Joe Biden, on Apr. 23: "Mark my words, I think he is gonna try to kick back the election somehow..."

[Mrs. Overall]

Link to tweet

Matt Viser
@mviser

Joe Biden, on April 23: “Mark my words, I think he is gonna try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held.”

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???

[soothsayer]

1. Well.... here we are

[SoonerPride]

2. People have posted similar worries on DU for months and every time they are mocked and lambasted

It doesn't matter if he CAN do it, the point is he will TRY.

The only thing stopping him is what, a piece of paper?

It hasn't stopped him so far.

[SoonerPride]

4. But he may persuade enough Republican states to agree.

[lagomorph777]

24. I hope he does! Every Red state that postpones is automatically out of the race.

Which will increase our margin of victory.

[Mike 03]

8. But the president also supposedly didn't have a say in how money allocated to

the Pentagon by Congress was spent, but he diverted it to build The Wall.

[getagrip_already]

19. their goal isn't to stop the election... it is to de-legitimize it.....

Trump wants to be able to claim he won, even when he loses. Create enough chaos, enough of a constitutional mess, and not only does he have a shot at stealing the presidency again, he has a shot at claiming he won and was cheated.

That is their goal. And they can do an awful lot of harm through illegal means with impunity if they win. It's a shoot the moon hand.

[Cosmocat]

25. Correct

nm

[getagrip_already]

12. that is irrelevant....

The constitution and the law is enforced through the courts and scotus. They act very slowly, even on an expedited basis.

Besides, their goal isn't to postpone the election. It is to de-legitimatize it. The goal is to prevent the EC from getting to 270 votes. That creates chaos and starts an extra-constitutional crisis that has no good ending.

Remember this is putins plan as much as trumps.

[getagrip_already]

17. no, he needs the majority of appointed electors....

There is a difference. The electors are appointed by the states before the ec meets, and a state can appoint them even without a general election. If they don't vote because they aren't certified, it doesn't matter.

So state A appoints 23 electors, then gets tied up by lawsuits and state legislatures and they don't get certified. They still count towards the total, and if those were biden votes they won't be counted.

Certification and appointment are 2 different things entirely.

The 12th amendment says appointed. Not certified.

[Mike 03]

5. Thank you. I understand many DUers are not worried about this, but

we have to remember that John Yoo has joined the WH legal team in an effort to teach this president how to abuse a recent Supreme Court decision that Yoo claims allows Trump to rule by decree.

He's done a number of things that should normally require Congressional approval without consulting them, and done things that we said were unconstitutional. It takes months or years to litigate them.

His new pharma Executive Order is basically plagiarized Nancy Pelosi legislation. He just took a Congressional bill that the Senate refused to even look at and turned it into an Executive Order, completely bypassing the normal legislative process.

[SoonerPride]

10. Exactly. Say he issues an EO to delay the election on 10/20/20

Sure, the Dems take it to court.
And one judge puts a stay on it.

Then it goes to another court
and eventually the SC, where it would of course lose.

But in the meantime, we have chaos.

Which is what he thrives on.

[Bettie]

16. Yep. Several of us

have noted that nothing seems to stop any of his...acts? Antics? Fuckery? I don't even know what word to use.

And yet, we're all panicking and "doom and gloomers".

Better to be ready for the worst, while hoping for the best.

[getagrip_already]

20. be ready for the worst.. and plan accordingly...

I'm not hoping for any best outcome. I will frankly be shocked if we get one.

The ONLY hope we have is massive, un-contestable, voting. Voting on a blow out scale. Across the board. People need to get motivated to vote and over react to the fuckery that is heading our way.

If we trust in the system, we will be sadly destroyed.

[Bettie]

22. The problem with the system is that it only works

if both sides believe laws and rules are a thing.

Right now, only our side believes that.

They have recognized that by simply ignoring laws they don't like, nothing applies to them.

There is no consequence so far, so they push farther and farther.

There is no enforcement mechanism.

[SoonerPride]

23. I don't understand why people don't get this.

Just screaming "you can't do that" doesn't stop them from doing just that.

[BannonsLiver]

26. More accurately

The question has been raised ad nauseam, usually by an OP that thinks they’ve stumbled on something no one ever thought about before. People who are tired of the question being raised over and over again reply with factual responses and often some snark about how many times this has been brought up before and the OP gets their feelers hurt. That’s usually how it goes.

[ebbie15644]

18. Pure distraction from the awful GDP news