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Election Postmortem #1: Where’s the Civil War?

November 8, 2024
by Peter Feinman
America's Third Civil War (The Atlantic)

This post in the first in a series of posts analyzing the results of the 2024 Presidential Election. I am starting with something that as of November 8, 2024, does not appear to have happened. To the best of knowledge there is no civil war at this time. In fact the country seems remarkably peaceful with no carnage in sight.

Let’s start by reviewing what did not happen. I will focus on articles and issues from The Atlantic which I have been patiently saving for this moment. I have lots of articles fully highlighted in yellow that I expected to serve as the basis for many blogs to come. I intended to review those articles and compare them to what was happening in Earth 1. Now it appears as if these well-meaning articles are the ones from Earth 2 and I have to decide whether to save them for posterity or to recycle them.

HOW TO STOP A CIVIL WAR

“How to Stop a Civil War” was the title on the cover of the December 2019 issue, just about five years ago. Editor Jeffrey Goldberg opened the issue with some comments by me from “America’s Third Civil War: An Update” (December 13, 2020)

A NATION COMING APART BY JEFFREY GOLDBERG

Goldberg tactfully opens his “Editor’s Note” with:

The 45th president of the United States of America is uniquely unfit for the office and poses a multifaceted threat to our country’s democratic institutions.

Truer words were never written, but I suspect they understate the problem. I doubt that Goldberg anticipated a frontal assault on the democratic process including an attempted coup to steal the election with the support of the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives and 125 accomplices. To imagine an attempted coup by this particular President requires no stretch of the imagination. To see how widespread the support was and is would have been unimaginable. These 126 traitors are from the present House of Representatives. It is quite likely that in the new House where the Democrats will have only the slimmest of margins, that the number of representatives who support the President in-exile will be even greater. There is no margin of error.

Goldberg went on to write:

The structural failures in our democratic system that allowed a grifter into the White House in the first place⸺this might be our greatest challenge.

I strongly doubt that Goldberg anticipated that the con artist only needed to ask for money to receive over $200 million from his Trumpican base. That is an astonishing achievement in the history of scam annals. He has perfected the ability to raise enormous sums of money in small amounts without having to fleece few bigtime marks.

Finally, Goldberg announced as the editor, the purpose for the special issue.

Out of our conversations, and others like it, emerged the idea for the special issue you are now reading, what we have called “How to Stop a Civil War.” … (W)e worry that the ties that bind us are fraying at alarming speed ⸺ we are becoming contemptuous of each other in ways that are both dire and possibly irreversible.

If these words reflect Goldberg’s assessment of the situation in December 2019, then one can only imagine what he must think in December 2020. For now the coup to steal the election temporarily has been stopped by the Supreme Court. One should expect the final stand where the last ditch effort to overturn the election will be undertaken will be when the new House convenes to ratify the vote of the Electoral College. He still thinks he can overturn the election and has roughly 126 people who will help him. The fat lady still hasn’t sung yet.

REMAINING ARTICLES

This issue and my comments above were written prior to the peaceful political discourse on January 6 by patriots who deserve to be pardoned because the election was stolen. The articles in order of appearance in the “How to Stop a Civil War” issue consists of a series of dispatches, a nice military term to convey the war atmosphere.

Opening Argument: When Trump Goes – Somehow, sometime, he will leave office. Will our politics get better or worse? By David Frum.

Sketch: The Secessionist – Daniel Miller, the leader of the Texas Nationalist Movement, wants to divorce the state from the union once and for all. By Graeme Wood.

Part 1 On the forces that Pull Us Apart

“How America Ends: A Tectonic Demographic Shift is Under Way. Can the Country Hold Together,” by Yoni Appelbaum

“Left Behind: The Real Roots of the Urban/Rural Divide,” by Tara Westover in conversation with Jeffrey Goldberg.

“Why It Feels Like Everything Is Going Haywire: Social Media Rapidly Changed How We Communicate, in Ways the Destabilize Democracy: What Can We Do about That?” by Jonathan Haidt and Tobias Rose-Stockwell.

Too Much Democracy Is bad for Democracy: The Major Parties Have Ceded Unprecedented Power of Primary Voters. It’s a Radical Experiment – and It’s Failing,” by Jonathan Rauch and Ray La Raja.

Part 2 Appeals to Our Better Nature  

“The Things We Can’t Face: What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk about Abortion,” by Caitlin Flanagan.

