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Trump already planning to declare Victory if it looks like he’s “ahead” before counts are finished

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by Rudy, Nov 1, 2020.

  1. Rudy

    Rudy Member

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  2. Carl Herrera

    Carl Herrera Contributing Member

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  3. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    This Is What It Feels Like to Live Under Minority Rule
    ...

    I have been thinking a good deal about the creeping cynicism that comes with this kind of powerlessness. And it is easy to feel powerless when you are constantly being told that the powerful will decide what matters, and also that they alone will determine what you can know about that decision. The stripping of power is part of the project. Senate Democrats never had any real power to stop the coronation of Amy Coney Barrett, but when they did try something—boycotting Thursday’s Judiciary Committee vote on Barrett—Lindsey Graham changed the quorum rules to push the vote through regardless. Before her 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seat is even empty, the White House has announced a nomination to fill it, just like the GOP announced that it had the votes to confirm a judge before she was even named. Her name was extraneous information for us, because we were powerless to stop the nomination. It’s hard to know what to do in the face of this kind of behavior that kneecaps opposition and grabs power wherever possible. It leads to the sense that perhaps one should do nothing.

    It’s increasingly clear that the U.S. Supreme Court, which will be newly reconstituted just a week before a federal election in which more than 50.3 million Americans have already cast ballots, will decidedly not be weighing in on the side of the right to vote nor will it be expanding the right to vote. It turns out the Supreme Court has many more options to interfere with a free and fair election than many of us previously understood, and also the power by which to do so. Federal judges around the country are ruling against efforts to make voting easier, whatever the merits.

    It’s easy, in the face of all of this degrading devaluing of majority opinion, to want to tune out—to look at everything happening to undermine the will of the majority and your own power to cast a vote and say “whatever.” And if you find yourself face-planting into a pit of whatever, you’re certainly not alone. But your whatever is in fact the mirror image of what Amy Coney Barrett has now told us about the rule of law. Whatever is what Lindsey Graham—who asked us to hold him to his pledge about not seating new justices before an election—has done with Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat. To answer him in kind is to accede to that logic. Whatever is the nihilism they want to seed in the world. The response to their whatevers just cannot be more of the same.

    Even though she didn’t answer any of her questions, we know who Barrett is and what she will do on the court. She is exactly who she has always been, who she was seated to become, and if you are worried for your children, for the planet, for the future of anti-racism and LGBTQ rights and voting rights, your worry is not misplaced. Barring court reform, the coming years will be marked by attacks on government agencies, court-endorsed rollbacks of progressive gains, and a steady series of wins for business, oligarchs, and inequality. It will come dressed as neutral “originalism,” but it will be neither neutral nor originalist. And as Adam Serwer brilliantly details, this is not simply a conservative project; it is a project to beat back changing demographics and to suppress the power of the majority. The whatever that powerlessness engenders is a feature, not a bug, of the conservative legal movement’s efforts to tell majorities that they are of no moment.

    Like Barrett’s appointment, the project of Donald Trump’s entire presidency is to remind you that you don’t have a say in your governance. And because you don’t have a say, you don’t need any actual information from which to decide. This is what we learned again last week in an interview with CBS’s Lesley Stahl in which Trump announced that he won’t disclose his new long-promised health care plan to protect Americans dying from a pandemic until after the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act. It doesn’t matter what his new plan is, anyway, he implies. The very definition of flooding the zone with **** is that nothing matters, because you have no choices left to make. That is because the new justice, who will be elevated without a hint of popular consensus will—as he has pledged—vote to dismantle the ACA without a hint of popular consensus. You don’t need to know about the new plan because you don’t have a say. Mike Pence has no obligation to answer sober questions. Your very powerlessness is the point. The cruelty is the fringe benefit.

    Rule of thumb? If nobody in any position of authority feels the need to provide information, it’s a decent bet you aren’t in a functional democracy anymore. And I am not here to tell you how to fight the cynicism that comes with being lied to or told you can’t change anything. I am just here to note that the inchoate rage and despair are real, and that even the possible resounding defeat of Lindsey Graham in his race for his Senate seat may not be enough to cure it. I am also here to remind you that some of the reflexive reaction to the daily reminders of your own powerlessness—including your possible hopelessness, blame-shifting, and the ritual saying of “who cares”—really is the reaction they are trying to elicit. It is the object of the exercise. You’re now in the autocracy trainee program. Mitch McConnell’s court coup is designed not just to decrease your political power but to teach you that you should expect yet more political powerlessness. That is how they are trying to ensure that even though there are more of you than there are of them, it doesn’t matter and they still get to call the shots.

