GET OUT: US politics November 2020

that post is actually quite reassuring, so thanks ums

if their work during the ‘Islamic Terror’ era is any guide, my concern re FBI is that they end up spending a lot of time and resources infiltrating these militias only to goad (and finance!) the weaker/ dumber ones into popping off. then swoop in and “save the day”, all in the service of justifying swelling budgets and maintaining public goodwill the Biden era

The not very reassuring thing is that all it takes is one malcontent with a machine gun to do a ton of damage. But those individuals will always be around as long as there are machine guns.

xpost valid concern.

also important to note millions of people legitimately believed Obama was illegally serving as President for 8 years, but most stayed on the internet

Individual mass killings are sadly just part of the fabric of American life.

I'm just saying don't look at these gassed up motherfucking midwest pre-diabetic insurance agents posting about the second revolutionary war in their 2014 gmc denali while they wait for their drive-thru order.

they are just pathetic

...may give them some leverage to claim the results are illegitimate.

How? What is the legal theory supporting the argument "this election is illegitimate...

afaics, the power in making that claim has nothing to do rationality or legality. its power consists solely of it being believed by a sufficient number of people who wish to believe it. in a democracy if really large percentage of people reject the legitimacy of elections, you got trouble.

I guess my main worry is that if people openly boycott the vote in large enough numbers that may give them some leverage to claim the results are illegitimate.

How? What is the legal theory supporting the argument "this election is illegitimate because I vociferously declared I wasn't going to participate in it and the candidate I dislike won"?

i'm just catching up here, but the way i read this, crut isn't saying that MAGA people have a solid legal argument. boycotting the vote isn't about legal theories, though. it's what happens when people believe legal processes have broken down, or if they're just really mad. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it happens frequently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_boycott

sorry, xposts

Yeah I remeber seeing all the batshit "If commie Obama wins, RIP to this once great nation, I am ready to fight if it comes to that" stuff. Strangely they wimped out and went back to watching Duck Dynasty and complaining in the comments sections at Hot Air and Breitbart and NRO.

....and winning the presidency.

FWIW, NY just got around to tallying about 50k votes from Rockland, Columbia, Warren and Essex counties and... Biden passes 80m nationwide as a result.

xpost they did win the Presidency but through the equivalent of the opposing team's quarterback fumbling the ball during kneeldown and running it back for a TD

ums otm. It's super easy for Americans to sit in front of a computer/TV screen, getting high on their echo chamber of choice and building up a head of vehement steam about how terrible things are and how it's time for REVOLTION IN TEH STREETS. When they step away, though, unless the world beyond that screen is just absolute miserable irreversible hell (and, tbh, this is the case for some), no one but the fringiest of nutjobs is gonna push through what is (let's face it) a cushier existence than is enjoyed by many/most people on the planet to actually RISE UP AND TAKE BACK THE NIHGT or whatever the fuck it is these sad LARPers sit around and pretend they're gonna do. No, you're gonna go play Call of Duty and shout racial epithets at thirteen-year-olds while you down a Big Gulp of Mountain Dew, is what you're gonna do, STFU.

Who's willing to miss an episode of Young Sheldon so they can run drills with the local right-wing militia, is what I'm asking.

Meanwhile, on this week's Meet the Press: Dinkins, Blinken and Todd

(sorry, just wanted to make that joke somewhere)

When friends in the last three weeks warned of Trump voters rioting in the streets with Proud Boys support, they mocked me for talking them off the ledge. Ninety-nine percent of his supporters are as lazy as the rest of us.

those who are not lazy are generally mad. a more robust american public mental health program / constitutional housing would likely cut gun violence in this country by half in under a year.

Man in Trump-shaped flotation device charged with assault after breathing on protesters https://t.co/lMS6raINPR via @nbcnews

— JJ MacNab (@jjmacnab) November 24, 2020

appropriating that for most 2020 images.

(Actually, Cook Report are about the only ppl reporting >80m. Their NY figures seem to include an extra 58k-17k split for Biden. I think they got a little excited. There is no extra prize for reaching 80m.)

was he expecting to have to swim?

Karl, this is from that Wikipedia article you posted:

In general elections, individuals and parties will often boycott in order to protest the ruling party's policies with the hope that when voters do not show up the elections will be deemed illegitimate by outside observers.[1] This tactic, however, can prove disastrous for the boycotting parties. Lack of participation rarely nullifies election results and the distorted voting is likely to further detach boycotting groups from the organs of power, leaving them susceptible to political irrelevance.

This is what would happen; furthermore, in this specific instance based on the tenuous grasp the people complaining have on what the truth is, this is what we want to happen. I'm extremely comfortable with someone casting a vote who thinks education is important but doesn't trust the current tax scheme is being used to fund it and wants that money back so they can fund their child's education themselves. I'm 100% uncomfortable with someone casting a vote because they think public schools are indoctrinating children into being intersex and they need to claw back tax revenue to fund home schooling to combat this. If the latter population wants to remove themselves from the voting pool because their views are being mocked, they are more than welcome to do so as far as I'm concerned.

To put it another way, who is going to swoop into the United States and say "the loonies aren't participating in your general elections, we must do something"?

Piers Morgan

I rest my case

leaving them susceptible to political irrelevance

o no not that

heaven forfend

The president must be delighted:

NEW YORK (AP) — Dow Jones Industrial Average trades above 30,000 points as stocks continue to climb on vaccine hopes, Biden transition.

— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) November 24, 2020

If the latter population wants to remove themselves from the voting pool because their views are being mocked, they are more than welcome to do so as far as I'm concerned.

