step 1: control the press, TV, and social media via public subsidies, ads, censorship, appointing judges, appointing executive board members so they will buy the media or the media ads
step 2: shout your country is a democracy!
dylan604 · 23m ago
Now do when your country is a democracy. Step 1 would just need a few tweaks like defund public media, start your own social platforms, have existing social platforms bend the knee, appointing judges, appointing executive board members.
clownworld1 · 19m ago
You may not like Trump but he resembles democracy as much as possible. An outsider that gained electoral support by his own means.
defunding media and other propaganda channels? of course, they are incompatible with a fair debate.
smokel · 2m ago
Note that democracy does not necessarily require one leader.
carefulfungi · 1m ago
Lots of authoritarians were first democratically elected.
ericmcer · 2m ago
It has actually been kinda nuts seeing the media completely flip. 10 months ago Trump had no power and was catching 24/7 flack from media outlets. Now he has power and the media has shifted their stance very quickly.
xmprt · 12m ago
I agree to some extent but there were a lot of advantages that Trump had that aren't particularly democratic. Electoral college gives more weight to rural voters. First past the post sucks. It's easy to mislead people because most metrics are lagging indicators (which is why neither party will ever fix the deficit). It also helps that his electorate tends to be less educated.
> they are incompatible with a fair debate
Considering his polling tanked after debating Harris and then he refused to debate again, I'm not sure if you can make this argument.
MisterMower · 1m ago
Didn’t a lot of that polling turn out to be massively wrong? The fact that it was off by so much seems to imply you’re right, it wasn’t a fair debate. Harris received significantly more sympathy from the press and polls, even to the point of peddling outright lies.
dizlexic · 18m ago
PREACH!
nonethewiser · 1h ago
Well this starts off with a bang:
>In germany we just saw very public rigging of an election for the federal high court of justice.
Not familiar with that but I imagine that is going to be a controversial statement.
Using Russia as a subject is interesting. A western audience is probably a lot less defensive against the idea that Russia rigs their elections. The video looks interesting.
devjab · 49m ago
> Not familiar with that but I imagine that is going to be a controversial statement.
I'm not sure if it's fair to call it rigging, but there was a massive smear campaign against a judge nominated for their constitutional court. Leading to the nomination being withdrawn when it really should've been an appointment as usual. Which is likely the first massive step toward Germany politicising one of the foundations of their democracy, similar to how the USA supreme court seems like it's red vs blue when looked on from the outside.
I'm guessing this conference is rather left leaning, which is why they'd called that rigging, but there wasn't election fraud. It's an issue of course, since this means that rich people can essentially buy massive influence on the German democracy by clever use of social media and lies. Which may seem like the norm to a lot of people on HN, but that's not how it has traditionally been in Germany.
hungryhobbit · 35m ago
There's no "seeming": the current US Supreme Court is nakedly political.
stronglikedan · 31m ago
Well, they're just people, so of course they are. Thankfully, there are folks representing both parties to keep it fair.
dylan604 · 21m ago
Thankfully??? Did I miss the /s at the end of that? Do you honestly believe it is fairly representing?
ooopdddddd · 31m ago
You are talking like this is the first time judges have been blocked for political reasons. See Horst Dreier in 2008 as a high-profile example.
nozzlegear · 35m ago
> similar to how the USA supreme court seems like it's red vs blue when looked on from the outside.
It's not just the outside who see it that way!
meibo · 19m ago
Not to mention that one of the major issues in that debate (for the supposedly "centrist" party) was abortion rights - even though most of her views on the topic were fairly in line with other sitting judges.
It's now alleged that this was caused by a disinformation campaign targeting MPs of that party.
If Kavanaugh has become a verb, shouldn't Garland'd be a thing too when the Senate denies POTUS his constitutional right?