“What Would Mister Rogers Do?: I First Met Him 21 Years Ago, and Now Our Friendship Is the Subject of a new Movie. He’s never been More Revered — or More Misunderstood” by Tom Junod.

“Can this Marriage Be Saved? Applying the Techniques of Couples Counseling to Bring Reds and Blues Back Together Again,” by Andrew Ferguson.

Part 3 Reconciliation and Its Alternatives

“The Road from Serfdom: How Americans Can Become Citizens Again,” by Danielle Allen.

“The Enemy Within: Have We Taught Our Children the Principles of this Democracy Must Live By? Do We Even Remember those Principles Ourselves? by James Mattis.

“Against Reconciliation: The Gravest Danger to American Democracy Isn’t an Excess of Vitriol — It’s the False Promise of Civility,” by Adam Server.

There is much food for thought in these articles. I used a lot of yellow highlighter when reading them. A glance at these pre-January 6, pre abortion ruling, pre “the enemy within” suggests how easy it would be a write of series of blogs just dedicated to the articles in The Atlantic from nearly five years ago. They would provide an update now that the battle is engaged. However, the battle is not engaged.

GEORGE PACKER

George Packer contributed two articles in The Atlantic relevant to this issue.

“The Four Americas: Competing Visions of the Country’s Purpose and Meaning Are Tearing It Apart. Is Reconciliation Possible? (July/August 2021)

“Imagine the Worst: How to Head off the Next Insurrection,” (January/February 2022) the anniversary of the January 6 insurrection.

BARTON GELLMAN  

In the same anniversary issue, Barton Gellman wrote a piece which garnered widespread notice among the chattering class:

“January 6 Was Practice: Donald Trump Is Better Position to subvert an Election Now that He Was in 2020.”

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE

Way back on President’s Day in 2023, acclaimed scholar Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that we need a divorce. The time had come to separate red states from blue. “From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last polices, we are done.”

Peter Wehner responded on February 21, 2023, in an on-line piece in The Atlantic.

David French responded “Take Threats of ‘National Divorce’ Seriously,” (NYT March 6, 2023, print).

So now I have this folder of articles clamoring for attention. It should be possible to write more than a dozen blogs on the subjects of the looming Civil War and/or the divorce. Yet what would be the point? One concern, of course, is taking seriously these people as prognosticators. Perhaps authors should have their articles accompanied by a batting average.

But the topic now is a postmortem on the recent presidential election. At this point I don’t have time to be distracted. There are a plethora of blogs to be written about the election. This is only the first one.

New York Times Magazine, November 10, 2019, by Paul Sahre

Stop the Coup! Save the Country!: Divide Georgia into Two States Now!

December 7, 2021
by Peter Feinman
Stop the coup: divide and conquer (http://www.bandersnatch.com/bajaz.htm)

To save America, divide Georgia into two states now. Time is running out. In December, 2019, Atlantic had a cover about the looming civil war. America’s Third Civil War has been a subject of multiple blogs here along with my concerns about our celebrating the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution as a single country.

Last December, I started to do an update on the Atlantic issue now that the election had been held (America’s Third Civil War: An Update). Of course, I did not know that January 6 was about to happen. The more we learn the more we see how close the Hitman’s assault on America to steal the election and overthrow the Constitution was to succeeding.

THE 2024 COUP IS UNDERWAY

According to the latest revelation from the soon-to-be published book by Mark Meadows, there should have been no need for January 6: the Supreme Court with “his” justices were going to make him President courtesy of the Texas lawsuit. That failure hit the Loser hard. Time was slipping away. As these pieces of the emotional state of mind of the Hitman are disclosed we get a better sense of what was occurring – now he thought the Vice President would be his Supreme Court and make him President, he had exhausted all other options. He really believed Pence had the power to make him President again. This goes to his own state of ignorance as well as the quality of his advisors in his final days as President.

People tend to take for granted that if the Hitman had been successful in his attempt to steal the election that the rest of the country simply would have accepted the results. The Hitman isn’t the only one who can rally people to the nation’s capital. People opposed to him can fill the streets there and throughout the country as well. And now they have a license to form Rittenhouse brigades.

One should not automatically assume that success is seizing the Capital equates to control of the control. To dominate America will require a lot more than it did to dominate Lafayette Square.

STATES ARE THE KEY 

Now we are at the two year anniversary of the Atlantic Civil War issue. Suddenly the magazine dropped another bombshell – “Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun” by Barton Gellman. By the time I receive my print copy of Atlantic, the online version will be old news. What Gellman has done is to document how the failure to succeed in the 2020 presidential election is serving as unexpected preparation for the assault in 2024. Now he does not need the Supreme Court, will not have the Vice President, and will not need a mob to invade the Capital. He can steal the election legally by controlling the voting infrastructure at the state level.

