Comment by dahdum
5 years ago
Trump barely has support now, nothing close to the widespread popularity he’d need to refuse to leave office. There’s about a 0% chance the Supreme Court goes along with it, and without an election the Presidency automatically transfers.
He’d also have to be astoundingly popular among the Secret Service for them to betray their oaths. His military support would tank, and him, his family, and administration would be in constant fear for their lives. IMO, he’s just not that insane, stupid, or popular enough to even try.
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.
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.
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.
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Not going to weigh in more generally - but he seems to be doing pretty fine according to recent polls
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
Well enough to pass some policy, but not enough to seize power through popularity. He’d undoubtedly lose significant (I’d wager most) Republican voters, and all semblance of a mandate.
The idea drives a lot of clicks and ad views though, so I’m sure we’ll see many more speculative articles before the election.
I wonder if anyone in history has managed to seize authoritarian power with only 40% support. I vaguely remember an example in the 1930s in central europe somewhere.
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> without an election the Presidency automatically transfers.
Says who? You've never had a President try to suspend or tamper with an election.
Primarily the Constitution and the Presidential Succession Act. While there are some ambiguities that need to be resolved there is definitely no scenario in which the sitting President continues.