Barton Gellman is a staff writer for The Atlantic. He is amazingly prescient. Right before the election of 2020, he wrote an ominous article speculating that Trump, if the election results were close, might refuse to concede. He foresaw the chaos that Trump would indeed unleash, undermining the integrity of the election, which is the central mechanism of democracy.
Now he has written an equally astonishing article in The Atlantic, in which he warns that “Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun.” He summarizes Trump’s strategy to overturn the election of 2020 by trying to persuade Republican legislatures to overturn the popular vote (if the Democratic candidate wins it) and submit slates of Trump electors for certification by Congress.
Trump put pressure on Republican state officials in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia to override the popular vote, but that didn’t work. Then he tried to stall the certification of the election on January 6 to buy time to get some of those states to withdraw their certification of Biden’s victory. One of his clown-car lawyers, Sidney Powell, appealed to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on January 5 to halt the official count the next day, hoping to buy time to turn a few states. And of course, Trump pressured Vice President Pence to stop the vote or allow Trump allies to filibuster the count.
The article may be behind a paywall. I subscribe to The Atlantic, so I don’t know. or, the magazine may allow you to read it for free.
Gellman analyzes the ideology of the Trump zealots. Their unifying bond is their belief that they (white patriots) are being replaced by non-whites and Jews. He calls it “The Great Replacement” and reminds us of the white nationalists and fascists who marched in Charlottesville and chanted, ”The Jews will not replace us.”
Gellman describes in detail the actions by Republican legislatures to take control of the vote in 2024, so there won’t be a repeat of 2020. The new laws allow the legislatures to ignore the popular vote and choose the electors themselves. So if a Democratic candidate wins a Republican controlled state, the legislature has given itself the power to choose electors who will cast the state’s electoral vote for the Republican candidate.
He sounds a warning:
A year ago I asked the Princeton historian Kevin Kruse how he explained the integrity of the Republican officials who said no, under pressure, to the attempted coup in 2020 and early ’21. “I think it did depend on the personalities,” he told me. “I think you replace those officials, those judges, with ones who are more willing to follow the party line, and you get a different set of outcomes.”
Today that reads like a coup plotter’s to-do list. Since the 2020 election, Trump’s acolytes have set about methodically identifying patches of resistance and pulling them out by the roots. Brad Raffensperger in Georgia, who refused to “find” extra votes for Trump? Formally censured by his state party, primaried, and stripped of his power as chief election officer. Aaron Van Langevelde in Michigan, who certified Biden’s victory? Hounded off the Board of State Canvassers. Governor Doug Ducey in Arizona, who signed his state’s “certificate of ascertainment” for Biden? Trump has endorsed a former Fox 10 news anchor named Kari Lake to succeed him, predicting that she “will fight to restore Election Integrity (both past and future!).” Future, here, is the operative word. Lake says she would not have certified Biden’s victory in Arizona, and even promises to revoke it (somehow) if she wins. None of this is normal.
Arizona’s legislature, meanwhile, has passed a law forbidding Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state, to take part in election lawsuits, as she did at crucial junctures last year. The legislature is also debating an extraordinary billasserting its own prerogative, “by majority vote at any time before the presidential inauguration,” to “revoke the secretary of state’s issuance or certification of a presidential elector’s certificate of election.” There was no such thing under law as a method to “decertify” electors when Trump demanded it in 2020, but state Republicans think they have invented one for 2024.
In at least 15 more states, Republicans have advanced new laws to shift authority over elections from governors and career officials in the executive branch to the legislature. Under the Orwellian banner of “election integrity,” even more have rewritten laws to make it harder for Democrats to vote. Death threats and harassment from Trump supporters have meanwhile driven nonpartisan voting administrators to contemplate retirement…
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, excommunicated and primaried at Trump’s behest for certifying Biden’s victory, nonetheless signed a new law in March that undercuts the power of the county authorities who normally manage elections. Now a GOP-dominated state board, beholden to the legislature, may overrule and take control of voting tallies in any jurisdiction—for example, a heavily Black and Democratic one like Fulton County. The State Election Board can suspend a county board if it deems the board to be “underperforming” and replace it with a handpicked administrator. The administrator, in turn, will have final say on disqualifying voters and declaring ballots null and void. Instead of complaining about balls and strikes, Team Trump will now own the referee….
