Fear of "backlash" is no reason to let Donald Trump make an illegal run for president
Fear of "backlash" is no reason to let Donald Trump make an illegal run for president
Don't negotiate with MAGA terrorism
So let's say we let him run to avoid a violent backlash.
What happens if he loses? We let him overturn the election to avoid another violent backlash?
All we're doing is proving to the fascists that we will kowtow to them if they are angry and violent enough. If we want to remain a free-ish country we're going to have to piss them off at some point by doing the right thing, and we'll need to deal with the fallout.
And if he wins the fascists will take that as endorsement. Whatever they would have done via backlash will become the norm since their present supports it.
I really think people either forgot or still don't understand just how close the insurrection was to succeeding. Change one part of Mike Pence's story and we'd be in a whole different -- and much darker -- timeline. There's plenty of evidence that suggests a different outcome if a similar coup is attempted this time. The law is on our side, and so are states' rights, we need to enforce them.
By 'deal with the fallout', of course you mean apply the law to criminals. Arrest them, charge them, send them to court, let them be convicted, and serve their sentences. Justice delayed is justice denied.
I personally can’t wait. All the 2nd Amendment idiots trying to take on the police and military?
It’d be glorious.
I personally can’t wait. All the 2nd Amendment idiots trying to take on the police and military?
Well, I've got some news for you.
House Republicans All Vote Against Neo-Nazi Probe of Military, Police
didn't think that one through much did you?
Which we deals with the fallout though? Would you, as an individual, risk being their target? That's the hard part. Easy to say we as a society shouldn't cave, but would you like to be name dropped by Trump as the enemy?
They're going to be violent; it's only a matter of when, how much, and for how long. Kicking the can down the road puts "when" further away by making "how much" and "for how long" much worse.
But that’s how we solve every problem in life.
Something something always do the right then when we have no other choice.
i wish they would get violent and we would respond in kind with greater force. give me a reason to start shooting these stupid fucks. let's get this over with ffs.
I get what you're saying, though I would frame it differently.
Knowing that there will be fascist violence, sooner or later (and with the election in November, that's the cutoff date), I may be put in a position of protecting myself and others. I need to be prepared to do that protecting.
Rudy has already hinted at violence Republicans are priming the cult. Tonight the rural red folk are out at night practicing with their night scoped rifles. Prepare accordingly.
Good point, though I would counter that there's a lot of blustering about taking our country back but I haven't seen many serious attempts or people capable of actually planning and executing such a thing, and I've had a good bit of contact with what y'all would consider to be American far right rebels.
For all I know, the far righties talking about their revolution is about as productive as the tankies talking about theirs. Nobody sees a future in this country where the workers seize the means of production and we actually eat the rich, right?
Nobody sees a future in this country where the workers seize the means of production and we actually eat the rich, right?
Comrade, I think you might be lost. I'm confident there are plenty of people on Lemmy who 100% envision such a future -- I can't be the only one!
If the backlash is the scary imagine how frightening the presidency would be. Fucking cowards.
Remember how frightening the first one was. You know, with the Nazi "very fine people" and giving Putin a BJ on international TV and trying to destroy NATO and...
I also "fear backlash" if he runs and loses the election. He won't hesitate to get his followers to commit acts of violence. According to the logic of the "for fear of backlash we should allow him to run" people, we should just annoint Trump President for Life. After all, we can't do anything that might cause MAGA to become violent, right? /s
Pick your poison:
Backlash now from an angry mob
Full-swing shift into an oppressive authoritarian state once he’s elected
Many of these politicians are hoping that it will be someone else's problem.
For them, the poisons are:
A) Backlash now and get possibly killed
B) Meh. Let someone else deal with it after I retire
Keep in mind that in 2020, many of the Republican Secretaries of State were threatened for not giving the election to Trump. They did the right thing and got death threats over it.
When people stand their ground, we have to remember that they are the last line of defense against democracy. I don't say that lightly. Many Republicans saw the resistance and either replaced these people or wrote laws to make overturning an election easier.
If the Republicans see that they have lost, it won't be another January 6th. It will be a bloodless coup because they've already done the work to bring themselves into power.
And that's why this election is not only important but potentially dangerous. I don't know many liberals who are willing to put their lives on the line to stand up to fascism. Myself included. I'd like to believe I would. But I don't know if I could if it came down to it.
There won't be a " bloodless coup." It won't happen because there is only one president at a time, so no matter how the election goes, Biden sits alone at the levers of ultimate power until Trump is sworn in.
The only way a "bloodless coup" could happen is with the full foreknowledge and cooperation of the US military's senior officer corps, but that's impossible both because it's too difficult to coordinate, and because the senior officer corps absolutely despises Trump as a liar and a coward and for many other reasons that I'm sure will occur to you when you think back on his presidency.
