Prediction: It Will Get Worse

Joe Biden is staying calm, appointing people, getting briefings, treating his ascension to the Presidency as a normal thing after a normal election. This is the forty-sixth time we have done this, transitioned from one President to another, and it has become a sort of matter of routine. The exiting President leaves a note in the desk, rides with the new guy to the inauguration, there are meetings between the incoming transition team and departing staff at many levels. It is complicated to replace the CEO and senior leadership every few years but it is a traditional and healthy part of American democracy and Biden is treating it as such.

Trump doesn't want to leave. It is not clear why. He does not show any interest in doing the job he was elected to do, but he does not want to leave, and so he is making this as painful and ugly as he possibly can. He is encouraging violence and disruption, hinting at civil war and a military coup, he is setting up the Executive Branch agencies so they will barely be able to function once Biden comes in. He is appointing people to ridiculous positions, stirring up conflict with other countries, trying to start purely political investigations, siphoning huge amounts of money out of the system.

He still has not admitted that he lost the election, and insists it was rigged. And here is the beautiful thing: he has every right, under Constitutional law, to challenge any election result that might have been fraudulent in some way. Trump can use the judiciary to challenge anything improper that might have happened in the 2020 election.

I have lost count, but he has gone to court now more than sixty times over this, including at least two appeals to the Supreme Court. He has had a good share of Republican judges and even judges that he himself appointed. They would love to help him out, you just know, they like him and would be happy if they could catch those libtards cheating in the elections, if they could prove that Trump actually won "BY A LOT," as he is saying. By and large, the judges are on his side. More than sixty times his lawyers have written up narratives and lists of evidence, names of witnesses and descriptions of what they witnessed, video of trucks in the night and people using flash drives and marking up blank ballots, and more than sixty times the court has been unconvinced. The witnesses are incoherent morons. The videos show ordinary ballot-counting processes. The complaints are trivial and unrelated to bias or "rigging" of the election. Still, any time the Republicans think they have found something they have the right to go to court, to follow the Constitutional procedures and demonstrate that our system of government is robust and serves to maintain justice and order. And so far it's working.

Plus, Trump's people get all the air-time they could ever hope for. "Access journalism" means that reporters and media outlets will let powerful people say anything they want without challenge or criticism, and Trump and his people have been in the media constantly, alleging improprieties. All they would have to do is hold up one piece of evidence, one photograph or recording or a piece of paper that shows a vote was changed or entered illegally. That's all they need, one piece of evidence to turn the American public to their side. If they can't convince the courts, they can at least try to convince us citizens. And they can't. They don't have anything that holds up, even in the eyes of Joe Blow sitting at home in front of his TV with Fido on his lap.

The inauguration is a month away. So let me make a prediction. I am going out on a limb here, so hear me out. Just based on my gut, on my finely honed political instincts, on my encyclopedic knowledge of history and inside-baseball political maneuvering, I am going to predict: it's going to get worse over the next month.

Trump has given up on the coronavirus pandemic. He will not even mention it, will not call a meeting, will not push to allocate funds to fight it. He is focused on one thing, and that is the election that he lost. It was an honest, fair election, even according to his own people that he sent out to find problems with it. In order to "win" he has to overthrow the system of democratic voting that we have had in place since 1789. He has to overthrow the American government and the American way of life. That might sound bad to you and me, but the Republican Party is soundly behind him, they do not recognize the validity of our electoral system, they will not acknowledge that Joe Biden has won.

It will get worse before January 20th. Trump is planning a "wild" demonstration in Washington DC on January 6th, the day when the Electoral College vote count is finalized and the results are certified by Congress. He is stirring up violence and talking about civil war. If there is to be a civil war now, the only issue is that the loser of the election does not want to admit he lost. It is nothing more than that, a rejection of the rule of law, a rejection of the Constitution, a rejection of the American way of life. Trump has gone off the deep end mentally and has surrounded himself with raving maniacs who are detached from reality. They don't want what the country wants, they don't want the heritage that has been handed down to them by history. It's going to get bad.