Tag: Electoral College

Second American Civil War: The Electoral College Voting Today & The Prospect Of A ‘Political 9/11’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Today is one of a few days that we kinda know would be a prime moment for the “political 9/11” I keep worrying about. But, to date, I’ve been pretty much totally wrong. I’ve been wrong for number of reasons, among them Trump is just a ding-dong not an autocrat and there’s just not been any stomach in seditionist quarters to actually do the things necessary to provoke a secessionist crisis.

But today — along with January 6th — are obvious days where our current eerie political moment could change dramatically. All that would have to happen is a lot of faithless Electors throwing the election to Trump suddenly. Or, say, Michigan militia groups manage to hurt Electors so they couldn’t even vote.

Or, put another way — if the voting of Electoral College was paused or disrupted because of violence or the threat of violence, that, in itself, might be the crisis necessary to push us into a secessionist crisis. My point is — the American political system is so out of whack, so fragile right now that any extra stress on it will lead to its collapse.

One reason why I know America is in deep trouble is we’ve reached the point when some pretty Far Right concepts are now hurtling towards mainstream acceptance in the Republican Party. The surreal part of all of this is secessionists don’t have any concreate reasons for leaving the Union other than they hate liberal-progressives and woke cancel culture. That’s it. I guess you could say they love the Dear Leader so much they would rather destroy the country than risk living under a Biden Administration, but I still don’t know what, exactly, would be so bad about a Biden Administration that it would be worth destroying the country MAGA says they want to make great again.

And, as I’ve said, MAGA secessionists are completely oblivious about how, in practical terms, they might have some serious problems leaving the Union in the first place. Sure, there are about 15 small population, homogenous states in the center of the country that could probably make a good show of leaving the Union, but that’s it.

I can’t think of a single state of the old CSA that could make a clean break of it. Take Georgia for instance. Not only is Atlanta a major metropolitan area now, but the African American community would rather take up arms against any secessionists than let the state leave the Union for pretty obvious racist reasons.

As such, while I could see any Second American Civil War being a lot longer and a lot bloodier than MAGA could ever possibly imagine — the end result would be the same — they would fucking lose.

I really went on a tangent there. Back to the point — if we can get past today without a “political 9/11” then we’re in the clear until January 6th. If we get pass the Congressional Certification Crisis, then we have the Trump Goes Insane Crisis for much of January.

And, in the end, it could be Trump going insane that leads to the Union collapsing. If Trump goes transactional on Twitter and starts ranting about how Trumplandia needs to be founded, then, well, I guess we’ll have to see how many people take Trump both literally and seriously.

Why A Second American Civil War Hasn’t Started (Yet)


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

All things being equal, the United States is on the cusp of a hot civil war after a decade of a cold civil war. And, yet, to date, while it definitely feels like a civil war is about to happen, it has not, in fact happened. How come?

For a civil war to happen, Trump would have to finally bump up against in stark terms how Americans perceive themselves. To date, he’s simply been too much of a lazy opportunist to do something so brazen as to cause the country to implode.

And, yet, he is such a ding-dong that it’s easy to imagine a situation where as he grows more desperate to stay in office, he sort of stumbles to an act that people who voted for Biden simply can’t brook. But remember, we’re entering the Upside Down of American politics right now — if Trump doesn’t act pretty quick, he simply won’t be able to have any thin veneer of legality to lean on when he wants to use the Insurrection Act on people who oppose him.

Or, put another way, it’s growing close enough to January 20th that the U.S. Military might simply slow-walk any effort on Trump’s to take “total control.” In fact, he Trump doesn’t act by Monday when the Electors vote, the window of opportunity for him to do anything too brazen may, in fact, be closed. The American Military could easily simply ignore Trump if he went nuts on the grounds that now that the Electors have voted, they are even MORE reluctant to follow an order that might be seen, in hindsight as illegal, or at least bending the rules.

So, one could argue that if we’re going to have a Second American Civil War NOW, rather than, say, at some point in the next four years, it will happen because something really random and extraordinary happens. And, what’s more, Trump will be in the position of leading a rebellion. The moment Trump takes up arms against the Republic, then, well, that’s a pretty easy moral situation for the U.S. Military. MAGA Rebels –> BAD.

One thing that might happen is Trump and Pompeo finally manage to box Iran into a war with Israel, then they use THAT as an excuse for Trump to take “total control” while we’re all distracted. But even that is fraught with problems — the American Military, unlike the American public, can walk and chew gum and if Trump simply ignored the Constitution because we were fighting a major regional war against Iran (and maybe the DPRK, too?) they would simply depose him while it was going on.

