I & I Editorial BoardI&I Editorial
The strength of America’s elections lies in people’s confidence that votes will be fairly tallied, and that the losing party will bow out gracefully and become the loyal opposition. But what if a loser refuses to acknowledge the results of a free and fair election? What if it instead takes to the streets to commit violence and mayhem? Or even attempts a coup?
We ask because there’s every sign now that the Democrats, in a panic over candidate Joe Biden’s lackluster basement campaign and growing evidence that he is suffering age-related mental impairment, will refuse to acknowledge President Donald Trump for a second term, even if he wins clearly.
The last time we had a party really refuse to accept the results of an election was in 1860. Then, Democrats in southern states threatened to secede if Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party, won. He did, and southern states began seceding before he even took office. We fought a civil war.
Today, we might be edging toward another.
“We now seem to be on the cusp of relitigating the question, only instead of slaveholding southerners blackmailing the country with secession, it’s anti-Trump Democrats and left-wing radicals threatening to tear the country apart if Trump wins in November,” writes John Daniel Davidson at the Federalist. “For them, the Union is conditional, and Trump’s reelection will violate their conditions.”
Of course, in 2000 and 2016 the Democrats also objected to the election outcome, but at least could argue that the Republican winner in neither election had a majority of the popular vote. (Irrelevant, of course, since thanks to the Founders’ wisdom we choose our president through the Electoral College, which gives individual states clout in picking the nation’s chief executive. That keeps the U.S. from being dominated by a dictatorship of just four or five heavily populated states.)
Since 2016, however, Democrats have openly made it a full-time political job to stymie Trump’s presidency. They’ve charged him with cheating in the 2016 election, colluding with the Russians, and even killing thousands of Americans due to his supposedly incompetent response to the China virus pandemic.
Despite the non-stop rage and obstruction from the Democrats for four years, Trump has still had one of the best first terms of any president in modern times, and perhaps ever.
But recent statements and actions by Democratic officials show they’re pushing to do the same thing this time, even if it means violently splitting the nation along political lines.
Earlier his summer, Democratic Party bigwigs and Never-Trumpers, working through a newly formed group called the Transition Integrity Project, funded in part by George Soros, held an unusual meeting. Their goal, as they put it, was to “game out” the possible scenarios for the 2020 election “out of concern that the Trump administration may seek to manipulate, ignore, undermine or disrupt the 2020 presidential election and transition process”.
Funny, since that’s precisely what the Democrats have done since 2016.
One of the scenarios TIP pondered was a “clear Trump win,” which should mean the Democrats fold up their tents and go home. Right?
Nope. Instead, “(F)ormer Bill Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, playing Biden, refused to concede, pressured states that Trump won to send Democrats to the formal Electoral College vote, and trusted that the military would take care of the rest,” according to a widely read essay, “The Coming Coup?”, by Michael Anton at The American Mind.
This is not just game-playing. The report from the Democratic group, Anton notes, “darkly concluded that ‘technocratic solutions, courts, and reliance on elites observing norms are not the answer here,’ promising that what would follow the November election would be ‘a street fight, not a legal battle.’ ”
In short, Democrats won’t accept even a clear Trump victory. They’re voiding the election before it’s held. If Trump wins, more riots. And a civil war of sorts, over our nation’s future as a constitutional republic.
But even that assumes a clean, fair election. Which now looks doubtful.
As Berkeley law professor and former Bush administration official John Yoo reminds us, “COVID-19 and state lockdowns might hamper access to polling places in the upcoming election. Mail-in voting will be more widespread than ever due to the pandemic and might suffer from fraud. Foreign governments might try to hack into state electoral systems.”
And that’s only a partial list. The chances for a clear winner seem slim at best. And the Democrats are ready to take advantage of post-electoral chaos to grab the presidency.
