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What Happens When a Presidency Loses Its Legitimacy?

haymarket said:
Legitimacy is a personal decision made by each American .
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No it isn't. There is an objective standard by which a person is considered a legitimate president of this country. Trump meets that standard. Your personal opinion on the matter is irrelevant.
 
ocean515 said:
LOL

Everyone, with the exception of 62 million of them who put him in the White House.

:beer:
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62 million people proving our point.
 
ocean515 said:
LOL

I think it's fair to assume what those 62 million think of your opinion.
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Well, at least I didn't vote for a known liar and suspected traitor. Seems I win.
 
Fletch said:
No it isn't. There is an objective standard by which a person is considered a legitimate president of this country. Trump meets that standard. Your personal opinion on the matter is irrelevant.
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By all means - present us this universal agreed upon standard.
 
haymarket said:
First, representative democracy is a form of republican government
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No, a "representative democracy" is not a form of republican government. Its Mob Rule.

haymarket said:
here are the very words from Hamilton from #68

Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention.
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Since no foreign agent or power has gained any improper ascendancy in our councils you have nothing here.

haymarket said:
The Machiavellian genius of the wikileaks release was NOT that there was any great damaging information in them, but that it was the political equal to the Chinese Death of A Thousand Cuts. Every day - starting just short hours after the release of the ***** grabbing Access Hollywood tape - the nation was treated to little morsels of trivia about the DNC and the Clinton campaign. And despite the absence of any smoking gun in them, Trump pretended that each one was some bombshell and was happy to root on the explosions each day as he professed his love for wikileaks and aided in their effort.

The facts that this came from the Russians and was aided and abetted by Trump and his campaign.
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Like I have said several times already, the Russians would not have been able to hack anything if the DNC had properly conducted themselves to begin with. Everything else is irrelevant to that fact.

haymarket said:
When I read a claim such as you just made - 1- that Trump did not invite the Russians to get involved and 2- that these events "DID NOT AFFECT ANY VOTES" it is my personal test to judge the holder of such views as incapable of rational thought and willfully denying reality because we have film of Trump inviting the Russians to get involved in our elections. Trump invoked wikileaks at least 164 times in the last month of the campaign. Are you really going to offer the absurd judgment that something which so dominated the Trump campaign had not one vote gained as a result? Such an absurd claim defies over two centuries of campaign purpose and experience. It pretends that major events that happen in a campaign have NO IMPACT on voters and if that is true perhaps you can tell me why politicians spend one minute doing so then? Why do they campaign in the first place if it has no impact or effect on voters?

Such a view as you just offered is absent of common sense and is absurd in the extreme.
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Besides asking for Hillary's deleted emails when did Trump ever ask for any other type of help from the Russians?

I never said that the leaks did not affect any votes. So get out with the strawmen ok?
 
haymarket said:
Wrong. It was Comey who decided to warn the nation against the activities of Clinton and in doing so violated long standing department protocols and possibly even the Hatch Act itself. He injected himself and his judgment into the last two weeks of the campaign and thereby did a great injustice not only to Clinton, but to the American people as well. Your own President used such thinking to justify his firing of Comey.
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Comey's letter about the additional emails was to the Senate. That is a fact. He did not direct it at the nation. He directed it at the Senate.

haymarket said:
Second, Comey sat on the evidence that Trump was being helped by the Russians and failed to warn the nation about that at the exact same time the campaign was in full bloom. His actions - at a time when between 10 and 15 million people cast early ballots - no doubt were crucial.
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Funny how you claim that he's violating the Hatch Act and then turn around and expect him to release information about a separate investigation.

haymarket said:
First, the circumstances of Obama's election were entirely different than Trump. Obama won both the popular vote and the EC so the taint of illegitimacy due to the mechanism from the 1700's was not there to stain Obama or to raise that question.
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Only reason that you're claiming illegitimacy is because Trump won. If it had been someone you supported you wouldn't be and you know it. No matter how that person won.

haymarket said:
Second, what you just did is something too many on the right try to do when they run out of rational arguments - they have to invoke something on the left to try and justify their own position on the right. And that is employing a fallacy of False Equivalency or False Comparison as they are two different things.
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There was no equivalency other than the fact that both Presidents were legitimately elected. That is a fact. Not supposition. Not wishful thinking. Fact. You may not like a President Trump, but he is and was elected legitimately. Nothing that you have shown says any differently.
 
Kal'Stang said:
I find it ironic that you advocate for a democratic form of government while touting the federalist papers which advocated for a republican form of government. Nothing in Federalist 68 contradicts what has happened. At least in my opinion. You of course obviously have a different opinion. Which is your Right.

