I had a wacky thought. Not a conspiracy theory, just an exercise in pure fiction:

[unblock]

Maybe someone can write a novel based on this wacky thought:

What if hillary actually won and they decided not to tell her?

Imagine all the media owners and republican leaders got together and said, damn, we lost again. But hey, we control the media and both houses of congress and key state positions, I think we can pull off the big con! So the media lies (first amendment!) and says Donnie won a few surprise states (ha!) and won.

On January 3, republicans in congress meet in secret (republicans only! Aw, did the democrats' invitations get lost in the mail?) and officially count the real electoral votes and record hillary as the new president and kaine as the new veep.

Then they meet with democrats for a fake session (they quietly do something technically wrong like fail to gavel-in) in which they trot out the fake electoral votes. They say Donnie's the new president (but it's nothing official because they're not really in session)

Now hillary is the real president but because she doesn't know it, she doesn't propose and laws, she doesn't sign any executive orders, etc.

Donnie isn't the real president, so he can't legally do anything official, that's why he just tweets, to distract us from the fact that he's not actually doing anything!

The executive orders that keep getting knocked down by the courts? Of course they know that! That's the whole idea! They know they don't have the power to actually do anything, so they sabotage their own executive orders so they aren't actually usurping presidential powers!

Oh, and gorsuch isn't really on the Supreme Court, but as we don't really see the inner workings there, we can't tell.

Ok, takes a lot of suspension of disbelief, and don't look too closely st the details, but hey, fun to think about. I've certainly seen worse script ideas turned into actual movies lol!

[drray23]

1. it could make for an interesting work of fiction.

A nice political thriller. Unfortunately, I do not have the skills to write such a novel.

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2. And don't have the time or inclination...

...to even find out if I've got the skills

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. Uhhhh, by what mechanism do you propose she

really won, as in got enough electoral votes? Keep in mind, it was the electoral votes that we all knew on election night. There was no suspense there.

Your scenario doesn't make sense.

Someone could quickly write a novel that's an alternate history in which she won and became President, but still has a Republican House and Senate to contend with. She'd get even less done than Trump does, because they'd block every single piece of legislation she proposes, would continue to attempt to repeal the ACA and so on. To be honest, that wouldn't be a very interesting novel. A somewhat better one would be to have Hillary get the nomination in 2008 and win then.

[unblock]

4. the idea is that she actually won michigan, pennsylvania, etc.

but that the media agreed to report it otherwise and those states' secretaries of state lied publicly about who won but officially certified that hillary won, etc.


i know there are enough safeguards that if you look closely enough there are definitely plot holes here, but hey, i'm not claiming it's a perfect yarn and hollywood is full of movies that just don't add up so why not this idea

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

7. There are also lots of books out there with equally giant plot holes.

In fact, since I was taking your hypothesis a bit more seriously than I should have, I will now say that in retrospect, presented somewhat luridly, with lots of creepy music it would work quite well.

Ignore all my objections.

[bobbieinok]

5. A Mike Malloy listener's theory about sElection 2000

Mike was still on late night at WLS in Chicago. He'd get calls from much of the country and was the audience leader in his time slot in Chicago. (Interesting that 2000 saw Malloy loose a national radio audience, BET was sold and no longer owned by blacks. And in places like Tulsa OK a decades-old community tradition country-Western radio station was bought by group playing 24/7 RW talk-radio.)

The listener asked on Mike's web page...'There's been so much constant media spin during the election campaign - what if Gore wins but we never know because it's spun that Bush won?'

Then there's the whole FL steal and the SCOTUS 5to4 vote. And, of course, the fact that it was announced that the result of the newspaper recount of all the FL ballots would be published on 9/12/01. But then 9/11 happened, and no one noticed that 4 of the 5 newspapers said Gore actually won!!

Real life 2000 was not so different from your book plot. If 2000 and 2016 Russia/GOP collusion could happen, why draw the line at your plot??

[unblock]

6. The difference is in my plot line the republicans don't actually steal the election

It's a con rather than a theft.

The idea is that they recognize they lost, and technically hillary is made president, only they con her (and the country) into thinking she lost.

This way when it's revealed after 4 years, they can't prosecute anyone because no one actually committed a crime, or only very minor ones.

[Joe941]

8. Interesting... plausible.