Hoo boy, it’s a toughie. On the one hand, Trump would still be around. He also wouldn’t be in as much legal peril as he is now (it’s likely there wouldn’t have been an appetite to prosecute him over the Stormy Daniels hush money payments, and the classified documents case would have never happened to begin with since he wouldn’t have had access). But he almost definitely WOULD have tried to pull off another insurrection similar to Jan 6th–he was foreshadowing that he wouldn’t accept the results if he lost even back in 2016, using the same language as he did in 2020 before he launched his coup attempt.
The world where Trump doesn’t attempt a coup isn’t very interesting, at least for this thought experiment–he slinks off, continues shitposting about Hillary on Twitter, but likely doesn’t try to run again (or loses in the primary because he’s a sore loser). Everyone ignores his hush money payments in the interest of “statesmanship,” and at best he becomes a minor kingmaker in the party apparatus. MAGA withers on the vine, and we largely continue with the late Obama administration status quo.
The world where he attempts a coup is much more interesting. The real question is, what would have changed after the failed insurrection attempt? It’s highly unlikely it would have succeeded or even gotten anywhere as close as it did, since a lot of the original plan relied on access to the levers of power (I.e. being able to withhold security to let the rioters overrun the Capitol). But how would everyone react to it long-term? In this timeline, Republicans genuinely distanced themselves from Trump and Jan 6th at first, likely out of shock over the realization that they were actually in danger and the very real fear that they could end up hurt or killed. But as the shock wore off, Republicans started shuffling back to MAGA as the propaganda machine did its work to downplay and normalize the failed coup, and they realized that their base saw Jan 6th as a good thing.
In a theoretical timeline where Trump tries a coup in 2016, it depends on how far Trump gets before he fails. If he’s thwarted to the point where he doesn’t (or can’t) hold the rally that stormed the Capitol, then nothing really comes of it at all–it becomes a footnote in history that is only cared about by political historians, pub trivia enthusiasts, and people who like to talk about politics on the internet. If he gets to the point where he holds a rally, but the rally is prevented from interfering with the certification process (complete with provocative images of cops in riot gear swinging at MAGA rioters), it’s likely that this downplaying and normalization would have been ironically amplified by virtue of the coup attempt being less successful. Without the visceral fear of hiding from rioters, Republicans would have no reason to distance themselves from the attempt, and they would almost immediately start using it as fodder to attack the new Clinton administration. In short, the hypothetical coup attempt would become another Benghazi scandal for Clinton–something that she had little real involvement in and largely wasn’t her fault, but that she gets blamed for anyway. Trump, meanwhile, would remain largely in the same position as in 2015–the dominant force in the party.
Aside from that, the court wouldn’t be as openly corrupt as it is now. It’d be filled by a moderate Clinton appointee if democrats have the 51 votes to abolish the filibuster for supreme court appointees (or held open by McConnell otherwise), and when RBG dies her replacement is decided by whoever wins the 2020 election. Roe v. Wade would still exist, the chevron deference would still be the law of the land, and we wouldn’t have the terrifying prospect of legally sanctioned presidential death squads.
Overall, I think we would be largely in line with the status quo of 2014-2015. Not great, with a worrying trend towards fascism and an establishment largely too busy huffing their own farts to address the vast majority of problems facing us, but a LOT better than where we are right now.
Would the hush money have ever been a thing (I don’t know the timeline of when it happened, but if after the 2016 election then it likely never would’ve happened.) I doubt there would’ve been a coup attempt in 2016, while people were interested, he was still very much an unknown to most. He didn’t have the fanatical following he’s known for now. While boring, I expect when would’ve faded into the background.
The hush money payments were before the election so they were still felonies. It’s possible Trump wouldn’t have bothered hiding them like he did if he lost, but in any case there wouldn’t have been the appetite to prosecute him.
As for the coup, he absolutely would have tried it, definitely through filing lawsuits, and probably up to the same fake electors scheme and the riot, but it’s debatable how far he would’ve gotten. Definitely not as far as he did in reality, though.
That’s fair, if anything I’ve been far too optimistic in this timeline. Pessimism would’ve served me better throughout the past decade at least.
Yes. The level of corruption would be insane and her fans would use any excuse under the sun to allow said corruption.
Never thought I would see a right winger so out in the open here. You must be lost, your delusional echo chamber isn’t here.
I don’t deal in echo chambers. And I’m centered-right, not delusional.
No that makes you delusional.
So criticizing any politician, regardless of left or right… that makes me delusional? Okay.
No, the sheer lack of understanding and critical thinking to grasp why your comment is wrong is what makes you delusional. Criticizing both sides is what people are supposed to do.
