cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/42694823

Trump has no power to “decree” that voters must present ID or to end mail-in balloting. But that doesn’t mean he can’t at least try both. Under the Insurrection Act or some other dusty statute, he can declare a state of emergency. Then he can decide that said state permits, nay requires, him to take extraordinary measures. On October 5, say, that might mean outlawing early voting. By October 13, it might mean no mail-in voting. By October 29, a reminder that all voters must present ID to vote. And by Sunday, November 1, two days before the election—an announcement that all these “reasonable” measures have alas failed, and he is now forced, against his will, to postpone the election.

  • megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    9 hours ago

    He can “say”, “declare” and “decree” things all he wants, but for that to do anything requires that people up and down the system go along with it. Sure people with in the executive branch might even be legally obligated to do certain things if he tells them to, with in certain limits.

    But most of the voting infrastructure is outside the federal executive, so it would require that a huge amount of local officials and administrators go along with that, some might be ideologically inclined to do so, but are there actually enough to overcome a groundswell of dissent?

    “Oh he’ll just use ICE to bully them in to doing it” there literally are not enough ice agents for that to be even remotely practical. “Well they’ll just hire and deputize more” They’re trying to but they can’t get enough people in the door, and a lot of the people they have aren’t getting payed. Are they really gonna stick their necks out to help him break the law when he’s not even paying them?

    This is not a masterful plan from an evil genius. This is a in denial old naracasist in way over his head surrounded by yes men who are saying what he want’s to hear so they can keep their positions and continue stealing everything that isn’t nailed down. It’s not that he doesn’t want to steal the election, it’s that he lacks the capacity to do so, and the people he’s surrounded him self with are not competent enough to build that capacity.

  • Ghostie@lemmy.zip
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    13 hours ago

    Thanks Mr. New Republic writer for telling the people that have plainly said it for years that they can now plainly say it. I’m sure they’ll waste no time getting around to plainly saying it some more.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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      10 hours ago

      Exactly. The media is finally getting around to warning us about what we’ve been screaming about for years. Welcome to the party, dipshits.

  • plyth@feddit.org
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    16 hours ago

    It’s the Austin Powers steamroller joke. For some reasons, nothing can be done even though there is plenty of time.

    • Yerbouti@sh.itjust.works
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      11 hours ago

      Plenty of time? You mean 3 like elections and attempted coup later? You’re pretty hard on americans, how could they have seen this coming?

  • Ranulph@thelemmy.club
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    15 hours ago

    Well, I guess we will see how far he will go and by he I mean THEM and by them I mean the republicans.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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      15 hours ago

      There are no Republicans any more. That was just the larval stage before they morphed into their final form - MAGA.

      The Republican Party is as dead as the Whigs, and should only be referred to in a historical or scholarly context.

      They’re all MAGA now.

        • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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          14 hours ago

          IN Politics yes, for sure, but I’d say the first one was Rush Limbaugh. His radio show became the gathering place for Conservatives, and was the recruitment and indoctrination center for millions of new Conservatives.

          Those new Limbaugh conservatives not only voted in Newt Gingrich, but a LOT of other like minded radical Republicans for him to use as a club to beat America with.

          But, yeah, that’s where it all started. Gingrich and Limbaugh were the Proto-MAGAs.

          • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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            12 hours ago

            I think “maga”/Nat-Cs are just Republicans unmasked, that’s all. The party has always been full of these types (basically RWAs - Right Wing Authoritarians as described by Altemeyer). You had the John Birch Society going way, way back.

            Democracy in Chains traces some of the threads related to the university level spread of this stuff. There are people that have discussed the Chicago School of Economics. I’ve not read it yet, but Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style in American Politics gets mentioned a lot. I’m sure there are some other good docs/books that might cover this long-running tradition, and I’d love to hear about them.

  • BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    Can anyone tell me what’s the big deal with voter ID? It’s a standard in EU, Noone complains about it there.

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      A current example is states invalidating all Trans people’s IDs during a primary election. That’s happening right now.