FergusArgyll · 1m ago
Borked was the original
delichon · 11m ago
Since Garland didn't even get to a vote, it wasn't necessary to Kavanaugh (or Bork) him to the same degree. Abe Fortus got denied a vote via filibuster in '68, so you could say that Merrick Garland was Fortused.
tietjens · 53m ago
It shouldn’t be that controversial a statement. It’s an accurate assessment of what happened this summer in Germany. A judicial candidate was destroyed by false claims online. To me it seemed like German politicians were reading too much US news and wound up aping patterns seen there.
dathinab · 44m ago
> imagine that is going to be a controversial statement.
not really
but compared to what seems to be happened nearly daily in the US it really is not a big deal
but compared to what is supposed to happen it was a big deal
which seems to be a common trend, being very pissed of about what happened in German politics, then looking to the US and being "they did what now!?", oh it seems things are still fine here
sho_hn · 27m ago
Maybe pick a functional democracy as your yardstick?
It isn't. A right wind millionaire and his media outlet started a fake campaign against the potential judge. Other media and social media jumped on it as well and the "normal" conservative party was "concerned". A lot of heel-dragging later, the judge had enough and withdrew herself from consideration.
immibis · 49m ago
In Germany it's often illegal to make strong statements like this unless they can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Is that the case?
(That's partly why Germany is getting infested with Nazis again. You can go to jail for calling them out.)
V__ · 44m ago
It's a civil matter, but yes. Sadly, courts are slow and the whole story was "there might have been plagiarism in her thesis". Even as traditional media started to explain the story as baseless, social media is a different beast.
ranger_danger · 17m ago
Can you provide some sources to back up your claims?
echelon_musk · 1h ago
Courageous.
kwanbix · 46m ago
Very.
churchill · 37m ago
Watching this brings back memories of Nigeria's 2023 elections. It was (one of a series of) turning point(s) for me when it slowly sank in that the country wasn't worth building a life in. Working remotely & spending in a local currency meant that for the past couple of years, I was insulated and could accumulate savings with little effort. But, the blatant corruption pushed me off the edge.
Quick scan of my social network just confirms the same: anyone extremely agentic, intelligent, or educated I know has either left, is in the process of leaving, or is considering leaving.
Last person out of Nigeria can turn the lights off.
adiabatichottub · 26m ago
That's very sad to hear. I've been to Lagos and I always have wished I could have visited longer. As an American I found it an absolutely fascinating place.
churchill · 22m ago
I'm happy (?) you found it fascinating, but only because you were only visiting. If you had to live in Lagos for, say, 1 year, your opinion might change drastically and you'd be eager to leave.
MisterMower · 5m ago
Wild that he even had the opportunity to ask these questions and do his own investigating. The exact same issues happened in a recent US election, but in ours no one was allowed to examine any of the things he was able to.
Sounds like elections in both Russia and the US are rotten these days. Curious to note which party has no desire to rectify these issues.
softwaredoug · 1h ago
I wish the DNC had a red team for institutional norms. Think of Project 2025 and other crazy theories about executive authority before the GOP does. Prepare for these situations. Assume they are going to happen.
giantg2 · 1h ago
What makes you think they don't?
patmorgan23 · 42m ago
Send me the link to the Democrats equivalent to Project 2025.
It's the same link as Republican's equivalent. I.e., it doesn't exist. P25 was some extreme right wing crazies that no one really cares about. It would have been a nothingburger if the Dems didn't try (and fail) so hard to associate it with Reps.
os2warpman · 21m ago
>P25 was some extreme right wing crazies that no one really cares about.
Project 2025 is almost halfway implemented and several of its authors hold positions in government, charged with its implementation.
Everyone who thinks it is some side project or wish list that isn't "real" and actually, literally, happening right now is a fool.
The Heritage Foundation is a think tank, not the RNC. Project 2025 no doubt has plenty of supporters in the RNC thanks to how influential the think tank is, but it's not an official party position. Any left of center think tank could cook up a Project 2028 document and claim it's the DNC's equivalent – it'd have just as much (official) standing as Project 2025.
trealira · 8m ago
Everything the Trump administration has done so far is straight out of the document. There's even a tracker someone made: https://www.project2025.observer/en
Granted, sometimes they go further. Project 2025 said to scale back USAID; the Trump administration simply illegally impounded its funding and let it collapse entirely.
