To paraphrase (poorly) Robert Preston singing Meredith Willson’s song “Ya Got Trouble” in “The Music Man”:
“[The Republican Party’s] got trouble!
Right here in River City
Trouble with a capital "T"
And that rhymes with "P" and that stands for … former President Trump.”
Donald Trump is going around telling everybody that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He calls it the “Presidential Election Fraud of 2020.” Except the election was not stolen from him. He lost because Joe Biden won a majority in the Electoral College.1 But former President Trump can’t seem to handle that fact. He wrote a long letter to the editor in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday listing all kinds of problems with the vote count in Pennsylvania. The WSJ listed just some of the errors in former President Trump’s list in an editorial on Friday, but it is impossible to respond to all of his claims. But that doesn’t mean they’re right. He just says things. Trying to respond to them all is a fool’s errand.
I think there are a fair number of people who believe former President Trump’s claims about last November. Except, as I said, he is wrong. And what former President Trump is doing is wrong not only because his claims about the election aren’t true, but also because at some point you have to admit defeat. That’s the way it is with elections. I know Stacey Abrams hasn’t done that with respect to the 2018 Georgia governorship, but that doesn’t make it right. And besides, governor is not President.
Al Gore conceded in 2000. In 1960, Richard Nixon called off efforts to uncover fraud in that election, telling newspaper writer Earl Mazo: “Earl, those are interesting articles you are writing – but no one steals the presidency of the United States. … Our country can’t afford the agony of a constitutional crisis – and I damn well will not be a party to creating one just to become President – or anything else.”3 This is what somebody says who cares about our country more than about himself. What President Trump says are the words of somebody who cares more about himself than about our country.
In former President Trump’s statement this month, he said, in effect, that if Republicans didn’t support his claims of fraud last November, he’ll make sure that enough of the people who voted for him in 2020 will not vote in 2022 and 2024 and the Republicans will lose.
And I think former President Trump means it because he’s already done it. In the runoff elections for the two Georgia Senate seats in early January, then-President Trump spent most of his time in Georgia talking about how the Georgia election authorities, including the Republican Secretary of State, stole the presidential election from him because votes for him weren’t counted, etc., etc. And guess what happened: Turnout in Republican areas in January was down from November, and both Republican candidates for Senate lost. That gave the Democrats 50 Senate seats, which plus Vice President Kamala Harris, gave them a Senate a majority. If then-President Trump had tried to help even one of the Republican candidates win, instead of just talking about himself, we might not be in that situation today. But he didn’t. And now he says, in effect, that he’ll do the same thing in 2022 and 2024 if Republicans don’t support his claim of the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020.
Which puts the Republican Party (at least that part of it which has not signed up totally for former President Trump) in a difficult position. Winning is hard enough when you have to beat the Democratic party. When you have to beat the Democratic party and former President Trump, it’s almost impossible.
I understand a lot of people feel that former President Trump was the first presidential candidate in a long time who spoke for them. It’s just too bad that so many of them continue to like him even though he now seems to care more himself about the country.
I wish I knew how to explain this better. As I said, I understand that people have felt ignored and disrespected for a long time and that they think former President Trump is the only one who will speak for them. He isn’t the only one, and in constantly talking about himself, I don’t think he is caring about them. The problem is how to explain this, in a way that is understanding and respectful. Unless and until we can figure out how to do this, Democrats may win a lot more elections than they should.
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1 Former President Trump won in 2016 because he wasn’t Hillary Clinton. President Biden won in 2020 because he wasn’t Donald Trump.
2 This is not true.
3 Edmund F. Kallina, Jr., Courthouse Over White House: Chicago and the Presidential Election of 1960 (1988), p. 104
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