Our country is watching a historic drama play out in the wake of the uber-contentious 2020 presidential election. The nation has heard Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden declare victory, but incumbent Republican President Donald Trump has as yet declined to answer that declaration with a concession.
Those two distinct acts – declaring a presidential campaign victory and a concomitant concession of a loss in the campaign has in the modern era of presidential politics been the familiar political dance that the nation's voters expect.
Moreover, those acts are deeply ingrained in America's political psyche during a peaceful transfer of presidential parties between individual candidates, between political parties, and between the citizen voters who align with the candidates during presidential campaigns that last entirely too long.
That conflict – and the accompanying social media conspiracy theories spawned by it – has created a national unease ranging from mild annoyance to deep anger. Part of that unease stems from simply not understanding the process and part from intertwined partisan distrust and suspicion.
Ultimately, the process wins out – as it should and must. The votes will be counted. The legal challenges will be argued, tried, and exhausted. All legal disputes, recounts, and challenges face a Dec. 8 deadline. On Dec. 14, the Electoral College electors face a deadline to cast their ballots.
Yes, so-called "faithless electors" may vote against how they are pledged to vote, but that they are sufficient in number to change the election is historically pretty far-fetched.
On Jan. 6, 2021, a joint session of Congress will officially count the electoral votes. If neither Biden nor Trump reach the 270-vote threshold, the majority-Democratic U.S. House of Representatives will decide the election. Then, on Jan. 20, 2021, the current presidential term ends at noon, and either a second Trump term or a first Biden term will begin along with the ceremonial niceties.
But which candidate has a plausible path to victory? Ultimately, politics is math.
To prevail, President Trump needs the legal means to challenge tens of thousands of ballots in multiple states successfully. Those challenges must establish broad-based, verifiable, and systemic fraud based on current elections law statutes in the various states.
That is, legal scholars and political experts agree, an extremely tall, if not insurmountable order. Turnout analyses verify that Trump outperformed his 2016 totals in the preponderance of venues, and the race was far closer than predicted.
Based on the available information and based on the initial Trump pleadings in challenges in places like Pennsylvania, the Trump challenges are unlikely to prevail. Politics is math, and the electoral math is decidedly and overwhelmingly on Biden’s side.
For the sake of the division in the country today, those challenges should go forward within the time left in the process. But Trump Administration interference with the Biden efforts for an orderly and peaceful transition is inappropriate and frankly dangerous for the country.
Democracy, capitalism, and retail politics are all inexorably tied to winning and losing. The foundations of our nation depend on the abilities of Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and other groups in contention to function as Americans who lost an election but remain committed to America as part of “the loyal opposition.”
In writing about “The Principle of Loyal Opposition” in 2012 for the New York University School of Law Journal, Jeremy Waldron said: “Politics exist because not one person, but (many) people inhabit the world – people in all their diversity with all their disagreements. Even if the objective truth about justice or the common good is singular, still here on Earth, there are many of us with many views, and ways must be found to accommodate us all in a political system.”
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.
35 comments:
If our democracy can't overcome this bump in the road it wasn't worth a shit in the first place. Trump announced months ago that he would not accept any outcome in which he was not the winner. So what? If he can dictate so easily and we MUST accept his pronouncement our democracy is too weak to survive. I don't think so. We will move on.
I like a divided country.It keeps me on my toes.
Thoughtful, sober commentary. An unusual stance these days.
Trump lost. But he proved that half the country doesn't like the liberal party lines (although, we should keep in mind those that tow that line aren't the "enemy"). The mature democrats agree with that. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a push to the middle where it's proven that in order to win elections you have to work with the other side rather than demonizing them.
A - The word capitalism (and the words free markets and conservative for that matter) are no longer applicable in the good ole US of A as we are in the vote buying phase of this republic
(research how many rich people with booming businesses that did not need any government welfare at all but had their payroll made anyway with PPP funds at tax payer, had to print the money because we do not have it expense, then ask Sid and every other so-called journalist why their silence is deafening, or why they don’t quit using the word capitalism and go ahead and admit we are a socialist country now).
B - Search “Hillary Clinton says Biden should not concede the election under any circumstances,” then go educate any Republicans that don’t understand what’s going on as to why Trump is now doing exactly what Hillary Clinton advised (which was A Ok with leftist when the advice was being given to Biden).
