For those of you who watch YouTube geopolitical talking heads, Chas Freeman, who was Nixon’s translator on his famed visit to China and later ambassador to Saudi Arabia, is particularly cool, articulate, and measured. We feature a recent video below so that you can get a sense of his temperament. Freeman has also become more unsparing over time due to the rank ineptitude of US conduct:
So your humble blogger sat up and took notice when reader johnnyme found these remarks late in a wide-ranging interview by the South China Morning Post:
The United States is in the midst of a mounting constitutional crisis that will come to a head with the November 5 elections and the transition to the January 20 inauguration of the next president. Those in Beijing who have come to believe that there is no longer a viable path to peaceful reunification and that the only feasible way to end the division of China is to resort to force might see this period of confusion in Washington as an opportune moment to do so. This would, in my view, be a tragic mistake. The civilian government in Washington may disintegrate at the end of this year, but the US Armed Forces will not, and the American people would not fail to direct their anger at China were they to regard it as responsible for a war over Taiwan.
One has to think Freeman still has a lot of contacts, as well as his considerable personal perspective. If his were merely one view, it might be easier to discount it. But people with very different reference frames are voicing similar worries. For instance, Matt Taibbi, in his discussion with Walter Kim of the RFK, Jr. speech throwing his lot in with Trump, in passing expressed doubt as to whether the 2024 presidential election would take place.
We have pointed out how it would not be hard to brick the 2024 elections. The usual focus of this concern comes from Team Dem, over the inept efforts by Trump and his allies to contest the 2020 results. Perhaps they will get better this time. Or arguably, the sowing of doubt in a Kamala win would be corrosive to “democracy”. The wee problem with this position is that the Democrats have shown themselves very willing to put their hands on the dial, witness the how Sanders was denied the wind in his sails of an Iowa win, his 125,000 disappeared votes in Brooklyn, or even an entire documentary based on poll workers seeing shenanigans in California, or now with RFK, Jr., their scorched earth tactic to keep him off the ballot. RFK, Jr. also alleges party operatives leaned on allies to deny him media coverage (his comparisons to how Ross Perot was treated suggest he’s not off base).
But despite hand wringing about Trump thuggery, there in fact has been nothing resembling a brownshirt show (see Israel settlers for a reality check of what that looks like), save of the perfectly legal sort, that on the threat in some states to prosecute women who get abortions, even out of state. And why should there be? Trump has been ahead. Even with the Kamala fest, the Democrats have not moved into the lead. And Trump has just gotten a vote, money, and media attention boost from RFK, Jr. endorsing him.
Consider further this report from a discussion by a reliable reader with a Democrat superdelegate. Even though single-sourced, it is a litany of admissions against interest. The summary of the superdelegate account:
The overall take –
a) the DNC convention was not very good. Policies were never discussed – and it is becoming obvious now that there is a severe deficit here. Furthermore, the policies that have been put forward – he specifically named price control – have been an utter disaster.
b) the whole no-show special guest Beyonce or George W Bush thing was a completely incompetent disaster and not a good look. Apparently it was supposed to have been Beyonce but she was very offended by something that happened earlier in the day, possibly with the Kamala advance team
c) Trump was already ahead in the real polls – he is now well ahead in the RFK endorsement saga – the polls in the media are really wrong according to him
d) he reiterated that the Kamala idea was literally no one’s idea with a brain in the DNC. His prediction is she will be a disaster. There were apparently multiple issues with temper tantrums this past week with aides in tears.
e) he still believes this will be a Trump win
This tweet came out shortly thereafter. The superdelegate said the speaker was indeed a convention participant and the insiders were “shitting their pants”. The Twitter views are not overwhelming but one would need to track back to TikTok, where it originated, to get a better sense of whether or not it is going viral. A key statement:
When I first got into politics, I thought the Democrats were the party of the people and at the DNC this week, I thought I was in a building with the most elite and out of touch people in the entire world. It very much felt like let’s just have a huge party and forget all of our the problems because the vibes are brat…I didn’t feel any connection to the people that I know right now who are struggling to buy their groceries or pay their rent.
Former Democrat Campaign Worker
Speaks out after attending DNC pic.twitter.com/rRxroTc7yy
— TestDummy (@TestDummy04) August 25, 2024
So given the likely trajectory, and the weird terror that the Democrats have instilled in many loyalists, that Trump will impose an authoritarian regime (and maybe even engage in a bit of Pol Pot-ery), it seems more likely that the Democrats will brick an election than the Republicans. People more expert in election rules and Constitutional process are welcome to correct me, but as I read the Constitution, there is no mechanism for delaying the Presidential vote. So it could take as little as imposing martial law in a few key states over violence, real or manufactured or exaggerated, by Trump loyalists, to halt the vote in those states and make it impossible for the election to proceed.
An alternative scenario that Lambert likes is space aliens land and we have to pause everything to deal with the threat they represent. I have long wondered why John Podesta was so obsessed with them. With all of our wonderful visual fakery, it would not be hard to fabricate a greatly improved and more lasting War of the Worlds. Readers have noted in the last few years that the number of sighting of UFOs has increased.
