More important cliffs to the Unicorn story is that anyone who acts like the rioters were flexing enough power to overthrow America is just being dumb.

The goal was simply to stop the Count and Certification process of the Electoral Collage votes and thus create a Constitutional crisis, where not even the Supreme Court would have jurisdiction on how to fix it.

And anyone who did not see how 1k protesters inside the Capital came a hairs breath away from accomplishing that, is gaslighting and in denial.

it was about 12 people who managed to upset a count in Bush V Gore and force that situation from completing the count to one decided by the SC and Al Gore accepting that defeat when technically he could have fought on and denied that result.




So while no one can say for sure how it would have played out, had the rioters prevented the count from being completed, you, bahbah, cannot laugh away the possibility that it could have caused a Trump win. A belief Trump and his teams felt confident it could.

Sometimes I wonder how the guy who encouraged Ashley Babbit to climb through that window is doing today.

By December, the chances that Biden would not be inaugurated as the next president were quite low, at least in my opinion. But that observation really, really misses the point, I'm sure deliberately.

The events of January 6 were a product who was in the White House. The president of the United States and some of the people around him (not all of them, but many of them) were willing to do anything in their power to resist the legitimate results of a democratic vote. There were no limits. They were willing to undermine the most important features of a functioning democracy -- public confidence in the fairness of elections and the cooperative and peaceful transfer of power -- in order to keep Trump in office. That is profoundly alarming.

They were unsuccessful, but they taught like-minded people an important lesson. If you want to successfully abrogate democracy in the United States, you need to do it earlier in the election process than weeks after the election, and you need to do it further upstream. Efforts to improve on the bungling efforts of Trump and Giuliani are well underway. That is also profoundly alarming.

What if they had simply had the VP on board?

Assume a modicum of competence as well.

My guess is that it wouldn't have mattered in the long run, although I acknowledge that the path would have been murkier. FWIW, I don't think that Pence ever seriously considered doing what Trump requested. He knew that it would put him near the top of a very short list of the most reviled politicians in U.S. history. And from a purely personal perspective, there wasn't much upside for him. What is the ephemeral gratitude of Donald Trump really worth?

It is a bit scary to think that dems took the first step in this process by banding together to claim trump wasn't a legitimate winner of the election and then the next election when trump lost he did the same thing dems did + took it a step further. Thank God that repubs didn't band together, like dems did 4 years earlier, and actually follow through with what the dems started back then.

Just to be clear, you are talking about the election in which Hillary conceded almost immediately, right?

I get temp banned for not having enough "content" in my posts while this ugly clown gets to repeat his childish, ridiculous lies over and over again...

Why do you feel that way though?

IF Bush V Gore taught us anything it is if a count can be interrupted or stopped, in such a way that it does not get completed before the Constitutional certification deadlines, even the SC might say 'sucks to be you Al Gore as the count SHOULD have continued but we are now out of time so we rule to certify as is without consideration for the remainder of the count'.


That is exactly what Trump was counting on again. That if Pence or the mob could prevent the Count from completing before the certification deadline one of a few things then would happen.

- they would argue, just like with Gore V Bush that the count cannot complete post deadline via the Constitution
- they would argue that the COnstitution does have a remedy for this. A Contingent Election.
- they would hope the SC ruled in their favour but if not...
- they would argue there is a separation of Powers issue and the SC has no role or authority to act here and this has to be settled by Congress following the Constitution.



The Constitution only has one method for settling an election that could not (for whatever reason) get settled via the Electoral Process count getting certified to indicate a winner and that is the COntingent Election.

What authority would anyone else have to tell Trump, the current POTUS, that we are going to ignore the COnstitution and do 'X' instead? And why would Trump accede to that?

I suspect that the SCOTUS would have ruled that Pence lacked the authority under the Electoral Count Act to do what he was trying to do. Even if the opinion wasn't a thing of beauty, I don't think there would have been five justices who would have been willing to be bystanders to the end of American democracy.

I dont like pence's views in mosr areas but I give him credit for having principles on this rather than having done some calculation

It doesn't have to be one or the other. My point is he certainly wasn't willing to do the wrong thing for the dubious reward of Trump's gratitude.

Ok. but that ruling almost certainly would have come after the certification deadline.

So we have a Constitutional required but missed deadline. Something the Constitution contemplates could happen from time to time, and does not spell out how or why it might happen but they give the only Constitutional remedy to deal with a missed deadline...



Is your view that the Supreme Court would say 'notwithstanding the Constitution and the only laid out path to deal with this, we the Supreme Court are going to provide a second path...'???

Or do you think the SC would call Trump and Co for their shenanigans, but then defer to the Constitution for the only available remedy?

BTW a version of that happened in Bush V Gore as I recall, where they ruled the votes should be counted (Gore won on that point) but they determined there was not enough time before the deadline so it had to be certified 'as is'. Sucks to be Al Gore, right but out of time.

I suspect that you would see an opinion that said the Framers did not create the deadline as a way to allow the VP to game the system, and the Court will not allow the Constitution or the Electoral Count Act to be used in a way that frustrates the obvious intent of both documents.

Fair enough

And yet they did in Bush V Gore.

The SC called for the vote to be halted while they adjudicated the matter of whether they should be counted or not.

They then determined they should be counted, as per Gore's request but said 'Oops, sorry there is not time, so we will have to certify as is and Bush wins'.

