America's Second Civil War

Flipping House delegations is probably a better strategy. There are only 26 Republican delegations. There's a rub: There's a tie in PA, and a retiring L in MI who'll likely be replaced by an R making another tie. A D pickup in FL is probably easiest, and that prevents any majority. MI and PA will need D pickups to enable a Biden win, and then... I'm not sure. Maybe two D pickups in WI? It's a hard road to 26 D delegations.

Hmm ... I was going off of the Wikipedia article for Contingent Elections, so I'll have to see if there's a better source.

Well, I think that this is going to make it all but inevitable now.

One scenario: If the House really will be deadlocked, we'll be able to see it coming well before the Electoral College votes in December. As long as there is at least one state that (a) does not have a disputed slate, and (b) does not legally bind its electors, any one faithless elector could set up a compromise third candidate to be considered by the House.

It looks like the House itself makes up the rules for what constitutes the State casting it's ballot in a contingent election.

Right now under the rules from 1825 the first ballot needs to be unanimous or the ballot is cast as 'divided' and not for either party.

Quite frankly, the Dems have enough votes to simply change the procedure so that each state has to vote unanimously, period. Thus kicking the can down the road.

So then it depends on who holds the senate. That could easily be the Dems by this point - at this point, it is likely to be.

So we get acting President Kamela Harris.

Nope. The first ballot needs to have a majority (as opposed to a plurality) in order to not be marked divided.

The Dems' 58% chance of control (as per 538) is contingent on Harris winning. And Pence still presides over the Senate until 1/20. So the Dems need 51+ seats. Which is less than half the chance of the Dems getting 49 or 50 seats.

Maybe. Far from a lock if the House successfully kicks the can.

Republicans have won the popular vote in 1 out of the past 7 U.S. presidential elections, and Republican appointees are poised to hold 6 out of the 9 seats on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Cool cool cool cool cool.

Our system worked fine for 200+ years until one hoser figured out that if he just gave the finger to everyone, he could get away with anything.

Well, you are in the thread 'America's Second Civil War.'

Nah, where we are in an oligarchy where only the top 10% of earners have impact on legislation, corporations write their own laws to hand to Congressmen, and we don't have something as basic as some form of universal health care in a pandemic, all of that isn't fine. Hell, that's just a start. There's a laundry list of 'pretty fucking far from fine, man.'

The preamble to the Constitution says "In order to form a more perfect union..." Even Nixon ultimately respected the rule of law. If you want to say there's never been anything perfect about the U.S. I'll totally agree. But I would argue that we were gradually getting better until enough of us realized that things were about to seriously get better for the "wrong" people and (collectively) shit ourselves and elected Fearless Leader who is happily trying to derail every bit of progress made since Lincoln was elected.

Evangelicals and Republicans have decimated our democracy. They have done more damage than the oligarchy.

This seems relevant to the discussion.

On further reading, it looks like either party needs 51 seats -- the vice president has to be chosen by "a majority of the whole number" of senators, and Pence isn't a senator, making this probably the one time when his tie-breaking power doesn't apply.

Which, in the event of a 50/50 split, seems to put us back at Acting President Pelosi if the House is also deadlocked.

On the House front, as long as the one criterion laid out by the 12th Amendment is satisfied -- that each delegation have one vote -- Pelosi can change the rules if she wants to, and frankly if it gets to that point, all bets are probably off anyway.

Here are a couple of semi-plausible scenarios for a House compromise in the event of deadlock ...

1) Senate is 51-49 Republican and elects Pence as vice president. Back in December, a faithless elector cast a vote for Mitt Romney for president, making him the third person who the House is allowed to consider. Republicans have Pence as acting president, so they have no need to compromise; they certainly won't vote for Biden. But Democrats would prefer Romney to Pence, so the Democratic delegations could switch en masse, and they'd only need one Republican delegation -- say, Utah -- to join them. Hello, President Romney.

2) Senate is 51-49 Democratic and elects Harris as vice president. Democrats have Harris as acting president, so they have no need to compromise. Republicans, however, would prefer Biden to Harris (more conciliatory, less likely to run for re-election in 2024), so a couple of their delegations fold.

