14 November 20
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14 November 20
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FOCUS: Naomi Klein | Now We Have to Fight Trump's Tin-Pot Coup - and Biden's Worst Instincts
Naomi Klein, The Intercept
Klein writes: "The reason a tin-pot coup attempt remains highly unlikely has nothing to do with the laughable idea that Republican lawmakers have too much respect for core democratic principles to engage is such a brazen power grab."
EXCERPT:
Republicans keep finding new ways to tell us that they don’t believe in democracy, and we should believe them.
he chorus of Republican voices echoing manufactured claims of mass election fraud hasn’t petered out yet. So, is it:
- A grift to raise cash for Donald Trump?
- A ploy to goose aggrieved Republican turnout in Georgia’s high-stakes Senate runoffs?
- An elaborate scheme to flatter a nuclear-armed narcissist into gradually accepting the reality that he is what he most fears: a loser?
- An attempt to preemptively drain the Biden-Harris administration of perceived legitimacy, in an effort to clip its wings and then use its ineffectiveness to secure big Republican wins in the midterms?
- An actual, thought-through, coordinated plot for Republican-controlled state legislatures to use the pretext of public concerns over voter fraud — concerns methodically manufactured out of thin air through sheer force of repetition by Trump and his minions — to claim a constitutional “duty” to override their states’ certified election results and instead directly appoint Republican presidential electors? In short, is what we are witnessing the prelude to an Electoral College coup? As David Sirota first reported, a harrowing paper by Ohio State constitutional law expert Edward Foley warned about this precise scenario last year, explaining how state legislatures could attempt to claim this kind of constitutional cover in order to override certified election results.
My take? A through D are definitely happening, while the risk of E being a real threat is very slim. But slim isn’t nil and given the stakes, that’s makes it enough to deserve some attention.
To be clear, the reason a tin-pot coup attempt remains highly unlikely has nothing to do with the laughable idea that Republican lawmakers have too much respect for core democratic principles to engage is such a brazen power grab. These are people who owe their holds on state power, and in many cases their entire careers, to openly anti-democratic redistricting schemes and other wily tools of suppressing, at all costs, the terrifying prospect of majority rule. They keep finding new ways to tell us that they don’t actually believe in representative democracy, and we should believe them.
Moreover, the tactic of taking minor voting irregularities and outlandishly inflating them to the level of election-stealing, thereby justifying a very real coup d’etat, has been the go-to tactic in countless U.S.-backed “regime-change” operations around the world — schemes supported, it must be said, by Republicans and Democrats alike.
Do not tell yourself they are above bringing the tactic home. If the Republican Party refrains, and I believe it will, it won’t be out of fealty to democracy but rather out of loyalty to market and empire. If multiple state governments were to openly override the express will of their electorates, the result would be massive protest and unrest, as well it should be. In the face of this kind of uncertainty in the world’s largest economy, markets would crash and U.S. global power would further erode. That’s why Rupert Murdoch and other corporate titans are rumored to be trying to talk Trump off the cliff.
Democrats should be out there forcefully defending the integrity of the votes and condemning coup-plotting for what it is.
Still, given the kind of profitable chaos Republicans and their donors have grown accustomed to under Trump, nothing can be ruled out. And as Sirota reported, these are not abstract fears: “Most ominously of all, Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona are already insinuating that the results may be fraudulent, even though they haven’t produced any evidence of widespread fraud.”
Given this reality, Joe Biden’s “Come on, man” approach of brushing off Republican election denialism as an “embarrassment,” rather than a serious threat, is probably a poor one. The Republican strategy, if they do go down this road, relies on state legislators appealing to a perception — not a reality — that the public has lost faith in the election results. That’s a lot easier to claim if the only people screaming outside your offices and bombarding you with phone calls and emails are Trump supporters shouting conspiracy theories about voter fraud, while the people who would see a challenge to certified results as a straight-up coup have already moved on, convinced that Republicans wouldn’t dare cross yet another democratic red line so they aren’t even bothering to make the point.
To be absolutely clear: The point shouldn’t have to be made. There is zero evidence of widespread fraud, and ratifying certified results should be a formality. But if there is one core lesson to take from the Republican victory in Florida in 2000, when the Bush campaign staged astroturf riots and the Gore campaign told supporters to stay home and trust the process, it is that partisan decision-makers are swayed by street-level messaging wars. If Republican state lawmakers are inclined toward flagrantly overriding the will of the people, the ability to claim that the overwhelming majority of the people they are hearing from have lost faith in the elections may be excuse enough. Remember: they would not be looking for the truth, which they obviously already know, but rather a marginally plausible cover story. One-sided protests could provide that.
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