America needs at least two years to cure itself
President Trump continues to resist admitting electoral defeat and has rallied most of the Republican party to his cause. Meanwhile Biden’s margins are increasing as the few remaining ballots are tabulated. Trump is fighting a losing battle. Why bother?
My guesses are these:
- to get concessions from Biden;
- to maintain his own relevance and retain control of the Republican party.
Trump is a transactional bargainer. He sees no reason to give up anything for free. Biden will soon hold the key to investigations of the Trump Administration. While Trump will be sure to pardon himself and his family members, he would be hard put to name all the loyalists who may have abused the public trust. He’ll try to get Biden to agree to go easy on them, exploiting the fact that Biden’s word, unlike Trump’s, is his bond. But I see no reason why Biden would offer it. Biden will have a hard time deciding how long to to focus on rooting out Trump’s malfeasance, but he is unlikely to agree to limit the prosecutorial efforts in advance.
Trump is more likely to be successful in maintaining his own relevance and control over the Republican party, whose leadership stands 100% behind him. Senator McConnell was of course correct in stating yesterday that the President is well within his rights to pursue all available legal avenues. But that doesn’t mean doing so is good for the country. The only upside I see of the hard-line resistance of the Republicans is that it will be marginally harder for them to claim that the election was stolen if all the allegations are determined in court to be unfounded.
There is little reason to be concerned about the impact of the delay so far. Biden has already begun his preparations, especially on Covid-19, and has an incredible stable of experienced people working with him. The funding Trump has blocked is minimal. The transition can be funded privately. The expertise available from Trump’s Cabinet is irrelevant. Throughout the US government, the civil service and foreign service officers will be preparing their memos and getting ready for the inevitable.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be hiccups however. The Trumpians haven’t found any good evidence of fraudulent votes or improper procedures. Some states with Republican legislatures could however try to certify slates of electors who did not win the popular vote. Some states might even withhold their votes on December 14, hoping to deny Biden the necessary majority in the Electoral College and throwing the selection of the next president into the new House of Representatives that will meet in January. It will have a majority of Republican-controlled state delegations, each of which gets a single vote. No doubt the Biden legal team has scoped out all these perfidies and designed appropriate responses.
The world, and my half of the American population, will watch this interregnum nervously. Can American democracy really survive such brutal assaults on the integrity of its electoral process? So far, the answer has been yes, but big challenges lie ahead. Perhaps the most significant is the double run-off for two Georgia senatorial seats on January 5. The Republican contenders there are already calling for the resignation of the Republican Secretary of State, whose only mistake has been to allow a free and fair election in a state where voter suppression has been developed to a fine art.
If Democrats win those two seats, which is unlikely but possible if everyone who voted Biden and then some come out to vote, they will gain control of the Senate and a commanding political position in Washington. The Republicans will then be compelled to do the hard job of figuring out how to become relevant again. Some may prefer the restraints of divided government, but given the gigantic challenges of restoring the US government to a modicum of dignity and respectability, I’m in favor: Biden needs at least two years with full Congressional backing to undo the damage Trump has wrought.
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