Thursday, October 29, 2020

The Problem With This Election, or When Is a Coup a Coup and When Is It Not?

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Headline: "MP claims "judicial coup" overturned Kenya election result; A Kenyan MP has filed a petition calling for the removal of Chief Justice David Maraga" (source)

By Thomas Neuburger

The problem with this election is that it brings to a head the general problem of dealing with Movement Republicans — those whom Paul Krugman in 2003 correctly called "a revolutionary power" — that like all revolutionary powers "does not accept the legitimacy of our current political system" and therefore has no intention of operating within the rules that govern the rest of us. 

They don't want to "work within" the system to reform it, because they don't believe the system should exist. They want to strip it to its bones and rebuild it.

A Revolutionary Power

This perfectly explains Republican Party behavior, from Nixon to Reagan to Bush to Bush-Cheney to McConnell. Nixon's re-election committee believed that the "other side" was so dangerous that anything that prevented a Democratic Party win would be justified — even murder, though I can't now find the John Mitchell quote, spoken under oath, that admits it.

Nixon and Reagan both treated with the enemies of their country — negotiated against their government's peace efforts during wartime — to extend the killing of American soldiers (Nixon) or extend the foreign captivity of American citizens (Reagan) for personal and partisan gain. 

Bush senior was Reagan's point man in Republican pre-election negotiations with the Iranian government to extend the captivity of their hostages, he carried the campaign's promises, made sure the hostages weren't released until after Carter was out of office, then swore an oath he had no intention of upholding — to defend the Constitution.

Cheney attempted, the entire time he was in office, to convert the presidency from an office checked by the other three branches to a "unitary executive" capable of acting close to king-like. He too swore to uphold the Constitution, yet worked his entire professional life to overturn it. His president, Bush junior, instituted the largest mass surveillance regime in American history, a regime that's still with us, and likely killed for good the 14th Amendment in the process.

McConnell's sins you likely know already, the latest being his help in putting Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court. 

Note this though: His sin is not in supporting Trump's nomination this late in Trump's term of office — Trump had that right just as Obama had the right to nominate Merrick Garland up to the day he left the White House (Ruth Bader Ginsberg publicly concurred). McConnell's sin is in helping put a culturally radical Movement Republican onto the Court, someone who, like the rest of her kind, will work like the devil to turn the country into a place no one but she can live in, then force the rest of the country to live in it anyway.

This is the revolutionary force that confronts us in this election, and the particular problem with this election isn't that they'll be returned to power, but that Trump, their bumbling president, will be retained through anti-constitutional means, the way George W. Bush was "elected" through anti-constitutional means. The Founders in 1789 had no idea that the Supreme Court could select a president; they didn't even countenance the thought that the Supreme Court could invalidate the law (that came in 1805 in a coup of its own by Supreme Court justice John Marshall). 

Republicans staged a coup once, a real one, and got away with it. I think a great many of them would gladly do it again.

"Fraud" versus Fraud and the Response to Each

What would happen if the electorate chooses Joe Biden? The radical Republican Party would scream "fraud" with every breath to invalidate that choice, then act as if Democratic fraud actually occurred, with all that this implies.

Yet Republicans are committing fraud as we speak. Among other acts, they are using their judicial operatives in the courts, Movement Republicans loyalists, to uphold challenges to Democratic Party voters.

If the unlikely occurs and the election turns on a case in the U.S. Supreme Court — as it did in 2000 — and the Court installs Trump as the winner with a ruling as specious as the 2000 ruling was, Republicans will have done in fact what they falsely accuse Democrats of doing in their dreams — they will have stolen the presidency, twice.

In addition, if Biden wins, it's pretty certain that many MAGA hat Trump supporters will take to the streets, that calls for "resistance" will be many, and the mantra "not my government" will be heard from a great many lips. From the Trump-supporter point of view, a Biden win will look like a coup that literally invalidates the authority of his government and justifies revolt.

But what if Trump wins because the Supreme Court installed him, despite the polling, the invalidation of ballots, the false claims of fraud, and the open and outright corruption of Republican judges? 

In this case, it will not simply appear to be a coup — it will be one in fact. 

How Should Anti-Trump Voters React to a Coup?

If this should occur, how should those who witness it respond? What should the people do if the Court, for a second time, steals the presidency? 

The fact is, they should react exactly as MAGA supporters are going to react if Biden were elected. The pro-Trump side will think it sees a coup, but they will be wrong. If the Court hands the election to Trump in an outright theft, Biden supporters will know they've seen a coup, and they will be right.

And that's the problem with this election. It could all come down to dueling charges of theft, one of them imagined and one of them very real. Will the nation, in rejecting the behavior of the "fake coup" side, reject their only valid response if a real one occurs?

  

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7 Comments:

At 9:12 AM, Anonymous Hone said...

Great piece. Frightening.

Although I knew about Nixon undermining Johnson's negotiations in Vietnam, I did not know about the undermining of Carter with the Iran hostages. Not that I am surprised, but this did not come my way in the media. The media has not been our friend in many ways. It has tried way too hard to be "balanced" when one side is totally corrupt.