Another reason why we haven’t had a hot civil war yet is while there has been plenty of hot air on the part of MAGA, they haven’t — to date — been willing to back it up. They would have to start blowing shit up pretty quick for it to make a difference. Though I could see, maybe, Biden’s first 100 days having significant political violence. And, yet, thankfully, MAGA-Qanon-Proud Boys have proven themselves to be just loud mouth punks.

That may change, it may not. Who knows.

It’s very possible that we’ll just drift in the Biden Administration peacefully with a sizable chunk of the Republican Party having a wait-and-see approach to if they want to destroy the United States or not.

American Tribulation


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing a lot of Twitter Liberals are oblivious about is how dire things are right now. They keep pontificating about the rise of fascism in the United States as if it’s a process that hasn’t happened yet — get woke, we are a fascist state NOW.

MAGA 2020.

Or, more specifically, we WOULD be a fascist state but for what a ding-dong our autocrat is. For me, all of this is very surreal because it’s like everything is there, waiting for Trump to go full autocrat….and he’s doing nothing. I can still think of a half a dozen ways he could seize “total control” RIGHT NOW…and…yet it appears as if he’s going to let Electors vote on Monday without even trying to get the Proud Boys to scare the shit out of them — or worse.

So, we lurch close and closer to a Biden getting sworn in and about half the electorate thinking he’s illegitimate. I will note something — the moment the Texas case came out of nowhere, I knew the Dead Hand of History was doing its thing. I have repeatedly said we’ve boxed ourselves into a civil war mindset and the Texas case is a prime example of that. Someone, somewhere with the ability to hand Trump his coup stepped up to the plate for no other reason than that’s where the momentum is right now.

Uh oh.

And, yet, again, Trump hasn’t done squat in real terms to attempt to seize “total control” even though many, many MAGA cocksuckers are begging him to do just that. I can only begin to believe that either Trump is going to allow a very surreal transfer of power actually happen, he’s going to go completely insane in some way, or, in the end, he’s going to finally go transactional and willfully destroy the United States after the point when we think we’ve managed to dodge a bullet.

Trump is so unpredictable, I can’t figure out what he’s going to do. In no small measure that comes from how difficult it is to figure out his motives at this point. Is it all about fundraising? Is it all about just not going to jail in NYS? If I could pin down is actual motives, then I could figure out his next course of action.

It seems more likely than not someone, or something is going to happen in a rather dramatic fashion between now and Jan. 20th….or a little bit afterwards. Let’s say Biden’s first 100 days. If we can actually get past, say, the Ides of March 2021, then things will have claimed down enough that we can all sigh a huge sigh of relief.

I feel you.

It just doesn’t seem like history is on our side right now. Electors could still get doxed, or murdered, or whatever. Trump could still get his Reichstag Fire with the help of the Proud Boys. Or Iran or the DPRK could give him cover to try to pull a Constitutional fast one on us while we’re distracted.

Let me make this clear — as a student of history, by every metric the United States is on the cusp of a historic and shocking implosion. I’m talking France 1940 or France 1789 type of shock. That the otherwise most stable, most powerful and arguably wealthiest nation in the world turn in on itself because of, what, white men without a college degree can’t get laid, is going to be one of the biggest shocks of the last 500 years.

America, 2020.

I’m wrong all the time. Hopefully, I’ll be wrong this time, too.

‘I’d Like You To Do Us A Favor, Though:’ What If Trump Hosts The Electoral College At The White House?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve been so busy assuming the Far Right would dox electors, that it didn’t occur to me that Trump might out of the blue call them all to the White House for a little tet-a-tet. And there’s absolutely nothing we could do about it.

We haven’t even gotten past the Certification Crisis, either. So, it could end there. Trump could throw the election into Congress, then SCOTUS then win. But if we get past this Certification Crisis, then we might see the surreal imagine of all the Electors spending the weekend at the White House or Camp David for the specific purpose of Trump attempting to glandhand them into voting for him.

Hell, he might even try to bribe them.

“I’d like you to do us a favor, though….”

While it’s still very possible that out of the blue a Right Wing insane person might murder an Elector before any of this can happen, I guess what I’m trying to say is — Electors are the weakest link of the Constitution because they’re physical human beings.

Why Trump Will Dox Electors On Twitter


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m wrong all the time. But here’s something to think about.

  1. Trump is deranged.
    Trump is an autocrat — if a very bad one — and as it grows more obvious that he will be indicted by NYS after leaving office, he’s going to do anything necessary to “not lose.”
  2. It will be value free.
    By the time we get around to impeaching Trump for doing this, we’ll have moved on to the next thing. The intimidated Electors were “legal” votes and fuck you, lib.
  3. He’ll be president, fuck you lib.
    What are you going to do if Trump intimidates Electors to vote for him, impeach and convict him? This is never going to work, especially if Democrats can’t take the Senate. So, in that sense, at a minimum, Interior Minster Barr will believe Trump can get away with a coup. Trump will dox Electors on Twitter, the Proud Boys scare the hell out of them — they vote for Trump. The End. Coup successful. (Though, of course, this would likely cause a civil war / revolution, but #MoscowMitch doesn’t think in those terms. It’s all about power for power’s sake and owning the libs.)

