What If: The Darkest Fate of 2020

Here we are on October 1 and it's the time of the year to start talking scary stories.

So here's the scariest story I can think of: What do you think is going to happen in a trump Second Term?

Yeah, we have to consider the implications. trump's threats to suppress voter turnout, ditch ballots, order states to end ballot-counting too early, and open refusal to respect any election result in favor of Biden means we are running the risk that trump can pull off a blatant theft of the whole shindig. Even if Biden secures 330-something Electoral Votes and 52 percent of the Popular Vote over trump's likely 44 percent, trump is going to pull every stunt (even the scary legal ones) he can to prevent a loss.

So in this timeline, gone darker by trump's own hand, what would the United States and the world look like by 2021?

We're already facing the madness of having a overly-skewed 6-to-3 ultra-conservative Supreme Court with Barrett added to it. What will likely occur anyway would be the end of any left-center identity of our legal system ranging from the end of abortion choice (also birth control and reproduction rights) for women as we know it, the destruction of Obamacare with no sign of a Republican replacement plan to fill the sudden health care void, and intent to deregulate every aspect of federal guidelines and policies. 

Added onto that would be four more years of trump (and McConnell, if trump's electoral theft aids his Senate Republican allies) filling every open judicial seat with those most loyal to him and most likely to give him safe passage in case of criminal and civil cases filed against him. Extending outward into the 21st Century a cronyist legal system choking reform and sanity for at least 30 more years.

Also happening to us right now is the coronavirus pandemic, and the public panic trump has felt since April about cures and vaccines will lessen as the private disdain trump really has about the pandemic victims no longer has to be hidden. Oh, the medical system will struggle to create a vaccine and try to establish a protective model to keep the risks of COVID to a minimum, but trump and his power circle won't give a rat's ass except to squeeze money out of it for themselves. trump's promises about vaccinating everyone can't be taken at face value, and he shows no sign of ever taking it serious. Lacking federal leadership, the current pandemic woes could well stretch onward as each state falters and adapts to trump's plague-filled "new normal."

The economic situation is harder to predict because the major aspects of it - the financial sector of banking and stock investing, the employment factor, the potential loss of small and local businesses unable to keep open as the pandemic continues into 2021 - are not as interconnected as they ought to be. The Stock Markets fluctuate without regard to how the unemployment numbers are or how other economic indicators trend (A bad day with unemployment numbers could actually make the stock values go up). Unemployment is likely to persist near double-digits as local businesses and other social-based industries struggle to stay open (Disney just announced major layoffs at their parks). The flow of income is likely to persist in high-tech and any other industries that can survive in stay-at-home work environments, while low-tech and service economy jobs will be hardest hit. The pandemic could also affect the future of physical workplaces especially in large metros where now-vacant buildings become useless. There are a lot of factors at play here, not all of it good.

The sins of trump's first term of punishing, jailing, separating, and torturing immigrant families will go unpunished, and will lead into deeper degradations of ICE's victims. Human rights abuses of immigrants and refugees will worsen. Our entire immigration system - broken and clogged - may actually collapse on itself.

In terms of foreign policy...

One thing to consider is how trump "wins" his second term: trump will likely steal it, either through cowed state legislatures, biased courts, or by force (trump will not win it honestly through Popular vote, and is likely not winning the Electoral). An act of authoritarian brazenness so public that foreign nations would have reason to condemn it they way they would any dubious election. Public relations with what were once our strongest allies - NATO, Japan, a Southeast Asia trying to stand against Chinese influence - can fall apart. How can Europe pretend they support democracy if they have to congratulate trump after trump pulls any kind of police-state or even militia-backed coup?

trump has already tainted our foreign relations to its lowest point since perhaps the Vietnam War era, if not the 19th Century when the U.S. was not as dominant on the global stage. trump does not inspire confidence in our allies. Another four years of trump abusing our State Department and twisting foreign policy objectives to line his own pocket will take its toll and reduce the ability of future administrations to repair the damage done.

