In perhaps the second-most liberal city in America, ruled by authoritarian busybodies who protect billionaires while virtue signaling their devotion to the homeless—yes, I mean San Francisco—the voters decided to deploy their super weapon.
Interesting thought experiment, but I think it assumes several facts not in evidence:
1. The complete unwillingness of the Legislature (the *First* branch of gov't) to act as a check on unfettered Executive power. The fact that the Senate (normally the most measured of the branches) failed to convict him for his role in January 6th is all the evidence that we need that *enough* Senators found it advantageous to continue to go along with Trump instead of holding them accountable (on behalf of those that elected him).
2. The Judicial branch has zero command authority over police forces. That's what the Executive branch is for. And without an independent arm to enforce their rulings, I doubt that we were far away from a Jacksonian "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." moment where a court would rule against Trump, and he'd ignore it.
3. Trump was (fortunately) slow to learn that he could replace members of the administrative state resisting his actions with more pliable alternatives. He eventually learned this lesson, and would be applying it with gusto in his second administration. The administrative state would resemble the current RNC more than anything else. You'd have an Attorney General Jeffrey Clark with no compunctions about interfering in elections or anything else Trump wanted.
4. You assume that after his second term ended, Trump would be in a different situation with a lesser ability to motivate his follower than before. Given that we lack any meaningful checks on a President's authoritarian impulses, that Trump wouldn't meddle in the 2024 election to ensure that his hand-picked successor ascended to the office of POTUS. He'd certainly emulate his role model Putin, who's stayed in power despite term limits by swapping offices with Medvedev[1] and still be in a position to exercise power (and avoid ANY democratic accountability) as he saw fit. And from the camp that was fine re-interpreting the Constitution and over a century of SETTLED election law, who's to say that some Claremont flack wouldn't find a way to reinterpret the 22nd Amendment as to effectively neuter it, when Congress stays silent and the courts are unable to enforce their rulings?
At the end of the day, the thing that I'm convinced Trump that he was finished was the military stating that they would not be involved in Trump's schemes, even though that option was being discussed in December[2]. Democracy didn't save us from Trump - it was our standing military who stood firm by their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. (Trump demonstrated whatever power "democracy" held over him in the weeks after the election.) Had Trump won in 2024, it's not clear that he would have not used his additional time as Commander in Chief to RNC-ize that institution into something that WOULD have interfered in a duly-conducted and legal election in 2024.
America is MUCH better off for Trump losing in 2020. Any violence that you think would have been averted would have just been postponed until 2024, as Trump remaining in office for another term does nothing to weaken the sources of power that he's trying to exercise now, and he would have had another full term after which he learned "how to President" to accelerate the corruption he introduced his first term.
You can say all the same things about the school board in San Francisco at the local level, who have the support of teachers, unions, administrators and the D party apparatchik. And yet poof they’re gone. The real super power is reserved to the American people and even with a violent cadre of supporters, and Stacey Abrams calling “suppression,” that power is not diminished.
I have to admit that I haven't followed the SF school board thing too closely, but did they try to argue that their recall election was illegitimate? Did they enjoy a place in the chain of command of the police who would be called to remove them if they showed up for a meeting after they lost the election?
Make no mistake, I'm EXTREMELY happy that Democracy works at MOST levels. I just don't think that the SF school board recall is an apples-to-apples comparison with the office of the Presidency. I mean, it applies to a President who takes democracy seriously and will acquiesce when the voters tell him to leave. In Trump's case, he couldn't give two sh!ts about what the voters and American people thought, as evidenced by his post-election behavior and schemes.
Had he a more pliable Pentagon leadership or Mike Pence followed through on casting doubt on the election, Trump would not have humbly accepted a second term, he would have lunged for it, given that the most important function of the office of the Presidency was shielding him from stuff that would bankrupt or sent any other American to jail. When retaining office becomes an existential issue for the officeholder (and I doubt that it was for the school board members), the true power lies not in the American voters, but those acting on the voters' behalf. I'm not a religious man, but THANK GOD for Michael Pence and the Pentagon leadership for refusing to go along.
Nah...they and their supporters (which are of course a minority of San Francisco voters) are saying those that voted against them were either duped by outside money/influence from Republicans or are themselves white supremacists.
Local and Federal elections have some significant differences in their rules, and those have to be considered when trying to use this as an example of how Trump would have been constrained - especially when you point out that the GOP appears to not be willing to constrain him.