You can say what you want or continue to deny it, but there is no left equivalent of it. There are no left wing think tanks writing documents like Project 2025, detailing how to take over the government and root it out of "cultural Marxism," whose presidents say things like "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be" with the degree of influence the Heritage Foundation has on the Trump administration.
Perhaps there should be; clearly they see it as a bloodless war. But there isn't.
softwaredoug · 29m ago
Running Biden in 2024 was a pretty clear sign they didn’t take the threat seriously.
burnte · 1h ago
The complete and total lack of any plan (or even the appearance of the desire) to combat the damage is a good indicator they haven't done anything. Half our leaders are tearing down the government and the other half are wringing their hands about it.
shostack · 56m ago
This. The fact that democracy is up against an extremely organized, centralized, and well resourced effort decades in the making with seemingly nothing comparable to combat it has those opposing this on completely reactive footing.
It is hard to see how a reactive group can come out on top in such a case.
AnthonyMouse · 29m ago
The problem is we got rid of "democracy" a long time ago.
The original premise was you have a lot of elected officials and then they act as checks and balances on one another. So, for example, to pass a law against something it has to be voted on by the House (elected officials), and the Senate (originally elected by state legislatures, giving the states, an independent elected body, a voice in the federal government; not anymore) and then signed by the President (another elected official), and then as a final check it had to be upheld by the courts (elected by the President and Senate for lifetime terms).
Then we effectively replaced most of that with administrative bureaucrats that act only within the executive branch. They're not only not directly elected, they're not even indirectly elected by the Senate; the President appoints them -- or they're hired by other unelected bureaucrats -- and then they tend to stick around between administrations because there are so many of them that you can't plausibly replace millions of people every time the constituents want to change who is in office.
Meanwhile they make the rules and enforce them and bypass the courts through coercive plea bargaining. But we call an attack on this system an attack on democracy?
steve_adams_86 · 1h ago
"Strongly worded letter" will be imprinted in my mind for a long time. Schumer couldn't have tried to be much more disappointing in that moment.
It was a clear sign of the inaction and impotency to come.
dylan604 · 18m ago
I laughed so hard at that when it happened, and I just did it again reading this.
HDThoreaun · 33m ago
Dems under biden had a plan. Manchin nixed it, they didnt have the votes in the senate without him
nonethewiser · 1h ago
Elections have consequences
mrguyorama · 43m ago
What was the party that continually lost all the important elections supposed to do? The law is very clear that they are not in power in any way.
There's no such thing as a power that the losing team has. The people with authority in the US come from the majority party.
You want the DNC to do stuff, to solve problems, to execute plans that grow this country, you have to put them into power first
Republican voters understand just fine that if republicans don't win the election, their will does not become law. Why is that so hard for Democrat supporters and voters to understand?
andrewflnr · 14m ago
There are lots of Democrats legitimately elected to Congress who are not using their lawful power effectively. But the other answer is that Dems could have created a party worth voting for ten or even five years ago.
RangerScience · 36m ago
Because notionally, the “game” isn’t supposed to be winners-take-all. And democrats believe in the game even when they’re not winning.
krapp · 8m ago
Honestly, based on my rage levels I can't decide from one day to the next whether the Democrats are controlled opposition player their part or, like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, just too gormless and naive to realize the nature of the game they're playing.
ryandrake · 27m ago
> What was the party that continually lost all the important elections supposed to do?
They're supposed to write a coherent plan with specifics on what they are going to do once they are in power. The (R) side did this with Project 2025. It was detailed and specific and they are executing on it like a checklist. Where is the (D) checklist?
