Swan Song

Presented with the opportunity to wait for all the votes to be counted, as have all incumbent presidents who came before him, the President instead chose to claim the election had been stolen from him before the result was declared. Why?

It was all part of the President’s contingency plan to undermine Americans’ confidence in our most cherished civic institution in the event his defeat looked imminent.

The President has been undermining confidence in absentee ballots for months. He knew that absentee ballots generally tend to be Democratic votes, as they have been for decades. It’s called “blue shift.”

At the same time, he encouraged his supporters to vote on Election Day and vote in person. He hoped it would be enough to counter the “blue shift.” In some states it was.

But he also had ulterior motives. If the mail-in ballots being counted started to shift the election towards Joe Biden in key battleground states, which is what is now happening, the President could claim that the ballots were fraudulent and illegitimate.

This was by design. This was his strategy all along. We know this because, at least as of this writing, he is encouraging counting mail-in ballots in Arizona (where his lead is currently increasing), but he is decrying counting mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania and Georgia (where his lead is shrinking).

Now, he’s moving on to part two. He’s running to court not necessarily to prove that he lost because of election law violations, but rather to create an air of legitimacy around his seemingly frivolous claims of fraud.

But in this particular scenario, the President likely can’t overturn the results in court barring some late revelation of objective evidence supporting his claims.

That’s why he is aggressively undermining the legitimacy of the election in the court of public opinion. He’s not trying to change the outcome, mind you, but rather to punish the majority of Americans who rejected him.

This is the beginning of his swan song — the final act in his four-year long desecration of the highest office of public trust in this nation.

The President’s supporters need to understand that he is not fighting to vindicate your votes or “save” our country. Trump has little respect for either the office he holds or the American people. If he did, he would not be taking actions that will leave America even more divided and fractured than it has been over these past years.

These are not the actions of a leader who is trying to “keep America great.” These are the actions of a failed autocrat trying to cling on to power.

It speaks volumes that even the President’s staunchest allies are not defending his conduct (yet). They are seemingly trading the next four years to preserve the next forty years. They are demonstrating what putting “America First” actually looks like.

It will be more interesting to see what they will do to oppose his efforts to retaliate against his political enemies and further divide our country during the last months of his presidency. When and if he does, shame on those who ever called him a patriot.