What if he loses?

[kuhla]

A couple of weeks ago I heard one political commentator bring up that they were worried about what might happen if Trump loses. The commentator brought up the following points:

1. A large number of his supporters seem to believe everything he says at face value and will vote for him no matter what.
2. Trump has often called this election rigged, not just at the media coverage level (which I think most feel is not a particularly controversial statement), but at the voter fraud level (a much more controversial statement).

How will his supporters, of which there are many millions, respond to a loss? The commentator went on to talk about the full range of possibilities from just bad to scary. It may have been scare-mongering but some of it did make some sense.

[Malaphax]

As far as the election being rigged I would argue that there is evidence of that being the case.

We've seen that Hilary's campaign staff engaged in widespread deception and flat out cheating/illegal acts in order to win certain primary races. There have already been several individuals claiming that dead people have already cast ballots for Clinton (while I personally believe some of this occurs, I do not know how much of an affect this might have).

 

I think the real truth of the matter is that Clinton has a huge campaign staff/volunteers, and due to her large staff she has the capacity for cheating/rigging parts of the election. Although I would be far more concerned about hacked voting machines than a few dead people casting ballots.

Trump on the other hand does not have the staff (or the wherewithal) to cheat. He also gets to hedge a potential loss by blaming it on cheating, as long as he doesn't get completely blown out in the general he can still say he would have won if it weren't for "cheating/corruption/rigging."

 

I think it's rather telling that Trump has managed to consistently gather huge stadiums full of people who support him, while most of the Hilary rallies can barely get a few hundred to show up. I do wonder just how badly the loss will affect not just the Republican party but also the various single issue voters that make up the Republican party. That's not to even consider the possibility of a Democrat controlled House and Senate.

 

Even if a "best case" scenario happens and Clinton wins the presidency cleanly while the House and Senate remain Republican controlled we will still see a huge shift in the Supreme Court and that has the possibility of being both disastrous and long lasting.

[Jedi2155]

On the opposite end, I have a slight fear that Russia has a vested interest in having Trump win (seeing that he wants to immediately fix the RUS relationship) and would actively attempt to hack at any weak voting location they could get their hands on. On the other hand, I feel that this probably would not have a large impact particularly as the US voting system is highly disjointed with various rules and systems throughout the US would be incredibly hard to attack.

I haven't been watching the rallies much, but I do feel that the people who tend to support Trump are more fanatical (though this tends to be true on both sides) suggesting that they would be more likely to attend the large stadium, not to mention that Trump specially loves the large attention so he would find ways to make it look like the rallies have huge support. Many of the same reasoning against Obama is used in Trump's campaign where he focuses on the populist concept of the weak being ignored and and that he would help their position. Same position as Bernie except from the Right, which is why a number Bernie supporters switched to Trump rather than Clinton. Clinton focuses on a platform of things are doing okay in the USA but just needs to be improved, while Bernie/Trump platforms are that things are awry and needs to be shifted. With all this negative energy, its easy to get a fanatical fanbase who come to rallies versus one who says easy does it, and no urgency to to come fix things.

How will his supporters, of which there are many millions, respond to a loss?

 

I don't believe it would be much worse than how it was when Romney lost to Obama. Many on the right were incredulous that he would be a 2-term president and absolutely felt that America was going down the drain.

[Jedi2155]

Also on the topic of cheating and popular support: http://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2016/10/18/study-bots-accounted-for-a-third-of-all-pro-trump-twitter-activity-during-the-debate/

[kuhla]

It has been 4 years almost exactly to the day and I'm wondering this question again.

[T1no]

i wonder the same thing with the other side.

[Malaphax]

 

[kuhla]

So if an administration has control of the house and the supreme court then they can "legally" just be re-appointed as president.

[Malaphax]

It's actually worse than that, you only need control of the majority of state delegations.  So California's 53 delegates get 1 vote, but Wyoming (least populated state, only 1 representative) gets the same 1 vote, you need a majority of state delegations (which the Republicans currently have).  I'm not sure on the tie breaker rules but you would need 26 state votes to win, potentially 25 if they use the VP tiebreaker rule that the senate uses.  If you think the electoral college is crap, this is even worse.  To make matters even less fair, I believe the state delegations are the current state delegations, so the election outcome could be made by people who lost their reelection campaigns. 

The supreme court has the ability to rule on what votes "count" during an election, famously in 2000 they made a ruling that affected which votes from Florida were counted and they could likewise make blanket rulings that mail in ballots received after election day are not counted, or even all mail in ballots not be counted.  Also if you're holding out hope that Roberts tries to keep the court out of politics, remember it takes 4 justices to grant a writ of certiorari (to agree to hear the case) and 3 have been appointed by the current president.  While Chief Justice Roberts has actually held the conservative majority back in some instances recently, the one area he has consistently ruled harshly on is voting rights.  Even if Roberts felt it was wrong, he could very well be outvoted 5-4 by the rest of the conservative justices. 

Sidenote: Laws need to be updated regularly, and our country shouldn't rely entirely on norms or past precedence because it leaves open the door to shenanigans or as the video put it "perfectly legal, perfectly constitutional coup."  I firmly believe even the founding fathers would have wanted future generations to revise the constitution drastically, either via amendments or a constitutional convention.  I have a suspicion that regardless of the outcome of this upcoming election we will see some real interest in constitutional reform and systemic changes to government. 

[kuhla]

"How Police, National Guard And Military Are Preparing For Election Day Tensions"

article - https://www.npr.org/2020/10/26/926703808/how-police-national-guard-and-the-military-are-preparing-for-election-day-tensio

"Concerned about election unrest, Beverly Hills will close Rodeo Drive"

article - https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/concerned-about-election-unrest-beverly-hills-will-close-rodeo-drive/ar-BB1arZb5

 

I'm not the only one concerned. I am planning to stay inside and not go anywhere Nov 3 or Nov 4.

[kuhla]

So here we are, end of Nov 5, things seem to be indicating that he will lose and basically all the bad stuff people predicted is happening. He has stated multiple times that he thinks he won, the vote is rigged, the votes are illegal, he will not let this election be "stolen", he is going to all the courts, etc. This is all doing serious damage to this country. His most devoted followers are going to start believing only one conclusion: democracy is not working in the USA and you have to achieve your goals another way. That's a bad bad path to walk down.