I was also quick to jump into "disagreement mode" a bit too thoroughly and wanted to state that I enjoyed reading your counterfactual reasoning (even if I think it's wrong).
For folks who enjoy this, I JUST finished the final book of the Merchant Princes series, which is an EXCELLENT alternative history of the world. It branches off of ours around 2003, when the US gov't discover that America has been infiltrated with dimension-hopping descendants of the Vikings[1]. While that sounds silly on the surface, the series does an excellent job describing the post-9/11 security state, how we'd respond to suddenly discovering a competitive power exists that we didn't know about, and how to build a Project Orion spacecraft[2] without murdering a large part of the population of Earth.
Perhaps. As you said, it's hypothetical. Still, I believe America needs this clarification we're going through now. The Left isn't winning, despite being in control of DC and most of "Legacy media". If November brings the "red wave" we expect, it won't even be in control of DC anymore for the following two years.
I think this needs be pointed out: for all the comments about "leftist violence", the bigger threat appears to be "rightist violence" - and there appears to be an argument that rightists should be appeased by giving them power in order to avoid violence. Am I off on this? Since when does appeasing those threatening violence if they don't get their way a good thing?
It’s not, if it was pure appeasement. If you disagree with the policies the Trump administration pursued then by all means don’t “appease.” But if the policies were acceptable, but the man wasn’t, is it appeasement to pursue the least violent course? Or would we not vote for a candidate (hypothetically, not Trump) based on the threat of violence from those who oppose him?
"As usual, I’m late in getting to my point. It’s this: if I could prove a counterfactual, I believe the country would be less worse off, in terms of political violence and the teetering of populist war, had Trump won in 2020 than we are now."
Nothing in here is about policies, and your comment above is skirting close to excusing the violence as long as you're getting some policies that you agree with, else it would be appeasement (if I'm reading you correctly)?
In the counterfactual universe where Trump won, the violence didn’t happen. The high probability of that violence and his out of control behavior outside the White House is what led me to vote for him. I believe the cost of him staying in was lower than the cost of him losing and doing what he’s doing. It was a rational decision in my view but ymmv. I don’t see it as appeasement bc staying in office I didn’t see Trump as POTUS doing things that were against my core beliefs policy wise (again he’s incompetent).
"In the counterfactual universe where Trump won, the violence didn’t happen."
I guess this is where you lose me. In 2020, I follow that the violence wouldn't have happened for a lack of necessity. In 2024, however, we have two scenarios to consider:
1. VP Mike Pence loses along the same lines Trump loses, Trump does post-election in 2024 what he did in 2020, and Mike Pence is told he has the opportunity to cast doubt on an election that HE lost. Maybe you don't get right-wing violence there. ("Hang Mike Pence" doesn't work if you're trying to get Mike Pence into power.) But if Pence casts doubt on the election for his own benefit to establish a Russian-style "tandemocracy" (my new word of the day), then you're going to get a lot of violence from the majority of Americans who denied him both an electoral and popular victory.
2. Let's say that Pence doesn't run, and Trump backs his favorite sycophant Josh Hawley, and the same thing as 2020 happens. Mike Pence is waffling on what to do on Jan. 6th and Trump engages in the same behavior we witnessed in 2020. (Remember that this is an existential issue for him - he MUST have Hawley in power to cover for him, as Biden is refusing to do now to Trump's great detriment.) Why do you think January 6, 2025 (and its aftermath) would play out any differently than it did in 2021? Other than Trump being four years closer to his date with the Reaper, what are you seeing that I'm not seeing that would indicate he would behave any differently than he has so far?
I can see your point about violence in 2021 not happening THEN, but unless Trump has a change of heart, a different candidate ascending to the office of POTUS doesn't seem like it would be a mitigating factor. The violence in Earth 2 (or whatever its designation is) isn't prevented, merely delayed.
Once again: policies that can be readily reversed with sufficient political will and effort, does not justify extreme means to prevent those policies.
We know you hate liberal democracy, Curtis. You don't have to keep proving it, or how morally bankrupt your position is when you have to support such extreme means because you are too lazy to actually work for your preferred policies.
If those policies lead to dictatorship, as in Canada seizing children, pets and bank accounts, extreme measures, including civil rebellion, are justified. All it takes is an authoritarian Congress, a President in agreement and a compliant Supreme Court to neuter the Constitution and it's done.
