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Prosecuting Caesar always struck me as a bad idea. Perhaps an ideal, extremely robust democracy could get away with it. At present, I don't think the US is it.
Let’s assume he is guilty, and let’s also assume that 30-40% of the country doesn’t believe he is (apparently 85% of republicans don’t think he should be prosecuted). Shouldn’t a hypothetical, nationally representative jury, nullify the charges?
I too am annoyed by loose threats of terrorism, such as ‘if you don’t give young men sex/poor people money/if you police black people/etc, they will rise up’, but Carlson’s prediction of violence is justified here. If the ballot box and the jury box fail (edit: I forgot, perhaps the most egregious of all, also denied the soapbox when democrats cheered when he was kicked off twitter), what box do they have left? They are, ultimately, a large faction of armed men (like the democrats). Their power to inflict violence should be respected (and democracy, at heart, very much respects it). Their opponents do not have to accede to their every demand, but they should definitely refrain from putting their leader in prison. It constitutes a direct challenge to the war-making potential on which their political power rests, and as such invites the battle democracy is supposed to avoid.
Look, occasionally prosecuting former politicians for obvious misdeeds is a thing that happens in healthy democracies. But this is a government attempting to imprison their head of state’s opponent in an upcoming election when he’s(the opponent) ahead in the polls.
I don’t think it’ll start a civil war- for that matter I don’t think trump will go to prison, the secret service won’t allow it- but I can’t predict how this will fall out. It’s definitely not a sign of a healthy democracy and ‘well what if he was secretly osama bin laden’ hypotheticals are irrelevant and stupid- like pornography, I know it when I see it and well, this is definitely a clearer move towards autocracy than anything trump did.
Problem is, if he were behind in the polls, he’d say the same thing. I suspect he’d still say it if he wasn’t running. It’s a bad look, a third of the country would be furious, and the bastard knows it. He’s going to claim complete immunity for everything until the day he dies, because “witch hunt!” is apparently an effective rallying cry.
Regardless of how I feel about his actual decisions, that’s kind of infuriating.
Well yes, trump isn’t a saint. I just think attempting to imprison the front runner in an upcoming election is rather worse for democracy than trump’s antics.
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His claims wouldn't resonate without plenty of people believing him. He's been unfairly persecuted by Democrats since election night 2016. The Democrats have overwhelmed their hands, and if you're upset that nothing ever sticks, you should blame the boys who cried wolf one too many times.
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Well, no, because a jury actually hears all the evidence and arguments, a process which most of the voting public will never bother with. They're supposed to come to the correct conclusions after getting all that evidence, not the nationally representative one, and it's no surprise if those two happen to diverge (or don't).
'They' Control the Supreme Court and the House and most state Senates where actual things that affect people's daily lives get passed. 'They' have had huge wins in the past decade across all kinds of political domains, including the abortion victory 'they' claimed to care so much about or decades.
And if they want to nominate a non-criminal, they have every chance of electing them President.
The ballot box has not 'failed' anyone, and most people are enough aware of this that they're not going to risk their lives and livelihoods over the rhetoric to the contrary (even if they repeat it themselves!).
Of these, only black people have actually done anything about it in recent memory, because the actual material conditions of their lives are bad enough that it's worth the risk. The expected value of rioting to disrupt the system and maybe loot a TV, against the risk of being killed or injured in the streets or arrested, was actually positive-EV for enough poor black people in some urban areas to get them out of their houses.
That's just not true in this case, the average Trump voter will not be materially hurt by another 4 years of Biden in a way where risking violence in the streets is positive-EV for their individual life, and very few people will ever do it just for ideology.
Let's have his trials in republican strongholds, then. I'm serious, this would make a conviction ten times as legitimate and vastly reduce my objections.
If they are so powerful, why would you risk antagonizing them by repeatedly going after their leader? All the more reason to maintain the fragile peace of democracy.
There is no clear relationship between oppression and propension to riot. Slaves rarely revolted. Perhaps the tulsa race riot proves that whites were oppressed. Or Kristallnacht tells us something about the material conditions aryans were forced to live in.