The former are the, generally unaware except at the elite level, shock troops of the latter. Neither would have been remotely as damaging without making common cause with the other

Having failed both their first coup attempt and impeachment, the Dems plan C appears to be another try at a coup. If they can stall via court challenges the vote count for POTUS this November as long as possible, past January, the supposed coup would get two bites - upon failing to change a Trump win to a Biden win (bite one), they are then in position to challenge the legitimacy of Trump's second term and basically repeat the basic script from the first term.

Cheat-by-mail raises many more opportunities for stalling which in part may help explain why so many Dems now favor it (if they didn't already as a perceived boost to Dem voter turnout). Trump hasn't helped with his comments that have called into question the possibility of illegitimate results.

The most likely way to avoid this coup two is a solid victory for Trump, which continues to seem inevitable imo. [Every store burned down and "peaceful" protest that results in injury probably means another several thousand votes for DJT. Just this w/e Mike Moore transformed into one of Trump's greatest allies with his rhetoric re Ginsburg's seat. And there are other reasons for my rosy outlook about USA's future but I'll spare you.]

Oh just shut the fuck up
Your 'cheat-by-mail' comment discredits anything you have to say.

I was reading the start of that and the stupid was familiar. Then I looked at the poster and *bing* it was tuttle. Only a warped mind such as his could think going from trump to pence based on the prosecution of criminal activity on trump's part was a coup. Only slime could twist itself like that.

“Your cheatin' heart
Will tell on you”.

What, exactly, is the basis for all this controversy over voting by mail?

Has it been a source of corrupted elections elsewhere and none of us noticed?

Maybe others did and I missed it?

Trump was bloviating and then installed DeJoy as Postmaster General, who promptly 'restructured' the USPS in what could be described as sabotage to hamper vote by mail.

The basis is that many Republicans, including Donald Trump, believe that if voting is made too easy, the Republicans will no longer be able to maintain their current minority rule.

So even though there is no basis whatsoever for the things he has been saying about voting about mail leading to widespread fraud, he has to say it over and over and over again so that when he contests the election, his bootlickers will believer there is a basis for it and back him up. IOW, he is trying to prepare widespread public support for a coup d'état, when he refuses to accept the results of the election and goes ahead with preparing his second inauguration. He is even willing to use violence to achieve that end. A number of his toadies have said so explicitly, and he has said so himself almost in so many words.

Projection is basically the conservative superpower.

^Sure.

Like the "Trump colluded w Russia" hoax, we've now all learned, turned out to be the exact opposite. In fact, none of Team Trump did anything, while Dems, Brennan, H.Clinton, Strzok, Comey, (and what turned out to be doddering) Mueller and his pack of partisans, along with many others, worked with Russia to impact the election and attempted to unseat a duly elected POTUS (or possibly they were just unwitting pawns of Russia?, just incompetents and idiots, and not quite venal criminals).

And by "we all learned" I exclude those who rely on Dem news sources like CNN etc., trapped as they are in an information silo that has ignored the whole story.

How the fuck do you function on a day-to-day basis with so little brain cells?

Seriously, you should submit yourself to medical science for study. You're a goddamn miracle.

^ : P

I take it you've been exposed to none of the information released this past week about the Russia collusion hoax scandal? Thank you for indirectly proving my point.

Silly, I know, to address a topic on the merits, forgot where I was. But you couldn't even garner a "bite me" from me today, I'm a happy camper.

[OTOH: I hear they still haven't invented "news" up in Canada yet so at least you have an excuse for ignorance.]

You can't address a topic on the merits when there are no fucking merits.

Seriously... how do you function on a daily basis?

Also, I didn't realize @Order2Chaos was a Trump supporter. When did that happen?

I think he's talking about how one of the people involved in the Steele Dossier (a sub-source...whatever that means) might have been a Russian spy. The FBI never even heard of the Steele Dossier when the collusion investigation started, so I'm not sure what that has to do with anything though.