Or they resist him and are thrown to the wolves

Three days ago I forgot to mark the anniversary of this blog. I started it on November 17, 2007. I’ve now been at it 13 years. This is post 4481. It has been a way for me to refine my political thinking. Now I understand that to mean a great deal of what goes on in this country is in support of supremacy of one sort or another – supremacy of race, gender, religion, ability, sexuality, and many more. In the last nine months I have written about the coronavirus 123 times. That’s the fastest rise of any topic I’ve written about. It is now 22 in the most frequently discussed topics. A few months after I started using the coronavirus tag I saw that it was coming close to the tag for Rigged Elections. Then that tag rose steadily in the rankings as well. I’ve now written about it 132 times and it is 20th in the standings, though I don’t remember what the count was at the start of the year. I’m sure the most discussed topics this year are the nasty guy (5th most written about) and the GOP (top most written about at 697 times). In five years (including his campaign) I talked about the nasty guy 339 times. In nine years I discussed Barack Obama only 217 times. The second most written about issue is gay marriage – marriage equality at 689 times. About halfway through my writings I switched to the more inclusive tag. There was a press conference yesterday led by Rudy Giuliani. But the important bit was said by Sidney Powell. She spouted a conspiracy theory. Then said “The entire election, frankly, in all the swing states should be overturned and the legislatures should make sure that the electors are selected for Trump.” In reporting this Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed what several GOP leaders have been saying – let’s give the nasty guy a few days. One of them, interviewed by the Washington Post a week ago, said:

What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change. He went golfing this weekend. It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.

Mark Sumner responded:

What harm can “a little bit of time” do? That’s how long it’s taken to get from “no one seriously thinks the results will change” to Trump’s legal team openly calling for the election results to be overturned, regardless of courts, certifications, or evidence.

Jen Hayden of Kos brought up a detail of Giuliani’s performance at that press conference – he had streaks of hair dye running down his cheeks. Hayden showed a picture of Giuliani and three people behind him, then asked Twitter “What is the name of this band? Wrong answers only.” Twitter obliged. Some of the names they came up with “Rage Against the Voting Machine,” “Rudy and the Blowfish,” and “The Four Treasons.” Jeff Sharlet included a reference to Parler, the conservative alternative to Twitter when he tweeted:

On twitter right now Rudy clips are playing to laughter; on Parler, for the same clips, it's salutes and sieg heils.

Joan McCarter of Kos reviewed the status of the latest nasty guy’s legal challenges. Their lawsuits now stand at 2-31. And they lost the recount in Georgia. In another post McCarter reviewed that the nasty guy lawyers – including Giuliani – are now saying they are not trying to prove the election was stolen. McCarter wrote:

This isn't about the courts anymore. It's about riling up the deplorables and pressuring elected Republicans into participating in this coup. And it's starting to work.

In another post Sumner discussed the meeting of Michigan’s GOP legislature leaders at the White House today. This wasn’t news of how that meeting went (I haven’t heard), but what those leaders will be facing.

What Giuliani and Powell do in court doesn’t matter. It’s only their ability to stir up anger among Trump’s base and terrify Republican legislators into becoming participants. Trump doesn’t have to persuade Republican legislators in Michigan that he won. They know he didn’t. He only has to convince them that they will suffer more for not joining his coup than they will from signing over the soul of the nation. Republican legislators in several states have been doing their best to hide. They’ve given vague statements that could be read as either supporting Trump or simply supporting the process, and attempted to hunker down until the vote certifications are done. Trump is not going to allow them to hide. He’s going to make it clear in Michigan, and in Pennsylvania, and in Wisconsin, and in Arizona, and in Georgia, that any Republican who is not for overturning democracy and seating Trump electors will become the target of the Trump-supporting mob. And in Michigan, the real nature of that threat is blindingly clear. … Republicans may have thought that all they had to do was sit back, wait out Trump’s ego-storm, and carry on as if they had been good little agents of democracy all along. It’s not working out that way. Trump is going to bring them in, one group at a time, and show them a future where they help him and get to enjoy the spoils of a victorious coup, or they resist him and are thrown to the wolves. What happens today with Lee Chatfield and Mike Shirkey won’t be the end of it … but it will be critical. If they say no to Trump, his coup is in serious trouble. If they fold, the slope from there to president-for-life is going to be extremely slippery.

Chatfield and Shirkey are the GOP leaders in the Michigan legislature. As for the wolves … David Neiwert of Kos reported that according to documents filed with the Michigan Attorney General’s office, the plan to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (thankfully foiled) wasn’t the first plan considered. I think that was somewhere around Plan C. Plan A was to storm the Capitol with 200 “patriots” while it was in session and hold the legislature hostage, then televise the execution of each legislator. Plan B was to storm the Capitol, block all the exits, and burn the place to the ground. The settled on kidnapping the governor after they had doubts about the logistics of plans A and B. But those people are in custody and the threat has passed! Right? In several close states the people who are to certify the election are receiving death threats. This is being driven by the nasty guy and by conservative media. Kos of Kos thinks there is a split between Fox News and other conservative outlets. I’ll let you read his reasoning. What caught my attention is at the top of his post. It is the election map as perpetrated by “news” site OANN. It shows the nasty guy with 333 electoral votes on his way to 410 with Biden getting only 128. We know it is fiction because it even has California as solidly red while Indiana is merely dark pink. But this is what these sites are feeding their viewers. It is what these viewers believe is the truth. It is what these people, willing to commit violence, want to defend. That effect on viewers can be measured. Leah McElrath tweeted a poll from the Economist/YouGov. Those that say Biden legitimately won the election: All voters: 57%, Biden voters 98%, Trump voters 12% Those that say Biden did not legitimately win: All voters 43%, Biden voters 2%, Trump voters 88%. Though mainstream media will report an accurate election map, they still aren’t honest with their readers and viewers, according to Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii. He tweeted:

Media, the word you are avoiding is “coup.” I’m not saying they will succeed - they will not. But they are trying to overturn a free, fair election and this deserves at least as much attention as the full week you devoted to Sarah Sanders being refused service at a restaurant.

Nick Cohen of the Observer included a video of Sidney Powell’s words (mentioned above) in his tweet:

It's only the memory of what the USA once was that stops the rest of the world saying that an attempt at a coup is underway. If this were Africa or the Balkans we would have no hesitation in saying that the ruling clique was using electoral fraud to maintain its power.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed one strange effect of this effort to reverse the election. Joe Biden’s agenda – who he is picking for his cabinet, his plans once he takes office – cannot be critiqued by conservative media. There can be no counter-message. Any mentions of anything Joe Biden is doing gets attacked. Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, wrote:

However unlikely, Trump is attempting a coup. That’s the point, not that he’ll fail. You need to carry two thoughts in your head at once 1. Trump is actually trying to steal the election, however ineptly. 2. He'll fail. But that doesn't make 1. any better or less bad.

Dworkin quoted Erick Erickson’s tweet:

I feel very sorry for the people who believe the bulls--- we just heard. There are a lot of broken people who are being lied to and many of them want to believe the lie because their religion has become politics and they cannot believe their god is abandoning them.