If I Could Serve Id Have Been A Contender wrote:

---

Well, I admit I was partly wrong.
The courts have generally been throwing out the cases of Trump and his surrogates in short order; they are ~1-57 in post-election litigation to date (their one victory was in getting the distance that observers could watch the count in one county reduced from 12 to 9 feet). All the substantive claims have been denied, the #Kraken "biblical" lawsuit has fizzled and more or less been laughed out of multiple courts.

In the last few days the state of Texas attempted to sue four close states that went for Biden for not following their election laws because they said that mail in ballots were not legal under those states Constitutions as the Governor's passed them, rather than, as Texas claimed, the State legislatures passing them as required.
17 additional states tagged on to this suit and aligned themselves as having a common purpose with it. Then 106 Republican sitting members of the House of Representatives also joined, and even more today - fully 60% of the Republican Members of the Lower House and 18 Republican Attorneys General ended up supporting this claim to have one state hold jurisdiction over another states rights to determine it's election.
They argued that this was because the result of the election, which they charged was technically illegal in those states - added up to their citizens choice for President ultimately losing and so they were disenfranchised as a result.

It was a very long shot indeed. And tonight the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) passed down their judgment. They dismissed it entirely as invalid. 1-58.

This should be a good thing, SCOTUS is the final stop, there are no higher Courts to which to appeal.

But, Trump has actually won. His 40 day refusal to concede and insistence that he in fact won a landslide and that Democrats cheated has worked.
~46% of the population now believe that the 2020 election was not fair and that Democrats cheated on a massive scale.
President-Elect Biden is utterly delegitimised to almost half of the nation, and they are in no mood to ever recognise him.

The calls tonight from Trump supporters are that this is in now over. They are demanding, in massive numbers, for any one of three things:
1: Immediate Martial Law
2: Civil War
3: Secession of all Republican States and the formation of a new country

On that last point especially, things have taken a serious turn tonight with the official Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas calling for secession, and that call was immediately boosted by rebroadcast on the Texas Republican Party account

All of which is to say that things here are really bad.

I currently live in a small rural town in Montana - deepest red Trump country, where he won over 80% of the vote. We don't fly a flag outside our home, by personal choice. My partner or their family has lived here for 40 years and never flown a flag all that time. Now, that makes you suspect, unpatriotic, treasonous. Our house is getting vandalised 3-4 times a week - all since the election, never before.

I struggle to understand why the worlds media aren't covering this. The country is going to explode.

---

Firstly, do you know Montana Doug, another member of this board?! Small world, a British tennis forum with two Montana members ?!  

secondly, it all sounds very dramatic. Do they, the 46 percent , not ever stop to think how the democrats could have actually organised such mass scale fraud, cos for it to have happened, it cant have been lots of tiny coincidences. And if it was organised, surely someone would have known about it , the FBI and the like. the thing about conspiracies is that , by nature, they require people to conspire- and that means talking, and planning. And that always gets out, always. Its why any time I here of a conspiracy theory, I always disbelieve it, humans on a mass scale cant by their nature conspire without someone breaking rank. 

and if the democrats did conspire , surely the republicans wouldnt have stood happily by and let them do it. They arent fools. Or....

Except there simply won't be close to any martial law, civil war or secession as Trump relatively fades away at least for a while, more of the not totally delusional begin to rediscover some common sense ( particularly some senior GOP people reaquanting  themselves with relevant political antenae ) and more normal life resumes.

Huge stakes and issues of course, and not uninteresting to the outsider, but frankly I can't help viewing the post election fall-out as a great big pantomime ( who knew our bretheren across the water were so into such traditional entertainment at this time of year ) that will run its course in the new year.

Things go from bad to worse.
140 Republican Congresspeople and additionally perhaps at least 2 dozen Republican Senators now have declared that they will reject certification of the 2020 Election results at the official count on January 6th.

The latest statement from a group of notable Senators, who mostly covet a future Presidential run, calls for a 10 day 'Truth Commission' audit of the election results. 

