So, how's Trump going to win this time..?

ToomuchFluffy 2020-11-05 19:55:00 UTC #21

Well, i start working early in the morning tomorrow, like on most days, looking through various newspapers and such. Maybe there will be clarity by then. But I don’t think it really matters. Biden won’t introduce radical reforms and nothing else would be sufficient at this point.

BillButNotBen 2020-11-06 00:02:14 UTC #22

This article from the NYT struck me as interesting.

(possible paywall, but you should get a few free articles)

It’s interesting to see that voters on both sides are at the same time very similar and very different.

I don’t think he’d be able to even if he wanted to, as he won’t have enough support in the senate.
That said, I think 4 years of Biden is likely to do a lot less damage than 4 more years of Trump.

The question would be what the situation will be like in the US in 4 years. Will 4 years of nothing enable heads to cool down, or will 4 years of a weak Democrat president and continued social media bubbles result in an even more extremist right wing and divided country?

I suspect a lot of the direct claims of interference and collusion were overblown. I mean, I’m sure Russian and other spies were doing their thing, and the Trump administration seems to have been particularly naive and vulnerable to it, but it’s probably nothing new.

But the massive social media destabilisation and misinformation campaign is basically true. It might not be only Russia, I’m sure there are a few other nations involved. There’s also a lot of genuine nuts and US people involved too these days. But it is pretty clear that foreign states have been waging officially sanctioned misinformation campaigns against the US (and UK) and it seems to have been pretty effective.

I think there’s probably less coverage now because (a) it’s too soon to focus on those kinds of details, (b) social media platforms have preemptively shut down a lot of those efforts or flagged their posts this time around, and ( c ) the damage has already been done and it’s probably self perpetuating at this point.

Aitrus 2020-11-07 17:57:18 UTC #23

The world is still fucked and America is still a trash fire capitalist racist imperialist nightmare monster, but…

Hurray.

Firkragg 2020-11-07 23:31:40 UTC #24

Ding Don, the witch is dead!

Phew, now we only have to worry about Corona

BillButNotBen 2020-11-08 03:01:55 UTC #25

Yay!

Even if a lot of damage has been done, and it isn’t perfect, at least there is hope that the next 4 years won’t keep increasing the damage.
I’m not sure how much they’ll be able to repair though.

Trump does have the option of running again in 4 years. On the other hand, once he’s no longer president Twitter can suspend his account.

The other worrying thing is that it seems to have pushed a lot of his supporters into even more wacko territory.
I think even Murdoch is worried about what he’s unleashed, and a lot of Trump supporters now seem to hate Fox news because they consider them to be too left wing… so they’re going to move to even sketchier sources and get an even more filtered and distorted view of the news… which is a scary thought.

There is also the worry that Biden won’t actually take office for another 10 weeks… and those 10 weeks could be very critical for Covid. I can half imagine Trump doing fuck all to prevent the spread of the disease simply to spite people, and then Biden inheriting a completely screwed up situation in January. Hopefully not.

It is a bit weird, when you think about it, that there’s such a big gap between the election and taking office. It basically relies on the honesty of the outgoing president not to deliberately mess things up for their successor.

Skalpadda 2020-11-08 03:51:37 UTC #26

He’ll be 78. Granted that’s just a year older than Biden is now, but the Donald isn’t in great shape to begin with. It’s also entirely possible he’ll be nailed for tax and insurance fraud and maybe other crimes once he leaves office. I’d be more worried about Ivanka or god forbid Junior getting ideas. Whatever the Republicans vomit up for next time it won’t be good.

I guess I should feel relief or something. It’s unquestionably positive, especially from a European perspective, that an insane madman isn’t going to be in charge of the US for the next 4 years. Biden isn’t great but he isn’t horrible either, and Kamala Harris seems reasonable and intelligent. There could be some movement on climate policy which is probably the brightest outcome, and at least slightly less embracing authoritarians and making an enemy of the EU.

