It’s honestly crazy that this even needs to be said. Anyone who was watching the news on Jan 6, 2021 should have thought this was the most obvious thing in the world.
It seems the problem may not be Trump. Rather, what's going on is that the country's so polarized that most of us would tolerate a fairly substantial amount of "cheating" to keep our side in and the other side out. Suppose you're a Democrat, and suppose you happened to be given proof that Biden only won by rigging the election. Would you then feel morally compelled or honor bound to share this proof with the world and get Trump rightfully back in office? Lol, fuck no, you'd quietly burn the proof. Very few Democrats would care if they'd won the election by rigging, and very few Republicans would care if Trump's coup had been successful. The only difference would be that a coup is visible to all, whereas election rigging is more of a behind-the-scenes game
I think I'd rather have a real example that equates Democrat cheating to Republican cheating. I would totally be upset if Joe Biden cheated the election, just as I was upset that the Democrat establishment rallied behind him to push out Bernie in the 2020 primary. The difference is there's no proof for the 2020 election being rigged. I think the right's incessancy of peddling falsehoods for their own advantage is unique, and reducing it all to "both sides are bad" is not helpful in this case, at worst downright deceiving.
I think the equity of the cheating scenarios might not matter as much as the symmetry of the responses. In order of preference, here's how I think the typical Republican would have ranked the following 2020 outcomes:
1. Trump wins fair & square
2. Trump wins by coup, but is able to convince the public that it was justified due to Dem election rigging
3. Trump wins by coup, but no one really believes it was justified
4. Biden wins
Similarly, for the typical Democrat:
1. Biden wins fair & square
2. Biden wins by rigging, but is able to convince the public that no rigging occurred
3. Biden wins by rigging, but no one really believes his denial
4. Trump wins
What we have here is a pretty volatile scenario. Can you imagine a top political scientist trying to model such a population? No chance, it wouldn't matter how many Chaos Theory courses he cheated his way through!
In some sense, Trump's advisors needed to recommend he at least test guard rails, because there was simply no way to calculate ahead of that it would go badly (and there were solid indicators that it may well have succeeded)
"Would you then feel morally compelled or honor bound to share this proof with the world and get Trump rightfully back in office? Lol, fuck no, you'd quietly burn the proof."
I think you are projecting "My side would do this (they did try to steal the election in 2020 from the guy who won an outright majority of the total vote), so of course the other side would do this too."
I would point out that there have been four times the popular vote winner has not won, and it was a Democrat that was deprived of what would be a victory everywhere else, and yet they complied with the law. Nixon and Reagan's secret deals with America's enemies to advantage their campaign and Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 election, suggests Republicans would not be so willing to concede.
I also note that once it was clear that Biden was not fit to be president another four years, he withdrew from his re-election campaign. Trump has not done that despite his alarming mental decline in recent weeks as the stress of the final stretch of the campaign is taking its toll.
I agree I'm projecting, but for the record, I'm a leftist, and the attempted coup is one of the few things about Trump I actually admire. If Biden had lost the election fair and square without making any efforts to cheat, then I would be ashamed of him. The way the Reps and Dems have bashed each other as potentially ruining the country, it would be out of proportion to simply let the election be decided by a popularity contest. At least cheating or staging a coup would show that they mean what they say when they bash each other
Well, for a fair democracy to work, there's gotta be a sense in which both candidates are at least tolerable to the great majority. I believe we're past that point. It's not that I'm particularly enthusiastic about coups, it's just that in situations like this "might is right" is the applicable law of nature
I think the fact that the Democrats did not, in fact, rig the 2020 election, but Trump and his supporters did, in fact, try to overtuen it, is powerful against this. Democrats obviously don't approve of cheating... The proof is that we don't cheat! In stark contrast to our opponents!
I am a Democrat and I voted for Biden; if it was revealed that he rigged the election I would be outraged and would want the results to be corrected, even if the outcome was Trump winning.
Ultimately it's very scary to think that about half the country is apathetic at best toward democracy and is willing to vote for a tyrant just to own the libs. Unfortunately, it seems that's where we are.
"Would you then feel morally compelled or honor bound to share this proof with the world and get Trump rightfully back in office?"
Yes. I don't know if this would technically lead to Biden leaving office (probably would be a Nixon-style double resignation, at a guess?), but yes, this would completely change my view of Donald Trump's behavior and actions, and it would be insanely disqualifying for Biden and whoever his co-conspirators were. It would suck that many of my policy preferences would struggle to be enacted, since presumably lots of effective long-term politicians would be implicated, but that's life.
Not everybody has as low moral character as Donald Trump.
Most conservatives don't think Kamala Harris will enact sane and reasonable policies. So if that's your assumption, then you are bound to misunderstand those who don't like Trump but vote for him anyway.
But Harris is far more conservative than Trump. She’s a pretty mainstream Democrat, not unlike Biden, Obama or Clinton. She has the support of many very conservative Republicans, including the Cheneys. They can see there’s nothing conservative about Trump. The only thing he wants to conserve is himself.
Um, Clinton and even Obama as he ran during his first election are to the right of Trump.
The problem with saying Harris is a mainstream Democrat is that the mainstream Democrats abandoned all sanity for batshit insane leftism during Obama's second term.
How is it "conservative" of Harris to support Biden's court-packing plan, his unconstitutional student loan forgiveness, and eliminating the filibuster?
Trump talks about jailing people who burn flags, closing down broadcasters he doesn’t like, he wanted to shoot protesters when he was president and if elected he’s saying he’ll go after his political opponents, who he describes as the enemy within. Not exactly a fan of free speech, is he?