The Coming Elector Intimidation Crisis


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I’ve said before, TrumpBarr blew it when they didn’t strike before the media called the election. That was a political act and, as such, they were dealt a significant blow.

So now we enter the a far more dangerous moment post – election when House Trump begins its extra-political attempts to stay in power. I keep saying that autocrats never lose and, well, this isn’t over yet. But the issue is — the only reason why Trump got himself into this situation is he’s so deranged and incompetent that he didn’t lay the groundwork to “not lose” in a far less conspicuous manner.

Two things stick out for me.

One is, this has the same dynamic as the Whitewater investigation that ultimately led to Bill Clinton being impeached. It’s building. It’s happening in the far right’s bullshit echochamber, but it’s building. And just like they say someone goes bankrupt “gradually then all at once,” so, too, is this crisis going to build and then pop out in a rather astonishing fashion.

The other is, what’s going on right now is exactly what happened in 2016, only this time there’s an actual chance this stress test on the Constitution might work, and, as such, cause significant political violence. Trump has said that he won’t leave power until he’s exhausted every possible option. What he means by that is, every step along the way to Biden becoming president, he’s going to attack and corrupt the process in a hysterical, vicious manner.

So, it seems pretty obvious that as I have long said, we’re going to have an Elector Crisis. As the shock wears off and MAGA begins to think about its options, Electors — the weakest link in the Constitution — will begin to grow in significance. They will whip themselves into a crazed frenzy at the idea that if they can just get enough faithless Electors they can win. Probably what will happen is some MAGA shithead is going to kill an Elector as a reminder to them what they should do. Then, to make matters worse, Trump will dox them all on Twitter and we’re going to have a massive, existential crisis as we all worry about what the Electoral College is going to do. To the point that all 300 million of us know the personalities of the Electors way, way, more well than we ever possible imagine.

But hopefully this will pass and we’ll go to whatever the next step in the process is and Trump will attack THAT. Then, probably, he probably is going to fucking lose his mind and salt the earth in a rather dramatic fashion. He may also pardon himself and flee the country.

In a sense, that’s a best case scenario.

The worse case scenario is there’s a civil war / revolution as Trump grows so radical that he simply seizes “total control’ and fuck you, lib. If that happens, I honestly don’t know what the endgame would be. Though I have said the dead hand of history would suggest Trump will win and we’re all fucked.

But I was wrong before — because Trump is too incompetent to be an effective autocrat — and so it’s possible we’re going to have a civil war / revolution and in the end, after a lot of needless, tragic deaths, things will go back to “normal” in some way. But the whole thing is going to suck so bad.

Just like with all such shitty historical situations, we will give it value and a narrative after the fact in an effort to make ourselves feel better for what we did to ourselves.

#TrumpCoup: If All Else Fails, Trump Is Going To Dox Electors


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Trump is very difficult to predict. Which, to some extent, is his secret power. You just never know if he’s going to fold in a rather unexpected, dramatic fashion, or if he’s going to do some autocratic thing. He vacillates wildly between these two things.

What I think might happen is should all his efforts to steal the election otherwise fail him, he is going after the physical human beings that make up the Electoral College. I could easily see him sulking for 24 to 48 hours if Biden won in some sort of landslide (even under the autocratic conditions Trump has established ) and then popping out on Twitter with the names and addresses of all the Democrat Electors.

MAGA-Qanon rushes to their homes and threatens their lives if they don’t vote for Trump. Trump could fire the head of the FBI and name Rudy his “interim” replacement. They Electors are left out to dry on this front because of this. Trump could even use the violence that his own followers are then doing as an excuse to use the Insurrection Act.

But again, Trump is so bonker and unpredictable that I honestly don’t know which direction he’s going to go. I do, however, suspect he’s going to pardon himself. Or somehow get some assurance he won’t be charged with anything as a prerequisite for physically leaving the White House.

If he really wanted to be destructive, he could abscond from the White House on Marine One hand settle somewhere like, say, Alabama to incite a real, honest to God civil war.

How A Liberal Plutocrat Could Game The Electoral College

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The sad thing about liberal rich people is they’re dumb-dumbs. They’re so busy quixotically running for president that they don’t think about how they could practically use all their billions to do something great for America.