But it’s bitter. It’s entirely clear there’s no way we’ll be able to trust the US for any length of time in the forseeable future. The American people have shown themselves to be just the venal worshippers at the altar of stupid that prejudice has made them out to be. It’s unlikely anything in US politics will be fixed as it seems the Republicans will keep the Senate. Dems have lost seats in the House somehow. The Supreme Court is fucked and will probably remain so for a very long time. Voting rights reforms won’t happen.

I’m also still not convinced there won’t be some sort of hand grenade thrown into the machinery during the lame duck period, either from Trump/Republicans or just unrest and violence from crazy right wingers.

On the positive end there are apparently a couple of special elections for Senate seats happening that could shift the balance, so that’s something.

BillButNotBen 2020-11-08 04:50:07 UTC #27

True. And if his Twitter gets shut off then that’ll remove a lot of his oxygen of publicity.

I do wonder if Biden and the Democrats are inheriting a bit of a poisoned chalice. If they don’t get the economy and everything back on track within 4 years then they may well get voted out for the bad economy, even if you could legitimately argue that there wasn’t much they could have done. Voters tend to have a very short memory and it seems pretty common for administrations to get the credit/blame for results that were triggered by their predecessor’s actions.

Not really relevant right now, but interesting point I read is that “Economic growth has, on average since World War Two, fared better under Democratic presidents than Republican ones.” Maybe that’s due to the aforementioned inheritance, but if not then it does highlight the myth that the Dems are anti business and the Reps are pro business - which I read repeatedly in comments all over the internet in the past month or so.

Skalpadda 2020-11-08 06:40:02 UTC #28

Yeah, Trump inherited a good economy that had recovered fairly well since the 2008 crash (which Obama inherited) and then sent it into overdrive by dumping taxes. Economic activity is going to surge in that scenario but lowered taxes and increased spending means they’ve ballooned debt and left them with fewer levers to pull to deal with the pandemic recession.

Afaik there’s going to be nothing stopping the Republicans from messing with the budget, possibly causing more government shutdowns, as long as they hold the Senate, and they can keep refusing to bring bills to a vote as well as stonewall appointments as they did under Obama. It’s real bad.

Firkragg 2020-11-08 07:36:58 UTC #29

Trump sure does come across as petty and vindictive, throwing a spanner in the works before he leaves is on character.

There has been some speculation on what Donald might do in his last days of office. In order to protect himself, he may try and pardon his family and business associates, both for “known and unknown” federal violations, which is wild. From the article I’m reading, he can only do this for crimes on a federal level, not on state level.
What is even wilder is a theory Trump will try for a pardon of himself, like Nixon did in 1974. Nixon was pardoned by Gerald Ford after leaving office. Some analysts think Donald may try to convince Pence to take the presidency for the last few days, so he can pardon Trump. He may decline because it’ll hurt his own chances of running for president. Also the potential for backlash must be pretty high, with all the shady stuff Trumps been doing.
If he can’t get Pence to pardon him, some speculate he may try and pardon himself, a decision that would have to be brought before the Supreme Court. We know which way they lean of course.

Donald will always do what is best for Donald, always try for a win.

BillButNotBen 2020-11-08 07:50:59 UTC #30

I think that at the end of the Clinton presidency there was actually an annual surplus and they were planning to use it to reduce the national debt (which Clinton had already done) and prepare for the boomer retirement costs, but then Bush went for tax cuts, and so they went back into deficit and the national debt went up.
IMHO the idea that the Republicans are the party to run the economy and the Dems aren’t is almost certainly incorrect. But it seems to be so perpetuated that people on both sides believe it.

I may be naive, but I actually think that in most cases the Supreme Court Justices are generally decent people who believe in upholding the law. (Though they may not always agree on what that means).
I’m hopeful that despite Trump loading the bench with his appointees, they will mostly do their best to follow the law rather than politics. I mean, Trumps first two appointees have mostly voted based on the issue rather than any kind of party loyalty.

If he thinks that getting 3 justices on the Supreme Court and then appealing to them about the election, or to save him from misconduct, will help him then I think he’s mistaken. At least I hope so.

