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Donald Trump does not understand that, so elected Republicans must

Nov 21st 2020

ALMOST TWO weeks after the votes that made him a one-term president were counted, Donald Trump is still claiming that he won. In reality there is no room for doubt. Joe Biden beat him by almost 6m votes, amassing 306 electoral-college votes to Mr Trumps 232. Yet reality is a stranger to Mr Trump, who was crying fraud before the first vote had been cast. He has since fired an official who contradicted his view that the election was stolen and encouraged his supporters to protest against the result.

Most Republican leaders go along with the president. They include his attorney-general, Bill Barr, who told prosecutors to investigate substantial allegations of election fraud; Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, who has championed the presidents right to go to court; and Lindsey Graham, one of Mr Trumps staunchest Senate defenders, who Georgias secretary of state says pressed him to exclude legitimate ballots.

As so often in the Trump presidency, it is hard to know how seriously to take all this. No coup is under way in America. Mr Trump does indeed have the right to mount legal challenges. The counting and certifying of election results has withstood pressure from above. Most of the Trump campaigns lawsuits have already been dropped or tossed out by the courts. Mr Barrs prosecutors explained that they could find no evidence of the kind of systematic fraud that the president insists took place. Despite violent threats, Georgias secretary of state refused to buckle (see article).

Whatever he says or does, Mr Trump will be out on January 20th and Mr Biden will be inaugurated. Might ignoring him thus be the best strategy? Some wonder if it might be best to let the courts explain to forlorn Trump voters that their man lost.

Yet Republican conduct is expedience dressed up as principle. Lawmakers are cowed by the threat that Mr Trump might back a primary challenge against anyone he judges disloyal. They think they need Mr Trumps support to win two run-off races in early January in which control of the Senate is at stake. Worse, their indulgence of Mr Trump imposes a cost on America. The effect of Republican leaders agreeing that perhaps Mr Trump really did win damages Americas ability to govern itself.

All Americans should wish the incoming administration to be competent. By delaying the transition, which in Americas spoils system entails the appointment of 4,000 new officialsall of whom must receive clearances before getting to grips with their new postsMr Trump is making that harder. When George W. Bush handed over to Barack Obama, they held a joint session of cabinet where outgoing officials sat with their replacements and ran through a series of hypothetical crises. The Biden officials will come into office with several existing crises to handle, including the logistics of a vaccination programme for covid-19 in which lives are at stake.

The president and his apologists are doing harm in another way, too. Voters have elected a divided government in Washington, with Democrats controlling the House and the presidency and Republicans favourites to keep the Senate. This requires both parties to work together, finding common interests where they can. If most Trump voters, encouraged by the likes of Mr McConnell, have come to believe that Mr Bidens win is illegitimate, why should they want their representatives to work with him?

America has had bitter elections before, yet the electoral system has almost always generated losers consent. In 2000 a minority of Gore supporters (36%) thought the result was illegitimate; in 2016, 23% of Clinton voters thought so. In 2020, 88% of Trump voters currently think the result was illegitimate. It is up to their elected officials to explain why it was not. This requires more than waiting for the courts, local election officialsor anyone elseto speak up. Failure to do so does not just make America harder to govern. It betrays a contempt for the spirit of democracy and thus a lack of patriotism.

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This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "The art of losing"

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Accepting a disappointing election result is a key part of democracy - The Economist

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On 7 November the United States pulled back from the brink of re-electing a president who has repeatedly shown disdain for democratic norms and institutions. Donald Trump has fused his own business interests with the White House, dubbed the media enemies of the people, embraced foreign strongmen, sidelined science and politicized the justice department, falsely cast doubt on the electoral process and is currently distinguishing himself as the first sitting president since 1800 to frustrate a peaceful transition of power.

But as great escapes go, this one came bone-rattlingly close to collapsing. More people voted for Trump in the 2020 election some 71 million Americans than for any other presidential candidate in US history, other than Joe Biden himself. It took gargantuan determination to unseat him, with historically high turnout and black voters leading the way. And it happened in spite of, not because of, the unique features of US democracy.