The Justice Department has filed suit to overturn some provisions of the new Georgia law—but not to challenge the hostile takeover of election authorities. Instead, the federal lawsuit takes issue with a long list of traditional voter-suppression tactics that, according to Attorney General Merrick Garland, have the intent and effect of disadvantaging Black voters. These include prohibitions and “onerous fines” that restrict the distribution of absentee ballots, limit the use of ballot drop boxes, and forbid handing out food or water to voters waiting in line. These provisions make it harder, by design, for Democrats to vote in Georgia. The provisions that Garland did not challenge make it easier for Republicans to fix the outcome. They represent danger of a whole different magnitude…
There is a clear and present danger that American democracy will not withstand the destructive forces that are now converging upon it. Our two-party system has only one party left that is willing to lose an election. The other is willing to win at the cost of breaking things that a democracy cannot live without.
Democracies have fallen before under stresses like these, when the people who might have defended them were transfixed by disbelief. If ours is to stand, its defenders have to rouse themselves.
Please read this article.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Just as almost all racists (George Wallace, Donald Trump) are self-described as “not racists,” almost all fascist states have “democratic elections.”
So here we are.
Republicans should look at the company they are keeping.
Oh, btw, why did Stalin fail in school?
Poor Marx.
Very funny. Marx is a mystery to me. His idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat seems to suggest the coming of a Stalin-like figure, but he somehow seemed to see a path beyond Stalin.
It is not so much a joke as an observation, but I often wondered why Marx failed in his predictions about European 19th century capitalism. When we study this matter, I always suggest to my students that Marx failed in his predictions because he did not anticipate trade unions as a force. Perhaps he also underestimated the power of Eurpean tribalism that allowed for the exploitation of the easy resources of the world, making Europe wealthy.
Montesquieu correctly identified power centers that pushed against each other, a model that took into account the real presence of multiple powers within human political interaction. Marx seems to me to be too attached to the Hegelian dialectic to realize the complexity of political relationships. In short, Marx failed Montesquieu. I guess he got poor marx.
I am probably wrong. I usually am, and I enjoy being corrected. I was surprised yesterday to discover that some of the observations about the effect of the discovery of the use of fire by early humans go back to the writings of Fredrick Engels, Marx’s fellow philosopher. So there is always much to learn.
He got poor Marx because he de-Ф-ied (dephied) his teachers
De-Ф-ed
All Ф’s for JoseФ Stalin
How dare you de-Ф me?
Your teacher, your mentor
A “Ф” will I give thee
For being dissenter
I knew the Russian I took in high school would eventually be useful for something.
But I can honestly say this is the first time I have used it since then.
What the successor to Glorious Leader will look like: “O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain! My tables!—Meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”
If only he had the opportunity to see Duck Soup. How different history might have been.
Roy, it you have time and interest on Marx, this is a really good one, in my opinion a fantastic biography that puts it into lay context is Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life by Jonathan Sperber. Think about checking it out. I think it clearly answers the questions you pose and prompt above.
Thanks, Greg. I could use some scholarly reading on Marx.
Actually, I like it so much because it’s not (too) scholarly. First book I ever read about Marx that treats him like a human being, describes the context and inconstancies of his life, and provides a great introduction he was nothing like the man whose ideas were being appropriated.
Thanks for the recommendation, Greg.
A very important question is, why would tens of millions of Americans vote for an obvious clown, phony and fraud like Donald Trump. He has a clear track record of being a despicable human being on so many levels whose guiding “principles” are greed, lust and megalomania. What’s next, electing a rabid pit bull to be president? It would be an improvement over Trump. The good news is that Biden won in the latest election cycle, so there is hope for the country. The bad news is that Trump or some other GOP gargoyle (DeSantis?) could win in 2024.
I cannot understand the loyalty of Trump’s base. Trump is the ultimate user. He is a silver spoon trust fund brat that would sell out his supporters in a heartbeat if it benefited him personally.
As for the Democrats they need to hurry up to stop this “slow moving coup” and figure out how to pass an ironclad voting rights bill before the midterms. The right will stop at nothing to win.
And how can so many of those same people be so nice? Many of the Trump supporters I know would give you the shirt off their back. Last weekend at a fund raiser, I got an answer of sorts. I got a ride in a car with one of the best helpers at our event. His radio was tuned to Super Talk Radio. I think you can tell a lot about a guy from what he listens to. This radio format is nation wide, and teaches people to be tribal. The message is pretty simple: fear the “others.”