He is widely seen as a gutless incompetent and deeply dishonorable idiot.
I don't know many liberals who are willing to put their lives on the line to stand up to fascism. Myself included. I'd like to believe I would. But I don't know if I could if it came down to it.
I'm with you on that. Honestly, I don't think I'd trust someone who sounded sure on that. They're either lying to themselves or a little too eager for violence.
Your comment is bang on. The rise of Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s should be mandatory reading for everyone. I bet less than 5% of the US population know how the Fascists came to power in Germany and Italy. Most people probably don't realize that Hitler was a populist who rose to power through legal means and then used a false flag operation to jail his opponents and seize power permanently, again using legal means. It would be all too easy for Trump to replicate that scenario if he gets the presidency again. If he gets elected legally (or at least with the appearance of legality), and then uses false flag operation to take out a good chunk of Congress, he could terrify the public and declare martial law. January 6 shows that he has the kind of supporters that would be willing to do something like that. In that scenario, even the US military probably wouldn't stop him.
We just need to rip the band-aid off and do it now before the election while we still have somebody semi-sensible in the Whitehouse, rather than wait for things to play out during the election. It's already going to be a chaotic time then, with everything being up in the air. Just push it now so we know what to expect walking into that shit. Otherwise we're going to be sleepwalking into that election potentially on the cusp of turning into a dictatorship virtually overnight.
No insurrectionists in any elected office. Makes perfect sense one would wish to have this key point in one's constitution, heck, even from the beginning. What about insurrectionists who were appointed by insurrectionist(s)? Seems pretty dubious. We need to either remove the insurrectionist appointees, or expand the SCOTUS to water down the insurrectionists in government. Putin must be chortling in his cocoa puffs.
Yes, we need to remove Scotus and retry all those cases
No insurrectionists in any elected office.
TBH in hindsight, this was only ever a milquetoast alternative to the gallows.
Imagine the alternative timeline in which confederate leaders didn't get to go back to their states and become governors, senators, KKK members, in which the confederacy didn't get to install one of their own by putting a bullet in Lincoln's brain, who would then subsequently veto legislation from congress that sought to prevent southern states from re-establishing with the same leadership that led up to the confederacy.
For that matter, Andrew Johnson as Lincoln's VP had every appearance of signaling a unity ticket (see? we will give concessions if you participate in good faith!) but in retrospect he was effectively the confederacy's deepest mole and most powerful enabler.
Imagine, if you will, the timeline in which confederate leaders were hanged and the confederacy was in fact dismantled vs. being protected from consequence
It boils down to this: You don't stop MAGA violence by giving in, but the opposite. You stop it by fighting back and holding people accountable. Removing Trump from the ballot, as the law requires, is a first step. It sends a strong message to MAGA: This is what happens when you use violence to get your way. By not taking his name off the ballot, states are signaling that they will accede to violent threats. We should not be surprised if rewarding MAGA violence means we see more of it.
Yeuup
Basically, for evil to success is needed that the good doesn't do anything.
Giving them concessions because you're afraid they'll act badly tells them to act badly when they want concessions.
The right course of action is to make acting badly (like participating in a coup, or engaging in political violence or threats of it) have painful consequences.
I have no idea why concessions are still being made to these assholes.
They're the political equivalent of the pan handlers you give five dollars to on the way into a gas station. And by the time you walk out they forgot you already gave them money and give you the same story.
They can get their way 99.99% of the time, but that 0.01% of the time you hold them to the same standard as everyone else, they start screaming they're being persecuted.
Fuck em. They act the same no matter what so just don't give them anything. It's still the same amount of terroristic threats in the end.
getting more than everyone else and then crying oppression is baked into conservative dna. it's the essence of the movement.
Whatever happened to not negotiating with terrorists? These people are terrorists. If they break the law, charge them for their crimes.
They're all domestic terrorists, they admitted as much at CPAC; I have no idea why anyone is willing to negotiate or even take them at their word.
Awful lot of extra words for "terrorists".
Because that's exactly what they are threatening, doxing, death threat, shooting up clubs hell even tried to attack the FBi and of course the attempt to overthrow the government..... Literally the most successful terrorist there ever was and we still won't call it at face value for what the maga group is....
https://apnews.com/article/fbi-cincinnati-armed-man-b4701596a0eb9770e3b29e95328f5704
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/blame-abc-news-finds-17-cases-invoking-trump/story?id=58912889
Literally the most successful terrorist there ever was
Definitely not. He wasn't successful at all.
Terrorism is to drive change and action through the threat of terror/fear etc.