The election exposed deep flaws in how Americans choose their leaders. Some of those flaws are as old as the nation itself, while others are more modern creations that have been weaponized by Trump and the Republicans. Combined, they present an existential threat to Americas reputation and survival as the oldest constitutional democracy on the planet.

As Ian Bassin, executive director of Protect Democracy, put it: The United States just allowed an autocratic person to ascend to the presidency, to serve in it for four years and to very nearly extend that term. The big question is: how did that happen, what went wrong there?

Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, expressed a similar thought in Slate: Our voting system is fundamentally broken, she wrote. The future of our country unequivocally depends on our ability to reform it.

Here the Guardian looks at five of the most glaring flaws exposed during this election cycle, and asks: what hope now for setting them right?

The US is recovering from a severe bout of stress, caused by nerve-shattering waiting for the swing states to be called. The 2020 presidential election will go down in peoples memories as unbearably close.

It wasnt close at all.

Biden walloped Trump with a massive lead of more than 5 million Americans in the popular vote the simple national tally of votes cast for either candidate. As CNNs Harry Enten points out, the Democratic candidate will probably end up with 52% of the popular vote, the highest percentage of any challenger since Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.

The popular vote is how most democracies hold elections. Not the US. The outcome is decided here by the electoral college that arcane, twisty system by which the president is chosen not by we the people, but indirectly by 538 electors apportioned by state.

The electoral college is one of the democratic flaws that stretch back to the birth of the nation, when it was devised with less than pure motivations. As Sabeel Rahman, president of Demos Action, explained: It was intended to insulate the presidency from democratic popular control, and in particular to expand the power of the slaveholding states so it was inequitable from the beginning.

By Rahmans reckoning, the electoral college today gives Republican presidential candidates a 4% to 5% advantage over their Democratic rivals.

There is little chance of the electoral college being scrapped any time soon, as it would require a constitutional amendment which is all but impossible in these partisan times.

The main hope for change is the National Popular Vote compact whereby states collectively agree to pledge all their electoral votes to whichever candidate wins most votes nationwide. The movement gained a boost on election day when Colorado backed the idea, but it remains a distant prospect.

Huge turnout in the 2020 election was all the more impressive given barriers to voting. We have seen this cycle an effort by the Republican party to make it harder, wherever possible, to vote especially for black and minority populations, Bassin said.

He added: I dont know of another advanced democracy in the world where one of the two major political parties has invested in voter suppression as a core strategy.

Among the tactics on display were inaccurate purges of citizens from voter rolls, Trumps active undermining of the US Postal Service, and malicious robocalls in areas with large black populations such as Flint, Michigan.

One of the most egregious examples of voter suppression this cycle was in Florida. In 2018 Floridians handed back the right to vote to those with felony convictions, technically welcoming 1.4 million people back into democratic participation.

Floridas Republicans immediately set about undermining the will of the electorate, putting in place a bureaucratic maze that former felons had to negotiate before they could vote. It was so convoluted that almost 900,000 people were still disenfranchised on election day including about one in every six black Floridians of voting age.

Combatting voter suppression is central to HR1, the democracy reform bill championed by the Democrats in Congress. But for the past 245 days it has been stymied in the Senate by Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, and pending two runoff elections in Georgia he is likely to continue to be a roadblock.

In that case focus is likely to shift over the next two years to the US justice department which has become virtually inactive in this area under Trump. Under Biden, the DoJ can be expected to re-engage, enforcing access to voting and prosecuting election-law violations.

That McConnell is likely to remain in control of the Senate is in itself a product of Americas flawed democracy. The composition of the chamber, with two senators assigned to each state no matter what its population, also has its roots in the countrys dark past.

The structure of the Senate is an outdated, racist, Jim Crow relic meant to enshrine white landowner power in our government, by prioritizing land over people, said Deirdre Schifeling, campaign director of the progressive coalition Democracy For All 2021. That disparity has only grown more magnified as our population has grown and its really unsustainable.

