cross-posted from: https://yall.theatl.social/post/3474840
From WABE Politics News:
Georgia’s secretary of state on Thursday came out against election rule changes pending before the State Election Board, specifically rejecting a proposal to count ballots by hand at polling places […]
There are going to be major shenanigans in November. I fear Trump loyalists have had too much time to prepare this time and gotten too emboldened. I love riding the high of the current wave of rare optimism, but it just feels like there is no chance Harris just wins, gets certified and sworn in and that’s that, right? Either Trump wins legit, or they manage to steal the election.
I really hope I’m wrong.
It won’t be a steal, it will be an insurrection and civil war.
I’m terrified that that might be the best-case scenario. Right now, it’s looking like non-fascists are so complacent and in denial they might let the MAGAs get away with coronating a dictator without even a fight.
Frankly, there ought to be hundreds of thousands of people in downtown Atlanta right now protesting the blatant corruption of the state elections board, but there aren’t.
I’m not sure there will be an insurrection. I don’t think his base is as energised as it was in 2020 leading into 2021, and I also think the actual consequences for the insurrectionists probably deter people from attempting it again. I might be wrong.
I still stand by my prediction that the single most likely outcome of the election is enough Trump/Republican loyalist election officials refuse to certify votes, leading to neither candidate reaching 270. The decision will then be thrown to Congress, where Trump will win.
That’s what I’m talking about: I’m terrified that non-fascists will accept that blatant tyranny and fail to revolt. That is a worse outcome than civil war.
(Also: more likely thrown to SCOTUS than Congress, since (a) the VP is a Democrat, and (b) not only does SCOTUS have a MAGA majority, no less than three of them helped perpetrate Bush v. Gore.)
I’m 90% certain revolt won’t happen. Probably more. The age of revolutions has passed, especially in America. The standard of living is too high, the weapons of suppression are too powerful. To quote the great Disco Elysium: “the material base for an uprising has eroded.”
In other words, thwarting the tactics described in this article is a do-or-die imperative because we have no backup plan. And that’s really bad news, because (a) pretty much every countermeasure I can think of only further disrupts the election and thus plays right into their hands, and (b) as far as I can tell, we’re not even trying to do anything about it.
Oh yeah, and also: unless we go even further and crush the MAGA movement entirely (imprison the traitorous leaders and deprogram the cultists), they’re just going to keep trying until they succeed.
With the recent Supreme Court ruling, Biden can just say no. He can order the military to do whatever is necessary to secure democracy.
A coup and a counter-coup might not look much different. That certainly is a problem. I expect we’ll do our best to avoid it, but we’ll do what’s needed if it comes down to Kamala getting 270 electoral votes denied only by Trumpers refusal to certify.
Some supporters of the GOP, notably some specific foreign ones, are fine with that. They’d rather see Trump in office, but they’ll be happy with anything that destabilizes the US while making their own elections seem better.
If Kamala loses the election legitimately, well, we just lose. Dem leadership will abide by the results of a reasonably fair election.