The Trump Presidency | Biden Inaugurated

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A bit of an aside but for all of the deification of the Reagan Administration by Trump and the GOP, it's remarkable to look back and see how personable he was compared to today's crop of Republican idiots. I can't recall any of them ever cracking a joke or smiling. Something's wrong with them. Just watch this clip, I think I laughed out loud at every joke.

 
From the ever excellent fivethirtyeight.com: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-if-trump-loses-and-wont-leave/

What If Trump Loses And Won’t Leave?

For months now, President Trump has carefully planted the seed that he might not leave the office of the presidency willingly if he loses.

Whether it’s tweeting that the election should be delayed as it “will be the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history” or that there will be widespread voter fraud because of the expected uptick in mail ballots due to the coronavirus, Trump seems intent on undermining the electoral process.

This, in turn, raises a rather thorny and unprecedented question: What happens if Trump won’t go? The answer is bleak. Experts tell me that the president actually has a lot of power at his discretion to contest the election, and some of the scenarios that could bring us to the edge of a crisis are actually very plausible.

Consider this one: It’s late on Election Day, and hundreds of thousands of votes in key battleground states still have to be counted due to the increased use of mail and absentee voting because of the pandemic. As a result, media outlets have largely avoided calling the race, but based on the votes that have been counted, Trump leads in enough states to reach at least 270 electoral votes, which would be enough to win the election if his election-night lead holds. Trump claims victory, but because Democrats were much more likely to vote by mail than Republicans, Joe Biden eventually pulls ahead because of the Democratic lean of the remaining votes — a phenomenon known as the “blue shift.”

That’s just one of the many scenarios the Transition Integrity Project, a bipartisan collection of over 100 experts, explored this summer while researching how a possible election crisis could unfold.
Rosa Brooks, a professor at Georgetown University Law School who co-founded the Transition Integrity Project, told me she and her colleagues weren’t interested in predicting the likelihood of any one scenario they looked at, but more so in understanding the range of possibilities. Ultimately, they don’t know to what extent this year’s election result will be contested — would Trump deploy federal agents from the Department of Justice to secure vote counting sites or would he just take to Twitter to bemoan the results? — but Brooks told me they do think the election will be contested at least on some level. So the question they’re asking is: How much?

One big takeaway from the Transition Integrity Project’s simulations was just how much power Trump has at his disposal should he choose to contest the election. “You have just a tremendous differential between the president of the United States of America, who has just awesome coercive powers at his disposal, and a challenger who really has no power whatsoever in our system,” said Brooks. “Joe Biden can call a press conference; Donald Trump could call on the 82nd Airborne.”

This, of course, would be a doomsday scenario, and one reason why so much of this is hard to fathom. A cornerstone of American elections has been the peaceful transition of power, but as research from the Transition Integrity Project and others underscores, there are multiple ways to contest an election. And it’s not limited to just Trump either. It’s very possible were Trump to win in the Electoral College, where he has an advantage, but lose the popular vote to Biden, that Democrats would dismiss the election as unfair.
We, of course, do not have to look too far back in our electoral history to know that Americans have survived a disputed election before — see the 2000 presidential race. But experts I talked to were worried, given Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric around the election and his own track record of openly flouting democratic norms, that the country wouldn’t be able to handle another full-throttle election dispute. Take how low the public’s trust in the election already is. Last week, an NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll found that 59 percent of Americans were not too confident or not confident at all that the election would be conducted in a free and equal way, in line with its polling since early August on this question.

It might be hard to remember now, but in the 2000 presidential election, Florida’s GOP-controlled state legislature was on the verge of appointing a new slate of electors to vote for George W. Bush had a court-ordered manual recount imposed by the Florida Supreme Court dragged on. Of course, it ultimately didn’t come to that because the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and halted Florida’s recount, famously deciding in a 5-4 decision that the state Supreme Court had overstepped its bounds and that a recount could not be held in time to meet the federal deadline for the selection of presidential electors.

Edward Foley of Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law thinks something similar could happen this year if the president and his backers contest the results in the Electoral College.