Gellman has done us a service in showing that the path to power is through the states. This isn’t like Germany seizing Paris and therefore controlling the country. Trumpican governors know that they may have to use local forces to secure their states in 2024/2025 in the name of their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name, Say Hallelujah.

A review of the specific mechanisms whereby the coup be affected are well known. The longstanding gerrymandering is only the tip of the iceberg. The voter suppression efforts underway since the 2020 election and still being pursued also are quite familiar. We have seen brave Republicans (not Trumpicans) in Michigan and Georgia fulfill their oaths to the Constitution and to the law only to face the wrath of the Trumpicans. Some have lost their jobs. Some are being primaried. Some have just had enough.

The Trumpican seizure of the voting infrastructure reflects a comprehensive systematic nationwide effort to make it legal so Joe Biden cannot win no matter what. This effort includes:

1. Gerrymandering
2. Voter suppression
3. Rigged voter counts and certification
4. Legislative appointment of electors.

However, it also presumes that the Vice President will convene a meeting on January 6, 2025, to certify the vote even with dual slates of electors, contested votes, and all these manipulations.

GEORGIA ON MY MIND

In the last few days, the implementation of the plan to steal the election has become public in the actions in Georgia. The double battle between Trumpican and Republican for the nomination and the showdown between the winner of that confrontation with Stacey Abrams highlights that states are the key.

The challenge for Democrats is to devise a strategy to counter the coup plan detailed in the Gellman article. Since states are the key, the countermove is quite straightforward – create more of them in a way that undermines the Trumpican strategy.

Imagine now, if Georgia were to follow in the footsteps of West Virginia/Virginia from the second Civil War. Suppose Georgia divided into Confederate Georgia and Union Georgia for the 2024 elections – what would it mean for the Hitman’s attempt to steal the election?

Governor – Stacey Abrams would be the Union Georgia Governor and either Brian Kemp or David Purdue would be the Confederate Georgia Governor.

Senate – Confederate Georgia would have two Trumpican Senators and Union Georgia would have two Democratic Senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, for a pickup of two for McConnell.

House – Confederate and Union Georgia would split the 14 Representatives 50:50 based on the close voting in the 2020 elections. The present configuration of 8 Confederates and 6 Union would shift to 7:7 for a net gain of one for Pelosi.

Electoral College – Trump would win Confederate Georgia for 9 votes versus none in 2020 and Biden would win Union Georgia for 9 notes versus 16 in 2020 for a loss of 7.

Of course the results would differ in the divided Florida, Texas, Alabama and elsewhere in the Confederacy to the advantage of the Democrats in the House, the Senate, and the Electoral College.

At the state level, Confederate Georgia would be governed by Confederates and Union Georgia would be governed by Unionists. Neither state legislature would have any say over the actions of the other one This change means that gerrymandering, voter suppression, rigged voter counts, rigged certification, legislative-appointed electors would be irrelevant and not exist. ALL THE TECHNIQUES DETAILED BY GELLMAN ON HOW TRUMPICANS WILL STEAL THE ELECTION WILL BE RENDERED MOOT IF THE STATES DIVIDE INTO THEIR CONFEDERATE AND UNION COMPONENTS.

In the battle for the elections so far the Democrats have brought a plastic knife to an AK-15 gun fight. If the Democrats wait until after the 2024 presidential election to realize there is a problem, they will have waited too long. The states beyond a shadow of a doubt are the arena where the battle for 2024 is being fought right now (just as where the abortion battle is). And the states are where the Trumpican plan to seize control of the electoral process can be thwarted. Forget about Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. for now. Think about Union Georgia, Union Florida, and Union Texas instead.  This time when the South rises again, it will be a Union one.

 

P.S. Don’t Mark Meadows, Jeffrey Clark, and Steve Bannon know they are going to be charged with sedition in the House report regardless of all their legal shenanigans and games?  Are they really that ignorant?

The Texas Secession: Legally Dividing America

December 14, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Why he fights so hard

This report on America’s ongoing Third Civil War is being conducted through The Atlantic time capsule issue from December 2019 entitled: “How to Stop a Civil War.” The initial blog covered Editor Jeffrey Goldberg’s explanation for the issue and David Frum’s Dispatch from the electoral front-lines as he saw it back in 2019. The world has changed a lot since then.

