The decision of the United States Supreme Court in Republican National Committee versus Democratic National Committee, of April 6, 2020, is a great example of how sometimes something that can look terrible, ends up being excellent, at least in one respect:
What do I mean? Well, now that Banana has showed his hand, and in desperation is suggesting that the date of the presidential election be changed (this cannot be done because the date of the presidential election is set by Congress and has already been set and there’s no chance that the Democratic house would go along with the change of date regardless of what the Republican Senate did), THE REASONING IN THE WISCONSIN CASE DOOMS TRUMP.
While it is true that the court repeatedly emphasized that the decision was made on the narrow grounds regarding absentee ballot deadlines, it also pointed out the following:
”This Court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election. See Purcell v. Gon- zalez, 549 U. S. 1 (2006) (per curiam); Frank v. Walker, 574 U. S. 929 (2014); Veasey v. Perry, 574 U. S. __ (2014).”
The court was entirely unmoved by the following concerns of the liberal dissenters’ about the safety of the election due to coronavirus:
“The question here is whether tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens can vote safely in the middle of a pandemic…Either they will have to brave the polls, endangering their own and others’ safety. Or they will lose their right to vote, through no fault of their own. That is a matter of utmost importance—to the constitutional rights of Wisconsin’s citizens, the integrity of the State’s election process, and in this most extraordinary time, the health of the Nation”
THE CONSERVATIVE MAJORITY, after blithely dismissing the liberal dissenters’ concerns on various procedural grounds – as though the country were not in a stay at home posture due to a then still-new pandemic emergency, would have to struggle now to say that after dismissing such arguments just MONTHS before, they would abruptly turn tail and endorse the radical step of changing the date of a presidential election. Roberts, who treasures the legal doctrine of stare decisis (Latin for, roughly: ‘let the decision stand’, which says that the court should not willy-nilly overturn decisions – particularly recent ones), would likely be loathe to change the date of a presidential election, particularly when there would also be radical separation of powers issues.
This could be true despite the court’s warning that the Wisconsin decision was narrow, because Roberts knows that the niceties of legal procedure would not shield the court with such passions present in the body politic this year.
Irony – and karma – live after all.
I thought this would be a non-starter… but we should all watch like hawks to see if McConnell et al demonstrate any slippage over the next months.
It’s a non-starter with Dems certainly and it takes both chambers to alter the law on this.
Trump wants to delay the election but libtards won’t let him! Show your support for Trump by boycotting the election & staying home Nov. 3rd! best sign yet
If no president has been elected by inauguration day, 2021, the House speaker assumes the office.
Now that’s what I call Karma.
Actually no federal election means no House either and therefore no Speaker. The Senate OTOH will still have 2/3 of it’s membership, a majority of whom will be Dems who can elect a President pro tempore who will instantly become acting President. This is all academic anyway. Dem states will still hold elections and will choose their Reps., Senators, and Electors and thus create an overwhelming majority in each case.
Here’s how Newsweek says Mr. Trump can seize and retain power (https://www.newsweek.com/how-trump-could-lose-election-still-remain-president-opinion-1513975):
Even if those states don’t certify electors there’s a good chance Biden still wins a majority, and at least two of them have Dem Governors who won’t play along. Plus Trump doesn’t have the powers suggested by point 3. Please stop telling yourself horror stories.
@Trump doesn’t have the powers suggested by point 3:
Trump doesn’t have the power to invade Portland OR with heavily-armed combat troops. Every observer I’ve seen agrees that such a move is illegal.
It still happened.
What you don’t seem willing to accept is that “not having the powers” does not stop Donald Trump. He is stopped only when other entities make him stop.
Multiple observers have said that they believe the invasion of Portland was a trial run for similar deployments elsewhere in the US. Mr. Trump has already said he’ll do the same in Chicago. Look at the way federal forces were improperly (many say illegally) used to create a photo-op in Lafayette Square near the White House.
This man, like other dictators before him, takes whatever power he wants unless and until the rest of us stop him.
@Please stop telling yourself horror stories:
Tell it to Newsweek or ex-military people like Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56DlPjCmJxI).
Politico reports in an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/02/clyburn-trump-mussolini-390500) earlier today that Jim Clyburn likened President Donald Trump to Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, warning that Trump would resist leaving office (emphasis mine):
Please stop denying what the man himself is doing and saying.
I’ve seen Portland described as “awful, but lawful” and I still say it’s a lot easier to send federal security forces into a city than completely shredding the clear procedural mandates of the Constitution. There are way too many people, lots of whom do not work directly for Trump, that would need to cooperate to pull off your scenario and everybody I have read agrees. Clyburn is hyperventilating on this one. Also electoral-vote.com not only has Biden way up, but has addressed this paranoia multiple times. The new House may well have a different balance of state delegations and if we stipulate for the sake of argument that certain states won’t hold elections the Dems would almost certainly have a majority of delegations. Finally, even Republicans pushed back on Trump’s troll tweet about possibly delaying elections.
@Even Republicans pushed back …:
That was a game by Mr. Trump and so far it has succeeded. He provided an excuse for elected GOP officials to go on record defending the date of the election.
He did not walk back his lie that voting by mail leads to massive fraud. That lie is now part of GOP dogma. We’ll hear more and more about that as this all unwinds.