In Foley’s scenario, Trump leads in the tipping-point state of Pennsylvania on election night, but because of Democratic gains in ballots counted in the following days, Biden pulls ahead by a few thousand votes. What happens next quickly devolves into a partisan dispute. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf signs Pennsylvania’s certificate of ascertainment, confirming Biden’s victory by listing the Democratic electors as the state’s official slate for the Electoral College, while the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania legislature appoints a different set of electors at Trump’s behest as he has claimed there was widespread election fraud.

This, were it to happen, would likely be met immediately with legal challenges in state and federal court, perhaps followed by another intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court. But the significance is that even if a court ruled against the validity of one set of electors, Congress still has the power to consider both sets of electors as long as they have in hand the certificate naming them.

The Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs the electoral vote counting process, was designed to help Congress decide how to handle such a situation. But it is especially ambiguous on what would happen if the Senate and House disagree on which set of electors should count, which could happen if the GOP retains control of the Senate and Democrats keep the House.

In Foley’s scenario, Vice President Mike Pence — as president of the Senate, he would oversee the count in Congress — follows one interpretation of the law, arguing that neither set of electors should count because they conflict. That removes Pennsylvania’s votes from the total number of electors and gives Trump a majority based on the remaining 518 electoral votes.

(However, there is a question of how the denominator would work in this situation, as the question of what happens if a state’s electoral votes are rejected has never been tested. In theory, the 12th Amendment requires the House of Representatives to decide elections in which no candidate wins an electoral-vote majority, but it’s not clear that this would be the case here.)

Democrats, however, counter, claiming the certificate bearing the governor’s seal, which supports Biden, is given preference by the law.

Ultimately, though, neither side finds a compromise and we find ourselves in the midst of a full-blown constitutional crisis. In this scenario, the Supreme Court could become involved if, for instance, Democrats seek an injunction to stop Pence from not counting Pennsylvania’s votes. But it’s also possible the court would try to avoid making a ruling on the counting dispute, in keeping with a dissent from Bush v. Gore that argued neither the Constitution nor the Electoral Count Act provided a role for the judiciary in this process.

Under the 20th Amendment, we know someone must take office on Jan. 20 as president, yet the amendment is curiously silent on how to deal with a dispute over whether someone has actually qualified to take office. “The thing that we know for sure is the current term ends,” said Foley, but he added that doesn’t mean it would be straightforward to figure out who should take office next if there’s a disagreement.

In fact, it’s possible that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could claim that under the Presidential Succession Act, she is next in line to become president and that she would be willing to resign her House seat to serve as president until Biden is ruled the election winner. But if Republicans claimed Trump had won reelection, they very well might object to Pelosi being sworn in. Given a crisis on this scale, it’s hard to unpack what exactly might happen, but it’s very likely things would spiral out of control, and the resulting uncertainty could spark unrest and protests that could very well lead to violence.

Gaming out these different scenarios demonstrates that, should Trump dispute the result, a key factor will be the extent to which leading Republican officials at the federal and state level cooperate with him. Brooks pointed out that while Trump has significant power to contest the results as president, he can ultimately only go so far if supporters don’t follow his lead.

For instance, in one of its simulations, the Transition Integrity Project found that GOP leaders might support some of Trump’s claims of fraud or maneuvers to manipulate the vote count, but that didn’t mean they’d go along with every move he tried. For instance, it found many Republicans might oppose an attempt to federalize and deploy the National Guard. And in Foley’s scenario, much hinged on what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans — including Pence — chose to do when it came to deciding which Pennsylvania electors should count.

The relative closeness of the election is a factor here, too. In a different simulation the Transition Integrity Project looked at that put Biden in a stronger position on election night, Trump attracted less support from Republican leaders and Biden’s campaign was able to get some degree of bipartisan cooperation so that the country didn’t slide into a full-blown electoral crisis. Still, throughout its different scenarios, the project found it likely that the Trump campaign would try to raise enough doubts about the vote so as to undermine what might even seem like a clear result. Considering Trump claimed millions of people illegally voted when he won in 2016, it doesn’t take much to imagine he’d do the same this year if he thought it would improve his chances of winning a contested election. That’s one reason researchers at the Transition Integrity Project rank Trump’s allegations of voter fraud among the most dangerous threats currently facing the election.

