"We enter [Germany's] parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. We become members of the Reichstag in order to paralyze the Weimar sentiment with its own assistance. If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and per diem for the this ‘blockade’ (Barendienst), that is its own affair."

"We do not come as friend nor even as neutrals. we come as enemies: As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come on.” -–from Joseph Goebbels’ “Der Angriff” (the Attack), April 39, 1928

One more doozy from Goebbels: “We National Socialists never asserted that we represented a democratic point of view, but we have declared openly that we used democratic methods only in order to gain the power and that, after assuming the power, we would deny to our adversaries without any consideration the means which were granted to us in the times of opposition.”

Re 2000: "That event came down to a little over 500 Floridian votes for the Republican candidate, ..."

No Charles, it came down to a little over 500 more R votes than the D votes.

Someone brought up this point: Everything Trump does is to distract from what he is really doing. So what is Trump really doing while pretending to refuse to accept the election results?

As for voter fraud - the only fraud being uncovered is fraud committed by Republicans:

Postal Worker "Whistle-Blower" says he Made Up Evidence of Vote Tampering; paid 130k by GOP Donors

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/11/10/1994821/-Postal-Worker-Whistle-Blower-says-he-Made-Up-Evidence-of-Vote-Tampering-paid-130k-by-GOP-Donors

It’s a national murder-suicide: Tr666p is the bullet, the Republinazi Party is the gun.

It ain't voter fraud... It is Republican fraud. But am willing to give it a few more months... Darwin is coming baby

@3,

"Everything Trump does is to distract from what he is really doing. So what is Trump really doing while pretending to refuse to accept the election results?"

Getting his TV and/or radio shows ready. He'll never say he lost the election and he'll always say it was rigged and fraudulent. He's got lots of followers who want to hear that and advertisers know it. Donnie's been planning TrumpTV for a pretty long time now. I think he didn't expect to win in 2015 and was in it merely to run up an audience for a TV show.

Democrats beat their best of most popular candidate despite voter suppression, despite the inane electorate, despite biden being boring, despite the fact that presidents rarely lose reelections. Hopefully this is the writing on the wall for the GOP, that would explain why they're so delusional. trump must be remembered though, for that this can never again occur.

Republican ideology and the two-party system aren't going anywhere.
Right now they are the party of 'low taxes' and 'gin up the stock market at any cost'.
But they still have options on some old chestnuts they can trot out again when it suits them, such as 'law & order', 'deficit spending bad', 'defense spending good'.
Just because they appeared to have jettisoned those ideas over the past 4 years doesn't mean they have lost the copyright on them.
Imagine the Democrats trying to co-opt any of those issues, wouldn't work.
We have 'the environment', 'health care', 'education', 'labor protection', including 'wage growth'.
Can't imagine any Republicans pushing those issues, impossible.
Should be more potent issues for us, and yet Republicans have still made inroads into the labor vote.
So the two-party system and the Republican party ain't going nowhere, we're stuck with it.

@9, They also own the Supreme Court majority, with mostly middle age judges who'll be making horrid rulings against civil rights, voting rights, and in favor of corporate fascism for the next generation or so. They also have a media infrastructure ownership advantage, weaponizing widespread right wing talk radio, with Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and their clones preaching hatred against the left and the democratic party 24/7, massaging the minds of inane Americans, so many of whom lack critical thinking skills. We're going to have the live with the results of their wrath for a long time and overcoming them and their structural advantages will take a lot of dogged organizing and resistance, and won't happen by performative game playing on twitch or winning the intellectual argument on twitter and cable tv news.