Assuming the Republicans hang on to the chamber by winning both runoffs for Georgias Senate seats in January, the Democratic group will represent 20 million more Americans in the incoming Senate than their peers across the aisle and yet still be in the minority. Vox has calculated that if both runoffs are won by Democrats that gulf in representation would shoot up to 40 million Americans, while the Senate would remain in a 50-50 split.

This distortion favors senators from low-population rural states with largely white electorates, such as Montana and the Dakotas, and helps explain the Republicans stranglehold on Congress. Its a catch-22: Democrats are unable to push through democracy reforms such as HR1 because they are blocked by unrepresentative Republican senators, yet without those reforms there is no hope of loosening the rightwing grip on power.

Plans had been laid to address this conundrum by granting statehood to Washington DC and to Puerto Rico, thus creating four new Senate seats. That scheme will be dead in the water with McConnell, the Grim Reaper, in charge and so the vicious cycle continues.

Brianna Brown knows what its like to be at the receiving end of Americas flawed democracy. As deputy director of the Texas Organizing Project, which seeks to build a political voice for black and Latino communities, she has been battling against a Republican state legislature that has made Texas ground zero for voter suppression for years.

Weve had polling place reductions, massive voter purges, a voter-ID law all attempts by the right wing to consolidate their power and shrink the electorate. If they can do that, they win, she said.

On top of all that, there is now the changing composition of federal courts to contend with. Over the past four years, Trump has placed more than 200 judges, conservatives to a fault, on district and circuit courts, in addition to the three rightwingers he nominated to the US supreme court.

Such judicial activism is likely to shift the balance of the federal judiciary for years to come, with consequences on the ground in places like Texas. The pattern was vividly illustrated during the election, when the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, limited the number of ballot drop-off locations to one per county.

The move meant that Harris county, home to the city of Houston, had to close 11 drop-off sites leaving only one to serve almost 5 million people.

The restriction was challenged, bouncing around the courts until it came before a three-judge panel of the fifth circuit court of appeals, which ruled in Abbotts favor. All three of the judges had been appointed by Trump.

This is going to be Trumps long-term legacy, Brown said. We are certainly going to feel it down the line as these rightwing judges, appointed to lifetime positions, obstruct us as we pull out all the stops to provide relief to our folks.

One of the most disappointing aspects of election night for the Democrats was the failure of the blue wave to materialize at state level. Republicans clung on to power in state legislatures in Florida, Iowa, Minnesota and North Carolina, and took control of New Hampshire.

Nowhere was that blow felt more keenly than Texas, where Democratic hopes of seizing the state house by storm rested on flipping nine seats. They didnt gain a single extra one.

The flop will, like Trumps judges, have long-term consequences. Failure to take control in Texas and elsewhere hands Republicans the gift of controlling the 10-year redistricting process in which electoral boundaries are drawn. As was seen in the last round in 2010, after the Tea Party upheaval swept Republicans to power in several states, they proved themselves to be devastatingly effective at drawing those lines in their own favor gerrymandering.

As Brown pointed out, this is another vicious cycle. Gerrymandering allows Republicans to consolidate their power, which in turn puts them in charge of the next redistricting round in which they will intensify gerrymandering.

Our goal is to transform democracy in Texas, and if we can do that we can transform the country, Brown said. But before we can even start that fight, the lines have already been drawn, limiting our ability to build a democracy that looks like us and shares our values.

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America's flawed democracy: the five key areas where it is failing - The Guardian

The Constitution includes mechanisms meant to water down the popular willlike the Electoral College. (Lynn Grieveson / Newsroom via Getty Images)

Join the Nation Festival for four days of essential conversation and commentary in the wake of the 2020 election.

Join the Nation Festival for four days of essential conversation and commentary in the wake of the 2020 election.

If the United States were a democracy, this election wouldnt have been close. The fate of the world wouldnt depend on a handful of suburban precincts. The winner would have been known immediately. With a comfortable lead well into the millions, the president-elect and his party could have moved on to crafting and passing the program that gained them an undeniable mandate.