He's not in jail, his blinded followers barely got punished for the severity of their crimes and we are all sitting here talking about if it's democratic to not put him in the ballot and fucking contemplating the very real prospect of a "one day dictator"
What other terrorist group has driven so much change in their favor? Do we all think Binladin was maybe on to something? How about ISIS ..?
He is closest to really overthrowing this whole ship, unless maybe we all vote for the oldest president there ever was....
We are on a knifes edge and it's fucking horrifying and baffling. This isn't 2020 we all know the "it will never happen" thoughts of trump getting elected were wrong and we shouldn't delude ourselves with thinking this will never happen either..... The highest court in the land is stacked and taking bribes now openly with no consequences, our past president almost assuredly sold nuclear secrets and still lives and allowed to fuck this whole country.... What higher power do you think is soundly going to hold people accountable and uphold the law, cause I don't see it.
I don't think it's entirely about "fear of backlash". I think the real fear people are expressing is the fear of the election appearing rigged, Ahmadinejad-style. If the Republicans nominate Trump, and he goes unconsidered with "unknown numbers" of write-in votes in enough states to affect the election, he would obviously argue that he actually won on votes and might even be convincing to non-Republicans.
When the Colorado Supreme Court decided against Trump, it was a split decision by an all-Democrat panel that questioned what "due process" should be on the matter. There's so many ways that this can be spun nationally or internationally by the modern equivalent of the way the South created sympathy through propaganda after the Civil War that survives today. Hundreds of millions of people throughout the world will likely question the legitimacy of the president or US elections after this matter no matter who wins or how chips fall.
BUT, there's also no right answer, and none of the above reasons are sufficient to just put Trump back on the ballot and hope. It should never have gotten to this. Someone that is publicly believed by a significant percent of America to not be eligible should not have party support in the first place. And if it did, Congress should have stepped in before now.
Ultimately, the Republicans are again objectively hurting America for their own agenda.
If Republicans want a candidate on the ballot, they can nominate someone who didn't start an insurrection. They have no shortage of choices for other candidates. If anything, that's why the rulings should be laid out right now before the Republican Iowa Caucus.
In a vacuum, I could see the point of the world not seeing the US President as being democratically elected. In practice, this is only going to be an issue for countries that have their own problems with fascist political parties, and I'm not inclined to care.
I think it's far simpler than that. Biden doesn't win 2024 if his opponent isn't Trump, his entire campaign message is designed to go head to head with Trump and only Trump. The dems don't want him to be removed from enough ballots that someone else wins the republican primary.
I fear allowing the ignorant and uneducated to be part of the conversation.
Donald Trump is not qualified to be considered a decent human being let alone president.
It becomes a reason if it were to work... - hence why they keep trotting it out I suppose, just to see what sticks.
If the only backlash there is to fear is death, then I have nothing to lose.
fear of backlash
negotiating with terrorists
corporate wants you to find the difference between these this picture and this picture
I honestly believe taking Trump off would hurt Biden. I feel there's a reasonable number who are looking at voting for him because he's not Trump.
The "backlash" will be that the people that take him off the ballot may end up being murdered. Or their family might be killed. Or both. Sure, maybe it's the duty of the secretary of state in each state to remove him from the ballot. But would you be willing to do that if it was likely someone would try to murder you? And consider for a moment that it's likely that a significant number of cops that you might expect would protect you probably sympathize with political violence in favor of Trump.
Those are the stakes for the people that need to remove him from the ballot.
Are you ready and willing to fight? Because you might have to.
EDIT: People seem to think that my comment about getting ready to fight is in support of Trump. It's not. If you believe in this 250-year experiment in Democracy, you might have to be willing to fight--as in, with guns and bullets--to preserve it, and that means fighting against the Trump followers that want to end democracy for a totalitarian gov't. It happened in Germany in the 20s and 30s; don't think that it can't happen here.
This is why Mexican politicians kowtow to the cartels.
I thought America was better than this.
We had four years of a populist far-right president that brought out the very worst in his cultists. The only reason we were (past tense) better than this was because we believed we were.
If I took an oath of office you bet your ass I’d be willing. That’s what it means to serve your country in office. If you aren’t willing to uphold your oath, resign.
I would hold no ill will to any person who resigned their position because they are unwilling but if you want to do the job, do it.
Would you though? Would you really? If you got a email of a photo of your family getting out of their car at Target or Walmart, would you really think, yeah, I'm willing to trade the life of my spouse and kids for this job? Would you be willing to do it that if you took it to the police and they just shrugged and said they didn't see anything actionable? The fact that we haven't heard of political figures being assassinated by Trump supporters yet doesn't mean that it's not going to happen; religious fanatics have blown up doctors offices and killed doctors to 'save babies', and Trump cultists literally believe he was chosen by their god to rule.
