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[Rolan7]

I think the most dangerous part of Trump refusing to concede is a lack of a briefing to the incoming president.  While if I understand correctly trump made a token appearance of cooperation, Biden has been excluded from every important briefing, which seems unusual.
 
Though admittedly trump himself has not been attending them either, according to what I've been hearing.  Trump supposedly won't even be present for the inauguration, instead opting to throw a pity party for himself down here in Florida.  And he certainly doesn't seem to be doing the job he wants to keep so much, I've seen more unique images of Donald Trump golfing that I've seen of him speaking to the country as a leader since the election, and I'm counting those speeches where he claims the democrats cheated, because he cheated so hard that the only way democrats won was if they cheated too.

He's spent more time golfing than Obama, which is a rich hypocrisy considering specific accusations he made, but to be fair he calls those "working vacations" and I'm sure he does talk to people during them.  As Obama did.

He even paid lots of money! /s

I see the /s but I still want to say, he didn't pay lots of money.  He convinced a lot of cities to give him loans so he could do a rally in their cities, and has refused to pay up.  He also got the post office to send out a lot of mail for him that he also refuses to pay for.  Its partially why when he paid for the recounts(that he lost lol) he had to pay up front.

It's mindboggling to me that anyone would loan Trump any amount of money at this point, or even do work for him without money up front.  He was already infamous for stiffing contractors and creditors long before his Presidential run, so it should surprise no one.

I'm not sure I like the idea of calling this a coup.  He has a right to contest the election results, and thus far he has done so legally(by all appearances anyway).  He is definitely toeing the line with his posturing and public appearances, and by not conceding defeat, and it's certainly not good for the country, but calling it an attempted coup? Nah, I don't buy the hype. 

I could be wrong, he could tell his proud boys to storm the capital tomorrow or order the military to mass to defend the white house from 'traitors' in January.  But I think he is simply trying to divide the country politically for either his own ends to make more people to buy his book, or for the republican party to somehow get an advantage out of this.  I think all the news people calling this a coup are just trying to get clicks.  If he wanted to coup, he would have done so before members of his own party started bailing.

The legal challenges are fine.  Legally challenging is fine.  The ones his team keep raising are groundless or misformed, which is why they keep getting dismissed out of hand.  But there's nothing stopping him from blowing donations on a shocking display of incompetence.

What's not okay is the lies.  There's a vast gulf between what Giuliani was saying at press releases, and then actually arguing in court.  Trump's legal team told the public that the Dominion machines were designed to win elections for commies like Castro, and now for Biden.  That's utter bullshit, but they said it from the bully pulpit, and the main consequences were that people laughed at Giuliani's hair dye and maybe he caught Corona.  We laugh off the lying because we're so used to it, but some people truly believe it.

Laws against slander are tricky for obvious reasons.  But it was slander, it was a direct attack on American Democracy, and it's not okay.  I'm not calling for legal action, but the public should revile these actions.

[Bumber]

By all means, celebrate; just a reminder that fash rarely step down willingly.

Spoiler: It can be tricky this time of year: (click to show/hide)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

An excellent summation of where we are now.

[Starver]

It echoes (though not the way I'd present it) the need for the Democrats to break the whole ORBIT class out of their state of delusion/self-delusion/deluding. But hopefully without also morphing them into, say, "RABIDs" (Rallying After Biden, Incidentally Democrats[1]) or we end up with similar issues. Perhaps worse if Biden succumbs to the social flattery and turns Competent-Evil somehow.  As seems proven, RABIDs did not spring up already to directly oppose all the ORBITs, so I think the "anything but centrist" pool mentioned at one point in the article is already mostly used up in populating the right-end fanaticism.  Those wildcards just haven't been as invested in the Bernie end (well, not since it stopped being a practical result to aim for).

I disagree a tad with the brief mention about Russia and 2016. Their efforts (social hacking, certainly, whether or not any technical interference happened) were likely aimed at muddying the waters, presuming a Clinton win that they would have weakened, not actually/supposedly aimed at a Trump win. Though I'm not sure the Twitter Collectives even bothered to put a budget request into the main Moscow finance department specifically to run the 2020 electoral Troll Farms, because the chaos was already there. It'd have been a side-project at best.

(Could have done with another proof-read. A couple of homophonic errors slipped through. )


[1] My own construction just this moment. I'm sure there'll be better coinages made should the need arise to coin something.

[martinuzz]

Holy shit, Flynn is really cuckookachingching crazy.

He wants Trump to instate martial law under the Insurrection Act, by equalling the 'massive election fraud' to 'rebellion', and then hold new elections supervised by the army.

