A sad, sobering truth came to me today.

[Tommy Carcetti]

Basically, it was that if Hillary Clinton were elected in 2016 (with her winning the electoral vote as well as the popular vote), every single tactic they've used to attempt to delegitimatize President Biden's electoral win would have been used to delegitimize her victory as well.

Same crackpot conspiracy theories, same frivolous lawsuits that would ultimately get rejected by every judge who's forced to hear them.

The only question is whether that having ultimately failed (as it did in 2020-21) Trump would have still set his goons loose on the Capitol as a last ditch effort to disrupt certification. And whether the response from most Republicans would have been as lackadaisical as it had been in 2021, or whether that was a product of the hubris gained by the benefit of having four years entrenched in power.

[leftieNanner]

1. I think your last sentence is correct

He would have kicked and screamed in 2016. Maybe filed a few lawsuits. But he hadn't really tasted power yet, nor had he amassed the array of lunatics in the government who are following him now.

The Congressional Republicans hadn't been fully indoctrinated and might have actually stood up.

I think of President Hillary Clinton all the time. What could have been.

[Tommy Carcetti]

2. One key difference is that he wouldn't have had Mike Pence to lean on and intimidate.

Instead, he would have had...well, Joe Biden, actually.

[Mr.Bill]

19. And in 2025 we will have

Kamala Harris. That's a little fact that get's left out of all the speculation about January 5th 2025.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. The "Trump strategy" has been around before Trump.

It started with Bill Clinton. Hillary was spot on when she characterized it as a "vast right wing conspiracy". She wasn't hysterical. She wasn't imagining it.

It could have started with Michael Dukakis and Willy Horton or Gary Hart and Donna Rice.

But I've noticed the Republicans are non-competitive. They are driving a steam-roller towards any Democrat in power or campaigning.

January 6 was the pinnacle of more than 30 years of destroying Democrats.

[Tommy Carcetti]

9. They seem to specialize in character assassination by attrition and siege mentality.

Basically, wearing down the reputation of a popular persona by throwing scandal after scandal in the hopes something would stick.

With Bill Clinton, they started out with Whitewater, a "scandal" that to this day, still nobody understands. That obviously didn't work, so they kept trying ply after ploy (Vince Foster! Travelgate! Socks the Cat!) until finally they were able to settle on his lying about a personal affair during a deposition in a civil lawsuit.

Hillary was exceptionally popular as Secretary of State, so they had to knock her down as well. First, they tried recycled stuff from her husband's campaign, then Benghazi, then the Clinton Foundation, until finally they focused on the email server dealio.

Joe Biden as well. There was that Tara Reade nonsense that thankfully never stuck, a few other things, but they seem hellbent on argle bargle about Hunter at this point.

And they're even doing it for Dr. Fauci now, because he committed the unforgivable sin of being smarter and more popular than Donald Trump. They've claimed he's inconsistent, that he somehow conspired with the Chinese to create (!) the virus, and because that didn't work, now they've moved on to some absolute craziness about him torturing dogs.

It's insane, but that's their M.O. They knock down a popular figure by spreading insinuations of their corruption--no matter how false--until it reaches supersaturation level and the public begins to believe that those people actually are corrupt.

It's basically a siege mentality on their part.

[HUAJIAO]

14. Very perceptive statement....

[zuul]

4. I think 2016 would have been worse for HRC.

Biden is a white man. Just think how much worse it would have been for TFG to accept getting his ass kicked by a woman.

[3catwoman3]

12. You are likely quite right.

I have wondered, many times, if there might have been a small part of HRC that was a little bit relieved that she did not have to spend 4 years beating her head against a Republican stone wall.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

22. Devil's advocate.. remember everything that was written that they never in a million years

Thought they were going to win.

