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Stuff like throwing out the real election and installing their candidate anyway?
Someone who believes Jan. 6 was a failed coup doesn't think the Trump gang has been waiting.
That suffers from a similar failure of reasoning. To think that was a coup attempt requires a similar sort of video game logic to thinking that Trump (or Kamala for that matter) becoming president will somehow result in the constitution being abolished or massively amended. It's thinking that there's a magic chair that if you can just touch then the objective marker says "completed" and it plays the "overthrowing the government" cutscene. If the necessary pieces were in place for that to happen (meaning, the vast majority of the federal apparatus was already on board), then touching the magic chair would be unnecessary.
Failure of reasoning or not, it’s taken as desire to do the illegal/procedurally impossible. Holding Congress hostage is absolutely the kind of thing that leads to fantasy oppression.
For what it’s worth, I’m with @AshLael. The chair does matter because all the chairs matter. Every victory, legal or not, is evidence that the victor has more power. The will of the people, the Mandate of Heaven, the barrel of a gun, the right side of history—whatever says “these guys are winners.” You don’t get the necessary pieces in place without some of those victories.
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No, the magic chair does matter. It creates a coordination point.
If you've got an army with the numbers to go and storm the opposing trench you still need a way to get them to all charge at once. If one goes on his own he gets shot to bits. Seizing control of the leadership can potentially give you that - you still need soldiers willing to obey your orders, but you can gain the authority needed to make them believe that everyone else is going to obey them too.
There's many examples of dictators who took power by exploiting legitimate processes before running roughshod over the law once in power - including the archetypal evil dictator Hitler himself. If Hitler loses the 1932/1933 elections - even with no reduction in real support, say because Germany had had a different electoral system - he doesn't pass the Enabling Act and he never becomes Fuhrer.
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At the same time, the failure seems to illustrate that the Republican congressmen don't just always go along with everything.
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