BRACE YOURSELF

Donald Trump is Going to Do a Victory Prance on Stage Tonight

Donald Trump is not going to present himself as the "aggrieved winner of a stolen election" this Election Night. Rather, he is going to be celebratory about his "glorious victory" and how "the people have joined our movement in a landslide like nobody’s ever seen before." He is going to dance around the stage and spike the ball like he just won the Super Bowl. Regardless of whether he actually wins or loses, Trump is going to try to create an illusion that he won an overwhelming victory so that it will become the image that sticks in your mind. Only in later days will Trump play the "stolen election" card - if he even needs to.

Much of what I will present below and in the coming weeks will be relevant either way: whether Trump loses but declares victory and tries to overturn the electoral results through a "contingent election"; and/or how to confront the nightmarish possibility that he actually wins.

What Democrats and moderates and independents haven't thought through is what they/we are going to do if Trump wins legitimately (for example if he wins both the popular vote and electoral college, or in an electoral college squeaker that betrays a popular vote landslide for Harris). While “the Constitution is not a suicide pact" as some quote Justice Jackson’s famous remark in order to deny Trump the presidency by any and all means possible, we as a nation also cannot allow ourselves to "become fascist by fighting fascism."

Safeguard has been warning since 2020 about the possibility of a contingent election and what to do regarding the post-election process that might lead to one. Whether we move into a contingent election or not will depend first on the actual results as they come in on Election Night itself and afterwards. Second, it will be shaped by how a multitude of not just court cases but POLITICAL MANEUVERINGS play themselves out in the coming months. And then there would be the contingent election itself, and just as importantly the possibilities surrounding it.

Democrats and moderates/independents need to be proactively thinking ahead of the curve regarding both of these last two phases. The possibilities are absolutely brain-racking. And we cannot just blindly destroy our country by trying to save it.

Here are the first two things you might want to consider in defending against the argument of a "stolen election."

Because of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Democrats put forward a bill sponsored by Amy Klobushar to ensure that all ballots would have a "paper trail." Mitch McConnell and the Republicans opposed the bill under McConnell's objection that it would be a "federalization" of the electoral process. But regardless, we somehow have a situation whereby nonpartisan election officials tell us that 97% of ballots cast in this presidential election will have a paper trail, anyway. (I have no reason not to believe this, although I have not actually hand counted all of the ballots myself in order to give you my personal guarantee on the matter.)

The point here: Republicans cannot tell you with credibility that the election was not “free and fair" (or "stolen") when they themselves thwarted the very legislation designed to make it so. You can digest this regardless of who you have supported in this election and use it in your arguments against "election deniers" in the coming days.

The second counterargument I am going to leave you with is the linked article “Why Is Election Night a TV Show?" It explains that there once was no "Election Night" because elections weren't even held on the same day amongst the states until 1848 when the invention of the telegraph necessitated it in order to prevent results from one state influencing voting in others. In 1860 it still took WEEKS to get the results from the far western states to the eastern ones: results from California had to be be transported by Pony Express to Fort Kearney, Nebraska and then forwarded eastward via telegraph. "Election Night" coverage didn't even begin until the invention of the radio in 1924. Television coopted the process with its competitive and profit-driven motive to "announce the results first,” although sometimes erroneously as its faulty "calls" of Florida for BOTH sides in the 2000 Bush-Gore race so greatly magnified. And reputable media has been more cautious about calling its (unofficial) results through its unreliable exit polling and computer models ever since.

So when Donald Trump prances around on stage and tries to sway you with a false longing for "the old days when we knew the results on Election Night," know there really has never been a time when "Election Night" results actually mattered. Trump will simply be trying to do what Trump does best: creating a "fake reality" out of a television illusion that never existed and still doesn't.

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Here’s the link to the full article, which is a Members-only story on Medium.com. I asked the author to remove it from being paywalled just for Election Night. He graciously did so: https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/why-is-election-night-a-tv-show-c821a4b699ff?sk=3cffceeec9c1d1060524cfbb5dfd0822

Here is the link if you are a Medium member and would like to support George Dillard’s work in Lessons from History: https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/why-is-election-night-a-tv-show-c821a4b699ff

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