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Learning From What Didn't Work Everywhere Else; Questions for Elected Democrats [1]

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Date: 2025-07-12

I was recently talking to the leader of the Democratic Party in my state’s legislature. She had called me to solicit a donation. I told her I had one thing to ask her, which was that if Trump (or some designated successor) lost and pulled a 2020 and basically overturned the election results, what, as a state leader, would she do? What would she advocate as a response?

If Trump ordered the ballots impounded in a key jurisdiction to flip the state to him, would she tell the governor to call out the National Guard to keep federal agents away from the ballots? If Trump stole an election, would she support withholding state tax dollars from the federal government? And a few other questions like this, questions about how to fight rather than accept the entrenching of a dictatorship pretending to be a democracy.

And she said, “Oh Lord,” and that was as much of an answer as I got.

It was a bit disappointing, because I don’t think she’d even thought about those questions, or that anybody had asked them. And that’s what I see missing from our national discussion right now, among a lot of missing things.

And what I want to do here is, as I’ve said, move the Overton window for the pro-democracy, pro-freedom, pro-rule of law side of the discussion. Maybe, just maybe, it incentivizes MAGA not to do their worst so they can keep dealing with Granpa Chuck Schumer rather than the alternatives that could be on the table. Because behind every successful peaceful movement, there’s the implicit question of doing it the easy way or the hard way.

Look, competing in elections and building a pro-democracy electoral majority is important, it’s critical, but it’s not enough. The regime isn’t leaving just because it loses an election, it already demonstrated that. So stopping the conversation at a strategy for winning the next election seems to be planning to fail and accepting we’ll be living in a dictatorship for the foreseeable future. We have to ask, what do we do when they refuse to leave? We never really had a discussion about what we should have done if Trump’s coup had somehow worked in 2020, and that is overdue.

So what do we do when peaceful political change is no longer an option? What do we do when elections aren’t free and fair? What do we do when there is no peaceful electoral way to get Trump or some designated successor out of the White House?



Trump and the MAGA fascists have made it easy for us, because unlike in some other countries where there’s more effort to disguise the reality of dictatorship, Trump has been clear since 2016 he won’t give up power peacefully, much as you would expect from a mobster. You give the White House to Michael Corleone or Tony Soprano, he’s not giving it back just because he lost an election.

And in 2020 he showed he meant it. And this is now officially the position of the Republican Party (and unlike in 2020 everybody knows what they’re supposed to do to steal), and with a compliant DoJ and loyalist lickspittles all throughout the government, it will work in the absence of radical resistance.

I can tell you what kind of resistance doesn’t work, which is continuing conventional politics as normal. That’s been tried in Hungary, and Venezuela, and Turkey, and Russia, and it didn’t work. MAGA is incredibly explicit Hungary is their model. Why would we expect a different outcome here? (Although in truth, MAGA is far more radical and violent than Orban has ever been, so I think things here will be a lot worse than in Hungary, which has still become the poorest nation in Europe, so quite a model for them to aspire to.)

After the Venezuelan economy had been wrecked and the idea the country was a democracy was dead and rotten in the grave, the Washington Post ran an editorial, finally, finally, in 2024 (almost three decades into the regime) after the most recent “election” and acknowledged politics as usual wasn’t working and observed a new approach was needed.

But the Post obviously was too frightened to try and answer its own question and simply left the question hanging.

Are we going to have to wait out almost 30 years of tyranny and kleptocratic misrule, probably with an economic collapse and hyperinflation (again see Venezuela), before our “thought leaders” and elected officials even begin to recognize the problem? (I’d argue based on Trump’s demonstrated unwillingness to permit a peaceful transfer of power, his lawless actions, and his illegal candidacy as an insurrectionist, we’re living in a dictatorship already and a legitimate US government ceased to exist on January 20, 2025, but that’s a separate conversation.)

So I’m suggesting we start the conversation of asking what happens with a stolen election? What is the response? If we expect people to try and protest, do we have strike funds? Have we organized something as simple as babysitting in advance so people can go on the streets and stay there for weeks, if necessary? Are we stockpiling respirators? Have we started talking about this and preparing people psychologically for the sacrifices they’ll need to make? (Actually, what do we do if Trump is running illegally in 2028? Yes, he’ll get his pets on SCOTUS to say it’s above board, but we all know it’s illegal no matter what a few lying robed goons who’ve forfeited any legitimacy say, so do we just act like it’s a normal election?)