According to conservatives Kamala has already been running the country behind the scenes for the past 4 years of Dementia Joe's presidency. What policies did she enact that are worse than Trump normalizing falsifying electoral votes for politicians to stay in power or his proposed 10% tariffs on every foreign nation?
Yeah I've heard some conservatives say that. But I think overall their claim was that whoever the Democrats have as their figurehead is really just a figurehead for a political movement behind the scenes.
I don't think there's much point in me evaluating specific policies here. I was just pointing out that conservatives don't think Kamala a sane person, which the original post seemed to be assuming they do.
So let's not worry about testing the guardrails again since I'm sure they haven't learned anything about plowing thru them in the meantime. The smart move would be to just dismantle them beforehand. The Supreme Court might have made this easier when they declared the president has immunity for acts he committed as president. That's probably minor considering all the other means they can conjure up. I say they because it will be a republican party that's changed a lot. Just one detail is jd Vance who will do what Pence would not have. But by the time it gets to that it will be a very changed format vastly favoring the Republican party. An atmosphere of fear is probably on the table. Just consider Trump's current rhetoric. The kind of people who arm themselves to go after FEMA workers will have a much freer hand. Consider what Trump has to say about pardoning the Jan 6 mob.
No, because there is nothing in the US Constitution forcing the social media companies to platform whatever you feel they ought to. Obviously. Twitter can allow or disallow whatever content it pleases.
By the way, did you ever find "Report on Widespread Fraud in the Georgia 2020 Presidential Election"?
It's funny you give the example of an alternate world Trump trying to launch a nuke, because one of the reasons I'm still leaning towards Trump is because he's softer on Russia, and therefore less likely to lead NATO into a nuclear war over Ukraine. From an existential risk standpoint I still see Trump as the better choice, regardless of what his election might imply for "Our Democracy".
By appeasing Russia Trump would be implicitly encouraging Russia to attack other countries, like maybe one of the Baltic states, NATO members. Appeasing Russia is more risky than standing up to them and backing Ukraine.
I don’t see how Kamala winning would increase nuclear war chances, given that the war has been in a stalemate for over a year and even Russia’s laughable nuclear threats have dropped off.
Plus, Ukraine has apparently threatened to nuclear use on its own if Trump wins, which seems like a much more credible and serious threat than a continuation of the status quo.
If Trump hands Ukraine to Russia because Ukraine was part of Russia before 1991, then the same logic applies to the Baltic republics because Putin is going to want the too. Ask yourself, why does Putin want the Ukraine in the first place? It produces nothing Russia doesn't have plenty of. The only thing that makes sense is he wants more defensible borders. But to get that he needs the Baltics, and part of Poland as well. He can point out that Poland was a Russian satellite before 1991 and part of Russia itself before 1917, so these both properly belong to Russia, or at least its geopolitical sphere of interest.
Will Trump hand these over too? If not, then what?
Glad someone mentioned this, I forgot to include it in my comment. Attempting to launch a nuke is different in kind from attempting a coup. Say whatever you want about a coup, all of us are still here the next day when it's over. Starting a nuclear exchange? Not so much.
I do find it a bit annoying when someone like Ben Shapiro has to hide behind "the guard rails held" because people wouldn't be able to stomach him speaking the truth, which is that he simply views the Democrats as a bigger threat to his values than Donald Trump. That said, I also find it dishonest to pretend that all this talk about a "coup" (not a coup, coup would be if the military got involved, but whatever) is a magical nullifier variable that automatically overrides everything in else in existence.
I don't really have a problem with disqualifying Trump based on Jan 6 in a vacuum, the problem I have is with this:
>Kamala Harris, whatever you think of her, is a relatively normal Democrat—further left than I’d like on various issues, but sane and reasonable. When a sane and reasonable adult is running against a crazy person who attempted a coup, the choice is clear.<
To me, Democrats as a class are not "sane and reasonable adults." I can't ever award that label to people who support transgenderism, DEI, COVID lockdowns, and all the other insanity. What Trump achieves by exception on the right side of the aisle, I find the "normal Democrat" to be guilty of by default. The degree of crazy coming out of the left *absolutely* affects how one views Donald Trump in reaction, and it's silly to play dumb and pretend that one doesn't understand this. If you actually think Kamala Harris and the people she represents are "sane and reasonable adults," well sure, it seems like the most obvious thing in the world that Orange Man Hitler. But obviously all the people that are voting for Trump disagree with you on that point!
The bottom line here is that politics is ultimately about policy, not process. *At some point*, if your values are placed under enough threat, nearly any process becomes justifiable in their defense. It's therefore quite dense to complain about process violations without accounting for the value conflicts driving those processes. Democrats are completely guilty of this on abortion and don't even feel bad about it; even many liberals will acknowledge that as a matter of legal reasoning, Roe was terribly decided, but liberals worshiped it anyways because they simply liked the policy outcome that much.
To go back and apply this principle to the current situation, I'm not voting for Donald Trump this year, but I'm not voting for Kamala Harris either. I wrote in Bozo the Clown. I don't like Trump. But if you put a gun to my head and forced me to vote either Harris or Trump? It's Trump, easy. If you could just find me *some* semblance of value overlap with Democrats, somewhere, maybe you could get your foot in the door to start trying to have this conversation with me about Trump Bad because he did a coup and whatever. But there simply is none. This makes all the difference in the world when it comes to how much I can be made to care about the "coup attempt." When value differences are this extreme, I likely can't be convinced to ever vote for people who I view as my ontological enemies.
Yes, and they happened in spite of Trump, not because of him (for the most part). Your comment is the same as me attempting to dismiss Jan 6 with "well it didn't work."