 
At 10:40 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

If you were paying attention to Reagan's Inauguration, the news media broke in at about 12:10 EST with a bulletin which announced that the hostages were being released.

It smelled like a rat even then. Iran Contra only proved is, but that Rat Bastard in Chief pardoned everyone before the investigation could be completed.

It is long past time for the Republican Party to be declared an enemy of the State and to be arrested and tried - but the "Democrats" aren't man enough to do anything. It's been like this since Watergate, and I no longer expect that they will now.

I'm for sending them to join the Whigs and find another party to promote.

 
At 1:15 PM, Blogger Cugel said...

Frankly unless Trump can pull within a couple of percent in PA, and unless he wins FL, TX, AZ and GA, then all the vote stealing won't matter.

From Twitter, Rick Hansen, Professor of Law and Political Science at UC Irvine; Election Law Blogger. CNN Election Law Analyst. Latest book: Election Meltdown"

Yes, these results where the election is narrow and comes down to a few tens of thousand votes in PA and the S.Ct. blatantly steals it for Trump. But, due to Biden's 9% national lead, this is a low order probability. He's very likely to break through in one of the following states: GA, FL, AZ, TX, NC. If he wins one of them PA won't matter. Trump isn't even bothering to campaign in any of them, because if he loses them its all over for him anyway, so he might as well put all his hopes on PA.

Prof. Hansen: "What is much more troubling is THIS: I’m afraid it’s even worse now. Federal courts need to defer to state legislatures about how to balance voting rights against purported state interests and not second guess whether these actors are acting in their own self-interest

Quote Tweet
@AdamSerwer
· 16h
"This is mostly correct except that when the federal government enacts legislation *protecting* voting rights, this violates the “equal sovereignty of the states,” a concept with no textual basis in the constitution but one that overrides the explicit text of the 15th Amendment. twitter.com/popehat/status…"

"Heads we win, tails you lose!"

This is what is facing us in trying to ever have free and fair elections in the US. The Constitution allocates to the state legislatures how to apportion their Electoral Votes. The Reich-wingers on the court won't let Congress fix all these problems because it's up to the State Legislatures under this newly invented judicial doctrine.

The ONLY Possible solution is to re-balance the S.Ct. with at least 3 new justices.

 
At 1:50 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

A lot to unpack, most of it from the able responders above.

"What should the people do if the Court, for a second time, steals the presidency?"

Actually it may be the 4th (!!) time they will overturn the results and/or stop vote counting.

The point I always make is that obamanation was elected in 2008 with an FDR-sized mandate to, among other things, FIX VOTING. Neither he nor his party even attempted. They couldn't be bothered.

A fairly simple fix would be a constitutional amendment making voting a RIGHT rather than a privilege and vote counting or verification a mandated duty of the executive branch. But one can certainly imagine a quorum of nazi states refusing to ratify this. And none of the potted flora that vote for either party would bat an eyelash.

And that is the real problem, is it not? obamanation/democraps did not remedy the process of the 200 coup nor the rampant criminal fraud of 2004... and their voters thought nothing of it. He also did nothing to remedy finance (repealing GLBA, CFMA and various deregs from reagan, slick willie and on), nor prosecute financial crimes ($21 TRILLION in fraud) nor war crimes (torture, cheney's wars for oil...) nor anything useful. He only gave health insurance and phrma some government bailouts and ratfucked 30 million more citizens to provide that windfall.

And voters only became more in love with that!!

Hone... what can I say... I've written about reagan's treason often.

and voters re-elected him AND nixon in spite of their treasons.

here is a hypothetical: what if american voters were smarter than a ficus?

 
At 2:59 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

At this point there is a parallel between conquering the ongoing nazi coup from within AND fixing the democrap party coup from within.

In both cases:
1) the coups are so old as to be normalized and established and unassailable.
2) sentient and conscientious voters would be a prerequisite for both. and we ain't got none.

 
At 9:07 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

There appears to be a global purge of the real left from "the left".

Keir Starmer's "suspension" of Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party is one example, while Glenn Greenwald resigning from The Intercept appears to be another.

If true, then this is an effort to return "the left" to being the docile lapdog it's been since Thatcher and Reagan muzzled and leashed it. Is the motive to ensure that the results Bernie Sanders got with the working class enough to cause the entrenched corporatist elements to seek to ensure another can't rise up to replace the now-neutered Sanders?

 
At 6:14 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

9:07, a misapplication of terms, perhaps.

The real left is being suppressed by the fake left (the democrap party and their appendages).
This has been true since the Democrats formed the DLC in about 1981.

Reagan did not muzzle/leash the real left. The democrap reaction (the DLC) to reagan is what capitalized on the stupidity of the real left and cajoled them into voting for the, now, fake left (the democrap party).

Bernie? A metaphor of the DLC, pretending to be real left, but in actuality just another part of the fake left tasked to expand the size of the greenhouse of voters.

And if you want proof of the potted flora's limited potential? they still think Bernie is 'real' left (obamanation, biden, harris, pelo$i, hoyer, cliburn, $cummer..... too).

 

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