But we do not have a democracy, and not because Trump undermined it but because the framers of the Constitution did not create one. They felt the Articles of Confederation left too much power in the hands of economic populists in the states, and so they constructed a system meant to serve and protect the rich. The Constitution was designed specifically to prevent, as James Madison put it in the Federalist Papers, an abolition of debts or an equal distribution of property from passing into law.

Nearly two and a half centuries on, the antidemocratic provisions of the Constitution are still working as the framers intended. Even in an era of global capital, the wealthy benefit from a sclerotic, dysfunctional government. When early election results suggested a Joe Biden presidency with Republicans maintaining their grip on the Senate, the Associated Press reported that stocks rallied on Wall Street as investors embraced the upside of more gridlock in Washington. Divided government, these investors seem to think, will derail what Madison called wicked or improper projects: the abolition of student debt, higher taxes on the wealthy, the Green New Deal.

More than progressive economic measures, however, democracy itself is being thwarted by the Constitution. In the summer of 1787, opposition to rule by the people was one of the few things the delegates in Philadelphia could agree upon. They spent the first few days of the convention reassuring one another of their antidemocratic credentials. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts was typical in deeming democracy the worst of all political evils.

The Constitution they designed included provisions and mechanisms meant to water down the popular will and block a more equal distribution of wealth. The president would be selected not by the people but by an Electoral College whose members would be appointed by the state legislatures. The Senate, with equal votes for every state, large and small, would ensure that citizens of large, populous states had far less influence over legislation and judicial appointments than those in smaller ones. Alexander Hamilton wanted its members to serve lifetime terms, for nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy. Though he opposed giving each state equal votes, James Madison thought the upper house should serve as a check on the democracy, a way to impede the influence of those who labor under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings.Related Article

Far from resolving a decade of paralysis and crisis, the 2020 election has only confirmed doubts about the stability of American democracy, institutions, and the constitutional order. The Democrats apparent failure to recapture the Senateassuming anything less than a miracle in Georgia this Januaryremoves the possibility, for the foreseeable future, of steps the party might have taken to offset its structural disadvantages, such as expanding the courts and admitting Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as states.

Merely ousting Trump is not enough without addressing more fundamental weaknesses in our political system, especially an outdated Constitution that continues to serve a minority of wealthy and white citizens and to curb any movements that might threaten their wealth and power. The antidemocratic Senate, for example, is the main obstacle to passing serious legislation on climate change. Without a practical plan for revising the Constitution, Democrats will be condemned to play by rigged rules.

This is a 1780s-like moment in which the existing Constitution seems incapable of responding to crises yet is too difficult to amend. The choice Americans faced then, between national rupture or national renewal, is the one we face now. We can still choose the latter, but it will require devising new institutions that empower the many instead of the few. A constitutional convention may be required to fix some of the flaws of the original charter. The Senate has to be abolished or otherwise deprived of its veto over national affairs. Term limits on the Supreme Court should be instituted so that each presidential term sees the same number of vacancies. The House of Representatives has to be expanded, as it has not been since 1911, when the country had less than one-third of its present population.

To be sure, even a constitutional convention may not be enough to reverse the countrys descent into dysfunction, perhaps even dissolution. It could itself trigger a breakdown of the political order. Yet that might be a risk worth taking if the United States is to survive for any kind of worthy purpose, such as leading a global effort to avert climate catastrophe. More than a new president, we need a radical reimagining of what this country can and must becomenothing less than a full-scale attempt at national renewal.

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American Democracy Was Never Supposed to Work - The Nation

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By David M. Greenwald

When I warned people over the summer of the threat to democracy, there were usually two responsesa lot of partisan agreements and a lot of independent and conservative denials. Indeed, when Trump at the first debate refused to commit to accepting the election results, a lot of people still did not see a true threat.

The only real parallel the US has had in our history was the 1876 election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden. But that election was legitimately in disputeboth sides agreed that there was no clear winner in the three states that would ultimately decide the election, and ultimately there was a deal cut by Hayes to be seated as President basically in exchange for ending Reconstruction.

