First, it is election day in Georgia—the special election of two U.S. Senators, which will decide the Senate majority and greatly (though not wholly) determine the ability of the Biden administration to get legislation passed. The Republicans have the advantage of incumbency in a perennially red state in the deep South, where they have spent their campaign and media appealing to the state’s racist past.
However, the Biden-Harris presidential ticket did win the state just months ago, and early voting numbers were very high and seem likely to be favorable to the Democratic candidates. Reporters for Slate and others suggest that Sunday’s revelation of Trump’s functionally treasonous phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State, strong-arming him to change votes, has been the overwhelmingly top news story in Georgia since, with unknown repercussions. If disenchantment with Trump suppresses Republican votes today, the Democrats have a chance, these reporters feel.
What I haven’t seen anyone mention yet is how long it may be before Georgia has definitive results, if the elections are close, nor in what order the votes will be counted. In November, the Trump votes came in early, and Biden only gradually took the lead towards the end, several days later. How long will it be before we know the outcome, and what kind of uproar will there be depending on results?
Wherever the vote count is on Wednesday, attention will turn to the formerly ceremonial counting of the states’ electoral college votes in Congress. Thirteen Senators and more than a hundred House Members are likely to object to the results in one or more of the 6 “swing” states, forcing debates and votes.
These results were never going to be overturned in the House—so Republicans who care more about their privileged life in Washington than they do about American democracy can play to their AlwaysTrump base at home, without actually endangering the outcome.
But even a few weeks ago it was clear that the objections would also fail in the Senate. There were just enough Republican Senators on the record to deny a majority. But then one ambitious GOP Senator, eyeing a 2024 presidential run, announced he would object anyway. Then, probably alarmed by this appeal to AlwaysTrump voters, presidential hopeful Ted Cruz announced he would object, and went one better by organizing 11 others to join him.
However by Monday there were many more than the original handful of Republican Senators who announced they would support the electoral results, including some Trump supporters up for reelection next time. Reporters (and perhaps Democratic Senators) expect the mandatory debate to at times pit Republican against Republican.
My favorite response however was from an unlikely source in the House: a conservative Texas Rep named Chip Roy. In what is also usually a ceremonial vote, current Members vote to accept newly elected Members. But Roy objected to the seating of 67 Members elected in November, both Republicans and Democrats, from the swing states at issue in the AlwaysTrump attempt to overturn the election’s results. He did so using the same logic that I have on this blog: that if you object to the election for President in those states, then you object to the election of everybody in those states. They were all elected by the same rules and on the same ballot.
His objections forced the 100 plus Republican Members who were going to object to the presidential election to nevertheless vote to seat Members from those disputed states elected at the same time, thus exposing one of the many elements of their hypocrisy.
Like the ballot-counting in Georgia, the debates in Congress may continue for more than one day, though the outcome in Congress is assured. But meanwhile, our apprentice dictator has invited his most violent followers to Washington during these debates, and is allowing the idea that he might attend himself to be publicized in the news. The National Guard has already been called up, and the DC Police will be looking for guns. All guns in a DC demonstration, and in the federal area of Washington, are unlawful.
Meanwhile, political leaders and media writers were asserting in stark terms what is at stake this week, including the conservative columnist George Will, and even some at Fox. None said it more firmly than Tom Nichols in his Atlantic piece titled Worse Than Treason:
"No amount of rationalizing can change the fact that the majority of the Republican Party is advocating for the overthrow of an American election.
“Forget all the whispered denials and the off-the-record expressions of concern in private; ignore the knowing smirks on camera from GOP officials who are desperately trying to indicate that they’re in on the joke... This is sedition, plain and simple. No amount of playacting and rationalizing can change the fact that the majority of the Republican Party and its apologists are advocating for the overthrow of an American election and the continued rule of a sociopathic autocrat.”
He concludes:
“The sedition caucus is worse than a treasonous conspiracy. At least real traitors believe in something. These people instead believe only in their own fortunes and thus will change flags and loyalties as circumstances require. They will always become what they pretend to be, and so they cannot—and must not—be trusted ever again with political power.”
Other writers, including Jonathan Chiat, reiterate that Trump and his minions have been undemocratically inclined from the beginning. In other words: Homegrown Hitler, as I’ve been saying since 2016.
In fact, some former Washington officials are so worried that, if all else fails, Trump will attempt to use the military to retain power, that they engaged in a pre-emptive strike. Fred Kaplan’s report in Slate begins:
" In an unprecedented critique of a sitting president, all of the 10 living former secretaries of defense—from five administrations, Democratic and Republican—have warned that the time for challenging the 2020 election results has passed, that ordering the U.S. armed forces to resolve disputes would be “dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional,” and that those who issue or execute such orders “would be accountable” and possibly face “criminal penalties” for “the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.”
Though Kaplan reports that none of the signatories (from the administrations of both Bushes, Clinton, Obama-- and Trump) believe a coup would succeed—military chiefs would refuse it an an unlawful order. This statement, published as a Washington Post oped, is to support them.
Kaplan notes that according to an historian, that so many former Pentagon chiefs have never signed their names to anything. In yet another massive irony, it is said that the person who organized the oped is none other than the last proto-fascist in the White House, Dick Cheney.
But Eliot Cohen (also in the Atlantic) suggests that while these are dark days, the future may be brighter, in his piece titled: Don’t Despair: Americans are equal to this moment. He also has been warning about Trumpism since the beginning, but sees resilience coming to the rescue.
But he begins his piece with the best description of the habits we’ve been forced into since 2016, fully enabled by the Internet:
" The most apt coinage of recent years is doomscrolling. Early in the morning or late at night, you can scan through an app on your handheld device for infection numbers, test-positivity rates, and news of vaccine shortages. If your interests range more widely, you can monitor domestic-abuse and murder rates, cases of depression and anxiety, crumbling small businesses, and the lonely snuffings-out of the flickering light of life for hundreds of thousands of the aged and the vulnerable. Or you can scrutinize the latest deranged claims and incitements of a mad and evil president; statements of support made by politicians faithless to the Constitution, intellectuals unimpeded by truth, lawless lawyers, and godless pastors; and the fears of the residents of one city or another swallowing hard at warnings of riots and wild-eyed Proud Boy desperadoes toting long guns. These are cruel facts, not exaggerated one whit.”
But he is optimistic, though he takes a very long view. And we must allow for the possibilities of better news even this week: the Georgia Democrats win, maybe even handily with results just hours after the polls close. The presidential phone call to Georgia has also stymied the AlwaysTrumpers in Congress so perhaps their objections will turn out to be brief and pro forma, and quickly dealt with. And the demonstrations in Washington are relatively small (so Trump won’t show up), and relatively brief and devoid of serious violence.
Which only frees us to monitor hugely ballooning Covid statistics and vaccine chaos, but at least gets us a little closer to January 20, and what must happen to end the mortal threat of this pandemic before even more sicken and die, and the rest of us get even crazier.
Cohen also quotes Benjamin Franklin’s famous one-liner, which for the next three days is less a witticism than a warning. When asked what kind of government the Founders had finally come up with, Franklin is said to have responded: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
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