And have we defined in advance what a free and fair election really is, and what we do if it isn’t? Because an election that isn’t free and fair doesn’t grant the consent of the governed and doesn’t have democratic legitimacy. If ActBlue is shut down is it a free and fair election? If the Democratic candidate is arrested is it a free and fair election? Could we have a free and fair election today, with an intimidated media and opposition politicians afraid of being arrested? With the DoJ going after Trump’s enemies? The chilling effect is already real, and even if people don’t want to acknowledge they’re intimidated, we know they are.

Rather than splitting hairs, if it’s bad enough we have to debate if our elections are free and fair, I’d argue with an avowed tyrant in the White House, if we even have to debate it, it’s safe to say they’re not free and fair. Cutting the fascists the benefit of the doubt is not a policy that will serve us well, and again, it didn’t work everywhere else this has happened.

To me, the most dangerous thing, the most dangerous scenario, and again this is based on looking at other countries, is when everything is technically “legal,” and the dictator is winning elections that look real but aren’t. They’re not free and fair, but the opposition is afraid to draw the necessary conclusions so they just agree to go on losing. Maybe they win some local offices, but the Boss runs the country and that won’t change for decades.

We need to identify in advance what invalidates the election because if we don’t, people will keep shifting those goalposts to avoid acknowledging that we’re not living in a democracy anymore. They’ll keep hiding from a truth they don’t want to face. The corporate media and even many Democratic politicians would be happy living in the charade; their objective is stability above all and enjoying the gravy train they’re already a part of.

If keeping their perks means serving as window dressing on a dictatorship, like a necklace on a pig, then there will be many happy to play that role, you can count on that. These people are not heroes, and they are pretty clear about it as long as they get to be anonymous. In wars, you find out quickly there are good peacetime officers and good wartime officers, and they usually are not the same. Right now we have a lot of peacetime politicians and we need wartime politicians.

So we’re going to have to force them to confront the things I’m talking about right now, and the ones who won’t, they have to go. Once again, we’re going to have to take hold of our future in our own hands and save ourselves.

So what do we do if elections aren’t free and fair? What steps do we take if we’re living under an oppressive regime?

If we want people to respond to us, we have to make it clear we’re willing to rock the boat, one way or another. If there’s no consent of the governed, there’s no representation, and there’s no taxation without representation...so dodge as much in federal taxes as you can get away with. You owe them nothing and you certainly don’t have to subsidize your own oppression. Morally you’re in the clear, and honestly if you’re choosing to financially support a tyranny if you don’t have to...you probably shouldn’t. Yes, there will be parts of the government that we still want to do their jobs, but it’s all or nothing, we don’t get to choose what gets funded. That’s why it’s essential to get democracy back, so we can have nice things again.

If we have to dust off the question of states’ rights, and use it for freedom instead of tyranny this time, well, what’s the big deal? Peaceful transfers of power were a big tradition up until the Republicans decided they weren’t anymore in 2020. They’re reopening legal and constitutional debates people said were settled long ago. Why can’t we do the same?Gavin Newsom raised the idea of withholding federal tax dollars and I think it’s a great idea. The Trump states all depend on transfers from blue states, so to use their own idea, starve the beast. No more milk for parasitic fascists who want handouts from everyone else while strutting around denouncing everyone else for being lazy. We live in a federal system for a reason, which is to make it hard for a tyrannical central government to compel obedience everywhere.

What duties or obligations, if any, do we owe to a tyrant state, if we can elude its coercive power? If the social compact is destroyed and the consent of the governed a memory, are we morally obliged to follow any rule or law at odds with our own conscience?

I don’t have all the answers and I’m not trying to address every question, or pretend I can answer every question, or would have the right answer if I did. But I’m just trying to do whatever small things I can to push this conversation in the direction it needs to go. So ask your elected officials and the so-called Wise some of these questions and keep asking until they answer. When is an election not free and fair? What do we if that’s the case? And compliance is not an acceptable answer.

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