I keep hearing various media personalities I like say things along the lines of “If we even have another presidential election… <nervous laughter>”
Is this just the joke of the month or are people truly thinking it’s game over? I don’t live in the US so I’m not really familiar with how that would work
The thing is we’ve crossed a real river here in terms of retribution against political opponents. The Democrats went after Trump using the law and actually arrested him and went after people around him. The thing is they missed, they weren’t serious about it and didn’t land more than a scratch but it’s angered and freaked out the Republicans who are doing a little bit of the inverse against their opponents and are convinced that if they lose power they’ll be subject to more of the same from Democrats so have an extra strong incentive to rig things and do everything to stay in power so that power can’t be used against them.
However, elections are an almost certainty, the military would likely get involved and arrest or shoot anyone trying seriously to prevent elections taking place because they’re that important as a relief valve.
But those elections are likely to be even more crooked than usual. Voter roll purges, ballot invalidation, gerrymandering, etc, etc. Taken to new levels IF NECESSARY. But it’s important to understand this too isn’t new. Bush 2000 only won because Florida rigged the vote by invalidating/questioning ballots and the Supreme Court stopped the count. So we’re 25 years beyond election rigging being normal and USians getting mildly upset but basically going back to brunch because eh what can they do.
Liberals and chuds will both be in hysterics about election interference and whoever loses will have a large chunk of their base not accept it.
Of course there will be elections. Everywhere has elections, even if they’re obviously undemocratic (which the US elections always were). There’s zero reason to change that, and elections are a very useful tool for influencing and controlling the public.
Also, who establishes a dictatorship in their 80’s? He’s gonna die soon anyway.
This is one of those things where it’s less about reality and more about what it signals. Libs are signalling how important they consider elections to be, and trying to either scare people into voting or get them to appreciate being able to vote.
Elections in the US will be gone very soon, replaced by a Mr. Beast style challenge. “SURVIVE 100 days LOCKED in the Oval Office to become PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES”. Combined with some UFC style wrestling, commentary by Joe Rogan. And then finished off with a McDonald’s mukbang.
We have elections in the US? First I’m hearing of it. Big if true.
There’s too much money to be made by too many consultancies, advertising agencies, etc. The grift is too lucrative for too many influential people for the election industry to just vanish. I’d sooner bet on more extreme voter suppression and more outright corruption in the process than the process stopping.
The veneer of a public mandate is a load bearing element of the entire USAmerican national mythology. It is central to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both of which are venerated by chuds. The capital city is named after the guy who elected to step down after his second term.
They are not getting rid of elections. There is no need to. With the record-breaking consolidation of national media, they will just be run as a shambolic spectacle. Nothing new, in other words. Democrat-aligned power brokers will be cut out of the process. For people like James Carville, it will be experienced as the end of democracy as we know it, but no change at all for the proletariat.
It is central to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both of which are venerated by chuds
I’m not quite as confident about this. They certainly venerate the aesthetics of those documents, but I think the last ten years or so have shown that their allegiance to the content is conditional at best. We see this pretty clearly in the purely vibes based “originalism” of the conservative SCOTUS ghouls: it’s important that they couch their rulings in appeals to the Constitution, but they’re totally fine to just make shit up about what the framers “intended” in order to advance their agenda. I think as long as Trump could come up with a narrative in which him running for a third term (or cancelling elections) would make the “founding fathers” proud, most chuds would swallow it happily. Hell, the amendment about only two terms being allowed was only added in the 20th century–clearly not what the founders wanted!
The only substance those documents ever had were aesthetics. The founders themselves routinely violated them (the Sedition act and the Loisiana Purchase, for instance), contrived powers out of nowhere (Marbury v. Madison), only to arbitrarily decided those powers are meaningless whenever it suits them (by refusing to enforce rulings like Worcester v. Georgia). I don’t think anything the contemporary court had done is any more contrived than claiming the Sedition Act does not infringe the right to free speech in 1798. It has always been this stupid. It has always been a game of Calvinball for burger slave owners. This is the epitome of bourgeois democracy.
