This happened & it will happen again

[kpete]

The Plan
Published by digby on February 15, 2021
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In this interview Jamie Raskin outlines in clear terms what they thought Trump was up to on January 6th:

Placing former vice president Mike Pence front and center was not a strategic choice for the impeachment managers; it was a recognition that Pence was the central player in the former president’s attempted coup. “There was a method to all [his] madness. This was the counting of the electoral votes,” Raskin said. Trump seemed to think that if he could just get Pence to throw out votes from a few states, that would stop the election’s certification and “he could deny the election to Joe Biden.”

Under this thinking, the election’s outcome would go to a vote in the House, and Trump could “declare martial law” to put down the violence. “Vice President Pence became the linchpin” in this fanciful scenario. That is why Trump called Pence the morning of Jan. 6 and reportedly told him, “You can either go down in history as a patriot” or as an epithet[a pussy].

Raskin said, “The American people understand who Donald Trump is. That kind of authoritarian relationship is a threat to democracy.”

Mike Pence knows this first hand, as does Rudy Giuliani and any number of Trump’s confidantes. It really was an attempted coup. And when Pence refused to go along, Trump sicced his violent mob on him, hoping that would delay the vote and persuade him to change his mind out of fear for his life.

This happened.
https://digbysblog.net/2021/02/the-plan/

[MOMFUDSKI]

1. I think trump

was aiming for JUST ONE congresscritter to be KILLED so he could do Martial Law and grab the power for who knows how long? But it wasn't to be that day. Close but no cigar.

[magicarpet]

2. And the Fascist pig trDump had the audacity to tell Kevin McCarthy on the phone call,...

... that the marauding mob at the Capitol was all Anti-Fa-scists. Yet there were a bizillion trDump and Confederate flags carried by the insurrectionists. Screaming "FIGHT FOR TRdUMP".

[sop]

3. I'm still trying to game out the logical end result of Trump's ill-conceived insurrection scenario.

Assuming - just for the sake of argument - Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi and others had been captured or murdered by the Trump mob, how would that have helped Trump remain in power? Military leadership had already declared they would not become embroiled, so stopping the EC certification and declaring martial law would have accomplished what, exactly? What would Trump's usurpation of power have looked like?

[Oldem]

5. I agree with you, in principle.

But there's Mike Flynn's brother. There are undoubtedly others like him. If they tried to follow such a dump order, it would have up to the rest of the military to stop them. That could have been very messy, even bloody, and the outcome would have been uncertain. If they gained power, would the good-guy military have turned power over to Biden on 1/21? This is third world stuff we came close to.

[CrispyQ]

4. Yes, it will happen again.

America’s Next Authoritarian Will Be Much More Competent
Trump was ineffective and easily beaten. A future strongman won’t be.

NOVEMBER 6, 2020
Zeynep Tufekci
Contributing writer at The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/trump-proved-authoritarians-can-get-elected-america/617023/

snip...

Make no mistake: The attempt to harness Trumpism—without Trump, but with calculated, refined, and smarter political talent—is coming. And it won’t be easy to make the next Trumpist a one-term president.

more...

At the moment, the Democratic Party risks celebrating Trump’s loss and moving on—an acute danger, especially because many of its constituencies, the ones that drove Trump’s loss, are understandably tired. A political nap for a few years probably looks appealing to many who opposed Trump, but the real message of this election is not that Trump lost and Democrats triumphed. It’s that a weak and untalented politician lost, while the rest of his party has completely entrenched its power over every other branch of government: the perfect setup for a talented right-wing populist to sweep into office in 2024. And make no mistake: They’re all thinking about it.

And new voters are fickle. We are going to have to GOTV as hard or harder than last election.