The hush money payments were before the election so they were still felonies. It’s possible Trump wouldn’t have bothered hiding them like he did if he lost, but in any case there wouldn’t have been the appetite to prosecute him.
As for the coup, he absolutely would have tried it, definitely through filing lawsuits, and probably up to the same fake electors scheme and the riot, but it’s debatable how far he would’ve gotten. Definitely not as far as he did in reality, though.
Hoo boy, it’s a toughie. On the one hand, Trump would still be around. He also wouldn’t be in as much legal peril as he is now (it’s likely there wouldn’t have been an appetite to prosecute him over the Stormy Daniels hush money payments, and the classified documents case would have never happened to begin with since he wouldn’t have had access). But he almost definitely WOULD have tried to pull off another insurrection similar to Jan 6th–he was foreshadowing that he wouldn’t accept the results if he lost even back in 2016, using the same language as he did in 2020 before he launched his coup attempt.
The world where Trump doesn’t attempt a coup isn’t very interesting, at least for this thought experiment–he slinks off, continues shitposting about Hillary on Twitter, but likely doesn’t try to run again (or loses in the primary because he’s a sore loser). Everyone ignores his hush money payments in the interest of “statesmanship,” and at best he becomes a minor kingmaker in the party apparatus. MAGA withers on the vine, and we largely continue with the late Obama administration status quo.
The world where he attempts a coup is much more interesting. The real question is, what would have changed after the failed insurrection attempt? It’s highly unlikely it would have succeeded or even gotten anywhere as close as it did, since a lot of the original plan relied on access to the levers of power (I.e. being able to withhold security to let the rioters overrun the Capitol). But how would everyone react to it long-term? In this timeline, Republicans genuinely distanced themselves from Trump and Jan 6th at first, likely out of shock over the realization that they were actually in danger and the very real fear that they could end up hurt or killed. But as the shock wore off, Republicans started shuffling back to MAGA as the propaganda machine did its work to downplay and normalize the failed coup, and they realized that their base saw Jan 6th as a good thing.
In a theoretical timeline where Trump tries a coup in 2016, it depends on how far Trump gets before he fails. If he’s thwarted to the point where he doesn’t (or can’t) hold the rally that stormed the Capitol, then nothing really comes of it at all–it becomes a footnote in history that is only cared about by political historians, pub trivia enthusiasts, and people who like to talk about politics on the internet. If he gets to the point where he holds a rally, but the rally is prevented from interfering with the certification process (complete with provocative images of cops in riot gear swinging at MAGA rioters), it’s likely that this downplaying and normalization would have been ironically amplified by virtue of the coup attempt being less successful. Without the visceral fear of hiding from rioters, Republicans would have no reason to distance themselves from the attempt, and they would almost immediately start using it as fodder to attack the new Clinton administration. In short, the hypothetical coup attempt would become another Benghazi scandal for Clinton–something that she had little real involvement in and largely wasn’t her fault, but that she gets blamed for anyway. Trump, meanwhile, would remain largely in the same position as in 2015–the dominant force in the party.
Aside from that, the court wouldn’t be as openly corrupt as it is now. It’d be filled by a moderate Clinton appointee if democrats have the 51 votes to abolish the filibuster for supreme court appointees (or held open by McConnell otherwise), and when RBG dies her replacement is decided by whoever wins the 2020 election. Roe v. Wade would still exist, the chevron deference would still be the law of the land, and we wouldn’t have the terrifying prospect of legally sanctioned presidential death squads.
Overall, I think we would be largely in line with the status quo of 2014-2015. Not great, with a worrying trend towards fascism and an establishment largely too busy huffing their own farts to address the vast majority of problems facing us, but a LOT better than where we are right now.
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Or worse yet, they split the vote and a solid blue seat sends a Republican to Congress with 35-40% of the vote. I just love FPTP!
Yup, this was one of the central debates with gay marriage vs. civil unions, so many LGBT+ couples were absolutely screwed pre-Obergefell by one of the partners getting sick or dying, and the surviving partner either having no say in medical decisions or getting screwed out of inheritance because the sick/dead partner’s family was anti-gay and froze the surviving partner out of everything.
Yeah, that’s what happens when the LLM they use to summarize these articles strips all nuance and comedy.
