This Is a Coup. Why Were Experts So Reluctant to See It Coming?

Wednesday morning, like most mornings, I woke up to the usual round of politics news sites and newsletters: Politico Playbook, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Most of the day’s news concerned Tuesday’s runoff elections in Georgia, which apparently delivered control of the Senate to Democrats; other articles concerned the ongoing pandemic and the future of commuting in the post-pandemic world.

One article caught my eye: a Washington Post article by David Nakamura about whether the protests and petitions against the counting of Electoral College votes added up to a coup attempt. The piece quoted several liberal commentators and historians as saying that it obviously was, but the thesis was that what we were seeing as of Tuesday did “not yet meet the formal academic definition of an attempted coup.”

[The political scientist Naunihal Singh argues that Wednesday’s violent invasion of the U.S. Capitol is not a coup. To read why, click here.]

Some of the experts quoted in the piece urged calm and even insinuated that being alarmist about the indications that protesters aimed to cause severe unrest could be self-fulfilling. I filed this, and another incident, away and set about my daily business of testing and interpreting theories about politics. I looked forward to spending the day tapping out code in the data analysis tools Stata and R and occasionally checking in to make sure that the counting of ballots was going on as automatically, if a little more dramatically, as expected.

As I write this a few hours later, rioters incited by President Donald Trump have stormed the Capitol building. Both the House and the Senate have suspended their counting because of security threats. Reportedly, shots have been fired. A photograph of a rioter occupying the House speaker’s chair shows that the Capitol is, essentially, being occupied. C-SPAN is reporting that senior members of leadership of the legislative branch are being held in an “undisclosed location.” Reporters are refusing to divulge their locations on the grounds—entirely reasonable—that doing so could endanger their safety. The National Guard has been deployed.

It’s undeniable at this point. The United States is witnessing a coup attempt—a forceful effort to seize power against the legal framework. The president has caused the interruption of the process that would certify his removal from office. The mechanics of constitutional government have been suspended. Americans are in danger of losing constitutional government to a degree unmatched even during the Civil War, a period when secession itself did not postpone either the holding of elections or the transition of power between presidents.

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