      Also - getting an ID is expensive and time consuming in the US. The cliche of spending 4 hours in line at the DMV to get a license even though you made an appointment ahead of time isn’t an exaggeration, and applies to getting an ID as well. The reality is most people won’t spend the time and money to do it just so they can vote every 2 or 4 years - especially people who can’t afford to take a day off work and travel to do it.

      But people will do it so they can drive their car every day - so people with IDs are more likely to have more money.

      And for people who have driver’s licenses that fall on hard times it’s also a problem, because they stop paying for insurance (invalidates driver’s license), lose their car (keeps them from paying for insurance or renewing license), or even lose their home (address change invalidates license). These are not people who can take a day to go pay to vote. And that’s exactly what they’d be doing, because the new ID card they’d be buying would strictly be for voting. Aside from the cost of the ID, when I updated my DL in June I had to travel 80 miles round trip, and the process took about 7 hours - and I had a car to speed things up.

      So it’s effectively pay-to-vote system that only applies to poor people. People with money can vote for free through “motor voter” registration by checking a box when getting or renewing their driver’s license.

    • floofloof@lemmy.caOP
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      13 hours ago

      In the USA the issuing of IDs will be made deliberately difficult enough to discourage cartain demographics in a way that favours Republicans. For example, it may carry a fee so poor people are discouraged, it may require your birth name and gender so trans people are discouraged, it will require birth certificates and marriage certificates so immigrants and women are discouraged. The whole thing will be used to erode the numbers of non-white-male voters and this disproportionately boost the right.

      Kansas Republicans just invalidated the driving licenses of trans people overnight with no warning. We can expect the same kind of political shenanigans with Real ID.

    • ecvanalog@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      In the US, there is no free option for public ID. Voting is a right. You are required to prove identity at the time of registration, which can be done using your birth certificate.

      Essentially, the push for photo ID is a way to disenfranchise poor people, women and trans people, and other groups who may for whatever reason not have easy access to an “acceptable” ID.

      Historically our courts have found that creating a financial barrier to voting is a violation of the constitution. The current Supreme Court, staffed entirely by far-right activists rather than serious jurists, is far less likely to rule that way, so anti-democracy folks are pushing to establish a new precedent before the court can be reformed.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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      14 hours ago

      One problem is that they decided to change the ID situation so that everyone has to have a “Real ID,” in which your name has to match what’s on your birth certificate, or else have supporting documents like marriage certificates or divorce papers. So it’s easy for men, who never change their names, but can be problematic for women who can change their names multiple times, depending on marriages and divorces.

      My wife and I were married in the Caribbean over 30 years ago. We have no idea what happened to our marriage certificate, we haven’t found it in decades, it must have gone missing during a move or something. We’ve requested a copy several times over the last decade. It only costs about $10, and we’ve spent over $100 trying to get a copy. They keep the money, and send nothing. Over and over. My wife STILL doesn’t have a valid Real ID because of it. We live in a state that doesn’t care what Trump wants, so it isn’t an issue for voting, but she hasn’t tried flying yet.

      So IDs aren’t nearly as easy for many women, and the female vote is a problem for MAGA. Some have even suggested that the vote be removed from women, because that’s how MAGA thinks: If the people don’t like what were doing, we don’t change what we’re doing, we just suppress the rights of anyone whose complaining.

      • signalsayge@infosec.pub
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        13 hours ago

        You could do a vow renewal at your local courthouse and get a “new” marriage license from them.

        Edit: but yeah, stupid additional barriers…

        • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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          13 hours ago

          Yeah, we’ve thought of that, and we may have to. I wonder what that does to all the things we’ve done together in the last 30+ years. If we get married now, does that mean that we weren’t married before, making all our legal paperwork for mortgages, loans, credit card, etc. fraudulent?

          It sounds dumb, but if the government decides to target someone, and they uncover this “marriage fraud scheme,” they could use it to really clobber someone, if they wanted to. We’ve seen where MAGA loves to exploit loopholes like this.

      • BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        So you’re arguing that because your own Caribbean government screwed you, there can be no voter ID? That line of thought is insane. Blame the Caribbean gov for the problem.

