What if empty-suit Kalamatous joyously flops in debate tomorrow, polls don’t improve? Dems to postpone Nov. 5 election, nominate stronger ticket?

Lenin’s Socialist Soviet repeatedly postponed (but dared not cancel) 1917 All Russia Constituent Assembly; bought time to consolidate power in Petrograd, Moscow

Lenin had achieved all the localized military power he needed by the end of 1917 and—rather than risk alienating those who had voted for delegates across all of Russia—allowed the Constituent Assembly to meet January 5, 1918, at Petrograd’s Tauride Palace, essentially on Lenin’s terms. **Moorehead, 1958 (See footnote for discussion source.)

By that time mutinous soldiers and sailors, all loyal to Lenin’s Socialist Soviet, had control of both Petrograd and Moscow; opposing forces in those cities had been denied or stripped of weapons, and there was no unified opposition.

Armed Bolshevik forces then presided over the meeting as “Assembly guardians”—until guards “got tired” of watching representatives’ proceedings and declared them terminated in the early morning of the following day. Armed Bolshevik “guardians” then forcibly “escorted” Assembly reps out of the Palace.

Those elected representatives then went into hiding, or fled Russia—presaging nearly three years of bloody civil war, the deaths of millions by starvation and disease.