Simply put, Trump DID NOT start a coup. Below is a link to a motion filed on behalf of one of the lawyers to quash a subpeona demanding all his work product on the matter. You can read through that at your leisure, but here is the broad overview:
Previous precedent says that if electors don't vote on the date prescribed by Congress, they don't count. Wisconsin lost one set of electors when a blizzard kept the electors from meeting on the prescribled day.
1876 saw dueling sets of electors come before Congress, and they spent weeks deciding which set was valid. They later passed a law creating a "safe harbor" provision where if all challenges were resolved six days before the electors meet, the agreed upon winner's electors could not be challenged.
1960 saw Hawaii called for one candidate (Nixon) but there was a recount challenge pending when the electors were to meet. Both Nixon's electors and Kennedy's electors met on the prescribed day. When the recount resulted in Kennedy winning Hawaii, all the electors' envelopes were opened and Nixon as VP moved for unanimous consent to accept the Kennedy electors as the true ones for Hawaii.
2000 saw Bush v. Gore, recounts, and hanging chads. After losing the initial count and a targeted first recount, Gore's attorneys pushed for a statewide recount. When asked when this needed to be done by, they said it had to be done by the safe harbor date. As the request came in so late that a recount of that size was impossible by that date, the Florida Supreme Court refused. On appeal to the US Supreme Court, 5 justices agreed and upheld that ruling, but two of the dissenters pointed out that even if the recount had been approved and resulted in Gore winning, his electors had failed to meet on the required day and thus were ineligible anyway. Like Hawaii in 1960, electors should have met to preserve their candidate's rights.
So when we get to 2020, Trump's lawyers believed that a) challenges were still ongoing, b) that Hawaii's precedent from 1960 (as tacitly approved by 7 justices in 2000) was the established legal precedent, and c) that no one had tested what happened when dueling sets of electors showed up without a clear and convincing result since before the safe harbor provision was instituted; they were not only allowed to bring alternate electors, they were required to as a matter of good faith toward their client.
As for what actually happened on that day, the complete record shows that Trump asked people to go to the Capitol and peacefully make their voices heard, that only a few people got violent, and questions about whether they were goaded into violence remain. This is not the hallmark of a coup. Had troops been deployed to "convince" Congress to act as Trump wished, that would be one thing; random unarmed civilians is, to paraphrase a chess rule. "insufficient material to force" a coup.
What makes the votes fradulent rather than merely alternate is that none of the states certified Trump's alternate votes. That's why the alternate electors have already been or are in the process of being convicted for perjury.
The claims you make about legal precedent are also not true - Eastman admitted the plan would lose 0-9 in the Supreme Court. And keep in mind, Eastman, Powell, Giuliani - these people were not part of the DoJ. These were outside lawyers Trump brought in after his DoJ said the plan was crazy and there was no precedent for it.
And the point of Trump hosting the rally on Jan 6 and telling them to march to the Capitol was to pressure Pence and Republican Congressmen into certifying the fradulent electoral votes - there is no open mystery about it. Pence has been open that Trump tried to convince him to choose the fradulent electoral votes and Congressman Mo Brooks sent an email to the Trump campaign asking for a preemptive pardon for every sitting Republican that was going to vote to certify the fake electoral votes.
> So when we get to 2020, Trump's lawyers believed that a) challenges were still ongoing, b) that Hawaii's precedent from 1960 (as tacitly approved by 7 justices in 2000) was the established legal precedent, and c) that no one had tested what happened when dueling sets of electors showed up without a clear and convincing result
Except recordings of Trump’s lawyers and documents presented to Trump show that everyone around him acknowledged that he had lost.
First, I dispute that he attempted a coup. The January 6th intention was to send the contested slates of electors back to the states to get recertified, not to immediately make him president. I agree that that's bad, but that isn't as obviously coup-ish (and I think he genuinely but wrongly thought that there was widespread fraud).
1. I agree that there are many things that Trump might do that would be very bad.
2. I do not think that Trump would declare a national emergency and refuse to leave. But if he did, that would be bad.
3. I am concerned that Trump would attempt to exert his will upon the judiciary.
4. I agree that disincentivizing repeating that behavior is good.
Nevertheless:
1. I also think that there are things that Harris would do that would be very bad.
3. I think there's a pretty decent chance that a Dem trifecta does things that are bad for the judiciary.
4. And it's worth disincentivizing people from being elected who'd be okay with court-packing.
I agree that Harris probably won't act too much in a crazy manner herself, but she'll go along with everything suggested to her by her left-wing friends, and will generally let people off-leash to do whatever (giving tons money to harmful NGOs, engaging in lawfare, passing preposterous bills and policies, whatever). That sort of thing wouldn't really happen with Trump.
>The January 6th intention was to send the contested slates of electors back to the states to get recertified, not to immediately make him president.
None of the states agreed with Trump's voter fraud claims. Trump privately contacted many state representatives and they all told him they wouldn't certify his slates of electors.
>and I think he genuinely but wrongly thought that there was widespread fraud
Page 22 of the Jan 6 report https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/pdf/GPO-J6-REPORT.pdf details multiple instances of Trump lying about election fraud even after his DoJ and representatives explained to him why he was wrong. The Georgia ballot case example is one he could have easily checked himself because Giuliani spliced the video to make it seem like they were pulling the briefcase out of nowhere, when the full video shows them putting it away then retrieving it. He repeated that one up to and including his Jan 6 speech. Either Trump was maliciously lying or he belongs in a mental institute for how delusional he was.
Michael's essay was the final point for me in this debate, but I still think it's worth putting a little more effort into understanding Ben Shapiro's position.
