Perhaps He Really Did Win the 2020 Election
Prior to November 3, 2020, 35% of Republican voters believed the election was going to be unfair. President Donald Trump had told them so. In July, he claimed that “2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history.” And at a Wisconsin campaign event in August, Trump warned his supporters that “the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”
These statements coincide with hundreds of others that Trump has made since losing the popular vote (by nearly 3 million votes) to Hillary Clinton. That four-year campaign culminated in Trump’s announcement, at 2 AM on November 4, 2020, that he intended to remain in office regardless of the vote:
“This is a fraud on the American public,” he stated. “Frankly, we did win this election [and] we want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list.” With these words, Trump attempted to stop state election officials from counting lawfully cast ballots within the existing deadlines.
After all the major news networks had called the election for Joe Biden, Trump Tweeted I WON THE ELECTION and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo assured the world, “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
By that same time, the percentage of Republicans questioning the fairness of the vote had doubled. According to a Politico/Morning Consult Poll, 70% of Republican voters deny that Biden and Harris won a “free and fair election.” A survey by the Economist and YouGov puts the percentage even higher, at 86%. That figure dovetails with polls indicating that the percentage of conservatives who trust the mainstream media declined to 13% during Trump’s first term.
Under those conditions, a critical mass of Republican voters could be trusted to watch credulously on Fox News while Rudy Giuliani explained how a foreign socialist government had rigged the election. They could be trusted to entertain—alongside Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and Lou Dobbs—Sidney Powell’s claims about a communist cabal of Venezuelans, Chinese, and Cubans hacking our voting machines with assistance from George Soros.
And actually, these theories are “conspiracy light” compared to QAnon’s vision of Trump battling a global cabal of satanic pedophiles and cannibals. Asked about QAnon supporters back in August, Trump gratefully acknowledged their support for his campaign and called them “people that love our country.” After the vote, he helped spread QAnon claims about Dominion voting software.
Edward Luttwak defines a coup d’ètat as “a special form of politics that requires guns as an aid to persuasion” (preface to the 2016 edition, xv); however, Luttwak adds that coups usually fail if those guns have to be used. When it comes to an illegal seizure of political power, despots aim for a swift and bloodless takeover. That requires strong ideological support on a grass roots level. The goal, after all, isn’t to run the country through an oppressive apparatus of generals, jails, torture chambers, captive judges, congressional co-conspirators, and secret police. Rather, it’s to re-shape worldviews in the leader’s favor, thus enabling a smooth take-over, a more exalted and profitable period of rule, and—at all times—a lower risk of failure.
With the certification of the vote in Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Nevada, and the GSA’s decision to allow a formal transition to Biden’s administration, it’s now virtually certain that Trump will fail to overthrow the election. Despite his record number of judicial appointments and a million dollar reward for evidence of voter fraud, his legal claims have fallen flat. Despite being pressured in person by the President himself, state authorities refused to appoint Republican electors in contravention of the popular will. And it’s unlikely that U.S. attorneys will manufacture evidence of widespread voter fraud in the coming six weeks or that the Supreme Court would credit that evidence under duress.
Although they wouldn’t necessarily have had to use them, Trump and his co-conspirators would probably have needed guns to accomplish such things.
But what if Trump never really expected to pull off a coup d’ètat? What if his primary objective all along has been to stage a coup de théâtre? Trump’s refusal to concede may be a theatrical mechanism designed to undermine reason and rationality, and generate greater ideological support for the long run. Which is to say, American democracy hasn’t been overthrown by an authoritarian power grab, but it may still be overthrown by ideas.
Although he has failed to seize a second term in 2021, Trump has succeeded in convincing the great majority of Republican voters that Biden’s victory is fraudulent. Even several weeks after the election, only 5% of Republican members of the House, 10% of Republican senators, and 25% of Republican governors have recognized his status as President-elect. Trump may have laid the foundation for a second term starting not in 2021, but in 2025.
What better way to prepare for the 2024 presidential race than by deeming Biden’s presidency illegitimate, undermining any possibility of bipartisan cooperation, and ensuring that America will be ungovernable?
That poisonous strategy was visible not just in Trump’s pre-election claims about voter fraud, but also in his pre-election claims about Biden himself. At the Republican National Convention, Trump labeled Biden “a Trojan horse for socialism” and the leader of a “radical movement” that would “destroy…the American way of life.” Days earlier, Charlie Kirk had pronounced Trump “the defender of Western civilization” who would “protect our families from the vengeful mob that seeks to destroy our way of life” and ensure that “America remains the greatest country to ever exist in the history of the world.”
But what if Trump never really expected to pull off a coup d’ètat? What if his primary objective all along has been to stage a coup de théâtre?
Both speakers set the stage for an election that would be fought to the end. Kirk: “This election is a decision between preserving America as we know it and eliminating everything that we love.” Trump: “This election will decide whether we save the American dream or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny.” Beyond suggesting that the election would be rigged, these warnings suggested that a Biden presidency would be so harmful to America that even a valid Democratic victory should be reversed—no, that there could actually be no valid outcome besides a victory for Trump.
Two socialist conspiracies, one to rig the election and another to destroy America—those were the bookends of the Republican Party’s appeal to voters. And voters responded. Trump received 74 million votes, 11 million more votes than he received in 2016 and the second greatest showing in American presidential history (behind Joe Biden’s 80.9 million votes).
The United States has long been home to political polarization around such incendiary issues as gun laws, abortion, and immigration. But now we’ve gone from incendiary issues to an incendiary president who has created an alternate reality and incited political disorder. A critical mass of voters, politicians, and media organizations now stand ready to contradict and defeat anything the Democrats think or do. Worse still, they stand ready to fabricate a host of things Democrats have never thought or done.
What will become of self-governance after reason has been destroyed? Can a citizenry that disagrees on basic facts, core values, and the legitimacy of an election ever function as a political community? Can there be democracy among enemies?
Trump has clearly lost the popular and electoral votes, but he may have won the election. After all, elections represent a civilized contest for the power to govern. Because Trump succeeded in making the election uncivilized and has probably succeeded in making America ungovernable, it’s too soon to pronounce Biden the winner.
Beyond reversing Trump’s substantive policies, Biden must now restore trust and rationality to a viciously polarized electorate and a bizarrely distorted marketplace of ideas; and, whether Democrats retake the Senate or not, this task will require the Republican Party’s collaboration. If the Biden administration fails to enlist Republicans in repairing the most elementary building blocks of democracy, it’s unlikely that Trump will go down in history as an aberration. He may prove to be the way of the future instead.
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