Instead they could have said 'while we adjudicate the matter we will allow the count to continue, just in case, and if we rule against, that count will not be disclosed or be used'.


The SC deliberately took a path that even if Gore won, he would still lose, when they had a fair option not to.

But I still find your opinion strange on this.

Which Justice do you see standing up and saying 'We have a Constitutional process to remedy this but we just don't think the Constitution applies in this case because... So we are going to create a new process here and here it is...'

The Bush v. Gore decision is very complicated. I don't have time to draft a lengthy post explaining it, but it isn't nearly as analogous as you are suggesting, certainly not analogous enough for the Court to feel that its hands were tied by the logic of that decision.

In addition, whatever you think about Bush v. Gore, it didn't end democracy in the United States. The decision you are contemplating would have. That's a heavy finger on the scale of justice. You should read Michael Luttig's comments on Eastman's memo. Luttig advised Pence on the Eastman memo. Luttig is an arch conservative who sat on the DC Circuit forever. His name often was bandied as a SCOTUS candidate. He acknowledged that Pence could have precipitated a constitutional crisis, but it's also clear to me that if Luttig had been on the Court, there is simply no way that he ever would have signed an opinion that ended democracy.

If you can link me to anything by Luttig I would love to read it.

I've mentioned before that listening to legal podcasts is one of my big walking pleasures. I have listened to all sorts of legal discussions on Bush V Gore and there is a very strong belief Al Gore had every right to refuse the Supreme Court and tell them Separation of Powers and they have no place in the process and pushed the country into a Constitutional Crisis. He decided not to do so, in part because he would look terrible not just fighting Bush and his position but also then defying the SC and needing to diminish them to then stand his ground.

This is a good summary of Luttig's views. I don't think he was particularly worried about the outcome by the time we got to January 6. By then, the Court had declined to take up the independent state legislature doctrine. But as you can see, he he definitely sees a lot of risk going forward.

I misspoke when I said he was on the D.C. Circuit for years. He was on the 4th Circuit.

Funny, I don't remember Biden or Obama saying they just wouldn't leave the White House if Trump won. And I certainly don't remember either of them (or Hilary) giving a big speech at the White House on the day of election certification and encouraging the crowd to storm the Capitol.

The SC did give an opinion that ended democracy for one of the presidential elections. They continue to have the power to overrule the democratic process whenever they desire. That ended democracy in the US in my opinion anyway.

I struggle to see the path Rococo sees for the Supreme Court to address the wrongs of a Trump Constitutional crisis.

It is entirely possible for the SC to say or think what the Jan6 rioters did was wrong and terrible and should not happen and yet recognize it did and then look to the Constitution for a remedy.

It is entire possible for the SC to say while we think that Certification process SHOULD HAVE been completed by the drop time, it was not and the Constitution only outline one remedy for that. That remedy makes no mention that it is only supposed to be used in certain instances but not others, and in areas of fraud or even SC offense to actions taken, that remedy is to be put aside and the SC, in its sole discretion is to put aside that Constitutional delineated remedy and instead just pick another process they deem that would arrive at the right outcome. And then for the SC to do so in defiance of the Constitutions with no authority behind it.

I think instead the SC would say, 'what was done was terrible and wrong BUT we have a Constitutional process, that was deliberately set out by the Founders to address this, and we will throw this to a Contingent Election giving the Congress people in the House the ability to do their job and rectify this as the separation of power demands'. I even think the SC Justice might throw out a facile comment like 'just because the GOP has an edge in the House, we cannot assume they will not consider what took place and vote based on what is correct and not just partisan'.

This SC has recently looked at cases (I think it was a Alabama gerrymandering case) and over ruled the State Supreme court that had ruled a prior map must be used in an election there that was approaching, because the map was so badly gerrymandered that the Black voters who by proportion should have a chance at their voting mattering in about 3 seats, had been reduced to 1 seat. The Federal SC recognized what they State Supreme court had said as correct and that this new map was wrong, but still went out of their way to find a reason to accept it, saying a change of Map now, so close to election would cause confusion. The new maps should be instituted AFTER the election. So give the GOP all the power first and fix it after when the GOP has all the power and will just find other ways to achieve the same thing. The interesting thing is that the "confusion" would be more by implementing the new map and requiring all the voters to now figure out where to vote instead of sticking to the old map, where they knew. So the SC used completely empty reasoning to stretch to ensure the GOP has a massive advantage to increase control of the State legislature.

There have been about 5 cases re GOP State legislature abuse they have heard and they always seem to find a way to rule in favour of the abuse citing some prior norm or legal necessity to do so, often in opposition to a ruling they made in another case. They just flip the reasoning.

So even though I think Trump's Jan6th insurrection, had it been successful would be a test for and SC, I think this specific SC would have taken the easy path and sided with the Constitution and pushing it to a Contingent Election.

I think you may have misunderstood what I said because of all of the echos in this echo chamber. The next time you have a few hours to waste google or YouTube dems saying trump is an illegitimate president. Biden, Hillary, Kamala, pelosi and the lost goes on of who jumped into the action of trying to convince people trump was illegitimate.

Trump did exactly what a huge % of dems did to him. I would argue their actions were worse since when 20+ politicians say the same thing even normal people believe them, but when one guy makes such a claim only the crazies believe him.

Baham , why dem says trump was illegitimate?
There is a distinction between not liking a president and denying an election result, not accepting democratic process.

For your last paragraph, both side are the same .
U hear many crazies on republicans side too .