Shapiro's brand is built around loving the American system, talking about how awesome the founders were, and talking about how awesome the Constitution is. His first love isn't a specific sub-brand of American politics. His main political anchor is the American System® as he understands it. He isn't discussing Trump in isolation. He used to say "Trump is a hammer. Sometimes he hits a nail, and sometimes he hits a baby." He understands Trump. But he thinks that Trump is more aligned with the American Idea® than Harris, and trusts the system he loves to protect the country from the worst of Trump's impulses. Trump might be like a bee that keeps trying to fly through a window, but the Democrats are like the kid that'll figure out how to open it, and that's even scarier.
He might be wrong, but he's not as stupid as some make him out to be.
But this isn't a very good piece. Maybe I'm upset at the "status quo" of my usual bus driver, who always drives incredibly slowly and thus endangers my continued employment because I'm always late to work. But on the other hand, this doesn't mean I should leap at the chance to instead take the bus driven by the insane driver who only failed to drive off the cliff because of the guard rails.
Even if you dislike the status quo, things are still good enough that you'd be crazy to prefer very high variance futures instead. And while I'm sure the author of that article would disagree, I'd say he's drastically overestimating how bad things are right now (or, more importantly, where they're headed on their current trajectory) and drastically underestimating how much everything can fall apart in some sort of misguided Hail Mary.
>But on the other hand, this doesn't mean I should leap at the chance to instead take the bus driven by the insane driver who only failed to drive off the cliff because of the guard rails.<
The analogy fails because when it comes to bus driving, good and bad outcomes are clearly dictated by physical reality (not abstract values) and easily agreed upon by all. In the realm of politics, what you view as the bus driving off the cliff, the other side might view as the exact opposite. Many right wingers felt that the bus was already tumbling down the side of the cliff by the end of 2020, with COVID insanity and the Summer of Floyd piled on top of all their other accumulated grievances.
>The analogy fails because when it comes to bus driving, good and bad outcomes are clearly dictated by physical reality (not abstract values) and easily agreed upon by all.
I already stated that I knew - well, guessed - you'd disagree on which outcome is worse. I then went on to say this is most likely based on a confusion about facts, not about values, even if your values don't completely match mine (and I'm an immigration restrictionist!).
Yes, that's why I didn't address that part of your post, because we likely have irreconcilable differences on perception of facts there. I'm not sure why you're re-stating it.
I don't know what these irreconcilable differences in perception of facts are supposed to be or why they're truly irreconcilable (instead of merely difficult to reconcile - smart people change their minds in important ways all the time, whereas probably nothing I could say could ever convince a genuine psychopath to truly value other people for its own sake), but I suppose it's possible we have them, who knows.
>And while I'm sure the author of that article would disagree, I'd say he's drastically overestimating how bad things are right now (or, more importantly, where they're headed on their current trajectory) and drastically underestimating how much everything can fall apart in some sort of misguided Hail Mary.<
These are irreconcilable because they're reliant on either subjective value judgments ("how bad things are right now") or on predictions of the future, which are necessarily uncertain
If you want average people to take "defending democracy" seriously, it helps to not redefine it to mean managerial technocratic oligarchy.
To illustrate what I mean consider the example of Orban's Hungry and the EU more generally. "Respectable sources" frequently say that the latter is democratic and the former is not. Now under the etymological definition of "democracy" as "people power" this claim makes no sense since Orban is a popular elected leader and the EU operates opaquely through bureaucrats largely unaccountable to anyone. However, once one realizes that "democracy" to mean managerial technocratic oligarchy this makes sense. The EU is "democratic" precisely because it is governed by unaccountable technocrats and Hungry is "anti-democratic" sine Orban keeps the Hungarian bureaucracy under a tight leash.
>Nope, things are already very bad and they're on track to get much worse.
Everything I said is compatible with things being bad and being on track to get much worse, as long as the alternative is even worse than that. I'm not even pro-immigration, but having peaceful, universally recognized-as-legitimate transfer of power is the most important ingredient to preventing civil war, and I promise you the latter is worse than having a lot of Hispanic immigrants unless you're a complete nihilist.
> but having peaceful, universally recognized-as-legitimate transfer of power is the most important ingredient to preventing civil war,
Just for the record, are you implying that overlooking fraud is justified in the name of " having peaceful, universally recognized-as-legitimate transfer of power"?
That's a fine opinion to have, just don't cry "lawfare" like the former President when you get jailed or are otherwise met with violence for trying to destroy our democracy.
BTW, look at Benthams' substack. He believes all marine life should be exterminated as part of some expected utility calculation. He is in no position to call anyone else insane.
It’s honestly crazy that this even needs to be said. Anyone who was watching the news on Jan 6, 2021 should have thought this was the most obvious thing in the world.
Anyone watching a riot at the capital should have assumed that the government was about to be overthrown?
Memories are apparently really short
It seems the problem may not be Trump. Rather, what's going on is that the country's so polarized that most of us would tolerate a fairly substantial amount of "cheating" to keep our side in and the other side out. Suppose you're a Democrat, and suppose you happened to be given proof that Biden only won by rigging the election. Would you then feel morally compelled or honor bound to share this proof with the world and get Trump rightfully back in office? Lol, fuck no, you'd quietly burn the proof. Very few Democrats would care if they'd won the election by rigging, and very few Republicans would care if Trump's coup had been successful. The only difference would be that a coup is visible to all, whereas election rigging is more of a behind-the-scenes game
I think I'd rather have a real example that equates Democrat cheating to Republican cheating. I would totally be upset if Joe Biden cheated the election, just as I was upset that the Democrat establishment rallied behind him to push out Bernie in the 2020 primary. The difference is there's no proof for the 2020 election being rigged. I think the right's incessancy of peddling falsehoods for their own advantage is unique, and reducing it all to "both sides are bad" is not helpful in this case, at worst downright deceiving.