[localroger]

5. I don't think it would have gone nearly as far

In 2016 Trump didn't have the considerable advantage of already being president and having had 4 years to weed out the disloyal and elevate those he trusted. At that point he had nobody in Congress or in the Justice Department to do sketchy things for him. It took some time for the people who are loyal lapdogs now to climb on the bandwagon and for those who still had a principle or two to retire or get the boot.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

23. +1

[Tribetime]

24. Bingo he didn't have as many people kissing his butt

At that time people like Lindsey Graham didn't support him either so I don't think it would have gone anywhere

[Bettie]

6. Actually, they would have gone harder at Clinton

as they hate women far more than they do Biden.

[displacedtexan]

7. I'm pretty sure the Russians gave Trump the hacked files on the RNC as well as the DNC.

It's the only scenario that makes sense to me as to why Trump won the GOP primary in 2016 and convinced practically every plausible future Republican opponent to bow down and defend every vile thing he said or did.
There must be a ponderous chain of evil links he could still use as blackmail on each and every one of them.

[Walleye]

8. If we don't deal with this,we can expect it to happen every election

No more peaceful transfer of power

[cilla4progress]

10. What ..

we're fucked?

[Tommy Carcetti]

11. Not necessarily.

But we’ve taken a grave turn for the worse are definitely in danger.

[hadEnuf]

16. And this is why we need to beat the living fucking shit out of the Republican party at every chance.

Seems to me that Dems are often sitting around wringing their hands, waiting for the next GOP / Trump atrocity to take place.

We need to take control of the situation and use every bit of political power that we currently have to put these unamerican fascist bastards on the run.

[uponit7771]

15. Spain 1938 screwed if we don't jail Putin's Whore

[Pmc1962]

13. We didn't kick and scream enough to support HRC

I wish the 2016 (and 2000) elections had been recounted to the extent that the 2020 election was.

Rather than demand recounts of the sketchier results, we just said “oh well, that sucks, lets move on”.

I would like to see half the level of scrutiny for elections where the person receiving the most votes did not become President.

(And, let’s be frank, there would be 7 Supreme Court justices, as McConnell wouldn’t have allowed any of HRC’s nominees to move forward.)

[Laura PourMeADrink]

25. Absolutely positively agree. And she was so gracious

When in retrospect, we should have fought it tooth & nail. You know you can kind of mark that as the end of graceful political behavior. Do you like they do and recount every state

[BigmanPigman]

26. I know I sent about $50 to have recounts in 3 states

that were close (I think they were MI, PA and WI).

Even though the fucking moron won he still sceamed ELECTION FRAUD. Kris Kobach was in charge of finding the lost votes for tRump.

[soldierant]

17. "or whether that was a product of the hubris gained by the benefit of having four years entrenched i

They could have worked to gain that hubris even though not in power. And, after the midterms, they would have been very much in power in Congress. And McConnell had already deprived Obama of even consideration of one SCOTUS judge. That would have contined. All of that leads to hubris too. Hillary was on to them, but most of us weren't. It's quite a thought exercise.

[Whiskeytide]

18. I think the Republican establishment ...

… would have derisively pointed at Тяцмр as the reason they lost in 2016. “If we hadn’t run a washed up, orange, failed reality teevee host, we would have won!”

His ability to activate the base, I think, really surprised everyone. Quite a few were anti-Тяцмрers right up until the election when they went “Oh shit- he won”.

And the genuine crazies weren’t in Congress yet. Cawthorn, Gaetz, Bang Bang and Greene were products of his presidency. People like Brooks, Johnson and Gomert were fringe clowns.

Тяцмр‘s election damaged this country substantially. It will take a generation to recover, I fear.

[patphil]

20. I believe Roger Stone had an organization called "Stop the Steal Inc." in 2016.

They were prepared to go that route if needed.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

21. Personally, I think it would have been better. Trump really didn't

blossom as a devil (if you can put blossom and devil in the same phrase) until later after he got in. I liken him to a runaway train. We might could have stopped him if we had impeached him in 2017 when his approval ratings were the lowest. It kills me when I read about how Republicans thought everything was all over when we thought he was going to fire Comey

[pecosbob]

27. I don't believe so

We've watched the media amplify astro-turf protests staged by the right since Nixon's tenure. We watched the media both-side political murder and terrorism last term. Without his Twitter dog-whistles the basket of deplorables would still have been too afraid to come out of the closet. I saw that as the biggest difference during the last election cycle. FOX didn't know whether to shit or go blind.

