Vladimir Putin must be thinking, “Hell, that big fool didn’t need me to kill faith in the American system. He’s capable of doing it all by himself.”
That’s indeed the plan, such as it is. Trump and his populous Kool-Aid brigade truly believe that, as a matter of faith, votes cast for Him are legit and that all others by definition are not.
The facts of life tell us that President-elect Biden has scored a solid victory. His current share of the popular vote (which will continue to uptick) is 50.8 percent, which is higher than Truman’s in ’48, Kennedy’s in ’60, Nixon’s in ’68, Carter’s in ’76, Reagan’s in ’80, Clinton’s in ’92 and ’96, Bush’s in ’00 and ’04, and, of course, Trump’s in ’16. The facts of life tell us that Biden will finish with 306 electoral votes, identical to what Trump previously garnered and ballyhooed as a victory for the ages. The facts of life tell us that Biden’s winning margin in the three pivotal Rustbelt states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin) is already three times larger than Trump’s ’16 margin in those states.
But instead of acknowledging reality and conceding the race for the good of his country, Trump naturally prefers to marinate in denial – abetted (who could have predicted it) by the craven lickspittles who infest what was once a patriotic American party. Republican leaders still refuse to recognize Biden’s win, even as foreign leaders are lining up to do so; heck, even Turkey’s thug boss sent his congrats to Joe. But the apparent MAGA “strategy,” if one can dignity it with that word, is to keep the Trumpster fire burning down to the very last ash on the very last day of his lame-duck clustermuck.
This nihilistic denialism – that surely a Democrat can’t win the White House unless the balloting is rigged – is totally in character. We’ve already weathered their denialism about Obama (he’s not an American!), denialism about climate change (the weather is always changing!), and denialism about Covid (it’s disappearing!), so why not pretend that a decisive electoral defeat never happened?
This is a last-ditch bid to delegitimize free and fair elections in America. That’s how dangerous the MAGA-riddled GOP has become. It matters not a whit to these saboteurs that Trump has been rejected by more voters than any presidential loser in history – at last count, a whopping 77,000,000. In the words of Max Boot, a former Republican foreign policy advisor, “Republicans are dissolving the glue that holds our republic together…adding to our political dysfunction.”
And they’re doing it by indulging Trump’s ludicrous post-election lawsuits, which will soon be joining Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump Airlines, Trump Casinos and Trump University at the bottom of history’s ash bin.
How’s that hunt for massive ballot fraud working out? I’ll give you two examples:
In Pennsylvania, the Trump team got all excited about a postal worker who claimed that he’d witnessed pro-Biden ballot chicanery up in Erie – so excited that the Trump team cited the guy yesterday in a lawsuit designed to stop Pennsylvania from certifying Biden’s statewide win. Lindsey Graham got wind of the claim and shared the big news with Attorney General/MAGA defense lawyer Bill Barr. But then, alas, the big news went bye bye. The worker admitted to U.S. Postal Service investigators that he’d made up the whole thing. Then he signed an affidavit admitting that he’d made up the whole thing.
Meanwhile, out in Michigan, where Trump’s lawyers have been trying to delegitimize that state’s results (Biden won there easily), they went to court with statements from Republican poll watchers who supposedly witnessed very suspicious stuff. This particular statement is a classic: “I saw a few dozen military ballots being counted. Although I cannot provide specific numbers or names, I can estimate that at least 80 percent of the military ballots I saw were straight ticket democrat or simply had Joe Biden’s name filled in on them. I had always been told that military personnel tended to be more conservative, so this stuck out to me as the day went on.”
There’s the MAGA mentality in a nutshell: If some military people are voting for Biden, that means there must be fraud of some sort. Good luck getting that one past a judge.
If there’s any upside to this eleventh-hour farce, it appears that roughly 80 percent of Americans do recognize that Biden has won the election – and that includes nearly 6 in 10 Republicans. (If we’re still willing to believe the polls.) It’s horrific that Trump and his fellow grifters would flame out by attacking one of the core pillars of the democratic edifice, but perhaps Biden is right when he assures us, as he did again yesterday, that his team is on the case and that we should all remain calm.
Matthew Dowd, a former Bush pollster and frequent Trump critic, tweeted yesterday: “Folks, let’s not get addicted to the constant crazy and chaos, and feel like we have to respond to every twist and turn. Find a place of peace, calm, and joy today away from the news and social media political back and forth. The world needs more serenity from each of us.”
I don’t disagree. But it would also be wise to remain vigilant.