I think the equity of the cheating scenarios might not matter as much as the symmetry of the responses. In order of preference, here's how I think the typical Republican would have ranked the following 2020 outcomes:
1. Trump wins fair & square
2. Trump wins by coup, but is able to convince the public that it was justified due to Dem election rigging
3. Trump wins by coup, but no one really believes it was justified
4. Biden wins
Similarly, for the typical Democrat:
1. Biden wins fair & square
2. Biden wins by rigging, but is able to convince the public that no rigging occurred
3. Biden wins by rigging, but no one really believes his denial
4. Trump wins
What we have here is a pretty volatile scenario. Can you imagine a top political scientist trying to model such a population? No chance, it wouldn't matter how many Chaos Theory courses he cheated his way through!
In some sense, Trump's advisors needed to recommend he at least test guard rails, because there was simply no way to calculate ahead of that it would go badly (and there were solid indicators that it may well have succeeded)
"Would you then feel morally compelled or honor bound to share this proof with the world and get Trump rightfully back in office? Lol, fuck no, you'd quietly burn the proof."
I think you are projecting "My side would do this (they did try to steal the election in 2020 from the guy who won an outright majority of the total vote), so of course the other side would do this too."
I would point out that there have been four times the popular vote winner has not won, and it was a Democrat that was deprived of what would be a victory everywhere else, and yet they complied with the law. Nixon and Reagan's secret deals with America's enemies to advantage their campaign and Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 election, suggests Republicans would not be so willing to concede.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vietnam-candidate-conspired-with-foreign-power-win-election-215461/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/expert-analyzes-new-account-of-gop-deal-that-used-iran-hostage-crisis-for-gain
I also note that once it was clear that Biden was not fit to be president another four years, he withdrew from his re-election campaign. Trump has not done that despite his alarming mental decline in recent weeks as the stress of the final stretch of the campaign is taking its toll.
I agree I'm projecting, but for the record, I'm a leftist, and the attempted coup is one of the few things about Trump I actually admire. If Biden had lost the election fair and square without making any efforts to cheat, then I would be ashamed of him. The way the Reps and Dems have bashed each other as potentially ruining the country, it would be out of proportion to simply let the election be decided by a popularity contest. At least cheating or staging a coup would show that they mean what they say when they bash each other
If coups are acceptable to you then you support autocracy, which in this country means fascism. That's a strange position to have for a leftist.
Well, for a fair democracy to work, there's gotta be a sense in which both candidates are at least tolerable to the great majority. I believe we're past that point. It's not that I'm particularly enthusiastic about coups, it's just that in situations like this "might is right" is the applicable law of nature
I think the fact that the Democrats did not, in fact, rig the 2020 election, but Trump and his supporters did, in fact, try to overtuen it, is powerful against this. Democrats obviously don't approve of cheating... The proof is that we don't cheat! In stark contrast to our opponents!
I am a Democrat and I voted for Biden; if it was revealed that he rigged the election I would be outraged and would want the results to be corrected, even if the outcome was Trump winning.
Ultimately it's very scary to think that about half the country is apathetic at best toward democracy and is willing to vote for a tyrant just to own the libs. Unfortunately, it seems that's where we are.
"Would you then feel morally compelled or honor bound to share this proof with the world and get Trump rightfully back in office?"
Yes. I don't know if this would technically lead to Biden leaving office (probably would be a Nixon-style double resignation, at a guess?), but yes, this would completely change my view of Donald Trump's behavior and actions, and it would be insanely disqualifying for Biden and whoever his co-conspirators were. It would suck that many of my policy preferences would struggle to be enacted, since presumably lots of effective long-term politicians would be implicated, but that's life.
Not everybody has as low moral character as Donald Trump.
Most conservatives don't think Kamala Harris will enact sane and reasonable policies. So if that's your assumption, then you are bound to misunderstand those who don't like Trump but vote for him anyway.
But Harris is far more conservative than Trump. She’s a pretty mainstream Democrat, not unlike Biden, Obama or Clinton. She has the support of many very conservative Republicans, including the Cheneys. They can see there’s nothing conservative about Trump. The only thing he wants to conserve is himself.
Um, Clinton and even Obama as he ran during his first election are to the right of Trump.
The problem with saying Harris is a mainstream Democrat is that the mainstream Democrats abandoned all sanity for batshit insane leftism during Obama's second term.
How is it "conservative" of Harris to support Biden's court-packing plan, his unconstitutional student loan forgiveness, and eliminating the filibuster?
Not to mention her VP has gone on record opposing the First Amendment.
Trump talks about jailing people who burn flags, closing down broadcasters he doesn’t like, he wanted to shoot protesters when he was president and if elected he’s saying he’ll go after his political opponents, who he describes as the enemy within. Not exactly a fan of free speech, is he?
> he wanted to shoot protesters when he was president
He wanted to shoot violent rioters who where actively setting fire to businesses.
If you can't tell the difference, I recommend checking your ideological blinders.
According to conservatives Kamala has already been running the country behind the scenes for the past 4 years of Dementia Joe's presidency. What policies did she enact that are worse than Trump normalizing falsifying electoral votes for politicians to stay in power or his proposed 10% tariffs on every foreign nation?
Yeah I've heard some conservatives say that. But I think overall their claim was that whoever the Democrats have as their figurehead is really just a figurehead for a political movement behind the scenes.
I don't think there's much point in me evaluating specific policies here. I was just pointing out that conservatives don't think Kamala a sane person, which the original post seemed to be assuming they do.