If there's anything to scare trump in a second term, it's the fact he'll be facing civil lawsuits and state-level fraud investigations that he can't avoid any further. trump will try to evade any accountability like he's done his first term to evade Emoluments cases and Mueller's investigations into the 2016 election. But in a second term trump - and the family members he relies most on to do his dirty work - will be facing likely criminal charges in New York state over his questionable accounting practices (cough fraud cough), and due to the separation between federal and state there is little trump can do to stop it (outside of breaking up the entire state government and legal system of New York itself). If trump takes that route (he might if it meant keeping donnie junior, Eric, Ivanka, and SIL Jared out of handcuffs), the covenant of the Constitution could get shattered and we're looking at an open-scale Second Civil War. 

At the worst of a trump second term, the damage to our federal institutions and to the Constitution will be carved into the very foundations. trump will have more time and effort to corrupt the various Executive agencies to serve his whims, not the rule of law nor the requirements of civil service. Agencies in opposition to trump - the IRS, FBI, CIA, EPA, even HHS and CDC, the freaking POST OFFICE, anything deemed "Deep State" - will be defunded, destaffed, destroyed. Any hope we have now of a Biden administration restaffing and repowering as much as possible still won't see any improvement until 2023.

Even if the Democrats maintain control of the House (likely, there are few scenarios trump and the Republicans can do this election cycle to win that branch), there is no guarantee they can keep trump under investigatory control. Even if the Democrats win control of the Senate, there is no likelihood they can win enough seats to uphold any Impeachment attempt: 68 votes are needed, and only a clean sweep in 2020 could get them to 70 (the Democrats are looking at a 5-seat flip at best for 2020 to win Senate control 53 to 47, at worst Republicans can hold on 51 to 49 (boooooo). A Democratic supermajority in the Senate is near impossible). The best the nation can hope for from Congress is a slim Democratic majority in the Senate stopping trump from filling more judiciary openings with Far Right judges. A fully Democratic Congress could likely pass all the legislation that Mitch McConnell has held up since 2019, but then we'll be facing a trump vetoing every one unless he gets whatever he wants (his goddamn Wall, a repeal of Obamacare, keeping immigrants in baby cages, and more money to his pockets).

What a second term of trump will do to the national psyche is horrifying. The haters and ragers that trump currently empowers will sink deeper into their sadism and anger towards fellow Americans. Whatever is left of our public discourse will get drowned out by QAnon conspiracy theories and Fox Not-News fearmongering. A lot of Americans who will vote in the majority against trump (remember: he's NOT winning the Popular Vote. Any national result with trump getting over 44 percent will be goddamned lie) will continue suffering severe bouts of anxiety and depression: I am not exaggerating, trump's existence in the White House has generated unheard-of levels of anxiety among Americans.

Any trump "victory" this November will not be viewed as legitimate by a significant portion of the nation's population. While this is true of his first "win" in 2016, a lot of that was blunted by the reality of a broken Electoral College gifting trump the Presidency while losing the Popular vote by the largest margin since 1876 (when Tilden beat Hayes in the Popular but the fight over the Electoral votes went dubiously to the Republican Hayes). 

This time, trump will not have that excuse: trump has been so open in his voter suppression efforts that any Popular vote changes to his favor will be attributed to his cheating. Any planned challenges by trump and his corrupted DoJ lawyers in the battleground states over the ballot counts and Electoral Votes will be viewed as intentional acts of sabotaging the results.

The public outrage to any subversion of the election results can well be on the scale of the massive protests like the Women's March in 2017, and the ongoing Black Lives Matter marches right now. The sad thing is, we've seen these protests happen... and then, without any political power where it matters most, nothing happens. We haven't had protests on the scale of Belarus or Hong Kong or any other places facing ongoing suppressive rule. A response to trump's sabotaging of the election would - even compared to the chaos of 1968 in the American streets - require a response from Americans on a scale from city to city in full revolt our nation's ever known. I personally can't guarantee a massive uprising like that could happen, but the anger towards trump may be the final kick to the head that will wake the majority up.