While the Russians may have released information which was detrimental to the Democrat Party it did not affect any votes that would not have been affected if someone else had delivered the same news. What you cannot deny is that the news that was released was true and that it is the fault of the Democrat party that such news was even around to begin with. As such it is purely the Democrat Parties fault for losing the election. Not the Russians. You may wish to shoot the messenger. But most thinking people find it useless to do so.

As for Comey, he informed the Senate of what he did about those emails that were found on the laptop as he said he was going to do. He did not inform the public of it. He informed the Senate. So if you wish to lay blame for that information being released to the public then you should be blaming the Senate who let the information out. Not Comey.

And no, not once did Trump ask the Russians to help him win the election. What he did do is ask them to release the emails that Hillary had deleted if they had them. Which they didn't. And never did release. As Trump knew that they wouldn't because Hillary had deleted them and as such they couldn't be hacked. Particularly considering that at the time Trump said that Hillary's servers were in FBI custody. Not even online. So such a "suggestion" by Trump was nothing more than political rhetoric at best. Did Trump use what was released? Sure. :shrug: But don't even try to tell me that if the shoe were not on the other foot that Hillary wouldn't have done the same damn thing. Or any other politician on the entire planet. And we know that if it had been someone that you supported you would not be saying what you are saying today. You'd be supporting your choice no matter how they got elected.

Like it or not Trump is about as an illegitimate President as Obama ever was. Which is to say that he's not illegitimate. He is, like it or not, the legitimate President of the United States.
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I think the important part is that the information was released to the public and then the Trump campaign commented on it.

The information was not secretly given to the Trump campaign making them release it.

Since the Trump campaign didn't know the source of the information, other than Wikileaks, why wouldn't they comment on it since it was in the public domain?
 
Puigb said:
But GOP voters elected a "birther-tard" to the presidency...what does that say about them?
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I don't think it was out of line to ask where Obama was born especially after Obama himself said he was born in Kenya.

After all is said and done, it didn't matter where he was born as his mother was a US citizen thereby making him eligible to be President, but it was important to prove Obama was a liar.
 
Kal'Stang said:
No, a "representative democracy" is not a form of republican government. Its Mob Rule.
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You really should learn the definitions of things before you spout off so incorrectly about them.












Definition of a Republican Government. ... A republican government is one in which the political authority comes from the people. In the United States, power is given to the government by its citizens as written in the U.S. Constitution and through its elected representatives.
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Mob Rule is to representative democracy what a ride in the electric chair is to a slap across the face.

I realize the right wing loves to invoke the specter of mob rule when ever they want to oppose the actual right of people to pick their government, but its laughable and disgusting all at the same time. And that is what you are attempting here.

You really need to reexamine your false premises as it dooms the entire reminder of your argument which can now be discarded, crushed and flushed.

I never said that the leaks did not affect any votes. So get out with the strawmen ok?
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Terrific. Glad to see you agree that the Trump invocation of Wikileaks from the Russians was a factor in impacting votes.

Then we will hear no more of the absurd claims that Trumps continual invocation of the wikileaks material did not impact the election.

Since no foreign agent or power has gained any improper ascendancy in our councils you have nothing here.
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That is inane on one hand and absurd on the other. The GOP changed their platform at the behest of Manafort and Trump to be more Russia friendly. And despite all manner of intelligence official warning us that Russian did this and will do it again, Trump sits idly by with his thumb firmly placed up his own ass doing nothing about this. He certainly acts like a creature under the influence of the Russians - our adversary - and that is what Hamilton said the EC would protect us form - and it FAILED to do so.

Like I have said several times already, the Russians would not have been able to hack anything if the DNC had properly conducted themselves to begin with. Everything else is irrelevant to that fact.
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Blaming the victim is a tired and offensive strategy in any offense. You should be ashamed of yourself trying that here to excuse what the Russians did, what wikileaks did and what the Trump campaign did.

Besides asking for Hillary's deleted emails when did Trump ever ask for any other type of help from the Russians?
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That act all by itself was enough. Trump invited the Russians to get involved in our election. And your own response confirms it.
 