Lambert further points out that they have been peculiarly concentrated in the US and even more so around nuclear facilities. My pet explanation is that these sighting are actually US experiments with advanced visual and perhaps signal spoofing technology.
Needless to say, I hate having to entertain this line of thought. Perhaps Freeman and Taibbi are inhaling too many swamp vapors. We can only hope so.
Given that the Congress is still serving the remainder of its term (though, what happens in the next Congressional session if there are no newly elected congresspersons from specific states?), if the presidential election is interrupted in some number of states and consequently there are insufficient electors elected to give either candidate the needed 270, presumably other provisions of the Constitution would still remain in force, so that the result would be decided, after an inconclusive vote (or non-vote) by the Electoral College, by “one vote per state” in the House of Representatives. That favors DJT and Ds might hesitate to undertake to trigger such a scenario.
Thanks. So that may be why Freeman implied a full martial law scenario, the suspension of “civilian” government, Ukraine-style. Whoever is gaming this out went a few steps further than I did.
I would think you’d need martial law at the national level though. Doing it with a handful of states would definitely cause chaos and mentally put the legitimacy of any winner into question. However, it would likely in my opinion be the trigger to sending it to the House. In 1836, Virginia electoral delegates refused to vote for Van Buren’s VP so the VP slot was decided by a contingent election in the Senate.
A crazy knock on is that the new congressional session starts on Jan 3rd I believe. If not all of the house seats have had an election because of the hypothesized martial law actions… what does the make-up of the house look like? Is someone gaming that and is there a scenario there where you flip the house make-up so Trump is short votes?
While I agree it would not be the desired outcome, but it might not be a total loss. The senate gets to choose the VP which then means team Dem (or other anti-Trump factions) only has to find a way to remove 78 year old president Trump. Sadly there are too many crazy and powerful forces working in bad ways these days. I expect only the worst regardless of who wins.
Many thanks, and it does seem that the DNC was almost completely vacuous. However, I note the remark about price controls being a ‘disaster’, and note the assessment made by one of the leading students of various wartime controls and the Nixon experiment (where the abandonment of the gold peg worked against the simultaneous imposition of controls, as if Nixon was pressing hard on the brake and accelerator pedals all at once – though Nixon’s approach was quite effective and relatively popular for a while):
“The first [lesson] is that without monetary restraint controls will fail. If there is not an immediate breakdown, there will be evasion and a postcontrol inflationary surge. The second lesson is that controls must be removed with dispatch. To maintain controls permanently once reasonable expectations for price stability have been established would saddle the economy with a burdensome bureaucracy, an extensive black market, reduced economic efficiency, more acrimonious labor relations, greater incentives to corrupt the legislature and an irksome regimentation of economic life.
With what kind of medicine should we compare comparable controls? In the debate over controls in the Continental Congress, two centuries ago, Richard Henry Lee came closest to the truth. He compared controls to a palliative. They are a medicine to be used to dull the pain and tranquilize the patient while monetary restraint and reform of our fiscal affairs would work the fundamental cure. To renounce controls completely would subject the patient to needless pain, assuming that he would subject himself to the treatment at all. But to rely on controls to work the whole cure, or to continue their use after health was restored, would create more problems than it would solve. Thus, the extremists on both sides of the debate over controls are wrong. Controls are more than a mere placebo. But they will never be a wonder drug for an ailing, inflationary economy.” (Hugh Rockoff, ‘Drastic Measures: a History of Wage & Price Controls in the United States’ (1984), at 246)
That the main plank of Harris’s near non-existent economic policy is, in effect, a mechanism for ‘dulling the pain and tranquilizing the patient’ perhaps tells us all we need to know about Harris and the essence of her meme-based campaign as she has conducted it so far.
I think that crunch time would come if Trump won the elections in November. Will the Democrats just step aside in January and let Trump once more take the oath of office? Or will they pull out all the stops and use every possible trick, legal skullduggery and blatant attack on him that they could. I know even know how they would justify breaking all sorts of laws and procedures in order to stop him becoming President again. They would tell you ‘But it’s Trump! We have to stop him for the good of Democracy.’ What happens if the Democrats refuse to vacate office or even hold the inauguration? Come the 20th January next year, it may be a toss up as to who the government machinery decides to take their orders from – Trump or Kamala. It’s gunna get messy.
Remember Hillary and her allies briefly floated the idea of getting the electors to flip: https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/19/as-michigan-charges-trump-electors-with-felonies-recall-how-leftists-everywhere-urged-2016-electors-to-defect-to-hillary/
Maybe that’s a reason they’ve kept Joe in charge while Kamala runs? It would be harder to pull off a sit-down-strike coup if you’re the one who lost “fair and square” as we used to call it.
There has been talk of the sitting president cancelling the election and remaining in power in every election since 2008, including partisans of both sides engaging in the same kinds of hysterical outbursts. While it seems that the furor has gotten more furious over the years–and anything is possible–I wouldn’t put bets on overt election cancelling.
