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The Proud Boy sentences being quite severe is on my mind today. 22 years for Tarrio who was not there on Jan 6. He does have text saying it was them who did it. A few others got in the high teens sentences who were there.
I will admit I respect the Proud Boys and agree with a lot of their statements. I do believe the 2020 election was stolen. The lack of a secret ballot thru mass mail-in voting violates every principle of Democracy. Without violating the secret ballot Trump would have easily won in my opinion. The Proud Boys official position from memory was a desire for a new election following Democratic principles. Seems fair to me. So I feel they are directionally correct even if they took things too far.
The right won’t get equal treatment in the court. It seems like the key courts are in cities that are going to have unsympathetic juries and judges. If you flip these courts to rural areas then my guess antifa types are getting 20 years and Proud Boys 2 years. In rural areas they would have judges very sympathetic that the election wasn’t proper and their anger was justified in the same way BLM protestors get courts sympathetic that America is a racists nation.
I think the left is making a mistake with these massive sentences. If they gave them a couple years I would feel it was fair as they went too far. But now I want them pardoned. If Trump pardons them as he should then it’s a slap in the face of the court decision. Delegitimizes the court to have the court decide these are really bad people deserving long sentences for overturning Democracy but then have the next guy release them. It feels very third worldish to me. With other lawfare attempts it seems as though any future POTUS should do mass pardons. I’m not sure how balance of powers can survive this.
The punishment for Proud Boys seems to have some connection to the debates and Biden declaring them “white supremacists” and Trump telling them to “stand by and stand down” (which felt coded). It made it important these guys got long sentences to confirm that they are the bad guys because then a court confirmed what they told you. Same thing with Floyd officers and long sentences which confirmed that they were bad murderous cops. A jury convicted therefore we know it’s true.
It’s another example of punishment for exercising your right to a jury trial.
I agree with Garrett Jones books “10% Less Democracy” and America would be better with less activision and less voting. But America looks more and more like a third word spoils system. Win you get the spoils, lose you go to jail. Which makes elections far more important.
Links aren’t important just sometimes people asks for articles.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1172530436/proud-boys-jan-6-sedition-trial-verdict
https://apnews.com/article/enrique-tarrio-capitol-riot-seditious-conspiracy-sentencing-da60222b3e1e54902db2bbbb219dc3fb#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20(AP)%20—%20Former%20Proud,for%20the%20U.S.%20Capitol%20attack.
https://www.amazon.com/10-Less-Democracy-Should-Elites/dp/1503603571
https://reason.com/2023/09/06/with-22-year-sentence-ex-proud-boys-leader-enrique-tarrio-pays-hefty-trial-penalty/
Edit: Focus on the punishments and any results from the severity. I used a certain frame to put it in their view. We don’t need to discuss election legitimacy again.
Trump can't pardon them because Trump isn't president and is unlikely to ever be. By the time a Republican is allowed to take office again, they will be rotting in jail forgotten, and the "Republican" president will agree they should be in jail anyway. Part of the point of these sentences is to get across the message that opposing Democrats too vigorously is severely punishable. Of course if Trump did take office and pardon them it would be third-worldish, but it already is.
I assume you are writing this in the third-person of a true believer Democrat.
https://www.predictit.org/markets/3/President
I think these markers are semi-efficient and he’s at 32% win rate so unlikely is false plus some percent a different republicans wins.
Biden has the Democratic party, the universities, the newspapers and other media, the unions, the corporations, the urban organizations, and pretty much everything else behind him. The Republicans have nothing except what Trump managed to put together in 2016, and that's a lot weaker than it was even in 2020. The Democrats should win in a walkover.
Hilary had all of those as well and lost just the same.
Define democrats winning in a 'walkover' and conditional on Trump being the republican nominee I'll take the other side of that bet.
Hillary also didn't have institutional support locked in for vote harvesting machines and widespread court agreement that illegal or semi-legal last minute changes to procedure do not result in an election being re-done, it results is a suble finger wag and a shrug.
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Hillary may have theoretically had them insofar as she was a Democrat but there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm for her bordering on loathing. There's a reason she lost to Obama in '08 despite the sense of inevitability the party tried to create; the Democratic establishment either didn't learn that lesson or were pressured to ignore it due to the pervasive influence of the Clintons.
Biden isn't exactly the most inspiring candidate, but the only people who seem to despise him are the kind of people who wouldn't vote Democrat anyway. The only real knock against him is his age and aloofness. There are obviously attempts to paint him as corrupt, but they'll probably only damage him to the extent that Whitewater damaged Hillary. Basically, he isn't unlikeable the way Hillary was, and his policies are anodyne enough as to not scare away anyone who's actually paying attention. Trump's a much more divisive figure in that he actively insults anyone who doesn't kiss his ass, and who has no problem floating insane policy proposals only for his aides to walk them back later. Especially after the election nonsense and January 6, it's hard to see what his appeal is to the 2020 Biden voters he needs to pick up to win this time.
I would argue that Whitewater and other corruption allegations actually damaged Hillary Clinton a lot.
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