People riot because they can get something out of it, because they can get away with it, and often, for the hell of it.
You'll get that in the documents case at least (assuming it occurs). And that's probably the one that's going to result in the longest sentence.
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I agree with this. It’s both a strategic mistake and a grave political failure to use the courts to target Trump now.
Unless it works. If it's crazy and it works, it's not crazy.
How can it work? It’s clear a conviction wouldn’t remove him from the ballot, so electorally it wouldn’t work, and any loss from being arrested and being unable to campaign would likely be made up by the zealotry of his supporters and any number of GOP politicians (including the VP pick) being invited to campaign on his behalf.
Why not? If some set of states indeed use it as an excuse to remove him from the ballot, "allowed" or not, what recourse is available? Particularly if it gets dragged out in the courts until after the election is held? (Again, I look at Ted Stevens.)
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How is that clear? The recently rejected suits were about a pre-conviction determination.
I’m going by the New York Times from last month:
Is the New York Times wrong?
Ah, yes: the newspaper that had its baby journalists twittering about being in an unsafe space for BIPOC people because of an opinion piece published by the paper.
They considered that piece a "call for state violence", so I guess the same attitudes are behind "January 6th was an insurrection".
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And one or more states doesn't bother "passing legislation requiring a clean criminal record… on legally shaky ground," but just says "Trump's been convicted, so we're not putting him on the ballot; the Republican party can either submit a different name to go in their 'guaranteed spot' or else we leave it blank"? Sure, a court will probably rule that this is illegal and unconstitutional… eventually.(And who enforces that ruling, anyway?) But if you time it right, you can probably have that decision only come after the election, and then what? (Or, failing that, come well after ballots are printed and too close to election day to print new ones.)
The electors can elect whomever they want though, right -- so just throw a placeholder in there, mobilize the base (have rallys with him & Trump, etc to make the situation clear) and then the (Republican) electors throw their votes to Trump.
Calls for faithless electors to save democracy didn't work so well the last time, though. Hillary lost five of them, which she didn't need.
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No, the faithless elector laws are enforceable.
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I'm not sure. The rule that states may not add additional qualifiers for federal office has some loopholes but some well-established precedent.
However, there's also been serious sets of legal challenges and a well-promoted campaign to argue that the 14th Amendment automatically disqualifies from the ballot anyone who 'participated in insurrection', by a vague and broad definition that includes whatever they think Trump has done.
I'd argue that they're wrong to do so, but I'm not sure what I think matters.
The 14th Amendment is rather quiet about how it's insurrection rule is to be enforced: it's not clear who actually gets the power to decide "insurrection" occurred. The federal courts? The states? Local officials setting up ballots?
Some of those options are better than others, but if you choose poorly I think you'll find "was overruled once by SCOTUS" to be grounds for finding "insurrection against the Constitution" in any case where unfriendly partisan officials are empowered to so decide. Obviously Obama's fake "recess appointments" in Noel Canning were a deliberate attempt (from a famed Constitutional Scholar!) to subvert the Constitution if you let Ken Paxton decide.
To be fair, it's not clear how the Constitution's eligibility rules would be enforced generally if someone nominated, say, a child who was obviously under 35. Birtherism runs a bit more into the Full Faith and Credit Clause, though.
All the amendments are similarly quiet. The idea that it is specifically the courts that are responsible for enforcing (say) the 1st amendment is quite recent. At the time of the founding, the dominant view was that all political actors were obliged by their oaths of office to act constitutionally - that legislators should not pass unconstitutional laws, presidents should veto them if they do pass, etc.
The same approach to section 3 of the 14th is that it is incumbent on everyone not to allow insurrectionists into office. Parties should not nominate insurrectionists, secretaries of state should not put them on the ballot, voters should not vote for them, presidential electors for insurrectionists should go faithless (the Constitution overrides faithless elector laws) and the joint session of Congress should object to the electoral votes if they don't. The job of the courts is then to handle the inevitable litigation when people disagree about whether Trump really is an insurrectionist. Obviously, this is bad and puts you straight in a constitutional crisis.
