It's really notable that none of the worst case nightmare scenarios involving ICE at polling stations, arrested election workers, seized ballots, postal shenanigans, etc. came to pass. And that's due to tireless work by legal advocates for states and NGOs, not to mention independent judges who were willing to stand up to the administration's unlawful excesses.
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@medusaskirt “there’s no point in fighting”. what a weird take.
@mattblaze that's not at all what I said.
What I'm saying is to not confuse good omens with victory, and, when one sees victory, to be realistic about what that victory actually means.
A judge's ruling only stops a trigger being pulled if the person holding the gun believes in the judge's ruling, and fascists should never be counted on to believe in a judge's ruling that they don't like.
@medusaskirt the lack of interference with the election wasn’t an “omen”. It was a direct consequence of people doing hard work to defend elections.
@mattblaze @medusaskirt And maybe Ukraine bombing Russian data centres.
@newstik @medusaskirt Russian data centers had nothing to do with any of the things I was discussing.
@mattblaze @c_dan4th I'm still thinking they have something else up their sleeve.
@mattblaze probably shouldn't discount the effect of the mass mobilizations against large, conspicuous ICE operations as well. They only would have had the numbers to project power against so many polls in the first place, but I suspect the level of public resistance forced them to change how they operate in a way that precluded attempts at mass voter intimidation.
@mattblaze
They tried to steal the election, and they failed. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!
@mattblaze Good job on defending your democracy America (there's still important fixing to do, but it could have been so much worse)
@mattblaze I think there's a good chance they'll still try something, maybe one of the think tanks' crackpot schemes to refuse to seat Democrats. Maybe even another attack on the Capitol.
But their best chance is behind them and they know it. At this point they're not even pretending the election was stolen.
@mattblaze The Y2K of politics. Work hard behind the scenes so nothing evil happens. If you succeed, unserious people will say it was all a waste.
@mattblaze but mostly due to the de-centralized nature of U.S. elections. Between absentee ballots, 2+ weeks of early voting in ~9000 early polling locations, and day-of voting in 100K locations, it's a logistical nightmare to try and organize something on a scale big enough to effect the outcome.
@mattblaze Separately, let’s also credit electoral campaigners running up the score in early voting so that it was an insurmountable blue wave, prominently including #NoKings Early Vote a couple weekends ago, which measurably boosted early voting where there were events, in a huge way in places.
A weekend protest that actually changed things!
@mattblaze How can we find out about how this works? How was ICE stopped? What did the legal advocates do exactly?
And most of the people responsible for the smoothness with which this election proceeded are relatively anonymous, toiling away at the unglamorous work that quietly keeps democracy running. We owe them all a great debt.
@mattblaze you're welcome.
@mattblaze true public servants ❤️
@mattblaze @vees the amount of times i took comfort in Securing The Vote over the past years is a high number
@mattblaze They gave me and my spouse lollipops. They didn't have to but it was a nice treat
@mattblaze And it will all be known like the Y2K bug in history. Everyone before was panicking but now 26 years later reporters on the news are asking "Was it really that bad? See, nothing happened!".
Well, nothing happened because we were warned ahead of time and put down a LOT of unseen work to make it not happen.
Same here, without the warnings and people standing up and quietly doing their part, this would look a lot different. A lot of people already saw what could have happened and put a stop to it.
@mattblaze It hasn't even been a week since the election happened.
ICE weren't at polling stations because ICE didn't feel like doing that.
There's still plenty of time to arrest election workers.
Ballots can still be dismissed.
We have a glimmer of hope, but we haven't won yet.
The law, the work of legal advocates, the rulings of judges, all of those are easily overridden by determined fascists with firearms. MAGA still has plenty of time to crush our hopes and dreams.