"Trump may win or lose, but he will never concede. Not under any circumstance. Not during the Interregnum & not afterward. If compelled in the end to vacate his office, Trump will insist from exile, as long as he draws breath, that the contest was rigged." theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
Trump can't lose. He's defiant. We don't know what he'll do exactly, but we know that he won't accept losing. It's like when I said in November 2016 that he wouldn't let himself be impeached.
Or, when I knew in November 2018 that Dem control of the House wouldn't change anything.
I'm not sure what we should be bracing for exactly, but I know that we should absolutely not expect for Trump to concede.
This is exactly the problem of putting an unaccountable leader into a position of power. You'd like to think that the constitution & norms would constrain him, but he will find a way to be unaccountable. That's who he is.
And, you could tell all along by the way that he talked.
Read the article, to be prepared so you know the signs of what's happening. You are not helpless. Do not give up in advance.
+Make sure you're registered to vote
+Volunteer to work the polls
+Vote & bring a friend
+Follow news about the vote count
+Be prepared to march/protest
The point of stasis (stopping, or the central issue of the debate) will be over whether or not to "count every vote."
Counting every vote will likely hurt Trump (what they call a "blue shift" over time as more votes are counted). #CountEveryVote
Will reporters be allowed to witness the vote counts? In the 90s I was an @AP election night stringer. I sat in my county office and watched them count the votes & reported updated tallies. Does the AP still have in-person election night (and after) observers? Do parties?
Perhaps no news at all should be released about the contents of the vote count until all of the votes are counted?
Is that possible?
"Take agency. An election cannot be stolen unless the American people, at some level, acquiesce."
There's been a lot of reporting that the vote will take a long time. That's good.
This article is a must read because it explains what will happen behind the scenes to subvert the democratic process & how & why the laws are open for manipulation.
Know what to expect.
Trump still violating democratic norms, won't promise a peaceful transition. Still using conspiracy rhetoric to frame legitimate votes. Remember, conspiracy is "self sealing"--it cannot be proven or disproven, so it makes him powerful.
Every time he accuses the election of being rigged or refuses to say whether he will accept the results of the election if he loses or leaves doubt about a peaceful transferal of power that is evidence of the #TrumpCoupPlot. Presidents don't threaten democratic norms like that.
I've said this before, but it might be worth repeating here: it doesn't matter if Trump is actually an authoritarian or if he is pretending to be one to control the news cycle. The effect is the same.
Pretending to be authoritarian is authoritarian.
And, if you don't know the poli sci work on "democratic erosion" or "democratic backsliding"--the process by which nations lose their democracy, it's a real thing. Here is @BrightLineWatch's latest expert survey about the state of our democracy: brightlinewatch.org/bright-line-wa…
Indicators of democratic stability/backsliding.
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Expect that Trump won't "debate," he'll be there to humiliate. What does he think will humiliate Harris the MOST? He will call her names, distort her record & policies, try to make her cry, try to intimidate her & attack her heritage. He'll say she's a dumb silly girl & a whore.
He will spew so many lies (Gish Gallop) that no one is able to refute them. Do not try. This isn't a "debate," do not try to debate facts. Weirdify: expose, critique, and mock. Explain Trump's weak-sauce strategies to the audience--
"Well, that was about 20 lies right there. I'm not going to waste the short amount of time I have here refuting them (it's on my website-post factchecks). Trump lies a lot, some of the worst lies he tells are about how this nation isn't already and hasn't always been great..."
This is a large part of our collective trauma. We lack civic spaces, can't find the time to join, never go to the park or library, and can't say we have friends we can count on. For some of us it's much worse than it is for others of us. We all suffer. This neoliberal life.
"Trump promised that the papers proved that he and his businesses wouldn’t profit off the presidency, but when reporters asked to examine the evidence, the folders and papers appeared blank. Not for the first time nor the last, Trump had offered props instead of proof."
Sometimes called "carnivalesque" and sometimes called "tactical frivolity" and sometimes called "culture jamming"--humor has been taking down repressive regimes since ancient Greece:
I've been writing a little lately about "reflexive control"--the strategy Russians use to get their targets/adversaries to do what the Russians want, but think it's their own idea (Russia's goals become your goals). It's really effective, and the point of their information ops.
So thinking about reflexive control--creating a context, feeding the information environment to create the conditions by which your adversary makes the choice you want them to make--and the last few weeks. Biden/Harris have completely inverted Republicans' control over the race.
Republicans didn't think it possible, could not conceive of a world in which Biden willingly gave up power (so much so that Trump was tweeting today trying to make Biden recant his decision 😂). All Republican plans were designed to control the outcome of the race against Biden.
More about the #weird strategy: fascists use language strategies that create the conditions for fascism. Part of that is creating fear & hate objects & then defining "normal" & scaring folks into defending/policing the new normal. When we make fascism weird, it loses its power.
The current iteration of the "weird" strategy is genius because it shows how isolated the right-wing media ecosphere is. Most folks don't know wtf they're talking about. The OFoxMax crowd is a small % of the US population, but a large share of cable news viewers.
They only talk to themselves. They don't try to solve problems or even cover actual news. It is pure outragebait all day and all night. That outragebait is good for keeping an audience, but it turns them into weirdos. No one cares about what they care about.