Of course, considering how high the existential stakes seem to be in this election, it’s not out of the question that Biden might be the one who disputes the result. Tellingly, in another simulation the Transition Integrity Project played out, a crisis unfolded after Trump won in the Electoral College but lost the national popular vote by 5 points. Trump claimed it was fraud that explained Biden’s popular vote edge, but Biden retracted an election night concession and pushed Democratic governors in Michigan and Wisconsin to send appointed slates of electors to Congress, in conflict with the elected ones backing Trump. In his work, Foley also explored an alternate scenario in which Arizona was the tipping-point state and Republican Gov. Doug Ducey refused to certify the results to give Biden the state’s electors. During Congress’s counting, congressional Democrats argued that Arizona’s electors should be disqualified to give Biden the victory — the same argument Pence made in the Pennsylvania scenario to claim Trump had won.

The scenarios laid out by the Transition Integrity Project and Foley shouldn’t be taken as definite outcomes, but they do make clear that the rickety apparatus governing our electoral process could collapse if key actors decide to push against it.

Worryingly, the public may be especially vulnerable to attempts to delegitimize the election, too. Faith in the Electoral College is already shaky because of the possibility of a popular vote-electoral vote split like in 2000 and 2016, and worse yet, support for the Electoral College is increasingly polarized by party. A conflict over which electors should count would only exacerbate those concerns. And because many Americans still expect to know who won on election night, this could create a situation where much of the public isn’t ready for — or is ready to reject — sizable shifts in the vote after Election Day, which could make it easier to cast doubt on the outcome.

But even if the worst scenarios don’t come to pass, the fact that we lack a neutral electoral arbiter is surely a ticking time bomb for our democracy. Such an institution may sound difficult to create, but many individual states have used judicial panels to successfully sort through close elections, and other democratic nations have far better laws to adjudicate contested elections. For now, though, in the absence of such measures, the peaceful transfer of power hinges on the expectation that that is how American elections work, but that may be increasingly hanging in the balance, as anyone living in this incredibly polarized era of U.S. politics will tell you.

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Cheimoon said:
I mentioned this before, but I think it's possible that audio recordings of Trump admitting the seriousness of COVID-19 might have further ramped up public pressure on him. Trump cares about people's impressions of him more than anything else, so this may have made him respond with more serious public statements and measures on COVID-19.

Woodward was quoted on this earlier in the thread here, and his thinking was that he'd have more influence by releasing this information in the election period. So I'm saying that I disagree. Back in February/March, Woodward could not have known how Trump would continue. If Trump had turned on COVID-19in May, it would still be too late, but the recording would have no influence on the election anymore. And we can also see now that this has faded out in seconds, like any news on Trump - which I think Woodward could also have predicted.

Obviously, there was no certainty anywhere, but I think Woodward's better bet would have been to release the recordings back in February/March. (Obviously though, Trump's decisions are all Trump's responsibility.)
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The problem is that in February/March there were very few issues in Southern and Midwestern States. He would have simply dismissed the tapes and say hey look at the Corona cases. Or use some other spin.

Thw problem is that America has a lot of very dumb, gullible, and easily manipulated people and a religious base that is much more interested in persecuting anyone that isn’t white and straight rather than listening and accepting the truth.

Massive cult reprogramming is needed. We even have elected officials who believe there is a deep state plot where celebrities/politicians are conspiring by drinking the blood of babies.

America is eerily similar to Germany in 1930s right now.
 
AllezLesDiables said:
The problem is that in February/March there were very few issues in Southern and Midwestern States. He would have simply dismissed the tapes and say hey look at the Corona cases. Or use some other spin.
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Yeah, ultimately, the problem is that just nothing sticks to Trump. He says what he wants, his base and government cronies lap it all up, and that's all that matters for them.
 
Vooon said:
I doubt Pence is actually a human being. For a start his hair looks like it's a sprayed on Lego toupée, his posture makes you wonder if all his bones are made of solid iron, and his face has a certain doll like quality - like his skin has been glued on. He surely must be an android of some sort. He creeps me out!
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Basically David 8.
 
FireballXL5 said:
Pence always reminds me of Colonel White from Captain Scarlet, only not as animated.

latest
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Like some kind of love child between George Hamilton and George Peppard.
 
Kentonio said:
Still one of the most disgustingly undemocratic court decisions in modern US history.
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And a spineless reaction from the Dems and Gore. Should have fought that out in hindsight. I think they'd fight this time around but who knows. They'll probably manage to feck up this GE and lose outright (electoral college that is).
 
