Another point here is that elections are an additional check after the courts, Congress, etc. US presidential elections are not administered by the federal government, they are administered by the states. So to interfere with elections, the president can’t just fill election boards with cronies or give orders to anyone in his chain of command to rig the election. He’d have to forcibly manipulate or interfere with state officials and state governments, risking direct conflict with states. And if he doesn’t interfere with the election and the states announce results showing he lost in a landslide, his political power almost certainly evaporates. Of course, if all the president’s crazy actions are in fact popular, then he is much more likely to succeed and stay in power for many reasons.
Again, if you assume the military always slavishly follows the president, then this ends up in a civil war with a plausible military victory for the president. But each escalation into “this is obviously illegitimate” means the president increasingly offends his generals’ sense of duty, decreases the probability of success and increases the legal and political risk for the officers following his orders, increases the size and motivation of the inevitable popular resistance, etc.
Isn’t the obvious thing to do here to just imprison/jail/deport/exile your political opponents? The supreme court will of course object, but that’s the whole scenario we are playing out here. My sense is this a relatively common thing to do if a president wants to stay in power.
But each escalation into “this is obviously illegitimate” means the president increasingly offends his generals’ sense of duty, decreases the probability of success and increases the legal and political risk for the officers following his orders, increases the size and motivation of the inevitable popular resistance, etc.
I agree that there is some broad sense in which this must be true, but I do think this hasn’t so far been particularly true in this administration? Maybe not super worth going into a ton of local political details, but I think history more broadly also shows that in many cases you can make up for doing things that are obviously illegitimate by looking like a bold, strong and decisive leader, and by threatening force to anyone who opposes you. So I don’t really buy there is the nice linear correlation that you say there is here.
Another point here is that elections are an additional check after the courts, Congress, etc. US presidential elections are not administered by the federal government, they are administered by the states. So to interfere with elections, the president can’t just fill election boards with cronies or give orders to anyone in his chain of command to rig the election. He’d have to forcibly manipulate or interfere with state officials and state governments, risking direct conflict with states. And if he doesn’t interfere with the election and the states announce results showing he lost in a landslide, his political power almost certainly evaporates. Of course, if all the president’s crazy actions are in fact popular, then he is much more likely to succeed and stay in power for many reasons.
Again, if you assume the military always slavishly follows the president, then this ends up in a civil war with a plausible military victory for the president. But each escalation into “this is obviously illegitimate” means the president increasingly offends his generals’ sense of duty, decreases the probability of success and increases the legal and political risk for the officers following his orders, increases the size and motivation of the inevitable popular resistance, etc.
Isn’t the obvious thing to do here to just imprison/jail/deport/exile your political opponents? The supreme court will of course object, but that’s the whole scenario we are playing out here. My sense is this a relatively common thing to do if a president wants to stay in power.
I agree that there is some broad sense in which this must be true, but I do think this hasn’t so far been particularly true in this administration? Maybe not super worth going into a ton of local political details, but I think history more broadly also shows that in many cases you can make up for doing things that are obviously illegitimate by looking like a bold, strong and decisive leader, and by threatening force to anyone who opposes you. So I don’t really buy there is the nice linear correlation that you say there is here.