I periodically listen to these shows when I drive to study the mind-set of the listeners. The other day one of the hosts was telling of a vandalism that tore down Christmas decorations of some sort. In a whining voice, he explained that this act, committed on a Hanukkah or Kwanzaa decoration, would have brought down charges of “hate crime.” His logic: It is OK to desecrate Christians, not the “others.”
I will not even point out the ludicrous nature of this logic. What I will point out is that those not attuned to the intellectual sleight of hand used by the Limbaughists do not even recognize that they have been had. They buy into this logic because they already have the human tendency to be tribal. My people are good. They can be any color as long as I know them and know they are my creed, so I must not be a racist. My creed might be religious, but it is social too, and all who conform are my people. If I do not know you, you are not my people until you have proved you belong to my tribe.
I live in an area in which Sinclair Broadcasting operates the local stations. They feature a lot of stories the engender fear and mistrust. It seems to be a common right wing message.
Ironically, tribalism is the thing that has made specific human groups very successful , but it may very well be the thing that eventually leads to human extinction.
yes
SDP: I have often argued that the quality that made some civilization great in history was the same quality that doomed that civilization. I think this is one of the central themes of human history.
Rome prospered because of its propensity to organize and engineer, but that same ability led to the death of its Republic, its unwieldy Empire, and its ultimate demise.
Happens all the time
The key difference from the past, of course, is that battles between nuclear armed tribes could easily lead to The End — and not just of Empire or even “just” of Civilization.
Many people believe that the nuclear Armageddon threat went away with the fall of the Soviet union. But they are very wrong in that belief. Particularly since WWIII might be started between nuclear states other than the US and Russia. Started, at least.
When Italy, Germany, & Japan became fascist and tried to defeat the “democratic” world–killing or torturing everyone or group in their way–the USA, Britain, France, Canada, Australia, etc.–and yes, Russia–stood in the way and ultimately defeated that fascism. If WE–the most powerful nation in the history of the world–become fascist, who is to stop that new totalitarianism? If we become Hitler, who will be FDR? God help this planet and the people on it!
And yet we were and are forced to accept totalitarian rulers after the defeat of the Axis powers that are Hitlerian. God help is indeed.
If God allows the US to become fascist, God is certainly not going to help anyone fight the fascists.
There would be no logic to that.
Oh, never mind.
The Buffet Theory of Religion
God helps those
Who help themselves
Like, I suppose
The Hitler elves
Who piled their plate
With Jewish fate
And swallowed whole
The lives they stole
You clearly aren’t aware of the clear fact that always chooses sides, Bob Dylan explained it to me. But I somehow listen to Buddy’s more.
Y’all clearly don’t understand. Glorious Leader Who Shines More Orange Than Does the Sun embodies, instantiates, the Will of the People. So, all this holding elections is REDUNDANT–unnecessary faddle. That’s why we adopted the gerrymandering systems here in the United States–to dispense with such nonsense when it comes to Congressional elections.
“When they disrespect me, they disrespect the government.”
“Then I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President, but, I don’t even talk about that.”
–Glorious Leader
Or, as the previous Sun King said, “l’état, c’est moi.”
Interesting reference you make to Louis XIV. His policy arguably left France a hanging fruit for revolution 74 years after he died. Sic Semper Tyrannis. He told his young grandson, the eventual Louis XV he should endeavor to help his people, not make war as he himself had done. Alas, Louis XV was unable to understand, and his incompetent grandson, perhaps not such a bad guy but certainly not worthy to be a king, lost his head.
There is another question here. Do the Trumpists really want Trump himself? In any movement involving power (all national politics)nthere are always pretenders to the throne. Are there people who would undermine Trump to move the body politic even farther to the right than Trump is willing to go? Is there a political equivalent to Alex Jones out there waiting to get his Brown Shirts together and go after Trump’s base, now perfectly willing to accept strange assertions as truth?
I could see a scenario where some wingnut assassinates Trump with the idea of fomenting a disturbance built around the hatred of the perpetrator. It may sound outlandish, but much stranger things preceded the Nazi takeover in Germany.
Hint: The name begins with D and has a serpentine hiss at the end.
