Watch them for what exactly? For… Voting for another candidate? I don’t understand. Like. They are looking for fraud? What would that look like?
I don’t get it. Like if I went and watched the people at my local voting center, I would see a bunch of senior citizen voulenteers handing out ballots, and then I would see people putting their ballots into the big scantron machine thing. That’s what it would look like. That’s what it looks like every time.
Watch that be what all of these mass shootings have been about. People hanging out in some random chat room or forum getting talked into shooting up schools, movie theaters, churches, concerts, etc… And the whole thing ends up being connected to this creepy cabal of people like Roger Stone and Steve Bannon. They get people to stand around the polling places with AR’s and then people are afraid of becoming another statistic.
If you have 2 people charging into a voting place and being stupid they get arrested. If you have 100 people then the voting place gets shut down for safety.
Shut down enough places in the other guys territory and you win.
Florida 2000. The Supreme Court gives itself the power to supersede the Constitution and Congress and the State Secretary. They then hand the election to the GOP. (Who promptly lost the recount but too late, SCOTUS said so!)
Thanks, too many folks forget that Jan 6 was the second violent coup perpetrated against the United States in the last few decades. Not only does the Brooks Brothers Riot absolutely count as one, it actually succeeded.
“So, we have to be careful. You got to get out there and watch those voters,” Trump said, adding, “You don’t have to vote, don’t worry about voting. The voting, we got plenty of votes.”
He's saying that he's going to win by force. And he probably will. It's over.
Yeah, I’m a bit concerned about that myself. I live in a red state, but a blue city that is 43% black. They have arcane voting laws that force you to stand in line for hours. I can definitely imagine a scenario where long voting lines in the city are attacked by white nationalist gunmen, and all the law-abiding unarmed voters are defenseless. This won’t stop me from voting or having my long gun in the truck, but it is something I’ve been concerned about.
They’re saying democracy in the US is over. The slow walk of prosecutions against the Jan. 6th insurgents, particularly its organizers, has given the fascists the confidence to do it again at a national level. We’ll either have to fight back with equal violence, flee, or submit to their dictatorship.
The slow walk of prosecutions against the Jan. 6th insurgents
A sane legal system takes time. While I agree the organizers have mostly gotten off scott-free, it’s because they know how to keep themselves in the grey area even knowing full-well how the uneducated, violent people will react to their messages. The rubes have gotten hard time and I feel potential rubes have taken some notice. They’ll still play the victim all day, but they seem less hesitant to join calls to action.
It didn’t help that America’s top cop (AG Merrick Garland) deliberately held back on the investigations. It’s not just my opinion. Multiple observers came to the same conclusion.
I can’t believe how many people are trying to paper over that by strawmanning “you wanted Garland to indict immediately?”
No, i wanted him not to BLOCK ALL INVESTIGATIONS FOR A YEAR AND A HALF. But insiders gonna inside, Garland wants those country club memberships and speaking engagements.
@spaceghoti hit the high points. The presumptive nominee for President of the United States for one of two major parties is openly fascist, with exactly zero consequences. He has a lot of people on his side, many of whom are already in positions of power in government, in all three branches, and in the press.
There have been plenty of opportunities for consequences to be laid upon these people who are still working to overthrow the foundations of democracy. None have been laid. None. I have zero faith in the ability of a democratic government to be able to put down this fascism.
Are you a trump shill?
You are free to browse my comment history to make your own judgment on that. Or go fuck yourself, your choice.
We will disagree until at least powerful fascists see real consequences. This very post is about Trump telling his followers to go strongarm polling places, voters, and election workers. And they will. They've already made life hell for some election workers. They've already been threatening House members over the Speaker votes.
It's getting worse, not better. It will continue to get worse. A lot worse. More people will die, and as yet, the people who are fomenting terrorism with their speech are not being held accountable at all.
There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.
Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
Let’s not throw in the towel, as dire as things look. It’s not over yet. Organize.
