You want more good news?


OK, I can do that. Today is the day the final nail gets pounded into Trump’s coffin.

Vice President Pence and his team have huddled for hours with the Senate parliamentarian. They have studied historical examples of other vice presidents who have presided over election results.

And they have begun anticipating the ire of President Trump — likely to come in the form of angry tweets — in the aftermath of Wednesday’s certification of the electoral college vote count before a joint session of Congress.

The role of Pence, who will preside over the certification, is largely ceremonial, one of the few official duties of the vice president in his capacity as president of the Senate. But Trump’s continued and baseless insistence that he won the 2020 presidential election has thrust Pence into a vise between the Constitution he swore to uphold and the president he has promised his fealty.

Oooh, “angry tweets”. That’s what the wrath of Trump has been reduced to. This act by Pence is also his final doom — he sold his soul to Trump, and now this is what he looks like to the rest of the world.

Pence’s performance Wednesday in the Senate chamber will serve as a fitting coda for a vice president who — through a combination of deference, obsequiousness and studied self-effacement — has made navigating the whims and loyalty requirements of his mercurial boss a full-time pursuit.

Go find a nice hammock in rural Indiana, go to church a couple of times a week, and relax for the rest of your life. Your political influence has been snuffed out, Mike. Mr Obsequious. Mr Deference. Mr Spineless.

You might want a good solid fence and a couple of bodyguards, Mr Chickenshit, because the former president is going to sic the right-wing goons you spent the last four years enabling after you.

Comments

  1. birgerjohansson says

    If European countries have lucrative speaking circuits for conservatives that get going after vaccines get widespread distribution, the poultry-colored VP can get (more) rich away from dangerous MAGA hats.

  2. raven says

    Oooh, “angry tweets”. That’s what the wrath of Trump has been reduced to.

    I wish.
    Probably not.
    Trump is going to burn down as much of the USA as he can on his way out.
    So are the GOP.
    I’m sure they’ve thought long and hard about calling out the military to stage their coup.

    This act by Pence is also his final doom — he sold his soul to Trump, and now this is what he looks like to the rest of the world.

    Well to be fair, so what.
    He doesn’t actually have a soul.
    So he sold a nonexistent object to Trump for 4 years of a decent paycheck, some national visibility, and a great retirement plan.
    He’s set for life.
    It was a good deal.

  3. says

    Well, what else could Pence have done than take the VP nomination and then appease Trump?

    According to my relatives in Indiana, he was so hated as governor that the Republican Party itself was going to (presumably successfully, given the vitriol that was passing among his own party) primary him as governor in 2016 if he hadn’t accepted the nomination. (Among other things, he demanded that state departments underspend their budgets by a third so he could cut their budgets the next year and claim the savings… leading to massive backlogs of necessary work, and the dilapidation of Indiana’s already-terrible highway system until there was a catastrophic bridge collapse directly caused by lack of maintenance.) He’s not even a witless demagogue like Trump, he’s a parasite who lucked into a position he was too stupid even to exploit while destroying, Trump-style. (Much like Illinois’ former governor Blagojevich.) He had no fallback plan because he was too stupid to realize why his system didn’t work, and when it became clear that his career in Indiana was over, he had no alternative paths lined up — and basically no skills to apply in other jobs.

    If he hadn’t taken Trump’s offer he was out of work, and although the man is apparently a dunce he knew that nobody but Trump was ever going to give him a shot at the corridors of power again. Presumably, that’s why Trump picked him in the first place.

  4. consciousness razor says

    He’s not even a witless demagogue like Trump, he’s a parasite who lucked into a position he was too stupid even to exploit while destroying, Trump-style.

    Well, that’s just what a Trump/Pence supporter like you would say, isn’t it?

  5. Allison says

    I’m hoping that this means Pence is out of politics (or at least, any access to power) for good.

    Since I’m a trans woman, the past 4+ years have been a long nightmare, expecting at any moment for the Republicans, led by Pence and people who think like him, to start enacting statutes to make life in the USA impossible for us LGBT people.

    I won’t even begin to start feeling safe until Biden is actually in the White House and Warnock’s and Ossoff’s elections are certified and they’re sworn in and seated. But I’m still not sure that the storm is past yet, i.e., that it isn’t just the eye of the hurricane.

    “All that is needed for Evil to flourish is for the Good people to do nothing,” and “good” people have been standing around just watching for quite a while. I won’t really feel safe until I see people who have the power to do something actively oppose Evil instead of temporizing with it.

  6. asclepias says

    davidc1 @ 6 – Fortunately, none of the banks in Canada are going for it. Wanna drill, gotta have capital, and the banks are on the side of the Gwich’in.

  7. KG says

    consciousness razor@5,

    Well yes, it is, if that Trump/Pence supporter was doing their best to demotivate Trump opponents in the context of a lefty liberal blog: the occasional attack on Trump (or better, Pence, particularly as he’s clearly come to the end of his political relevance) would be necessary to keep up the lefty facade.

  8. wzrd1 says

    @raven, #3,

    I’m sure they’ve thought long and hard about calling out the military to stage their coup.

    Already considered, at every inquiry on possible excuses, the military firmly told the appointees publicly, without mention as to why such a refusal was coming out of an apparent vacuum, “The military has no place in matters involving an election”.
    Basically, sticking with precedent and flat out stating that any order that attempts to invoke martial law while the courts can hold session would be an unlawful order and refused.
    See ex party Milligan. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_parte_Milligan
    As retired military, that was essentially telling the would-be emperor to kindly go pound sand, in the most uncomfortable manner available, using only the bare minimum of respect while doing so. Something rarely done, to put it mildly, but in doing so, tells the superior that any such attempt will result in refusal and if sir persists, sir will be arrested and charged.