I am not suggesting that anyone is planning anything so nefarious as what Roy is suggesting, though this would make a great premise for a novel. I expect, rather, that current Glorious Leader will be elevated to whitewashed Founding Father of the New American Reich–that The Don will be sidelined by age and ill health and then have a makeover as the central figure of the new national origin/rebirth story, as Ronnie Reagan was remade by his conservative hagiographers, his virulent racism and tickle-down economic fantasy and treasonous sale of arms to Iran forgotten.
CHAP. XVII.: Of the executive Power in the same Republic.
The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu (London: T. Evans, 1777), 4 vols. Vol. 1.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/montesquieu-complete-works-vol-1-the-spirit-of-laws#Montesquieu_0171-01_1330
JEALOUS as the people were of their legislative power, yet they had no great uneasiness about the executive. This they left almost intirely to the senate and to the consuls, reserving scarce any thing more to themselves than the right of choosing the magistrates, and of confirming the acts of the senate and of the generals.
–From Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws Book XI
This interpretation of the Roman loss of liberty haunts me. It sounds so much like us.
!!!!
Historically, reactionaries have tried to isolate others. Today, they have it figured out. It’s about isolating yourselves so comfortably and securely, that it really doesn’t matter what others say. They got the power and the legal justification to not give it up for generations, or at least so they have reasoned. And by what one sees, I think they’re betting on a winning horse.
I am convinced that the fascist takeover of the United States will be complete by January 2025, that it will be orderly, that it will be considered a part of the restored history of the peaceful transition of power. It will be buttressed and solidified by state legislatures who act based on narrow directives from nebulous, cartel-like sources, ensuring another layer of national legislation to manipulate the police power—which I clearly remember as being defined by an exceptional teacher of state and local government as “the power to regulate for the health, safety, morals, and general welfare of the public.” That’s quite some power! It will enforce public mythologies at the local level through local school boards mandating heavily-slanted policies favoring some students of some over others, but always finding legal justification for both. Local police forces will selectively administer their improvised view of the laws and local courts will support them. After all, juries have been pre-fixed, as it were, and the judges are in on the ruse.
Pliant enlisted men, officers and a few well placed generals will provide a threat of enforcement that everyone will understand and few will challenge. Indeed, they will continue to be thanked for their service, get on planes first, and be offered discounts at businesses everywhere. Think of an East German death strip that’s invisible, rarely experienced, unnoticeably prevalent, and without the visible infrastructure or drama. And if you’re one of those who see it, where could you run if one could not afford to leave the country? Perhaps when all is solidified, certain cities will be given limited, “looney” self government. Places like Austin, Asheville, New Orleans, Providence, Sedona, and most of Vermont could become Las Vegas-style enclaves of temporary escape to the arts, culture, race, lefties, gender, whatever.
And they won’t mind “public debate.” Criticism from the Left won’t matter and will actually, ironically, benefit them. It will harden the opposition and make them easier to mock and make their language meaningless. They’ll have their indisputable, invincible counterpart. Now that I’m occasionally in hotels again, I’ll watch Fox for 5-10 minutes just to get a bitter flavor. No matter what time you tune in, the topics will either be easily disproved lies or absolutely inane things about which a person with at least one synapse will realize are fluff. That will be our national news, or at least THE official news through which we will better be able to decipher the motives and actions of the ruling and governing classes. Not that we would be able to do anything about it. Oh, and at the local level, these people will foolishly expose themselves by writing letters to the editor, putting our political yard signs, and other stupid things that just make them easier to identify.
Why am I so pessimistic? Look around, it proceeds unabated, despite public outcry, despite a presidency and House majority, and occasional judicial victories. It proceeds because public ignorance and indifference to people who are not like them, especially among whites, is becoming great. They are completely unaware of what is going on around them. They are the types of citizens China wants. They are the kind of people who make authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and fascism possible. Mainly because they don’t know that those word or concepts mean. Just like with communism, labor unions, voting, socialism, capitalism, mixed economy, and so on. All of these words will become meaningless. Oh, and they’ll own all the mechanisms of governing, regardless of what the actual population of the United States is or ever will be. Never forgot that little tidbit. That’s why you won’t really hear a whimper when the fascists get comfy in their new roles. Even that faint sound might determine the course of your life.
