This is where I think it will end up. I am optimistic that there will be no camps, because Congress will refuse to fund them. There will be increased deportations though, and not just of illegals. Anyone who is not a citizen but here legally needs to rethink why they are here, immediately. Blue states may throw roadblocks up, but Red states will gladly give them the boot.

There is a narrow way this can backfire, though. Let’s say I am right, and deportations and reverse migrations happen, but mainly in the red states. Blue states welcome the legal immigrants in, smuggle the illegals and DREAMers in a new Underground Railroad, and rebuff the Feds when they come for them, tieing up in the courts. Then, the Democrats figure it out and put up a candidate who can win against the MAGA candidate in 2028.

Guess what? That means that Democratic President runs the census, which is supposed (by the Constitution) to enumerate all persons residing in the US as of April 1, 2030, without regard to citizenship and immigration status. Republicans want to put a Citizenship question on that census, with the goal of eventually disqualifying non-citizens. But if that question is not there, and the full enumeration happens, those Red states will find they didn’t just get rid of immigrants, they got rid of House seats too, because that count is directly used to reapportion Congress.

Yes, but the funny thing about the filibuster is that while it requires 60 votes to advance legislation, it is just a Senate rule, and Senate rules are established by majority vote. The Senate has kept the rule (and, in fact, have made it easier to use over the years) because Senate terms are so long that most Senators have experienced time in the minority at least once, and want to preserve that tool for when they end up there.

This election cycle was the toughest one for Democrats. The next one will be the toughest for Republicans, with 20 of their seats up for election, and nobody at the top of the ticket to boost their numbers. The math says Republicans will likely not hold on to the Senate in 2026. So the sensible thing to do is keep the filibuster.

OTOH, Republicans may see the things that they want Trump to do to be so transformative that they can get it all done in 2 years, and not have to worry about Democrats undoing it in the next term. In fact, they may welcome it, because if Democrats do take control without a filibuster they can go back to Der Gröpenführer and say “Sorry, we can’t do anything about it, please stop calling”.

I’m surprised the other ones did better

No, I am not saying “Trump won’t be that bad”. He will be that bad. I am hoping that we can avoid the worst of the worst, though, by continuing to hold other politicians accountable to the people.

Elections are managed by individual states, to Federal guidelines. There is only so far that Congress can influence them. I can see Congress enforcing new documentation requirements for registration, and making it easier to “purge” voter rolls, as well as giving states leeway to reduce polling places in urban areas. But the election will still go on, and Blue states will go out of their way to creatively comply with the new mandates while still allowing access.

I simply refuse to believe America is done. We held elections during a Civil War, after all. We can hold them during a fascist tantrum.

Plus, those camps would all have to be built. We’ve already established that the immigration processing apparatus needs more funding; that’s part of what that immigration reform bill would have done. So he might be able to start the process of building these camps, but eventually he will have to come to Congress for more money. (And he can’t spend money that isn’t there – if he did that, then the whole debt ceiling charade Republicans do is rendered meaningless).

And yes, Republicans will control both houses. But there is a difference between cheering on the fascist head of your party, and actually casting the vote to build the concentration camps. Everyone in the House will be up for election again in two years, with no Presidential election on the ballot, and these people will have to justify their votes back home. Many, many Red districts will cheer them on, but some Republican wins were in close districts where this will make a difference.

(And yes, there will be midterm elections. Congress’s term is set in the Constitution. We can’t just skip an election just because the President says so.)

An interesting poll, but note that the sample size is only 5k. If you click on the link, other questions had 22k respondents. So these results are more accurately described as a poll based on people who were willing to divulge their income to an exit poll.

The only thing that would accomplish it to get Trump to reprint all his “45-47” hats. It might also fuck up the certification if there is no sitting VP when they count the votes.

If Biden was inclined to do it, the right time would have been a year ago. Doing it now is useless.

I’m one of those people. I’m glad to see that more votes are coming in, and the margin compared to 2020 is smaller. Still, it’s too large. If 81M people had shown up for Kamala, it would have beaten even Trump’s increased numbers.

The Biden/Harris campaign raised over a billion dollars this cycle. They couldn’t use that to ensure turnout was higher than during a pandemic? Why should we give them any money at all?

You had a good run, CFPB, but Project 2025 is coming for you.

The American Constitution says that Presidents can’t accept gifts from any foreign source, and that has been interpreted in the past as a general prohibition on Presidents operating in any capacity in any private enterprise. Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm in a blind trust.

Not only was Donald Trump allowed to circumvent this during his first term, retaining ownership of his businesses and nominally putting his kids in charge while they pursued foreign deals, but today Trump is waist deep in Crypto, and owns a majority share of a publicly traded company whose ticker is his initials. Foreigners can (and likely do) shovel money into both. Do you think anyone will ask him to divest, like the Constitution requires him to?

