Political Discussion

The threat of a furthering of the fascist state is real and will continue to be even if Biden somehow wins. These people are not going to suddenly disappear or crawl back into their hole if Biden wins. If anything, it's perfectly reasonable to expect they will be further emboldened.

Best-case scenario Biden is some-kind of stopgap that mitigates all that has been happening temporarily. I don't think any other candidate would have been any better of a stopgap. The legacy and burden of the 2016 election is something we will all have to bear for the rest of our existence.
 
ayayrawn said:
So Biden somehow, by some miracle, wins by a lot, openly The administration has casually talked about installing faithful electors that will vote for him anyway. There are states where it is legal for electors to ignore voters. Trump cries fowl of fraud in close states (where thousands of ballots will likely disappear). It goes to a 6-3 conservative supreme court. Or he just outright shows up at inauguration. What then? Who's going to stop them?

This is effectively the opposition we have: Excuse Me, Mr. Trump, Sir, But, Respectfully, Dr. Trump, Mind You, Captain President, Sir, And There's Nothing You Can Do About It, Good Professor!
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I think the answer varies by scenario.

If it's a situation where Biden wins key states (like PA, TX, FL, etc.) but the electors don't follow suit, I imagine it goes through the courts. I want to say the faithless elector process has been approved by the courts in the past but will happen again if it actually overrules the will of the population in a manner that changes an election result at this level. With that said, if this happened I would (hope, imagine?) the protests of the populous would beat the courts to the punch. I think riots, violence, and likely death is an unavoidable response to this.

If it's a situation where we functionally get Bush v. Gore II using false fraud calls to take a 5-4 or 6-3 decision in a stacked court, I am not sure honestly. I think a lot of it would depend on what happens in the Senate but I think it accelerates a rapid change in the courts regardless. The next Dem President (if there is a next one), no matter who it is, would pack the court guaranteed at that point in time. I think if it's a situation where Republicans maintain the Senate the reaction may be more like situation one except for federal buildings. That could get dramatically worse.

If it's the third, where Biden wins a clear electoral victory, and it somehow isn't resolved by inauguration day, or if it is and he doesn't listen? It probably initially falls to the military, although I would imagine the inauguration crowd at this kind of situation would be enormous and no decision that is made is going to stop something really, really, really bad from happening.

I can't believe I'm saying it but I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if, Trump steals the election in some fashion like this, if you see some states threaten or attempt to secede from the Union, especially if Trump executes on his threat to withhold federal funding from NYC, Seattle, and Californian cities.

None of this really involves Democratic politicians really. Outside of the obvious ideal of it not happening, the only thing I think Dem politicians can do is win the Senate and the House which would represent at least a slowing of some of the bad ramifications of a Trump takeover, but like is suggested above...that's a stopgap. As much as their behavior annoys me, I don't really know what Democratic Senators or Representatives could realistically do here outside of forcing Clinton to visit Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016.

Edit: I do think this is a tipping point though. Polling can be wrong but the popular vote polls we're seeing has this as the biggest lead (at this point) since Clinton '96 in terms of being 40 days out from an election. The reason I think we're seeing all of this now is because Republicans know they are the underdogs at the polls right now, and they're doing anything to avoid that. If it's a clear stolen election...I genuinely can't imagine the ramifications.
 
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jaycee said:
The threat of a furthering of the fascist state is real and will continue to be even if Biden somehow wins. These people are not going to suddenly disappear or crawl back into their hole if Biden wins. If anything, it's perfectly reasonable to expect they will be further emboldened.

Best-case scenario Biden is some-kind of stopgap that mitigates all that has been happening temporarily. I don't think any other candidate would have been any better of a stopgap. The legacy and burden of the 2016 election is something we will all have to bear for the rest of our existence.
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If the democratic party was even remotely effectual or wiling to play hardball, they could fix and undo so much in a single congressional term. But they're not. So stopgap until the next psycho rightwinger it is.
 
ayayrawn said:
If the democratic party was even remotely effectual or wiling to play hardball, they could fix and undo so much in a single congressional term. But they're not. So stopgap until the next psycho rightwinger it is.
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We need a major cleaning of the bodies in government, as much as it may fall into discrimination, we should probably have an age limit to those that hold seats in our government. I'm an old white guy, but can fully see that until all these old white folks in government are gone, change is a hard sell. Maybe my non-existent grand children will have better :(
 
