old salt wrote: ↑Wed May 29, 2019 3:37 pm
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed May 29, 2019 2:48 pm
CU77 wrote: ↑Wed May 29, 2019 2:38 pm
It's becoming ever more clear (at least to me) that we no longer live in a democracy.
As has happened before in many other countries, a strongman has risen to the highest position of political leadership, and commands a majority of one of the key legislative bodies (the one that does not have proportional representation). He has also stacked the highest court with enough cronies (with more to come) to get a favorable (to him) decision on any case he cares about, and is busy cramming the lower courts with still more cronies. His loyal apparatchiks at lower levels of government paved the way for him (and continue to pave it) by rigging voter registration, district maps, and election rules in his favor, by enough to overcome the fact that he is supported by only about 40% of the voting (under fair rules, anyway) population. But this is more than enough to keep him and his family and his hand-picked successors in power forever.
I see no way to recover from this.
RIP, USA.
Let's hope Constitutional self-correction doesn't come too late.
Otherwise, you'll be right.
Congress could save the Republic immediately, if it actually was in jeopardy.
Failing that, the people decide again in just 17 mos. Both are Constitutional.
I agree, both are Constitutional.
But neither can be assumed to get it done.
CU77 is describing an environment in which partisanship has become so extreme that a minority of the population actually ensures an authoritarian outcome.
Frog is in warm water, then hot, then boiling water...too late to jump out.
We may already be boiling and it's too late.
Right now, McConnell has made eminently clear that there is no level to which he will not sink in defense of his partisan objective. His comment yesterday admitting, with a smirk, that he'd of course pass a Trump SCOTUS nominee through in an election year is just the latest evidence.
So, we're faced with a near certainty that the House would easily achieve an impeachment indictment, but an equally likely lack of a conviction in the Senate. It could get close, but the reality of the partisan dynamics right now, the fear of being primaried on the right, is that 60%, even 70%, of Americans could ultimately favor impeachment and removal and the GOP Senate would still fall well short.
And we have a current reality that there's no GOP politician nor set of GOP politicians who, no matter how much they felt Trump should resign and not force them to vote, to whom Trump would actually listen. He's not leaving, period.
And we also have a situation in which it's quite clear that the GOP will go to absolutely ANY lengths to achieve an Electoral College majority.
The latter is not entirely assured, but the set-up is in place to have epic levels of electioneering fraud, machine tampering, voter suppression, and an open invitation to the dictators of the world currying favor to help support the Trump Campaign.
What happens if it's even remotely close?
For the reasons I just laid out, I would expect the Electoral College situation to be close even if Trump only wins 40% of the national vote.
And close could then get bumped to SCOTUS.
God help us if the Dem wins a landslide of votes, but the Electoral College is secured through fraud and/or SCOTUS.
Trump unleashed.
Frog dead.