Our constitutional crisis is already here

[Dill]

(10-02-2021, 11:13 AM)CarolinaBengalFanGuy Wrote: This whole section is just a 4-5 man circle jerk. It’s basically back to the same 3 people starting all the threads with the same 5 people nodding their heads, with a few Fritz crazy threads sprinkled in between.

Looks like you are not really following the threads, just looking at posters names
--without even checking team affiliation.

What would a thread look like that wasn't a "circle jerk"? 

If you cannot answer that question, then this is really just a complaint that
people are discussing/criticizing politics at all. 

[Dill]

(10-03-2021, 09:37 AM)GMDino Wrote: On the first page (10/2/21 @ 8:29am) there are currently (under the "normal threads") 17 threads started by 8 different posters. On the second page it is 9 of 20 created by different posters.

Most have multiple pages of replies.

One or two regular posters have personal agendas against other posters and try to derail every one of their threads.  The other casual and semi-regular contributors get bored with it and stop posting at all because of the fighting while a few try to bring new topics or fresh information.

Discussions would be great if people cared enough to do that vs attacking the posters and adding nothing to conversation.  

Good points here. 

In a healthy forum, threads die because one side has refuted the other's arguments, or people tire of the topic and new ones pop up. Sometimes the thread discussion renews when its topic is back in the news. 

It's unhealthy though when some stop open discussion of topics by just jamming/diverting it with personal attacks, dismissing evidence without counter-evidence, declaring some political issues off limit, and the like.

If there is a "circle jerk" effect in this section, it would likely come from some posters trashing OPs they have not actually read. 

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(10-03-2021, 03:23 PM)Dill Wrote: Good points here. 

In a healthy forum, threads die because one side has refuted the other's arguments, or people tire of the topic and new ones pop up. Sometimes the thread discussion renews when its topic is back in the news. 

It's unhealthy though when some stop open discussion of topics by just jamming/diverting it with personal attacks, dismissing evidence without counter-evidence, declaring some political issues off limit, and the like.

If there is a "circle jerk" effect in this section, it would likely come from some posters trashing OPs they have not actually read. 

More of "Dill doesn't see it".  There are multiple issues at work here, and you're a key contributor to a major one, but you "don't see it" so it will continue endlessly, further killing the forum.  Yes, I know you'll refute this, and one, maybe two, people will agree with you.  However, the problem will continue because you won't even acknowledge it exists.  Like I said, ponderous.

[BoomerFan]

(09-24-2021, 10:57 PM)Dill Wrote: Second, Trump and his Republican allies are actively preparing to ensure his victory by whatever means necessary. Trump’s charges of fraud in the 2020 election are now primarily aimed at establishing the predicate to challenge future election results that do not go his way. Some Republican candidates have already begun preparing to declare fraud in 2022, just as Larry Elder tried meekly to do in the California recall contest.

Meanwhile, the amateurish “stop the steal” efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized nationwide campaign to ensure that Trump and his supporters will have the control over state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020. Those recalcitrant Republican state officials who effectively saved the country from calamity by refusing to falsely declare fraud or to “find” more votes for Trump are being systematically removed or hounded from office. Republican legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the election certification process. As of this spring, Republicans have proposed or passed measures in at least 16 states that would shift certain election authorities from the purview of the governor, secretary of state or other executive-branch officers to the legislature. An Arizona bill flatly states that the legislature may “revoke the secretary of state’s issuance or certification of a presidential elector’s certificate of election” by a simple majority vote. Some state legislatures seek to impose criminal penalties on local election officials alleged to have committed “technical infractions,” including obstructing the view of poll watchers.

One way to stop this is to win soundly. That means showing up for every election and voting, and gently reminding others to do so. If you only vote when you are "enthusiastic" then contests become close and can be influenced or decided by other actors (2000 may be an example of this depending on what you believe). 

I would hope/prefer that some on the liberal side of the aisle stops reacting to the Trump and his supporters by trying to mirror their bad behaviors. People are becoming more polarized and even sometimes radicalized and it is happening on both sides to the aisle. The difference between those two sides is, I suspect increasing tribalism is a goal and perhaps a winning strategy for the conservative camp. I realize it is a generalization but I would say conservatives see strength and homogeny as positive traits. By contrast, when liberals start saying (implicitly) "Toe the line, you are with us or against us" or disparaging potential allies, it is simply alienating to their base because liberals tend to see individualism as a positive trait. 