        BTW, how do you live for 30 years without ID? In EU it’s nearly impossible

        • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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          14 hours ago

          We’re Americans, who got married in the Caribbean. We eloped, it was romantic.

          My wife has had a driver’s license like everyone else, but a few years ago, they declared that everyone had to get a NEW ID that required these extra steps and documents - but only for women. It was to “discourage terrorism,” although I doubt it’s stopped a single instance.

          So without a marriage certificate, she can’t get a Real ID, which is already required to fly, and MAGA wants to make it a requirement to vote. My wife, through no fault of her own, can’t get the docs she needs to get a REAL ID, so she won’t be able to vote under the MAGA proposal.

          And I’m sure she’s not alone. MAGA knows that this new policy, which women have never had to navigate before, will keep at least some women from voting. So they cut off some votes here, cut off some more with voter roll purges, discourage voting by cutting off mail-in votes, prohibiting or decreasing early voting, closing polling places in populated cities, while leaving sparsely populated rural polling places open, etc., and the result is that a few percentage of your enemies can’t vote, and in a race that is only a couple of points apart or less, that may be enough to win.

          • nymnympseudonym@piefed.social
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            13 hours ago

            You don’t have to get a new ID

            They don’t like that your old one doesn’t have a record in a centralized government database.

            I am never getting a “Real ID”. I pay the extra $40 fee every flight. FUCK YOU NAZI TRUMP

            • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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              13 hours ago

              Except when your driver’s license expires, you don’t have a choice. And if you’re a man, it isn’t a problem. You show your birth certificate, and you’re done. A woman has to explain and document name changes from marriages and divorces.

              Frankly, if I were a woman getting married today, I wouldn’t change my name. I can’t believe that tradition hasn’t died decades ago.

              • nymnympseudonym@piefed.social
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                11 hours ago

                My state allows me to get a State drivers license that is not Real-ID compliant.

                My state-issued drivers license does not have on it:

                • my picture
                • my SSN
                • my home address

                It is in part because of this somewhat recent Amendment to our Constitution

                [Art.] 2-b. [Right of Privacy.]
                An individual’s right to live free from governmental intrusion in private or personal information is natural, essential, and inherent.
                December 5, 2018

                https://www.nh.gov/glance/state-constitution/bill-rights

        • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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          14 hours ago

          How is it “their Carribean government”? They just took a vacation and got married it sounds like.

          They have a state issued ID, just not a “REAL ID”.

        • tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          14 hours ago

          They didn’t live without ID for 30 years, there are now more strict requirements for obtaining one, and older IDs that don’t fit the new qualifications aren’t accepted for things like flying. Many countries especially 30 years ago might not have digital records of marriages, people born in the US are having the same issue obtaining birth certificates from rural hospitals, or some people born in the US decades ago never received a birth certificate.

    • General_Effort@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      People in the English-speaking countries generally don’t have government issued ID beyond a driver’s license. That’s also true for the UK. Historically, ID cards are connected to military conscription. The UK could rely on the Navy for defense and did not maintain vast land armies like the continental nations. Political initiatives to introduce ID cards are usually rejected by voters as totalitarian overreach.

      The former slave states in the US have a history of using procedural rules to exclude blacks from voting. After the end of slavery, there was formally equality before the law. So, laws were created to maintain the status quo that were non-discriminatory on their face. EG literacy tests. This not only targeted blacks who were denied an education. Administering such tests was fully in the hands of local elites. They could be made arbitrarily hard to black people, while politically reliable white illiterates could be excused.

      • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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        10 hours ago

        In addition to the bullshit “count the number of bubbles in this bar of soap” tests, the IDs required to vote are not free, making this a form of poll tax, which is illegal in the United States.

    • wolfpack86@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      In my experience in an EU country, sufficient ID was also provided freely by the government (eg a social security card).