These documents are nothing more than totems, but they are (small r) republican flavored totems. The rough contours of republicanism still need to be observed. Things like “the first amendment” and “the second amendment” come from this thing which says we have elections every other year. Of course, the right doesn’t give a shit about free speech or equal rights to own firearms, but this framing is so deeply embedded in their worldview that I don’t think it is ever going away. If the powers that be decide to switch to some kind of hereditary autocracy or military junta or benevolent dictator for life or something, the right genuinely would fracture and grow a thousand-fold more incoherent. A lot of the right’s rhetorical power runs on inertia. On the white-washed fanciful history of the US received by over a hundred million people when they went to grade school. A lot of the military brass (though certainly not all) are true believers as well. The Liberals aren’t the only zealots of civic religion.
The two term thing specifically, they could get rid of that and easily justify it as a product of the 20th century. Running a sham election for a third term is a much smaller stretch than declaring a new republic. Micheal Bloomberg already did it in New York City.
Nothing Ever Happens gang vs. Trump is Juuuuuuust Narcissistic Enough to Try It gang
Basically every country nowadays has elections, even ones that are pretty blatantly not genuine. There’s no real reason not to have elections, especially if you can manage to institutionally legally rig the results (like Mussolini’s parliamentary electionlaws, lol).
Not very, sham elections would be better for them than no elections. The illusion of choice is important
So no change then
Not at least until the boomers die off and millenials “retire” if that’s such a thing around 2040.
In time for the EU to be MIC 2.0 and WW3 to kick off to excuse actually doing anything for the people.
They’ll just do what they did last time: have democrats run an awkward, uncharismatic loser that only pushes back on leftists while swinging the door wide open for chuds. And of course treat 3rd party options like you’re throwing away your vote (while not ever addressing how that means their precious democracy is actually pretty worthless).
It’s not technically a sham election if the opposition cares more about the status quo than winning.
yeah more likely.
There’s way too much money in the spectacle. The only way elections ever get cancelled in this country is if an anti-capitalist third party gets popular enough to have a reasonable chance at winning.
They’ll hold elections but they’ll set up out-in-open voter roll purgers like they’ve done in several states already, dilute democratic votes with gerrymandering, and intimidate people. It’ll be a total mess.
That said, I legit think we are gonna see a total breakdown before 2028.
well the mainstream libs - the people whose entire identity is that they’re wrong about everything - seem obsessed with the possibility of trump cancelling the elections, so i’m going to say it’s not gonna happen
Does it even matter? Elections in the US have one, singular function - to make USians incorrectly think they have any say in their governance.
Oh there will be elections. Sham ones.
I think we have elections, I think trump tries to find a way to angle for a third term, but when the time comes will just be too old.
I think we will get a real cabinet of curiosities for GOP contenders.
Gruesome will probably the dem nominee and lose to Holden bloodfeast
However much I doubt consequences I think he is certain it’s his only guarantee to stay a free man, so it’s gonna be a real shitshow until he just dies and removes himself from play sometime in late 2027
There’s going to be an election, unless there’s like a military coup or something. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be fair or untampered, but elections are a very useful charade for the ruling party.
It lets the ill informed still people in a vague sense of democracy, of placid stability. It lets people think they can Vote out their problems. It’s also a giant economic driver, both for politicians and the industries that support them. If elections stop, that gravy train becomes much less certain.
Basically, there are countless reasons why some form of election will almost certainly happen. Just, an election in a vacuum isn’t necessarily meaningful to a governmental change.
There’s going to be an election, unless there’s like a military coup or something.
There also might be a military coup to ensure an election.
Sham elections are the standard playbook, and are effective. It would be a major misstep by Republicans to do stuff like ban elections and protests, since these are important pressure release valves for political dissatisfaction.
I think it’s probably a major messaging misstep by liberals to beat the drums about how “we might now have elections in 2028”, because we obviously will. You can see a bit of pivoting on that message now that Republicans are showing some of their election manipulation playbook for upcoming elections.