AnthonyI said:
We need a major cleaning of the bodies in government, as much as it may fall into discrimination, we should probably have an age limit to those that hold seats in our government. I'm an old white guy, but can fully see that until all these old white folks in government are gone, change is a hard sell. Maybe my non-existent grand children will have better :(
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Agreed 100%. There's a required age to run for government, there should be a cap. Diane Feinstein is 87, assuming that she lives through her term, will be a senator until she is 92. That is absolutely unacceptable (and not just because she fucking sucks).
 
ayayrawn said:
So Biden somehow, by some miracle, wins by a lot, openly. The administration has casually talked about installing faithful electors that will vote for him anyway. There are states where it is legal for electors to ignore voters. Trump cries foul of fraud in close states (where thousands of ballots will likely disappear). It goes to a 6-3 conservative supreme court. Or he just outright shows up at inauguration. What then? Who's going to stop them?

This is effectively the opposition we have: Excuse Me, Mr. Trump, Sir, But, Respectfully, Dr. Trump, Mind You, Captain President, Sir, And There's Nothing You Can Do About It, Good Professor!
Click to expand...
I just read the Atlantic piece and while it paints a rather chilling picture, most of the speculation is worst case scenario stuff and extremely unlikely (like less than 1%). It is important to be prepared for that potential outcome but it is nothing to worry about too much at this point. It is like worrying about a tornado hitting your house every time it rains, you will drive yourself mad with anxiety. The are warning signs to be cognizant of that we are headed towards Interregnum and it’s important not to ignore them or “hope for the best” if this warning signs start to present themselves, but we aren’t there yet. Currently, it is still much more likely that Biden wins the election and power is peacefully transferred (with or without a concession by Trump) that one of these doomsday scenarios playing out. Again, we should all be aware of the possibility and do are best to prepare for a plan of action if these things do occur but we also need to acknowledge at this point they have a very slim probability of actually occurring.
 
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ayayrawn said:
Agreed 100%. There's a required age to run for government, there should be a cap. Diane Feinstein is 87, assuming that she lives through her term, will be a senator until she is 92. That is absolutely unacceptable (and not just because she fucking sucks).
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holy fuck that's old. I had no idea how old she was. Doesn't she want to retire or something? I mean that's crazy. Take a seat, thank you for your term but it's time.

I think a cap at like 70 years old would be a good idea. You can be in your sixties when you're elected (say you're elected at 68, end of term would be 72), but not campaigning past 70.
 
wokeupnew said:
holy fuck that's old. I had no idea how old she was. Doesn't she want to retire or something? I mean that's crazy. Take a seat, thank you for your term but it's time.

I think a cap at like 70 years old would be a good idea. You can be in your sixties when you're elected (say you're elected at 68, end of term would be 72), but not campaigning past 70.
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I don't know. There is value* in one body of the government having long institutional memory, being slow to turn over, and having depth of expertise.

87 year olds? C'mon. But term limits aren't necessarily all they're cracked up to be.


*Edit: theoretically
 
wokeupnew said:
holy fuck that's old. I had no idea how old she was. Doesn't she want to retire or something? I mean that's crazy. Take a seat, thank you for your term but it's time.

I think a cap at like 70 years old would be a good idea. You can be in your sixties when you're elected (say you're elected at 68, end of term would be 72), but not campaigning past 70.
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She's also estimated to be worth ~60 million. Idk why so many rich old people feel the need to be horrible in politics when they could fuck off and disappear for the rest of their days.
 
jaycee said:
Yes - the general public has very little understanding of "margin of error" and definitely don't understand the value and necessity of 2 standard deviations as a statistical confidence measure. Scientists / analysts are comfortable are more comfortable with variability and "maybe" than most
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The problem with all of this is that when we are talking about human behavior, or predicting human behavior based on past behaviors, this is all a function of probability. Scientists aren't more okay with the maybe. They just understand that the math and model is only a suggestion of reality based on the limited data we have. The models are supposed to show us how likely a given answer is if someone has the choice between yes or no, rep or dem, but they also account for random guessing and error which is why we have confidence intervals, and to me, this is more accurate. But I understand the math behind all of it.

Turbo said:
Did you listen to this week's Reply All podcast? Some interesting tidbits on the creation of the Q Anon online account and who is likely controlling it.
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Ooooooooh, now I need to listen to this.
 
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