2020 Election Post Mortem VIII. What in the world is Donald Trump doing?

I guess the safest thing to say is that neither I, nor anyone else, has any idea, but he should stop it.

Let's start with some things that few people are willing to acknowledge right now.  While the Trump Administration has been a roller coaster ride, and an unwilling one for many people, its had its accomplishments.  Setting aside the constant drama of the last four years, his judicial appointments have been excellent and many business people feel that his management of the economy and roll back of regulations was well done.  Opponents of abortion could note that he's the most pro life President in years.  Populists can claim him as the most populist President since Andrew Jackson, if you like populism.  People who wanted a draw down in military engagements overseas got that.  His taking on China in trade was also long overdue.

None of this is to say he is without critics, but rather if you look at things from the 30,000 feet view, he had some real accomplishments and it can be argued. . . .or could be argued that his oppressors were simply unreconstructed leftists who just hated what he was accomplishing.  Not that this view would really be correct or at least fully correct either.

Now, all of that is changing.  Donald Trump is going to be remembered as the President who made a desperate last ditch effort to subvert the election after the fact and hold on to power by any means.  That will be the single biggest thing he's remembered for.

Remember Richard Nixon?

Of course you do. And when you recall him, you think of Watergate right away.

Yup.

So why on earth is Trump doing what he's doing?

Before we look at this, we need to note something else. The damage being done by the sitting President to American democracy right now is a the epic level.  We are looking like a third world country to the outside world and the constant legal actions and attacks on the process are convincing a certain section of the population that the world's fairest election system is corrupt.  It's inexcusable and it will take at least a decade to overcome it.

It will also do untold damage to the Republican Party which is on shaky ground to start with. Right now, I'd give the GOP even odds on actually surviving or splitting into two parties.  If that sounds surprising I've heard Republican after Republican of the old school openly criticizing their party.  One person I know called the party "bat shit crazy".  Another GOP member I know told me that he's leaving the party after its safe to go to the courthouse and re-registering as an independent as he "doesn't want to be a member of a fascist party".

Now most Republicans won't leave the party, of course.. . . unless the Ben Sasse, Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney wings of the party can't reconcile with the Trump wing.  In that case, we're going to have two parties.

And all of this is being done in a doomed effort.

Indeed, if it isn't doomed, it will actually destroy American democracy to some degree. Trump will not be able to govern if he actually takes the Oval Office this way.  Protests, and extremely violent protests, will occur across the nation. Trump will call for the use of the National Guard against the protestors but some Governors won't do that, and at this point I'd guess that a fair number of National Guardsmen, quite a few of whom are minorities, wouldn't report if called.  It would be a mess of epic proportions.  A second effort to impeach the President would occur, but this time in a very closely divided Senate where some Republicans would definitely cross the isle.  Republicans won't all want to be associated with the mess.  We will have seen nothing like it since 1859 and 1860.

And as noted, it won't work.

So why is this going on?

It's almost impossible to say but it boils down to about three things.  Perhaps Trump really believes he won, in which case he's delusional to the extent that there's be some sort of disorder associated with it.  That's possible, as some people come to love themselves and believe themselves so strongly, that they actually can't accept defeat.

Nobody can psychoanalyze a person remotely, but lots of people try.  With Trump its been done before and there are those who have claimed him to not be quite right.  Earlier in his administration it was claimed that a lot of his his staff routinely work to simply defeat his various notions.  Now we could be seeing him essentially unleashed with no restraint.

Or it could be that all of this is necessary as there's something to hide.  That's been suggested a lot recently, but if that's the case he was never going to be President forever and whatever needed to be hidden ought to be well hid by now, unless of course once again the staff prevented it and this is a last ditch effort at distraction.  That seems unlikely.

