Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
JohnMakin | on: Trump wins presidency for second time
It's not, but, you have to ask a question - if democrats believe this, and this is the correct messaging, why did they do practically nothing to prevent things like this from becoming a reality? Or even propose a plan going forward as to how to prevent this again? Nothing came of Jan 6, nothing came of any of this, no matter who won, and it was very obvious that the plan was just "well as long as we're in power we won't slide into authoritarianism," but even if it wasn't Trump, eventually someone else is going to come along and beat them and begin wherever Trump left off.

It's not very good messaging at its core. You can't say something is an existential crisis, and then spend 4 years doing absolutely nothing about that crisis other than to say "vote for me again so that won't happen this time."

mtswish | parent | next
They impeached him. Counter to Republican's rhetoric, the Democrats can't force the DOJ to press charges in a timely manner, but the DOJ eventually also pursued charges. So they attempted to fix this with:

1. Impeachment 2. Congressional Acts 3. Independent action from the Department of Justice 4. Individual states attempted to get him off their ballots for treason

How about you describe what they should have done?

hipadev23 | parent | next
> why did they do practically nothing to prevent things like this from becoming a reality

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/22/1139951463/electoral-count-ac...

JohnMakin | root | parent
This is like using a squirt gun in a forest fire. A meaningless change to a meaningless procedural "loophole" that had no chance of working whatsoever.
aredox | parent | next
They have tried to do things, but they are not omnipotent and the House was under GOP majority.
klipt | parent
> why did they do practically nothing to prevent things like this from becoming a reality?

You mean like passing "The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022"? That was literally written to support democracy and prevent another Jan 6.

Obviously you can't write legislation to stop Trump winning democratically while still supporting democracy.

Dems have at least shown they're the party of supporting real democracy.