And the thing about it is, in real terms, it wouldn’t even be that expensive relative to the power it would give them. The Electoral College is a numbers game. One thing about several mid-West states is they’re nearly vacant. But the infrastructure for more people is still there. So, what Tom Steyer should do is pick three or four low-population states in the mid-West. Then in each pick a small-to-medium sized city. Setup a loan forgiveness program that would do something along the lines of this — if you move to one of these cities and promise to live for seven years, the program will forgive a huge chunk of your college loans.

You might even be given low interest loan to start a new business. I mean, fuck, if you have billions of dollars to play with, why not? The point of this would be to bump up the number of liberals in, say, Nebraska so there might be two additional liberal Senators in Congress. Throw in a few additional safe Democratic Electors and you might just right America’s ship of state.

If this idea was anywhere near as successful as it needed to be, the reaction to would likely be furious and even violent. Republicans have a political bloodlust that Democrats simply don’t have the taste for. I’m growing to believe that Republicans are so wrapped up in their surreal and extreme partisitionship that, well, we’re fucked people.

The end, that’s it. There’s nothing we can do. But sometimes it’s fun to daydream a little bit.

The Electoral College Is A Fatal Flaw In The American Constitutional System

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

A recent Federal court ruling says individual Electors are free agents. So, in real terms, the only thing stopping them from voting for whomever the wish is their personal affinity for the party they represent.

Given that Electors are pretty much just average people, it is inevitable that a faithless Elector — or two — is going to put a spanner into the democratic process sooner rather than later. Given how divided America is, I don’t see this problem being fixed any time soon, no matter what happens.

So, I could see Trump losing the 2020 election only to win the Electoral College because he personally doxed them all. I could see the entire Republican Party attacking individual after the actual popular vote to such an extent that the whole thing is at least thrown into the House where Republicans probably would have a decent shot of winning.

The whole nation being divided thing makes it almost impossible to get rid of the Electoral College long after it’s proven to be a fatal flaw in our entire Constitutional system. In fact, the only way I could see any reform on the matter is if the Electoral College went rouge en masse. If someone who wasn’t from either one of the major parties won, then I think both sides would suddenly have a reason to work together to fix the issue.

Now, the one thing about the power of the Electoral College is it’s a lot like quantum physics. The actual use of the human being that make up the Electoral College to stymie the will of the people is so profound that there’s no way of knowing what would happen. Legally, we’re stuck with whomever the Electoral College picks. That’s it. Once they vote, that’s the president. The only exception is a tie, whereby it goes to the House where the states vote by delegation. Each state gets only one vote.

The average person is simply not prepared for what would happen if the Electoral College went rouge. I don’t have an easy answer for what the reaction would be. Really, the only bright spot of saying Electors are free agents is you never know when that might come in handy. The Electoral system is so bad in modern terms that there are a few scenarios one could think up whereby you might want free agent Electors. One is the idea the Russians might brazenly hack the election in 2020. If they do so in a really brazen fashion, the idea that Electors might vote for who _actually_ won once we looked into things is at least something to make you feel a little better.

But I just don’t see the 2020 election being normal. In fact, I think it is probably going to be the last proof we need that the United States is no longer a democracy. In the end, I’m afraid, no matter what the popular vote, Trump will be sworn in for a second term

A surreal combination of demographics, power and money make it nearly inevitable that until something really wild happens, we’re going to have autocratic Republican presidents for the next few decades. The America that I grew up in is gone. We’re now much like the Roman Empire in its early days when it refused to accept that it was, in fact, an empire.

Republicans are going to remake America at last. In fact, I would go so far as to say the only thing that may save us is the apolitical nature of the US Military. It may be that a junta has to step in at some point. That may, in fact, be the only thing that keeps the country together in the end. Otherwise, the country is going to split apart — peacefully or otherwise.

The End Of The American Constitutional Republic — An Electoral College Nightmare

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The fatal flaw in our existing system is there are physical human beings — 538 of them — who vote for president as the Electoral College. Given that Nancy Pelosi refuses to impeach Trump on moral grounds, if nothing else, what’s to stop Trump from using his dark money buddies to bribe enough electors to give him the presidency, even if he’s not on the ballot? In other words, what if the Electoral College votes for you to be president and you’re not eligible anymore?

Who’s to say you can’t be president, especially if you have FOX News and a dozens of insane assholes who don’t give a shit about anything but absolute power and “liberal tears?”

Once Trump — or whomever — was president at that point, they could as long as they were extreme Right nutjobs — sitback and control the Executive Branch for as long as they like. The military might be upset, but Turkey proves even that isn’t effective.

I think this scenario is the one that will happen, probably in 2020, or no later than 2024 when Trump simply refuses to leave office after the a bribed Electoral College votes for him en masse.