The primary reason that the Weimar Republic failed was because the mechanisms of democratically-based self governance were never aligned with the intent of the Weimar constitution and the concept of rehabilitation based on education. The constancy of the bureaucracy was reason the country continued to function through the turmoil that occurred from the end of WWI through the turmoil of the Rathenau assassination. There was a brief period prosperity accompanied by false nostalgia and the widespread amnesia it caused. But in this case, the American version of January 30 through May 10, 1933 version will go by relatively unnoticed, and even celebrated for its “normalcy.” And after a few years, when they what works best, their version of Kristallnacht will be even more consequential and unnoticed.
Sorry, I was only going to write first paragraph when I started.
Greg, please do not be sorry. More, more, more of this. So freaking important.
While I agree that reactionaries seem now to be refraining from quarrelling, I would remind you that power intoxicates men universally, and the American Right is not immune to the Covid of disunity. Indeed, the fight between Tea Party Republicans and their older opponents produced Trump in 2016. Thinking they could control him, people like Bush and Cheyney kept mum.
How will this group act in 2022? 24?
And what of the distant right? Those who are actually farther away from reality than the Trump people.
And do not apologize for being wordy.
I agree with the intoxication part, but I think what we see on the Right is both subtly different; it is a matter of timing. What is different now–I hope I am wrong–is that I believe they will remain unified enough to seize the mechanisms of power and then sort out the power intoxication thing then.
And there is, I think, an appropriate analogy with the end of Weimar here as well. People like the Thyssens and von Papen (there were many of them) rode the wave, felt they manipulated it to gain power and would be on the top of the heap soon. The Thyssens stepped back from the politics and reaped the rewards. We’ll see a lot of that. von Papen ended up quite far from real power at the ambassador to Turkey, was tried and, like a lot of the Thyssens, lived out his life in quiet, comfortable obscurity. And I bet the coming Night of the Long Knives won’t be literally bloody, but I wonder who the current day Ernst Röhm will be.
Who the Röhm will be. No idea, but he will hold the title of Attorney General.
Disagree, Bob. Röhm was a power hungry, not-so-closeted gay masochist and sociopath, sure of his position in the ruling hierarchy, a sycophant to Hitler, and executed while surprised as he was “caught in the act.” I’m putting my money on Lindsay Graham. He ticks all the boxes–the last act will, of course be symbolic, but you can be a final outing will be part of the schtick–but instead of not-so-closeted, I would use the term I’ve-convinced-myself-that-I’ve-convinced-them-I’m-not.
…you can bet…
I am pessimistic, too.
And I bet there were plenty of Germans like dienne77, scapegoating everyone from the Nazis and normalizing the Nazis as no different than the other corrupt political parties.
Oh, there were. They were the first ones in concentration camps. And the ones who laughed and celebrated loudest about that who weren’t party members were next. I guess, now that I think about, party membership was another temporary vaccine of sorts. Some had real bad side effects, some none at all.
I am convinced that the fascist takeover of the United States will be complete by January 2025, that it will be orderly, that it will be considered a part of the restored history of the peaceful transition of power.
I am, too.
Here’s why I said, Greg, that that guy will be hold the title of AG: Trump wanted to violate the law and field the military as a police force to quell BLM. Milley and Esper wouldn’t play ball. Barr tried to comply on the QT–sending in his version of Russia’s “little green men” in Crimea. When DeSantis, the guy who just called for the creation of a state National Guard under his sole command, the one who sent gun-waving goons into the home of the state employee who dared to divulge Covid deaths and hospitalizations data, the one who in his first act as governor signed the bill allowing local police to declare any group of 3 or more persons a terrorist riot–when that guy enters the Whiter House, he won’t make Trump’s mistake. He’s a LOT smarter than Trump (I know, that’s not saying much) and will have marionettes in these key positions ready to trash posse comitatus and enable him to enforce his will on the ground.
All states operate based on monopolies on the use of power. Fascist states are straight forward about it.
I agree with you that the fascists will sort out matters of internal division and dissent after they have it all locked.
And, ofc, an SA is useful at the beginning of a fascist coup to provide some demonstrations of unchecked, raw power to scare resistance into the woodwork.
Using paramilitary forces in the beginning is useful because it provides plausible deniability. And then, once the consolidation of absolute power is complete, those can be eliminated, having served their purpose.
