It has been like a bad reality show where the loser refuses to leave the set after being voted out by the viewing audience. Trump was determined to remain in the White House past January 20 even if the numbers told him otherwise. His last ditch effort to stop the certification of the ballots in Michigan failed yesterday, when one of the two Republicans on the statewide canvassing board accepted the results. The other abstained.
The canvassing board officials had no authority to determine whether the votes in Detroit should be audited. Yet, the fate of Michigan's 16 electoral votes hung in the balance until the very end because Trump and his Michigan operatives had exerted an inordinate amount of pressure on the Republican officials to deadlock the certification and send the matter to the state supreme court, where I assume Republicans felt they had the advantage. Aaron Van Langevelde was finally convinced he had no other option and did the right thing when he certified the results.
Even still, Trump refuses to concede. He simply has given the authority for Emily Murphy to provide funds and access to national security briefings to the Biden transition team, which had embarrassingly resorted to crowdfunding on twitter to cover its costs. This came after Republican legislators beseeched the White House to begin the process as they considered the delay a threat to national security, and more specifically to the ongoing pandemic relief effort, or Operation Warp Speed as it has been called.
It seems that Trump is desperately worried President-Elect Biden will get all the credit for the vaccine due to roll out next month. This led Geraldo Rivera to opin that the vaccine should be named after Trump. Geraldo thought this might ease the transition. If anything, the virus should be named after Trump, since he played so little role in curbing its spread throughout the nation, and hadn't attended a coronavirus briefing in five months. Before the election, Trump was peddling "herd mentality," insisting COVID-19 would go away on its own.
Since the election, more prominent poltiical figures have been diagnosed with COVID, including the President's eldest son. The White House has become an incubator, with scores of persons contracting the virus as a direct result of their contacts with the President and his staff. No matter, Trump plans another superspreader event during the holiday season, refusing to concede to the virus as well. Note that the invitation says "Holiday Reception," not "Christmas Reception," as I assume it is for the official lighting of the White House Christmas tree.
His merry minions have been conspicuously quiet on social media. They seem to have accepted this defeat even if it goes against every grain in their bodies. There was no violence in the streets or takeover of state capitols, as some feared, but it isn't over until Trump finally admits defeat and invites President-Elect Biden to the White House as is the protocol. After all, President Obama and the First Lady invited President-Elect Trump and his wife to the White House in November, 2016, to "facilitate a transition ... and come together."
Throughout Trump's first year in office, pundits thought he would rise to the occasion. Everyone kept waiting the "pivot" to take place but it never came. His tumultuous tenure was marked by repeated sparring with Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as he demanded absolute fealty to his rule. Failing to get it, he pouted continuously on twitter, cultivating a legion of sympathizers who swore their allegiance to Trump. His twitter feed became the "real news" for them, while all other news was "fake."
It didn't matter that he failed to get a signature bill through Congress, or even one of his vaunted trade deals. He resorted to executive orders, often challenged in court, to make his voice heard. His most notorious executive order was banning travel from specific Muslim nations. He initially wanted to include Iraq and Afghanistan, which the US military had fought for 15 long years to liberate, but was talked out of it.
This was followed by an even more heinous immigration policy that saw children separated from their parents at the Mexico border, and literally kept in cages that resulted in no end of reported abuses that horrified the world, including prominent conservative evangelicals like Franklin Graham. Even when deaths were reported, the Trump administration refused to yield. This was the price that had to be paid to stem the flow of illegal immigration, despite the fact most of these detainees had entered the country legally.
On the world stage, Trump was an even greater embarrassment. It was bad enough he pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Iran nuclear deal, and many other international agreements, but it shocked our allies when he recognized Kim Jong-Un and paid deference to other autocratic leaders around the world, namely Vladimir Putin. There was deep concern he would pull the US out of NATO to satisfy the Russian strong man. As it was, he continually berated other NATO member nations for not meeting their obligations, blithely unaware what those obligations even were. When push came to shove in Syria, he retreated rather than face down Turkish President Erdogan. A move that upset his Republican allies in Congress.
We were told how national security briefings had to be written in personal terms he could understand. He only cared how a foreign policy issue affected him directly, not national interests. This greatly frustrated his advisers and military leaders. Secretary of State Tillerson and Defense Secretary Mattis eventually resigned in disgust, as did many lower ranking officials. This opened the door for Mike Pompeo to become Secretary of State, promoting the administration's deeply divisive global strategy that seemed especially keen in destabilizing the EU, which again served Russian interests. Analysts began to openly wonder if his foreign policy was driven more by the personal properties he held in autocratic countries than it was American national security, believing he had been compromised by Russian, Turkish and Saudi Arabian leaders.
President-elect Biden inherits this tainted legacy. One that has severely compromised the United States as the "Leader of the Free World." Joe Biden should be well-equipped to handle the situation, as this is a legacy very similar to the one George Bush left for Barack Obama in 2008. The only question now is whether the "Free World" trusts us anymore?
Trump remains the 500-pound elephant in the room. What's to stop Republicans from nominating Trump again in four years, or some other like-minded conservative hell-bent on making America great once again? The stupid slogan is like an ear worm that you can't get out of your head. The same for Trumpism, which is really nothing more than the 2010 Tea Party movement which Trump branded his own. These people will not go away. They have seen the power of their vote, and will continue to flush out the moderates in the GOP. Lara Trump has intimated she will run against Pat Toomey, the Republican Senator of Pennsylvania, who was one of the first senators to urge Trump to accept defeat.
This is something Trump simply won't do. He may allow Biden access to sensitive national security information, but as far as Trump is concerned he will always be President. He will carry his administration into exile, determined to rule the Republican Party, if not the nation, as he needs a legitimate political organ to rail against Joe Biden for the next four years, hoping to set up a rematch in 2024. Whether the GOP plays along remains to be seen. It depends largely on how Trump-backed candidates fair in the 2022 midterm elections.
Democrats can expect little or no cooperation from Republicans over the next two years. There will be no "honeymoon" for Joe Biden, but at least we can now focus on the road ahead. Democrats can make things demonstrably easier for the President-Elect if they win the two remaining Senate seats in Georgia in the run-off election in January. This would cause a 50-50 split and make Kamala Harris the deciding voice in the chamber. If not, Biden has to try to woo two or more Republican senators to his side so that he can at least get his cabinet picks affirmed in the coming months. It is doubtful Republicans will be so accommodating when it comes to judicial picks, given what we saw with Amy Coney Barrett.
The Democrats will have yet another chance to take back the Senate in 2022, as 22 GOP Senators are up for re-election, two of them in states Democrats have regained politically -- Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Others in battleground states like Ohio, North Carolina and Florida. The next two years will be pivotal for the Democrats to regain control of Washington and provide the legislative relief this country so desperately needs.
Much depends on Americans accepting Biden's reconciliatory approach to governing. How far is he willing to bend to accommodate frustrated Republicans without disappointing progressives in his own party? He was willing to accept fracking in Pennsylvania as the price he had to pay to win the state. Yet, claims he will usher in a new era of environmental regulations and his own version of the Green New Deal. This kind of double dealing is what has caused so much cynicism among the electorate. President Biden will have to do much more than pay lip service to causes if he expects the nation to rally behind him.
Good luck, Joe! You will need it. As for Donald, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
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