Copyright is the only thing protecting us from getting absolutely fucked even harder by the rich than we already are, yes.
Do you want corps just stealing every new idea and product, cloning it, and muscling out the original inventor without paying them a dime? Because abolishing copyright entirely would be an excellent way to do that.
Fucking Christ, multiple people opening up about how they feel shunned by the very queer community that’s supposed to accept them because they’re bisexual, and here you are shunning and silencing queer people.
Are you this much of a flaming bag of dog shit to everyone in your life?
They did use them as best they could. They were hamstrung by a filibustering Senate, and two conservative Democrat senators (Sinema and Manchin) who refused to support getting rid of it, making killing the proposition of killing the filibuster DOA. As a result, their only choice to pass legislation was budget reconciliation, which aren’t subject to filibuster. The issue is that reconciliation has several big limits:
The bill has to be related to government spending, revenue, and the debt ceiling. You can’t toss in things like minimum wage increases or voting rights legislation.
You can only pass one of these bills per year (theoretically you can do more, but additional reconciliation bills have to go through the budgrt committee and with a 50/50 senate the GOP can just skip those meetings to deny quorum and keep it stuck)
Whatever passes still has to get at least 50 votes, which means either appeasing Manchin/Sinema or getting Republican votes (which ain’t gonna happen)
And despite that, we still got the CHIPS act, an infrastructure bill, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which–even with Manchinema throwing as many grenades in the process as they could get away with–was the biggest climate change bill in our country’s history. Not perfect, no, but a sizable step in the right direction, for once.
God, the unrelenting misery is killing me in this platform. I think the thing I’m most sick and tired of more than anything else is the constant stream of The Usual Suspects butting in with “But what about Gaza?!” on Every. Single. Post.
Post an article about Biden proposing a ceasefire agreement in the war? Complain about Biden giving support to Israel!
Post an article about Biden celebrating pride month? Complain about Biden funding Israel!
Article about Biden forgiving another batch of student loans? “BUt Biden supports israel!”
Article about Trump getting convicted of felonies? “But Biden! Gaza! Israel!”
Article about a small town library fighting LGBTQ+ book bans? “GAZA! ISRAEL! BIDEN! BAD”
Article about a goddamn random topic completely unrelated to Biden, Trump, Israel, politics, or the US at all? “GENOCIIIIIIIIIIDE!”
It’s at the point where I’ve cut back on Lemmy usage entirely because every comment thread I click on is like navigating a fucking minefield of misery. Nothing good can ever happen, no policy changes can ever be celebrated, no events can be remarked upon, without someone butting in with a reminder that Genocide Mother-Fucking Joe is personally shoveling coal into the palestinian child incinerator. No post can ever leave you with any emotion other than the thin veil of doomerism settling upon your shoulders, a pall of depression casting itself over the tragedy of the world, and a sense that modern society is an Aristocrats joke that has long since crossed the line from “horrifying” to “funny,” then back to “horrifying,” then back to “funny,” before settling itself so firmly in “horrifying” that the audience is casting nervous glances and hoping that someone else is the first to call the police.
How about you fuck off and chug a diarrhea dogshit smoothie :^)
Don’t bother, he’s one of the many trolls whose entire purpose on Lemmy is to shit on biden
Holy shit, Stamets changing their name because of the last season is probably the single most damning condemnation I could think of if
I’m pretty sure he was agreeing with you…?
And on the other side of the coin, hard-right Israelis work to paint any criticism of Israel as antisemitic, regardless of legitimacy.
So on the one hand, you have antisemites using this as an opportunity to blame all the world’s ills on tHe (((gLoBALiStS))) (I really hope that came across as sarcastic enough), and on the other, you have ultraconservative Israelis using the first group to lump the people saying “please don’t do a genocide” in with them. And on top of that you also have Hamas doing the goddamn Goofy “and I’ll fuckin do it again” meme, along with a bunch of people in Palestine who are literally taught antisemitism and hatred in the classroom, while Russia, Iran, and the same goddamn Israelis painting everyone as antisemitic pour money into the group that would genocide Israel back in a heartbeat. And caught in the middle of this category 5 shit hurricane are a bunch of innocent people who just want to be treated like human beings with equal rights, and to be able to go to the goddamn grocery store without worrying about getting exploded by a piss rocket / laser-guided cluster bomb made by Lockheed Martin.
