On reading this exchange on Joe's 2020 election question, my first instinct was the same as JAE's comment, John, like Sam Harris is exhibiting TDS. However, John is expressing a point of view that held widely and deserves a serious response (which Glenn offered in part). I'd invite John to consider the following points from someone who sees Trump as unfit for office:
1. Are you not playing a bit fast and loose with the term "insurrection"? You describe what happened as "They were trying to hold up the procedure." Does that sound like an insurrection? Holding up the process was an attempt to implement John Eastman's and Peter Navarro's whacky "Green Bay Sweep" legal strategy. While that effort was bogus, does it really qualify as an insurrection in the meaning of the 14th Amendment?This would be the only insurrection in history attempted without arms. Isn't the use of the term "insurrection" sophistry intended to open up the possibility of first impeachment and then disqualification? Have you read the 3-judge dissent in the 4-3 Colorado decision?
2. Are your historical analogies really apt? The 1960 and 2000 election problems were examples of shenanigans in Cook County and Dade County, respectively. In 2020 we are talking about what Molly Ball described in Time Magazine as a "shadow campaign": There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans." While these conspirators believed they were "fortifying" democracy even i lifelong Democrat like me can recoil at the sheer audacity...oligarchy much? Then there is the spectacle of national security officials concocting a story and coordinating with tech companies to suppress information, not about Hunter Biden's embarrassing sex and drug escapades, but about potential corruption, and Biden specifically relying on that disinformation in presidential debates. Does that not give you pause?
3. Finally, as you acknowledge, there is a difference between the people like Joe who posed the question and the nutters who think the election was stolen in a "bald, absurd, nasty, incontestable way." What might be the effect on folks like Joe and the millions of others, including Democrats and independents who think (a) there were some very troubling aspects of the 2020 effort to "fortify" the election and (b) the current attempts to boot Trump off the ballot and the coordinated lawfare efforts to get him are illegitimate? While I think civil war or even widespread violence is not a likely, isn't it better, as Glenn suggested, to defeat him in an election than to make him a martyr to millions and further erode the institutional trust of even wider swaths of the electorate?
On reading this exchange on Joe's 2020 election question, my first instinct was the same as JAE's comment, John, like Sam Harris is exhibiting TDS. However, John is expressing a point of view that held widely and deserves a serious response (which Glenn offered in part). I'd invite John to consider the following points from someone who sees Trump as unfit for office:
1. Are you not playing a bit fast and loose with the term "insurrection"? You describe what happened as "They were trying to hold up the procedure." Does that sound like an insurrection? Holding up the process was an attempt to implement John Eastman's and Peter Navarro's whacky "Green Bay Sweep" legal strategy. While that effort was bogus, does it really qualify as an insurrection in the meaning of the 14th Amendment?This would be the only insurrection in history attempted without arms. Isn't the use of the term "insurrection" sophistry intended to open up the possibility of first impeachment and then disqualification? Have you read the 3-judge dissent in the 4-3 Colorado decision?
2. Are your historical analogies really apt? The 1960 and 2000 election problems were examples of shenanigans in Cook County and Dade County, respectively. In 2020 we are talking about what Molly Ball described in Time Magazine as a "shadow campaign": There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans." While these conspirators believed they were "fortifying" democracy even i lifelong Democrat like me can recoil at the sheer audacity...oligarchy much? Then there is the spectacle of national security officials concocting a story and coordinating with tech companies to suppress information, not about Hunter Biden's embarrassing sex and drug escapades, but about potential corruption, and Biden specifically relying on that disinformation in presidential debates. Does that not give you pause?
3. Finally, as you acknowledge, there is a difference between the people like Joe who posed the question and the nutters who think the election was stolen in a "bald, absurd, nasty, incontestable way." What might be the effect on folks like Joe and the millions of others, including Democrats and independents who think (a) there were some very troubling aspects of the 2020 effort to "fortify" the election and (b) the current attempts to boot Trump off the ballot and the coordinated lawfare efforts to get him are illegitimate? While I think civil war or even widespread violence is not a likely, isn't it better, as Glenn suggested, to defeat him in an election than to make him a martyr to millions and further erode the institutional trust of even wider swaths of the electorate?
Exactly!