At that point, we would likely see a response from trump's well-known, well-armed fanbase of White Supremacists and haters. Having been told to "Stand By," any mass protest against trump post-election will trigger the wingnuts into attacking like they've done at the BLM protests this year. 

On the other hand in the timeline where Biden does secure the Popular Vote - polling above 50 percent, that's likely - and ekes out the Electoral College win despite trump's efforts to stop it we would still see a violent response out of the gun-toting wingnuts, because they'll be convinced from trump's gaslighting that Biden cheated.

Blood in the streets - even in a Biden win - will be unavoidable.

Another reality that's unavoidable is the fact trump is going to get older. trump is already 74 and will be nearing the average life expectancy of healthy American males (78). And trump is not a healthy American male. For all of his shenanigans over his annual checkups, there is no way that flabby orange lifeform is under the weight limit (239 lbs) of being morbidly obese. Rumors of drug abuse abound. And trump's unscheduled visit to Walter Reed in 2019 still raises cause for concern. Just look at trump (before looking away in disgust). Does he LOOK like he's healthy enough to live another four years?

Even if trump stays alive to 2024, our Darkest Timeline threatens to get darker still because the bastard keeps talking about wanting a THIRD term. Whining that he wasn't treated fairly since 2016, trump claims he's entitled to a "do-over" and so he deserves four more years after no matter what. Never mind that the 22nd Amendment clearly spells out there is no goddamned way that would happen. If trump gets his second term, he's scheming to break whatever's left of the law to force his third. 

A second trump term does not look appealing in any way shape or form, America.

For the LOVE OF GOD, don't let him even try to steal it. Even in the possibility of violence from trump's fascist militias, we dare not fall back against trump's onslaught of our rights as voters to choose better leadership than him.

What If: Considering How trump Will Cheat in 2020

I wrote earlier that donald trump has no honest way to win the 2020 Presidential election.

So that means trump is going to cheat.

We're already seeing some of the steps trump is deploying to rig the turnout and thus the results. his latest Postmaster General is sabotaging the United States Postal Service to ensure mailing delays that could prevent mail-in ballots from getting received in time to count.

Other things in play, aside from trump's accusations that mail-in balloting is voter fraud, are AG William Barr's efforts to misdirect investigations into Russian (and other nations') meddling into the 2020 general vote. There's hints aplenty that Barr is setting up "October Surprises" to discourage voter turnout for Joe Biden. 

All of this culminates into a lot of worried speculation - and yes, I am piling onto that dread - of how trump and cronies are going to cause enough disruption into the results that he can shrug off a Popular Vote and also an Electoral College count that would otherwise confirm a Joe Biden victory. 

But can it really happen?

Infidel753 pointed me to a link to a website Electoral-Vote that took stock of all the fears and tried to look at the actual numbers and likely results for November 2020. What the blogger there found was, well here's a few paragraphs:

If we assume there is enough "fog" to give cover to state legislatures to start thinking about shenanigans, that still leaves the pro-Trump forces with some daunting math to confront. Let's start with the states that have Democratic trifectas. Joe Biden is expected to win all of these, and there are not going to be any EV-stealing shenanigans in Trump's favor in these places:

That already puts us (note: well, Biden) at 195 EVs. Now let's add in the states where Biden is expected to win, and the Democrats control at least one chamber of the state legislature (note: meaning the GOP can't automatically fck with the EV):

 

We're up to 233 EVs. Biden isn't going to lose any of these due to shenanigans, either. Note, incidentally, that Minnesota is the only one of the five additional states that has a split legislature. The four others have both chambers with Democratic control.

Now, let's add states where Biden is favored to win, and where there is at least one Democrat who has to sign off on the results (either the governor, the secretary of state, or both):

Now we are up to 305 EVs. Getting into the weeds of what could happen in each state is a bit much, but several things are already evident: (1) Republican-controlled legislatures in swing states would have to be very unified to pull off this scheme; (2) they would face pushback on that, including lawsuits, in many places; and (3) their likely best case scenario, even if they are unified and they prevail in court, is to deny anyone an electoral victory (by muddying the waters until the deadline for the EC to meet has passed) and to throw the election to the House...