Yeah, terrible, just terrible what those people did. But you know, they feel strongly. They want their country back. You don’t get your country back by being weak. Very good people. Yada yada.
cx: Using paramilitary forces in the beginning is useful because doing so provides plausible deniability. And then, once the consolidation of absolute power is complete, the leaders of the paramilitaries can be eliminated, having served their purpose, and the thugs in the rank rank and file can be absorbed into the official instruments of suppression of opposition.
Trump has been gone for nearly a year and still you all thrill to him as the big, bad Boogie Man like children listening to ghost stories. Hating that man gave your lives meaning for four years and now you miss him.
Meanwhile, Biden and Harris are so unpopular that the DNC is starting to push the woman who lost to Trump five years ago (after promoting him in the first place).
Free advice, worth every penny: if you really want to avoid red waves in 2022 and 2024, forget about Trump and start doing what you said you’d do when Biden was elected: push him left. At the bare minimum we need the free community college he promised (preferably free public university), the public health care option he promised (preferably Bernie’s M4A), the $15/hr minimum wage he promised (preferably $20 or more), a real pandemic plan like he promised, meaningful climate action like he promised and significant debt relief (student, medical and otherwise).
So Republican efforts to control the vote are meaningless? Biden’s powerless nature, fueled by a very bare democratic majority, is no reason to sit by and allow manipulation of voting.
Amen.
“..if you really want to avoid red waves in 2022 and 2024…”
Notice the writer of that does not include herself as someone who wants to avoid red waves in 2022 and 2024. “if YOU” Not “if WE”.
She will be pushing whatever right wing propaganda helps defeat Democrats — which coincidentally means a red wave.
Dienne, if you would read a little more closely, you will see that the theme of the comments above is not the vileness of Glorious Leader but what will inevitably, it now seems, spin out from that horror–2022, 2024, the rise of the Fourth Reich.
Btw, Vlad, be careful what you wish for there.
But yes, with regard to your list, not holding my breath, any more than I expect Garland to hold Trump and his spawn to account for anything.
“Biden and Harris are so unpopular”
Why would that be. Is it in your opinion because they are not progressive enough?
The Unemployment rate is down to 4.2% The prime age worker participation rate is only 1.2 % lower than its high and rising . It is where it was in 2017. Wages of the lowest quin-tile of the labor force are up.
Most people report their personal economic situation is good .
But yet the economy sucks ?
The virus would be very much behind us except for ignorance and a right wing death cult. Not always the same. A small portion of the ignorant are not Right Wing.
Now I may agree with you on all those policy prescriptions but lets not pretend this is about anything other than ” American Values” If you need a description of those values you have not spoken to enough right wingers.
I won’t post youtube I normally would here, but it begins with, “Hmmmm, who could it be now? Let me think…”
It’s kind of like blaming Sully for not landing at LaGuardia after his engines sucked in a flock of geese. What a terrible pilot!
Help Biden keep his promises by working hard to get more Democratic votes in the House and Senate. Tough to implement any progressive policy is there when Joe Manchin holds the balance of power. The Washington Post wrote a few days ago that he consistently opposes anything to reduce climate change or to strain the budget. His family-own coal company is in a “blind trust” but Manchin receives about $500,000 from that “blind trust” whose main holding is a coal company worth many millions. Conflict of interest much?
Diane,
Haven’t you noticed that dienne77 spends a lot more time criticizing a monolith called “the Democrats” or “Biden and Harris” than Manchin or Sinema?
I am not sure she ever has criticized Manchin or Sinema by name.
I would trust her far more as a progressive if she was bashing Democrats who were conservative outliers in the Democratic party like Manchin and Sinema and demanding they be replaced.
But she seems to be extremely focused on pushing what is clearly Bannon-endorsed right wing propaganda directed to progressives that the problem is Biden and Harris, and not the specific conservative Democrats who Bannon and his ilk do not want demonized because they like them! It would make more sense – if this person was really the progressive she claimed to be — for her to be bashing Manchin and Sinema instead of Biden. But how would that help the far right? It wouldn’t. I doubt very much it is a coincidence why this person’s scapegoating is always Biden.
I haven’t even heard her be critical of the Supreme Court or the Republicans attack on voting rights! It’s all about “Biden” or “Biden and Harris”.