I’m so goddamn fucking sick and tired of everything with this. Literally the only “good guys” in this entire fucking 70-year conflict are the noncombatants on either side of the Gaza border wall trying to go about their day and whose entire lives are reduced to a casualty sheet and a propaganda blurb, while both sides just keeps fighting and killing because perverse incentives mean it’s the only way both Netanyahu and Hamas can cling to power, innocent life be damned.
It’s all well and good to say “choose another system of governance” but how do we implement this change? What is the mechanism under which we can replace our current system of government with Swiss democracy, without the old government just saying “lolno” and bombing it to shit? The only method I can think of is a constitutional convention, and right now we’re closer to the right wing being able to call one and rewrite it to take pur rights back 200 years than we are to leftists implementing Swiss democracy.
Like… I would be thrilled if that were within the realm of possibility, but as it stands any possible options for dramatically overhauling our system of governance is more likely to lurch us straight into permanent hard-right minority rule by a bunch of fascists. That’s what I mean when I say I’ve never seen an actual plan by leftists to overhaul the system–it’s all arguing about what the sexy end goal should be, without bothering to talk about the boring minutiae of how to actually get to it. So far as I can tell, the “plan” to make all these needed changes, so far as any thought is put into it at all, is just a silent assumption of either “we lobby our politicians and they do what we tell them and nobody opposes our ideas” or “we do a violent revolution and kill all the bad guys without harming the good guys and we definitely win and accomplish our goal without someone else taking advantage of the chaos to do a fascism instead,” depending on how radical the change is.
More like we don’t want to crash our only car when we don’t have another means of transportation, and oops, now we can’t get to work.
It’s great to say “the system is broken and must be replaced.” I agree! But nobody who says that, me included, has ever had anything resembling an actual plan to replace the system or to prevent something even worse from taking over once the system is destroyed.
Everyone gave the GOP shit for screaming about how Obamacare needs to be “repealed and replaced” but never saying what it should be replaced with (though that was because the “replace” part was a lie and they just wanted to go back to the bad old days of people being trapped in a job or entirely unable to get insurance because of a preexisting condition). It’s the same thing with people saying the entire system of government needs to be replaced.
Yeah, IIRC a knight’s suit of armor and weapons alone were worth more than most people in medieval times would ever earn in their entire lifetime. Knights traveling on horseback were the modern day equivalent of a celebrity rolling around town in a Ferrari
Yeah, there are so many moments I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and yell at various people while shaking their shoulders.
For the love of God, Barack, don’t make fun of Trump at the White House correspondent’s dinner, he’ll run for president to dismantle all you’ve built up in revenge and HE WILL WIN.
Please, Ruth, I beg you to step down now while there’s still an opportunity for you to be replaced with another liberal justice. If you don’t, your legacy will be undone I’m under four years and it will herald the end of American democracy.
Please, Barack, don’t let them steal a supreme court seat like this, you have to force the issue while there’s still time or else you will watch the heritage foundation gloat about the second American revolution against the left while a corrupt court anoints the president as above the law of the land.
For the love of God, Biden, please run in 2016, I know you’re still grieving over the death of your son, but if you don’t you’ll be grieving over the death of your entire country.
For the love of God, Hillary, please step aside and let Sanders be the candidate, I know you agreed with Obama that he would give you SoS in return for you running after him but the Republican propaganda machine has made you toxic.
Barack, you can’t sweep this Russian interference under the rug, it’s too important to ignore, please!
I beg you, Hillary, don’t ignore the rust belt, your numbers are weaker than they should be there and they are too important to lose, the literal future of democracy is at stake.
For fuck’s sake, Comey, don’t reopen this stupid email investigation two weeks before the election, we both know there’s nothing on that fucking laptop. You need to shut down the trumpy faction before they leak its existence because they are trying to interfere with the election, and if Trump wins he will reward you with a pink slip while gleefully dragging the country to a dictatorship.
This timeline could’ve been so easily avoided, if only one variable out of dozens was different. But here we are, with me wondering where I can even flee to in order to escape the coming dictatorship.