It’s sort of the strength of rules which is the advantage of good, though. The advantage of evil, short term gains, is great. In the short term. The thing about fascists is that they really actually can’t make the trains run on time, or sustain any level of state for any extended period of time, because they’re incapable of actual coalition building without self-sabotage. It’s why they keep having to move to beating on the most extremely marginalized in society. After trans people, I have no idea what the hell they’ll scapegoat, because they’re already scraping at the bottom of the barrel there. It was incredibly unpopular to overturn abortion, it will be the same with pretty much any other healthcare, or really anything that’s actually core to what they want to do once they get power. None of this is to say that they shouldn’t be feared, but we didn’t stay in the great depression, and we didn’t stay in the company towns, you know? People faced with nothing left to lose have every reason to fight establishment power, and fascists and fascism does nothing if not create people with nothing left to lose.
When Side A plays by rules, and Side B doesn't, then an overwhelming majority in Side A is required to hold Side B accountable. Side B doesn't need a majority - they can be a "moderately strong minority" - as long as they're willing to break the rules, refuse to comply, and act with enough threat of or actual violence, Side B wins.
There has already been actual violence, but the threat of more and greater violence is larger. Side A has to hold Side B accountable, for real, no matter what threats are made.
There's been no accountability, Side B is continuing to break the rules, with impunity.
Lol “Godwin” that means I can ignore everything you say!
If you say so. Or you could, you know, learn something.
These people are literally open fascists. Comparing their actions to that of the Nazis is completely fucking appropriate.
The Nazis didn’t take power their first try. Their first insurrection (the Beer Hall Putsch) failed, and Hitler and his fascist buddies got slaps on the wrist.
Then they did it again and that time they didn’t fail. With something like only ~30% popular support.
If you’re gonna go through life relying on random people to explain things to you, especially when the Internet exists, you should be more polite about it
Other clips from the rally went viral as well, including Trump saying, “I’m for us. You know how you spell us, right? U.S. I just picked that up. Has anyone ever thought of that before?”
No, Donnie. No one has ever thought of this. You’re the first, you beautiful genius. /s
Everyone should participate and have their voices heard. However, if you think the whole thing is a farce and want to undermine the system from the get go, I’m not gonna be too broken up about it if you choose to exclude your voice from the process.
In some countries (I think Australia is one), you’re required by law to vote. If you don’t, you get a small fine. I think we need this system because there are a ton of would-be voters who don’t see the point. If they were made to vote, I think there’d be greater engagement because they’d be more frustrated at the appalling candidates and demand more because they had skin in the game.
Pretty positively. Our politics have trended generally to the right as have most western countries (especially those with large Murdoch media owned presences) but the 2 major parties still sit relatively close to centre, and particularly wild right wing elements have been shredded at the last round of elections.
The hard-rights attempts at US style minority led major parties seem to be invalidated by the voting population, so I’d say our system of ranked choice voting with mandatory participation is working very well.
Seems like he is calling for his supporters to swarm polling stations and scare away anyone who looks like a Democrat. He is counting on violence or the threat of it to give him a win.
I think it’s going to end up like how he discouraged mail in voting. The real crazies live in red areas, they are going to scare their own voters away.
This actually concerns me a bit. Not that I believe Trump can actually coordinate anything, mind you.
But at the same time, Trump really didn’t lose the election by several million votes. He lost the election by a few thousand key votes in key swing states. Many of those states have passed dranconian laws, took over election boards, and put in rules that would allow them to just throw the election Trump’s way regardless of the actual vote count. It’s very possible that he’s simply banking on those to carry him through the day regardless of the actual vote totals. If Trump believes (or is led to believe) the fix is in in those key areas, telling ruby-red voters in ruby-red states to stay home is no big deal.
While I agree with the sentiment, Trump did lose by millions of votes. There was a 7.61 million vote differential. He also lost the popular vote to Hillary by 2.9 million votes.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than any other losing presidential candidate in US history.
Going back further, incumbency aside, there hasn’t been a Republican who has won the popular vote since GHW Bush in 1988…35 years ago
Those numbers do matter for clarity. Saying he didn’t lose by millions blurs the truth. Saying he lost by a few thousand votes is not at all accurate when electoral college votes are the only ones that matter, and adding “in a few swing states,” only fuels those stop the steal Maga idiots
They do not. They only matter in the context of a discussion of the election among those familiar with how the system works, where all parties specifically understand that the popular vote is a meaningless metric as it relates to electing a president.