    That’s where the fight lies. In understanding that however systemic the suppression of truth and trust might feel, there are still more of you than there are of them. The effort to say you are nothing and deserve nothing isn’t actually erasure. It’s actually their fear showing. And that fear in turn suggests that you still have more power than you may know.​
     
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  4. JayGoogle

    JayGoogle Member

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  5. Dubious

    Dubious Contributing Member

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    Here's what I don't understand, no one 'wins' until December 18th.
     
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  6. Space Ghost

    Space Ghost Contributing Member

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    Blah blah blah
     
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  7. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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  8. fchowd0311

    fchowd0311 Contributing Member

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    Remember that debate we had about apathy?

    Let's hope this is all nothing. I genuinely do.
     
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  9. Xerobull

    Xerobull You son of a b!tch! I'm in!

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    Good grief. There’s not going to be any damn civil war.
     
  10. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    I just posted this in the 2020 Presidential election thread. The Presidency isn't actually decided until the electors vote in early Dec.. There is nothing in the Constitution that says that elections are decided on the night of the election.
     
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  11. B-Bob

    B-Bob "94-year-old self-described dreamer"

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    Right? I mean he always handles things the right way, full of grace, decorum, and respect for traditions and decency.

    He will, at least, declare at some point tomorrow night, something a lot like: "looks like we've won again, but you know, we have to see how much they're going to try to cheat now." Can you all not hear that, coming out of that little mouth?

    If he loses, his hard-core part of the electorate will go to their graves believing he actually won but that the election was stolen in the crime of the millennium. And this will make the road forward so, so much harder for all of us than if he owned the capacity for a gracious exit, for admitting a defeat or a mistake or a reality that doesn't perfectly suit him.
     
    #11 B-Bob, Nov 2, 2020
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2020
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  12. Nook

    Nook Member

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    [​IMG]

    Supposedly Trump has invited this guy to deliver the victory speech for him on Tuesday night.
     
  13. Space Ghost

    Space Ghost Contributing Member

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    Trump is gonna Trump, no matter what. Every scenario has been beat to death over the last few months. There isnt going to be a civil war. We're not going to turn facist. If Trump loses decisively, he's not going to nuke all of the blue states. If there is a very thin margin of victory for either side, both will do their damnest to contest it.
     
  14. Amiga

    Amiga I get vaunted sacred revelations from social media
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    The good thing is Fox News won’t even follow along here and no other media (except OAN and those extreme partisan hacks) will be calling the election willy nilly.

    The other good thing is the SC isn’t going to back this admin here. What they could and may do is if it’s a close election, throw out ballots that are received after a certain *judged* deadline. That itself however is probably enough to bring mass prolonged protest and maybe violence into the street, depending on how much valid legal ground they stand on.

    Part of the consequence of this stupid pressure from Trump is his supporter is going to believe, if he loses, it was stolen. Another potential consequence is the mass population is relieved that he didn't go to the court to ask for wholesale removal of ballots, but just these few batches... even if they don't' stand on any good legal ground. The nation needs to push back on an illegitimate move by this admin to steal the election and yes, call out a 6-3 court if they decided to go with him...

    p.s. I still can't believe one of the SCJ has already made the same crazy argument as Trump about throwing out wholesale ballots.
     
    #14 Amiga, Nov 2, 2020
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2020
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  15. dachuda86

    dachuda86 Member

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    Absolutely he should if he knows before the west coast is counted.... and if it's clear. He can back track and look stupid of course. This is key since he needs to stop the media from falsely claiming a Biden win which I wouldn't put past them at this point.
     
  16. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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  17. LosPollosHermanos

    LosPollosHermanos Houston only fan
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    Bro are you ****ing stupid or some ****? You know what I’m going to actually go vote.

    Trumpism is a dangerous fascist ideology. Feels gross voting for a dem but this is more about right/wrong
     
  18. desihooper

    desihooper Contributing Member
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    That's not my job, Carl :cool:
     
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  19. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    This year and this election has been so crazy I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow night shows Biden with an early lead and Trump switches to saying we need to count every vote. FL is counting early votes already, they won't report them tomorrow night, but it's possible the early vote counting in FL shows Biden leading there and without FL Trump has a very difficult route to victory.
     
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  20. ROXRAN

    ROXRAN Contributing Member

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    Tomorrow will be fun. We are in a fight for the very soul of our nation and I hope Trump wins so America can still be America and let’s be honest , the real reason is so we can watch the waaaaa from the evil demon left
     

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