You don’t need to be an expert in electoral politics to understand Rule One of any campaign: Candidates should pursue as many votes as possible. In a democracy, it’s common sense: The more votes a campaign has, the greater the chance of success.
With this in mind, Donald Trump appears to have a counterintuitive rhetorical habit. The New Republic noted:
On Fox News Thursday morning, Donald Trump had a weird instruction for his supporters: they don’t have to vote. “My instruction: We don’t need the votes, I have so many votes,” Trump said on Fox & Friends before going on a rant about how much support he has in Florida.
As a clip from the show makes clear, the former president didn’t appear to be kidding: https://x.com/atrupar/status/1816482779581775943
If the phrasing sounded at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. The day after last month’s presidential debate, for example, Trump held a rally in Virginia and told attendees, “We don’t need votes.”
They don’t need the votes because they have a plan in place to seize the power with undemocratic measures.
It’s all he’s been saying the last few weeks. If you listen to him, he says again and again, that they plan to abolish american democracy.
ISTG if trump loses, incites another insurrection and we still don’t put him jail I don’t know what the point of it is anymore.
This is a common feeling with a lot of people. Not jailing rapists and other criminals just because their daddies were wealthy breaks down the social fabric. After all, if it’s everyone for themselves, why shouldn’t I steal from Walmart? Why should I not commit fraud against corps? Why should I not try and murder a presidential candidate?
The public not seeing that crimes against the social contract have consequences will be the actual thing that breaks society, not gay people loving each other.
As one of the other posters mentioned (@Jordan117@lemmy.world) , it’s exactly this. Johnson will refuse to certify the results of the election that put Democrats in the House, claiming some kind of bullshit irregularities with no proof, leaving the House controlled by facists. They’ll then claim irregularities in the presidential election and force a contingent election where they have a 100% chance of electing Trump no matter what the public votes.
More people need to be made aware that this is 100% legal for them to do, and more people need to be aware that it is almost certainly what they will try. The only thing that can possibly stop it is significant awareness by the mass population of Americans and significant publicity (similar to how mass awareness of Project 2025 turned it into a poison pill).
EDIT: Oh look, they’ve already started making it super-legal in battleground states: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/06/georgia-local-election-boards-allowed-withhold-vote-certification
While that’s true, there’s another thing just as true - the other side has a plan to seize the power with democratic measures.
It’s deep state vs bandits. Surely the latter are not cool, but the former, while being cool, are very dangerous.
It’s Palpatine vs Hutts. You wouldn’t want to be ruled by a Hutt. But Palpatine has his quirks.
He’s going to attack the capital. Again.
Attacking capital is great, it’s attacking capitols I have a problem with
Attacking the capital was a last-ditch hail mary move, and only viable when he controlled the military.
They’re going to use baseless conspiracies to try to fuck with the election certification enough (with an assist from the courts) to force a contingent election in the House, where they’ll likely have a majority of state delegations.
The whole Republicans house is in on it again. They have a multi-prong plan to seize the White House, from voter suppression to elector rigging, gerrymandering and outright violent intimidation. The coup will be much better planned this time.
Love to see the face of Jan 6 2.0 rioters, when they realized someone in power actually wants to stop them this time
You made me think of Vincent Vega, beause this is how I feel about that prospect.
Boy, I wish I could’ve caught him doing it. I’d have given anything to catch that asshole doing it. It’d been worth him doing it just so I could’ve caught him doing it.
Bring it on, traitors.
They don’t need a riot this time. Mike Johnson will refuse to recognize the results and then the house will vote for the next president with each state receiving one vote. Republicans control a majority of house delegations, so they will vote for Trump.
The riot was a smokescreen. It was to buy time to strong arm the state legislatures and convince Mike Pence to not certify the results. With Johnson on board, they can forget the smokescreen and just steal the election in plain sight.
They only need the house of representatives to steal a presidential election. The only thing that could stop it is some house Republicans voting with Democrats to remove Mike Johnson as speaker. (Or, I guess, finding their conscience and voting for Harris as a state delegation.
He doesn’t need to. He’ll just the the Republican legislatures of swing states to send electors that will vote Trump regardless of November results.
And the worst part is that it’s probably legal. The Constitution gives individutal state legislatures the authority to select electors in whatever way they wish, and they can probably change their method between the November election and the meeting of the electors in December if they decide they don’t like the outcome.
One aspect of the fake elector scheme was to block the counting of rightfully assigned electoral college votes.
If they can successfully do that in enough states to prevent either candidate from getting 270, then it goes to the House of Representatives to select the president.
Each state gets one vote, and since there are only 19 states with Democratic controlled legislatures, that would guarantee a Trump win, no voting necessary.
They managed to shore this one up after Jan 6. Now, instead of just needing a single Representative and Senator to challenge a vote, you need 1/5 of each body.
So an improvement, no doubt Election Denialers have more schemes in mind though.
This article, combined with the Rolling Stone article just posted about 70+ election deniers running elections in critical states and counties, I have a strong feeling that Trump thinks he has already stolen the next election. The fix is in.
Since this is from MSNBC…
This is Rachel Maddows take on this as well. Essentially that states will refuse to certify the results.
They tried to do it last election, but weren’t really prepared. This time, they feel they’ve got this on lock.
Because the fix is in with the Republican state legislatures and Republican Governors; and The DOJ / Supreme Court is gladly eating Trump’s soiled diapers with a fork and knife
It’s gonna be 2001 again unless Harris can really knock it out of the park
This is my take too. Whole country votes solidly blue but the SC crowns Trump king anyways.