      This is not something in the US that is free. ID must also be a photo ID. So let’s say you have a job where you work 7 days a week and take the bus because you don’t have a driver’s license. To get sufficient ID you must then: take unpaid time off of work, get to an office that issues ID, pay like $20 for such an ID… All to have the opportunity to exercise the right to vote.

      This is both a tax and an unreasonable burden, effectively disenfranchising millions of poor people.

      This is solvable though, if the government issues free IDs and sets something up to facilitate people getting their photos taken. However that would never be executed effectively, nor would people support paying the costs.

      • smeenz@lemmy.nz
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        18 hours ago

        You omitted that in the US, employment is largely “at will”, which means even taking a few hours off work, even asking for that, can result in that person being fired, and many won’t take that risk.

      • SpaceCadet@sopuli.xyz
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        15 hours ago

        This is solvable though

        They don’t want to solve it… the unreasonable burden and disenfranchisement are the point.

      • Xylian@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        In Germany you do not need a ID to vote. Every citizen gets a voting invitation per mail which is a notification saying when and where to vote. It is also a single use “voting ticket”, as instead of a ID.

      • Dasus@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        You’re not wrong in most of what you’ve said but equally in the EU you got to apply for one and pay for it, and an ID card is ~40€. Passport is a bit more. But yeah you could actually take your own passport photo with a mobile as long as it fullfills a few requirements. Most people just use a photographer who sends them directly to the police and then you just go online and pay and wait a few weeks and get your ID in the mail.

        But yeah I know how different it is in the US especially because it affects different populations differently.

        • davepleasebehave@lemmy.world
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          16 hours ago

          in Belgium it is fairly painless. it’s possible to take time off for admin. and life here is really difficult without one. it’s essential.

          • Dasus@lemmy.world
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            16 hours ago

            Yeah I wouldn’t know about that aspect, the only time I’ve ever had a “normal schedule” were in the army and a few months of day shift as a taxi driver. And if I had to do something in the middle of the day I just did it between fares.

            So I don’t I now if people working 8-16 in Finland take personal days but it’s possible at least. Not that it’s even necessary for most I think. There’s not many places you still have to physically go to to apply to things and whatnot. Mostly online.

        • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
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          16 hours ago

          For an ID? No. For voting? Yes. Having to pay anything for voting is a problem. Just as having to stand in line all day, thus paying by not earning, is a major problem.

          • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
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            13 hours ago

            Government photo ID is required for a lot of reasons, not just for voting. But yeah pretty weird that we have to miss work* to stand in line all day to get one, and that we have to PAY for this thing the government requires us to have. Like social security cards are required in USA too but I’m pretty sure we don’t have to pay for those.

            I think the reason govt photo ID’s cost $20-ish is because originally they were a Driver’s License, which is a privilege to have, not a requirement, so we pay for that privilege. And the place we get that photo ID is at the motor vehicle office / department of motor vehicles.Then over the years the motor vehicle office started offering government photo ID’s for people who DON’T drive too. But for some reason those ID cards cost $20-ish too which is a bit extortionate since there isn’t even a driving privilege associated with that. Government-issued photo ID’s are REQUIRED so should be free like social security cards are.

            *Don’t really have to miss work. Just go there on a day you’re not scheduled to work. Not fun to spend a day off at the motor vehicles office but c’est la vie.

          • BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world
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            16 hours ago

            It’s an extremely small cost for ensuring most important democratic process is untampered. The opposition for voter ID check is completely unreasonable

            • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
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              15 hours ago

              Believing that everyone can find money for an ID is extremely privileged.

              I have had students who couldn’t put together the equivalent 15USD, without a month’s notice. In the US you have entire families being homeless, we don’t.

              • BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world
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                15 hours ago

                Well that’s great, since next elections are far more than one month away. You just made an argument that even poor students can afford it

                • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
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                  13 hours ago

                  I also made the argument that you shouldn’t have to pay to vote, but you don’t like to respond to that. Only that you, through your immense intellectual powers, have found the logical loophole, that made me debate whether I should even make my comment.

                  Is the age of your account an indication of your intent to troll, or do you care to explain, why it’s OK to require people to pay to vote? Not why it’s not unaffordable, but why it’s OK to require payment to vote.

