It’s been over a week since the presidential race was called for Biden, yet the loser in the White House refuses to concede. The victor’s camp has had to watch endless analyses of the loser’s situation, which with time grows more pathetic and bizarre. The media continues to cover Trump, take his words to heart, and repeat them when they don’t deserve repeating. A few sycophants continue to treat him as if his wishes and grudges matter. Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani’s scatter-shot press conference in defense of the President, held mistakenly at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, sandwiched between a dildo shop and a crematorium in a banal corner of suburban Philadelphia, offers a visual metaphor for how dodgy and disreputable Trump’s protestations are.
Meanwhile, the victor and the victorious electorate have been cheated of the whoop and holler of all-out jubilation. Yes, Biden backers partied in the streets the day the election was called and rallied to cheer Biden’s sweet victory later that night. Yet a cloud hangs over Biden’s lawful assumption of the presidency, because the current president refuses to acknowledge what Biden has accomplished—refuses to acknowledge the people’s choice. Until someone chops down Trump’s tree of refusal, Biden’s win remains in the loser’s shade.
It’s incontrovertible that Biden defeated Trump. As of this morning, Biden has 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. Biden won by flipping five states that Trump won in 2016: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia. His margins could have been fatter in Arizona and Michigan, but only in Georgia are the results close enough to justify a recount, which is occurring now. Even if Georgia were to go to Trump instead of Biden, it wouldn’t be enough to touch Biden’s win.
An astonishing number of Americans (about 73 millions) turned out for Trump. He received the highest number of votes ever cast for a Republican candidate, but, in this year of astronomical turnout, Biden far eclipsed him, winning roughly 78.8 million votes out of some 152 million cast. Biden received over 5.6 million more votes than Trump.
Trump’s childish inability to accept the results is unfortunate, but far more dastardly is the behavior of others in the Republican party, who indulge Trump instead of pressuring him to concede. Of particular moment is the formal beginning of the transition process. Once the formal transfer of power begins, we can all breathe a sigh of relief. The incoming administration will then be privy to what is going on in the Trump White House, greatly reducing the risk of any dangerous lame-duck shenanigans. So far, though, a single Trump appointee, GSA administrator Emily Murphy, has held up this process, by declining to ascertain that Biden won. She is siding with the defeated incumbent instead of with the American people.
Yet the moment is coming: Power is drifting away from Trump and incrementally consolidating around president-elect Biden. The news outlets are debunking Trump’s claims of fraud. Secretaries of state and other officials all across the US are explicitly defending the integrity of the elections they conducted. The New York Times reported on a group of election officials who say this was the most secure election in US history. Makes sense, given the fears raised over interference in 2016. Since then. states have made substantial progress in improving election security and defending against any type of interference or fraud.
Meanwhile, Trump voters are shrugging off the loss. As of November 10, 79 percent of Americans had come to accept that Biden had won the presidency, and 13 percent thought it hadn’t yet been decided, whereas only 3 percent believed Trump had won. By now, the number who believe Trump’s claim to a second term is meager indeed. The Newshour’s William Brangham, talking to Trump voters in Michigan after the election, found that many were weary of politics and ready to move away from the chaos and heal the social wounds they’d sustained. Over the weekend, pro-Trump demonstrators planned a MillionMAGA march in Washington, DC, but the crowd numbered in the tens of thousands at best. Hey, most of us have lived beyond voting for a candidate who lost.
It’s time for the Trump era to fade to Biden. Catcalls, boos, and rotten tomatoes will rain down on Trump, if he can’t improvise a graceful exit tout suite. Only a buffoon enjoys being humiliated: whether Trump is one will become evident now.
I find it incredible that orange head has not conceded; the damage to our republic, and to democracy, is dire. I am writing this response on November 22, 2020. Still “orange head” and his team continue to file lawsuit after lawsuit, falsely, baselessly claiming voter fraud has occurred.
Nearly every case has been tossed out; no judge has the right to take away the results of THE PEOPLE’s votes. “Orange head” has tried in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada. He even had the audacity to fly in GOP leaders from Michigan, hoping to sway them to take away Biden’s victory somehow through the legislature. (Biden won Michigan by over 140,000 votes.) To orange head’s surprise, those GOP legislative leaders “took him to the woodshed,” proclaiming they would NOT mess with Michigan voters’ will.
Orange head nevertheless keeps on plowing ahead, like a thug/hoodlum after prey. As you aptly mentioned, nearly all the federal GOP legislators, save a very few, have remained silent as they watch their “king” keep going and going, eroding our democratic election traditions.
These lawmakers all took an oath, not to Trump, but to our country and Constitution. . . . Never since the Civil War has a presidential election been so quagmired. I worry that orange head is itching for blood, to have citizen fight citizen in the streets and countryside. He cares for no one’s life but his own.
It’s particularly scary how he’s focused on Michigan, despite its going for Biden by a large margin. He’s always hated Gov Whitmer (in keeping with his aversion to smart powerful women) and he imagines he can stoke the latent sexism and violence of his supporters in the state, just as he did earlier in the year. They are pressuring state officials here intensely, just like they did in Georgia. By the end of the day, we will know whether Michigan officials are capable of being brave and respecting the will of the majority.