One More Month

 Immediate political evaluations of the first Trump v. Biden debate are overwhelmingly that Trump lost, if only because he didn’t win. He is behind by a lot. National polls still provide Biden a 7 to 10 point lead, and (according to USA Today’s averages) his lead increased over the past week, not only nationally but in all states in play except Texas and Georgia, and some polls suggest Biden is ahead in them as well. Notably Biden increased his lead substantially in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. So Trump needed a win to change the dynamics.

 David Siders begins his Politico piece on the debate with the entire story in a nutshell:

 The mayhem Donald Trump subjected Americans to on Tuesday might have helped him if Joe Biden had disintegrated. Biden didn’t.

Josh Marshall put it this way:

" I think it was somewhere between bad and disastrous for President Trump... I saw nothing tonight that seems at all likely to improve things for President Trump. Nothing. Biden did fine. Not great. But fine. I’d say he had a B performance with some B+ or even A- minus moments. But for him that’s fine. He’s ahead. He’s not running as best debater. He’s not running as most dynamic figure. He’s not competing for most unstable affect. He’s running as the guy who will end the nightmare."

There were moments that will be repeated but the overall impression for most was that Trump’s constant interruptions of both Biden and the moderator violated all the agreed upon rules as well as the rules of civil political debate for the US presidency, and blew up the debate and perhaps the presidential debate format. This earned universal condemnation, even from Fox News. (Their panel may have sung a different tune had not the abused moderator been their own Chris Wallace.)

 Another Wallace—Nicole at MSNBC—in fact very powerfully characterized Trump’s tactics as abuse, in its contemporary sense. She also suggested that Trump’s approach was not spontaneous, it was planned and in some sense rehearsed by the campaign. But why? she asked.

 Rachel Maddow voiced the answer that others suggested more obliquely. Speaking of Trump she said: “He’s not running against his opponent. He’s running against the election.”

 And what does that mean? 

 After my most recent news fast, I awoke to hear Lindsay Graham asserting that of course Republicans would honor the process of the election. If the Supreme Court says the winner is Biden, they will accept that, he said.

 And I said: the Supreme Court? What happened to the election, which is traditionally decided by totaling up the votes?

 That (and a column whose author I no longer recall that asserted that Trump no longer cares about winning, he’s setting up to stay in power by other means) alerted me to the fact that this insane strategy is not Homegrown Hitler’s alone but the national Republican party’s.

 There are various scenarios for a Trump retention, regardless of the votes. Except for Trump simply refusing to leave—not a winning strategy, unless the Secret Service and the rest of the federal government violate the Constitution—the scenarios for accomplishing this are complicated and require every court case, every decision by every state legislature involved, etc. to go the same Homegrown Hitler way.

 And that’s even before factoring in something that seems to get forgotten in these discussions: there is more than one election on election day, more than one office, and except for the presidency—which includes the intervening electoral college stuff-- they are decided directly by a plurality of votes. Notably every member of the House of Representatives is up for election, and a third of the Senate. Votes have to be counted for those offices as well, which complicates the politics of challenging results. Republicans as well as Democrats don’t take office until their votes are counted, which provides motivation for counting them.

 Moreover, the new Congress takes office on January 3, almost three weeks before the President’s term of office is officially done. The dynamics of forcing a presidential election to be thrown to the House may be greatly affected if, as is likely, there are more Democrats in Congress.

 So what about the Supreme Court? So far this year, challenges asserting fraud in mail-in votes have been notably unsuccessful in courts. The Supreme Court would have to reverse every lower court decision. The suggested strategy is to get votes thrown out—or the election entirely negated—in a few key states. Each case has to be decided on its own merits, and the Rs may have to win them all.

 There may be a test case in the Supreme Court before the election. Republicans are challenging a Pennsylvania decision to extend the time that mailed votes may be received in order to be counted. If the Court doesn’t take this case, or if it decides against the challenge, the whole house of cards could fall right then and there.

 But while understanding the nefarious intentions here, which amount to an attempted coup, and while being prepared to counter such activities, they are all unlikely at this point.

Even if the polls are wrong, not by the margin of error, but by 50%, Joe Biden would still win the presidency in a landslide. 

 The determination of early voters to get their votes counted suggest that more Democrats may vote in-person than had planned to. In any case, people voting against Trump are very determined, and will do whatever is necessary. They want the nightmare to be over. 

 As for election day, there are some interesting dynamics in Pennsylvania (which has started early voting), and the polls in Florida and North Carolina are close, so it still a big unknown whether the outcome of the presidential election will be known by election night, but it is more likely now that it will be pretty evident, at least to analysts and perhaps to everyone.

 Court cases in a few states may well not make enough of a difference. The margins may well be too great in others. The presidential election will not be close, and while the 49 state victory is a thing of the past, this could be an historic landslide by other measures. A Democratic majority in the Senate is also likely. 

 This may yet require some heroics, especially by voters who refuse to be intimidated, bamboozled or dismissed. There are ample opportunities for Republican officeholders—like certain US Senators facing votes to rush through a SC nomination—to wake up from their fatal trance and do the right thing. The stakes are basic and extreme— the future of the US and the future of the Earth.