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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe recent HBO film 537 Votes<\/a> about the Florida 2000 election mess offers one overarching message: Democrats\u2019 refusal to sound a clear alarm about the slow-motion heist in process ultimately let the election be stolen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In that debacle, Democrats seemed to think things would break their way with well-honed arguments inside the cloistered confines of the legal system \u2014 they never understood how public-facing politics can play a role in what ultimately ended up being a pivotal political brawl outside the courtroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Twenty years later, the lesson of that debacle isn\u2019t being heeded. Donald Trump and his cronies are quite clearly waging a public-facing campaign designed to create the conditions for the Electoral College process to pull off a coup. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a full-scale emergency \u2014 and yet the Democratic strategy seems to be to try to pretend it isn\u2019t happening, in hopes that norms win out, even though nothing at all is normal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the week since the election, Trump\u2019s and his Republican allies have waged a public campaign to call the election results into question \u2014 not just in the courtroom, but in the public\u2019s mind. Their lawsuits and Attorney General William Barr\u2019s recent memo<\/a> are designed as much to win rulings and initiate prosecutions as they are to generate headlines. Their tweets<\/a> asserting fraud, and their high-profile<\/a> promises<\/a> of financial reward for evidence of fraud are all designed to do the same thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Most ominously of all, Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania<\/a>, Georgia<\/a>, Wisconsin<\/a>, Michigan<\/a> and Arizona<\/a> are already insinuating the results may be fraudulent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Why is public perception so important? Because as Ohio State University law professor Edward Foley shows in a frighteningly prescient 2019 article<\/a>, legislatures could use the public perception of fraud to try to invoke their constitutional power to ignore their states\u2019 popular votes, reject certified election results and appoint slates of Trump electors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In an article that predicted almost exactly what has already happened in Pennsylvania, Foley imagined Trump seeming to be ahead at first, then losing his lead as votes are counted, then making allegations of fraud, setting the stage for this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Trump\u2019s urging, the state\u2019s legislature \u2014 where Republicans have majorities in both houses \u2014 purports to exercise its authority under Article II of the Constitution to appoint the state\u2019s presidential electors directly. Taking their cue from Trump, both legislative chambers claim that the certified popular vote cannot be trusted because of the blue shift that occurred in overtime. Therefore, the two chambers claim to have the constitutional right to supersede the popular vote and assert direct authority to appoint the state\u2019s presidential electors, so that this appointment is in line with the popular vote tally as it existed on Election Night, which Trump continues to claim is the \u201ctrue\u201d outcome. <\/strong><\/p> The state\u2019s Democratic governor refuses to assent to this assertion of authority by the state\u2019s legislature, but the legislature\u2019s two chambers proclaim that the governor\u2019s assent is unnecessary. They cite early historical practices in which state legislatures appointed presidential electors without any involvement of the state\u2019s governor. They argue that like constitutional amendments, and unlike ordinary legislation, the appointment of presidential electors when undertaken directly by a state legislature is not subject to a gubernatorial veto.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Foley notes how public-facing politics \u2014 outside the cloistered legal arena \u2014 could then come into play. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt might be too much of a power grab. One would hope that American politics have not become so tribal that a political party is willing to seize power without a plausible basis for doing so rooted in the actual votes of the citizenry,\u201d he writes. \u201cIf during the canvass itself, Trump can gain traction with his allegation that the blue shift amounts to fraudulently fabricated ballots \u2014 along the lines of his 2018 tweet about Florida \u2014 then it becomes more politically tenable to claim that the legislature must step in and appoint the state\u2019s electors directly to reflect the \u2018true\u2019 will of the state\u2019s voters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be sure, pulling this off would be complicated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Republicans would have to get not one but many of the five Biden states with GOP legislatures to try to ignore the popular vote. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Congress would also have a role to play deciding which electors to recognize, which gives the House Democratic majority some leverage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And it\u2019s not clear<\/a> that any of the maneuvers would hold up in court (though let\u2019s remember: the Supreme Court now includes three<\/a> Republican-appointed justices who worked directly on the Bush v. Gore<\/em> case that stole the 2000 election for the GOP). <\/p>\n\n\n\n But this is quite obviously what the GOP is aiming for \u2014 and they\u2019ve basically said it out loud. Indeed, Trump\u2019s son<\/a> has promoted the idea of legislatures overturning the election, and so has Trump\u2019s staunch ally<\/a>, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. Meanwhile, a Republican lawmaker involved in Wisconsin\u2019s new election fraud investigation suggested<\/a> his state\u2019s popular vote could be ignored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is why we\u2019ve seen Republican<\/a> officials<\/a> and policies<\/a> continue<\/a> pretending<\/a> that Trump didn\u2019t lose the election, and presuming that there will be a second Trump term. This isn\u2019t merely infantile behavior or an immature temper tantrum \u2014 it is part of a cutthroat plan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They are trying to normalize the idea that regardless of how Americans actually voted, a second Trump term is inevitable because state legislatures and Congress will ultimately hand him the Electoral College. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One big takeaway here should be that in the long-term, the Electoral College has to go \u2014 it has now become an even bigger threat to democracy, beyond just routinely throwing elections to the losers of the national popular vote. The system is being weaponized by a Republican Party determined to thwart the will of voters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In this particular crisis unfolding right now in the short term, a strong and serious response is needed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We do not need silly, self-aggrandizing, money-wasting vanity stunts from grifter groups like the Lincoln Project<\/a>, who are preparing a campaign to try to make Trump attorneys at Big Law firms feel bad about themselves \u2014 as if a vicious pol like Trump can somehow be deprived of ruthless legal representation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We need a vociferous public campaign focused on preventing state legislators from feeling empowered to ignore their own voters. And such a campaign could be successful because at least some of these states\u2019 legislatures<\/a> are only narrowly controlled by the GOP \u2014 meaning they may be sensitive to a future voter backlash in 2022 that could come from their actions to steal a presidential election. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet\u2026 instead of sounding the alarm, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris seem to have settled on a \u201cnothing to see here\u201d approach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Biden-Harris campaign has been proceeding as if everything is fine, rolling out some transition team names<\/a> and announcing<\/a> that Biden has talked to some world leaders. Biden\u2019s comments today about the election were even more sedated<\/a> and anodyne than Al Gore back during the 2000 Florida recount. The most he could muster was an assertion<\/a> that the GOP\u2019s behavior is embarrassing and might hurt Trump\u2019s legacy \u2014 as if this is a West Wing episode inanely presuming that any single Republican elected official in the country cares about such things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet, we\u2019ve been taught over and over and over again that real life most certainly is not<\/em> a West Wing episode. The Republicans do not<\/em> care about anything other than obtaining and holding power by any means necessary \u2014 they are T1000 Terminators ruthlessly focused on winning at all costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So where is the call to action? Where is the activism? Where are requests for Democrats in the five Biden states with GOP legislatures to start pressuring their state lawmakers to commit to respecting the popular vote? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Biden may be calculating that any public pushback will only help Trump, and the best strategy is to try to starve the fraud allegations of attention. And sure, we may get lucky \u2014 things may eventually just sort themselves out with no big hullabaloo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, history suggests that it is pretty risky to bank on a passive strategy, leave it all up to fate and simply hope for the best through \u201cnormal\u201d procedures during moments of obviously abnormal circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, refusing to wage a much more organized, public campaign to challenge Trump\u2019s coup attempt is exactly the kind of strategy Democrats went with 20 years ago in Florida during the Brooks Brothers riot \u2014 and look how that turned out. We got an illegitimate Bush presidency that gave us the Iraq War and a financial crisis that ended or ruined millions of lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This time around it could be even worse \u2014 the end of whatever\u2019s still left of American democracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Republicans are following a clear plan to try to overturn the election results, just like they did in 2000. And once again, Democrats are not sounding a loud enough alarm. David Sirota \u2013 Nov 11, 2020 The recent HBO film 537 Votes about the Florida 2000 election mess offers one overarching message: Democrats\u2019… Continue reading Trump Has A Deliberate Strategy<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Normalizing The Idea Of A Second Trump Term<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Where Is Democrats\u2019 Call To Action?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n