Many of my Democratic friends, while unsurprised that Donald Trump is refusing to acknowledge that he lost the election, are surprised, not to mention dismayed, that top Republicans like Mitch McConnell are playing along with the president’s meritless claims that there is sufficient evidence of voter fraud to call Joseph Biden’s victory into question.
Yesterday I heard an analysis of this Republican pandering to the president that entirely made sense of it. For McConnell and his Republican colleagues the entire game now is winning at least one of those two runoff senatorial elections in Georgia. To do that they need Trump’s supporters in Georgia, which means they need Trump, which means they can’t afford to piss him off. So they’re playing along, paying lip service to his fantasy of salvaging a victory so that when the time comes he will help rally his base in Georgia. It’s sad and cynical, but that’s the world we live in today.
The consensus among political pundits is that Trump’s attempts to overturn Biden’s win will come to nothing. His campaign’s meritless court cases will be thrown out and the election results will be certified in the various states by the end of the month. Trump will never concede, and may continue to withhold support for the presidential transition, but not since George H.W. Bush has there been a president-elect who needed transition support less than Biden does. He and virtually everyone on his incoming staff were working in the White House only four years ago. So Biden will take office on Jan. 20, the thinking goes, and will capably pick up the reins of governance regardless of what Trump does.
But while there will be no coup, Trump will go to his grave swearing that the election was stolen, and tens of millions of his supporters will believe him. That represents a serious threat to our democracy because the seeds of tyranny are planted when large portions of the electorate lose faith in the democratic process.
And even with that note of gloom, there are some who are even more pessimistic. As one letter to the editor in this morning’s New York Times put it, the pundits’ confidence that Trump’s court challenges will be dismissed “misses the real possibility . . . that in some key swing states with close outcomes in Joe Biden’s favor, the Republican-dominated legislatures may well declare that in view of the controversies over the propriety of the counts, they will have to intervene, resulting in designation of Trump electors. The Supreme Court could well declare that such actions are legal pursuant to the constitutional provision authorizing state legislatures to determine the mode of selecting electors, and the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which seems to give the legislatures considerable discretion in the resolution of such disputes.”
Another possibility is that the certification of votes in some states could be held up long enough that the Electoral College fails to award 270 votes to Biden when it meets in mid-December, in which case the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives where Trump would win because each state gets one vote and a majority of states have a Republican-majority delegation.
So might we be witnessing the beginning of a successful coup, or are we “only” seeing a dangerous erosion of our democracy? I’m inclined to think it’s the latter, but I wouldn’t bet my car on it.
I think the state legislatures appointing sets of electors contrary to the actual votes in the states is unlikely. I also realized this morning that Trump really doesn’t care about the GOP or the Senate or Georgia. He’s in it for himself, so unless there is cash upfront he won’t be interested. I believe Mitch and his minions are going to be disappointed. Trump is looking for big money to pay off his huge loans coming due next year. He’s more likely to sell state secrets to the highest bidder. Of course, since he never paid attention at intelligence briefings he really may not have that much to sell. It’s really sad and frustrating to have the whole world coddling a toddler having a tantrum.