I appreciate you writing all of this up, thank you.
One byproduct of having reasonable people argue for the potential upsides of both candidates, is that it leads me to somewhat not just think, “oh, we’re absolutely doomed if X person becomes president.” Rather, that there may be reasonable arguments that both candidates could handle some area decently well, and I’m ever conscious, or trying to be, of negativity bias in the news. Maybe leaves some room for the optimistic observers or something.
Saying that, I will note this list from a comment on the original thread by Samuel Hammond, as something I’m not sure is addressed above re Jan 6th but does put me more on the side of “Trump as a threat to democracy side”. But I also haven’t independently evaluated these claims either. Just thought I’d contribute what I can in the moment:
“Trump’s threat to democracy and his overt willingness to break laws in order to hold on to power is NOT just about Jan 6. It is not n=1. There are multiple shocking and blatant examples of Trump’s attempts to undermine the election prior to the day of Jan 6. This includes use of false slate of electors (people illegally purported to be elected electors) to go to state governments to discount the vote of millions of Americans; the orders to members of his DOJ to send letters to states lying about corruption in the elections to have them overturned (in which DOJ officials en masse threatened to resign if Trump placed Clark as AG to do so); he called Raffensperger (Georgia’s SOS) as a private citizen for him to search for the exact number of votes he needed to win and threatened legal action; on the day of Jan 6, he told his VP to illegally throw out 81 million votes; and countless of many other examples.
Why is Pence not his running mate? How come many of the people he worked with before are not a part of his campaign? Because he made it clear that his 2nd term will have nothing but yes-men, and it is very unlikely they would have the courage like Pence or Jeffrey Rosen. Vance already said that Pence should have listened to Trump and throw out the votes. The “guardrails” that stopped him the first time wouldn’t be there.”
I share this concern. I find the Georgia case very sketchy. There are other claims I haven’t dug into as much yet.
My main observation is that he and his people really do think the election was stolen from them. In their media bubble you’ll see stuff like surveys of non-U.S. citizens where double digit percentage say they vote: enough to sway some states that Trump lost if you extrapolate (but maybe this is complete disinfo?). Because they believe (whether their beliefs are accurate or not) that the democratic rules are already being hacked/broken against them, they want to get as close to cheating as possible (and some probably do want to just break rules fully). It is true that census resident counts (independent from citizenship) shape the electoral college numbers, and thus manipulating illegal immigration does directly contribute votes to whoever wins states with disproportionate shares of illegal immigrants.
I think all these forms of defection are unacceptable. We can’t have the Dems playing the Rajneeshi strategy and the Republicans playing voter suppression. Dems have been serious about election security in the past, but right now Republicans at least superficially seem more serious about fixing things, because concessions from the Dems would play into the Trump narrative. OTOH, it wouldn’t surprise me if the reforms proposed by Republicans to make voting easier and more secure include poison pills?
But anyway the core point I am making here is that the most important thing to do for coup proofing/election hacking is to establish more broadly/justifiably credible election integrity. There is a path to do it that Republicans will agree to, but the Dems can’t for narrative reasons + the view that stronger voter ID laws are voter suppression (which they could be if changed very close to an election).
Separate from narrative, many Dems dislike the electoral college in general because it does geographically bias against what they’d get with popular voting. This is a general problem for scaling democracy in a mutually beneficial manner: smaller states/coalitions need disproportionate power to have incentive to join, or they can expect their interests to be decisively vetoed all the time. It’s why the UN and EU don’t do anything by population popular vote either.
But anyway the core point I am making here is that the most important thing to do for coup proofing/election hacking is to establish more broadly/justifiably credible election integrity.
I am skeptical that there is very much correlation between between the actual level of election integrity and the perceived level of election integrity by heavily partisan individuals. It is difficult to prove a negative. There are so many ways one could allegedly tamper with the election results, and a fair number of people seem to need ~0 evidence to believe they are truly happening (e.g., allegations of local officials dropping off premarked ballots by the truckload).
To fix the problem from a stability standpoint, an election integrity system would have to be strong enough to credibly disprove malicious lies told to a hyperpartisan audience. That is much harder than actually ensuring the integrity of elections. (And even that is harder than the task securing most things because of the limitations imposed by the need for ballot privacy.)
My main observation is that he and his people really do think the election was stolen from them.
That sounds to me like a reason not to elect him? Self-deceiving for personal gain (endemic though it is 😔) is not a positive trait for a president to have.
I appreciate you writing all of this up, thank you.