Why so glum, Charles? LIberals and democracy have won a great victory. At this rate, the only bad thing is a risk of popcorn shortage:

'Meanwhile the President is staying behind closed doors, tweeting in wild block capital letters and unleashing a purge of the Pentagon's civilian leadership in what one current defense official called "dictator moves." [...] But the Trump team only dug itself deeper into a bizarre parallel universe -- one where the President has already secured a second term -- consistent with the embrace of misinformation and alternative facts that has characterized the last four years.' (https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/11/politics/donald-trump-joe-biden-transition/index.html)

Here's hoping on January 20th, the Secret Service drags him out and dumps him in Black Lives Matter plaza, where he'll be surrounded by citizens carrying "YOU'RE FIRED!" signs and eagerly burning MAGA hats.

Do they consider at all what "success" would look like? The kind of wrenching, violent chaos that would ensue if they somehow ratfucked their way to overturning the results? Do they care? The answer is, they don't. They are so hopelessly addicted to the lies, the bullshit, the half-truths, and above all the perception that the other side are, somehow, despite all tangible evidence, The Ones To Blame, that the fate of the nation is hardly an afterthought.

@3 - He is laying the groundwork for martial law. Sow enough doubt in the election, replace the military and intelligence folks with loyalists, announce military action to stop the election from being “stolen.”

The republicans will fall in line (just look at McConnell). So will 70 million white americans (many of them armed). It will come down entirely to how the military, police, and other power structures respond.

Most of us are comforting ourselves that the dems won. They haven’t yet (and won’t ever potentially). We’re being naive about who we are dealing with: people who just want to assert power. We’re too used to the system working, but a quarter of the country wants to opt out of that system.

It is a very dangerous moment. Either Biden is our Yeltsin, or we are all fucked.

@13: He's playing imaginary warlord, firing persons who either had already drafted letters of resignation, or who had expected to resign ahead of the incoming Biden administration. His efforts to claim fraud are rapidly collapsing into ridicule, and state-level Republicans are condemning him. He's already cost Georgia's two incumbent Republican senators their best re-election message ("A Republican-controlled senate will protect us from Biden-Harris and the House Democrats!") by demanding they reject the reality of his loss. McConnell will soon have to choose whether he wants to stand up to Trump, or risk becoming Minority Leader.

@14 - That pretend warlord is in fact commander in chief of the world’s largest military and just fired a defense secretary for suggesting he can’t deploy said military on domestic soil. That same commander in chief used federal officers to do extrajudicial detentions on the streets of an american cIty. That commander in chief has convinced 70% of republicans that the election wasn’t “free and fair.”

We aren’t out of the woods yet.

@13: Quite possible, but less so plausible or probable.

@15 That's true to an extent. I have no doubt the new acting Secretary of Defense would order troops to keep Trump in office. I also believe that the generals in charge learned enough from the Battle of Lafayette Square that they won't actually follow those orders.

@17 - The fact that Lafayette Square happened at all goes to show that people are conditioned to follow orders. If the person giving the orders lacks circumspection or compunction, they can cause a lot of damage. How much? Hopefully we don’t find out.

I'm inclined to think the hyperventilating about Trump's refusal to concede might be a bit overblown. He is just looking more pathetic and crackpot every day. I'm also holding out hope that I get to see him dragged out of the White House in a similar manner to how Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, although for sure it would take more than one Secret Service agent per limb.

@18 And Gen Milley apologized afterwards for having been there and using active duty troops. He made that apology at the commencement ceremony for the National Defense University, saying to the class that the military should not get involved in domestic politics.

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/11/875311214/gen-mark-milley-apologizes-for-appearing-in-a-photo-op-with-president-trump

@20 - oh good, he apologized. my main concern was that the military deployed against US citizens on US soil and didn’t feel bad about it afterwards. So relieved to know i neednt worry - they have the feelz. Whew.

(I hope youre right. I really do. I hope when he gives the order to seize the Pennsylvania capitol that the military recognizes the illegality of the order PROSPECTIVELY. Of course, they will have to mutiny by refusing a command, so either way, Trump wins. He either gets martial law or he can keep selling his supporters on a narrative of the country falling apart with him as a brave freedom fighter.)