I would suggest that the winning strategy for liberals is to disengage from conflict while still establishing a presence and a positive message. It can be difficult to do, especially when met with a wall of nonsense every time you say anything, but it is certainly possible. Obama was pretty darn good at doing just that (and Biden isn't bad either). It is common knowledge that without term limits Obama would've won a 3rd term and he'd probably still win today. People respond to a positive message. Emulate that manner of being and the sky is the limit for the good things that can happen. 

Also, when the op-ed says (emphasis mine):

Quote:First, Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for president in 2024. The hope and expectation that he would fade in visibility and influence have been delusional. He enjoys mammoth leads in the polls

I think this must be referring to polls stating Trump should be the leader of their party? Or maybe the viability of Trump in the primaries as opposed to other specific candidates? If the polls could be cited that might be helpful for clarity in the discussion. 

All I can find is where CNN says that about half of Republicans don't even want Trump to run again:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/12/politics/cnn-poll-donald-trump-republicans/index.html

Quote:Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say, 63% to 37%, that Trump should be the leader of the Republican Party. But they are about evenly split over whether having the defeated former President back on the ticket in 2024 would be an advantage: 51% say that Republicans have a better chance of retaking the presidency if Trump is the nominee, with 49% saying the party would be better off with a different nominee. That's a very different landscape from 2019, when more than three-quarters of Republicans said their party had a better shot in 2020 with Trump as their nominee than they would with a different candidate.

Moving on, let me return to the WaPo article:

Quote:The stage is thus being set for chaos. Imagine weeks of competing mass protests across multiple states as lawmakers from both parties claim victory and charge the other with unconstitutional efforts to take power. 

I have questions here. Are we imagining certification would fail to happen in multiple states? Or that somehow that Trump would be certified as a winner when it was clear he wasn't? 

Again, one remedy for this is to win the election by a large margin. Biden as an incumbent will have some advantages so this is certainly possible. 

[Dill]

(10-04-2021, 03:43 AM)BoomerFan Wrote: I think this must be referring to polls stating Trump should be the leader of their party? Or maybe the viability of Trump in the primaries as opposed to other specific candidates? If the polls could be cited that might be helpful for clarity in the discussion. 

All I can find is where CNN says that about half of Republicans don't even want Trump to run again:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/12/politics/cnn-poll-donald-trump-republicans/index.html

Moving on, let me return to the WaPo article:

Quote:The stage is thus being set for chaos. Imagine weeks of competing mass protests across multiple states as lawmakers from both parties claim victory and charge the other with unconstitutional efforts to take power. 

I have questions here. Are we imagining certification would fail to happen in multiple states? Or that somehow that Trump would be certified as a winner when it was clear he wasn't? 

Again, one remedy for this is to win the election by a large margin. Biden as an incumbent will have some advantages so this is certainly possible. 

You've raised some good points here, Boom. To answer your questions: 

First, we know that Trump WANTS to run again in 2024, and millions of Republicans are contributing to his PACs. But 2024 is a long ways off. Legal difficulties in NY could put him in jail. A poorer than expected showing of Trump-linked candidates in 2022 could lower support, etc. But until someone comes along who can get more than half the party to support him/her, it is highly likely he will run and likely he will win the Republican primary.

Second, Kagan is arguing that Republicans have learned from 2020. Probably, most of the Trump faction leadership do understand that this was the most audited and litigated election in history, and still Biden was the clear winner. The only chance they had was for state officials in critical states (AZ, GA, MI, PA), to refuse certification of election results, or "find" the needed votes somewhere, or to compromise enough state results to throw the election back on the House.

Beyond restrictive voter ID laws to shave some fractions off the D vote, the primary goal of their recent legislation is to fix the above-mentioned "weak link" by 1) replacing state officials fixed on upholding rule of law with state officials who will place party first, and 2) by creating laws which will manage election challenges by throwing the choice of electors back to the (Republican) state legislatures. 

