Quote:
Originally Posted by edslunch
On a positive note Trump is getting little traction in the courts with his fraud claims so it might be difficult to run out the clock on certification.
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It is getting traction in the media and among a sizeable number of Americans however.
From Andrew Coyne in the
Globe this morning (but cited elsewhere too):
Quote:
The party base, moreover, is buying it. An extraordinary Morning Consult poll shows plummeting faith among Republican voters not just in the fairness of this election but of elections generally, from roughly two-thirds in late October to barely a third this week. Almost half (47 per cent) of Trump voters told another poll, days after most of the votes had been counted and the results were known, that their candidate was winning the election.
The party establishment has obediently fallen into line. Just four Republican senators have to date acknowledged Mr. Biden as the president-elect. And the longer Mr. Trump’s claims go unchallenged, the more opportunity he and his team have to cement their control of the party – and steel it for what is to come.
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Trump and the Republicans play only to their base - they have no interest in governing for the nation as a whole and - with perhaps a small handful of exceptions - no interest in being restrained by constitutional norms or ethics of any kind.
Trump, in particular, will exploit every avenue available to him, and there are many (see the Van Jones video posted earlier in this thread). Even if the transition to Biden is completed, it will likely be sabotaged, and Trump will continue to pound the message that the Biden administration - and the election system itself - is illegitimate, and his base will continue to lap it up.
This is very much an attack on the institutions of American democracy which - as we've seen over the last 4 years - aren't as strong as one might have imagined. If a significant portion of the population loses faith in those institutions, and considers the stakes high enough, a real fracturing of the republic - and violence - is very possible.
As Coyne points out in his opinion piece, the election is only a week old, and there remain 10 weeks for Trump to do damage even if he ultimately steps down in January.