Firkragg 2020-11-08 08:13:43 UTC #31

Oh I’m in the same boat, I really hope they vote for what they honestly believe in and not to curry favour with Trump or their former party lines. Personally think it’d go against Trump if he tries it, but I also think it likely he’ll pull every lever he can if it might help protect him and his interests after leaving office.

Skalpadda 2020-11-08 09:09:07 UTC #32

Being able to pardon himself is not an unreasonable reading of the US constitution. It places no real limits on the president’s pardon powers and a bunch of the conservatives are originalists (they don’t want to put the constitution into modern context) and into unitary executive theory (that all executive power stems from the president so he can pretty much do as he pleases). I wouldn’t be surprised to see that get through, especially as it would let the rest of the Republican party off the hook and leaves responsibility with Trump personally.

I’d be surprised if Trump doesn’t at least try it if he can’t find a way to get someone else to do it.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if Biden goes and gives him a blanket pardon as some idiotic attempt to reset and try to be bipartisan (that worked so well under Obama).

I don’t think the SC would go as far as overturning the election. Roberts and Gorsuch at least don’t seem to be insane. Kavanaugh I’m not sure about (he doesn’t seem to be a good judge or person but probably not an insane zealot) and I barely know anything about Amy Coney Barrett except she appears to be a religious nutter purpose bred to stomp on abortion rights.

BillButNotBen 2020-11-08 09:39:27 UTC #33

Yeah, I’m a bit worried about her. But we’ll see.

Sarfrin 2020-11-08 13:40:23 UTC #34

That’s what he’s doing already, isn’t it?

LexW 2020-11-08 14:57:04 UTC #35

I think labeling that as “idiotic” is short-sighted.

It’s not a matter of “being bipartisan”, in some hippy way (that wasn’t even the case with Obama, he was just trying to find a way to actually get stuff passed - he failed miserably though I agree), but rather preventing terrorism and turmoil which Trump has been promoting, from being a problem for the US for the next 10 years.

If Trump leaves office and then is immediately charged/arrested for all his many, many crimes, he’s going to become a martyr for the Christians and far right, and particularly for QAnon nutcases. America has a serious problem with domestic terrorism already, and Trump in jail or constantly in flashy, high-profile criminal trials (which they would be) is going to rile them up fantastically. And the results are unlikely to be great - he may well get a number of innocent verdicts, which he is definitely going to parlay into calls for revolutionary violence/terrorism (or his supporters will).

Yeah, sure, people like you and me will definitely enjoy see justice being done, to the extent that it is (which I suspect is “way less than we’d like”), but at the cost of giving a massive boost to terrorists, militias, the far-right and conspiracy nuts for decades, which will potentially result in more stuff like the Oklahoma truck bomb of 1995, or worse.

Whereas if Biden pardons him for anything that happened during his term in office, he neuters him.

Suddenly Trump has no real grievances, no valid complaints. QAnon types may well believe Biden is “working with” Trump on some level. Far-right-types have little to rattle on about and Trump becomes this faintly shameful figurehead, like everyone who gets pardoned is. There are no criminal trials to exacerbate the situation. And further, if they want to, Republicans can use it as an excuse for thumbs-upping Biden? Will they? Probably not. But that’s beside the point. The point is to neuter Trump and prevent a decade of domestic terrorism.

And Trump is going to end up buried beneath a ton of embarrassing civil lawsuits that he can’t be pardoned out of anyway. He might also be criminally tried for stuff that happened before he was president, which doesn’t have the same appeal to the far-right and nutjobs, because it’s mostly rape and sexual assault, and that’s grime-y shit no-one wants to be associated with. Further, the Christians don’t like it, because pretty much none of the women are his wife, where they might find it more acceptable.

And leaving him in charge and getting the shit sued out of him, rather than in jail, satisfying as that might be, is much more likely to have knock-on bad effects for his kids, who won’t be able to do the “OMG my dad is a political prisoner!!!” dance, but will instead have to be “OMG my dad is not in debt, he’s a billionaire!” and “OMG my dad is not a rapist!” dance, neither of which is an attractive dance. It once again will become clear that Trump is not a “cool rebel” (yeah I have no idea why anyone believed this but whatever) or a “normal guy”, but rather will appear to be a mega-rich old perv who routinely assaulted women.