RedTiger said:
Trump dismisses climate change and says the temperature on the west coast will drop and to just watch

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Ah yes, the old 'wait-and-see' approach. Just like when Covid magically disappeared as he predicted.
 
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Carolina Red said:
Not this again...

Look, claiming victory or whatever on election night doesn’t mean jack diddly. It’s the electoral college that elects the president and his term isn’t over until late January, which is well enough time to have the votes tallied.
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Tell that to Al Gore.
 
Carolina Red said:
Funny you should say that...

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Remember that time everyone was sane and said atrocities like the holocaust should never happen again because we have learnt from history? And some people are too pure to vote for Biden.
 
RedTiger said:
Trump dismisses climate change and says the temperature on the west coast will drop and to just watch

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Well, at least all his children and grandchildren will intensely feel the consequenses of his moronity. But I guess in his bubble of narcissism he probably deep down doesn't give a shit about any of them either. But what the hell, anything to maybe get another four years as president so he can watch cable news, rage tweet and play golf all day while Stephen Miller runs concentration camps and sterilizes immigrants.
 
Dr. StrangeHate said:
OMFG, please people set aside your hatred of Biden and just vote the current f***** out.
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Hold on mate, a certain poster in here thinks we shouldn't vote because Dem because Biden wasn't serious about us allowing us to do our banking in the post office.
This is just one if the dumb fecking false equivalencies sane voters in this country have to endure because we think Biden won't sterilize immigrants while there babies are being raped.
 
BeforeKeanetherewasRobson said:
"It'll start getting cooler, just you watch"

Well, when he puts it in those detailed terms, who are climate change scientists to argue?
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The turn of the head with the proud smirk when the record temp. in Death Valley was mentioned. This is a clear sign of a one track mind. My 6 year old loves big numbers as well, doesn't understand that sometimes a big number is bad but doesn't care.
 
GiddyUp said:
Hold on mate, a certain poster in here thinks we shouldn't vote because Dem because Biden wasn't serious about us allowing us to do our banking in the post office.
This is just one if the dumb fecking false equivalencies sane voters in this country have to endure because we think Biden won't sterilize immigrants while there babies are being raped.
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A bit more aggressive than I would have stated it but as I indicated I wholeheartedly agree with this. There arent enough people on the left, in the middle and in the center right to take the same single issue voter stance that the (far?) right has been able to weaponize to their advantage.
 
is anyone else on the Trump campaign mailing list? There going into overdrive sending 4/5 emails a day

you'll get one from Trump, then Pence, then Trump Jr.. sometimes you get three emails back-to-back

the content is bat-shit insane too
 
RedTiger said:
What is required to amend the constitution?
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Authority to Amend the U.S. Constitution

Article V of the United States Constitution outlines basic procedures for constitutional amendment.

  1. Congress may submit a proposed constitutional amendment to the states, if the proposed amendment language is approved by a two-thirds vote of both houses.
  2. Congress must call a convention for proposing amendments upon application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the states (i.e., 34 of 50 states).
  3. Amendments proposed by Congress or convention become valid only when ratified by the legislatures of, or conventions in, three-fourths of the states (i.e., 38 of 50 states).
Amendments Proposed by Congress

To date, Congress has submitted 33 amendment proposals to the states, 27 of which were ratified. The 27th Amendment, which prevents members of Congress from granting themselves pay raises during a current session, was ratified in 1992—202 years after it was first submitted to the states.

The following steps must be completed for an amendment proposed by Congress to be added to the United States Constitution.\

Step 1. Passage by Congress. Proposed amendment language must be approved by a two-thirds vote of both houses.

Step 2. Notification of the states. The national archivist sends notification and materials to the governor of each state.

Step 3. Ratification by three-fourths of the states. Ratification of the amendment language adopted by Congress is an up-or-down vote in each legislative chamber. A state legislature cannot change the language. If it does, its ratification is invalid. A governor’s signature on the ratification bill or resolution is not necessary.

Step 4. Tracking state actions. Proposed amendments must be ratified by three-fourths of the states in order to take effect. Congress may set a time limit for state action. The official count is kept by Office of the Federal Register at the National Archives. Legislatures must return specific materials to show proof of ratification.

