Nov 18, 2020 6 min read

First, thank God the voting is over. U.S. presidential elections are too long. The problem with long election seasons is they suck up too much oxygen, and distract from governing, which should be the primary role of government. The “permanent campaign” may be good for cable news ratings, but it’s exhausting for the rest of us. While political campaigns always try to inspire commitment by claiming it’s the most important election in our lifetime, this time they were probably right. A single Trump term is an aberration; a second term would have made Trumpism permanent. As Winston Churchill once said, “Americans always do the right thing … after they’ve tried everything else.”

More than two weeks after the election, Trump has refused to concede. Trump promised that the only way he could lose the election was if it were stolen, and his pugnacious refusal to concede typifies what many of his supporters like about him. Critics agree that this is typical behavior for Trump – that of a toddler who throws a tantrum when he doesn’t get his way. That’s why the Trump presidency was so exhausting. It was like being the parent of a intemperate toddler; you just want them to stop, so you can do other things, but if you look away, they may do irreparable damage to themselves and to things you care about.

One of Joe Biden’s campaign’s themes was that Trump’s demonization of his opponents and incitement of his base by using “alternative facts” to create fear and inspire hatred of other Americans is “not who we are.” While a majority of the voters did clearly repudiate Trump, almost 7 million more people voted for Trump in 2020 than did in 2016. So while that may not be who the majority of us are, a large (and growing) minority saw Trump’s first term and said “give me more of that,” pandemic and all.

In spite of Trump’s refusal to concede, Biden clearly won the election. As is always the question with Trump, is his refusal to accept reality ignorance or malevolence? In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, does he actually believe he won, or does he know he lost but is incapable of losing graciously and simply wants to hurt Biden any way he can? Or is he just running one last con on his way out the door? Until word got out, the “election defense fund” was using half what it raised to retire Trump campaign debt – one last opportunity to monetize his support. A grifter to the end.

Given Biden’s margins of victory in the battleground states, even if Trump’s allegations of fraud were true, they would not change enough votes to overturn the election. And the campaign’s allegations have been pretty lame; in Michigan, the campaign’s “evidence” was that a poll worker heard something about fraud, to which the judge hearing that this was the administration’s “evidence” responded, “Tell me why that’s not hearsay. Come on, now.” One of the strongest allegations was that a postal worker in Erie claimed to have overheard his supervisor instructing someone to back date mail-in ballots, but when the Postal Service investigated, he recanted (after raising more than $130,000 on GoFundMe).

Reportedly, Trump’s staff doesn’t have much faith in the efforts to overturn the election, and they are going along with the president’s desires to fight this to ease him into the idea that he lost. Only five out of 53 Republican senators have publicly recognized Biden as the president. As any parent knows, when you enable a toddler’s behavior, you get more of it. Trump may be incapable of behaving more maturely, but the remainder of the Republican Party should be held to a higher standard. Acceptance of election results is vitally important for a democracy. Undermining faith in the process, as Trump is trying to do (without evidence), weakens the political system. Republicans should not let their fear of Trump’s base make them complicit in undermining our democratic institutions.

Just days after the election some moderate Democrats (Conor Lamb, e.g.) blamed progressives for a number of newly elected members in swing districts losing their seats. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fired back, asserting that no Democrat in a swing district who signed on to the Medicare for All or Green New Deal lost their seat. I admire both Lamb and AOC, but enough with the circular firing squads after an election the Democrats won. Those districts lean Republican and were flipped in a wave election in 2018, so they were always going to be a challenge to retain. The strategic debate will continue to be: do you try to excite your base and win through increased turnout or move to the center and to win over moderates and independents? The strength of the latter strategy is that if you can actually flip a Republican vote to a Democrat, that’s twice as valuable as a new Democratic vote because you also reduce the Republican count by one (which made that strategy conventional wisdom; energize the base during the primaries but tack to the center for the general election). But since the 2000 election, Republicans have had great success in disregarding that and simply energizing their base. The benefit of that strategy is that they are likely to vote a straight party ticket and may become regular party supporters.

While the Democrats lost a few seats in the House, they still retain control, but their hope of gaining control of the Senate rest on the unlikely scenario of winning both run-off elections in Georgia, traditionally a red state. Many people who have been dismayed by the hyper-partisan atmosphere of the last few years are calling for Biden to rein in the left wing of the Democratic Party, and it is in Biden’s nature to want to get along with his Republican opponents. But before he does that, maybe people should pressure Republicans to first recognize his victory.

Kent James is an East Washington resident and has degrees in history and policy management from Carnegie Mellon University. He is an adjunct professor of history at Washington & Jefferson College.