Trump's won, the West is goosed ☹️

I’ve no doubt that the Democrats will up their game with the wind in their sails, but what worries me at the moment is the polling in all states. No good news at the moment for the Dems! One poll predicts Trump will win all significant swing states. But we shall see!

I just discovered an American cartoon YouTube channel. Looks good. Instant messaging.
If you like political cartoon satire. Pity about the music.

https://www.youtube.com/@ameriCArtoon

Wargaming before the last election predicted what Trump would do to cling to power. What they predict this time is scary.

It appears to me that their Constitution has serious flaws, if by using the legal system, with Republican Supreme Court Justices and hand-picked Republican Judges, Trump can impose authoritarian rule.

A decisive win by Kamala Harris seems to be the only way to avoid it. Or am I wrong?

And now he is warning his stupid followers that Kamala Harris will load the Supreme Court with Democratic
Judges.
It’s OK for me, but not for anyone else, as usual.

I think he would need to have majorities in Congress and in the Senate to do real harm. Well I hope that would be the case. Kamala winning means he would have to face justice and hopefully be incarcerated though they may not risk the latter.

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That’s perfectly possible - the Republicans have a majority in the House, and the Democrats a very slim majority of 1 in the Senate.

Harris choosing a Senator as her running-mate could be enough to tip the balance.

It depends what you mean by real harm. He could use the Insurrection Act without any input from Congress or Senate and the army would back him up. He’s already talked about breaking the wall erected between the Executive and Judicial branches of government, and yes he needs the Senate to confirm major Executive branch appointments, but a lot of the other appointments face little or no scrutiny.
The ‘barriers’ between the three branches of government are so flexible in theory that he could do a lot of serious damage. I can see some scenarios that mirror how Hitler came to power (Görings role as speaker) that he could use to change the constitution. Once that happens, then it’s game over.

I’m sure Trump has plans to call election fraud during or even before the elections if the polls look unfavourable. It’s going to be dirty.

So, it’s up to Kamala Harris, and her soon-to-be running mate, to convince a majority of the US public to vote for them to avoid a catastrophe. The next three months will be full of such incredible tension around the swing states.

I hope she can keep the momentum going, as she does here in Atlanta, Georgia. The world is waiting.

I’m sure we’ve no idea just how dirty :frowning:

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Lots and lots of lovely evidence, all the way through the campaign :face_with_hand_over_mouth: And it won’t cost a cent of campaign funds.

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They do great stuff :slightly_smiling_face: Thanks for the link.

Came across a historian, Heather Cox Richardson, who I found to be engaging and enlightening, regarding the current political state of the USA. She talks about Trump, Project 2025 and more. Worth listening to IMO.

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There is a growing threat that when/if Trump loses the election his acolytes will not accept defeat. The plan is already in motion

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/12/opinion/trump-crowds-kamala-harris.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

We saw this on Sunday, when he (Trump) claimed that Kamala Harris had used A.I. to fake an image of an enthusiastic crowd greeting her when she arrived in Michigan.

“There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!,” Trump wrote on his vanity website Truth Social.

His argument, such as it was, was based on a conspiracy theory floating around febrile corners of the internet that purported to find evidence of Harris’s deception in her plane’s reflection. “Same thing is happening with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches,” Trump added. “This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING — And they’re even worse at the Ballot Box. She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE.”

One way to read this post is that Trump is delusional. He can’t cope with Harris besting him on the metric he’s long valued the most — the size of his audience — and so is denying reality and having a tantrum. But however disordered Trump’s mind might be, I suspect there’s also a sort of strategy at work here. He is helping his supporters build a rationale for rejecting the election results if Harris wins.

By insisting that Harris’s support isn’t real, Trump is bolstering the idea that if she prevails, it won’t be legitimate.

The people who refuse to accept that Kamala Harris’s crowds are real are telling us they won’t accept that her votes are either.

Exactly. The idea that if Trump loses, it can only be because of cheating is now firmly embedded.

Especially as Georgia passed new rules to allow delay before certifying election results. Not sure if any other “Trump friendly” state has done this (and it may fail on appeal) but it’s a worrying development.

It has the potential to get ugly - but it would be uglier were he in office refusing to hand over power.

Harris still seems to be doing better than I expected and all Trump has left (all he ever had really) is ad hominem attacks.

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Probably why he’s never posted here…

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I’ve been reflecting how many of the posts on here Trump would be delighted with.

I understand your anxieties but every time you post here about Trump negatively you are giving him oxygen. You are adding to the clicks, the bots are scrabbling up the numbers, the language, the fear. All grist to his mill.

Is that really what you want to do?