zlacker

I think you're basically making an "it can't happen here" argument, and I wholly disagree. I worry this kind of thinking effectively guarantees it will happen here eventually, because it relies on dynamics that govern legitimacy remaining the same as they have been in the past. The way it would happen is specifically if the dynamics of loyalty and who has legitimate authority change, and we've seen over the last four years that that's 100% happening. The only question is how deep the distrust of institution goes and how far the people in key positions will go to defend a President they are loyal to. If you can convince enough people to distrust the process of picking the President, you can create enough chaos to break apart the forces that would normally counter that kind of thing.

Look at any nation that underwent major coups; factions form, and it tears the organizations you've listed apart at the seams. Because a conflict of legitimacy exposes those seams, and those seams are absolutely present today. A Secret Service agent, an army colonel, armed militia, border patrol agents—if they can be made to believe the results of the election are illegitimate, they may consider the best way to fulfill their oaths to be stopping the "illegitimate" president from taking office. They will think of themselves as the ones stopping the coup.

I'd love to believe that all of those dynamics you're describing are the same as they were 20 years ago. I'd also make your argument then. But they aren't anymore. It can happen here.

>>montag+(OP)
I won’t claim it could never happen here, societies change and we could certainly drift to a place it could. The Dem candidates that advocated packing the Supreme Court scared me for this reason, that’s part of how Maduro seized complete power.

Trump now though? Nobody fears him, the majority disrespect him, government bureaucracy openly defies him. He doesn’t even have the House, nor enough Republican support to pass laws to enable a power grab, nor a Supreme Court loyal to him before the constitution.

>>dahdum+h3
Trump and Mcconnell have already packed the supreme court and the federal circuits.

It's no-longer a question of if the Democrats respond, it's a question of how.

>>NickNa+kb
They didn’t pack the Supreme Court, it’s still the same number. They did appoint a bunch of textualists and originalists, not just die hard conservatives. That makes it harder to drive progressive change through the judiciary, but the legislative branch was always the better option.

Actual court packing is a terrible idea, last attempted by FDR, at great political cost. Hearing candidates actively propose plans for doing so boggled my mind.

>>dahdum+3i
> That makes it harder to drive progressive change through the judiciary, but the legislative branch was always the better option.

Maybe not so much. Didn't this court gut important parts of the the Voting Rights Act?

>>ardy42+Lo
We also have Roberts to thank for Citizens United, which flooded the political landscape with dark money and made the current GOP strategy viable.