If they lose, Democratic Party leaders might stall and hope for a friendly legal venue in which to litigate the election in their favor. If that sounds improbable, consider the disputed 2000 election. With George W. Bush declared the winner in Florida, Democrats first tried to manipulate the vote count. When that failed, they tried to get the Sunshine State’s Democrat-leaning Supreme Court to declare Al Gore the winner, and thus take the U.S. presidency.
Only the U.S. Supreme Court’s action stopped that travesty.
Worse yet, Democrats have begun to think they might be able to count on the military executing a soft coup of sorts. Recall that in June, acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper publicly warned Trump against invoking the Insurrection Act as the riots spread across the nation. That would let Trump use military troops, if necessary, to quell the violence.
Esper’s remarks implied that Trump, the nation’s commander in chief, might find his legal orders ignored by an unwilling military. If that wasn’t enough, Bob Woodward’s latest book, “Rage,” claims Gen. James Mattis told Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats: “There may come a time when we have to take collective action” against Trump because he’s “dangerous. He’s unfit.”
There are only two legitimate forms of “collective action” under the Constitution, and neither includes the military. One is impeachment. Democrats tried that, and failed. The other is an election. The military has no business adjudicating the results of an election. None.
Absent concrete charges and evidence of that, such talk is prima facie evidence of sedition, a serious crime. Democrats and Defense Department officials would be very wise to stop using such language, since taking part in a plot to subvert our government carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
The Democrats are playing with fire, supporting increasingly violent demonstrations against the legitimate government of our country, while pondering illegitimate means to remove Trump from office even if he wins. That’s not an election. It’s called a coup.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Bob Maistros
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
The anti-slavery Republican party of the 1860s became the modern day Democratic party in the major platform shift in the half century following the Civil War. That is why modern day Republicans in the Southern states that seceded are so vehemently behind the Confederate monuments. But for you it’s only key that you project the democrats of that time upon the democrats of this time, and claim Lincoln as a patron of your platform.
“The anti-slavery Republican party of the 1860s became the modern day Democratic party”
I disagree, noting that the GOP never changed their name. Further, it was the Democrat party that always supported slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, and still is the party supporting affirmative action for favored races and against making government color blind.
But I do agree, Democrats did get blacks to vote for them like good plantation members, in spite of the fact they’ve never delivered anything to them but welfare and affirmative action (which IMHO, both work against them and their prosperity). What help is it to put a poor performing student (relatively speaking) via affirmative action into a university with students who’ve done better, setting them up for failure and debt? And what help is it to black women and her children to know they can get a government sugar daddy of welfare by raising children without a husband or supportive father? That’s setting up women so they don’t make sure the guys they sleep with will support their children, and creating an environment where her children are more likely to get involved in crime.
It’s not about whether you agree or disagree, go back and look what party loyals on both sides did in those 50 years. They switched parties because the platforms on either side became untenable for them. Confusing? Yes.
You are clearly wrong. Democrats backed and passed Jim Crow laws and founded the Ku Klux Klan. Republicans backed and passed the 13th-15th amendments as well as the Civil Rights acts of the 1800s. Robert Byrd and Strom Thurmond, both Long-standing Democratic Senators, were highly-placed members of the KKK.
Silly Jeff, Thurmond switched to the Republican party in 1964, to support Barry Goldwater. As you know, change in this country happens very slowly, and not everybody just switched at the same time. Are there racist Democrats still? Yes, for sure! Are the two platforms consistent with what they were in the 1860s? Hell no.
True! Not only did Republicans get the 13th 14th and 15th Amendments passed, with the exception of the 13th (only 23% of Dems voted for it), *zero* percent (0%!) of Democrats supported those Amendments.
And, yes, the Democrats of yesterday founded and used the KKK *just as* they use Antifa and BLM today: as their paramilitary arms to intimidate voters to “stay on the Democrat Plantation” and cause damage and chaos.
Stop running so fast! The point was back there on the right.
“The anti-slavery Republican party of the 1860s became the modern day Democratic party in the major platform shift in the half century following the Civil War.”