I would agree 100% with this perspective, but for the demonstrated fanaticism that has kept Trump's approval rating in the vicinity of 42% no matter how he screws up. If this craziness coalesces around a plan of action like boycotting the GA special election, it might coalesce around other crazy actions.

All the points made recently about the unlikelihood of genuine mass action to overthrow democracy by Trump followers (who claim this is actually upholding democracy) are well taken. This is not likely in the near future. But the trend of the past four years has not been encouraging for my optimism about that future.

Maybe this is better suited for the rolling economy into the shit bin thread but maybe economics nerds can weigh in: has the Dow ever been so far out of whack w the discernible reality?

"Unless the legal situation changes in a dramatic and frankly an unlikely manner, Joe Biden will be inaugurated on January 20," Ingraham said on "The Ingraham Angle."

Okay, looks like Laura Ingraham is on board, so I'm officially calling this for Biden.

no one expects the october surprise in january

I would agree 100% with this perspective, but for the demonstrated fanaticism that has kept Trump's approval rating in the vicinity of 42% no matter how he screws up. If this craziness coalesces around a plan of action like boycotting the GA special election, it might coalesce around other crazy actions.

All the points made recently about the unlikelihood of genuine mass action to overthrow democracy by Trump followers (who claim this is actually upholding democracy) are well taken. This is not likely in the near future. But the trend of the past four years has not been encouraging for my optimism about that future.

Okay so... the options being presented here are:

• Encourage insane people who want to do us harm to participate in our democracy by voting in people who will use the weight of the system to hurt us, or;
• Succumb to insane people when they eventually rise up in revolt and overthrow the government of the United States

(Actually, Cook Report are about the only ppl reporting >80m. Their NY figures seem to include an extra 58k-17k split for Biden. I think they got a little excited. There is no extra prize for reaching 80m.)

― Michael Jones, Tuesday, November 24, 2020 10:33 AM (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Dave Wasserman tweeted that he got those NY figures directly from an election official in Buffalo.

Thanks tipsy, I was waiting for that joke.

Do I have that correct? We should capitulate the power of state to insane people so they can start hurting us now because they might try extralegal action against the federal government and armed forces and we might get hurt in the process? That's our best play?

Thanks for this. Given where we are and the likely alternatives, fewer assholes/illiterates participating in the electoral process is a straight positive, period.

BREAKING: Nevada Supreme Court certifies Joe Biden's victory; with this decision, his win is official.
- @AP

It's happy hour somewhere 🍾💙🍾

womp womp.

— Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind) November 24, 2020

PARTICULARLY since they are choosing to remove themselves (if, in fact, they choose not to participate, which I will believe when it happens)

Dave Wasserman tweeted that he got those NY figures directly from an election official in Buffalo.

Ha, right! I see it now.

The president must be delighted

Or panicked that the credit won't fall squarely on him; just gave an epic 45-second non-press-conference to break the news.

Do I have that correct?

No. Succumb? Capitulate? Nothing I said was remotely like that. Simmer down.

New York and California haven't even finished counting yet, so we really just don't know who won.

DJP relentlessly OTM

jfc people don't waste a single second of your lives worrying about the disenfranchisement of these fucking fascist scumbags who just spent the last month trying to legally disenfranchise millions of largely black and POC voters in PA and Michigan

it's not fucking social studies class

Stock market really excited about Biden's massive socialist agenda!

Even the ppl who physically went out and protested the vote counting while getting whipped into a frenzy by Alex Jones got bored after a day or 2. These choads are so not worth stressing out about.

No. Succumb? Capitulate? Nothing I said was remotely like that. Simmer down.

Everything you said was exactly that.

The original comment was that laughing at people boycotting a general election was "antidemocratic". This was later expanded as a concern that if enough people boycott the election, it will be seen as illegitimate. I asked, "by whom, because it wouldn't be the courts" and was given a link to a Wikipedia article that reinforced my point, which is that insane people removing themselves from the election process leads to sane elections. You then responded "but there are a lot of insane people out there, it's not far-fetched to think they might do something even more insane". If you were not interjecting this as a counterpoint to the expansion upon the argument that it is neither antidemocratic nor in our best interests to solicit the participation of obviously insane people in our elections, why did you say it? What are you adding to the conversation?

jfc people don't waste a single second of your lives worrying about the disenfranchisement of these fucking fascist scumbags who just spent the last month trying to legally disenfranchise millions of largely black and POC voters in PA and Michigan

particularly when the noise these people are making is how they want to disenfranchise themselves

like, if they must disenfranchise someone, that's literally the only acceptable population

PARTICULARLY since they are choosing to remove themselves (if, in fact, they choose not to participate, which I will believe when it happens)

― DJP, Tuesday, November 24, 2020 11:39 AM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes, this declaration has the air of a seven-year-old threatening to run away and never come home again.

I def think a good chunk of the "non regular voters" who voted Trump are going to fade back into non voting and being less politically involved. I'm sure some minority of them are now politicized but without the central animating figure of Trump they will be dispersed between various movements and cult leaders imo. Of course then there's the much larger chunk of regular republican voters who were overwhelmingly fine with Trump, and they aren't going away.

Hey, remember this story from three, four years ago?

BREAKING: Delaware computer repairman at center of Hunter Biden laptop scandal closes shop and skips town -- https://t.co/i5vtNFR28k -- from @TVD_DC for @dcexaminer

— Daniel Chaitin (@danielchaitin7) November 24, 2020

Ol' Rudy's going to be facing some fun questions soon enough.