            • ecvanalog@lemmy.world
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              14 hours ago

              Except that it’s already secure. There are monitors, studies, and statistics to back the fact that illegally voting is a statistically nonexistent problem. The number of such cases is vanishingly small. There is no problem that needs solving here. It’s just assholes like yourself trying to impose their will on the law.

    • zebidiah@lemmy.ca
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      12 hours ago

      We have it in Canada too, and it’s generally not a big deal… But that’s likely because both our governments are doing it in good faith to ensure who shows up is the actual person on that voter card

      The problem with the US is that they do not operate in good faith and use voter id laws to target people they do not want to vote, it’s the same bullshit as putting a single polling station in minority districts with 10+ hr wait times (and criminal penalties of you give someone standing in line a bottle of water) and plenty of polling stations throughout the suburbs where you can be in and out in under 5 minutes.

      It’s not really about the id, it’s about “fuck you”

    • SpaceCadet@sopuli.xyz
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      15 hours ago

      In the EU everyone is likely to have an official ID card, so it’s a non-issue.

      In the US this is not the case, and the people who do have an ID or who are likely to know what to do to get an ID probably skew a certain way. So requiring voter ID is a way of voter suppression to discourage disenfranchised groups from voting.

      • BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        If they don’t bother to vote it’s their choice. The requirement isn’t unreasonable in any way.

        • SpaceCadet@sopuli.xyz
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          13 hours ago

          If they’re putting up barriers to selectively exclude certain voices, it becomes everyone’s problem because the outcome of the election no longer represents the will of the people.

          Even if 90% of the group that they’re trying to suppress does get an ID, and 10% doesn’t, it can be enough to swing elections, especially in a winner-takes-all system that’s in place in most of the US.

        • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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          10 hours ago

          It’s amazing how we made it for 250 years without MAGA fixing our horribly broken system for the Sociopathic Oligarchs. It’s almost like the Founding Fathers didn’t even care about Billionaires.

  • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    I mean, before he become president the first time he literally said that he would only accept the results if he wins.

    I too hate how obvious and predictable it all was but people finally getting it is surprisingly also very annoying.

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        It takes more guts than brains to comment this in a post about voter suppression.

        Think you can push it a bit more and blame the people who are currently in Trump’s concentration camps or deported for not voting this election?

      • D_C@sh.itjust.works
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        20 hours ago

        I have no idea why you were downvoted. If it weren’t for the tRUMP voters AND the non/protest voters then the orange child rapist wouldn’t have won.

        (Though all that could’ve been avoided if biden had pushed for prosecutions on the insurrection stuff and top secret documents stuff almost immediately. Instead he tried the old route of “it’s time to heal”, which NEVER works. NEVER.)

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          Because it’s not a very compelling theory that people particularly say this one out over various reasons. The turnout was actually above average by a few percent. It also assumes that most of those non voters would have gone against Trump. Which is far from assured

        • brynden_rivers_esq@lemmy.ca
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          19 hours ago

          He’s being downvoted because this was the democrats’ race to lose and they lost it spectacularly. Don’t blame non-voters for not turning up for the candidate that said “shut up about the genocide that we support and that i intend to confine to support”

          Or for a party that abandons every campaign promise other than “things will not fundamentally change.”

          The Democrats could try a little leadership for god’s sake. The top level comment blames the party, the comment you responded to blames the people. That’s why it’s downvoted, I think.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Back in 2024, Kamala Harris and the Democrats struggled to convince voters that a second Donald Trump term would constitute a serious threat to democracy. We can debate the effectiveness of her, and their, rhetoric. But on a certain level, it was a hard argument to make because it was hypothetical.

    On what planet was it hypothetical.

    Honestly. It’s like everyone’s still using fucking Windows. Fuck levels critical.

    • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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      15 hours ago

      I think in this case, hypothetical just means it was an “if, then” statement. As in, “if he wins, then his second term will constitute a serious threat to democracy.” He hadn’t won the election yet, so the electoral outcome was still hypothetical and therefore so were all of its effects.