That is certainly the story promoted by the Democrat party. It is, however, demonstrably untrue. The Democrat party of 1860 had two defining standards – they were in favor of slavery, and they ran on a platform of anti-black sentiment.
Since then, there were indeed changes – albeit only cosmetic. The first change happened with the 13th Amendment prohibiting the personal ownership of slaves. The DNC reacted by becoming ideological Marxists, promoting a form of universal slavery of the working class through personal income taxes insuring most working class could never accumulate sufficient wealth to allow them to retire much before they died. This took quite some time, for first they had to pass a Constitutional Amendment making it possible to circumvent the Apportionment clause and another Amendment to nullify the ability of the States to rein in spending. Both were reportedly accomplished during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson (a known supporter of Marx). Neither to this day actually has the Constitutionally mandated documentation, but the courts upheld them so they are law. Even then, it took many decades of leftist creep to overcome American’s sensible distrust of big government. Today, there is an 8% tax on labor in addition to personal income taxes, insuring that the working class living above subsistence pays a higher rate of taxation than do millionaires – many are taxed over 50%, while the very maximum ever paid by the wealthy is limited by capital gains tax rates. Taken together with a mountain of Federal laws and regulations, compared to 1900 the average working American is nearly in bondage with no hope of escape.
The second similarity in the Democrat platform is their support of universal racism. Forced to sign the affirmative action laws, LBJ and the DNC affected a propaganda coup. Having learned that the anti-black message they promoted through their “affirmative action” group the KKK was no longer resonating with enough WHITE voters to swing elections, they flipped their message to anti-white/white guilt and immediately obtained the loyalty of a solid majority of American minorities. Following that success, they passed hundreds of laws codifying and institutionalizing racism into law, insuring that there can never be equality among people of different heritage.
Thus, the Democrats today remain the party of racism and slavery.
That fairy tale about “switching sides” has been debunked so often, I wonder about the credibility of a commenter still spreading it these days.
For an honest demonstration of the Democrats’ history of bigotry, start by looking up the 1860s Democratic Party poster titled, “The Two Platforms”.
One copy of it is available here: http://www.jpattitude.com/IHTM/1860sDemocratPartyPoster.jpg
It would behoove you to read the article “The Big Lie: Republicans and Democrats Switched”
You can find it here: https://soapboxie.com/us-politics/The-Big-Lie-Republicans-and-Democrats-Switched-Policies-on-Race
How do you explain Democrats supporting Jim Crow, school segregation seperate water fountains, and opposing Civil Rights legislation, right through the mid 60’s?
A larger % of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats.
How do you explain Democrats supporting Jim Crow, school segregation seperate water fountains, and opposing Civil Rights legislation, right through the mid 60’s?
They cannot, because the theory that the “parties switched” is pure propaganda nonsense. The Democrats are still the party of racism – they merely switched their message in the 60’s from “anti black” to “anti white,” thereby securing most of the minority vote in this country.
If Trump is the clear winner on Election Night he will be in a strong position to take decisive action against street chaos and violence.
And if he doesn’t, he will definitely encourage a coup.
You mean, like Democrats already failed at? The first conspirator has already pled guilty, more are coming.
Except a coup is *exactly* what *Democrats* have been explicitly promising to do. Projection, much?
Actually no, because the States are responsible for enforcing most all the criminal laws, because those are State laws, not federal laws. But IMHO (and I’m sure lawyers could argue both sides) Trump could prosecute local politicians for failing to protect peoples’ civil rights to not be harmed via riots and looting the politicians don’t seem to care about.
Trump is right to point out, the riots could be stopped in hours, if the local politicians wanted to stop them. He might also point out, that back in the earlier part of the 20th century, Democrat politicians in the South also didn’t want federal troops in their state making sure blacks could vote or attend public schools. Seems to me Democrats don’t want law and order, instead they want to be in charge or they’ll let the riots continue, and are attempting to extort the voters.