  9. says

    @#5, consciousness razor & #9, KG:

    Wow, thanks for demonstrating that people who support Biden are as conspiracy-theory-prone and loony as QAnon believers. Think the Democratic Party has moved so far to the right that it is, from a practical perspective, indistinguishable from the Republicans? Clearly, you must be a Republican, because… reasons which make sense inside the tinfoil hat. You, like Trump supporters, are so glued to a particular worldview — one in which the parties are manichaean opposites, despite all the real-world evidence that they are merely representing two slightly-non-overlapping groups of the very wealthy — that it is no longer possible for you to even imagine that you might possibly be wrong.

    This is like the whole “anybody who dislikes Hillary is a Russian Bot” thing from the last four years. For somebody who claims to hate “both-siderism”, you’re sure doing your best to give ammunition to that view.

  10. christoph says

    @ The Vicar, # 11: Thanks again for telling everyone here why they’re wrong about everything. You’re really good at this!

  11. consciousness razor says

    KG, you seem to forget that Biden and other conservative Dems have been doing their best to demotivate people like me.* If you really thought only Republicans would want to do that, you thought wrong.

    And there are plenty of them in positions of actual power/influence in the party and elsewhere, so I don’t think they need Vicar on their team to help with that. (Especially not here of all places, unless you really want to be carried away with the paranoia … in which case, be my guest.) Besides, Vicar clearly doesn’t like them very much.

    So how do you tell whether he’s on the Biden team to demotivate me or the Trump team to demotivate me? Or perhaps some other team to demotivate me? Do you play poker? What’s the tell?

    Or have I also put up a lefty facade for several years, simply in the hopes of deceiving you? Or maybe it’s just confusing you into thinking that a candidate like Biden is worse than he really is? But … how bad is that? I’ll make no assumption that you’re just putting up a lefty facade, so I do figure that you’ll agree he’s definitely a piece of shit of some sort. Does this just boil down to exactly how big of a piece of shit you think it is versus how much I think it is? Or, if you really don’t think there’s a valid basis for that kind of criticism (whether or not it may be demotivating for some, because it’s still the truth), then we’d certainly disagree about that.

    *You, they probably don’t care about much, because you don’t have to live here. Otherwise, I bet they’d be interested.

  12. christoph says

    @ davidc1, # 6: Most companies aren’t interested in drilling in Alaska, the profit margin is too small these days. I doubt anyone will even bid on the drilling rights.

  13. raven says

    Basically, sticking with precedent and flat out stating that any order that attempts to invoke martial law while the courts can hold session would be an unlawful order and refused.

    I saw that and I hope so.

    While I’m sure the GOP has thought long and hard about calling out the military, we hope they decided it was a bad idea that wasn’t going to work.
    That really puts the military in a bind. Generals have been shot before for disobeying orders.
    And there are generals who would cheerfully carry out such an order to seize the government.

    Former general Mike Flynn calls for military to keep Trump in …boingboing.net › 2020/12/18 › former-general-mike-fl…

    Dec 18, 2020 — Mike Flynn, the former general fired (and later pardoned) by President Trump for lying about his contacts with Russian officials, says that the …

    General Mike Flynn is one. Retired General Boykin is another.

    Ex-Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin: Jesus Will Return with AR-15 …http://www.democracynow.org › headlines › ex_army_lt_gen…

    Feb 21, 2014 — Jerry Boykin is back in the news. The retired Army lieutenant general who once described the war on terror as a “holy war” is now predicting …

  14. nomdeplume says

    “‘we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country,” Trump added. In what alternative universe is this not an incitement to a coup?

  15. nomdeplume says

    But all is not lost. Chris Wallace of Fox has come out with a bold statement that it is “kind of sad” that this is happening. Be still my beating heart.

  16. davidc1 says

    I see some of the snatch snatchers supporters have stormed the Capitol building in DC.
    More than likely someone forgot to lock the back door.

  17. kome says

    News is reporting that Trump-supporters have been having physical confrontations with police, have stormed the US capitol, the VP and members of Congress have been evacuated, and that there are reports of suspected pipe bombs that law enforcement are investigating.

  18. Tethys says

    Both Georgia senate races have now been called for the Dems.

    Congress has reconvened to confirm Biden after the fascists outside interrupted the fascists inside. I hope any further attempts to subvert the results are met with open contempt and the vote takes ten minutes of unanimous consent.

  19. KG says

    The Vicar, consciousness_razor@various,

    Fuck me, but you’re a pair of numpties. Of course I don’t actually think The Vicar is a Trump plant, Russian bot, whatever. It’s thousands of times more likely that he’s just a self-righteous fool with an oversized ego. I’m just noting that there’s no way to tell from his posts – a person out to demotivate commenters here from doing anything to prevent Trump getting another four years could well have exactly the commenting history The Vicar has here. The judgement that he’s not such a plant is based purely on external considerations. Why would the Trumpkins/Russians bother with such a tiny corner of the Interwebs? Is there a plentiful supply of egotistical fools who like to show how radical they are by claiming conservatives are the same as (or even worse than) fascists, that the shortest way to The Revolution is by helping the fascists into power, etc.? (Answers: they wouldn’t; yes, there is a plentiful supply.)

  20. KG says

    KG, you seem to forget that Biden and other conservative Dems have been doing their best to demotivate people like me. – consciousness_razor@13

    Yes, it’s really all about you, isn’t it?