Trump's delay 2020 election ploy — two perspectives — one correct

31 July 2020

Let's compare two perspectives toward Trump's proposed power coup

One is carelessly founded.

The other exhibits societally necessary Jeffersonian vigilance.

Let's start with facts

Yesterday, President Trump tweeted this:

With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history.

It will be a great embarrassment to the USA.

Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???

Predictably, levels of outrage from Trump's Republican Party were mainly absent

Republicans are happy with their Oval Office Monkey.

Even when he blatantly flouts both Constitution and centuries of American history.

More astute observers resisted the President's unlawful idea

Their observations divide themselves into two camps.

Camp One simply states that Trump's idea is illegal and implies that its illegality will overcome it.

Camp Two agrees that election delay is illegal, but overtly states that being illegal, alone, will not prevent the President's implicitly proposed coup d'état.

Camp One's perspective — demonstrated by Eric Boehm at Reason Magazine

Boehm wrote this:

[L]et's take the second part [of the tweet] first, since that's the bit that threatens to blow a gigantic hole in 230-plus years of American democratic tradition.

Election dates are set by the U.S. Constitution, by Congress, and by the states—the president has literally no authority over it.

The CRS [Congressional Research Service] reports that some state constitutions allow governors to postpone elections for emergencies, but there is no provision in the U.S. Constitution allowing federal officials to change the date unless Congress changes the law or a constitutional amendment is passed.

If . . . all elections were canceled or postponed and there was no new Congress to meet on January 6, the CRS report says, that doesn't change the fact that the incumbent president's term ends at noon on January 20th.

"There are no provisions of law permitting a President to stay in office after this date, even in the event of a national emergency, short of the ratification of a new constitutional amendment," according to the CRS.

In that absolute worst-case scenario, the presidential order of succession would come into play. There would be no elected vice president, so Mike Pence is out of the running.

If there was a functioning House of Representatives, the new Speaker of the House would become president.

If that person could not serve, the president pro tempore of the Senate—currently Sen. Chuck Grassley (R–Iowa), though that could change before January—would become the nation's chief executive.

The bottom line: Trump can't cancel or postpone the election, and even if the election doesn't take place for some reason, he can't legally remain in office.

Consider what Boehm overlooks

Boehm assumes that the System will operate as it was designed.

Yet, we have seen absolutely no evidence, for decades now, to support the idea that the American system works as it was designed to.

All of its components have surrendered to maximizing the personal advancement (in wealth and power) of the three governmental branch's occupants.

There exists nothing substantial (on record) to indicate that anyone (in high-ranking Government employ) still believes that he and she should vigorously be upholding and enforcing the Constitution's directives — regarding who can do what to whom.

Congress long ago abandoned all motivation to oppose the gross inflation of presidential power. In fact, the House and Senate do nothing productive, virtually ever.

For its part, the Executive Branch regularly gobbles more and more king-like power in (a) waging domestic government by executive order and (b) escalating perpetual war abroad.

Last, top levels of the American judiciary have been over-populated with ideologues, who concoct vacuous reasons not to believe that Law, Precedent and Common Sense say what they do. See here, for example.

These trends are why most of our civil rights have expired under the combined "wars" — against everything that one can think of — that American government and Plutocracy have been instigating and operating for seemingly ever.

Boehm and Reason Magazine's complacent point of view, regarding President Trump's tweet, are (therefore) Liberty-killing naive.

Camp Two — opposes complacently trusting the System to work

Beau of the Fifth Column explains this second group's anti-complacency reaction to Trump's tweet:

Let's talk about Trump's call to suspend the elections, YouTube (30 July 2020)

Let's talk about how that tweet can't happen here, YouTube (30 July 2020)

The latter video makes the following case:

Those words on paper [in Law and Constitution] mean nothing, if people don't follow them.

He's talking about voter fraud . . . . It's about delegitimizing the election.

If there is a delay, there will be no election . . . . This is him exposing his face.

He doesn't care about democracy . . . . He cares about power and himself.

Just like every other wannabe dictator.

In evaluating Beau's observations, recall that . . .

Republicans have already demonstrated that Trump could serially pussy-grab (his words) metaphorical nuns in the street — and his Party would (and will) continue to support him.

And for their Fake Party of Opposition contribution — if History be any guide — Democrats will continue to be completely ineffectual in doing anything that requires both work and wit. In any direction and whether for or against the President.

It is not as if this country contains some Magical Backstop to prevent Liberty's ball from fleeing our park.

Therefore . . .

The emotionally appropriate reaction to Trump's tyranny-seeking tweet should be planning the means (metaphorically) to string him up — should his proposed version of a defiant January 2021 arrive:

Upside-down, inelegantly naked and possibly de-manned

from one of the flagpoles

among those circling the Washington Monument

to rot there

(again figuratively)

under the public's televised eye

in the same poetically just manner

that Benito Mussolini

suitably departed his term of dictatorial office

in Italy

during World War II.

Our freedom-supporting, imaginary, very graphic theater would serve as fitting warning to the American Presidency's continuing wish for more power.

If . . .

. . . you do not possess a similar level of rage at the President Trump's proposed attempt to circumvent the remains of American democracy, you are definitively not an historically worthy USA patriot.

Most succinctly and colloquially stated

When Freedom's enemies start telling you what they plan to do to chain and dismember your future, you had better start just-in-case considering how to cut their balls off.

I'm philosophically with General Mad Dog Mattis on this.

The moral? — Thomas Jefferson's admonishment about blood and tyrants is still pertinent

Are Americans too weak, lazy or stupid to defend their freedoms with suitable levels of self-defending alarm?

We are witnessing the 2020 equivalent of Paul Revere's midnight ride warning. This time, coming from the Tyrant Wannabe himself.

PeteFree.com

Trump's delay 2020 election ploy — two perspectives — one correct