If Jan 6 shows any indication, a simple police presence will be enough to stop most violence and the outliers will be found.
I think this is a lot more true than many people here suspect. What we're realistically looking at is relatively low-intensity insurrection on the level of, say, Northern Ireland during the height of The Troubles. It's still a very bad thing, but it's not existential and if the comparison to The Troubles is accurate, the violence will mostly target federal law enforcement and any military that's brought to bear should Biden invoke the insurrection act.
The real existential threat is Trump actually winning another term.
Trump miscalculated. He thought Pence was spineless. Had Pence stopped the transition as they wanted and instead assisted with the fake electors they created and intended to deliver that day the insurrection would likely have worked. Trumps lawyer has already agreed to testify about the faked electors, and we know Pence got thrown off that day and then thrown to the wolves. I think Trump wanted the crowds of his followers there so when they submitted the fake electors and denounced the official vote he could have video of "everyone" cheering on live TV and he could look like he stopped a stolen election while he himself stole it. Narcissistic idea one might say.
This is an opinion piece from someone who thinks they know better than the entirety of the US judicial body. You can skip this one.
What Judicial body? Every currently standing ruling regarding the merits of Trump's eligibility to be president under the 14th amendment have found that he is not eligible (although all are still in limbo pending the inevitable SCOTUS appeal). There is a colorable technical argument to be made that he is not excluded, but most of the legal community is not convinced by them.
The legal arguments about his eligibility to appear on the primary ballot are more nuanced, but seem kind of silly if he ultimately is inneligable to hold the office.
The states that have ruled that Trump can remain on the primary ballot all did so on some sort of procedural ground. Typically of the form "state law does not require a candidate to be elligable to hold office to appear on a primary ballot". In fairness to those states' lawmakers, what sort of braindead political party would try nominating someone who was inneligable to hold office?
Whenever someone devises a system to be foolproof, someone goes out and finds a greater fool. The Republican party is nothing if not overflowing with greater fools
It's going to get fucky, because no presidential candidate is actually on a citizen's ballot. We don't vote for the named candidate; we vote for a panel of unnamed electors pledged (but not obligated) to support the named candidate.
We need to be talking about "faithless electors" and the "National Popular Vote Interstate Compact", as the conditions are ripe for these to play a major role in the next election.
Do any of you that let this man live rent free in your head realize he hasn't been CONVICTED of anything that would invalidate his candidacy? Indicted =/= guilty.
It's always hilarious when someone pulls the "you let this guy live rent free in your head" card about the greatest current threat to American democracy. Yes, we should just pretend he doesn't exist. It's almost always followed by one or more arguments that show they lack even a surface level understanding of the details of the situation. This post manages to live up to that 'standard'.
This is what happens when you have an uneducated populace. A lack of critical thinking skills leads to the adoption of nonsensical viewpoints based on emotion instead of reason. When those viewpoints are challenged, they're similarly met with typically meaningless, emotion-driven responses (a la "he lives in your mind rent free") as the adopters lack the capacity to respond with reason.
The amendment says nothing about criminal conviction
They would just move the goalposts after any conviction anyway.
Indeed. It was specifically written to be self-executing because it would have been impossible to charge, try and convict all of the tens of thousands of former Confederate officers it was meant to bar from federal office. Because it's self-executing, a simple finding of fact is sufficient for it to apply. The question then isn't whether it requires a conviction, but rather whether it applies to Trump.
To me it pretty obviously does apply to him, but I'm definitely biased as fuck.
The 14th is self-executing which means that you don't have to be convicted in order to be disqualified. The reason it's self-executing is that it was originally designed to prohibit former Confederate officers from holding federal office, and since there was no way that every one of the tens of thousands of former Confederate officers could be tried and convicted, it was written to be self-executing meaning that a simple finding of fact rather than a conviction was sufficient to bar one from running for federal office.
Now, you may not like that and if you're a constitutional scholar you may even have some decent arguments as to why it doesn't apply to Trump, but leaving that aside, you are absolutely full of shit when you imply that he needs to be convicted before the 14th applies. That's why it's a question for the SCOTUS and not random idiots like yourself.
Sorry for being a dick, I'm just tired of this stupid phony talking point.
if it's so "self executing" why does SCOTUS need to hear it? some people are just so blinded by hate they can't comprehend that things in this country are not guilty until proven innocent. but no one will convince you of that.
Lol a presidential candidate for one of two major parties I'm the most powerful country in the world threatens to literally be fascist and go after political opponents from day 1 .
Right wing morons:
ReNt FrEe!!11!