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Are we possibly headed to a complete electoral and political meltdown in November, complete with riots in the streets and threats of secession by some states? Last week something called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) made huge news with a 22-page report on a simulation exercise of scenarios of what might happen in the event we have a contested election in November. A bipartisan groups of political luminaries, including former RNC chair Michael Steele, former Michigan Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm, and all-around liberal potentate John Podesta, conducted the simulation, and it set off a media frenzy over the prospects of either Trump or Biden contesting the election result right up to inauguration day, with potential riots in the streets, and “Seven Days in May”-sounding concern over what the military might do!
Nils Gilman
Amidst all the handwringing and near-hysteria about a report projecting possible hysteria, few news stories (or podcasts for that matter), bothered to talk in depth with the two leaders of TIP, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University Law Center, and Nils Gilman, vice president of programs at the Berggruen Institute in California. As it happens, I know Nils Gilman! He’s a very smart lefty, though he might quibble some with my description of him as such, and I like him personally, though we obviously disagree about a great many (though not all) things. So I decided to ring him up and talk through the TIP report and several related matters, and the result is this fast-paced hour-long show that barely scratches the surface of the many issues that deserve exploration. (So we may need to do a sequel! Let me know what you think.)
For exit music this week, since I try to find something that fits the show’s theme, I decided to use Molly Hatchet’s tune from the 80s, “Flirtin’ With Disaster,” and it certainly fits!
We’re flirtin’ with disaster,
Ya’ll know what I mean
And the way we run our lives,
It makes no sense to meI’m travelin’ down that lonesome road
Feel like I’m dragging a heavy load
Yeah I’ve tried to turn my head away,
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“Chutzpah’ explodes in my mind as I listen to a fellow of The Left—you remember them—the LEFT that, minutes after the glass ceiling stayed up in the Javits Center, was party to and created and reveled in ‘The Resistance”. It was concocted before then as is now clearly shown in the Steele/Russiagate obscenity releases. The Left was Party TO an espionage adventure vs Candidate Trump and then POTUS elect Trump and then President Trump—and THEY still cannot accept that they lost. So they are projecting the next ‘what if’ and dragging in a Trump Admin which has shown NO inclination to destroy the Office of The Presidency NOR to thwart the peaceful transition of power— as they did— and now project that onto a ‘What-If Trump…?’…scenario.
The Left has no marker that tells them that they went too far…As has been noted, WF Buckley told the KKK/John Birch types to take a hike in the mid-1950s….there was no room for them in the Conservative/Republican Party. Clearly, given the encouragement of and tolerance for AntiFa and BLM, and pals, there are still no such markers on the Left.
(Shorthand? They still proudly wear their Che T-shirts….what does the MainStream Right in 2020 wear? MAGA hats.)
Agreed. I’ve listened to about 20 minutes of it. Where’s his condemnation of what the Obama administration did before and after the 2016 election. The abuse of FISA is just one of many examples. The CIA’s spying on Congress and the targeting of Flynn are other examples. He strikes me as being a particularly slimy leftist. There’s also the widespread attacks on Trump supporters. Nils can pretend to be a pious citizen worried about Trump may do. He should spend some time cleaning up the rot on his side first.
Steve and Nils assume that Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker of the House on January 20th, 2021.
Her term ends at noon on January 3rd, 2021. If members of the House know that who they elect as Speaker on January 3rd (or I’ve heard January 5th, which could be set by statute) will become the next Speaker, will they really vote Pelosi in?
Keep in mind that the Constitution does not require that the Speaker be a member of the House of Representatives. They could install anyone in that seat.
@Richard Easton I thought AG Barr put it perfectly tonight in an interview. What the Obamunists did before, during and after Trump(and I think The Donald has an awful persona!) was very much a ‘Doomsday Scenario’ in which the Party in power, aided and abetted overwhelmingly by a hyperpartisan MSM, worked assiduously to destroy a political opponent. Nothing less defines what they’ve done….I can see a scenario wherein the ultra-cautious Durham does not bring any indictments until said indictments are too late to affect the outcome. Not because of some nefarious motives on his part but simply because they are SO focused on the rule of law and will not move to indict until they are convinced they can get a Grand Jury to move and that they can prove their case beyond a shadow of a doubt.
It was cute when Nils was talking about transitions around the fifty minutes mark. He claims that Trump wouldn’t make it easy for a Biden administration to take over in January. Payback maybe? He says that Bush did a good job handing it off to Obama and Obama stayed out of the way. Did he forget the Office of the President-elect that Obama created, complete with a seal? As others have noticed, he has no mention of the abuses of Obama in 2016. Steve started to pushback but said it would take things astray and in his introduction said he likes to let his guests talk.
I listened again to the last 20 or so minutes just to give myself a refresher on how smarmy, smug and uninformed—yet certain—the liberal intelligentsia are. It’s 2020 and he still does not know that IF you want to GET THE $$ to pay for whatever floats the Left’s boat THE BIG BUCKS are in the HUGE middle class…tax the Adelsons and Koch brothers et al at 100% and you don’t pay for nearly enough.
