Media organizations are now projecting Joe Biden has finally won the Presidency, his third try for the ultimate political plum. I don’t mean to demean him; I believe him when he says he ran to begin the long, hard process of uniting the country.
So what comes next? There are at least two paths. The first one everyone knows.
The first path is Trump lights up the sky with lawsuits. But will this work? He’s already been working the legal system, but outside of one trivial victory, he’s suffered continual failure. Although I haven’t been tracking the details of these suits, at least one, involving the Texas GOP, was rebuffed by a far-right Federal judge, after the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court also bounced it. This reminds me of this 2018 lawsuit brought following the November election, in which the Republican loser for a House seat claimed the election was invalid because ranked choice voting was used, and a Trump-appointed Federal judge disagreed.
My point? That a Federal judiciary packed by Trump is still no guarantee that Trump will win. This isn’t the private sector, where loyalty can be bought or blackmailed. Sure, we’ll find Trumpy Trumpist Trumpian cultists among the many judges he nominated and Senator McConnell (R-KY) rubber-stamped, but remember that Trump didn’t personally select them in many cases. Some will be qualified judges who put the law above personal preference.
Add in to the mix the third-rate legal team employed by President Trump. Rudy Giuliani might have been a legal genius in his prime, but now he’s a decayed wreck of what he used to be, reduced to constructing fake scandals, and even failing at that. Jay Sekulow? His background is unsuited to this work, and his victory in the impeachment trial had little to do with actual legal ability, and everything to do with Republican Senators unwilling to condemn the toxic political culture which had placed them in positions of preeminence and wealth. Most of my reading suggests this is not a team of distinguished legal theorists.
And, finally, the SCOTUS conservatives, who may end up being presented with these lawsuits, must be conscious that this will be a test for them. If they accept and find for the President, after all the other judges refuse to do so, in multiple suits, they’ll reveal themselves as nothing more than partisan hacks.
Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett. Third-raters. That’s what they risk, being known as craven loyalists, not respecting the will of the people. Indeed, every news media outlet, if presented with the opportunity of at least some conservative Justices whining that these suits should be heard, if they arrive as Trump appealing yet another loss, should TRUMPET that whining, identifying them, implicitly, as nothing more than partisan hacks.
So much for their legacy.
But I said I saw two paths, and here’s what happens: the conservatives begin to realize that tearing the nation to pieces is not to their advantage. Literally, if this nation goes to pieces, then there goes the free markets that enrich them, there goes their healthcare, there goes civil peace – who wants riots literally in front of their houses?
So here’s leading Fox News Trumpian Laura Ingraham (look at the second video, not the first):
Laura Ingraham prepares her audience for the likely possibility that the President will lose the election pic.twitter.com/tG50EIHj60
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) November 7, 2020
Yeah, a lot of that sounds like utter nonsense. But keep in mind: she’s implicitly speaking to an audience of one: President Trump. No, he looked like shit at the town hall with Savannah Guthrie. His record is worse than undistinguished – he’ll be considered a bottom five President by historians. He’s a leading example of why being a businessman isn’t a qualification for any elective office.
But she knows: he’s a man-child that must have his ego soothed in order to properly instruct him.
So, we may see Trump finally give up and attempt to accept the loss with good grace. It’ll be clumsily done, with many asides alluding to cheating and that sort of crap, insulting the election workers who put their honor, their health, and even their lives on the line in order to implement this basic part of American democracy. But he may do that.
And then, in order to avoid American justice, he’ll flee to another country.