So the good news, as long as the voter turnout matches what the polling is currently telling us, is that Biden can easily pass the 270 EV hurdle much like Obama did in 2008 and 2012. And the blogger at Electoral-Vote hasn't counted states like Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and Georgia that can still go Blue for Biden this November.

So the bad news is this: Now we know why trump and his GOP cronies are eager to fck up ballot-by-mails (aka Absentee balloting) to try and mess with ALL states results to create enough chaos to ruin this math. And now we know why Barr is readying the DOJ to cause the chaos, not prevent it.

Going through a current pandemic crisis that can hamper in-person voter turnout is probably one of the reasons - he'll never admit it, but you have to admit the thought has crossed so many people's minds that SOMEBODY in trump's orbit whispered it into his ear - why trump is failing to respond to the crisis at all.

Another element of bad news is, while the Electoral-Vote blogger - I'm not sure whose name in on it, it's either Votemaster or Zenger (hmm, as a Journalism grad I know that name) - knows the Popular vote AND Electoral vote all favor Biden, we can still see that trump and the GOP's endgame is to throw the chaos into the U.S. House. The example here isn't the 2000 Election madness - the conditions for that were different - but the 1800 and 1876 Elections, where political bias favored the Party in control of the House.

The sick rule of the House solution is that the votes are not tallied by Representative - which favors Democrats - but by State Delegation (the group per state) meaning 50 votes not 435 (and DC has not vote in this matter). Thanks to gerrymandering, delegations skew to the Republicans who currently control 26 delegations over Democrats' 23 (one delegation is split). THIS is what worries Never Trumpers, more so that messing with the Electoral College: Barr could either trick or bully enough state legislatures to not accept the popular voting in their states to award Electors, forcing the College to cancel and pass it all to a GOP-bent House.

Thing is, the Electoral-Vote blogger thought of that as well:

An even bigger problem is Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966). While that one was specifically about poll taxes, it also established the broad principle that once the right of people to vote has been extended, the state cannot intervene to dilute the potency of that vote. Taken together, what Bush and Harper suggest is that a state might be on firm ground if they announce on, say, Jan. 1, 2020, that "this year, the state legislature is just going to award our EVs." However, once states allow people to cast actual ballots, that method for awarding EVs is locked in and cannot be altered...

It had happened before, by the way: In 1860, South Carolina didn't host a popular vote, their legislature went and awarded their results to the pro-Slavery Democratic candidate (Beckinridge). This time, it's too late: Any GOP state that's watching the polls swing to Biden (hi, Florida!) right now in August cannot cancel the vote and nominate the Electors. They can do everything else - suppress votes, rig machines, undercount results - but they still run the risk that the popular vote won't go their way.

Which is partly why they're waiting on Barr to release "reports" of mail-in ballots being "rigged" in order to justify negating the popular vote results... but THAT all depends on if the difference in results relies on the mail-ins counting or not (if Biden wins by a wide margin without mail-ins, forget it: Barr would have to argue a way to negate the WHOLE thing, which even conservative courts would choke on).

This is the point where headaches start forming, and the stress of paranoia/despair kicks in. The solutions rely on a lot of things outside of control at our (yours and mine) level. The Democratic Party has to be ready to call on a legion of lawyers across every state to fight Barr's likely meddling in any and every possibility.

The one thing WE can do at our level is turnout the vote. THAT'S the math we can control. As long as the turnout FOR Biden and the Democrats is high enough, the Republicans can't rig a damn thing. They'll yell and scream, they'll present bad evidence to argue their side, but if Biden is winning places by double-digits in enough states and at percentages close to polling, the Republicans will have a hard time arguing rigged results... and they run the risk at state levels of alienating enough residents to diminish state-level control by the 2022 midterms, if not outright street protests by an outraged majority that will never stop (hi, Belarus!).