So yes, we are imagining that initial certification in critical states will indeed be challenged, and then those states will be forced to "follow the law" they have prepared for that (manufactured) contingency. Were they able to do this in AZ, GA, MI, and PA, Trump would have won the 2020 election. If they can do this in three or four critical states 2024, they can create a Trump win, assuming he takes the same red states as before. Or at the very least, the election will be so compromised that it will be thrown to the US House, where the number of STATES voting for Trump will decide the issue.

Third, as you say, the remedy would seem to be--win the election by a large margin. But that is easier said than done. Remember that more people actually voted for Trump the second time around than the first. The foundation of the Trump vote is mass disinformation, creating an alternative reality impervious to facts and counter-argument. So we have a mass of voters who will die for Trump before they accept COVID vaccinations in Biden's "socialist" America. That mass may be get larger if Biden passes legislation to improve infrastructure and employment conditions.

The concomitant problem is that many "independents" and centrists still don't see the coming problem. From their perspective, "both sides" are just complaining about the other, business as usual, etc. So these voters are unable to see what is qualitatively different about Trump and the Republican party at this point and so unable to take the threat seriously.

[Belsnickel]

So, this has been an interesting conversation to watch from the sidelines. I have an interesting point of discussion, though. Kagan refers to this as a crisis that is coming. From the point of view of political science, a constitutional crisis is something which the constitution is unable to resolve. The secessions that led to the Civil War would be an example, because the U.S. Constitution doesn't really address the ability for a state to remove themselves from the union. However, this framework does actually address the main point of the issue Kagan brings up. State legislatures have the full authority to assign their electors however they wish.

Don't take this as me not being concerned about what is happening. I am in favor of increased democracy, of a good polyarchy, and the moves that are being made by the Republican Party are decidedly anti-democratic (and that's with a little d, mind you) and against all of the ideals the writing of our founders makes clear that they held. However, this isn't a constitutional crisis. State legislatures passing laws the way they are is decidedly within their purview as defined by Article II.

I wish people could pull their heads out of their asses and see what is happening. I truly do. But I also with Kagan and others that write these sorts of opinion pieces would realize how little they move the needle. It's just yelling into the void, honestly. Things aren't going to get better until they get worse.

[hollodero]

(10-01-2021, 02:38 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I don't disagree with many of your positions here.

In that case I wonder how you could still see warnings like this merely as liberal disaster porn.

(10-01-2021, 02:38 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Where I see a danger that I believe you do not is in the speculation of the actions detailed in OP being presented as if they are a fait accompli.  If so, then is not any action appropriate to deal with such a danger?  The danger here is convicting people of future crime and thus taking "appropriate" steps now.  In much the same way that we both had issues with Miley acting preemptively, that is my issue here.  

It is a fair point. I think the motivation is not to call for preemptive actions that might just be as questionable as the deeds feared though. To assume that motivation and refusing the points based on that is logical fallacy to me, for in the end that would mean all warnings can be tainted in this or similar ways and hence in the end no warnings should be recognized in the first place.
I read it as a warning that, as argued, I consider very well rooted in reality. I fear your "counterpoint" could be used to silence such warnings or at least diminish them in their importance, for starters by associating anti-Trumpism sentiments like that one with own agendas, liberal positions or positions taken on behalf of the Democratic party, which is an unfortunate trend really.

(10-01-2021, 02:38 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: If you're referring to Cheney, they was a lot of resistance to any form of punishment for her initially.  It was only after she continued to raise the subject publicly, even when it was not the topic at hand, that eventually resulted in her censure.

Cheney sure is one piece of the mosaic, but by far not the sole one or even the most important one to me. That, imho, would be the treatment Kemp and Raffensperger get from their own party, for committing the eternal sin of certifying the election results. This I find mighty scary, that pretty much a whole party scolds their own people (or at least does not defend them) for doing their duty and not following Donald Trump's wishes of dismissing results of a fair and clean election.
Imho, the republican party as a whole, in its listening to the hard core Trump supporters that follow him on every undemocratic and unconstitional thought and action, is not within the realms of the constitution any longer. That's how I see the crisis.

If the term constitutional crisis is appropriate, I dare not say. For I have a very different take on this paper then most have in the first place, I consider the US constitution largely responsible for this Trumpian mess and hence for the crisis to begin with.


(PS sorry for the late response, at times I find it difficult to shout into an ongoing feud)

[Belsnickel]

(10-04-2021, 02:48 PM)hollodero Wrote: If the term constitutional crisis is appropriate, I dare not say. For I have a very different take on this paper then most have in the first place, I consider the US constitution largely responsible for this Trumpian mess and hence for the crisis to begin with.