One byproduct of having reasonable people argue for the potential upsides of both candidates, is that it leads me to somewhat not just think, “oh, we’re absolutely doomed if X person becomes president.” Rather, that there may be reasonable arguments that both candidates could handle some area decently well, and I’m ever conscious, or trying to be, of negativity bias in the news. Maybe leaves some room for the optimistic observers or something.
Saying that, I will note this list from a comment on the original thread by Samuel Hammond, as something I’m not sure is addressed above re Jan 6th but does put me more on the side of “Trump as a threat to democracy side”. But I also haven’t independently evaluated these claims either. Just thought I’d contribute what I can in the moment:
“Trump’s threat to democracy and his overt willingness to break laws in order to hold on to power is NOT just about Jan 6. It is not n=1. There are multiple shocking and blatant examples of Trump’s attempts to undermine the election prior to the day of Jan 6. This includes use of false slate of electors (people illegally purported to be elected electors) to go to state governments to discount the vote of millions of Americans; the orders to members of his DOJ to send letters to states lying about corruption in the elections to have them overturned (in which DOJ officials en masse threatened to resign if Trump placed Clark as AG to do so); he called Raffensperger (Georgia’s SOS) as a private citizen for him to search for the exact number of votes he needed to win and threatened legal action; on the day of Jan 6, he told his VP to illegally throw out 81 million votes; and countless of many other examples.
Why is Pence not his running mate? How come many of the people he worked with before are not a part of his campaign? Because he made it clear that his 2nd term will have nothing but yes-men, and it is very unlikely they would have the courage like Pence or Jeffrey Rosen. Vance already said that Pence should have listened to Trump and throw out the votes. The “guardrails” that stopped him the first time wouldn’t be there.”
And FWIW I’d be happy to discover all of the above list is also kinda unsubstantiated. May check them out independently if I have time.
I share this concern. I find the Georgia case very sketchy. There are other claims I haven’t dug into as much yet.
My main observation is that he and his people really do think the election was stolen from them. In their media bubble you’ll see stuff like surveys of non-U.S. citizens where double digit percentage say they vote: enough to sway some states that Trump lost if you extrapolate (but maybe this is complete disinfo?). Because they believe (whether their beliefs are accurate or not) that the democratic rules are already being hacked/broken against them, they want to get as close to cheating as possible (and some probably do want to just break rules fully). It is true that census resident counts (independent from citizenship) shape the electoral college numbers, and thus manipulating illegal immigration does directly contribute votes to whoever wins states with disproportionate shares of illegal immigrants.
I think all these forms of defection are unacceptable. We can’t have the Dems playing the Rajneeshi strategy and the Republicans playing voter suppression. Dems have been serious about election security in the past, but right now Republicans at least superficially seem more serious about fixing things, because concessions from the Dems would play into the Trump narrative. OTOH, it wouldn’t surprise me if the reforms proposed by Republicans to make voting easier and more secure include poison pills?
But anyway the core point I am making here is that the most important thing to do for coup proofing/election hacking is to establish more broadly/justifiably credible election integrity. There is a path to do it that Republicans will agree to, but the Dems can’t for narrative reasons + the view that stronger voter ID laws are voter suppression (which they could be if changed very close to an election).
Separate from narrative, many Dems dislike the electoral college in general because it does geographically bias against what they’d get with popular voting. This is a general problem for scaling democracy in a mutually beneficial manner: smaller states/coalitions need disproportionate power to have incentive to join, or they can expect their interests to be decisively vetoed all the time. It’s why the UN and EU don’t do anything by population popular vote either.
I am skeptical that there is very much correlation between between the actual level of election integrity and the perceived level of election integrity by heavily partisan individuals. It is difficult to prove a negative. There are so many ways one could allegedly tamper with the election results, and a fair number of people seem to need ~0 evidence to believe they are truly happening (e.g., allegations of local officials dropping off premarked ballots by the truckload).
To fix the problem from a stability standpoint, an election integrity system would have to be strong enough to credibly disprove malicious lies told to a hyperpartisan audience. That is much harder than actually ensuring the integrity of elections. (And even that is harder than the task securing most things because of the limitations imposed by the need for ballot privacy.)
Agreed—I haven’t looked very closely here either, but eg “Fox, Dominion reach $787M settlement over election claims” seems like a robust signal. https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe
Agree that’s a strong signal!
That sounds to me like a reason not to elect him? Self-deceiving for personal gain (endemic though it is 😔) is not a positive trait for a president to have.