AlterNet - Could Republicans Just Cancel the Midterm Elections?

[TomCADem]

Lets say Trump gets his wish and starts a war with a convenient adversary whether it be North Korea or Iran. Lets say Trump then fire Jeff Sessions and picks an AG who is more than happy to go after Trump's political adversaries. Could our Democracy be saved if these two events and Republicans in Congress just go along for the ride by doing nothing?

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/could-donald-trump-cancel-mid-term-elections

In his 2017 New York Times bestselling book "On Tyranny," Yale historian Timothy Snyder warned that the American people only had one year to stop Donald Trump from causing serious and perhaps irreversible harm to our democracy, as well as other social and political institutions.

Snyder's concerns were centered on how the rule of law, reality and truth, civil and human rights, and the ways Americans interact with each other as members of a shared community would come under assault by Trump and his allies' agenda. He also sounded the alarm about the possibility that the Trump administration could stage its own version of Nazi Germany's "Reichstag fire" as a way of declaring a national emergency in order to consolidate power.

* * *
When Trump was elected you said America had roughly one year before the country's democracy was irrevocably damaged. You were also concerned that Trump and his allies would stage some type of "Reichstag fire," a staged event that would permit them to expand their control. Where are we with those predictions?

My allusion to the Reichstag fire was meant to be a self-defeating prophecy. I was trying from the very beginning to get that idea out there in order to make it less likely. I think that conversation has now gone well beyond me. I am happy that plenty of other folks have now raised it. My new concern is that there will be something that happens around the time of the midterms. This will allow Trump and his allies to say that the midterms don't really count or that we have to have the midterms under exceptional conditions. Take note of how Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently said that the Russians are going to hack the 2018 election and we really can't do anything about it.

I'm starting to wonder whether the idea might be to discredit the election and use Russian interference as a pretext to say that the elections aren't real and therefore we must not have any turnover. It is odd otherwise for Tillerson to say, "Yes, there is Russian interference, but no, we can't do anything about it." It's one thing to say it's not real. It's another thing to say it's real, but hey, you know, what the hell? That is basically Tillerson's position, as I understood him.

[onenote]

1. No.

Very convenient to predict something and when it doesn't happen claim your prediction is what kept it from happening.

[defacto7]

3. It seems you don't know much about Timothy Snyder

[onenote]

7. I know he doesn't understand the concept of inevitable

and isn't a lawyer and apparently doesn't understand how the Constitution works.

[defacto7]

12. Then you really don't know who he is.

You aught to look him up. His history and education let alone position are farther up the ladder than I can write. He's an amazing professor of political history at Yale fluent in 30 languages. He teaches lawyers.
A self-defeating prophecy will always be criticised by its nature, but there's no other way to make a self-defeating prophecy. You either state it or you don't. If you're correct you fail, if you suceed you're open to criticism.

[onenote]

14. I know exactly who he is and I've read some of his work.

The fact that he's an able historian doesn't make him a constitutional expert or someone whose predictions necessarily are worth the paper they are written on. As shown by his own backtracking from his original prediction about "one year" to stop Trump or all would be lost.

And there is a way to make a self defeating prophesy without hiding the fact that's what you are doing. You don't say it's "pretty much inevitable" that something is going to happen (for one thing, something is either inevitable or its not). You say "I'm concerned something will happen unless x, y or z happens to prevent it."

Finally, the issue is whether Trump will try to prevent the November elections from happening or becoming effective. It's a frightening thought, for certain. But how, exactly, in our constitutional system, does the president do such a thing? In a system in which elections are largely run by states and localities, how does the president tell California not to hold an election. How does he tell Congress to ignore the constitutional provisions relating to the term of office to keep members in office after their terms have expired and someone has been elected to fill that space.

It's easy to write something attention grabbing. Not so easy to defend it in real world terms.

[defacto7]

17. It means a lot to you to make your point.

I'll give you that much. You expanded on your original point but you don't convince me. Who cares, right? Snyder's points in context make sense to me at least, and I know his work and reputation very well. Very well.

Take care...

[TomCADem]

4. If Jeff Sessions Starts Prosecuting Whoever Trump Wants...

...which Trump believes is appropriate, then what is to keep Trump from simply putting any potential adversaries on the defensive, particularly with Fox News going on the offense? At least 35 percent of voters would be all-in for Trump so long as he keeps up the racist rhetoric.

[dchill]

2. Not without a fight.

[loyalsister]

9. States rights might be good for something after all

.

[Binkie The Clown]

5. A Few folks on DU siad GW Bush was going to cancel the elections and declare himself pres for life.

Some RW nutjobs said the same about Obama.

Things are bad enough without injecting irresponsible crazy talk into the mix.

[TomCADem]

6. False Equivalency to Compare Trump to Obama

Or even Bush for that matter. I think a lot of folks underestimate the danger represented by Trump and normalize him as being no different than prior Presidents.

[Binkie The Clown]

11. I'm comparing wild rumors to wild rumors. Nothing more. nt

[TomCADem]

18. Trump challenges Sessions to investigate Obama, Democrats on Russia

So, it is just a rumor that Trump has demanded that his Justice Department investigate his political enemies?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/21/politics/donald-trump-jeff-sessions-obama-russia/index.html

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump, after being criticized for his response to Russia's election meddling, challenged Attorney General Jeff Sessions to launch an investigation into the Obama administration for failing to do enough to stop the 2016 election foreign interference.

The tweet is the latest in a series where Trump faults former President Barack Obama for not doing enough to stop Russian meddling, but the first time Trump has suggested that Sessions -- the man he picked to lead the Justice Department but has maintained a grudge against for the better part of a year -- wasn't doing enough.

"Question: If all of the Russian meddling took place during the Obama Administration, right up to January 20th, why aren't they the subject of the investigation?" Trump tweeted Wednesday morning. "Why didn't Obama do something about the meddling? Why aren't Dem crimes under investigation? Ask Jeff Session!"

[Binkie The Clown]

21. That's not what I said, or implied. Read my post again. nt

[renegade000]

8. Modern authoritarians tend to like to hold elections to give themselves faux legitimacy...

Bigger question is how fair they are when held.

[pnwmom]

10. It would be much simpler for them just to tamper with the election system n/t

[StevieM]

13. This won't happen in 2018. But I am terrified of what a President Kris Kobach might do some day.

eom

[FarCenter]

15. A war wouldn't cancel elections. I would secure a victory for the most patriotic sounding party.

[oberliner]

19. This is actually from Salon

Alternet just stole the content to generate traffic to its ad-filled site.

[GulfCoast66]

20. Right after the aliens show up...

Why do we allow this on DU?

We are s fact based community.

[ChoppinBroccoli]

22. No, But What COULD Happen...........

...........is that the Russian hackers could once again get into our voting machines, and rather than picking a candidate and causing that candidate to win like they did in 2016, their goal would be to throw an inordinate number of votes at the Democratic candidates. The goal would be that after all the talk of the "Blue Wave," people would start seeing all these Democrats winning with overwhelming numbers (and in most cases, unrealistically large numbers). That would then set up the natural response by the Republicans to scream that the Democrats were REALLY the ones working with the Russians, and they would then call to just negate the election results entirely, and cancel any further elections indefinitely, "until we can figure out what's going on."

This is not a scenario I made up in my head. This is actually what Malcolm Nance has predicted. You might remember Malcolm Nance as the guy who wrote "The Plot To Hack America," in which he accurately predicted what would happen in the 2016 election three months before it happened. But if we spread the word now, and alert people to this possibility, they won't fall for it when it does happen.