Step 5. Announcement. When the requisite number of states ratify a proposed amendment, the archivist of the United States proclaims it as a new amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Actual certification is published immediately in the Federal Register and eventually in the United States Statutes-at-Large.

State legislatures often call upon Congress to propose constitutional amendments. While these calls may bring some political pressure to bear, Congress is under no constitutional obligation to respond. The U.S. Constitution does not contain a provision requiring Congress to submit a proposed amendment upon request by some requisite number of states.

Amendment by Constitutional Convention

In addition to constitutional amendments proposed by Congress, states have the option of petitioning Congress to call a constitutional convention. Legislatures in two-thirds of states must agree, however. While the convention process has yet to be triggered, efforts to do so are not new. In fact, they may be “as old as the republic.” Unofficial sources report convention applications being filed as early as 1789.

Interest in a U.S. constitutional convention has peaked and waned several times over the decades. In the early 1900s, direct election of senators was a hot topic. In the 1940s and 1950s, federal taxing power was the focus of many applications. Two issues came close to triggering conventions during the 1960s to 1990s—apportionment and a balanced federal budget.

The current wave of interest began around 2010. Its focus is not a single issue nor is it being driven by one organization. Various groups are pushing their viewpoints—be they conservative, liberal, populist or progressive—and are urging action. On the one hand, legislation calls for a convention on a broad array of topics, such as limiting authority of the federal government, balanced federal budget, campaign finance reform, congressional term limits or federal debt. On the other hand, some legislation proposes to rescind previous calls for a convention.

The volume of legislation introduced in state legislatures illustrates recent interest.

  • 2011—78 bills or resolutions
  • 2012—40 bills or resolutions
  • 2013—62 bills or resolutions
  • 2014—66 bills or resolutions
  • 2015—65 bills or resolutions
  • 2016—89 bills or resolutions
  • 2017 (through July 12, 2017)—120 bills or resolutions
It is difficult to predict whether current efforts will lead to a constitutional convention. And since an Article V convention has never been held, questions are being raised about when and how this may happen:

  • Does someone officially track convention applications?
  • Has an official list of the applications been created?
  • What constitutes an official application by a state legislature?
  • What is the proper procedure for enacting and submitting state legislative applications?
  • Must the language of the states’ applications be identical?
  • Must the applications be made be made within a specific or relatively close timeframe?
  • May a legislature rescind its own application?
  • May a subsequent legislature rescind an application submitted by a previous legislature?
  • May the scope of the convention be limited?
  • May the state legislatures establish the scope limit within their calls? Or is that a congressional function?
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https://www.ncsl.org/research/about...gress may submit a proposed,, 34 of 50 states).

It is difficult to imagine the 2/3rds majority and the 3/4 of states agreeing on many things in such a politically polarized place as America seems to be right now
 
GiddyUp said:
The turn of the head with the proud smirk when the record temp. in Death Valley was mentioned. This is a clear sign of a one track mind. My 6 year old loves big numbers as well, doesn't understand that sometimes a big number is bad but doesn't care.
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that was just odd
 
Redplane said:
A bit more aggressive than I would have stated it but as I indicated I wholeheartedly agree with this. There arent enough people on the left, in the middle and in the center right to take the same single issue voter stance that the (far?) right has been able to weaponize to their advantage.
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And they've been slowly weaponizing that advantage for 40 years. They had to change their tune because bombing family planning clinics wasn't sustainable in the long term.
Look at the judges that have been put in place, we are royally screwed under another trump term because he might guaranteed at least one more SC pick (if RGB's health deteriorated).
We are letting this happen because people think an elected official should agree with them 100% or they understandably angry over a piece of legislation nationally agreed on and passed 30 years ago.
Every slimy rock in this country should be kicked over but this election cycle is not the time. The Dems are cowards and Biden is a safe choice. They are right to widen the tent for this cycle because people are fearful right now of what a 2nd term will bring and anyone that looks at the last four years and thinks Biden and the Dems are a worse choice need their fecking heads examined, or a lesson in morals from a 10 year old.
 


Yet more corruption. The masters of dropping themselves in the shit only to not face any consequences.

Also today after saying yesterday climate change will reverse because global temperatures will start to go down, he said forest fires happen because 'trees explode'

He's also said he read Bob Woodward's book (that was released at 3am) and it was a lightweight read and very boring. Interesting because it's entirely about him...
 
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