Worse than I Thought

 Before the election I thought those who worried that Trump would not accept the result if he lost were overwrought and even a little silly and paranoid.  After the jackass refused to admit he lost, made wild claims about being cheated out of a victory, and filed lawsuits to overturn the results of the election in several states, I admitted that I had been wrong, and the paranoiacs had been right. He was refusing to face the facts and behaving worse as time went along.  I still thought though that people who worried that he might try to attack the republic itself and keep power by some unconstitutional or illegal means if he thought he could were letting their understandable contempt for the man  get them too worked up and going too far.    

Now I am less nearly sure of that. After losing in courts  time after time in various states, he and his ally the embarrassing attorney general of my state took the case to the Supreme Court and lost nine to nothing.  (Seven justices including all three Trump appointed did not think the case worth considering at all.  Alito and Thomas favored looking at it on technical grounds  because it was a case where the court had original jurisdiction, but said they would offer no relief.) That should have been the end of it. Trump got his case to the Supreme Court, and the justices threw it out. The electors vote tomorrow, and Biden will be elected President of the United States officially.

However according to the news, Trump says he is not giving up and will be trying something else.  I’m not particularly worried by that. Whatever it is won’t work. Republican legislatures in states Biden won won’t meet tonight and select electors for Trump.  Congress is not going to fail to accept the results. The republic is strong. The citizens and the  armed forces are loyal to the  Constitution. Trump does not have a Thirteenth Legion to lead across the Rubicon.  He will be gone in a few weeks.

He won’t overturn the election and stay in power, but his behavior of the last few weeks is enough to make one worry about what other things he might do while he still can. He seems at least a bit unhinged – continuing to claim he not only won but won in a landslide. Several writers have likened him to  Norma Desmond. I would add to that a little of Bogart’s Captain Queeg  explaining about the stolen strawberries.   I hope all he will do is continue to rant, fire a few people, and pardon a few cronies and perhaps himself.  If people around him can limit things to nothing worse than that, they will have done well by the country. We’ll see.  Some people are more worried than I am, and those people have been on a winning streak in predicting what Trump would do.