Donald Trump lost. There is no question. The election went smoothly, without violence or strife. The votes have been counted and at this point Joe Biden received over seventy five million votes and Trump over seventy one million. In the Electoral College, Biden currently holds two hundred and ninety votes to Trump's two hundred and fourteen. With three more states yet to finish counting, it is likely the final tally will be three hundred and six votes for Biden and two hundred and thirty two votes for Trump. Although the time it took to finalize the vote counting in some states gave a few of us Biden supporters nightmares, in the end it wasn't that close an election. Sure, Trump outperformed the polls (again), but a Biden victory was predicted months ago, and it was delivered Saturday when Pennsylvania was called for him.
For months leading up to the election, Trump has been saying that mail in voting is open to massive fraud and that he will contest the results. And so that has come to pass. Without a word of concession, he has started legal proceedings in several states, led by his ghoul-like lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
The chances of any of his legal arguments actually succeeding are virtually none. If voting fraud did take place, that would have to mean that the Democratic party manipulated millions of votes in several different states, which would be the largest election scandal ever. And that while they were doing this, somehow they forgot to defeat other Republican candidates, like Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell. Devious and dumb at the same time! While the Trump team seems to be holding onto the precedent set the last time there was a highly contested election (Bush Vs Gore in the year two thousand), it must be pointed out that that was an extremely close election (only half a million votes separated the two candidates) that all came down to a razor thin margin of around five hundred votes in one state. Nothing in this contest compares. For Trump to prevail he would have to somehow flip more than one state that he lost, and that's really impossible. Not even a Supreme Court with three of his appointments can do that.
The sad thing is that many Republican leaders, like Graham and McConnell, are either saying nothing or encouraging Trump's legal actions. So, far, only four Republican Senators have publicly endorsed Biden's victory. I imagine that this has more to do with elected Republicans fearing to cross Trump and his vice like hold on the Republican voters than it does any actual belief that he will prevail. To Republican officials, supporting Trump even as he says foolish or awful things has become reflexive in the past four years. Siding with him yet again is nothing new for them.
In many ways, Trump's refusal to accept the election results is laughable, as he continues to think that the world works only by his rules. But it is important to consider just how despicable he is being here. No president in the history of this country has attacked a perfectly legitimate election result before. Nixon's corruption didn't even come close. His actions are an insult to the entire idea of democracy, not to mention the constitution. Trump is calling for nothing less than a coup. Even if it is a failed one. it's still simply terrible that our nation has a president trying something so extreme. Hopefully, America will never sink to the level of Trump ever again.
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