So let's not worry about testing the guardrails again since I'm sure they haven't learned anything about plowing thru them in the meantime. The smart move would be to just dismantle them beforehand. The Supreme Court might have made this easier when they declared the president has immunity for acts he committed as president. That's probably minor considering all the other means they can conjure up. I say they because it will be a republican party that's changed a lot. Just one detail is jd Vance who will do what Pence would not have. But by the time it gets to that it will be a very changed format vastly favoring the Republican party. An atmosphere of fear is probably on the table. Just consider Trump's current rhetoric. The kind of people who arm themselves to go after FEMA workers will have a much freer hand. Consider what Trump has to say about pardoning the Jan 6 mob.
Were these guard rails supposed to prevent the Biden administration colluding with private social media companies to sensor his political opponents?
Because it looks like these guard rails don't actually work.
No, because there is nothing in the US Constitution forcing the social media companies to platform whatever you feel they ought to. Obviously. Twitter can allow or disallow whatever content it pleases.
By the way, did you ever find "Report on Widespread Fraud in the Georgia 2020 Presidential Election"?
It's funny you give the example of an alternate world Trump trying to launch a nuke, because one of the reasons I'm still leaning towards Trump is because he's softer on Russia, and therefore less likely to lead NATO into a nuclear war over Ukraine. From an existential risk standpoint I still see Trump as the better choice, regardless of what his election might imply for "Our Democracy".
By appeasing Russia Trump would be implicitly encouraging Russia to attack other countries, like maybe one of the Baltic states, NATO members. Appeasing Russia is more risky than standing up to them and backing Ukraine.
I don’t see how Kamala winning would increase nuclear war chances, given that the war has been in a stalemate for over a year and even Russia’s laughable nuclear threats have dropped off.
Plus, Ukraine has apparently threatened to nuclear use on its own if Trump wins, which seems like a much more credible and serious threat than a continuation of the status quo.
Trump wanted to use nuclear weapons on North Korea and generally talks about them in a very cavalier manner: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/18/united-states-nuclear-weapons-president-deterrence-law/. It’s crazy to think nuclear weapons are best entrusted to someone who is fascinated rather than alarmed at their power.
He’s also not very stable mentally and appears to be deteriorating.
If Trump hands Ukraine to Russia because Ukraine was part of Russia before 1991, then the same logic applies to the Baltic republics because Putin is going to want the too. Ask yourself, why does Putin want the Ukraine in the first place? It produces nothing Russia doesn't have plenty of. The only thing that makes sense is he wants more defensible borders. But to get that he needs the Baltics, and part of Poland as well. He can point out that Poland was a Russian satellite before 1991 and part of Russia itself before 1917, so these both properly belong to Russia, or at least its geopolitical sphere of interest.
Will Trump hand these over too? If not, then what?
Glad someone mentioned this, I forgot to include it in my comment. Attempting to launch a nuke is different in kind from attempting a coup. Say whatever you want about a coup, all of us are still here the next day when it's over. Starting a nuclear exchange? Not so much.
I do find it a bit annoying when someone like Ben Shapiro has to hide behind "the guard rails held" because people wouldn't be able to stomach him speaking the truth, which is that he simply views the Democrats as a bigger threat to his values than Donald Trump. That said, I also find it dishonest to pretend that all this talk about a "coup" (not a coup, coup would be if the military got involved, but whatever) is a magical nullifier variable that automatically overrides everything in else in existence.
I don't really have a problem with disqualifying Trump based on Jan 6 in a vacuum, the problem I have is with this:
>Kamala Harris, whatever you think of her, is a relatively normal Democrat—further left than I’d like on various issues, but sane and reasonable. When a sane and reasonable adult is running against a crazy person who attempted a coup, the choice is clear.<
To me, Democrats as a class are not "sane and reasonable adults." I can't ever award that label to people who support transgenderism, DEI, COVID lockdowns, and all the other insanity. What Trump achieves by exception on the right side of the aisle, I find the "normal Democrat" to be guilty of by default. The degree of crazy coming out of the left *absolutely* affects how one views Donald Trump in reaction, and it's silly to play dumb and pretend that one doesn't understand this. If you actually think Kamala Harris and the people she represents are "sane and reasonable adults," well sure, it seems like the most obvious thing in the world that Orange Man Hitler. But obviously all the people that are voting for Trump disagree with you on that point!
The bottom line here is that politics is ultimately about policy, not process. *At some point*, if your values are placed under enough threat, nearly any process becomes justifiable in their defense. It's therefore quite dense to complain about process violations without accounting for the value conflicts driving those processes. Democrats are completely guilty of this on abortion and don't even feel bad about it; even many liberals will acknowledge that as a matter of legal reasoning, Roe was terribly decided, but liberals worshiped it anyways because they simply liked the policy outcome that much.
To go back and apply this principle to the current situation, I'm not voting for Donald Trump this year, but I'm not voting for Kamala Harris either. I wrote in Bozo the Clown. I don't like Trump. But if you put a gun to my head and forced me to vote either Harris or Trump? It's Trump, easy. If you could just find me *some* semblance of value overlap with Democrats, somewhere, maybe you could get your foot in the door to start trying to have this conversation with me about Trump Bad because he did a coup and whatever. But there simply is none. This makes all the difference in the world when it comes to how much I can be made to care about the "coup attempt." When value differences are this extreme, I likely can't be convinced to ever vote for people who I view as my ontological enemies.
> transgenderism, DEI, COVID lockdowns, and all the other insanity.
Just wanted to point out that all of these things already happened during a Trump presidency
Yes, and they happened in spite of Trump, not because of him (for the most part). Your comment is the same as me attempting to dismiss Jan 6 with "well it didn't work."
Simply put, Trump DID NOT start a coup. Below is a link to a motion filed on behalf of one of the lawyers to quash a subpeona demanding all his work product on the matter. You can read through that at your leisure, but here is the broad overview:
Previous precedent says that if electors don't vote on the date prescribed by Congress, they don't count. Wisconsin lost one set of electors when a blizzard kept the electors from meeting on the prescribled day.