Wat. My sheer lack of understanding and critical thinking… Hillary is fkin corrupt. Just about every person that opposed Hillary and put her on blast ended up unalived, but your excuse will be, “it’s a coincidence”. Not to mention, Hillary’s a racist ass bitch. She put ethnic minorities under the umbrella term, “Super predators”. The Dems did some massive damage to ethnic minorities, destroyed innocent lives and families. At the aftermath of the crime bill, that should have been the moment they should have turned their backs on the Dems.
But I concede… I lack understanding and critical thinking haha.
found the Libertarian/ Russian stooge.
Damn you’re pretty good… long ago I would self proclaim to be libertarian… but the libertarian party is full on fkin derpy, stopped caring about the Libertarian party a couple years after Ron Paul was on the debate stage owning the status quo. And not so much a Russian stooge… I just don’t have beef with Russia or Russians. Cold war is over.
No way in hell would Clinton have been even remotely as corrupt as Trump. You’re just projecting the fact that you are using any excuse to excuse his corruption.
Anyway, she would be in the same shoes as Biden. Health degeneration.
Shed be finishing up her second term and there is no evidence that she is in some poor health. It seems you keep mistaking Trump’s shortcomings for Clinton’s.
No evidence, huh? lol… Yeah 7 years ago, didn’t happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5wWZIFZraw
This is fake propaganda. No wait, she just had a cold.
Are you suggesting that she won’t make it till Jan? Because that just ridiculous if you have to point to something that happened seven years ago to prove it.
Nope she wouldn’t. Or at the very best… barely.
Wait you think her poorly acting like she’s surprised is ill health? Holy shit you’re stretching.
I read a lot more about US politics in 2016 than I do now (sorry, now that Trump has been president once, I know what it’s like when that happens and don’t worry that much about it anymore). I can tell you that back then it already seemed very divided from my (non-US) point of view.
now that Trump has been president once, I know what it’s like when that happens and don’t worry that much about it anymore).
That sounds disturbingly like you aren’t all that concerned about what a second Trump presidency would be like. It sounds like you think the first one wasn’t as bad as people thought it would be and the second one will similarly be better than people think. Am I misreading your words?
This isn’t too far off. In 2016 many people I read thought a Trump presidency would literally be the end of US democracy, possibly the end of the world because he would start a nuclear war. Those are not things that ended up happening, so I do not predict that they will happen if Trump wins this year either.
In 2016 many people I read thought a Trump presidency would literally be the end of US democracy
And it almost was. Remember, he lost an election and tried to send fake electors in to declare him president. When that didn’t work, he worked up his cultists into attacking the capitol in order to threaten pence into not certifying the election. It was so dangerously close to a constitutional crisis that Republicans and Democrats banded together to say that the VP does not have this power.
Also trump nominated three members of scotus, and it was that majority that just opened the door for the president to commit all kinds of crime with immunity.
The pain of his last presence is still playing out, and it doesn’t look good.
I’m more concerned that if he wins again, he’ll complete gut the government and even if he does step aside when his term is up, the damage will be done and we will have no ability to tackle some of the biggest issues facing us: namely climate change.
I see. So what has happened over the last 8 years as a direct result of his election isn’t concerning to you?
There could have been better worlds, probably would have been if Clinton had won in 2016, but it isn’t anywhere near as catastrophic as some people predicted.
There could have been better worlds
So… because Trump didn’t get unhinged to the point where he started a nuclear war, you aren’t worried.
-
How did you feel about refusing to concede in the 2020 election and creating uncertainty and doubt about the electoral process among a not insignificant minority of voters?
-
How about inciting an angry mob to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power on January 6th?
-
How about strong-arming the Republican party and installing his family to run it?
-
How do you feel about how his SCOTUS has changed the fundamentals of the US government?
-
The Chevron deference?
-
Bribery?
-
Presidential “immunity” for official acts?
-
How do you feel about the loss of the right to have an abortion?
Do you think Trump, with the powers newly granted to the office he’s again running for, will act in his second term? Where is your line?
About half of those (esp. those that involve the Supreme Court) would have happened under any generic Republican president too. They are not specific to Trump.
The first two, I agree with you, really are horrible; but they are also proofs that the American democratic system works because Trump didn’t end up succeeding with them.
[How] do you think Trump, with the powers newly granted to the office he’s again running for, will act in his second term?
-
They’re probably not worried because they don’t live in the US.
If they don’t win now, they will come back for a rematch.
Yes and no.
Without Trump fucking shit up on a government level (the Supreme Court in particular), there would probably be less scary shit happening on that end. Would have slowed things down.