So I fucking hate to say it, I genuinely hate it, but pardoning him for anything done during his presidency, no matter how corrupt, may be the smart move here.

Agree re: the SC being unlikely to intervene in the way Trump wants. His cases just aren’t strong enough and aren’t about few enough votes. The margins are too big. He might make ground with recounts, but it’s equally likely he’ll lose it, and there’s no real chance the counting in any state was so far off that it’ll change over. Recounts in the US typically change the numbers by a few hundred votes (I think this is the same in most places in developed world), because the counting systems are boringly well-designed, but Biden’s smallest lead is over ten thousand, and the rest are multiple tens of thousands. The SC already ruled some votes had to be separated off in Penn. for example - Trump’s campaign crowed about this. Turns out it was about 500 votes (presumably split 65/35 Biden/Trump, so not even all against him), when Biden won Penn. by 40000-ish (IIRC). Sooooooo. Yeah. Not looking great for Trump there. Re: Amy Conan O’Brien and abortion, well, it’s only an issue because they only have abortion rights because of a frankly flimsy court ruling (Roe vs. Wade). In a civilized country, it’d be because it’s an actual, clear law. If Roe vs. Wade went, it’d cause temporary and extreme chaos, but there’s no way it wouldn’t ultimately lead to an actual law allowing abortion, because all the old evils would come back in months.

Firkragg 2020-11-08 16:13:17 UTC #36

A well reasoned and thought out argument, kudos LexW. Godsdammit, I hate to say it as well but I can definitely see why pardoning Trump could be a smart move.Though how you can have a president who in the history of the US deserves the most to be brought to justice, then not do it? Bad example to set. A small consolation is that history won’t be kind to Trump in any case.

LexW 2020-11-08 19:48:04 UTC #37

I agree that pardoning him definitely sets a bad example.

But it’s the old “How do you shoot the devil in the back? What if you miss?”. If you had an open-and-shut case against Trump, on very serious charges, where he’d serve 10+ years, and there was just really no chance of acquittal, just a question of what he’d plead down to (and it’d need to be serious and certain enough that he couldn’t plead down much), then sure, prosecute, it’s the best way.

But that is not the position we are in. There are a lot of things you might charge Trump with, a lot of ways you might prosecute him, particularly re: corruption, but none of them are at all certain, because no president has really been this self-serving and law-ignoring in this particular way before. Throw enough at him and you might convict him on some stuff - but it’ll probably be white-collar stuff he can appeal, and possibly stay out of prison on the appeal because it’s white-collar.

What’s most likely is you’d either prosecute him for a bunch of stuff, and he’d try to plead it down to basically nothing - then say he was innocent and he only plead because it was too expensive to fight or w/e, or he’d outright claim he was innocent, and you’d have him likely in the flashiest trial in human history, denying everything, ranting, his lawyers ranting, surrogates demanding political violence and so on, Republicans making massive amounts of hay out of the whole thing the whole time. Then he may well get an innocent verdict because it’s all hard-to-prove shit and novel legal theories, or it’ll go on to appeal after appeal until it eventually reaches his own, hand-picked SC, so it’ll go on forever, and then suddenly his own appointees are there to judge him. And all he has to over is the slightest fig-leaf of a defence and say it’s a political trial, and they’ll let him off (and they won’t even take the case if he gets off then the prosecution appeals).

That’s the real reason he wants the SC, I suspect. Not so much to re-rule the election in his favour, though that could have been handy, but because eventually, if he gets prosecuted for anything, it potentially gets appealed all the way up to them, and what are they going to do, recuse themselves? Nah. Kavanaugh and Barrett will both say they know their business well enough to stay on, and owe him nothing, after all, the Senate approved them, and some other Republican, likely Alito will lead a majority judgment in Trump’s favour, which they can just sign off on.