[Dill]

(10-04-2021, 01:51 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: So, this has been an interesting conversation to watch from the sidelines. I have an interesting point of discussion, though. Kagan refers to this as a crisis that is coming. From the point of view of political science, a constitutional crisis is something which the constitution is unable to resolve. The secessions that led to the Civil War would be an example, because the U.S. Constitution doesn't really address the ability for a state to remove themselves from the union. However, this framework does actually address the main point of the issue Kagan brings up. State legislatures have the full authority to assign their electors however they wish.

Don't take this as me not being concerned about what is happening. I am in favor of increased democracy, of a good polyarchy,* and the moves that are being made by the Republican Party are decidedly anti-democratic (and that's with a little d, mind you) and against all of the ideals the writing of our founders makes clear that they held. However, this isn't a constitutional crisis. State legislatures passing laws the way they are is decidedly within their purview as defined by Article II.

You bring up a truly interesting point here, and lay out the problem clearly. If you are correct, then if some Republican-controlled state legislatures reject their popular election results and choose electors themselves along party lines, their actions might result in a social or political, but not a "Constitutional" crisis.

It's a point worth exploring. My first question would be, aren't there, perhaps, some unstated assumptions about the "full authority" given to states to choose electors? E.g., could a state pass a law explicitly specifying that only members of one party can choose electors, and claim the sanction of Art. II? Would this be no different from a decision that all electors vote for the candidate who won the popular vote in that state? Can states "legally" stack enough anti-democratic moves (e.g., starting with gerrymandering) to place control of electoral votes outside democratic contest altogether?

(10-04-2021, 01:51 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: I wish people could pull their heads out of their asses and see what is happening. I truly do. But I also with Kagan and others that write these sorts of opinion pieces would realize how little they move the needle. It's just yelling into the void, honestly. Things aren't going to get better until they get worse.

Seems to me that "moving the needle" right now isn't the only standard by which to judge arguments like Kagan's, and possibly not even his goal. 

I believe people like myself and fence-sitting "independents" are his target audience. He's gambling that what he is saying will appear more illuminating to the latter as we approach the 2022 elections and anti-democratic legislation moves from state house debate into practice. For those who don't need convincing there is a problem, I do think Kagan deepens our understanding of the specific challenge Trump's party poses to the existing system of checks and balances. If I get that, probably so do others, and this may help focus counter-strategies. 

*A Dahl fan. Me too.

[Belsnickel]

(10-04-2021, 03:30 PM)Dill Wrote: You bring up a truly interesting point here, and lay out the problem clearly. If you are correct, then if some Republican-controlled state legislatures reject their popular election results and choose electors themselves along party lines, their actions might result in a social or political, but not a "Constitutional" crisis.

It's a point worth exploring. My first question would be, aren't there, perhaps, some unstated assumptions about the "full authority" given to states to choose electors? E.g., could a state pass a law explicitly specifying that only members of one party can choose electors, and claim the sanction of Art. II? Would this be no different from a decision that all electors vote for the candidate who won the popular vote in that state? Can states "legally" stack enough anti-democratic moves (e.g., starting with gerrymandering) to place control of electoral votes outside democratic contest altogether?

The answer to all of those questions is yes, at least as far as our current view of the Constitution. Were they to be challenged in the courts it would be a very acrobatic opinion that would overturn those laws.

(10-04-2021, 03:30 PM)Dill Wrote: Seems to me that "moving the needle" right now isn't the only standard by which to judge arguments like Kagan's, and possibly not even his goal. 

I believe people like myself and fence-sitting "independents" are his target audience. He's gambling that what he is saying will appear more illuminating to the latter as we approach the 2022 elections and anti-democratic legislation moves from state house debate into practice. For those who don't need convincing there is a problem, I do think Kagan deepens our understanding of the specific challenge Trump's party poses to the existing system of checks and balances. If I get that, probably so do others, and this may help focus counter-strategies. 

But isn't that trying to move the needle?

(10-04-2021, 03:30 PM)Dill Wrote: *A Dahl fan. Me too.

Well, duh. Dahl has some of the best theories on democracy in the modern era.