I was expecting this post. I actually thought, this is a very important article about the danger our country is in, and that’s always when our resident Trump normalizer posts to lecture us. For a while I thought I was wrong, until I scrolled past all the other posts.
Does anyone notice how this person only posts infrequently, but she ALWAYS comments whenever Diane Ravitch posts an article about how dangerous the Republicans are?
And this person always starts by pushing the right wing propaganda that there is no real danger, because Trump isn’t really a scary guy. Although I did notice this person was MIA during the coup itself and the aftermath. But now she posts the same right wing talking points one can find on Fox. This coup attempt isn’t important, or maybe didn’t happen at all.
Remember everyone, any attempted coup is no big deal. The time for us to be concerned is only after a successful coup (coincidentally when it is much too late to be concerned.)
What kind of fascist enabler would keep posting every single time Diane Ravitch writes about democracy being in danger to reiterate that Trump is gone so why are we even concerned? I will note that this person was warned in 2016 that a Republican president would be appointing far right Supreme Court Justices that would make it significantly harder – if not impossible – to get progressive legislation passed and she was unconcerned about that.
Just like she is unconcerned about coup attempts. The time to be concerned about right wing Supreme Court Justices with lifetime appointments and coup attempts seems to be never, or maybe after it is too late to do anything about it.
Either this person is a right wing troll, or this person has some need to justify their rejection of those who cited that the 2016 election would have a huge influence on the Supreme Court and cannot simply admit to have made a serious mistake. Bernie Sanders knows that electing Trump in 2016 and having this new far right Supreme Court where John Roberts seems “moderate” (!!!) is a terrible thing for the progressive movement.
Rather than to admit to a mistake, this person just goes on the attack to find scapegoats or rewrite history (Trump’s coup isn’t ongoing because it never really happened in the first place!)
It is ridiculous for someone who opposes the election of Democrats to ignore the fact that in order to do all the things on her laundry of things she pretends to support, this country has to elect a lot more Democrats so that they have a majority similar to the majority they had under Truman and LBJ and FDR.
Free advice to this faux progressive who spouts right wing talking points: if you really want free community college, the public health care option, the $15/hr minimum wage, meaningful climate action, and significant debt relief (student, medical and otherwise), you will stop pushing the right wing lie that if those things aren’t all accomplished in the first year of a presidency where the Senate is evenly divided and a single conservative Dem Senate can stop progressive legislation, you will hope and pray that a lot more Democrats get elected and stop doing everything you can to help a red wave.
Unless it is that you WANT a red wave?
Can you imagine if the anti-abortion folks had refused to vote for any Republicans and just kept bashing Republicans as liars who are secretly in bed with the pro-choice lobby because Republicans did not yet achieve their goal of outlawing abortion throughout the land?
The far right is empowered because the voters who were far right kept electing more and more Republicans. Not because they spent their time telling voters that the Republican party was a corrupt and dishonest “liberal” party that secretly had a “liberal” agenda because they had not yet achieved their goal of abolishing abortion, Medicare, Social Security, and the rest of those “commie” programs.
If this person was a REAL progressive, she would express concern about voting rights.
Why isn’t voting rights a concern for her?
Have you ever heard her criticize the Republicans for their war on voting rights?
Are voting rights not important when someone claims to want a progressive future?
This is the most revealing part of this comment:
“…if you really want to avoid red waves in 2022 and 2024…”
If YOU want to. Not if WE want to. Because there is no evidence this person cares about avoiding red waves.
Trumpist fascism is even influencing the traitor’s fascist loyalists to give books on Amazon negative reviews if anything in the book, even one paragraph, doesn’t support Trump’s BIG LIES.
“1.0 out of 5 stars Lloyd Lofthouse’s new book was a gem
Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2021
Once you started reading it, this was one book that was absolutely hard to put down. It has great characters, action galore, and about a group whose mission is to preserve the American republic. That made it hard not to put it my top ten books I read this year!
Yes, it was a gem right up to the near-end when Lofthouse wrote totally unneeded and unnecessary personal political comment in just one paragraph. It was definitely a surprise to find it in what should have been a great book!
This brought the whole story to an end for me. If there is a sequel, I am not sure i want to read it.”
NOTE: Since I am not a character in the story, I did not add a personal political comment in just one paragraph. But, I think I know what this reviewer was referring to, and that may have been revealed in another negative review from another apparent Trump loyalist.
