In the midst of the orchestrated mayhem of the moment it is important to step back from the chaos and take stock of what has happened in recent weeks. Yesterday the President again refused to commit to leaving office peacefully if he loses the election. It was credibly reported that the President’s advisors are laying the groundwork and lobbying state legislators to press friendly state legislatures to reject the vote counts in their states and declare President Trump the winner. President Trump meanwhile says a ninth Justice must be on the Court to decide the outcome of the election. In his threats to reject the results of the election at yesterday’s press conference President Trump said he might concede the results of the election if they “get rid of the ballots”, by which he seemed to me end voting by mail.
The notional justification for all these wild claims and threats, almost entirely unprecedented in American history, is the false claim of voter fraud and the more general specter of election chaos – delays, missing ballots, interminable legal disputes, insoluble legal questions that leave the decision in the hands of the Supreme Court or grants some spurious rationale for overruling a botched election.
No one needs to tell us these threats and bogus claims are wrong. But it is still necessary to step back and realize that there’s no chaos. We are on the cusp of what should be an entirely orderly election process. There’s zero evidence there has been or will be any election fraud of any sort. Not only is there no evidence any of this is happening we have abundant, really incontrovertible evidence that organized election fraud is all but unknown in modern American electoral history. It simply doesn’t happen. Period. There’s zero reason to believe the Supreme Court or any Court will be required to decide the outcome of the election or make decisions which significantly affect the outcome.
Truly none of this is happening. It’s like being in one of those old iMax surround theaters watching a movie of a roller coaster or hang gliding or parachuting off the side of a mountain. You’re gripping your seat because you’re being inundated with sound and visual stimuli. It feels totally real. But yet … none of it’s real. You’re just sitting in a theater near some mall in the suburbs. None it is real.
I know you know that … sort of. But again, think how much in this climate of stress and confusion and specters of irresolvable disputes simply isn’t real. Just entirely made up.
That doesn’t mean everything is fine. This false drama and lying is all meant to set the stage for things that are very real. Certainly not to justify – but even for those of us who are gripping on to the sinews of our democracy with every strength, it creates a sense of forward motion, inevitability, disorder. But the reality check is still helpful, critical, necessary. Because none of it is really. It’s a storm of drama, completely fictive, to set the stage for an unpopular President to reject the results of an election that ends his presidency.