But the radicalisation of the Americans began before 2016. Trump is a symptom, not a cause. The disease started spreading as early as 2008. The recession, the damp squib that was the Occupy Wall Street event was the inception of many political movements, both far left AND far right.
That’s the thing people don’t realise. Even if Donald J. Trump didn’t exist, the underlying social tensions mean that inevitably someone would show up to galvanise far right sentiments, and the political estabilishment would have boosted them, whoever they were, because when the common folk are getting angry about their lot, then to the people actually in charge, a fascist dictatorship is preferrable to the alternative.
No, it started with Nixon, and his Southern Strategy. Reagan and the Silent Majority–which was fundamentally about racism and the desire to segregate schools, even though abortion was their cause célèbre–made it worse. And Newt Gingritch and the “Contract With America” really threw gasoline on the fire.
I mean if you wanna dive that deep, it started when some religious extremists got kicked out of England for being too extremist (for the british empire!) and moved to the new world, killing the people who previously lived there.
… But up until 2008 shit more or less held together? Not pretending 'murica was ever good, but it was the 2008 recession that caused its structure, however fucky it had been from first principles, to really break down.
The modern far-right really got it’s first big taste of legitimacy with the Tea Party. Which, yes, would be 2009-ish, and a blood-relative to the election of Obama. (E.g., without Obama as president, the racist fears of the Tea Party would have fizzled out in the harsh light of reality.) But I look at all of this on a continuum; the only two conservatives I see in recent memory that have made an apparently sincere attempt to stop the crazy train have been John McCain (…although he took Palin as a running mate…) and Mitt Romney, and they both got crushed by Dems. Well, maybe Liz Cheney too. Maybe. But she was okay with everything except Trump, so I dunno. Anyway, point is - Nixon, Reagan, and Gingritch were all laying the foundations and drawing up the architectural plans that Trump has used, and is using now, to build his version of a fascist state.
The modern far-right really got it’s first big taste of legitimacy with the Tea Party
Thanks a bunch Koch brother (still quite happy at least one of them is dead.)
That is entirely an astroturfed “caucus” along with the freedumb caucus… Bought and paid for by the ownership class. Ever wonder why those assholes never go away no matter how horrible they are? They’re the Koch’s henchmen…
I think that electing someone as deranged as Trump — who basically would try anything and everything that a sane person wouldn’t risk out of self-preservation, we basically saw a speedrun of finding out all the weaknesses and exploits of our government, combined with proving that impeachment and removal is basically impossible as long as one party is in collusion with the president.
We might have gotten here anyway, but it might have been a decade or two rather than four short years.
And the Supreme Court wouldn’t look like it does and be doing what’s it’s doing, which is also now a speedrun of horror.
I’ll never forgive Americans for 2016.
Yeah. Pushing for nearly immunity of the president might turn out to be very costly when someone actually reckless comes to presidency. And I presume Trump will be a version of that someone, as he is getting old and there won’t be another term for him. Nothing to lose, all to gain. He will make th US a shit show.
some republican would have won in 2020, for sure; trump or somebody worse
Yes. The MAGA group probably wouldn’t be as large, but they would still be there and very angry.
I’d say it’d depend on the specifics of the result.
Taking the wind out of MAGA’s sails would take a blowout victory and Hillary wasn’t gonna get that without doing some serious full court pressing for the entire general campaign, like well beyond even the “she should have campaigned more in the rust belt!” ideas people have about where she fell short.
Probably. Division is what we are being fed, every day, on every topic with everything.
We would just be in a different shit show, attacking different groups.
Nope. The racist bastards would still be hiding under their rocks and you wouldn’t have an army wearing red dunce caps drooling while driving their ram pickups with flags in the back.
A bit less divided.
trump is just a symptom of underlying problem in society that manifests itself all over the world.
populist politicians trying to appeal to nostalgy for “good old times”, ability to weaponize social media and craft customized lies to every minor group, russian bot networks spewing out propaganda… it is something that creates problems everywhere and it will not get better.
recent eu parliament elections are shining example.
Can’t say for sure, but Hillary is an old-school politician who tries to create consensus. Trump is a fire breather who thrives on controversy.
Yes. Just because trump lost doesn’t mean conservative propaganda hasn’t been spewing hate and lies for decades. Even before obama, I knew people that hated Democrats but could never tell me why. Their propaganda has labeled Democrats enemies for quite a long time now. They started this shit back in the 50s-70s. Republicans have been brainwashed and somehow they’re proud of that fact.
From my limited view, I think not much would be different… The US was already down this path. I think we have to look back further to the Bush/Gore election. That election initially sowed distrust in the election process with hanging chads and SCOTUS involvement in politics. This laid a blueprint for the success Trump and the Republicans have had.