2.0 out of 5 stars Strains credulity to the breaking point
Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2021
“Part thriller, part romance novel, part political statement; The Patriot Oath fails at every step of the way.
The book begins with an interesting premise; a soldier (who happens to be Spec Ops) returns home because his sister has been raped and failed by the judicial system. Had the author stayed with this premise, the book would have been much better. …
Then we begin with the dangers of “right wing” militias, when to my knowledge it’s “left wing” militants such as Antifa and BLM that have been rioting and tearing apart cities across America. I won’t even get into the damage and destruction that “eco terrorists” have caused globally. …
The only thing that kept me from giving it one-star is that I do like the author’s writing style.”
Above in the thread, Greg warned about well-placed people in the Dept. of Defense.
Today, in the Congressional hearings about Jan. 6, we learned that Joseph Schmitz who attended religious schools including Georgetown Prep, sent to Jim Jordan a legal opinion about certification of the 2020 presidential electoral count on Jan. 5. Schmitz’ included comment was reportedly, “Good luck tomorrow”.
Schmitz was the former Inspector General of the U.S. Dept. of Defense. He was a former executive in Erik Prince’s Blackwater Worldwide.
McClatchy’s D.C. Bureau reported, 8-21-2016, about accusations of anti-Semitic remarks allegedly made by Schmitz, allegations reported to authorities under oath. Schmitz denies the accusation that he bragged about pushing Jewish employees out when he was in the D. of D.
Then, also from a religious background, there is retired General Michael Flynn and his military brother, who is currently assigned in a D.C.-area posting and who is the subject of questions about the National Guard’s delayed response to the Jan. 6 riots.
The people who spin the Jan. 6 insurrection for Fox, e.g. Laura Ingraham, is driven by her religion.
I could only read this excerpt, but the message that jumped out at me is that many states are enacting laws that allow them to overturn election results, and the federal govt is doing nothing about it. That is a giant and alarming announcement. Yes, states are proposing and in some cases have enacted a rash of outrageous and objectionable voting laws. But I find so far zero factual evidence that any law enacted or even pending supports that particular claim. Based on his previous prescience, I’ve no doubt the author needs to be heeded. However, IMHO his case would be stronger if he didn’t overstate it.
Biden made the same claim in a July speech in Philadelphia. Politifact says “Ultimately, we decided that Biden’s statement is too speculative for us to render a Truth-O-Meter rating. However, we did take a closer look at the evidence the White House cited and examples from other states.” Read details here: https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/jul/14/are-state-legislators-really-seeking-power-overrul/
The Voting Rights Lab calls itself “a campaign hub designed to supercharge the fight against voter suppression and transform our voting systems.” They did a 10-pp analysis of laws/ resolutions passed & unpassed, claiming also “The most concerning bills would enable partisan state legislatures to overturn election results.” They have more detail, but nothing here contradicts Politifact’s summary:
Click to access 20210924-VRL-Election-Subversion-Report-.pdf
I would characterize these laws as sabotage (as opposed to subversion). The features making it harder to vote are addressed in both The Freedom to Vote Act introduced by Senate Dems and the Protecting Our Democracy Act by House Dems: these need to be on the front burner now & all public pressure brought to bear (as well as DOJ’s investigation). Equally concerning are the death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach of the features highlighted here by Gellman. They do not precisely enable overturn of voting results. But they guarantee massive gridlock of reporting results in every Republican-run state– while massively reinforcing bobble-head Rep cult’s distrust in our voting system.
We need the John Lewis Voting Rights bill, which empowers the Justice Department and federal courts to review state election laws. It’s worth taking down the filibuster to get it passed.
Your final sentence.
There’s a lot of philosophizing and joking in these comments, but I don’t find anything funny at all in this. The burning question is what can be done to save the remnants of our democracy. Great to reference the terrifying article in the Atlantic, but I’m at a loss to explain the meek, ineffective response by the sane part of our body politic to the outrageous delusional rantings of Trumpists. It seems like the inmates are running the institution and running it straight to hell.
I POSTED The Gellman piece at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/How-Donald-Trump-Could-Sub-in-General_News-Donald-Trump_Election-Challenges_Election-Integrity_Election-Interference-211218-506.html