      I agree that the wording is quite terrible though.

    • johncandy1812@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      He couldn’t have made his intentions any clearer. I think people just figured the Senate, SCOTUS and the DOJ would keep him in check. They didn’t see him taking control of those to this extent.

      Now people are about to find out just how much control he has over the military.

      • GroundedGator@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        I had hoped that even the maga members of Congress still had enough spine and self respect to put the rule of law over the promise of power, influence, and the ability to shape their christo-facist state. What a naive fool.

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        14 hours ago

        I think with the DOGE data (it was always about access to all the mainframes) and Palantir’s AI, it’s perfectly possible to know who will be loyal and who not. From the top of the miltary to the last redneck in Dumbville.
        If I was in the States, I wouldn’t be writing these things here.

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        19 hours ago

        Frankly, I don’t really blame people for having faith in the guardrails. Generally speaking, whenever any truly progressive legislation (often labeled as “extremism”) has been pushed forward, those guardrails have come up real quick. I understand why people thought that that would hold true for extremism in any direction. But it… well, doesn’t.

      • SabinStargem@lemmy.today
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        24 hours ago

        Considering how abusive he is towards members of the military, I think he will find himself frog-marched out of office.

    • doesit@sh.itjust.works
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      11 hours ago

      It’s like people don’t understand what happened and almost happened on J6.
      If all fails he’ll definitely do this again.
      edit : grammar 🫣

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      1 day ago

      “Trust me”, said pro-genocide candidate Kamala Harris, who shows no interest in reigning in the billionaires and corporations rushing to support fascism. “I’m better than Trump. I support US imperialism politely.”

          • MrVilliam@sh.itjust.works
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            1 day ago

            Harris was imperialist and colonialist, but not fascist. It’s ludicrous to equivocate trump and Harris as both being fascist.

            And in any case, yeah, vote for progressives in primaries. I know that there wasn’t a real primary for 24, but that has more to do with Biden not stepping aside soon enough than anything else. Dem voters are getting tired of establishment enablers, and DNC leadership is no longer interfering to pick favorites (see Mamdani’s victory) so we could actually see progressives taking over the party.

            You’re painting a false equivalency (both sides the same) and pining for other options without actually offering a solution for how to get there, implying that we just stay home and not vote at all. You’re the problem. If you don’t like the fascism, vote against the fascist. If you don’t like the non fascist option, tough shit because there may not be a next time if the fascist wins (and he did and here we are talking about suspending elections). If you actually want better Democrats in the general for the 26 elections, you need to start paying attention now because it’s primary season already, and you can and should be donating/volunteering for who you believe in.

            If you’re being serious about wanting an option outside of the two parties, only one of them is open to things like ranked choice to get rid of first past the post and eliminating the electoral college so that it’s people and not land doing the voting. Spoiler alert: convincing people to withhold their vote helps the other guys win, and they’re thrilled to keep it a two party system. You may not like somebody milquetoast like Biden, but he course corrected and arrested the slip into fascism while getting some progressive stuff through. Not enough, but it’s fucking silly to say that Harris was the same as Biden and also Harris is the same as trump.

            • cecinestpasunbot@lemmy.ml
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              Imperialists and colonialists share the same beliefs as fascists. They just disagree on whether or not it’s time to turn the violence of the imperialist machine in on itself. As the decline of America continues, eventually the imperialist are guaranteed to relent and side with the fascists.

              On top of that the DNC no legal obligation to run democratic primaries. Regardless of whatever wins democratic socialists have made, they’re so far from actually wielding enough power to meaningfully reform the American system. If they had any chance of success under the current rules then the DNC would just change them. The obvious conclusion is that voting alone will not stop the rise of fascism. It literally the least you can possible do.

            • flandish@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              They are both capitalists and will therefore both trend toward fascim, albeit at different rates. But that trend toward is a very slippery one way street with entire world wars being necessary to only temporarily revert it and try new ways.