But America is already in a constitutional crisis. Either Trump is right and you are a country where elections are routinely rigged, or Trump is lying and you are a country where there are no electoral consequences for spamming false allegations of vote-rigging the way most politicians spam promises of other people's money and demanding criminal investigations of local election officials for doing their jobs, or Trump is delusional and you are a country which is about to elect a madman as chief executive.
This is scary, man. And I don't even live in America.
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No, but that is a different set of criteria than who will appear on the ballot. For example, there's nothing in those requirements about having to get a certain number of verified signatures of support, which is a near-universal ballot access requirement. The suspicion is that a conviction will be used to prevent Trump from being on the ballot in at least some states despite him being eligible to be President if he was elected anyways.
Sure, but if those states are California, New York, Vermont, and hawaii, that disqualification is irrelevant.
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Dismayingly frequently.
Not about this, I believe, but since the history of the NYT being bafflingly brazenly wrong about things extends from over 90 years ago to under 2 days ago, it still feels weird to cite them as an authoritative source.
Of course, I certainly didn’t mean to imply they’re always right. But they don’t seem to be wrong about this.
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It was a while ago, but there literally was a guy who ran for president from prison.
Debbs against Wilson.
Yup, keep trying to remember him by his convict number, and keep falling flat on my face.
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If Trump loses either because or despite being imprisoned, the Democrats have successfully shown they're the strong ones and the opposition gets out of line they don't just fade into obscurity, they go to prison.
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This doesn't make any sense to me. There are two important groups of people here. People who would vote for Trump if he isn't convicted but wouldn't vote for him if he is convicted and people who wouldn't vote for him if he wasn't convicted but would vote for him if he was convicted. Is it your contention the second group is larger than the first? This strikes me as wildly implausible.
If there are people who feel that an important principle is being violated, they may well vote for Trump in that case as a protest vote. Sometimes you have to go with who you got, even if they're not the perfect subject for a case.
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I think there are quite a few Republicans who find Trump personally distasteful and would not normally vote for him who would feel compelled to send a message to the Democratic establishment that imprisoning their candidates is not an acceptable political tactic, actually -- and the set of "people who will definitely vote for Trump but respect the decisions of a DC court as to his morality" seems really, really small?
Why is agreeing with a DC court as to his morality the relevant criteria? How about "the set of people who wouldn't vote for a convicted felon?" I bet that's a much larger set!
"Wouldn't vote for someone you already support but was convicted by a kangaroo court full of people that you hate" seems pretty small.
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That's true, but what if you think the conviction was unjust? Put him in to get him out was a slogan for an Irish by-election canvassing votes for a political prisoner in 1917.
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I suspect these people are outnumbered by Republicans who find Trump distasteful but would vote for him on the grounds he's a Republican -- except that they're happy to have the excuse not to because voting for a convicted felon is just beyond the pale.
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I don’t think that true blue resistance warriors would vote Trump because he’s convicted, but there’s a certain kind of lower class conspiracy theorist which to be honest mostly doesn’t vote which might decide that him being convicted is a reason to support him.
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I don't think either group is all that clearly outlined, because the world in which Trump is Nominated+Convicted is a different world in more ways than just Trump's location.
Other important groups of people:
-- People who will commit or attempt terroristic violence after Trump is imprisoned.
-- People who won't vote for Trump after the above have committed their terroristic violence on principle. Cops and cop fans, mainly, are likely to fall into this category. While Cops are typically very red tribe, after a MAGA mad hatter kills a cop in cold blood, they will flip.
-- People who won't vote at all if Trump is in prison because they will lose faith in the system.
And the thing is, that upside doesn't just carry across the Presidential race, it carries all the way down ballot in all likelihood, as GOPers will be forced to bend the knee from Senate to City Council.
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Campaigning is about rallying the troops. My contention is that the effect of a Trump conviction wouldn’t substantially reduce the number of would-be Trump voters, but would energize his base tremendously.
Ok, but how does energizing his base going to translate into more votes? Were a bunch of people who make up his base also not going to vote for him until he got convicted?
Yes, all candidates have a portion of the base who is insufficiently motivated to get to the polls but can be convinced to do so.
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