In some ways this is worse. The New York Times today quoted Presidential historian and author Michael Beschloss, who pointed out, In the case of Hayes, both sides agreed that the outcome in at least three states was in dispute. In this case, no serious person thinks enough votes are in dispute that Donald Trump could have been elected on Election Day.

This is a manufactured crisis. It is a president abusing his huge powers in order to stay in office after the voters clearly rejected him for re-election.

Some have suggested to let this play out. It is playing outbut in most ways it already has played out. The legal avenues have largely been exhausted. The courts have pretty much thrown out every single challenge by the President.

Georgia held a recount. They did find a few uncounted ballots. It did close the gap by a few hundred votes. But it left the result intact.

We are left pretty much with madness.

Anyone who actually watched Rudy Giulianis press conference had to leave shaking their head. Remember when to a lot of Americans this guy was a hero? That was just under 20 years ago. Now he delivered a 90-minute briefing that overflowed with falsehoods and conspiracy theories.

At no point has Trumps legal team offered proof of their allegations for widespread fraud. One official did say that this was an introductory statement and they would be striking at claims about a conspiracy involving Venezuela and George Soros interfering with the US election.

Even before they were made, most of the specific claims have been refuted whether by federal election experts or bipartisan election officials.

This was not an individual idea of 10 or 12 Democrat bosses. This was a plan. You would have to be a fool not to realize that, Giuliani said, pointing to legal challenges in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and elsewhere.

Attorney Sidney Powell also alleged that Dominion Voting Systems used technology developed by Hugo Chavez, the late-Venezuelan dictator, to manipulate votes tabulated overseas to favor Joe Biden.

Of course the company has disputed the assertions, and Department of Homeland Securitys Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has said there is no evidence of foreign adversaries changing vote tallies. Moreover, thats not how they count votes anyway.

The Wall Street Journal in an editorial explained there were some errors, but they point out that the errors in Michigan actually didnt affect the totals and, In any case, the Michigan Secretary of States office said the error would have been identified during the county canvass, when Democrats and Republicans review the printed totals tape from each tabulator.

Antrim County Clerk Sheryl Guy told the Associated Press: There was no malice, no fraud here, just human error. Shes a Republican, the WSJ points out.

Princeton Computer Science Professor Andrew Appel said that voting machines could theoretically be hacked. Wheres the proof they actually were in 2020?

Vulnerabilities, Appel wrote in a blog post Friday, are not the same as rigged elections, especially when we have paper ballots in almost all the states.

Trump went further in a tweet: REPORT: DOMINION DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE. DATA ANALYSIS FINDS 221,000 PENNSYLVANIA VOTES SWITCHED FROM PRESIDENT TRUMP TO BIDEN. 941,000 TRUMP VOTES DELETED.

Dominion responds thats impossible, noting that Dominion only serves 14 counties in Pennsylvania, and it could not have deleted a million Trump votes. Moreover, the WSJ points out, With turnout at 76%, it adds, those counties registered 1.3 million votes.

George Washington Law Professor Jonathan Turley, who has actually been critical of the medias dismissal of the Trump claims of fraud before evidence has come out, believes that the Trump team could face a defamation suit from Dominion.

He writes, If the Trump team does not put forward this evidence in its case challenging the election, it could now be forced to produce it in a case brought by Dominion or its officers.

With the legal ploys going nowhere and devolving into bizarre conspiracy theories, the other move seems to be election nullification.

This is an interesting test for just how strong our democracy isI suppose.

The NY Times lists the chances as somewhere between remote and impossible.

In Michigan, the bizarre machinations in Detroit where Republican canvassers at first refused to certify the results, then did so, now are claiming threats and pressure and want to withdraw their certification, but apparently have no mechanism to do so.

Now he is attempting to get the Michigan Legislature to overturn the Biden victory and seat a Republican slate of electors. He invited the delegation to the White House to attempt to persuade them to ignore the popular vote outcome.

