate, however, is far from over:

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/politics/andrew-yang-moving-atlanta-help-democrats-win-senate-runoffs/BTGI65ATNZHTJMJWFXRLAZV4HU/

Two more Senate seats and the Dems control the Senate, given Kamala Harris has the VP tie breaking vote.

(I was quite happy to see Susan Collins win in Maine though)

Yes, I was too.

 

[Alex_Krycek]

7 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Why is it obvious? My feeling is they won because they didn't message too far to the left, given how close the races were,  Sanders in this this race instead of Biden would have been a straigghtforward win for the GOP..Another thing is, Ocasio-Cortez'-types wishes are probably dead in the water, given the likely layout of the Senate. The results don't seem amenable to a future progressive agenda. Just imo, of course.

Well, Sanders didn't run against a Republican, so we'll never know how he might have done.  As a matter of fact, a real progressive has never run in a Presidential election for the Democrats (only in the primaries).  That includes Obama, who was a centrist / moderate, not a progressive.  There have been decent third party progressive candidates like Ralph Nader and Jill Stein, but it is exceedingly difficult for third parties to do well in America given how the system is designed.

Could Biden have won areas like Atlanta, Detroit, or Philadelphia (which in turn helped him win those states (Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania) without massive turnout from progressive voters?  I doubt it.  Of course, moderates and conservatives helped Biden as well. 

This was more of an anti-Trump election rather than a pro-Biden election, meaning, the thing that united most people was their hatred of Trump, and not their support for any particular policy that Biden put forward.  The conveniently philosophical slogan: "Battle for the Soul of Our Nation" encapsulates this perfectly.  It doesn't mean anything concrete, and it doesn't have to.  It simply means:  "We're not crazy like Trump."  Not a very high bar.

Where do things go from here?  The Corporate Democrats will keep pushing their Republican-lite messaging, chastising progressive candidates like the squad for "costing them elections".  This is absurd really, as the squad won all their seats back easily, while centrist / republican lite Democrats experience defeat after defeat.  Corporate Democrats will see Biden's election as a convenient mandate to return to business as usual - i.e. arguing why they can't do anything meaningful for the American people.  Business as usual wasn't working before Trump.  It's not going to work again now.  

Edited November 9, 2020 by Alex_Krycek

[DrmDoc]

9 hours ago, Alex_Krycek said:

This is an excellent interview with AOC.  

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/08/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-ends-truce-by-warning-incompetent-democratic-party

She makes the obvious point that the Progressive vote won Biden the election.  

If not considered in earlier discussion, this election was a referendum on Trump that likely owes victory to Republicans rather than Progressives, Democrats, or some other independent affiliation.  The evidence for this is suggested by the loss that House Democrats experienced and their failure to make significant gains in the Senate despite Biden's nearly 5 million more popular votes than Trump.  This significant margin of popular votes suggests to me that a large number of Republicans crossed party lines to vote for Biden while continuing their support for down ticket Republicans. If other affiliations were responsible for Biden's victory, they likely would have also elected a congress that would likely support rather than potentially obstruction his administration's goals.

[MigL]

I tend to agree Doc.
It would be statistically impossible for all Republicans to be idiots.
And I'm starting to think that no matter how much some of the members of this forum ( along with some progressive Americans, and the rest of the free world ) may want it, America, as a whole, is not yet ready to embrace a progressive agenda.

[iNow]

1 hour ago, MigL said:

I'm starting to think that no matter how much some of the members of this forum ( along with some progressive Americans, and the rest of the free world ) may want it, America, as a whole, is not yet ready to embrace a progressive agenda.

Any good leader doesn’t follow polls like a mindless lemming. Good leaders make the polls change by convincing people of the merits of their stance. That work has shifted the Overton window tremendously in these last years and that work will continue. 

The fear mongering over the word socialism and green new deal drowned out the discussion of more affordable healthcare for all and an improved environment through millions of new jobs... all of which are supported by large majorities