Stark. But:
I tend to disagree that the Chinese would be that inept as to try to swipe Taiwan. I smell a blob fantasy.
Will the U.S. of A. hold elections? Yes. Afterwards? Lawfare, tantrums, and posturing. Americans aren’t the French. Et vive la France. Americans prefer collective hissing and beating up the little kid.
Expect reruns of 2016 and 2020. With more whining! Let’s start there with our analyses rather than with potential actions of Generalissima “Lethal Force” Harris. If the Democrats cannot organize a convention, how do they organize a coup?. Likewise, the Republicans, thinking back on America’s Shaman.
Aliens? The UFO stuff is all reflections in mirrors. Watch out for Mothra instead.
No mystery guest? I was pulling for Childish Gambino. Or at least Moms Mabley raised from the dead.
Pass the vitello tonnato.
G.W. Bush would have been the perfect mystery guest.
Shrub killed 3-4k Americans in Iraq. And many, many more Iraqis. That’s just the warmup act for what the neocons have planned.
Maybe he could have come out on a gurney in a body bag and been ceremonially unzipped by Wolfowitz. Or better yet, Hillary!
Pretty quiet from the non-Jackson part of Wyoming- Cheney households…
We’ve got a situation here in France where the president is simply ignoring the results of the legislative election and refusing to name a prime minister, leaving us with a caretaker government that is still exercising power, including proposing budgets, discussing their portfolios on the TV, etc.
I’m not sure if the possibility exists in the US presidential election to do something similar, but it’s the least kinetic option.
I suppose Harris could just not certify the election if Trump won and the Dems don’t accept the results? It sounds far-fetched but we live in strange times. Perhaps more likely than an alien invasion?
I’m open minded to the big picture presented in the above article, but it seems to me that it should necessarily be easier to scam the vote counting than to cancel the vote counting. Among other advantages they control the governorships in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania which I think means they control the vote counting in those states.
On Taibbi, I follow him on Twitter and it seems like people are calling him names every day, like every name and every insinuation in the book. I’m not sure if it’s getting to him, or if he just replies to them to remind his readers they’re dealing with a cult. He faces a lot of harassment, a lot of us would have a hard time dealing with it.
Like Russiagate, Jan 6, and the recent Biden Harris switcheroo, it doesn’t have to be a good coup. They seem to have a special gift for getting these things done or else it’s apparently not that hard to do.
…but it seems to me that it should necessarily be easier to scam the vote counting than to cancel the vote counting, I agree, but cancelling the counting 1) has precedence (see team blue primary), 2) is much more of a sure thing in regards to Anyone but Trump!, 3) carries less legal risk.
Three thoughts.
One, maybe it’s the after-effect of watching the Democratic Party drop the ball on so many “easy layup” political moves or policy initiatives over the past couple of decades, not to mention now three elections in a row where the pitch comes down to “the other guy is worse”. But I suspect that by now, so many people in and around the party apparatus have failed upward and internalized incompetence, that even if they wanted to pull off a coup or “brick” an election, they might not actually be capable of perpetrating such.
Especially since…
Two, it is very hard to tell from the outside, but somehow I get the feeling that the Democratic insiders and donors are not necessarily united behind Harris. Some undoubtedly are, I mean, witness Pelosi gushing about both her and Waltz in Politico on several different occasions. On the other hand, Obama took his sweet time getting with the program. My point is, if you hypothesized that some of the high muckymucks in and around the DNC would be comfortable with Harris losing so long as they keep a significant enough presence in Congress and the Senate…well, there would be no need to “brick” an election. In fact, I suspect that guys like Newsom actively want Harris to lose, because that would open up a path for them to 2028. But who knows.
Three, I find it useful to occasionally revisit the battleground state poll aggregation on Real Clear Politics, together with the electoral map. As of now, if you include only the “close” states, and assume Harris picks up Minnesota-Wisconsin-Michigan (or, rather, Waltz does), then the election could well turn on either Pennsylvania by itself, or on Arizona plus Nevada. I mean, there is still a long way to go, and we still haven’t even had any Trump-Harris debates, but as of right this second, the election looks extremely close, with Harris having maybe a 45% chance of winning? But to the point of the post above, if it’s really that close, I think there is a higher chance of the Democrats “thinking” they could win it all and then being “disappointed”, as in 2016, than of them trying any shenanigans. Maybe.
I have shared this opinion for quite some time – civil strife is far more likely in the event of a Trump win than a Demo win. However, I too think that the elections will occur one way or another. After all, even during WW II elections were held. I will not speculate on the means and methods, but Trump will not be allowed to govern. Over the last four years while there was no one with a grasp of reality in the administration, personnel and policy has been put in place for an impressively deep and complex machinery to acheive the fabled Full Spectum Dominance. This group, whatever you want to call them, will be loath to give it up to some boob who does not realize its importance.
If it’s close, particularly if just one state is uncertain I guess that could lead to temptation. On the other hand it’s in the billionaires interest to have a smooth transition no?