> You want the DNC to do stuff, to solve problems, to execute plans that grow this country, you have to put them into power first
I'm not going to help vote them into power unless I see what their plan is. Even a one-liner that says "We have a list of what Trump did and we're going to revert each commit!" is better than nothing. Their party platform from 2024 is vague and talks more about principles and what they're not going to do rather than specific things they are going to do.
bobmcnamara · 27m ago
Seems like the plan is to keep throwing unpopular candidates into the bike wheel of elections until there's only good candidates left.
It's all part of the show folks.
righthand · 32m ago
Thanks because probably about half of all Democrats are moderate and DINOs. You can’t coordinate on a plan when half your base is defecting to the other side when the progressives don’t line up and kiss the DNC ring.
ohdeargodno · 1h ago
And do what? Say they need to investigate voting machines in <battleground state>, only to have republicans answer "no" and send out the brown shirts while the entirely corrupt federal legislature certified the results anyways?
Voting in the US was already a fragile thing with very little to trust about, purely due to the use of voting machines. Now it's a fully broken system, where no rules are holding up anymore.
The 2026 midterms _will_ be stolen.
the_snooze · 50m ago
What voting machines are we talking about? To the best of my knowledge, most states and municipalities have moved onto some kind of paper-based machine-read balloting system. Those often take the form of scantron sheets where voters bubble in their choices by hand and feed it into a scanner+box for tallying and safekeeping. Even if the tallying machines were broken or compromised, the paper ballots retain a direct record of voter intent.
ants_everywhere · 35m ago
There are a variety of voting machines in use, some are like you describe. Others are ATM-like kiosks that print out your ballot based on electronic input. Verified Voting keeps a database of which precincts use which machines.
> the paper ballots retain a direct record of voter intent.
This is true, although it's expensive to recount the paper ballots and in practice people don't often do it. They routinely do a sort of checksum or sanity check by sampling small numbers of ballots. But a full-on paper ballot recount is rare.
Bush v Gore is a famous example of a recount that was halted before it finished.
the_snooze · 23m ago
A lot of the innovations and changes in US elections are the direct result of Bush v Gore, from the (ill-conceived) rush into pure-electronic voting, to modern optical scan balloting technology. You're right that Florida 2000 was fishy and super close, but I don't think it's all that much of a relevant example today. It's famous, but we've learned a lot in the last 25 years.
A better example of close elections and recount procedures is the literal tie that happened in a Virginia state legislature race in 2017. The attorneys were able to litigate the validity and intent of individual ballots in that race because they had the physical ballots, as well as the machine scans and logs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia%27s_94th_House_of_Del...
monkeyelite · 1h ago
What do you think about the 2020 election?
Damogran6 · 53m ago
I think every accusation is a confession.
AnthonyMouse · 44m ago
Does this also apply when your side makes an accusation?
Damogran6 · 38m ago
You can show me the relative statistics and we can debate it, but I'll not waste time on someone who isn't really interested in honest discourse.
AnthonyMouse · 21m ago
Either "every accusation is a confession" or there are some that aren't based on statistics or other evidence, so which is it?
z0r · 42m ago
This is nicely ambiguous.
Spivak · 42m ago
I get the feeling this is meant juxtapose the statements Democrats made about the election being very secure in 2020/2024 and how little election fraud is even attempted let alone is successful with the statements Democrats are making now about how the midterms and 2028 elections are going to be rigged.
There is surely nothing at all different about our government as it was in 2024 vs today. We don't have a president that openly told his supporters that they won't have to vote in the next election because "we'll have it fixed so good." We don't have a president helping states more effectively gerrymander their districts, we don't have an administration passing new regulations making it harder to register to vote, restrictions on mail in ballots, and new rules for voting machines designed to decease polling location throughout which affects population centers the most.