1876 saw dueling sets of electors come before Congress, and they spent weeks deciding which set was valid. They later passed a law creating a "safe harbor" provision where if all challenges were resolved six days before the electors meet, the agreed upon winner's electors could not be challenged.
1960 saw Hawaii called for one candidate (Nixon) but there was a recount challenge pending when the electors were to meet. Both Nixon's electors and Kennedy's electors met on the prescribed day. When the recount resulted in Kennedy winning Hawaii, all the electors' envelopes were opened and Nixon as VP moved for unanimous consent to accept the Kennedy electors as the true ones for Hawaii.
2000 saw Bush v. Gore, recounts, and hanging chads. After losing the initial count and a targeted first recount, Gore's attorneys pushed for a statewide recount. When asked when this needed to be done by, they said it had to be done by the safe harbor date. As the request came in so late that a recount of that size was impossible by that date, the Florida Supreme Court refused. On appeal to the US Supreme Court, 5 justices agreed and upheld that ruling, but two of the dissenters pointed out that even if the recount had been approved and resulted in Gore winning, his electors had failed to meet on the required day and thus were ineligible anyway. Like Hawaii in 1960, electors should have met to preserve their candidate's rights.
So when we get to 2020, Trump's lawyers believed that a) challenges were still ongoing, b) that Hawaii's precedent from 1960 (as tacitly approved by 7 justices in 2000) was the established legal precedent, and c) that no one had tested what happened when dueling sets of electors showed up without a clear and convincing result since before the safe harbor provision was instituted; they were not only allowed to bring alternate electors, they were required to as a matter of good faith toward their client.
As for what actually happened on that day, the complete record shows that Trump asked people to go to the Capitol and peacefully make their voices heard, that only a few people got violent, and questions about whether they were goaded into violence remain. This is not the hallmark of a coup. Had troops been deployed to "convince" Congress to act as Trump wished, that would be one thing; random unarmed civilians is, to paraphrase a chess rule. "insufficient material to force" a coup.
https://1drv.ms/b/s!AiaTpmitxofqgcQvfnloK35jzoVjLA?e=uhW35d
What makes the votes fradulent rather than merely alternate is that none of the states certified Trump's alternate votes. That's why the alternate electors have already been or are in the process of being convicted for perjury.
The claims you make about legal precedent are also not true - Eastman admitted the plan would lose 0-9 in the Supreme Court. And keep in mind, Eastman, Powell, Giuliani - these people were not part of the DoJ. These were outside lawyers Trump brought in after his DoJ said the plan was crazy and there was no precedent for it.
And the point of Trump hosting the rally on Jan 6 and telling them to march to the Capitol was to pressure Pence and Republican Congressmen into certifying the fradulent electoral votes - there is no open mystery about it. Pence has been open that Trump tried to convince him to choose the fradulent electoral votes and Congressman Mo Brooks sent an email to the Trump campaign asking for a preemptive pardon for every sitting Republican that was going to vote to certify the fake electoral votes.
https://www.waaytv.com/news/email-reveals-mo-brooks-sought-pardon-from-president-trump/article_4fa42cba-f343-11ec-88f3-7f30f5512752.html
https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2021/images/09/20/eastman.memo.pdf
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-capitol-jan-6-panel-turns-attention-pence-thursdays-hearing-2022-06-16/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/key-trump-allies-charged-fake-electors-scheme-wisconsin-rcna155395
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/eastman-admitted-bid-to-reject-electors-would-lose-9-0-in-supreme-court-pence-counsel-testifies/
> So when we get to 2020, Trump's lawyers believed that a) challenges were still ongoing, b) that Hawaii's precedent from 1960 (as tacitly approved by 7 justices in 2000) was the established legal precedent, and c) that no one had tested what happened when dueling sets of electors showed up without a clear and convincing result
Except recordings of Trump’s lawyers and documents presented to Trump show that everyone around him acknowledged that he had lost.
First, I dispute that he attempted a coup. The January 6th intention was to send the contested slates of electors back to the states to get recertified, not to immediately make him president. I agree that that's bad, but that isn't as obviously coup-ish (and I think he genuinely but wrongly thought that there was widespread fraud).
1. I agree that there are many things that Trump might do that would be very bad.
2. I do not think that Trump would declare a national emergency and refuse to leave. But if he did, that would be bad.
3. I am concerned that Trump would attempt to exert his will upon the judiciary.
4. I agree that disincentivizing repeating that behavior is good.
Nevertheless:
1. I also think that there are things that Harris would do that would be very bad.
3. I think there's a pretty decent chance that a Dem trifecta does things that are bad for the judiciary.
4. And it's worth disincentivizing people from being elected who'd be okay with court-packing.
I agree that Harris probably won't act too much in a crazy manner herself, but she'll go along with everything suggested to her by her left-wing friends, and will generally let people off-leash to do whatever (giving tons money to harmful NGOs, engaging in lawfare, passing preposterous bills and policies, whatever). That sort of thing wouldn't really happen with Trump.
>The January 6th intention was to send the contested slates of electors back to the states to get recertified, not to immediately make him president.
None of the states agreed with Trump's voter fraud claims. Trump privately contacted many state representatives and they all told him they wouldn't certify his slates of electors.
Georgia https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AW_Bdf_jGaA
Arizona https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-donald-trump-arizona-elections-doug-ducey-e2b8b0de5b809efcc9b1ad5d279023f4
Wisconsin https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-wisconsin-2020-election-robin-vos-b2127446.html
There's more but I'm too lazy to find them all.