My response is you vote on the candidate that is most defensible and most qualified. Legitimate policies one doesn't like can generally be reversed or removed, if the people decide that's what they want to have happen.
So rather than appease an indefensible and unqualified candidate, use that same faith in the system to fight the policies you don't like from a qualified candidate that supports policies you don't like.
This gets to something I've been thinking for some time - too many people today look at Washington and think that they only get one bite at the apple, so they try and take as big of bite as possible, all other considerations be damned.
There's a lack of faith in the system - on which both Steve and I agree that should be fostered - but I don't understand why preserving the system that allows us to back out of bad decisions and policies is ALWAYS left out the basket of policies people discuss when justifying decisions. I don't know if its because people take it for granted or don't appreciate the need for a policy Ctrl-Z (undo), but preserving the system that allows us to make those decisions in the first place seems like it should be the FIRST policy test a politician has to pass:
"Do you support laws and regulations to be made by representatives of the people and for those representatives to be held accountable by the people?"
- "Yes? Great - now let's talk about your views on inflation / abortion / COVID mandates / etc..."
- "No? We have nothing further to discuss and I will be voting for your opponent. Good day."
For better or worse, backing out of a bad decision at the Congressional level once it's codified by the President's approval is unlikely. I suppose it's possible, but it is extremely rare. There is at least one potentially bad decision that cannot be reversed - adding a state to the union.
The best check on bad decisions is to make legislation extremely difficult to pass. We are almost there, and a balanced budget requirement would help even more. No legislation until a balanced budget is passed and signed.
Most of our ills could be cured by eliminating the career politicians. Term limits at every level.
Reversing/reforming policies requires political will and power, indeed.
Just because it is difficult or takes a while does not mean that it is any less the appropriate course of action: argue the position, and convince people to support it. Put in the work to get people on the side of reform/removal.
Adding a state to the union is not an inherently bad thing, especially when dealing with a province filled with US citizens (assuming we're talking about Puerto Rico).
I love the new attitude. We should just let the most destructive and disgusting humans just have their way. That way they won't be as disgusting or destructive. Makes perfect sense.
Interesting thought experiment, but I think it assumes several facts not in evidence:
1. The complete unwillingness of the Legislature (the *First* branch of gov't) to act as a check on unfettered Executive power. The fact that the Senate (normally the most measured of the branches) failed to convict him for his role in January 6th is all the evidence that we need that *enough* Senators found it advantageous to continue to go along with Trump instead of holding them accountable (on behalf of those that elected him).
2. The Judicial branch has zero command authority over police forces. That's what the Executive branch is for. And without an independent arm to enforce their rulings, I doubt that we were far away from a Jacksonian "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." moment where a court would rule against Trump, and he'd ignore it.
3. Trump was (fortunately) slow to learn that he could replace members of the administrative state resisting his actions with more pliable alternatives. He eventually learned this lesson, and would be applying it with gusto in his second administration. The administrative state would resemble the current RNC more than anything else. You'd have an Attorney General Jeffrey Clark with no compunctions about interfering in elections or anything else Trump wanted.
4. You assume that after his second term ended, Trump would be in a different situation with a lesser ability to motivate his follower than before. Given that we lack any meaningful checks on a President's authoritarian impulses, that Trump wouldn't meddle in the 2024 election to ensure that his hand-picked successor ascended to the office of POTUS. He'd certainly emulate his role model Putin, who's stayed in power despite term limits by swapping offices with Medvedev[1] and still be in a position to exercise power (and avoid ANY democratic accountability) as he saw fit. And from the camp that was fine re-interpreting the Constitution and over a century of SETTLED election law, who's to say that some Claremont flack wouldn't find a way to reinterpret the 22nd Amendment as to effectively neuter it, when Congress stays silent and the courts are unable to enforce their rulings?
At the end of the day, the thing that I'm convinced Trump that he was finished was the military stating that they would not be involved in Trump's schemes, even though that option was being discussed in December[2]. Democracy didn't save us from Trump - it was our standing military who stood firm by their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. (Trump demonstrated whatever power "democracy" held over him in the weeks after the election.) Had Trump won in 2024, it's not clear that he would have not used his additional time as Commander in Chief to RNC-ize that institution into something that WOULD have interfered in a duly-conducted and legal election in 2024.