Democracy in the US isn't well protected against "find a thing that splits across parties mostly evenly and then make it harder for your opponents." The AlphaPheonix gerrymandering software can give you any election result you want. You don't have to ever stuff a ballot box to get whatever result you want.
electrondood · 30m ago
It was well-litigated by the Trump administration, and none of their frivolous claims held up. They lost ~60 of their 63 court cases, and the 3 they won were technicalities.
2020 was a free and fair election.
ohdeargodno · 48m ago
The same thing as every election that involves voting machines: that its results cannot be trusted, and that their very presence erodes what little trust Americans can have in their failing democracy.
Now, if you want to trust that the private militia with a budget higher than every single army in the world is definitely not going to intimidate voters and that the machines being "re-certified" are going to have accurate results, boy do I have a bridge to sell you.
LearnYouALisp · 40m ago
And what understanding of the chains of custody, any audit processes, formal validation, authentication and security, and any FOIA-requestable information do you have that qualifies you to say that?
---
Is that really your own-developed opinion, based on concrete available data and reasonable examples, having passed through your own mind and examined by yourself? Or just entertaining oneself by spouting vehement political rhetoric for gratification? (i.e. opinion entertainment. as FN is rightly called)
ohdeargodno · 35m ago
Your failed democracy is imprisoning citizens in concentration camps, ignoring judge orders, threatening political leaders and has shown callous disregard for any rule of law.
But yeah sure, they're very afraid about FOIA requests :)
step 2: shout your country is a democracy!
defunding media and other propaganda channels? of course, they are incompatible with a fair debate.
> they are incompatible with a fair debate
Considering his polling tanked after debating Harris and then he refused to debate again, I'm not sure if you can make this argument.
>In germany we just saw very public rigging of an election for the federal high court of justice.
Not familiar with that but I imagine that is going to be a controversial statement.
Using Russia as a subject is interesting. A western audience is probably a lot less defensive against the idea that Russia rigs their elections. The video looks interesting.
I'm not sure if it's fair to call it rigging, but there was a massive smear campaign against a judge nominated for their constitutional court. Leading to the nomination being withdrawn when it really should've been an appointment as usual. Which is likely the first massive step toward Germany politicising one of the foundations of their democracy, similar to how the USA supreme court seems like it's red vs blue when looked on from the outside.
I'm guessing this conference is rather left leaning, which is why they'd called that rigging, but there wasn't election fraud. It's an issue of course, since this means that rich people can essentially buy massive influence on the German democracy by clever use of social media and lies. Which may seem like the norm to a lot of people on HN, but that's not how it has traditionally been in Germany.
It's not just the outside who see it that way!
It's now alleged that this was caused by a disinformation campaign targeting MPs of that party.
https://www.volksverpetzer.de/analyse/brosius-gersdorf-union...
not really
but compared to what seems to be happened nearly daily in the US it really is not a big deal
but compared to what is supposed to happen it was a big deal
which seems to be a common trend, being very pissed of about what happened in German politics, then looking to the US and being "they did what now!?", oh it seems things are still fine here
(That's partly why Germany is getting infested with Nazis again. You can go to jail for calling them out.)
Quick scan of my social network just confirms the same: anyone extremely agentic, intelligent, or educated I know has either left, is in the process of leaving, or is considering leaving.
Last person out of Nigeria can turn the lights off.
Sounds like elections in both Russia and the US are rotten these days. Curious to note which party has no desire to rectify these issues.
Here the link to Project 2025 for reference https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade...
Project 2025 is almost halfway implemented and several of its authors hold positions in government, charged with its implementation.
Everyone who thinks it is some side project or wish list that isn't "real" and actually, literally, happening right now is a fool.
https://www.project2025.observer/en
Granted, sometimes they go further. Project 2025 said to scale back USAID; the Trump administration simply illegally impounded its funding and let it collapse entirely.
Project 2025's most prominent authors are in Trump's cabinet: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/key-pr...
You can say what you want or continue to deny it, but there is no left equivalent of it. There are no left wing think tanks writing documents like Project 2025, detailing how to take over the government and root it out of "cultural Marxism," whose presidents say things like "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be" with the degree of influence the Heritage Foundation has on the Trump administration.
