You know who is trying to steal the election
What is Donald Trump up to? His refusal to acknowledge the result of the election more than 10 days on is harmful:
- It limits the Biden team’s preparation for taking on presidential responsibilities January 20, including distribution of Covid19 vaccines.
- It makes the US, supposedly the leader of the democratic world, look unable to conduct a clean election and manage its own political contestation.
- It promulgates uncertainty and projects unreliability to adversaries and allies.
- It may encourage Trump or our adversaries to indulge in badly calculated moves both at home and on the world stage.
Trump doesn’t care about any of this. He puts his personal interests first. Those are also clear:
- As a transactional negotiator and an ornery personality, he sees no need to give up anything voluntarily. He wants to be bought off, perhaps with promises about limiting judicial investigations of his Administration once Biden takes office.
- He is using his “stop the steal” campaign to raise money, ostensibly for his legal efforts to promote recounts but it flows first to the Republican National Committee and a political action committee that can fund his and his family’s personal expenses.
- Uninterested in (and incapable of) the usual ex-president role as a distinguished senior statesman, he aims to maintain control over the Republican Party for as long as he can, with the aim of either running again in 2024 or putting up Don Jr. for the role.
- He hopes to generate surprises: an outcome of the Georgia recount in his favor (which would not alone ensure him of election) and a move by the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania legislature to try to endorse his slate of electors for the December 14 voting of the Electoral College rather than Biden’s (which would also not alone ensure him of election).
- Failing those surprises, he will try to block Republican-led states from conveying Biden votes to the Electoral College, where Biden will be elected only if he has at least 270 electoral votes.
None of this is likely to work, but Trump believes what he tells his sycophants: anything is possible if you just push the envelope. I have to admit that his election in 2016 is a good illustration of that thesis.
The question is why any self-respecting Republican would go along with this fantasy. The answer lies in Trump’s well-established record of vindictiveness and those 71 million votes he so proud of (even though they were 5 million fewer than Biden’s). A few Republican members of Congress have peeled off and many Republican state and local officials are testifying to the integrity of the election. But the bulk of the Republican Party appears content to remain in the hands of the President who delivered so well on nominating judges who would do the Party’s bidding and lowering of taxes on corporations and the wealthy, without regard for the budget deficit the GOP complains about when a Democrat occupies the White House.
All of this is enabled by a media landscape that neatly divides Americans between major population centers and surrounding rural areas. I see no likelihood that will change. It simply doesn’t matter to Trump’s supporters if he lies to them about the election being stolen or Covid-19 being a hoax (and disappearing). They complain about government interference, worry about socialism, and resist wearing masks because it infringes on their freedom, but they also happily follow USDA instructions not to plant crops and cash their agricultural subsidy checks, which have ballooned by about $40 billion under Trump. No one on their airwaves is going to note he inconsistencies.
This is one of the most troubling results of four years of lying governance. Consistency, facts, scientific knowledge, and truthfulness no longer matter to about half the American population, which is content to vote for someone who lies without hesitation. I know who is trying to steal the election, and so do you, but they don’t.
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