Not going to happen We are going to follow the law and follow the process, said Mike Shirkey, the Republican majority leader of the Michigan Senate. Of course he said it before the meeting and, as we know, the President can be quite persuasive.

Michigan alone would not be enough to overturn the resultshe would need two other states to follow suit, and the NY Times suggests Georgia and Arizona as most likely.

But what happens if he succeeds? What happens if he can convince a few key people to overturn the results of a popular election?

This really isnt that close of an election. The close election was the 2000 race where it came down to one stateFlorida and a 500-point margin. There were legitimate concerns about the ballots. There were legitimate legal challenges. I think a lot of Democrats were angry at the result then as it was a 5-4 decision on partisan lines by the Supreme Court to halt the counting and, in that case, I think the result was legitimately within the margins for error.

Florida also took a lot of steps to recognize the shortcomings of their process and improve the system after that.

This is different. Biden won: Michigan by nearly 160,000 but there were much closer margins in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Georgiabut none less than 10,000 votes.

If Trump succeeds in throwing this one, Im not sure how our democracy recovers. But the good news, I suppose, is, so far, it still seems like an extreme longshot to actually succeed.

What he has done is throw a lot of his supportersmany already inclined toward bizarre conspiraciesinto a lather over this and that will make it much harder to bring this nation together again. Maybe ever.

Part of the problem here is the way that votes were counted fueled peoples misunderstanding of the fundamental fact: Republicans voted on election day, Democrats voted early and by mail. That made for large vote swings depending on which ballots were counted last.

As New York Times reporter Nate Cohn tweeted this morning, The thing thats most dispiriting about the vote dump charts (which purport to show irregularities, but just show large Dem. cities reporting), is that its in such complete bad faith that theres no way the electoral process could be reformed to guard against it going forward.

Giuliani alleged on Thursday that Donald Trump won by a landslide.

Christopher Krebs, the Election Cybersecurity Official fired earlier this week, tweeted in response: That press conference was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history. And possibly the craziest.

Many election systems would have simply folded under the strain of this. Ours has at least so far not really buckled.

It remains to be seen at one point the kind of mainstream Republican leaders say enough. Will they wait until December 14? Another three weeks of this?

Two Republican Senators spoke out yesterday.

One was 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, now a Utah Senator, and the other Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse. Both have been more independent and critical of Trump.

Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the President has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election, Romney said in a statement posted to Twitter. It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President.

It is worth pointing out that Romney and Sasse may have some leverage here, particularly if they could gain the support of a third senator like Murkowski or Collins. They could threaten to bolt the Republican caucus, effectively losing control of the Senate for the Republicans regardless of the outcome in Georgia.

But for now we will watch how this plays out.

David M. Greenwald reporting

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Commentary: Are We Seeing the End of Our Democracy or Its Resilience? - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

Yes, Donald Trump has been defeated by the largest popular vote (79 million) in any presidential election in the history of our democracy. This defeat has hopefully saved our democracy and our lives can return to some semblance of normalcy. Thereby ending the rampant toxic conspiracies that has turned families, friends, races, religious and parties into adversaries.

Conspiracies and distrust in our government is nothing new. When I was a high school student in the late-1950s, conspiracies about government control, interfering in our lives, taking of freedoms, arms ownership, taxation, etc. were plentiful.

With the advent of the internet, social media and cable news programs, individuals and groups were able to make their grievances public to millions without regard to fact. More often it was just an opinion founded in phrases such as, I hear or They said without facts based in truth or identifying the source.

Our political parties became obsessed with power and control of our legislatures and courts. It became evident that was easier to get our courts to do what the legislative process of passing laws was unable to do. These are but a few of the internal issues that have divided our nation.

Donald Trump, being media-wise, seized on this division and used it to create more division. He openly defied long-standing norms, refuted investigative controls, separation of power, etc.

Its time all the voters resolve their differences and unite to save our democracy.

Gary Schetrompf

Portage

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Letter to the editor | Let's come together to save democracy - TribDem.com