C - Leftist totalitarians that condone shitting and discarding shared heroin needles on the streets and sidewalks and the “not that long ago beyond imaginable” lawlessness we’ve witnessed from the left this year, then threatening a 12 year old with being arrested for missing 90 minutes of online school in ten months, was and is extremely inappropriate and dangerous for the country as well.
We may just be past the point of “loyal opposition.”
There should be no room for voter fraud in this country. It is an intolerable occurrence the naysayers have denied forever.
Its existence is becoming fact and well documented.
It is time for the courts to assess the situation, inject remedies and send those involved to prison.
When the Democrats used every gov't lever at their disposal to destroy the opposition, examples include Lois Lerner at the IRS, the bogus Dossier to back up a spying campaign by the FBI, wiretaps on Trump and others, an impeachment attempt after a phone call about Joe's malfeasance and potential bribing foreign country's to pad his and his relatives pockets, do you really think that the other side will really be willing have a kumbaya moment? The only ones that will want to play nice are the ones that suffer from TDS and are in on the corruption.
Sid you do remember the Resistance started before Trump's reorganization?
forget trump, I'm concerned about election fuckery. If we can't trust our election results, we're toast.
It's now time for the National Republican Party to recover, rethink and rebuild a new vision for better results tomorrow. At this point the only question is... "who's going to tell the Emperor he's naked and needs to put on some clothes".
Either Sid Salter is either ignorant or intentionally misleading. While the blue team does have a House majority, that's not how Congress will be charged to elect the president in the case of no candidate getting to 270. One state will get one vote and depends on which party holds a majority for that state, and the red team currently holds that majority. The objective isn't for trump to win the election, it's to inject enough doubt that the vote has to go to Congress.
Trump's election is a symptom of the process being broken. He wasn't elected bc he's a great guy, he was elected bc he has a track record of fixing things that governments have mismanaged while calling them out for being incompetent.
What from history gives any of you any indication that blood will not have to be spilled in the near future?
We have only truly watered the tree a few times. The living generations (excluding WWII age) have fought and died for American "interests" but never to secure our freedom. I'm not surprised. The world is a big bad evil place. However, I am surprised that it will be against our own. It's inevitable now. I just hope it happens before it is too late to be relatively quick....before the globalists/statist/communist type crowd manages to take complete control. That will make it much much uglier and last much longer.
The entire history of man backs me up. We are no different and arrogant to think so. That's part of the problem. We don't want to believe it so we sit and wait.
When the people accept the idea of sending ballots out to every registered voter our honest elections ended. there was never such a thing as an honest election. Votes were bought and sold but not on the grand scale as we now have. You know our vote is not worth much when dead people, dogs, and cats are allowed to vote.
We have too many crooks here in the U.S. and most of them are politicians. The people will have to reset the scales. The cost may be high.
What people fail to understand is our world, the entire world structure, is being changed before our eyes. Never before has such a radical change happened so quickly. It has taken the power brokers over 60 years of indoctrination, manipulation, and political placement to get us to this point. We have arrived. These near-future events will not be for the betterment of mankind. May God have mercy on our souls.
Our country is watching a historic drama play out in the wake of the uber-contentious 2020 presidential election. The nation has heard Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden declare victory, but incumbent Republican President Donald Trump has as yet declined to answer that declaration with a concession.
Well, let's call it straight. The only reason why it's even contentious is that one person feels like the rules do not apply to him and he will not play nice just so he can get his way.
America has been fortunate up until this point to have people serve in the Presidency that respects our government institutions. There was a wrinkle with Nixon, but at least then there were members in his own party that were willing to hold him to account.
Now it's a partisan free for all, where American politics are just about as gutter as a street gang rivalry comparable to Crips (Blue) vs. Bloods (Red). Isn't it ironic that Democrats' colors are Blue vs and Republicans are Red?
Throughout the history of this country, there have always been challenges to keeping it together. There was the Loyalist to the British Crown during the Revolution. Then came the Civil War. After the Civil War, there were Nazi sympathizers during WWII. Then the various domestic groups such as the Symbionese Liberation Army, the KKK, Aryan Nation, United Freedom Front, Phineas Priesthood, Atomwaffen Division, and the Weathermen - have all challenged our daily way of life.
We have a good set-up in this country. The difficult thing about it is that it takes a well-educated society to keep it together, to hold truth to power.
You get what you vote for.
We can do better as a society.
This elections is far from over. When the final gavel bangs in December, it might be over. I’ll wait to see who is sworn in before calling the race for 10% Joe.
I agree Biden should concede.