Or it could be a genuine effort at what would amount to an electoral coup.  The Atlantic warned of this possibility in what seemed to me to be a farfetched scenario at the time, but now the script that they set forth looks as if its being read by the administration.  In the last three weeks the Trump campaign has attacked the process again and again and it made a real effort to have the Michigan legislature decide the electors this past week.  It doesn't seem to have calculated that state laws don't allow for this process everywhere in an unrestrained manner and it didn't figure either that in some states, like Georgia, the Republican Party wouldn't participate in it.  That effort still is going on, however, with various states still having not certified. Therefore, it remains a theoretical, but extraordinarily remote, possibility that the Trump campaign could be successful at this effort in one or more states, with enormously disastrous results.

If that's the attempt, a person has to ask why its being attempted, as it would suggest that Trump is willing to subvert democracy to stay in office. But why?  It would be a national disaster as noted.

Usually when this occurs its because the forces backing it believe that they have a moral imperative to rule that overrides democracy.  In the 20th Century we saw fascist and communist parties that absolutely took that position, and in some cases they in fact rose to power initially in an election.

We also saw in the 20th Century, and earlier, the same thing with personalities that claimed a right to rule in that fashion.  In Spanish the term is Caudillo. The man on horseback.  An entire series of such rulers governed Mexico until the fall of Porfirio Diaz, who provides a good example.  He couldn't imagine the country ruled by anyone other than himself and fought a civil war over it.  Many other such examples exist, however, such as Franco of Spain and Salazar of Portugal.  Franco might provide a better example in that he continued his rule well after there was any reason for him to claim a need to do it, he just couldn't step down. And he didn't.  At least realizing that the country would transition to democracy after his death, he took steps for that to happen only after he passed away.

If that's the goal, it won't work.  But what it will do is cause the party backing the effort to look like the parties that backed those figures.  Does the GOP want to be compared to the Spanish Falangists?

None of this will work, but its making the transition to the Biden Administration problematic and it also stands, for conservatives, to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The GOP had a good election and just a few days ago it looked like it would retain the Senate.  Now it looks like the Democrats are going to take it. Every day in which this drama goes on makes things worse and worse for Republicans.

Which brings us to the final potentiality.  Maybe Trump knows all of this is doomed but he wants to run in 2024 and this is his way of keeping the Party under his control and retaining his base.  If that's his goal, at least its the least distressing one, even if its pretty distressing.  The problem with that, beside everything noted above, is hubris.  It's an assumption that an elderly man who is overweight and doesn't look to be in good health is going to be able to run in 2024 or even that the natural winding down of the clock of time, which none of us can control, won't run down.  At his age, after all, he's blisteringly close to the end of his naturally allotted years.

In an earlier post, I predicted November and December were going to be a mess.  But I sure didn't see anything like this.

One final thought.  For the first time yesterday I saw pundits referencing the Sedition Act.

In 1973 Gerald Ford made the mistake of pardoning Richard Nixon.  He shouldn't have.  Ford's pardoning of Nixon cost him the 1976 election and it further failed to provide an example which should have been provided that a President isn't above the law.  I know all of the excuses for doing it, but they don't meet the test.  Nixon should have been tried and convicted and served time for his crimes.

Democrats are now so enraged that there's real talk of prosecuting Trump for crimes, if there are any. This is going to be an early nightmare for the Biden Administration.  Having said that, there's now talk of the Sedition Act which addresses attempts to subvert the transfer of power.  Nobody would have mentioned that just three weeks ago.  It's being mentioned now.  Donald Trump, through this conduct, will not only be remembered for his actions in November 2020, but he's beginning to become the first President to have Sedition attached to his name.

This really needs to stop for the nation's sake.  But it doesn't look like it will.  Franklin stated that the Founders gave us a republic "if we could keep it".  Jefferson didn't think we would keep it after we ceased to be agrarian and that we'd descend to rule by the mob inevitably.  Whether they were right or not, we look pretty pathetic right now.

The GOP can still save itself, and the country, from this, but it has to do so right now.  And it has to involve a unified front of major Republican figures.  They should do it as its the only rational thing to do. But so far, they seem to have simply assumed that time will fix it and people will forget it.  If they keep up not saying anything, they're going to lose in Georgia and have a party that's effectively two parties in 2021.