This is what I imagined might happen, but it somehow feels strange to see it happening in a way that seems almost…well, comical.
Almost comical, anyway. Not quiet. Because to view it purely as comical is to be deliberately, willfully ignorant of the danger of this new precedent of a presidential administration, and the party in power that supports him, refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of an election. They are doing so by claiming that there was widespread voter fraud, and then they are unable to produce any serious proof of this apparently widespread voter fraud that allegedly decided the election in favor of the other guy. That is not comical at all. In fact, it is dangerous, and pushing dangerously close to an out and out conflict, possibly a civil war. There is nothing funny about that.
Trump lost the election. It is not even hard to believe, frankly, when you think about it. He was the most hated, least trusted president in our modern history, by far. He never so much as reached 50 percent approval ratings at any point during his presidency, even though he came close a couple of times, both in 2020 (before the pandemic). This was reflected in the election results, naturally. He lost the popular vote by over five million nationwide at last count, having received under 72 million votes, to under 77 million for Biden. Trump lost the Electoral College race, as Joe Biden has already clinched 290 points, well above the 270 points needed to officially win the election. Trump lost numerous states that helped him get over the top in the 2016 election. Namely, Wisconsin (by over 20,000 votes), Michigan (by over 125,000 votes), and perhaps especially Pennsylvania (by over 47,000 votes). In addition, he also lost some other battleground states that, in retrospect, added the exclamation point to his defeat: Arizona by over 13,000 votes, Nevada by over 35,000 votes, and Georgia by over 11,000 votes. It was a clear defeat that Trump suffered, one that in any other presidential election, by any other major party candidate, would have been irrefutable.
That Trump and his loyal supporters are disappointed cannot be doubted. Obviously they are. But for a group that so loved to watch the tears from disappointed supporters of Hillary Clinton in 2016, they sure want to be given special consideration for their bruised feelings and egos. Remember, these are the same people who kept reiterating how those who were disappointed by the 2016 election results needed to get over it, and even went as far as to make one of the Trump banners outright state: “Fuck Your Feelings.” But they sure the hell now want to be catered to, do they not?
Suddenly, some are suggesting that there should be partisanship. Some are saying that Trump and his allies need time to recover from the disappointment, and we should all accommodate them. Perhaps. But don’t take too long. Take your own advice from 2016, and get over it. Suck it up, buttercup. You spent four years savoring in election results that, in fact, showed that the popular vote had gone considerably in favor of the other candidate, and you relished in your man playing the polarization game. Now, it’s time to get over yourselves, and start rejoining reality at least a little bit.
You guys delighted in how much this pathetic excuse for a man attempted to deliberately piss people off by acting the part of the clown, the buffoon, a role that he clearly knows very well. You know that was his role, and you obviously took a lot of pleasure in it, too. But politics is not a game, and not mere entertainment for your fancy. As Trump supporters made clear in 2016, elections have consequences. Maybe you enjoyed the Trump shit show for four years, but the nation decided to cancel it, due to low ratings and tiresome repeats of the same material. It grew very old, very fast, in case you did not catch on. Now, it's time for something else. And since you guys collectively seemed to take such pleasure in tormenting all of those people who were truly concerned about the direction the country was heading in when a suspected xenophobe and known con artist took the reins of power, then it should not surprise you that many people are taking even greater pleasure when you cry wolf and claim the same things now that your guy lost. And let us make no mistake: your guy definitely lost. Lost bigly, you might say. In a heey-uuge, resounding manner.
Here's another thing: most of the people who were happy to see the results of the election, by and large, have more class than to delight in the suffering of others. So now, even after four years of your crap, they still act with greater dignity than you, because it's called being an adult. Since you guys were such frigging pricks about it in 2016, and for the four years since, that joy is greater than it otherwise would be once you guys saw your man fall, as was predictable. Again, you were the only ones in the world who fell for his con game. Literally the entire world saw him for who and what he was, except you.
Not everyone who delighted in Trump's fall even like Joe Biden, for that matter. Among the Democrats, he was not my first, or second, or third pick. In fact, he was basically at the very bottom. I view him as basically the source of most of the country's problems, having authored many of the very policies that have proven so problematic. But instead of groaning that he won, I was instead pleased that your guy lost, because nobody in the history of the American people has one man that I know of deserved to lose, and deserved to be humbled before the entire country. Indeed, the entire world. He lost, and he lost resoundingly. Now, if you are a supporter, it's time to deal with it. You know, maybe do what you yourselves loudly scolded others to do in 2016, and get over it. Not happy? Wasn't it you guys who came up with that charming campaign slogan? Fuck your feeling, right?
Yet, not everyone is doing that. In fact, many millions of people are refusing to accept that their man could actually have lost this election. For that matter, Trump himself refuses to concede, and other members of his administration are also clearly refusing to acknowledge their election defeat.
So why is it that the Trump administration officials, and far too many of Trump’s loyal following, including many prominent Republicans in Congress, cannot accept this electoral defeat? After all, this is not 2000, where the election was effectively decided by the state of Florida, which itself was decided by hundreds of votes.
Of course, Trump harbored the illusion that he could not possibly be defeated, at least not in what he called a fair election. According to him, everyone loves him, and wants him to rule. According to him and his logic, only idiots and illegals do not bow down to everything that he says and does, and so it was assumed by he and his White House entourage, not to mention a huge chunk of the over seventy million people who voted for him, that he would win. Probably easily and convincingly.
When he did not win, when he lost surprisingly convincingly even by the Electoral Count, of course he could not accept that, and neither can they, evidently.