Moving though the magazine, the next article is “The Secessionist” by Graeme Wood. It was based on interviews with Daniel Miller, the leader of the Texas Nationalist Movement. He wanted to divorce Texas from the Union once and for all. Now here we are a year later and the called for secession has moved from a magazine article to a national event. The change now has been the extension for the call for a single state to a broader secession involving all the states that had joined in the unsuccessful coup to steal the 2020 presidential election.

In The Atlantic article, Wood cites a claim of membership of 300,000 for the Texas Nationalist Movement. That seems like a significant number. The goal was for there to be a referendum in Texas on secession. Miller called the movement “Texit” based on the action in Britain. Left unmentioned were two related possibilities:

1. a referendum by the other 49 states on whether they (we) want to kick Texas out of the country regardless of how Texas voted.
2. dividing the state into the portions that wanted out from the portions that wanted in somewhat as Virginia had divided at the onset of the Second Civil War into West Virginia and Virginia.

If option #2 is taken, then even if portions of Texas vote to secede, the pro-American citizens can remain part of the country. That way, there could two Texases: one an independent country and one a state in the United States. There was no indication what Miller thought about these options.

Miller proposed a new country which would be the tenth largest economy in the world. He favored a cordial uncoupling with a largely undefended border with the United States (no mention of a wall with Mexico). He expected that the border between the United States and Texas would be like that between the United States and Canada. The key would be the independence of Texas where it would now be in charge of its own political decisions. And it would accept the consequences of those decisions as well.

Miller claims the right of self-determination. It is a right the United States supposedly supports in locations throughout the world. Now it is time to do so at home. He feels that if Americans see that the second largest state in the country declares that it was participating in the union under protest that the request could not be ignored. Apparently he is anticipating if not a 100% Texan support for secession at least a landslide. There is no indication in the article in what if any is his cutoff point for secession. As noted above, what if self-determination for a significant number of people means they want to remain American. Miller did not address this issue in the article although it is possible he has elsewhere.

As mentioned, this article was last December. What has happened this December? First the Texas Attorney General led the unsuccessful coup attempt to overturn the presidential election of 2020. This action does not comport with Miller’s expression of seceding because he does not want Texas to be governed by others. Now the Texas Attorney General was seeking to tell four other states what to do. How would Miller like it if other states petitioned the Supreme Court for Texas and other states to end voter suppression, end gerrymandering, and end the one drop-off location per county for early voters as a violation of the civil rights of Texans? I suspect Miller would not like such interference in Texas affairs even as his state sought unsuccessfully to interfere in the voting of other states.

Following the decision of the Supreme Court, the Texas GOP acted

Austin, TX, Release: December 11, 2020. For Immediate Release

Below is Chairman Allen West’s statement regarding the decision by the Supreme Court to dismiss Texas’ constitutionally legitimate and critical lawsuit.

“The Supreme Court, in tossing the Texas lawsuit that was joined by seventeen states and 106 US congressman, has decreed that a state can take unconstitutional actions and violate its own election law. Resulting in damaging effects on other states that abide by the law, while the guilty state suffers no consequences. This decision establishes a precedent that says states can violate the US constitution and not be held accountable. This decision will have far-reaching ramifications for the future of our constitutional republic. Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution.”

The Texas GOP will always stand for the Constitution and for the rule of law even while others don’t.

This is not the place to attempt to unravel the workings of the mind of Allen West or the place he is trying to carve out for himself in Texas politics. So far I am not aware of Miller or any Texas officials jumping on the Texas secession bandwagon either alone or with the other “law-abiding states.”

Still there are consequences to voicing out loud thoughts you never should have had in the first place. For example, Rush Limbaugh said the “US is ‘trending towards secession’ and there can’t be ‘peaceful coexistence’ between conservatives and liberals. It can’t go on this way. There cannot be a peaceful coexistence of two completely different theories of life.” Immediately afterwards he was forced to backtrack his comments. Limbaugh pretended he was echoing other people’s opinions rather than advocating for secession himself. It is quite possible he was a victim of his own rash impulsiveness. He just blurted out what felt good without thinking of the consequences just like the impulsive President.

While what Miller advocates is not significant, when the GOP Chair of a major state voices secession talk, it is more serious. Don’t be surprised to quietly see him disappear after the New Year.

