volkris @volkris@social.cleverlibre.org

@dalfen OH!

You're right, I was in politics brain and had substituted Tim Scott 🙂

@danwentzel Oh they do care, quite a bit!

The thing is that an unfortunate number of Republicans are buying into their own rhetoric and believe that Republican people of color and people who live in urbanized America are already behind Trump, so it's just a waste to go through the process.

It's not that they don't care. It's that they have convinced themselves they know what the answer is already.

@0batty_bat0 I think this is a link to the bill, and the articles aren't really a capturing what the legislation would change.

In particular it requires that force or threat of force be part of the defense for responding with deadly force.

That goes beyond merely being unhoused.

https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/24rs/hb5.html

@gcblasing @spencerbeswick

@dalfen One of the most infuriating things about Trump supporters is how often I hear them celebrating what a great orator he is: "Oh ha ha, Biden can't complete a sentence, but our great Trump is such a word smith!"

It's one of those things that lead me to generally suspect that none of them at all actually listen to him at all. They all just watch his mouth move and then substitute whatever words they want to be hearing.

I've been surprised by the timing and number of endorsements Trump has been getting from people like Tim Cook, so who knows what's going on behind the scenes or what was going through Cooks's head as he was standing up there.

I wonder if he's either playing along with the what Trump says doesn't matter to these people take, or maybe he himself substituted his own words in his mind too.

@dalfen It sounds like you're overlooking that so many potential Trump voters don't ignore the charges because he kissed a flag.

Rather, they consider those to be badges of honor for him and even confirmation of the whole bus versus them attitude that he has been running on.

It's not despite the charges for those voters. It is in part because of the charges that he has gained so much support.

In the end there is no one model of trump voter. Trump was elected by many different types of voters, often with directly conflicting values and goals, free traders and isolationists just to name two of those groups.

But if you want to understand what's going on in US politics with regard to Trump, it's important to recognize how much those felony charges increased his likelihood of success.

@GeePawHill I am so sure because I know how the system works, I watch it all the time, I know about the laws and the procedures and we have seen how they successfully work over and over.

And heck, if Trump could have turned off democracy he already would have. He was president already, and he utterly utterly fell on his face trying to get that election victory, he gave it his best shot, but the system is so solid, so firmly established that it swatted him away like a gnat.

Look at the events leading up to January 6th. We know how hard Trump worked to stay in office, but all of the mechanisms the US government has in place to protect democracy just made it an exercise in futility. There's just no way to get around that.

So no, democracy is not on the ballot. It literally cannot be since we have such strong legal frameworks preventing exactly that from happening.

The law matters. The laws protecting democracy most of all. And it's because we have such legal frameworks that we can say firmly that democracy cannot be on the ballot.

We need to support those laws by recognizing them. They won't go away if we talk like they're not there, but it doesn't help.

@GeePawHill still no.

@GeePawHill nope.

I'm referring to the enormous amount of legal machinery developed over the course of so many generations all aimed at protecting the democratic processes, ensuring that voting is that the core of the US system.

Democracy is not on the table. The democratic process is going to elect a jerk one way or another, but then, that's democracy for you.

@shayz0rz I'd say respect their choices, especially if they are at that high level.

Make sure they have as much information as they need to make it good choice, but at the end of the day I'm not going to tell her what she should do.

(Assuming she's an adult, that is)

@GeePawHill what in the world? It's BECAUSE of law that democracy is protected.

It is because the law matters that we need to emphasize that the law would prevent such an option being on the table in any serious way.

We should be shouting that from the rooftops because the law, and it's protection of democracy, absolutely matter. Undermine both with this nonsense about democracy being on the ballot.

@ArtSmart like I said, complicated, but it's up to them.

They could have a conference call tonight and cancel if they felt like all of the penalties and public perception would be worth it.

And this prize is pretty big.

@GeePawHill No such question is before the voters, there is no mechanism to put such a question before the voters, it's just not going to be on the table anytime soon given the structure of the US government.

Folks who talk about ending democracy aren't being realistic about how government actually functions.

@ArtSmart going through the state by state polling results I don't think it's nearly that clear which would come out ahead. A whole lot has changed in the world since 2020.

So we'll see what Biden's campaign ends up looking like as he gets it moving. Still early days for him to really put the re-election strategy on the table.

As for the conventions, both parties are free to change the timing of their conventions, if they wanted to. It's really all up to them as more or less private organizations, though again yes it would involve a ton of complications involving state ballot access and such.

But they could.

@smach The thing I don't hear mainstream Republicans acknowledging nearly often enough is that mathematically they can't win with only Republican votes.

It's sad that not only does this go unacknowledged, but I don't think a lot of them realize it at all.

They aren't receiving good advice from their high profile figures.

@ArtSmart and my personal take on it, the interesting point is that even if nothing else changes, The party that nominates someone other than Biden or Trump wins the election.

So both parties have a tremendous incentive for changing nominees. They win!

So it's a funny situation when both are playing a silly game of chicken.

(I know, I'm being a little over simplified and dramatic, but I think it's interesting)

@okurth see I go the other way with that: All of Trump's efforts and then the events around January 6th fell so hard on their faces, exactly as they had to, because there was no way it ever would have worked.

The end of Trump's presidency shows that even when he pushed as hard as possible, it's just not going to work. It can't work. So he was completely rebuked like the swatting of a gnat.

And that was only a tiny reflection of the impossibility. It didn't even get into issues of unlawful orders being null or the procedure is in place to carry out the order of succession.

The US was designed specifically to counter that kind of thing, and generations upon generations of development as so firmly established the democratic process into the workings of the entire system, up and down multiple levels of government, that there is just no way it could be undone like that.

The inevitable failure we watched on January 6th just reflected that reality.

@entwininglife

@StephenRamirez The problem is that so many of us saw the opposite with our own eyes.

That's the state of the country, though. Two sets of people looking at the same thing and disagreeing about what it is.

@okurth it's clear because that's not how the United States works. There is no mechanism by which democracy could or would be ended.

Presidents aren't presented with that choice. It's just not possible.

And so folks familiar with the structure of the US government recognize that claims like that are really wacky, and those promoting those claims come across as folks who have been really badly misled, taken advantage of.

@entwininglife

@ArtSmart and keep in mind that it's not even rocket science here. The conventions are welcome to nominate anybody they want, so they know how, it's just a matter of whether they will be political will to do it.