Who Is Going to Stop Him?

Who Is Going to Stop Him?

 

If you don’t think that Trump will steal this election, please explain why not.

 

Hamilton Nolan

In These Times

September 21, 2020

Life's a beach. Nicholas Kamm/ AFP via Getty Images

 

Don­ald Trump is going to try to win the elec­tion, and if he can’t win it, he is going to try to steal it by any means at his dis­pos­al. This is not a rash fan­ta­sy — it is an hon­est read­ing of Trump, sup­port­ed by years of his own state­ments, and wide­ly assumed to be true by estab­lish­ment polit­i­cal ana­lysts. For those, like Joe Biden, who say that our sys­tem of laws and insti­tu­tions will not allow this to hap­pen, I have a sim­ple ques­tion: Which part of our sys­tem, exact­ly, is going to stop it?

 

There are many dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios for chaos in this pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, and all of them are dri­ven by the basic idea that Don­ald Trump will lose the elec­tion and try to fig­ure out a way to cling to pow­er regard­less. We should real­ize that such an action would be just the final cul­mi­na­tion of a long project by the Repub­li­can Par­ty to exer­cise pow­er by minor­i­ty rule. Set­ting aside the Sen­ate, the Elec­toral Col­lege, and his­toric dis­en­fran­chise­ment of large por­tions of our pop­u­la­tion (all of which serve to entrench minor­i­ty rule of wealthy white peo­ple in cer­tain areas), we are already knee-deep in sys­tem­at­ic vot­er sup­pres­sion efforts designed to make it as hard as pos­si­ble for Amer­i­cans judged to be like­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers to vote. Those things are already hap­pen­ing, and with notable suc­cess. If you do not think that the Repub­li­can Par­ty is exis­ten­tial­ly geared towards cut­throat pow­er grabs, you have not been pay­ing atten­tion. Trump just hap­pens to exhib­it a more overt zeal for this sort of thing than most.

 

Trump has said, many times, that the only way he can lose the elec­tion is if it is rigged. Clear enough for you? That means that loss­es will be judged to be ille­git­i­mate at his dis­cre­tion. There are many dif­fer­ent ways to do so, but any large-scale effort will involve friv­o­lous legal chal­lenges, to dis­qual­i­fy or not count cer­tain votes; a non­stop stream of lies from the White House to the Repub­li­can base, to solid­i­fy the idea that the elec­tion is being stolen; and the use of state pow­er as nec­es­sary, to force intran­si­gent local offi­cials to fol­low orders, to crush protests in the street, or just to cre­ate a dra­mat­ic, TV-ready smoke­screen of civ­il insur­rec­tion that can be used as a tool to jus­ti­fy dras­tic measures.

 

If these things sound famil­iar, it is because we have already seen all of them in action in the past four years. Recent his­to­ry itself is the best rea­son to believe that these things will hap­pen. Our sys­tem has been test­ed, and it has failed.

 

So, who or what will pre­vent this naked and out­ra­geous pres­i­den­tial pow­er grab? Trump can­not do it alone. He will need, first of all, the help of the entire Repub­li­can Par­ty. Repub­li­can offi­cials in red states will have to help to mas­sage the vote count in his favor, and Repub­li­cans in Con­gress will have to act in near-com­plete uni­ty to back him. If you are famil­iar with Mitch McConnell, you know that this part of the plan is beyond question.

 

The Depart­ment of Jus­tice? That is run by Bill Barr, an active and enthu­si­as­tic co-con­spir­a­tor of Trump, who has been lay­ing the ground­work of crush­ing dis­sent already by telling pros­e­cu­tors to use the Sedi­tion Act against pro­test­ers. How about the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty? Run by Chad Wolf, who loves to throw pro­test­ers in unmarked vans. How about the thou­sands of mem­bers of the U.S. mil­i­tary, Nation­al Guard, and var­i­ous state and local law enforce­ment agen­cies that would be weaponized to ​“keep the peace” and car­ry out the will of Repub­li­can offi­cials? Ha. The police unions have all endorsed Trump. The mil­i­tary is built to car­ry out orders above all. Any dis­put­ed elec­tion sce­nario will involve orders com­ing down from the Com­man­der in Chief and the DOJ and DHS, and of course the sol­diers and cops will act on those orders, not drop every­thing to hold a con­sti­tu­tion­al law sem­i­nar about demo­c­ra­t­ic legitimacy.

 

The sort of Democ­rats who loved ​“The West Wing” have an endur­ing fan­ta­sy that some­how the U.S. mil­i­tary is a deeply moral force for good that will step in at the key moment to pro­tect our trea­sured nation. (These peo­ple have their man in Biden, who has said he is ​“deeply con­vinced” that the mil­i­tary ​“will escort [Trump] from the White House with great dis­patch” if he tries any shenani­gans.) There is no bet­ter refu­ta­tion of this child­ish belief than Gen­er­al Mark Mil­ley, the top mil­i­tary offi­cial in the coun­try, issu­ing a worth­less pub­lic apol­o­gy for tak­ing part in Trump’s most styl­ish­ly fas­cist moment, when he had troops vio­lent­ly clear Lafayette Square so that he could walk over to a church and hold up a Bible he has nev­er read. Mil­i­tary and law enforce­ment lead­ers will fol­low orders and then, per­haps, chew over the con­se­quences years lat­er in pon­der­ous mem­oirs. Hope­ful­ly, you will be out of jail by then. To expect them to help in the moment of cri­sis is foolish.