However, that does not entitle them to not only harbor delusions about having actually won the election, but then act in a manner that clearly insinuates that they intend to circumvent the election results, and continue to plan on ruling as if they had actually won. Rudy Giuliani made an ass of himself in mocking how all of the networks had called the election in favor of Biden. In a briefing, Mike Pompeo stated that "There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration." No one seems certain if this was a serious statement, or if this was Pompeo’s idea of a joke. And of course, Trump has seemingly gone into hiding, but he has sent out a flurry of tweets claiming to have won the election. Furthermore, he is moving ahead with court action, contesting the results, and claiming that this court challenge is a serious one.
Here’s the deal: Trump tried to stack the cards in his favor. He and his Republican party attacked the Voting Rights Act, have passed voter ID laws with the obvious intention of disqualifying people who likely would not vote for them, engaged in shameless gerrymandering also designed to benefit their chances, removed voting machines and closed polling places, and even tried their best to effectively shut down the United States Postal Service.
Then, after engaging in all of those activities, and others, they are now claiming that they were cheated in this election?
I mentioned before my own stated belief that this election was about nothing less than the continuation of American democracy as we know it. The people chose, and finally, they chose wisely. I am no fan of Joe Biden, but what got him over the edge is something that I can appreciate: he is not Donald Trump. Trump has been just too much, outright flirting with the idea of staying in power indefinitely. This is a man with a legendary sense of entitlement, and this sense of entitlement has outright become a threat to American democracy. Now, he has lost an election, and he seems to be insisting that loyalists inside of Congress and his White House refuse to concede this election, which he clearly lost. Joe Biden, the President-Elect, was asked about this refusal by the sitting president. He answered that it was “embarrassing.”
Yes, it is. But it is more than that.
It is criminal. In fact, it seems to be his way of rallying the troops – possibly not figuratively – to effectively initiate a civil war. He knows only too well how millions of his loyal supporters seem to be itching for exactly that.
Trump is a loser. He has had numerous bankruptcies during his lifetime, and then claims to be a genius in business. He claimed to have been unique in winning the White House during his first ever run, even though the three men who preceded him did exactly that. Also, he seemed to forget that he ran in 2012, and did not even make it to the 2012 calendar year. In 2016, he won officially, but lost the popular election by 2.7 million. Now, he lost another election, pretty much in every way possible. It is time for him to acknowledge it, and for his loyal supporters to hear it, and to see their demagogue reduced in their esteem. To see that he is not God-like and all-powerful, but in fact, is a small and weak man. In fact, more of an overgrown, spoiled little child.
The reality is this: at some point, Trump and his fellow Republicans will be forced to acknowledge, at least on some level, that Trump lost, and that elections have consequences. Trump has expressed in the past his own worries that if more and more people vote, Republicans would never win another election. In defending Trump's refusal to concede, Republican Senator Lyndsey Graham outright echoed that same opinion. But you know what? That's not our problem. That's not something that they should force the American people to worry about. Want to win more elections, and worried that you can't anymore? Then change your approach, change your ideas. Make them more enticing to the electorate, to voters. Win votes the old fashioned way, by earning them. Not through voter suppression, or voter intimidation. Not through lies and absurd claims. Give people a reason to want to vote for you.
Trump somehow was able to con tens of millions of people - over seventy million people! - into believing that he had some answers. To anyone with an ounce of integrity and, frankly, objectivity, his governing style over the past four years clearly indicated that he has no answers. None whatsoever. And that is why he, despite those seventy million votes, still lost, and did so resoundingly. Because more people saw through him, and knew what a second Trump term would look like. And those voters rejected that vision, and they were the ones who decided this election.
No one is sure whether it was Abraham Lincoln or Mark Twain who coined the phrase:
“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
But that is a true phrase, and it is wise. It also rang true about the last four years. Indeed, Trump fooled a lot of people over the course of years, even decades. He fooled well over sixty million people that he was some kind of answer to all of the problems that plagued the country in 2016. By 2020, it was clear to most Americans that he had nothing of substance to say, that his answers were self-serving and polarizing. In short, he showed that the country was not better off now than it was four years ago, despite his over the top bluster and self-praise. Enough people caught onto the con, and rejected it. And the country is better off as a result.
Trump lost this election. That is a truer statement than suggesting that Joe Biden won this election, I think. I wanted Biden to win, despite my serious reservations. Despite, frankly, my dislike of Biden. Why? Because Trump represented something even more grotesque, and he posed (and still poses, frankly) an out and out threat to American democracy, not to mention decency. It is absolutely no surprise to me that he refuses to acknowledge that he is a loser, but he is. And at some point or another, he and his supporters will know it, even if they grumble and claim that they were cheated, likely knowing, deep down in their heart of hearts, that they were not. I had one Trump supporter promising me that this time, in 2020, there would be one hundred million Trump supporters coming out to vote. That did not happen. It was just one more empty promise, one more exaggerated claim that could and would never come true. Instead, far more people came out to vote to make sure that Trump did not get a second term, and that is the reason that Trump lost. That is the reality, and as Americans, we all need to understand and accept it.
Let me use the words from one of my favorite authors here to sum up. I think that he was directing this at Trump, specifically, but it probably could and should go to the legions of immature supporters who failed to see through their man and enabled his idiocy and, yes, criminality for four years now. This is what those people should hear and need to understand:
“You lost, you miserable self-entitled infantile fucker. Concede and get the hell out.”
—Stephen King
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