[nenjin]

Well at least they've dropped the pretense that they consider the Trump presidency as anything other than an Authoritarian Dictatorship.

[Telgin]

Maybe we'll see Trump removed from office ahead of schedule if he does try something insane like that.

[MrRoboto75]

Maybe we'll see Trump removed from office ahead of schedule if he does try something insane like that.

The day Trump faces basic negative consequences for his actions is the day pigs fly south because hell froze over.

[Random_Dragon]

This is why I don't consider the election to be over until Trump is actually, formally out of office. There's still room for shenanigans, however unlikely they may be to succeed. I think I hit upon a good metaphor for why this presents a bigger long-term threat to democracy than the actual attempt to hold onto power.

In this case, we have a lot of these institutions that're being tested to their limit. Institutions that, in most cases, are upheld by tradition and this idea of "the way democracy works" with the underlying legal framework not really seeing as much use. But, if those traditions are defied and the legal backing has to actually be utilized, that leaves the flaws in that legal framework exposed for future exploitation by more competent people.

I would take the transition of the Roman Republic into the Empire as a good example of this. Everyone thinks of the period of Julius Caesar and Emperor Augustus, but that's not the example I'd use. Instead I'd say the more fitting metaphor would be the period a century or more before that. The proscriptions, the Social Wars, the assassination of the Gracchi brothers, etc. The Roman Republic presents a solid example of a political institution where its checks and balances were carried by tradition with a legal framework backing things up. And when people defied those traditions, that exposed the legal framework's flaws and inadequacies, showing what ways one could get around those laws as well as revealing which laws are enforceable.

If it gets to the point where representatives are committing what would potentially qualify as sedition, and our ability to actually strip power from a president when their term ends is tested, it doesn't matter at all if the outcome is a failure or not. We've already gone past the point where tradition is no longer going to stop bad actors from acting in an undemocratic matter, and can now see just what laws will prove vulnerable to loopholes or unenforceable.

Worse, the 14th amendment discussion is a catch-22. If we give any clemency to the people actively pushing for installing a dictatorship, they learn that committing sedition doesn't carry actual consequences, and will regard the law as unenforceable should someone more competent end up in a position to try a proper coup. If we do punish them the way they deserve, that just sets a precedent for yet another method of political purges (see mention of proscriptions in the Roman Republic, above) that could then be legally abused by others later on.

[LordBaal]

Honestly, you guys have the luck of having separation of power in place, what happened with the Texas demand proves it. So is highly unlikely anything serious will happen, and at this rate Trump is in fact burning himself more and more making his chances of combe back in 2024 slimers.

[Zangi]

Make up random dirt.  Repeat it again and again and again with fire and conviction, blaming conspiracy masterminded by target / other side if lies are pushed back on. 
Use it as actionable excuse to legally abuse set precedent once your followers starts rabidly believing it after weeks of bombardment.

[Lord Shonus]

Separation of powers has been tested to the very limit this administration. It has held, and Biden's smart enough a politician that he's not going to strain it further. That gives us a chance to reinforce the protections (especially if we can get the Democrats to look past "we're in charge now" and recognize that crippling Executive power is good in the long run), but it isn't a magic bullet.

[nenjin]

I'd like to think that Democrats have to equal Trump's bluster and disregard for overall public opinion if they want to expand on what he's done. And I don't really see Biden doing that. Not because he wouldn't because it goes against his principles, just that he can't really pull off the same smug "I don't really care what the electorate thinks" attitude that Trump has embodied. He and his administration would have this crippling need to explain and justify their decisions, which means dialog of some kind, which immediately erodes their ability to act unilaterally because they bothered to acknowledge that someone might disagree with them.

[Starver]

Not the most disruptive thing from them, but "...outgoing US administration is in talks with the UK to try to seal a mini-deal to reduce trade tariffs...". It's quite obvious this is the Scorched Earth effort to sour the situation ahead of Biden.

There are those in the UK will cheer this, but I can't see it turning out well either by being stiffed by Trump (as already hinted) or the confusion as Biden has to run through the swathes of "little brown parcels" he will leave metaphorically lying around the West Wing and at least put the brakes on a bit.


(The quote "both the US and the UK - particularly the current government of the UK - are not big subsidisers, where some other countries are more inclined to subsidise" is particularly galling. The Brexit gang were always complaining we couldn't subsidise various industries because of the EU, and it formed a significant part of the reasons to Leave that they would have done if they could. Doubtless some believed this, but of course it's 'too late' for their own industry of personal interest in the several such cases involved.)

[TD1]

Well yes, why not cheer it?

Biden wants Britain to come last in trade talks and refused to talk to a BBC reporter because "I'm Irish".