 

How about the media? The insti­tu­tion that exists to tell the pub­lic what is true, and what are lies, and who did, in fact, win the elec­tion? I ful­ly expect all legit­i­mate main­stream news out­lets to do their jobs and report truth­ful­ly on this elec­tion. I also know that those news out­lets have nev­er in Amer­i­can his­to­ry had less abil­i­ty to influ­ence the beliefs of Trump’s base, who now have an entire­ly sep­a­rate struc­ture of pro­pa­gan­dis­tic right wing media to lis­ten to instead, and that seg­ment of the media will be cheer­ing on Repub­li­cans at top vol­ume as they spread con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries of vot­er fraud and antifa ter­ror­ists. Trump’s years of chants of ​“fake news” have all been lead­ing up to this: The abil­i­ty to be cor­rupt in full view, with no con­se­quence, no mat­ter how much it is report­ed. As a reporter, I am sor­ry to report that reporters will not save us this time.

 

So it comes down to the courts, the insti­tu­tion designed to head off the unlaw­ful pre­da­tions of cor­rupt offi­cials. Would the fed­er­al courts real­ly make them­selves com­plic­it in an attempt to mud­dy the vote count and throw the elec­tion? I con­fess I do not have enough insight into the hearts of Repub­li­can fed­er­al judges to know the answer to this. But one per­son who does seem to feel con­fi­dent about the answer is Don­ald Trump, who said this week­end, ​“Now, we’re count­ing on the fed­er­al court sys­tem to make it so that we can actu­al­ly have an evening where we know who wins. Not where the votes are going to be count­ed a week lat­er or two weeks later.”

 

Abor­tion and the empow­er­ment of cor­po­ra­tions are not the only rea­sons why Mitch McConnell has seen to it that one of every four cir­cuit court judges in Amer­i­ca are Trump appointees. There are elec­tions to con­sid­er, too. Ruth Bad­er Ginsburg’s death means a 5 – 3 con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty on the Supreme Court, so that even if one con­ser­v­a­tive defect­ed on prin­ci­ple in an elec­tion case, the court would be tied, which would let a low­er court rul­ing stand. It is pos­si­ble that a new jus­tice could be installed before the elec­tion, fur­ther cement­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty. Either way, it is easy to see how strate­gi­cal­ly filed law­suits in red states alleg­ing vot­er fraud or oth­er irreg­u­lar­i­ties could be lever­aged into a mon­strous court rul­ing that would serve as a con­ve­nient stamp of legal legit­i­ma­cy – one that would not be over­turned by the Supreme Court, and that would give Repub­li­can elec­tion offi­cials and mem­bers of Con­gress all the pre­text they needed.

 

And that is all that is nec­es­sary: pre­text. We must be hon­est with every­one about that. There is no hon­est desire for a free and fair elec­tion that reflects the will of all cit­i­zens. Nobody in pol­i­tics real­ly believes that. Trump him­self has no lim­its, and he has now sur­round­ed him­self with a core of enablers who will seek to bol­ster his claims of a stolen elec­tion, and they will be aid­ed by a sep­a­rate and unequal media/​ pro­pa­gan­da oper­a­tion that will be preach­ing to a base that already believes the real news is fake. To stop this, we have fed­er­al judges appoint­ed by Trump him­self and a Supreme Court that now has an insur­mount­able right wing majority.

 

It is pos­si­ble that an over­whelm­ing Biden win would stretch the lim­its of ille­git­i­ma­cy past their break­ing point, forc­ing the Mitt Rom­neys of the world to admit that Trump had lost, and dis­solv­ing the Repub­li­can Party’s unit­ed front. Or it is pos­si­ble that the pub­lic back­lash to some­thing this cor­rupt would suc­ceed, with mas­sive nation­wide street protests putting enough pres­sure on elect­ed lead­ers to tip the bal­ance. It is also pos­si­ble that Trump could use extra­or­di­nary mea­sures – post­pon­ing Elec­tion Day? ICE agents sta­tioned at the polls in key swing states? Mil­lions of eli­gi­ble vot­ers purged from the rolls just long enough to miss the elec­tion? Straight up declar­ing an insur­rec­tion and seiz­ing pow­er via mar­tial law? – that would over­whelm even an over­whelm­ing vote for Biden. I do not have any abil­i­ty to make hard pre­dic­tions of an unpre­dictable future. We do not need nihilism, but we des­per­ate­ly need to see real­i­ty for what it is. All of the tac­tics nec­es­sary to steal the elec­tion are tac­tics that have already been used in this coun­try, by this admin­is­tra­tion, in the past few years. Much of this argu­ment rests on the ques­tion of how much faith you have in peo­ple and insti­tu­tions that have already shown that they are not up to the chal­lenge of deal­ing with a true fas­cist in action.

 

It is pos­si­ble that I’m being a crazy alarmist. I hope so.

 

Hamil­ton Nolan is a labor reporter for In These Times. He has spent the past decade writ­ing about labor and pol­i­tics for Gawk­er, Splin­ter, The Guardian, and else­where. You can reach him at Hamilton@​InTheseTimes.​com.

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