There are other angles, but the TLDR is that I can’t see any way of the government prosecuting Trump for anything that happened during his term that ends well, and I’ve heard no arguments that there is a way.

As noted, he’ll still get buried under civil suits and potentially prosecuted for historic sexual assaults (the latter would not be the subject of a pardon - it’s not like the pardonee can “demand” what the pardon entails - I don’t think they can even refuse it). He may well get off, but that’s a much better result for Biden than some half-successful or entirely failed attempt at a prosecution - which might take so long as to still be running past the next election.

Skalpadda 2020-11-09 00:02:12 UTC #38

Yeah this is a reasonable argument but I think it’s way too late to try to either appease or trick the right wing in the US into being reasonable, nor to make the violent fringe not be violent lunatics. They will find a way to hate and weave extreme conspiracy theories about the left whatever happens, and they will find a way to excuse and defend their side no matter what. A pardon will be spun as 100% vindication, and they will not give democrats any “credit” for it whatsoever. It could also make state charges for the things he’s most likely to get convicted for (financial crimes) less likely to stick (double jeopardy, blah blah blah).

The reason I brought up Obama is that his presidency and the folliwing 4 years of Trump prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that there is no way for Dems to work with Republicans. They spent 8 years stonewalling and obstructing everything he did, then 4 years of blaming him for every woe of the Trump administration and trying to stomp all over his legacy, like the Affordable Care Act which was modeled after a Republican health care plan in an attempt to get bipartisan support. He tried to get bipartisan unity and they treated him like communist muslim Satan. Extend a hand trying to meet those fuckers in the middle and they will chop it off and run cackling to the far right.

Note I’m not saying Biden should go after Trump in any way personally, or that the White House should initiate some DoJ probe. Trying to go after him for stuff like the obstruction of the Mueller investigation or the corruption with regards to Ukraine that he was impeached for is probably a bad idea. Those things were blatantly corrupt and criminal but a conviction would rely on proving intent, which would be very difficult.

I’m saying the White House should stay out of it and let SDNY and others get on with their jobs and decide if they have enough evidence to charge him. Financial crimes (tax, insurance, bank fraud and possible money laundering) are going to be the easiest to prove and rely on numbers, not proving corrupt intent. The civil suits against him are defamation cases. They’re going to be hard to prove and unlikely to mete out sentences that seriously hurt him even if they succeed.

The point should not to be the satisfaction of putting Trump away but to not play along with white washing and the idea that presidents are above the law.

I think this is a little too rosy an expectation of the US Christian right at this point. He bragged about commiting sexual assault before 2016. He bragged about bursting into teenagers’ dressing rooms at his beauty pageants. We knew he fucked at least two porn actress while his wife was pregnant and paid them to keep silent. His ex wife has accused him of rape and physical abuse. There were allegations of rape and abuse of at least one minor. And of course he has consistently objectified and treated women like shit (including his own daughter) both before and during his presidency.

They don’t care and cannot be reasoned with. Nothing you do or say will change their minds. Democrats desperately need to stop playing softball and worry about giving the far right ammunition because they will just make up their own reality to be what they want it to be anyway.

LexW 2020-11-09 04:41:08 UTC #39

I’ve lived in the US, I’ve spoken to the kind of people who vote for Trump, even are fans of Trump (a whole bunch of my wife’s family for starters).

A few of them are like you’re saying. The vast majority are not. That latter group are the issue, and also how they interact with the other group is an issue. Pardoning Trump would definitely bank some fires and confuse the hell o ut of some people and completely destroy Trump as a martyr and focus for these people. Yeah, they may say he was innocent, but suddenly he’s just a guy who got off, not Jesus 2.0. Yes, new conspiracy theories will appear and so on, but they’ll be new and confused, not the relatively-focused QAnon stuff (curiously I haven’t heard jack about Q recently, I presume the newspapers etc. have decided not to report on that stuff now it’s banned from pretty much every social network). I think you’re underestimating how much of a motivating factor Trump the individual is to these people. They’re not generically evil, and without Trump, they were rarely terribly motivated. It’s important to make Trump look bad in a way that makes him look pathetic, rather than persecuted.