Democrats need to ensure enough of their numbers are registered and ready to vote, confirmed to vote for Biden against a corrupt trump that is one step away from tinpot dictator status that haunts all the failed Republics we've seen over the decades.

Elections matter, Americans. Voter turnout matters, Democrats. Come hell or high water or COVID or police crackdowns, every one of us opposed to trump's misrule, every one of us opposed to McConnell's obstructionist destruction, we have to do the math and vote and make it count and make the Republicans answer for their cheating, corrupt ways.

The Unforced Errors of a Political Witch-Hunt

As far as "October Surprises" go, this was one that kind of exploded in the face of the ones throwing it onto the political landscape. To wit via the New Yorker:

On Friday morning, James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, sent a letter to the heads of several committees on Capitol Hill, in which he said he wished to “supplement” the testimony he gave in July about the Bureau’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server. During that testimony, Comey had defended his decision not to bring any charges in the case, even though his agents had found evidence that Clinton and her aides were, in his words, “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

Back in July, the Republicans in Congress berated Comey for his lack of communication with their committees that were witch-hunting, uh investigating Hillary. As such, Comey promised to keep them better in the loop. Hence this letter:

In his letter on Friday, Comey wrote, “In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” Comey added that the agency couldn’t yet determine “whether or not this material may be significant or not,” or “how long it will take us to complete this additional work.”

Comey’s letter was brief and, evidently, carefully stated. Remarkably, though, its release wasn’t accompanied by any contextual information or background briefing to either lawmakers or the press...

That meant Comey's letter could be twisted into a hundred different ways. For the Hillary-Haters in Congress, that meant they could use it as a weapon:

...It made its way to much of the media in the form of a tweet posted shortly before 1 p.m. by Jason Chaffetz, the Republican Congressman from Utah who chairs the House Committee on Oversight, and who is a longtime Clinton tormentor. “FBI Dir just informed me, ‘The FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation,’ ” Chaffetz’s tweet said. “Case reopened.”

So for about three hours this past Friday afternoon, the entire political world was caught up in another maelstorm of WTF ZOMG HILLARY DOOMED NOW ranting. Republicans both high and low crowed. Trump started talking like the election wasn't rigged anymore.

And then people started asking just WHAT was in these new emails to begin with, and how they could tie into the questionably overblown scandal of Hillary's Secret Sec of State Server. Reporters like Pete Williams at NBC started digging - and started hearing from sources in the FBI and Department of Justice - and found out the "new and shocking" emails were in fact tied into the ongoing investigation into disgraced ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner's habit of sexting (including the recent allegations he went after a 14-year-old girl online), and that it had more to do with Hillary's personal advisor Huma Abedin - Weiner's rightly angry ex - than with Hillary herself. There's no evidence Hillary has anything to do with these new emails.

In other words, this is just another goddamn Nothing-burger the Far Right are twisting into another anti-Hillary conspiracy.

The story quickly turned on the fact that Comey overstated the value of the new revelations as they related to Hillary, and that he misrepresented which investigation was actually being pursued. He also - according to former FBI personnel - violated various departmental protocols with the FBI and DOJ. The one who's really in trouble now is Comey.

The one who OUGHT TO BE IN TROUBLE is Chaffetz. He's the one who took Comey's vague letter and turned into a source of fake outrage for the Republicans on the Far Right to tout as the final blow to Hillary's Presidential hopes. But elected officials apparently never answer for their sins, and Chaffetz is likely going to get re-elected in his safe Deep Red district back in Utah.

So we can look forward to at least two more years of Chaffetz tossing these types of bombs onto America with fake investigation after fake probe after fake outrage towards Hillary. He's already promised to do this.

It shouldn't be the Republicans getting angry here: It should be the Democrats. And you Dems BETTER USE THAT ANGER TO GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT AND KICK THESE REPUBLICAN BASTARDS OUT OF OFFICE.

/rage