              This is why it’s such a depressing mindfuck that the dems would rather remain the way they are instead of change. They want it. Just in a gaslit “guess we gotta be fasc” manner instead of trump’s “we are” manner.

      • Hapankaali@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        “Yes, of course I will choose the pile of rusty nails dipped in horseshit over the stale sandwich for lunch. As the sandwich is not very appealing, this seems like the logical choice,” said the well-balanced, rationally thinking individual.

        • bearboiblake@pawb.social
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          23 hours ago

          The point isn’t to choose the rusty nails, it’s to settle for better than a stale sandwich. I thought that was obvious. You deserve a candidate who actually represents your interests.

          • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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            15 hours ago

            “Better than a stale sandwich” wasn’t an option. I thought that was obvious. You had two choices. You refused to pick one, so you got the worst of the two.

            And now everyone who didn’t pick is still screaming at all the people who were going “Just eat the stale sandwich, we’ll work on expanding the menu for next time.”

            The DNC should’ve had a primary, yes. But that’s not how circumstances played out. There will be a primary next time, and that’s the time to make your voice heard on who should be nominated. The general election is a zero-sum competition in which, unfortunately, practically speaking there are only two options and can only be one winner.

          • Hapankaali@lemmy.world
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            20 hours ago

            Okay sure, definitely a good idea to change the menu, and make it so that there can be more than just 2 options.

            But you still have to choose something to eat today.

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        1 day ago

        Ive noticed that these guys are trying to start the same moral panic shit among Democratic voters to demotivate them this time around. For example, with Talarico - a key senate seat flip.

        • Optional@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          It’s definitely going to happen again. So-called moderate trump voters and our own LemLeft have learned nothing.

        • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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          Shove it up your ass. We tried to save the Democrats from themselves in 2024 and people like you ran static interference so that the Dems could run on “more of the same” and ultimately lose the election.

          • null@piefed.nullspace.lol
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            1 day ago

            Funny, I don’t remember seeing you promoting any progressive candidate for the the primaries.

            Saw you wokescolding Kamala voters a lot though…

            Must just be that you do the first part in communities I’m not in.

            • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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              Funny, I don’t remember seeing you promoting any progressive candidate for the the primaries.

              My entire comment history is right there buddy. Its all in there. Go take a look instead of relying on your clearly faulty memory.

              Saw you wokescolding Kamala voters a lot though…

              I love that word. I’m going to take that word.

              And again, instead of reacting to your impression of what you think I said, go through my comment history and find examples of that. If you need tools to better access them, I can provide that to you. I’ve got my entire comment history also available in JSON format, if that makes it easier for you, and you also have no excuse. In other words, put the fuck up or shut the fuck up, because I know precisely what I’ve said this entire time, and you are responding to your emotional impression of what I’ve said, not actually what I’ve said.

              My criticisms have been explicitly focused on the maneuvers of the party, the Biden campaign, the Harris campaign, and those who shield the parties or the campaigns from criticism

              All of this is based on the central thesis I offer, which is:

              • That its functionally and practically impossible to move an electorate over the course of a campaign which only lasts a couple of months. There are no mechanisms or tools available to campaigns to do so. Focusing critiques on individual voters when there is no function mechanism to change the minds of millions of voters is counter productive and loses you voters. The Harris campaign lost 6 million votes while not understanding this.

              • The only path to winning an election is to move a candidate to a set of popular enough policy positions they win the majority of factions necessary to capture the electoral college.

              • Any one saying that voters just need to “do better” while defending or apologizing for Candidates or campaigns with unelectable policy positions is a dangerous provocateur who, by shielding campaigns or politicians from criticism is operating on behalf of the opposition.

              If a candidate holds a policy position which will prevent them from winning the election, voting for them isn’t “strategic”; its irrelevant. The only options you have is to move politicians to electable positions. There is no other way to win.

              • null@piefed.nullspace.lol
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                1 day ago

                Hit me with some keywords I can use to find the candidate who’s campaign you vocally and regularly supported through the DNC primaries in that JSON dump.

            • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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              Yes. We gave the Democrats a straight-forward path to winning. They simply needed to shift their policy on Gaza. We communicated that here, there, everywhere. We got kicked out of the DNC convention saying it. We said it before Biden stepped down, after. We wrote articles about it. We did podcasts. We wrote editorials. We made it so incredibly clear, that there is really no excuse for not knowing that it was a choice on the part of the campaign to maintain an electable position.

              • beelzebum@lemmy.world
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                13 hours ago

                Yeah, dude, you made a lot of people sit at home so that they lost. You have the mentality of an early adolescent - selfish and with little wisdom or perspective.

                • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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                  No it’s that I actually wanted to win the election and I appreciate that I don’t control the behavior of others. I have to live in reality, where you need to to motivate voters to show up.

                  Instead of you, living in fantastic delusion of your own creation, where you some how expect to just guilt and shame voters into doing what you want them to do. And to be clear, the exact strategy you are advocating for is what the Harris campaign did do in 2024, and what the Clinton campaign did in 2016. They simply expected voters to show up, and tried to use same or guilt as the motivater.

                  It. Doesn’t. Work.

                  You lose elections doing that.

                  Also, if I’m some how so fucking powerful and have such masterful control of millions of voters, why wouldn’t you just listen to me and advocate that the candidate change their policy?

                  If you can’t win the election without meeting my demand, shouldn’t that be your priority? This is obvious, since, you won’t win the election without doing so.

  • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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    19 hours ago

    It was clear since at least November but reporting this 9 months before election is still pretty impressive. Mainstream media will probably wait till December.

  • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    Trump doesn’t get to say shit about how the States run their elections. Even if he “Hereby Do Dee-clares it.”

    • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
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      He isn’t technically able to do most of the stuff he does do. He just does it, and then time passes and then it gets declared retroactively illegal… but it still happened. He’ll probably get punished at some point… right?

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        The states run elections, lease the voting places and employ all the staff.

        Unless the federal govt replaces all of them, just waving a chicken leg around and declaring stuff won’t do anything.

        • Zexks@lemmy.world
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          Or you know he could put ice officers outside strategic polls and block anyone he doesnt like from entering.

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            20 hours ago

            We both outnumber and out-gun ICE by an absolutely astounding margin. ICE posts at our polling places, ICE gets crushed.

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              11 hours ago

              And theyre still running rampant and killing us citizens. Hows that armed resistence working out for you.

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                There hasn’t been much of one yet, because many people don’t feel personally threatened. They will feel threatened if ICE is blocking access to their polling place though.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      He and Pete Hegseth have no legal say in how the Scouts should run their affairs, too, but see what happened today?

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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        Its the difference of the courts stopping something vs making something happen. They can’t really do either, so anything that Trump doesn’t actually have a lever of power to pull to make something won’t happen. At least not to the extent he demands.

      • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        Trump says a lot of stupid crap. What you do is ignore him. Or say, “no” to him. But never give up without a fight.

    • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world
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      That’s true. The states can constitutionally tell him to go fuck himself. But I read a key phrase in another article that I tried to find and can’t, to the effect that his plan involves ally states.

      So lets say all but five states tell him to fuck himself and hold their elections. Five do not. They have just thrown the entire election and its results into massive constitutional confusion, with lawsuits for years to come while he just sits up there shitting his Depends and grinning. And it would work: whatever anyone says should be the answer, someone else will sue over.

      Elections are a huge power grab for anyone who wants even a little power. No one is going to let their piece of the pie go easily, whether that means holding an election or not holding an election, or fighting those who want the opposite, in court, forever.

      All he has to do is introduce confusion, and then it will be up to SCOTUS to decide.

      And SCOTUS is as corrupt as the day is long.

  • Sunflier@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    Is this title suggesting that the only good Republican is a dead Republican? It sounds like this title is suggesting that the only good Republican is a dead Republican. I wonder if the only good Republican is a dead Republican. I’m going to need to think on whether the only good Republican is a dead Republican. Does anyone else have any thoughts on whether the only good Republican is a dead Republican to help me contemplate on whether the only good Republican is a dead Republican?