Another day, another humiliating loss for Donald Trump and his quixotic (some might say insane) desire to hold onto the White House. Today, Georgia just finished their third (!) recount of the presidential votes, and it once again affirms that Joe Biden won the state by about twelve thousand votes. This comes after one loss after another in the courts (the Associate Press reports that fifty court filings so far have led to only one minor victory for the president's legal team). In perhaps one of the more stinging rebukes against the Trump legal team, Federal judge Stephanos Bibas ruled against them, saying "Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.” Bibas, it should be pointed out, was appointed by Trump, proving both the importance of an independent judicial system, and that partisanship does not always overrule the truth. And it's not just the courts that are rebuking him, recently the state of Wisconsin did a recount of votes (paid for by Trump's campaign), that actually added to Biden's vote total.
This is all good news in that it shows that American democracy, despite the roughing up it has taken in the past four years, is still holding on. But it is upsetting in that Trump has shown that the edges of our system can be frayed. From our absurd Electoral College that gave Trump his victory in twenty sixteen despite his losing the popular vote by almost three million, to his (thankfully failed) attempt to get electors in certain states to vote against the will of the voters, Trump has shown that he very well could have stolen the election if it had been closer. Really, his legal team's ineptitude is a perfect capper to his political career; chaotic, poorly planned, and built around the erratic, needy nature of Trump himself. If he had been more organized, and started making legal charges against election laws before the election, he just might have gotten away with it, but then, without chaos he wouldn't be Trump.
So now we have reports of him sullenly stalking the oval office, repeating "I won I won" to anyone within earshot, acting much like Richard Nixon did in his final days. But unfortunately, there is a crucial difference; Nixon's downfall came with plummeting approval in his own party, which eventually led to the elected leaders of his own party turning on him. Sadly, for the most part, this hasn't happened to Trump. So far, only a handful of Republican officials have publicly admitted that he lost. In a Senatorial debate in Georgia yesterday, Senator Kelly Loeffler refused to say whether Trump had won or lost that state in the election. And with good reason, a clear majority of registered Republicans (in some polls, as many as seventy percent) think that the election was somehow stolen by Biden.
We've been down this road before; during the presidency of Barack Obama, the crazy notion that he had actually been born in Kenya was seen as believable by a large number of Republicans. In other words, "Stop the Steal" is just the new birtherism, and it is really a surprise that a party that has often rejected the truths of evolution and climate change would move latch on to another falsehood? Fueled by the right wing media, for years now millions of Republicans would rather hear what they believe to be true rather than the actual truth.
Now, while there's no chance that the current conspiracy beliefs will change the election, it may prove to be a rallying cry in future elections, which is where my real concern lies. What if another demagogic cult like leader like Trump arises in this country? And what if that leader isn't disorganized and distracted like him? American has disposed of one president that is all too willing to discard democracy for his own personal gain, but what happens if another such leader rises? If Trump has taught us anything, it's that American democracy is more fragile than we thought, and that in the door to outright fascism may be open to just the right kind of leader. (If you think I'm just being paranoid, remember that Trump sometimes publicly mused about getting a third term, or even a lifetime appointment.) Hopefully America will never have another Trump, but it's not impossible.
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