The Supreme Court has punctured the hot-air balloons of the hothead traitors. The backlash has already started. The Orlando Sentinel has apologized for endorsing one of the Trump Traitors in the recent election:

We had no idea, had no way of knowing at the time that Walz was not committed to democracy… During our endorsement interview with the incumbent congressman, we didn’t think to ask, “Would you support an effort to throw out the votes of tens of millions of Americans in four states in order to overturn a presidential election and hand it to the person who lost…Our bad.

The paper vowed to ask such questions in the future.

Rep. Paul Mitchell, Michigan, has left the Republican Party. He was retiring so it doesn’t amount to much.

Smartmatic, the voting technology company that has been attacked by the various Trump networks has struck back. It “demands a full and complete retraction of all false and defamatory statements and reports published by Fox News. This retraction must be done with the same intensity and level of coverage that you used to defame the company in the first place.” Obviously that is not going to happen. Smartmatic is reserving its legal right to pursue possible defamation claims against Fox News, One America News, and Newsmax. There is a financial price to pay for simply making things up unless you are the President of the United States. How many pardons will have to be issued to protect his networks?

Now suppose in 2022, you are the daughter of the Sore Loser and you are asked in your Senate race: “Do you think Joe Biden got away with a rigged election in 2020?” How will you answer that? “What did you do to stop the attempted coup?” How will you answer?

The shell-shocked Trump Traitors who are in silence now will not be able to remain in silence forever. They can expect their efforts to overturn the election will be part of the attack on them in the 2022 elections. Representative Adam Kinzinger who did not participate in the attempted coup, instead tweeted:

[T]he Supreme Court is not part of the deep state… Complaining and bellyaching is not a manly trait, it’s actually sad. Real men accept a loss with grace.

Our immature-child President is not a real man and cannot accept a loss with grace. Instead America’s biggest baby has put all his children who want to be Senators and/or President on the spot. He has put Mike “sold his soul” Pence, Mike “sold his soul second Trump term” Pompeo, Nikki “sold her soul” Haley, and Ted “sold his soul” Cruz on the spot as well. What will they say about their failure to resist the attempted coup in 2020 or even to abet it? What will they say about their willingness to accept the vote in 2024?

The irony of the secession talk of like-minded states is that the Sore Loser would be perfectly willing to accept the United States dividing into two if he could be President for life in one half and there was no extradition to the other half.

America’s Third Civil War: An Update

December 13, 2020
by Peter Feinman
America's Third Civil War (The Atlantic)

America’s Third Civil War is unfolding in unexpected ways. Previously I had blogged that the 2020 Presidential election would be our Battle of Gettysburg (He Really Could Stand in the Middle of 5th Avenue, Shoot Somebody, and Not Lose Voters 4/1/20) . It would be the moment when the conflict between the two sides of the Culture Wars burst forth with some violence over which side had triumphed in the showdown at high November. In many ways, such a showdown has occurred but without the violence…yet.

In the more than one month since Joe Biden won, although the results were not immediately known, the fighting has transpired primarily in the court room. In these clashes, the hero of 9/11 has made a dripping fool of himself time and time again without having any awareness of his predicament… except that he knows enough that he will need a pardon.

One surprising absence from the war has been the current Attorney General. After months and years of doing the biding of the criminal in-chief, when the final showdown came he was missing in action. In fact, he gave aid to the patriots who were defending the country from the assault on democracy by denying that the election was rigged or that fraud had occurred.

With these thoughts in mind, I am taking a trip down memory lane to one year ago: the December 2019 issue of The Atlantic with the cover title “How to top a Civil War.” Since the war is not yet over and 2021 promises to be even worse as the new President struggles to assert himself as THE President of the United States, it is worth taking a look back on what was written.  In a preview to the next blog, I note the article in this time capsule on Texas and secession could just have easily been written in December 2020 as December 2019. I am waiting to see what happens before writing about it.

A NATION COMING APART BY JEFFREY GOLDBERG

Goldberg tactfully opens his “Editor’s Note” with:

The 45th president of the United States of America is uniquely unfit for the office and poses a multifaceted threat to our country’s democratic institutions.

Truer words were never written, but I suspect they understate the problem. I doubt that Goldberg anticipated a frontal assault on the democratic process including an attempted coup to steal the election with the support of the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives and 125 accomplices. To imagine an attempted coup by this particular President requires no stretch of the imagination. To see how widespread the support was and is would have been unimaginable. These 126 traitors are from the present House of Representatives. It is quite likely that in the new House where the Democrats will have only the slimmest of margins, that the number of representatives who support the President in-exile will be even greater. There is no margin of error.