The Constitution is useless unless it is enforced. It relies on checks and balances between competing branches, and right now they are broken. The only checks on Presidential power are the military (whose oath is to yhe Constitution, not to any one President) and the individual states (who retain all powers not explicitly given to the Federal government).

One of the many problems with the Democratic primary was the attitude that we can skip them altogether for incumbents. Dean Phillips got a lot of criticism for daring to challenge Biden, but I have to admit (in hindsight) that he was onto something. If they had staged a debate early in the primary cycle, we might have seen Biden’s decline earlier. Phillips might not have ended up the nominee, but we might have had a more rigorous verring of the eventual nominee.

If there is one reform I want to see in the Democratic party going forward, it’s that all Primaries be contested. we shouldn’t give an incumbent a pass. We should hear him defend themselves in debates before they become the nominee. Heck, have the sitting VP debate the incumbent. Why not?

The Constitutional text is very broad:

The President … shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

So it looks rather absolute, for Fedral crimes. However, the real situation is complicated. This is just one clause in the Constitution, while the President is supposed to be bound by all of it. So, presumably, he can’t exercise his pardon power in a way that violates something else in the Constitution. If you go deeper into the Federalist papers, it’s quite clear that the Founders held that no man should be his own judge, and a self-pardon effectively does just that.

Here is a good write-up, although I do note it was written before the Supreme Court put their thumb on the scale and said he could do whatever the hell he wanted, as long as he doesn’t get impeached for it:

https://protectdemocracy.org/work/the-presidential-pardon-power-explained/

I expect him to do it anyway. It will be challenged, but courts will reject it due to “lack of standing” and sidestep the messy business of having to tell the King he went too far.

As a first time offender, he may not be getting a jail sentence regardless. Even if he did, though, he could just file an appeal and in the time it would take to hear it, he would be President and whatever sentence would be immediately put on hold l.

You work for the government, not for whatever yoyo happens to be President at any given time. You wouldn’t necessarily leave a private sector job if the CEO changed.

OTOH, this administration has been making a point of wanting to make government so small they can drown it in the bathtub. Unless you work in one of the very few Project 2025 priorities, they will probably eliminate your job eventually. So keep a keen eye out for alternatives.

While I’m not as sure as you are about that, if it had happened that way I wouldn’t have minded at all. I liked Harris as a candidate, and feel she would have made a fine President. but I also like other Democrats.

We’ll have to watch Walz. His current term ends with the 2026 election, and while he’s not term limited he has already been in office for two terms. This campaign might give him the bug to try again in 2028.

Do we even know what would happen if there is no speaker by the time the Congress votes to ratify the EC votes on Jan 6? Can they do it later, or does that push it into a contingent election?

What if the GOP can’t get the House in order by Jan 20? Can the Senate still vote for a contingent VP if the House is dysfunctional? I’d laugh if Vance ends up President because the GOP House is full of children.

Last time, I don’t think Trump was expecting to win. He ended up needing to scrape together a cabinet, and a bunch of those officials were old-school Republicans who chafed at all the crazy stuff he wanted to do.

This time, the Heritage Foundation is preparing him, and the new Senate will rubber-stamp all his appointments. He will pick people who intend to “dismantle the administrative state”. Grover Norquist famously wanted to make Government so small he could drown it in fhe bathtub. He might get his wish.

Well yeah, you (and the other poster who referenced the Brooks Brothers Riot) are 100% correct in stating the count ended prematurely, but if Nader hadn’t siphoned away those votes, Gore likely would have had yhe lead throughout the recount and Republicans wouldn’t have been in a position to pick a favorable time to stop.

So they did that once, Hillary was all set to take the nomination in 2008 then this young charismatic guy took the nomination. Obama served 2 terms and the Republicans lost their mind over it…

… but maybe the Democrats did too? Because Hillary still thought it was Her Turn in 2016, and there were a lot of machinations to make sure they didnt run a Socialist. Then I distinctly remember all the shenanigans to insure that Joe Biden got the nomination in 2020. And we all know what happened this year. I actually think Harris was a good candidate, I just wish she got the chance to prove it in a meaningful primary. (Edited to add: if she had lost a primary, all it would have meant was that Democrats would have found an even better candidate.)

The Democrats do have a deep bench of Governors and Senators who might make really good Presidents. They even proved that strategy worked in 2008. I wonder why they are so afraid to prove it in a primary.

He is an expert, after all. He’s the guy whose 3rd party campaign in 2000 siphoned enough votes from Gore in Florida to flip the state (and the election) to Bush.