As an addendum to my first Comment, read “How Democracies Die” by Levitsky and Zablatt and whenever they’re warning about what an authoritarian Trump is SURE to do, substitute what the Obamunists DID in fact do…
The OP promoting the podcast makes me wonder if Steven Hayward is’nt suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, or at least clientitis.
@Thatcher I’m available….if the Dems call on me I will accept.
@SteveHayward I love that you let your guests talk—but this time I do wish you had engaged him more directly. His broad-brushes got annoying so IF there is a next time, which is not necessary IMHO, I do hope you’ll challenge his declarative statements which HE means t be accepted as fact if not countered.
“Has anyone looked out the window and seen what having an ineffective government, federal government is doing to our country? Literally there are tens of thousands of people dying of the fact that we do not have an effective central government. In other countries, in every other country, with the possible exception of Brazil, they’re doing better than us, and it’s largely because their governments are more effective than ours.” — Nils, 50:45
Well now. If he’s talking about the Wuhan coronavirus, our deaths per capita figures are actually pretty good, and certainly better than most of Europe. If he’s talking about the mayhem in the streets, I can almost agree with him — except that the failure is at the local level, and the “solution” (absent responsibility in the Democrat-controlled cities) would be a federal government that oversteps its boundaries and imposes order. I don’t think he wants that any more than I do.
Your blinkered guest trots out the hackneyed tropes of the left. He talks about people taking to the streets in protest, mentions the Second Amendment protesters to demonstrate that “both sides” do it — but draws no distinction between the destruction of the radicals currently tearing our cities apart versus the law-abiding, pro-Constitutional order conservatives. Nor does he acknowledge that those who want to change our small-R republican procedures and customs — faithful electors, the electoral college itself, the size of the Supreme Court, the way in which we conduct elections, etc., etc., are overwhelmingly on the left, even has he frets that it is the right that will refuse to comply with our small-R republican procedure and customs when it comes election time.
If we need evidence of which faction in American politics is disinterested in a peaceful transition, perhaps we should, as he suggests, look out the window and see who is seeking to achieve a revolution through violence now, long before the election.
We may all live in a bubble, but all bubbles are not equal. The left is unhinged.
“there are 10s of thousands of people dying, because the government is ineffective…” For a second, I thought he was going to launch into the riots… but no he’s going onto COVID 1984… No the US government hasnt been worse for its response to the pandemic than other countries – look at Canada which donated tones of PPE to China – then found itself in shortage as the pandemic came here…. SO lets call BS on the effectiveness of government… IF there is one thing I dont want the government to be effective at is passing laws. I want the government to be careful considered and ineffectual in making new mandates that the peons will have to follow – under pains of long prison terms.
Reforms:
1) electoral collage… The electoral collage is vital for the United States to be a regionally diverse democracy. I propose awarding electoral votes by congressional district. So winning any state is worth 2 votes, plus whatever congressional districts you carry. This would instantly make every state a battleground state … The media should love this – as it would force political spending into the hinterlands every TV station and newspaper would get a major boost every 4 years.
2) The Senate. The senate has reversed itself. It no longer represents the people to the feds, but the feds to the people. It should go back to being appointed by the state governments, and serve at the pleasure of that government. It should be a balance for the state interests against the federal powers. They should become ambassadors from the states to the federal government.
3) The Supreme Court – Each circuit court should have a seat on the supreme court. Each circuit nominates its candidates to fill its seat, to be approved by the president, and then confirmed in the senate. I prefer a mandatory retirement age, over a term, as I can imagine a judge wondering what he’ll do after his term is expired. I dont want a judge to be seeking favor with future employers, like every other regulator in Washington DC. To your point, I can imagine 30 years from now Kavanaugh arguing cases with Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
4) police reforms – No knock warrants should go away (or should be very difficult to get) FISA needs to be reformed, SWAT teams and police militarization generally need to be curtailed. More cops should be out on foot in bad neighborhoods at night, even in teams of 6 – 8 walking down the streets, a teams few blocks apart. I like the example of the Texas commission on law enforcement, which tests every candidate for every law enforcement position, from bailiff, to detective, on constitutional rights and procedures. I think standards (state wide) for training are important.
Oh wanted to add this story about a test of mail voting:
I’m inalterably opposed to arbitrary retirement ages for anything. It should be considered a civil right with the same level as discrimination based on race.
Incredible that someone who supposedly is a scholar can so terribly misunderstand the purpose of the Electoral College, but looking at his picture explains it all in my opinion. Hipsters are so tiresome. And he really thinks parliamentarian governments function better? He must be thinking of Israel. And it’s simply false that the United States is doing “worse” than almost every other country in the world when it comes to the virus. Steve may be friends with this guy but he has just lost all credibility with this obvious idiocy. I’m done.