Saying he didn’t lose by millions blurs the truth.
Again that’s just factually incorrect. By the same standards, you’d logically have to argue that Trump lost the 2016 election, which is obviously nonsense.
If anything, the opposite is true: using terms like “won” and “lost” based on the popular vote is what’s really blurring the truth.
It’s like talking about an American football game and who won and lost based on overall yards gained or time of possession instead of the final score.
Saying he lost by a few thousand votes is not at all accurate when electoral college votes are the only ones that matter
Interesting angle, considering this is the first possibly valid point you’ve made…but that it also completely contradicts the rest of your argument. You’ve been here arguing the popular vote matters then turn around and say the EC votes are the only ones that matter…bold strategy.
In concession, I’ll admit you’re right on this one and I stand corrected.
Yeesh you really don’t know how to keep to a side. Thanks for the props, thanks for saying what I already said, thanks for rehashing what you already said, and thanks for not understanding the point and drawing this out. This whole exchange is unnecessary and has been a waste of my time
…i think bush the lesser won the popular vote for his second term: didn’t make him suck any less, but wars win elections, which is a terrible incentive for the next minority-victory president…
While I agree with the sentiment, Trump did lose by millions of votes. There was a 7.61 million vote differential. He also lost the popular vote to Hillary by 2.9 million votes.
Yeah, I know all of that. But about 5 million of that 7.61 million, for example, came from California. There was never a chance that California was going to Trump, so those 5 million extra votes were largely overkill votes that had no bearing on the overall election outcome. Those 5 million could have stayed home and it wouldn’t have changed the outcome a single bit. The same goes, to a much lesser degree, with states like New York and Massachusetts, which are about as blue as you can get.
The same holds true for Trump, by the way. Trump won several southern states by double digits, leading to himself getting millions of overkill votes in states that were never in danger for him. A few million people in those states could have stayed home and the outcome wouldn’t have changed a bit. But a few thousand more votes in a couple of key states could mean we’d be sitting in the midst of Trump’s 2nd term while Biden goes down as a footnote who ran his campaign from his basement.
It’s all about the crucial votes in key areas of swing states. Georgia is a prime example. A swing of just over 11,000 votes out of a pool of 5 million could have thrown the state to Trump. A 20,000 vote swing in Wisconsin could have turned Wisconsin red. Between the two of them alone, 31,000 votes could have sent two states and their 26 Electoral College votes to the GOP. The same could be said about half a dozen other states where Biden’s wins were razor thin.
The popular vote is great for bragging rights, but in reality has no actual bearing on the outcome of the election due to the existence of the Electoral College. It’s great for chest thumping, but winning by 7.6 million votes when 7 million of those votes came from heavily populated states that Biden was going to easily win anyway doesn’t really say much. When you’re talking about votes that actually have an impact on the results, Biden’s victory was much, much narrower.
Look at it this way: Do you really think Biden is going to waste his time running up the score in California, or is he going to spend his time in swing states to try to at least maintain if not expand upon the narrow wins he got last time? He’s going to spend his time in the swing states because running up the score in California by a few million votes will do exactly nothing for him, while ensuring he at least maintains the 11,000 votes he won by in Georgia will mean he doesn’t lose 16 EC votes right off the top.
That was a lot of words to say what you already said, and I corrected. He didn’t lose by a small margin, he lost by electoral votes. Saying he only won or lost by a few thousand votes is wildly inaccurate when it is electoral votes that matter
I think he thinks he’ll lose, and he thinks a big loss is actually less believable to his supporters than a close loss, so he’s trying to create a big loss, which will make more of his supporters Jan 6 2.0.
I’m not following that logic. If he tells everyone not to vote, and most comply meaning only a few vote, wouldn’t the majority of them who didn’t vote see the low results and understand that it would be the natural outcome? Where do they think votes come from if they don’t vote?
I imagine when they look at the lines of voters they categorize people into two bins: normal and not-normal. Trump is asking his supporters to do a Rorschach test but citizens are the ink blots and he’s specifically telling them to look for scary things. Their Conclusion: If you see lots of normal people and he loses the election, then it’s because of those voters that didn’t look normal were there to rig the system.
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