Here’s the second of The New Republic’s post-election scenarios.
Biden wins the popular vote and Electoral College, and Republicans win the House.
If Biden wins the election but Republicans maintain control of the House of Representatives, it is very likely that Speaker Mike Johnson will refuse to certify the election, invoking the Twelfth Amendment to decide the election. This lets the House of Representatives—the one elected in November—determine the outcome, and each state gets one vote. That vote is decided by which party controls the majority of House seats elected by that state. Using that method, Republicans are virtually guaranteed to have 26 votes, and Trump becomes president. The only thing that might stop this is a few moderate Republicans in the House being unwilling to go along with such a plan, but most of them have already left. Remember: Two-thirds of Republicans in the House refused to vote to certify the election in 2020.
It’s also unlikely that the Supreme Court (which is already seen as illegitimate by a large percentage of the public after the shenanigans Republicans used to get a 6–3 majority, and after the Dobbs decision) will overturn this scheme, since it technically follows the rules. As a result, most people in blue states are likely to reject the legitimacy of the (gerrymandered) House Republican majority, the president, and the Supreme Court. Governors in blue states will be under intense pressure from their constituents, particularly those who fear for their lives if Trump takes power again, to reject the legitimacy of a Trump administration, much less give in to its extreme agenda.
This outcome results in the most intense “antibodies” being generated at the fastest rate possible. The immune system generates antibodies in response to a perceived viral or bacterial threat, and the greater the threat it perceives, the more vigorous the response is. So it is with political resistance: The more people perceive a second Trump administration to be an existential threat to their lives, the more they will resist.
Trump’s response will likely be to invoke the Insurrection Act and put down any resistance to his administration with the military. If this results in fatalities and mass detentions, it will probably only exacerbate the situation, leading to many people on both the left and right concluding that violence is the only viable option for change, resistance, or as a response to resistance. Right-wing elements have long been itching to use violence to put “those people” in their place. But the missing ingredient for a civil war is people on the left concluding that the only possible way to preserve themselves is violence. The outcome tilts toward the civil war scenario more than any of the other election outcomes.
By Shelt garner
@sheltgarner
I clearly think that civil war is a lot more possible than the author of these scenarios. In fact, I think it’s not civil war we have to worry about so much as a revolution then a civil war. If Trump wins and goes full tyrant on us, all bets are off. Trump is such a unique figure in American political history that he could, unto himself, cause a revolution and then a civil war.
If he starts to round up 20 million people and use the National Guard of Red States in Blue States….oh boy. That is a recipe for disaster. If people in Blue States begin to feel like they’re being lorded over by Trump and MAGA like he’s some sort of fucking Mad Red King his actions could prompt what would otherwise be impossible – a successful Blue General Strike.
If that happened and the U.S. Military somehow, magically decided to depose Trump and his Veep, then that, unto itself, would cause a civil war because Red States would then leave the Union in protest.
It all sounds very hysterical event to me, but, lulz, who knows.
