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Long before Trump won the 2016 election, there were suspicions that Russia was trying to interfere in the election with the aim of giving him a leg up in some form or other, either with or without his knowledge.
Now the evidence is piling up indicating that (1) Russia damn well did interfere with the election process with the goal of encouraging a specific outcome, and (2) at least some of the Trump campaign – if not Trump himself – was at best aware of this (and didn’t report it to the authorities) and at worst actively complicit. Allegedly. By the time Robert Mueller is done, we may have an even better idea of this.
You have to sort of admire the lateral thinking it took to come up with such a plan – why rig elections the old fashioned way (bribes, stuffing ballot boxes, hacking voting machines) when you can take advantage of the trend of Americans becoming increasingly isolated in hyperpartisan batshit echo chambers that serve as alternate reality bubbles, write some software to exploit that, turn the volume up to 11, sit back and watch the fun? They probably got the idea from watching old Twilight Zone reruns.
Anyway, it’s still a story in progress (the wishful thinking of the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee notwithstanding), but between this and the fact that Trump lost the pop vote, we’re looking at the real possibility that the 2016 election will be the first to produce a demonstrably illegitimate result.
Maybe. A major caveat here is that while there’s little doubt by now that Russia really did meddle with the election process, it’s not yet clear whether that meddling decisively altered the outcome. For example, there’s decent evidence that the James Comey letter alone cost Hillary the election – in which case we could deduce that the Russian meddling wouldn’t have succeeded in changing the result on its own. That said, the reverse could also be true – if Russia hadn’t interfered, the race might not have been close enough for Comey’s letter to make a difference.
But let’s say we will eventually be able to prove that Russia rigged the election and Trump’s victory is the result of cheating and therefore illegitimate.
That raises a pretty obvious question: NOW what?
The obvious answer for liberals is, of course, “Make Hillary president!” Or at least chuck Trump and hold a new election. The problem is there is no Constitutional mechanism for such a situation. Snopes has a good article here explaining the problem – basically, we have procedures for getting rid of crooked and incapacitated presidents, but not for rigged elections, regardless of whether the rigging is done by one of the competing parties or by outside agents.
There’s probably nothing we can do about this election, but there may be something we can do about future elections – and we should, because there’s no reason to assume that Russia (or indeed anyone else) won't try this again. Pretty much every intelligence agency we have (and those of our allies) agrees that they’ve already started on the 2018 mid-terms.
According to Snopes, Congress has the capacity to enact legislation establishing procedures for such an event. The problem, of course, is that the current GOP-led Congress is so dysfunctional that it’s very unlikely to hammer out anything useful. And even if the Demos take back Congress by a supermajority this year, Trump will veto any such legislation out of sheer paranoia and spite.
There’s the additional problem of how you would go about actually implementing such a mechanism. Let’s say we already had it in place, and that we had enough evidence to prove that Hillary would have won, which means we need to hold a new election. How exactly do you convince Trump’s MAGA fans – and indeed most of the GOP – to accept that, especially when they’ll simply write off the “evidence” as fake news or a Deep State plot to steal the presidency?
Or, to be fair, let’s reverse the scenario and suppose Hillary won under similar circumstances – would the Demos willingly accept a do-over without a fight, especially given the current meme that the GOP is a bunch of cheating evil bastards who lie about everything under the sun? I have my doubts.
This is the biggest problem with a do-over mechanism – both sides have to agree to it, which means one side has to give up power they just spent a lot of time, effort and (most importantly) money to attain. And let's admit, in these times where the opposition is essentially Satan, it’s always possible the losing side will try to invoke a do-over because they simply can’t accept the fact that they lost. (Which is why any do-over procedure should have a very high burden of proof to be enacted – and it will probably be high enough to ensure that it never is enacted.)
Arguably the relatively easier solution is to prevent (or minimize) election fraud and interference from happening in the first place. We already have laws and procedures for that, although clearly the Russians figured out how to game that system by manipulating social media. So at least we need ways to block such efforts, and that will include convincing Facebook, Twitter et al to ditch the “Internet is freedom” ideology and get serious about policing their content and user base. It won't be easy or perfect. But it’s more plausible than trying to redo an election.
As for the notion that Trump isn’t the legit POTUS – well, maybe, but we’re stuck with him until 2020, and nothing short of impeachment, resignation or death is going to change that. And then we get President Pence, who as far as I can see will only be an improvement in that we won’t have to put up with raging Twitter tantrums every other day.
Yes, that sucks. No, there’s nothing you can do about that. Your best option: go out this November and flip Congress back to the Demos so Trump at least doesn’t have a GOP-controlled Congress to do his bidding. It’s also your best chance to start impeachment proceedings, for all the good it would do.
BONUS TRACK: Speaking of impeachment, Ezra Klein has a good piece here making the case that we need to stop being afraid of using impeachment as a way to ditch a clearly bad POTUS – but the fact that it’s not feasible because of the sociopolitical consequences shows just how far American democracy has fallen from what the Founding Fathers intended.
