Bilal Barakat 🍉 (@[email protected])

Critical distinction that even if the US *mid-term* elections happen, that has no bearing on the whether the *presidential* elections effectively won’t. «Yet Republican leadership seems to assume they have the capability to decide Presidential elections in perpetuity, regardless of how people vote. This doesn’t apply to the 2026 mid-terms, but they do not matter anyway: SCOTUS has largely allowed the executive branch to bypass Congress, nor will the executive branch cooperate with a democratic Congress, and all the mechanisms to enforce actions by Congress are controlled by the executive branch anyway, such as the Department of Justice. At this point, the only election that matters is for President, and the results are already being determined by the incumbent party. ... The path for a Democrat to be sworn in on 20 January 2029 is so narrow that I deem it to be nearly impossible, and so should leaders within the Democratic party. … To summarise, here is what must happen: - A Democrat who can win has to make it to election day outside of federal custody - A Democrat must overcome attempts to suppress votes, and win the electoral college - They must overcome potential skullduggery by Dominion to manipulate vote counts - They must prevent local and state officials from refusing to certify the election - They must get SCOTUS to prevent ALL attempts to overturn election results - They may have to overcome another fake electors scheme - They must control the House of Representatives, despite all of the election challenges above (gerrymandering, end of the VRA, Dominion, polling place intimidation, fights over mail-in voting, etc…) - They must get the House of Representatives sworn in and seated by January 6th. - They must get the Vice President (presumably JD Vance) to certify the election - They will likely have to get Republican Senators to defy the administration at great personal risk to vote to certify the election - They must avoid or prevent Trump from using law enforcement, the military, or the mob to prevent Congress from certifying the election results - They must successfully get the Democratic nominee sworn in despite whatever efforts Trump and the GOP use to prevent it from occurring. If any one of those things doesn’t happen, then a Republican ends up President regardless of how people voted.»