The ploy is to say, "well, a lot of folks doubt this election, we must investigate", without ever mentioning that the reason for that distrust is that you have assiduously sowed and cultivated that distrust from the moment it was clear your preferred candidate lost.
Then to expand it to, "well, we must make election integrity absolute and make it even harder to vote in order to protect the sanctity of the elections, to restore confidence in our sacred elections.", whilst never mentioning that you've been trying for 30 years to implement voter suppression measures and they have repeatedly been found unconstitutional.
Oh, and by happy coincidence stricter voter measures would just happen to favour us, though that of course is not at all why we are doing it! (crudely, older people have more time and latitude to get to polling stations on a single given day, and they tend heavily to vote Republican), 

Trump and his allies are 1-60 in post-Election litigation, including 2 failures at the Supreme Court. This constant rejection has led some elected Republican members of the House to say that the courts have effectively left them no remaining option but violence. 

Trumps allies are planning a mass rally in the Capital on the day the vote is due to be certified. They are hoping for a 'Million MAGA' march. They probably won't get anywhere near that. Their last attempt in December got maybe 20K supporters. But, this march is being stoked directly by Trump on his Twitter feed, so probably will swell number to close to conservatively 100K.
They are openly discussing how they can get guns onto the march, despite DC having very strict anti-open-carry laws. There is unabashed and well supported talk of storming all the government buildings and carrying out executions of traitors (anyone that does not agree completely with Trump).

No matter what happens on the 6th, Trump has made very clear he has no plans to ever concede. "Why should I ever let this go?... How would that benefit me?", and to continue to delegitimise all forms of power that are not vested in him (qv last link, above)

I refer back to my comment in the thread of November 7th:

I will believe that Biden has actually won if and only when:
a) all of the legal challenges have been exhausted and Trump has no legal avenue remaining but the Supreme Court
b) the Supreme Court (SC) actually rules to affirm all and every ruling of the lower and appeals courts in every jurisdiction
c) Trump voluntarily concedes and acknowledges the result

The country is all but irreconcilable now. I fear for the next 30 days and beyond.

In other news, we were physically assaulted last week taking my mother-in-law to get a flu shot.

But the assaulters had a good and justifiable reason to attack us.
You see, we chose to wear masks whilst going out in public. Here, as in many parts of rural America, that makes you suspect, an outsider, unpatriotic, a traitor.

The group, of about a dozen assorted men and one woman, at least 4 of whom I have done work for in years past (2 of whom were on a pro bono basis) blocked our entry and attempted to rip the masks from our faces.
My mother-in-law is in a mobility scooter, and is 87.
"Get that shi!t off your face, you fake news hoax assh0les" was one of the more memorable pf the intelligible quotes. We managed to get into the center, and the receptionist barricaded us in.
The cops showed, but in small-towns far from central justice, the law is generally enforced to the majority opinion. So, they said effectively we'd lived here long enough to know better than to rile up the local rowdies like that, with a rueful chuckle. When we left, much later than necessary in order to allow things to settle down, our car window was broken. We still wore our masks, nut soon we may have to leave them behind, ironically for our safety.

You do eventually get used to small-town justice.

Happy New Year!

Bob in Spain wrote:

---

Just going to leave this here.

twitter.com/keithedwards/status/1345796238722129923

There are some reporters in the USA saying this is worse than Watergate.

-- Edited by Bob in Spain on Sunday 3rd of January 2021 08:42:50 PM

---

Gee. Hope a big OG with regard to the two senate run-off votes soon to take place in Georgia.

And indeed hope it helps lessen the up to now encouraging ( for Trump ) number of members of congress said to be intending to vote against ratification of the Electoral College result ( nothing like enough to stop the due ratification and Jan 20 Biden inaugeration but still a horribly dispiriting number of the unprincipled and/or deluded ). But that sadly is probably doubtful.

The whole tape ( available on YouTube ) certainly doesn't support the theory that Trump had privately conceded and was just carrying on for show. It is full of Trump's seemingly deluded acceptance of what "they are saying" ( much previously debunked ) and just not accepting what the Georgian official ( the valiant Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger ) says - eg. Trump repeatedly saying that a batch was counted 3 times in spite of early counter that that had been verified as not true. Delusion may be more concerning than strategy. 

Possibly most concerning is that this character is still President for another 2 weeks. Most immediately, with no help from him, may Wednesday pass off relatively peacefully in Washington. 

The gap has widened a bit for the Democrats and, with also it appears thousands of absentee ballots to be counted, some analysts are saying that they may actually win the second seat by a margin greater than the automatic threshold for a recount.

Some of the remaining counting has been suspended overnight but it is now big odds on both seats going Democrat.

Of course this thread and Trump's priorities are more about Trump than the fate of the Republican Party.