>and I think he genuinely but wrongly thought that there was widespread fraud
Page 22 of the Jan 6 report https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/pdf/GPO-J6-REPORT.pdf details multiple instances of Trump lying about election fraud even after his DoJ and representatives explained to him why he was wrong. The Georgia ballot case example is one he could have easily checked himself because Giuliani spliced the video to make it seem like they were pulling the briefcase out of nowhere, when the full video shows them putting it away then retrieving it. He repeated that one up to and including his Jan 6 speech. Either Trump was maliciously lying or he belongs in a mental institute for how delusional he was.
> 1. I also think that there are things that Harris would do that would be very bad.
What specifically would she do?
How does one attempt an unarmed coup detat?
Michael's essay was the final point for me in this debate, but I still think it's worth putting a little more effort into understanding Ben Shapiro's position.
Shapiro's brand is built around loving the American system, talking about how awesome the founders were, and talking about how awesome the Constitution is. His first love isn't a specific sub-brand of American politics. His main political anchor is the American System® as he understands it. He isn't discussing Trump in isolation. He used to say "Trump is a hammer. Sometimes he hits a nail, and sometimes he hits a baby." He understands Trump. But he thinks that Trump is more aligned with the American Idea® than Harris, and trusts the system he loves to protect the country from the worst of Trump's impulses. Trump might be like a bee that keeps trying to fly through a window, but the Democrats are like the kid that'll figure out how to open it, and that's even scarier.
He might be wrong, but he's not as stupid as some make him out to be.
Person Online wrote a great piece about this
https://persononline.substack.com/p/i-dont-care-about-the-status-quo
But this isn't a very good piece. Maybe I'm upset at the "status quo" of my usual bus driver, who always drives incredibly slowly and thus endangers my continued employment because I'm always late to work. But on the other hand, this doesn't mean I should leap at the chance to instead take the bus driven by the insane driver who only failed to drive off the cliff because of the guard rails.
Even if you dislike the status quo, things are still good enough that you'd be crazy to prefer very high variance futures instead. And while I'm sure the author of that article would disagree, I'd say he's drastically overestimating how bad things are right now (or, more importantly, where they're headed on their current trajectory) and drastically underestimating how much everything can fall apart in some sort of misguided Hail Mary.
>But on the other hand, this doesn't mean I should leap at the chance to instead take the bus driven by the insane driver who only failed to drive off the cliff because of the guard rails.<
The analogy fails because when it comes to bus driving, good and bad outcomes are clearly dictated by physical reality (not abstract values) and easily agreed upon by all. In the realm of politics, what you view as the bus driving off the cliff, the other side might view as the exact opposite. Many right wingers felt that the bus was already tumbling down the side of the cliff by the end of 2020, with COVID insanity and the Summer of Floyd piled on top of all their other accumulated grievances.
>The analogy fails because when it comes to bus driving, good and bad outcomes are clearly dictated by physical reality (not abstract values) and easily agreed upon by all.
I already stated that I knew - well, guessed - you'd disagree on which outcome is worse. I then went on to say this is most likely based on a confusion about facts, not about values, even if your values don't completely match mine (and I'm an immigration restrictionist!).
Yes, that's why I didn't address that part of your post, because we likely have irreconcilable differences on perception of facts there. I'm not sure why you're re-stating it.
I don't know what these irreconcilable differences in perception of facts are supposed to be or why they're truly irreconcilable (instead of merely difficult to reconcile - smart people change their minds in important ways all the time, whereas probably nothing I could say could ever convince a genuine psychopath to truly value other people for its own sake), but I suppose it's possible we have them, who knows.
You stated them pretty unambiguously here:
>And while I'm sure the author of that article would disagree, I'd say he's drastically overestimating how bad things are right now (or, more importantly, where they're headed on their current trajectory) and drastically underestimating how much everything can fall apart in some sort of misguided Hail Mary.<
These are irreconcilable because they're reliant on either subjective value judgments ("how bad things are right now") or on predictions of the future, which are necessarily uncertain
Let me offer you some advise:
If you want average people to take "defending democracy" seriously, it helps to not redefine it to mean managerial technocratic oligarchy.
To illustrate what I mean consider the example of Orban's Hungry and the EU more generally. "Respectable sources" frequently say that the latter is democratic and the former is not. Now under the etymological definition of "democracy" as "people power" this claim makes no sense since Orban is a popular elected leader and the EU operates opaquely through bureaucrats largely unaccountable to anyone. However, once one realizes that "democracy" to mean managerial technocratic oligarchy this makes sense. The EU is "democratic" precisely because it is governed by unaccountable technocrats and Hungry is "anti-democratic" sine Orban keeps the Hungarian bureaucracy under a tight leash.
Nope, things are already very bad and they're on track to get much worse.
The idea that ending democracy is analogous to driving off a cliff is premised on the idea that democracy is a good thing. It isn't.
>Nope, things are already very bad and they're on track to get much worse.
Everything I said is compatible with things being bad and being on track to get much worse, as long as the alternative is even worse than that. I'm not even pro-immigration, but having peaceful, universally recognized-as-legitimate transfer of power is the most important ingredient to preventing civil war, and I promise you the latter is worse than having a lot of Hispanic immigrants unless you're a complete nihilist.
> but having peaceful, universally recognized-as-legitimate transfer of power is the most important ingredient to preventing civil war,
Just for the record, are you implying that overlooking fraud is justified in the name of " having peaceful, universally recognized-as-legitimate transfer of power"?
That's a fine opinion to have, just don't cry "lawfare" like the former President when you get jailed or are otherwise met with violence for trying to destroy our democracy.
BTW, look at Benthams' substack. He believes all marine life should be exterminated as part of some expected utility calculation. He is in no position to call anyone else insane.