America is MUCH better off for Trump losing in 2020. Any violence that you think would have been averted would have just been postponed until 2024, as Trump remaining in office for another term does nothing to weaken the sources of power that he's trying to exercise now, and he would have had another full term after which he learned "how to President" to accelerate the corruption he introduced his first term.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putin-Medvedev_tandemocracy
[2] https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/trump-didn-t-sign-newly-unearthed-2020-election-eo-we-n1287959
You can say all the same things about the school board in San Francisco at the local level, who have the support of teachers, unions, administrators and the D party apparatchik. And yet poof they’re gone. The real super power is reserved to the American people and even with a violent cadre of supporters, and Stacey Abrams calling “suppression,” that power is not diminished.
I have to admit that I haven't followed the SF school board thing too closely, but did they try to argue that their recall election was illegitimate? Did they enjoy a place in the chain of command of the police who would be called to remove them if they showed up for a meeting after they lost the election?
Make no mistake, I'm EXTREMELY happy that Democracy works at MOST levels. I just don't think that the SF school board recall is an apples-to-apples comparison with the office of the Presidency. I mean, it applies to a President who takes democracy seriously and will acquiesce when the voters tell him to leave. In Trump's case, he couldn't give two sh!ts about what the voters and American people thought, as evidenced by his post-election behavior and schemes.
Had he a more pliable Pentagon leadership or Mike Pence followed through on casting doubt on the election, Trump would not have humbly accepted a second term, he would have lunged for it, given that the most important function of the office of the Presidency was shielding him from stuff that would bankrupt or sent any other American to jail. When retaining office becomes an existential issue for the officeholder (and I doubt that it was for the school board members), the true power lies not in the American voters, but those acting on the voters' behalf. I'm not a religious man, but THANK GOD for Michael Pence and the Pentagon leadership for refusing to go along.
Nah...they and their supporters (which are of course a minority of San Francisco voters) are saying those that voted against them were either duped by outside money/influence from Republicans or are themselves white supremacists.
It's laughable, and the definition of ridiculous.
Recalls don't exist in every state.
Local and Federal elections have some significant differences in their rules, and those have to be considered when trying to use this as an example of how Trump would have been constrained - especially when you point out that the GOP appears to not be willing to constrain him.
I was also quick to jump into "disagreement mode" a bit too thoroughly and wanted to state that I enjoyed reading your counterfactual reasoning (even if I think it's wrong).
For folks who enjoy this, I JUST finished the final book of the Merchant Princes series, which is an EXCELLENT alternative history of the world. It branches off of ours around 2003, when the US gov't discover that America has been infiltrated with dimension-hopping descendants of the Vikings[1]. While that sounds silly on the surface, the series does an excellent job describing the post-9/11 security state, how we'd respond to suddenly discovering a competitive power exists that we didn't know about, and how to build a Project Orion spacecraft[2] without murdering a large part of the population of Earth.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merchant_Princes
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
Perhaps. As you said, it's hypothetical. Still, I believe America needs this clarification we're going through now. The Left isn't winning, despite being in control of DC and most of "Legacy media". If November brings the "red wave" we expect, it won't even be in control of DC anymore for the following two years.
I think this needs be pointed out: for all the comments about "leftist violence", the bigger threat appears to be "rightist violence" - and there appears to be an argument that rightists should be appeased by giving them power in order to avoid violence. Am I off on this? Since when does appeasing those threatening violence if they don't get their way a good thing?
It’s not, if it was pure appeasement. If you disagree with the policies the Trump administration pursued then by all means don’t “appease.” But if the policies were acceptable, but the man wasn’t, is it appeasement to pursue the least violent course? Or would we not vote for a candidate (hypothetically, not Trump) based on the threat of violence from those who oppose him?
Except that you explicitly state:
"As usual, I’m late in getting to my point. It’s this: if I could prove a counterfactual, I believe the country would be less worse off, in terms of political violence and the teetering of populist war, had Trump won in 2020 than we are now."
Nothing in here is about policies, and your comment above is skirting close to excusing the violence as long as you're getting some policies that you agree with, else it would be appeasement (if I'm reading you correctly)?
In the counterfactual universe where Trump won, the violence didn’t happen. The high probability of that violence and his out of control behavior outside the White House is what led me to vote for him. I believe the cost of him staying in was lower than the cost of him losing and doing what he’s doing. It was a rational decision in my view but ymmv. I don’t see it as appeasement bc staying in office I didn’t see Trump as POTUS doing things that were against my core beliefs policy wise (again he’s incompetent).
"In the counterfactual universe where Trump won, the violence didn’t happen."