“Awful but lawful”, even more so than “legal corruption”, is a cute phrase designed to excuse the inexcusable. A sitting President deployed armed agents of the US government into a US city against the will of both the mayor and the governor. It’s a phrase coined by Paul Rosenzweig, a contributor to the Hoover Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the R Street Institute. He was appointed to the DHS by George W. Bush. You might as well cite Kellyanne Conway.
The Washington Post observes (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/22/trumps-actions-portland-are-controversial-man-spearheading-them-might-be-doing-so-illegally/) that nearly everything about this move is illegal. They point out that, at the top of the list, is the reality that these orders came from an “acting” director who himself succeeded an acting director. This all in explicit violation of the Federal Vacancies Act — it also circumvents the Constitutional requirement that cabinet secretaries be approved by the Senate.
Pretty much everything about this is illegal.
You are minimizing the risks and refusing to admit reality. An enormous number of German Jews peacefully boarded trains carrying them to concentration camps because they refused to believe that the “rumors” about those camps could possibly be true. They were confident that the German political system would protect them.
We will not remove Donald Trump from power by telling ourselves happy stories.
Please don’t invoke the Third Reich. They were a much less stable and accustomed democracy than we are. We will remove Trump by election just as the Constitution provides. All 4 states mentioned have Dem Secretaries of State and 3 have Dem Governors. The GOP isn’t even clinging that strongly to mail=fraud, nor should they considering how many of their own voters would want to take advantage of it. If Civil War couldn’t stop an election (which incidentally to my understanding included the first widespread use of mail voting for Union soldiers), nothing will. I suppose it’s possible we get questionable circumstances like 1876 or 2000, but the Republic has survived. BTW, my own prediction is that we are looking at a 1932 level political earthquake and Trump is more likely to pull a John Adams and skip town.
@Please don’t invoke the Third Reich:
Would you prefer Stalin or Stasi?
How many people have to be disappeared by DHS storm troopers before you admit that what they’re doing is anathema to America?
When the DHS storm troopers start killing people, will that get your attention?
@Clyburn is hyperventilating on this one:
Has any sitting member of the House or Senate made a similar on-the-record remark about a sitting President? Do you think Mr. Clyburn is in the habit of “hyperventilating”?
I expect to see more than happy-talk in the current circumstances. I think the events unfolding now make 2000 look like a walk in the park.
What’s happening in Portland now reminds me most of what happened to civil rights protesters in the Jim Crow South. I’m confident that likewise we will ultimately come out on the better side of this. We are nowhere near what happened in either the USSR or Nazi Germany, and I remain confident we never will be. Clyburn has his own motives to rally the base too.
This explains in more detail how highly unlikely the nightmare scenario is.
Too many links, resubmitted.
The GOP reads these just like you and me.
I think it’s a mistake to look at a piece like you cite, conclude “that’s unlikely” and forget it.
I suggest a different stance is more appropriate — assume you are on a “Mission From God” to re-elect Donald Trump, compare alternatives, and choose the alternative(s) that seem most likely.
Those are:
Donald Trump and the GOP have already demonstrated their contempt for option 1. Option 3 is the most murky and least likely to succeed.
That leaves option 2. I call your attention to the way that Anthony Tata has been installed in the Pentagon hierarchy (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/02/politics/anthony-tata-nominee-pentagon/index.html) after his nomination through conventional means failed. Somebody on Team Trump is reading the arcane rules for such an appointment very carefully and working them well. I’m quite sure that this work-around was passed along to senate Republicans like Mr. Inhofe prior to the scuttling of the nomination. This strategy gives each a sound bite for “opposing” the nomination, while ensuring that the appointment of this crazy extremist takes place as planned. This little example is well beyond the skill level of Donald Trump — somebody very competent is working very hard on his behalf.
I therefore think we should assume a similar effort directed towards option 2 above. I think it’s a huge mistake to dismiss that as “highly unlikely”. We’re not talking about random probability here, we’re talking about whether or not a concerted and carefully planned attack can succeed.
Does the analysis of your link take into account a full-press attack on the USPS? The armed invasion of Portland by DHS troops has provided the administration with at least a starting point for calibrating what the legal response to a similar election-eve and election-day move is likely to be. If the troops are called on the eve of the election, are you confident that our courts will respond in time to do anything? What do you think the courts will order in such an event?
I’ll tell you that a column in today’s New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/opinion/trump-2020-electoral-college.html) is not nearly so sanguine as you about this:
I think our current government is failing MISERABLY at stopping a growing list of serious abuses:
Our political system is already broken. It is a HUGE mistake to assume that it will magically repair itself by November and somehow return everything to “normal” (whatever THAT is) by January of 2021.
We MUST act and we MUST act NOW.
Why are the pieces you cite gospel when written by opinion columnists looking for clicks while the ones I cite written by experts dismissible? Does the precedent of history not count for anything either? I do think there needs to be a way to enforce against appointment shenanigans, like not paying those not properly appointed. In my substitute teaching I can’t receive my first paycheck until I have been fingerprinted and CORI’d if it is a year those are due.
I don’t claim they’re “gospel”, I claim they raise points that we should not summarily dismiss.
I don’t think we’ve ever had an administration that so intentionally and explicitly strives to violate the spirit and letter of the law. I think that history is of little help in responding to that.
You’ve worked with children professionally for years. You know that some children intentionally test whatever limits are in place. What do you think happens when you have no effective way to respond to that testing?