You are absolutely correct. I have been enraged that Trump has not used this option. The situation in blue states under antifa/BLMist siege is exactly like the excuse that leftists used to breach states’ rights – that local and state law enforcement were not protecting a group’s civil rights (then it was blacks; today it is law-abiding citizens). Trump and the GOP are just such cowards, all bark, no bite. This has been Trump’s playbook from the beginning. I still think his heart is in the right place, but that he keeps getting talked down from doing any real thing by his nasty son-in-law and worthless daughter. Still, the Democrats are actual enemies of Real Americans (so nice that finally this is out in the open!), so Trump retains my disappointed vote. But the only long term answer to avoid civil war is ethno-ideological dissolution of the USA, and left/right segregation, secession, and new sovereignties. The unitary USA is dead – thanks to racial integration, Marxist indoctrination in the schools (thanks GOP for NEVER fighting this leftist takeover!), and the post-1965 Third World Immigration Invasion that has radically remade the American people – for the worse. It was a great country, while WE whose ancestors built it, controlled it.
Precisely correct. Article IV, Section 4. of our Constitution guarantees:
“The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.”
An elected official who prevents police from arresting or charging individuals causing domestic violence, or a DA / prosecutor who refuses to prosecute such cases, a violation the Constitutional rights of every citizen harmed by said violence. Each charge of violating an individual’s rights is a Federal offense punishable by up to 10 years in jail and a $10,000 fine (probably should be increased due to inflation). Now, if in a city of over 1 million people just 100 were to file charges against said individuals, we are easily looking at lifetime in jail. Only a few such convictions would make the remaining insurgents “believers in law and order” again.
I believe what will happen is BLM and Antifa will target Republican majority polling places the night before and on the election. Most Democrats will have voted by mail. This will insure a likely a Biden win. If not, the claim will be then be made that the election was not fair to Democrats, because of the destruction of the polling places!
This “election refusal” will replace the Russia Hoax as the Dems mantra for the first 2 years of Trump`s next term. Biden has already hired 100`s of lawyers with those mysterious campaign donations last month. Personally I would love a splitting of the sheets after the election. there is no living with these animals.
FIne with me, as long as you don’t come after ‘us’ like the psycho ex as we live our ‘best lives’. That also extends to ‘us’, I don’t support ‘us’ behaving like the psycho ex, now or ever.
Absentee ballots are Mail-in voting and have been since the Civil War. All of the Democrat’s talking points about the need for Mail-in ballots have been on the books for over 100 years.
Here are two of the many disingenuous Democratic Party’s approach to Mail-in voting. ActBlue has an online ad about vote-by-mail. In it they are blatantly obvious about the reason Democrats want vote-by-mail: Senator “Amy Klobuchar is racing to pass an emergency bill to allow all voters to Vote-By-Mail. This could save the election.” It makes clear that vote-by-mail is intentional vote manipulation and not a good faith argument. It guts the various denials/stories in the media about the “True Reason” for ‘vote-by-mail’. No ‘Save Granny from Covid’, no ‘Minority Empowerment’ just “This could save the election” for the Democratic Party.
The second example is even more revealing of the Democrat’s intents about Mail-in voting.
The ‘vote by mail’ game in 3 clumsy moves:
1) April 2, 2020 “California Governor Newsom: Yes, We Will Use Coronavirus to ‘Reimagine a Progressive Era’ “There is opportunity for reimagining a progressive era as it pertains to capitalism,” absolutely we see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern.”
2) May 07, 2020 “Gavin Newsom of California promises no return to normal until a vaccine is developed. Newsom told residents in his state not to expect life to go back to normal from the coronavirus pandemic until after a vaccine is rolled out.”
3) May 8, 2020 “California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order permitting all registered voters in the Golden State to vote by mail in the upcoming presidential election, citing concerns stemming from the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.” [see number 1]
Democrats never negotiate in Good Faith.