Stuck in the middle with you,
This is dF
Now the evidence is piling up indicating that (1) Russia damn well did interfere with the election process with the goal of encouraging a specific outcome, and (2) at least some of the Trump campaign – if not Trump himself – was at best aware of this (and didn’t report it to the authorities) and at worst actively complicit. Allegedly. By the time Robert Mueller is done, we may have an even better idea of this.
You have to sort of admire the lateral thinking it took to come up with such a plan – why rig elections the old fashioned way (bribes, stuffing ballot boxes, hacking voting machines) when you can take advantage of the trend of Americans becoming increasingly isolated in hyperpartisan batshit echo chambers that serve as alternate reality bubbles, write some software to exploit that, turn the volume up to 11, sit back and watch the fun? They probably got the idea from watching old Twilight Zone reruns.
Anyway, it’s still a story in progress (the wishful thinking of the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee notwithstanding), but between this and the fact that Trump lost the pop vote, we’re looking at the real possibility that the 2016 election will be the first to produce a demonstrably illegitimate result.
Maybe. A major caveat here is that while there’s little doubt by now that Russia really did meddle with the election process, it’s not yet clear whether that meddling decisively altered the outcome. For example, there’s decent evidence that the James Comey letter alone cost Hillary the election – in which case we could deduce that the Russian meddling wouldn’t have succeeded in changing the result on its own. That said, the reverse could also be true – if Russia hadn’t interfered, the race might not have been close enough for Comey’s letter to make a difference.
But let’s say we will eventually be able to prove that Russia rigged the election and Trump’s victory is the result of cheating and therefore illegitimate.
That raises a pretty obvious question: NOW what?
The obvious answer for liberals is, of course, “Make Hillary president!” Or at least chuck Trump and hold a new election. The problem is there is no Constitutional mechanism for such a situation. Snopes has a good article here explaining the problem – basically, we have procedures for getting rid of crooked and incapacitated presidents, but not for rigged elections, regardless of whether the rigging is done by one of the competing parties or by outside agents.
There’s probably nothing we can do about this election, but there may be something we can do about future elections – and we should, because there’s no reason to assume that Russia (or indeed anyone else) won't try this again. Pretty much every intelligence agency we have (and those of our allies) agrees that they’ve already started on the 2018 mid-terms.
According to Snopes, Congress has the capacity to enact legislation establishing procedures for such an event. The problem, of course, is that the current GOP-led Congress is so dysfunctional that it’s very unlikely to hammer out anything useful. And even if the Demos take back Congress by a supermajority this year, Trump will veto any such legislation out of sheer paranoia and spite.
There’s the additional problem of how you would go about actually implementing such a mechanism. Let’s say we already had it in place, and that we had enough evidence to prove that Hillary would have won, which means we need to hold a new election. How exactly do you convince Trump’s MAGA fans – and indeed most of the GOP – to accept that, especially when they’ll simply write off the “evidence” as fake news or a Deep State plot to steal the presidency?
Or, to be fair, let’s reverse the scenario and suppose Hillary won under similar circumstances – would the Demos willingly accept a do-over without a fight, especially given the current meme that the GOP is a bunch of cheating evil bastards who lie about everything under the sun? I have my doubts.
This is the biggest problem with a do-over mechanism – both sides have to agree to it, which means one side has to give up power they just spent a lot of time, effort and (most importantly) money to attain. And let's admit, in these times where the opposition is essentially Satan, it’s always possible the losing side will try to invoke a do-over because they simply can’t accept the fact that they lost. (Which is why any do-over procedure should have a very high burden of proof to be enacted – and it will probably be high enough to ensure that it never is enacted.)
Arguably the relatively easier solution is to prevent (or minimize) election fraud and interference from happening in the first place. We already have laws and procedures for that, although clearly the Russians figured out how to game that system by manipulating social media. So at least we need ways to block such efforts, and that will include convincing Facebook, Twitter et al to ditch the “Internet is freedom” ideology and get serious about policing their content and user base. It won't be easy or perfect. But it’s more plausible than trying to redo an election.
As for the notion that Trump isn’t the legit POTUS – well, maybe, but we’re stuck with him until 2020, and nothing short of impeachment, resignation or death is going to change that. And then we get President Pence, who as far as I can see will only be an improvement in that we won’t have to put up with raging Twitter tantrums every other day.
Yes, that sucks. No, there’s nothing you can do about that. Your best option: go out this November and flip Congress back to the Demos so Trump at least doesn’t have a GOP-controlled Congress to do his bidding. It’s also your best chance to start impeachment proceedings, for all the good it would do.
BONUS TRACK: Speaking of impeachment, Ezra Klein has a good piece here making the case that we need to stop being afraid of using impeachment as a way to ditch a clearly bad POTUS – but the fact that it’s not feasible because of the sociopolitical consequences shows just how far American democracy has fallen from what the Founding Fathers intended.
Stuck in the middle with you,
This is dF