11:40am....'truth to power" and yet doesn't question one iota the bullshit they have obviously bought from the socialist and media. It's dolts like this that will be executed first by the very people they put into power. Just uttering the phrase "truth to power" tells me all I need to know.
The notion of voter fraud is currently being thrown out of court by both Liberal and Conservative judges. Why? NO proof of any fraud. none. nada. zip. zero. no matter what Mr Trump says.
Furthermore, Mr Trump didn’t win the popular vote in 2016 either. The Electoral College system, which favors smaller rural states, is why he served to begin with.
The reality is that the younger voters are far left of Joe Biden. They only voted for him to not have Mr Trump as president. Give it 20 years and we will be living in a USA that resembles Socalist Europe (think the UK.)
Enjoy Biden’s moderate left of center policies while you still can..
Talk about snowflakes, you lost the game, you don't get an extra quarter.
9:39 - what is long overdue is one standard for registering and voting in Federal elections. Too many differences in too many states.
10:17 Wrong, wrong, wrong. Trump was elected because the alternative was Hillary Clinton. More people voted against Clinton than for Trump.
Biden is indeed a moderate compared to what's already in the pipeline of the Democratic Party, and they have shown they will not hesitate to use violence if the political process doesn't produce the desired results. I would think there's a decent chance of considerable violence within the next few years.
All this talk of election fraud. Well, where is it? Why haven't Crybaby-in-Chief and Rudy "Tucker" Giuliani been able to produce one scintilla of evidence of massive voter fraud that would hold up in court? Why are SOS in both Red and Blue states almost uniformly stating that there was little to no evidence of voter fraud in this election? When former CISA director Krebs had the stones to publicly confirm that there was no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes or was compromised in this election, #LameDuckDonald fired him.
Widespread voter fraud is a myth.
Voter suppression, committed largely by Republicans, on the other hand is very real.
It is not good For America that we keep having such horrible choices.
8:38 you have a totally inaccurate view of what is going on.
John Adams said - "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
The problem is the immoral and unreligious numbers are increasing faster than the moral and religious. That's the problem. And that is what will ultimately make our Constitution inadequate.
3:17 must have gotten a prescription ahead of time.
Trump has no obligation to concede. Hillary told ole joe to not concede if it came to it. I realize ole
@3:17 "one scintilla of evidence" really? Open your eyes to something besides CNN, USA Today, et al. Their bias bans them from being called NEWS.
11:40am....'truth to power" and yet doesn't question one iota the bullshit they have obviously bought from the socialist and media. It's dolts like this that will be executed first by the very people they put into power. Just uttering the phrase "truth to power" tells me all I need to know.
Gotta be a Trumplican, who else would get triggered to 'truth to power'
How dare anyone hold the fuhrer to account
8:03 Absolutely right. There is a scintilla, maybe even two scintillas. And I heard there was a dead guy who voted over in Rankin County. Out of about 150 million votes that's plenty. Obviously the election was bogus.
O.K so the dead guy voted for Trump but...
Every time I read a post with someone mentioning a fuher or nazi this or that, I hear it in Meathead's voice.
8:33am....I think their point was that you blindly follow what you are told by democrat/socialist leaders and question nothing they say. Your hypocrisy is so thick, you didn't even catch the point. You are Stalin's classic "useful idiot."
It's kind to call it " loyal opposition". Given the baseless myths and conspiracies, it more like blind obedience.
" loyal opposition"
WTF ?
This is not the UK Parliament.
( House of Lords or the House of Commons )
We settled that crap during the late 1700's.
OK . . . time to go back to Robert St. John's columns.
3:57....who gets to decide which group, or people are “moral” or “religious”? If an atheist gives his/her time, money, energy working hard, paying taxes, following the law and giving to charity to support his/her fellow human beings and makes certain to check in on their neighbor to make sure they can assist them...all the same knowing that there will be no great eternal reward and that they do these things because they are the right thing to do versus the same “religious moral” person who does these things with the expectation that a god will reward them. Who is the most moral?
The problem I have is that the “religious” and “moral” tend to lean towards the judgmental and holier than thou. Many of these “religious” and “moral” people drive by and condemn the homeless and look down on those who are different, rather than try to assist and understand. If things were left to the purely unquestioning religious...people would still be operating on the theory that the earth is the center of the universe and that people with mental illness were infested with demons. Let us not also forget that following the “religious” and moral would have led humanity to pray for health, rather than understand germ theory.
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