Goldberg went on to write:

The structural failures in our democratic system that allowed a grifter into the White House in the first place⸺this might be our greatest challenge.

I strongly doubt that Goldberg anticipated that the con artist only needed to ask for money to receive over $200 million from his Trumpican base. That is an astonishing achievement in the history of scam annals. He has perfected the ability to raise enormous sums of money in small amounts without having to fleece few bigtime marks.

Finally, Goldberg announced as the editor, the purpose for the special issue.

Out of our conversations, and others like it, emerged the idea for the special issue you are now reading, what we have called “How to Stop a Civil War.” … (W)e worry that the ties that bind us are fraying at alarming speed⸺we are becoming contemptuous of each other in ways that are both dire and possibly irreversible.

If these words reflect Goldberg’s assessment of the situation in December 2019, then one can only imagine what he must think in December 2020. For now the coup to steal the election temporarily has been stopped by the Supreme Court. One should expect the final stand where the last ditch effort to overturn the election will be undertaken will be when the new House convenes to ratify the vote of the Electoral College. He still thinks he can overturn the election and has roughly 126 people who will help him. The fat lady still hasn’t sung yet.

“WHEN TRUMP GOES” BY DAVID FRUM

The opening article in the war issue appropriately enough was called “Dispatches.” It was listed as the “Opening Argument.” The question raised was “Somehow, sometime, he will leave office. Will our politics get better or worse?”

Frum opened his argument with the well-known examples of the current occupant’s preference to remain in office beyond the two-term limit. By now you would have to be dumb beyond belief not to realize that is his desire. I am not suggesting he has a plan to do it, only that he would like to. Plan B I would guess is to run in 2024 and then to be succeeded by a child, probably Ivanka as the first female president. It would follow her stint as Senator from Florida beginning in 2022 where she is now relocating. For all we know, she will be the preferred Trump in 2024. Whether all that happens or not remains to be seen. What is clear is that the Trumps will be with us for years to come with a strong base in the House that will do whatever he wants.

In his Argument, Frum presents two scenarios: a narrow Democratic victory or a big Democratic victory. We know now that the latter did not occur. It did not occur in the House. It did not occur in the Senate even if they win the two runoff elections. It did not occur at the state level. Even though Joe Biden won with the same landslide Electoral College vote as in 2016 only with the parties reversed and by over 7 million votes, the Democrats’ hopes were not fulfilled.

Frum’s analysis in 2019 misses two key considerations, one of which he could not have known about.

First, the coronavirus changed all political calculations. Without the coronavirus it is quite possible there would have been another election where the Democrats won the popular vote but lost the election. Without the coronavirus there really could have been a second term.  Even with the virus, what would have happened if the vaccine had been discovered sooner? What would have happened if the coronavirus had happened a year earlier? We will never know the answer to these different scenarios, but there is one chilling fact that will haunt historians for years to come:

Did 200,000 Americans have to die in 2020 for him to be defeated that same year?

Try and imagine what it would be like to participate in that debate.  Are those deaths the price America had to pay to make him a one-term president?

Second, Joe Biden probably is the only Democratic candidate who could have won. In a previous blog, I asked the question if Elizabeth Warren could have won. We will never know but the odds are she easily might have lost despite the coronavirus. Even more so for the other potential Democratic candidates.

Frum couldn’t possibly have known any of this when he wrote his Dispatch from the battlefield last December. In hindsight we can see how the stars had to be aligned to produce the Democratic presidential victory in 2020 and there is no guarantee that they will be so aligned in 2024.

So what will happen now?

As in America’s Second Civil War, we will have two Presidents: one in Washington and one in the South. The parallel is not the same. This time the President in the south commands no armies and the only revenue he raises will be for himself. During the Second Civil War, the Confederates removed themselves from the political process. They did not remain in Congress or vote in the 1864 elections. This time Trump’s traitors will remain in Congress without suffering any punitive actions for their attempted coup to steal the election. Their loyalty will be to the rightful President in Florida and not to the Constitution or the illegitimate President in Washington.

The ongoing war then is more likely to resemble World War I than the Second Civil War but without the violence. By that I mean, everything in Congress will be trench warfare with neither side budging. Trumpicans will not accept Joe Biden as the President of their country.  They will call upon their governors to do the same … unless the state needs federal aid due to a disaster.  Care to guess to whom the Governor of South Dakota will pledge her loyalty?

America’s Third Civil War is far from over. It will continue as long as the two houses live together in one political entity. Texas has a solution for that.