The only existential threats to America and the Constitution are the Democratic Party and those who vote to enable it.
“Absentee ballots are Mail-in voting and have been since the Civil War. All of the Democrat’s talking points about the need for Mail-in ballots have been on the books for over 100 years.”
This is a false narrative meant to conflate different things. For absentee ballots, the voter must request the ballot in writing and provide means of identification. The rejection rate for mail-in ballots is enormous, and that doesn’t count the fraud we CANNOT detect because mail is an inherently insecure system. Abuse of dependents in voting may pass unwitnessed because the abuser can be alone with the voter. Ballots can be intercepted, altered, or thrown away. “Vote harvesters” can collect ballots from mail boxes and complete them.
There are many ways we could allow secure absentee or remote voting. Mail is not and never will provide trust that the ballot was actually completed by a legitimate voter. If there were such a way, companies requiring their new hires to take a drug test would let them simply mail in their sample. Voting is more important than drug screens, and should be treated as such.
So, we KNOW cheating happens with mail in voting. What does that mean? Anyone supporting an inherently vulnerable system obviously favors cheating.
The solution – “We hold this truth self evident…..that if government (individuals, officials) become destructive of these ends, it is the RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO ALTER OR ABOLISH….. AND REPLACE. This means those seditious, subversives in and around this nation may be altered and or abolished by willing patriots. Go to accountabilityrevolution .com for details.
And the men who signed that document were traitors to their nation, which they clearly understood. They’d have been hanged if caught.
LOL – a modern day loyalist! Sounds like you grew up in a dysfunctional home and were afraid to leave…
Wasn’t there a big controversy with multiple electoral outcomes and threat of US military intervention in the 1876 Harrison v. Tilden presidential election? Might be worth looking it up.
Since Harrison died in 1841, it might be worth looking up. Tilden ran against Hayes in 1876.
1841*
There was another Harrison, to which he was probably referring. But he came a little later.
The good news about all the rioting and looting the Democrats are allowing (and which could be stopped in hours) is it’s all happening in Democrat run jurisdictions. That’s incentivizing rioters and looters to move to Democrat controlled cities and states, and responsible people to move to GOP controlled jurisdictions.
In other words, the Democrats are gutting their ranks of productive citizens and voters, they’re making their beds for the kind of place they want for their voters, and they’ll be sleeping in them until the voters realize it’s not that Trump and his supporters are systematically racist and causing the unrest and anger towards police, it’s that Democrats created their own problem and want to blame it on Trump instead of admitting their error and cleaning it up.
“out of concern that the Trump administration may seek to manipulate, ignore, undermine or disrupt the 2020 presidential election and transition process”.
In other words, they expect Trump to do exactly what they have been doing for over three years.
As a kid growing up in the 60’s, I always thought Lincoln was the greatest President we ever had. Now I’m older, have studied history and our Constitution, and have fought in two wars to depose dictators.
Lincoln was wrong.
The damage done by the Civil war did far more harm to our country than the “good” done by freeing the slaves, who would have gone free in a few years anyway because attitudes were changing around the world and automation was rendering slave labor uneconomical. That may sound heartless to some of today’s generation of African Americans, but the reality is that many of them starved once freed because of the crushing Northern intervention – so of those freed, many were WORSE off during that time. And, without the bitterness of the war, the transition to freedom may have been far less traumatic.
Now we face a similar choice. The Declaration of Independence assures us that we have a god-given right as a people to “change or abolish” our government. Lincoln denied that choice to the South at the point of a gun – wouldn’t we do better to simply let a couple of the most insane states go and turn into miniature versions of Venezuela? It seems that a lot of pain is the only thing that truly teaches some people the value of freedom.
But, I have one caveat. California does NOT get the whole State. Give them 30 miles of coast line starting 30 miles north of San Diego (we need to keep a Western port). Then, build a wall around it and call it Kalifornistan.
