Our constitutional crisis is already here

[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.