Also, you seem to vastly overestimate how easy it is to nail people for financial crimes. Especially very senior people, who are almost always isolated by multiple levels of people below them and accountants and so on. It’s not like these are untested waters. Historically, unless you can basically find an email from the person which is a response to “Sir should we do CRIMEZ?!?!” and the response is “Yes!!! DO CRIMEZZZ!!!” your chances of conviction are non-existent. Do you think these aren’t jury trials? They are jury trials. Should they be? No. Are they? Yes. People who are incredibly black-and-white guilty can get off because they are jury trials. If you want a nice example, Netflix’s “Trial By Media” series has the episode “King Richard” for you. You think a jury is going to convict an ex-president of the USA, who probably 40-50% of them voted for (!!!), of hard-to-prove financial crimes? Unanimously? Which I believe is the standard required in NY for this sort of thing (unlike the UK, were a majority verdict might work). I mean what? Whaaaaaat? Seriously? You think that’ll happen? That’s an honest question, because if you think it will, presumably you have some reasoning.

Re: the civil lawsuits all being for defamation, um what:

AFAIK only one civil lawsuit involving Trump is about defamation, and it’s potentially very seriously damaging if he loses it, because it’s a case of him claiming he didn’t rape someone and them claiming he did. If he loses that, he’d potentially literally be banned from entering some countries, and it’d be hugely embarrassing for him.

But I think we broadly agree - prosecuting him for stuff he did as president is a bad idea, even though it’s some crazy shit. That’s what you pardon him for. That might stop some of these cases, but not some of the others.

Re: Religious-right Christians, nah, I know I have their measure precisely. Your complaints suggest you think maybe they’re normal people who are just kind of religious, and it’s shocking that they’re not upset about this stuff, and shows some kind of broad-spectrum allowance that he can do anything. Nope. They’re all about denial. All the stuff he’s apparently/allegedly done, they can deny as “lies”, or “exaggerations”, or dismiss as “boys will be boys”, as insane as that might seem. If he’s in some criminal trial, however, and his defense is “it was consensual” or the like, that’s very different. That’s not acceptable any more. Some of them clearly think he is a creep and make excuses for him but it needs to not be a fact, and they need him to not be guilty of sex crimes.

As for “presidents are above the law”, well, that’s going to remain the case unless you do what both of us are saying not to and attempt to prosecute him for things he did in office.

Skalpadda 2020-11-09 05:42:35 UTC #40

Based on congressional testimony from people around Trump (Cohen etc), and things like the suit against the Trump Foundation, it seems entirely possible that this might very well exist. They also seem to have had a habit of secretly recording each other, which could be fun.

With enough proof in a NY or Washington district court? Yeah it’s possible. I have no insight into the current cases against him, nor do you. What I’ve said is that he shouldn’t be pardoned and that it should be up to prosecutors to bring cases or not.

Did you read that page yourself? There’s one I’d missed:

Lawsuit by former campaign staffer, Alva Johnson, who claims that Trump forcibly kissed her at a rally in Florida in August 2016. The lawsuit also alleges unequal pay standards for her, an African-American woman, compared to others on the team
Johnson v. Trump

Doesn’t sound terribly explosive to me by Trump standards.

The other two involving sexual misconduct, which is what you were talking about, are the defamation suits I mentioned above. There’s also a pay dispute and one that seems to be about Trump University. The rest appear to be mainly suits against the campaign or presidential office. Most of those aren’t going to go anywhere at all or the remedy is releasing some documents. I don’t see anything in there that would sink him personally.

EDIT: Turns out the suit by Alva Johnson was dropped some time ago, so nope, only the Summer Zervos and Jean Carroll lawsuits are still active.

I’ve seen no evidence whatsoever that facts have any bearing on what the American right, religious or not, thinks and says. A legal finding in a defamation or sexual misconduct suit is just as vulnerable to spin and conspiracy theories as anything else.