“Wouldn’t we do better to simply let a couple of the most insane states go and turn into miniature versions of Venezuela? It seems that a lot of pain is the only thing that truly teaches some people the value of freedom.”
That is sort of what happened in the first Civil War… and what you are describing amounts to actions that would only happen in a second Civil War. So the answer would gravitate toward ‘no, we wouldn’t do better to’.
It’s not a popular position to take but I completely agree with you. If the States are united then that union should be voluntary. I live in Canada which is also a federation and for years Quebec threatened to separate for reasons that are not worth going into. One referendum came close to making that happen and I am positive that had that referendum been successful the separation would have happened peacefully and through negotiation. And I completely agree with you that automation would in fairly short order have made slavery uneconomical. But Lincoln was a great orator…
Make it everything north of Camp Pendleton.
Works for me.
Jonathon, are sure San Diego will be conservative. I’ve been here for over 20 years and its changing.
“Jonathon, are sure San Diego will be conservative. I’ve been here for over 20 years and its changing.”
No, but we aren’t going to give up all of our Pacific port towns. San Diego is pretty moderate – if we implement universal school vouchers the teachers’ unions will be crushed, and the next generation will grow up un-indoctrinated with the ideology that requires control of education, media, and entertainment just to get a level playing field with rational thought.
I think the writer is over-dramatizing what Democrats are pondering. Their concern is what to do if Trump in effect steals the election. What if Trump sends federal marshals to “monitor” polling places in blue precincts in battleground states? What if the post office slows down mail delivery in blue counties so ballots arrive too late to be counted?
I suggest the writer do a followup piece on what Trump and the GOP will do if Biden wins the election fair and square. Trump has already announced that the only way Biden can win is if the election is “rigged”~ clearly indicating he will fight the results of a Biden victory.
The Democrats are openly trying to use mail in voting to cheat. On top of that, they are blatently conspiring to deny the Presidency to Trump if their dirty tricks still can’t keep him from winning. The DOJ should be fully investigating this matter, and the GOP lawyers need to earn their keep. Do not let the cheaters change the rules in the middle of the election. File suit everywhere they are attempting to circumvent state election laws. Appeal every decision that allows them to cheat. Openly sneer and appeal any decision that relies on the threat of catching a cold. And send monitors to every polling place in the nation.
It saddens me that there are Democrats who would rather destroy our country than let Trump win. Yet they will blame everything on Trump. I pray a light will shine on all the corruption and this will be fully exposed before election day.
So the Democrats are planning a coup if Trump wins huh? They have been having an ongoing coup attempt since he got elected.
So the headline should be:
“Democrats plan more of the same nonsense for four more years when Trump gets re-elected”. LOL
I don’t think the seceding States’ actions in response to the election of Lincoln can be thought of as analogous to what might happen if the Democrats don’t get a clear victory on Nov. 3, 2020.
They didn’t threaten to bring down the U.S. government in response. They just left to form their own country. Not quite the same thing.
A civil war is a war where both sides are fighting for control of the same government. Both sides in the American Civil War were not fighting over who would control Washington. This whole notion needs to be thrown into the garbage can. One side wanted to leave the Union; the other side wanted to prevent them from leaving.
As for saving our Republic, that was lost decades ago. We have been living in the aftermath of a soft coup for generations already. It’s just that most people don’t realize it. What the hell is there left to salvage from this obviously failed system?
The prevalence of rioting and looting and mayhem, with many elected officials praising the same, and preventing local police from maintaining order, clearly indicates that the people of the U.S. have no control over their governments, whether local or in Washington.
We have been overrun by savages and charlatans.
Esper, who has otherwise been a good SECDEF, should have been sent packing immediately on that comment. Any military official, civilian or in uniform, who even hints he would not follow a legal order from the President, grounded in federal statute, is not fit for service and a danger to us all with power in this hands.