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Perhaps this is the best we can hope for. Trump just keeps being Trump. Meanwhile, more competent people run the country. From the OP article:

"The U.S. government is already osmotically working around the presidency, a process enabled by the president’s visible distaste for the work of governance. The National Security Council staff is increasingly a double-headed institution, a zone of struggle between Kushner-Flynn-Bannon types on one side, and a growing staff of capable, experienced, and Russia-skeptical functionaries on the other. The Senate has voted 97-2 to restrict the president’s authority to relax Russia sanctions. It seems the president has been persuaded to take himself out of the chain of command in the escalating military operations in Afghanistan. National-Security Adviser H.R. McMaster recently assured the nation that Trump could not have done much harm when he blabbed a vital secret to the Russian foreign minister in the Oval Office, precisely because the president was not briefed on crucial “sources and methods” information.

In their way, these workarounds are almost as dangerous to the American system of government as the Trump presidency itself. They tend to reduce the president to the status of an absentee emperor while promoting his subordinates into shoguns who exercise power in his name. Maybe that is the least-bad practicable solution to the unprecedented threat of a presidency-under-suspicion. But what a terrible price for the failure of so many American institutions—not least the voters!—to protect the country in 2016 from Russia’s attack on its election and its democracy."
 
Kal'Stang said:
Comey's letter about the additional emails was to the Senate. That is a fact. He did not direct it at the nation. He directed it at the Senate.
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I do not give a wet fart if Comey gave the information to the Abbot and Costello Drinking society. He made it public and the damage was done. It was the information and judgment that did the damage - not the recipient of it. Your argument is rather silly on its face - not to mention completely irrelevant.

Funny how you claim that he's violating the Hatch Act and then turn around and expect him to release information about a separate investigation.
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Perhaps both would have violated the Hatch Act. Than can be argued. But the reality is that one action against Clinton was taken in violation of those protocols while he failed to take action on the Russian interference front helping the Trump campaign which calls the objectivity of his actions and the politics behind them into question. It is the partisan selectivity of the actions that are to be condemned.


Only reason that you're claiming illegitimacy is because Trump won.
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Actually I am claiming Trump is illegitimate is because of the factors I laid out in previous posts which are crystal clear.


There was no equivalency other than the fact that both Presidents were legitimately elected. That is a fact. Not supposition. Not wishful thinking. Fact. You may not like a President Trump, but he is and was elected legitimately. Nothing that you have shown says any differently
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You appear to be either ignorant or willfully blind to the difference between LEGALITY and LEGITIMACY. As you appear to be of at least normal intelligence I would conclude it is not ignorance that is the problem. You have made a willful decision to intentionally play ostrich and not recognize the difference.

And that too is shameful because it is intellectually dishonest.
 
Mason66 said:
I don't think it was out of line to ask where Obama was born especially after Obama himself said he was born in Kenya.

After all is said and done, it didn't matter where he was born as his mother was a US citizen thereby making him eligible to be President, but it was important to prove Obama was a liar.
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no, what was really important was to stir up racial animosity among the racist rubes in the Republican base. Trump himself never believed any of that birther crap, he just used it as a political tool to make himself popular with the racist segment of the GOP base. And guess what? It worked.
 
ocean515 said:
LOL

Everyone, with the exception of 62 million of them who put him in the White House.

:beer:
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Those 62 million people would vote for Ted Nugent if he were the GOP nominee. Trump got a pass because of that "R" next to his name.
 
Puigb said:
no, what was really important was to stir up racial animosity among the racist rubes in the Republican base. Trump himself never believed any of that birther crap, he just used it as a political tool to make himself popular with the racist segment of the GOP base. And guess what? It worked.
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Why would Trump have needed to be popular with the Republican base in 2012 or 2013?

The issue was settled by the time he announced his candidacy.

Would you like to try that again?
 
Mason66 said:
Why would Trump have needed to be popular with the Republican base in 2012 or 2013?

The issue was settled by the time he announced his candidacy.

Would you like to try that again?
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Uh, Trump started the whole birther issue in 2011 when he was first talking about running for the presidency on the GOP side. Prior to that, your new political messiah actually had praised Obama back in 2009 and even 2010. Then in 2011, when Trump was thinking about running, he changed his entire tune, became a birther, and the rest is history. Truth be told, I think Trump decided to drop out of the race in 2011/2012, because he knew he couldn't beat Obama.
 
Puigb said:
Those 62 million people would vote for Ted Nugent if he were the GOP nominee. Trump got a pass because of that "R" next to his name.
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Those "R"'s had a bass of over 10 candidates to chose from, so strike one on your premise.

How many candidates did the "D"'s allow voters to chose from?

Given how pathetic that candidate was right out of the gate, it would seem your premise applies to Democrats, not Republicans.
 
What happens when the legislative branch loses its legitimacy? What happens when the judiciary loses its legitimacy?
 
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