Perhaps there should be; clearly they see it as a bloodless war. But there isn't.
It is hard to see how a reactive group can come out on top in such a case.
The original premise was you have a lot of elected officials and then they act as checks and balances on one another. So, for example, to pass a law against something it has to be voted on by the House (elected officials), and the Senate (originally elected by state legislatures, giving the states, an independent elected body, a voice in the federal government; not anymore) and then signed by the President (another elected official), and then as a final check it had to be upheld by the courts (elected by the President and Senate for lifetime terms).
Then we effectively replaced most of that with administrative bureaucrats that act only within the executive branch. They're not only not directly elected, they're not even indirectly elected by the Senate; the President appoints them -- or they're hired by other unelected bureaucrats -- and then they tend to stick around between administrations because there are so many of them that you can't plausibly replace millions of people every time the constituents want to change who is in office.
Meanwhile they make the rules and enforce them and bypass the courts through coercive plea bargaining. But we call an attack on this system an attack on democracy?
It was a clear sign of the inaction and impotency to come.
There's no such thing as a power that the losing team has. The people with authority in the US come from the majority party.
You want the DNC to do stuff, to solve problems, to execute plans that grow this country, you have to put them into power first
Republican voters understand just fine that if republicans don't win the election, their will does not become law. Why is that so hard for Democrat supporters and voters to understand?
They're supposed to write a coherent plan with specifics on what they are going to do once they are in power. The (R) side did this with Project 2025. It was detailed and specific and they are executing on it like a checklist. Where is the (D) checklist?
> You want the DNC to do stuff, to solve problems, to execute plans that grow this country, you have to put them into power first
I'm not going to help vote them into power unless I see what their plan is. Even a one-liner that says "We have a list of what Trump did and we're going to revert each commit!" is better than nothing. Their party platform from 2024 is vague and talks more about principles and what they're not going to do rather than specific things they are going to do.
It's all part of the show folks.
Voting in the US was already a fragile thing with very little to trust about, purely due to the use of voting machines. Now it's a fully broken system, where no rules are holding up anymore.
The 2026 midterms _will_ be stolen.
> the paper ballots retain a direct record of voter intent.
This is true, although it's expensive to recount the paper ballots and in practice people don't often do it. They routinely do a sort of checksum or sanity check by sampling small numbers of ballots. But a full-on paper ballot recount is rare.
Bush v Gore is a famous example of a recount that was halted before it finished.
A better example of close elections and recount procedures is the literal tie that happened in a Virginia state legislature race in 2017. The attorneys were able to litigate the validity and intent of individual ballots in that race because they had the physical ballots, as well as the machine scans and logs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia%27s_94th_House_of_Del...
There is surely nothing at all different about our government as it was in 2024 vs today. We don't have a president that openly told his supporters that they won't have to vote in the next election because "we'll have it fixed so good." We don't have a president helping states more effectively gerrymander their districts, we don't have an administration passing new regulations making it harder to register to vote, restrictions on mail in ballots, and new rules for voting machines designed to decease polling location throughout which affects population centers the most.
Democracy in the US isn't well protected against "find a thing that splits across parties mostly evenly and then make it harder for your opponents." The AlphaPheonix gerrymandering software can give you any election result you want. You don't have to ever stuff a ballot box to get whatever result you want.
2020 was a free and fair election.
Now, if you want to trust that the private militia with a budget higher than every single army in the world is definitely not going to intimidate voters and that the machines being "re-certified" are going to have accurate results, boy do I have a bridge to sell you.
--- Is that really your own-developed opinion, based on concrete available data and reasonable examples, having passed through your own mind and examined by yourself? Or just entertaining oneself by spouting vehement political rhetoric for gratification? (i.e. opinion entertainment. as FN is rightly called)
But yeah sure, they're very afraid about FOIA requests :)