The president and congress do not decide if there will be elections, nor do they administer those elections, which would make it pretty hard to suspend or delay them without just triggering a civil war.
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Does this apply if the suppression is targeted though? I saw someone toss out the idea of DeJoy‘s USPS disrupting mail-in-votes in democrat leaning counties specifically. I agree that a statewide disruption could favor dems but that isn’t necessarily going to be how it’s done.
The structure of the Constitution and American governance more broadly is such that most of the normal 'coup-to-takeover' buttons have instead been rewired to 'civil war.' Governors handle elections, they have access to military force (national guard), the populace is armed, etc.
Machiavelli noted how Alexander could conquer the Persian empire in one swoop because it was centralised but it was impossible to conquer France because power was distributed among local powerful and armed men
The case I wonder about is a massive flip in the midterms that Trump refuses to acknowledge as legitimate. When he starts saying "those are fake senators" what then?
This is an interesting hypothetical, but Trump broadly has no interest in decrying "election fraud" when it doesn't affect him personally. He'd find it way too simple to just call all of those people losers, which is what he did in 2018
Well if I recolect correctly most Trumpers did cry “fraud” when losing seats on 22 so I wont rule it out. The thing is that now they actually have power to enforce that
Try to tell that if they have a hunch and send the army (probably wont). But other way to influence it by threatening to cut federal ressources if the results arent what they want or that x candidate has been cheated. Nothing can be discarded right now i think
The assumption these people seem to make is that blue state governors will do nothing but post on Bluesky and sue in captured courts if he uses physical force to illegally cancel elections.
Depends on how autonomous the national guards really are, but agreed. It did feel like we got a start to it during the early covid days too, when governors were using the national guard to guard supplies, hide them, or get them by bypassing the feds.
I am telling people on my channels trump support is SOFT. It is not universal. And Pritzker in Illinois is deffo saying “fuck you, you fucking fascist”
What's the chance that the United States simply disintegrates in the face of blue state secession without a full blown war for DC? As in, Trump seizes the federal government but the military is too paralyzed to either stop him but also to take action against blue states?
Again, every governor has a chunk of the National Guard they control, so even if the Pentagon reacts with paralysis, you're still going to get two sides both claiming to be the legitimate government of the whole with armies to back it up.
Honestly, I wonder how close we are to this just from defying judicial orders. Like, there are multiple orders reinstating grants & unpausing payments which the regime is ignoring. Sure that will go up to the SC but how far are we from a federal judge sending someone to arrest Elon for contempt…
We're already seeing that the blue state response - and even many purple states - even to some potentially lawful (but bad) administration actions - like the ICE raids - is, "fuck you, make me."
So I don't think they'll suddenly become compliant if he violently disbands congress or something.
Their mediocre deportation numbers also show that their manpower, budgets, and organizational capacity are far from overwhelming. They can threaten to do anything and everything. In the end, however...
This would be an interesting topic for https://acoup.blog/ at some point - 'how is the US constitution set up to trigger civil war instead of coups and what were the historical examples that informed this.'
What is the response if Trump orders federal institutions to act in ways that affect election results— for instance, what if Republicans win the midterms because Trump orders the post office not to deliver mail ballots?
How sure are we that button still works? If he says no to a new senator isn't legit and the old one agrees, is Ohio or wherever going to march to enforce it?
We've already seen plenty of people will just do what the executive branch says even if it's not really their purview.
The president doesn't say yes or no; he gets no say at all. The Senate and the House manage their own members. He'd have to dismiss the authority of the entire body. Civil war button.
Or House and Senate republicans would have to refuse to seat opposing party reps. Also civil war button.
I admit I've never really understood the whole self-seating nature of the chambers. How can the House decide on its own membership if its membership is still yet to be decided on? Or could the first guy seated technically say "I refuse to seat anyone else, and I have 100% of the House backing me"?
Yeah, like, let's be real here- Trump absolutely floated the idea to Mike Johnson to just lock the Dems out of Congress, like, physically, the day after he won the election.
Not recognizing and subsequently ignoring Congress is not pushing the civil war button. It just hands that button to the military, law enforcement, and the bureacracy. Because they now must decide who's orders to follow and if they remain unified, no civil war happens.
One of the common ways for want-to-be authoritarians is mass protests as the military stands back. Imagine protests the size of Floyd with the fury of Jan 6.
People ask who will stop him, but reverse is true too. Fundamentally the only thing that allows Trump to sit in the White house (since I doubt military would use live ammo for him) is that his *opponents* consider him legitimate. Those not bound by the law also aren't protected by it.
But they can put their thumb on the scale. They can overload with misinformation and make quality information harder to access. They can harass and arrest political opposition. That can be a very heavy thumb when you control federal agencies.
There will obviously be elections, even North Korea has elections, it's just a question of to what extent they'll be fucked with. On a scale of 0 (perfectly fair) to 10 (North Korea) we might end up with a 2-3. I can't predict the future of course but the amount of election fuckery won't be 0.
agreed; I was more trying to get at the notion of the midterms being normal (as in, happening in all states and the results being respected). not suggesting nobody will try to hold any elections. 1/
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Beyond that? Civil war button.
Blue states reject the authority of the regime, it sends soldiers to make them, governors mobilize their national guard against that, civil war.
Civil War button.
So I don't think they'll suddenly become compliant if he violently disbands congress or something.
It is the Dem coalition now that has the 'crawl over broken glass to vote' voters, and the GOP that has the 'maybe I vote, maybe I don't' voters.
We've already seen plenty of people will just do what the executive branch says even if it's not really their purview.
Or House and Senate republicans would have to refuse to seat opposing party reps. Also civil war button.