I guess this is where you lose me. In 2020, I follow that the violence wouldn't have happened for a lack of necessity. In 2024, however, we have two scenarios to consider:
1. VP Mike Pence loses along the same lines Trump loses, Trump does post-election in 2024 what he did in 2020, and Mike Pence is told he has the opportunity to cast doubt on an election that HE lost. Maybe you don't get right-wing violence there. ("Hang Mike Pence" doesn't work if you're trying to get Mike Pence into power.) But if Pence casts doubt on the election for his own benefit to establish a Russian-style "tandemocracy" (my new word of the day), then you're going to get a lot of violence from the majority of Americans who denied him both an electoral and popular victory.
2. Let's say that Pence doesn't run, and Trump backs his favorite sycophant Josh Hawley, and the same thing as 2020 happens. Mike Pence is waffling on what to do on Jan. 6th and Trump engages in the same behavior we witnessed in 2020. (Remember that this is an existential issue for him - he MUST have Hawley in power to cover for him, as Biden is refusing to do now to Trump's great detriment.) Why do you think January 6, 2025 (and its aftermath) would play out any differently than it did in 2021? Other than Trump being four years closer to his date with the Reaper, what are you seeing that I'm not seeing that would indicate he would behave any differently than he has so far?
I can see your point about violence in 2021 not happening THEN, but unless Trump has a change of heart, a different candidate ascending to the office of POTUS doesn't seem like it would be a mitigating factor. The violence in Earth 2 (or whatever its designation is) isn't prevented, merely delayed.
Well put.
Perhaps more succinctly: "The ends do not justify the means".
I can imagine the alternative to the "ends" being undesirable enough to justify extreme "means" to prevent it.
Once again: policies that can be readily reversed with sufficient political will and effort, does not justify extreme means to prevent those policies.
We know you hate liberal democracy, Curtis. You don't have to keep proving it, or how morally bankrupt your position is when you have to support such extreme means because you are too lazy to actually work for your preferred policies.
If those policies lead to dictatorship, as in Canada seizing children, pets and bank accounts, extreme measures, including civil rebellion, are justified. All it takes is an authoritarian Congress, a President in agreement and a compliant Supreme Court to neuter the Constitution and it's done.
My response is you vote on the candidate that is most defensible and most qualified. Legitimate policies one doesn't like can generally be reversed or removed, if the people decide that's what they want to have happen.
So rather than appease an indefensible and unqualified candidate, use that same faith in the system to fight the policies you don't like from a qualified candidate that supports policies you don't like.
This gets to something I've been thinking for some time - too many people today look at Washington and think that they only get one bite at the apple, so they try and take as big of bite as possible, all other considerations be damned.
There's a lack of faith in the system - on which both Steve and I agree that should be fostered - but I don't understand why preserving the system that allows us to back out of bad decisions and policies is ALWAYS left out the basket of policies people discuss when justifying decisions. I don't know if its because people take it for granted or don't appreciate the need for a policy Ctrl-Z (undo), but preserving the system that allows us to make those decisions in the first place seems like it should be the FIRST policy test a politician has to pass:
"Do you support laws and regulations to be made by representatives of the people and for those representatives to be held accountable by the people?"
- "Yes? Great - now let's talk about your views on inflation / abortion / COVID mandates / etc..."
- "No? We have nothing further to discuss and I will be voting for your opponent. Good day."
For better or worse, backing out of a bad decision at the Congressional level once it's codified by the President's approval is unlikely. I suppose it's possible, but it is extremely rare. There is at least one potentially bad decision that cannot be reversed - adding a state to the union.
The best check on bad decisions is to make legislation extremely difficult to pass. We are almost there, and a balanced budget requirement would help even more. No legislation until a balanced budget is passed and signed.
Most of our ills could be cured by eliminating the career politicians. Term limits at every level.
Reversing/reforming policies requires political will and power, indeed.
Just because it is difficult or takes a while does not mean that it is any less the appropriate course of action: argue the position, and convince people to support it. Put in the work to get people on the side of reform/removal.
Adding a state to the union is not an inherently bad thing, especially when dealing with a province filled with US citizens (assuming we're talking about Puerto Rico).
I once said the same thing about Hawaii and now we have Mazie Hirono as a US Senator.
I love the new attitude. We should just let the most destructive and disgusting humans just have their way. That way they won't be as disgusting or destructive. Makes perfect sense.