My take...no, we don't see the Capitol stormed.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

28. During the 2000 election the RW assumption was that Dubya, being the guy

you'd like to have a beer with, would get more popular votes than Gore, who was seen as stiff and humorless but more likely to carry the electoral college. Under this scenario Gore would win the electoral college and thus the presidency. Obviously, this result was unacceptable to the Right.

So a plan was hatched where a hue and cry would rise up across the country to give the presidency to the man who got the most popular votes. Every elected Repug would loudly denounce Gore's win, a message echoed by the RW media (Fox Snooze) and conservative personalities like Rush Limbaugh. "Spontaneous" protests would occur, letters to the editor would be written, ads run, and every RW pundit would repeat the same message: "Our president should be selected by the majority of the popular vote. The electoral college is antiquated and should be ignored."

We know what happened: the vote turned out opposite of expected -- it was Gore who won the popular vote and arguably the electoral college. They resorted to Plan B, which was to make sure Florida's electoral votes went to Bush. They made the ballots confusing (the infamous "butterfly" ) and flew congressional staffers down to stand outside the counting room and loudly protest the count. Admittedly, Gore didn't help his cause by requesting that only certain counties be recounted, a tactic which, while legal, gave the impression he was trying to manipulate the vote in his favor. In retrospect he should have requested a statewide recount, as was his right. Meanwhile Team Bush was delaying the count while their case was winding its way through the courts on its way to the SCOTUS.

I can't find the source, but I remember reading an article published in 2001 that described the process of deciding Bush v. Gore: The Court was stuck at 4-4, with Justice Kennedy holding the deciding vote. He was leaning in favor of Gore, but Scalia kept browbeating him and dragging out the process until the early hours. An exhausted Kennedy ultimately gave in to Scalia's pressure, and we got eight years of Bush and RW rule.

The problem T**** faces is that he lost both the popular and electoral votes by bigly margins, and every court threw out his claims of fraud. Suddenly the vaunted Constitution (conservatives are always claiming, "We need to get back to the Constitution!" ) became inconsequential, and TFG and his enablers ignored the rule of law in favor of rule by the mob. And the plan almost succeeded -- that's the scary thing. But for the fortitude of three men -- Rosen, Raffensperger and Pence -- we would be facing an authoritarian government supported by every Republican. (IMHO it was actually Dan Quayle who is the hero of this morality play.)

Our democracy is literally hanging by a thread. Margret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” One study has concluded it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change. While the study focused on the effectiveness of peaceful process to effect a positive change like civil rights, my observation is that it works the other way as well (insert Nazi reference here). We now face a small group of people who are focused laser-like on one purpose -- to end democracy as we know it, and establish autocratic rule with T**** as Emperor for Life.

[FakeNoose]

29. This is absolutely true

In 2016 - even before the November 8 election - Chump went around saying that it was going to be "rigged." Remember that? He said it because he assumed he was going to lose. Then astonishingly he won - and he had to immediately shut up about "rigging" and "fraud" because he was the winner. How could there be fraud, since he won?

That doesn't negate the fact that his game plan was to attack Hillary and accuse the Dems of "voter fraud" and rigging the election. It absolutely was his plan all along.

Once again, as soon as his private polls told Chump that he would lose in 2020, he dredged up the FRAUD!!! charges all over again. He was already talking about fraud and rigging even last summer. He set the stage for his slow-motion coup to begin immediately after the election. We know now that he had several people helping him do it, too. The idea of having Mike Pence having a role in the Electoral vote certification, well that came out of left field at the last minute. But the rest of the coup was mostly planned out in advance.

[BradAllison]

30. Without Trump in office, it would of been shutdown faster. n/m