January 20 Can't Get Here Soon Enough

And here I was planning on writing a hopeful piece based on the new year and the Biden Administration taking over on January 20th. I was even willing to dismiss Senator Josh Hawley's stunt, in which he was going to formally object to the Electoral Vote count on January 6.

Then this happened. Eleven Republican Senators, with the Vice President's blessing, will also formally object to the vote count, and will further call for the formation of a commission to audit the vote in  states that flipped from Trump to Biden.

It seems they are concerned that despite the fact that no credible evidence exists of voter fraud, suppression of votes, or illegal activity on the part of states regarding absentee, mail-in, or voting machine votes, and despite the fact that the U.S. Attorney General, Attorneys General and Governors of states that switched from Trump to Biden, State Court, Federal Appellate Court, and U.S. Supreme Court Justices have found either no credible evidence to support overturning the will of the people or that, well, states can't sue other states and force them to overturn the will of their voters because they don't like the outcome, the election might be tainted. Why? Because Donald Trump says so.

Please understand that this attempted coup will go nowhere because both the House and the Senate would have to approve it and that won't happen. But also understand that if the House and the Senate were both controlled by Republicans and enough of them decided that losing the support of Trump's voters was too difficult to bear, then they could have stopped the process of counting Electoral Votes and possibly reversed the results of the election. Why? Because Donald Trump says so.

And that's the key here. The only reason why these officials are trying to subvert a fair and free democratic election is that Donald Trump cannot lose. He's been squawking about mail-in ballots since the spring, making unfounded accusations about voter fraud. Then he lost, which evidently can never happen, and he continued to make unfounded, unsupported, specious accusations about the vote and filed scores of lawsuits that essentially said that the election was unfair because...Donald Trump says so. 

That's it. There's no evidence, but these Senators, and 126 Republican Representatives, believe they must investigate a non- issue that's been investigated and adjudicated multiple times. 

It's a disgrace.

The president lost the election because of his terrible response to the pandemic, his vile tweets, his disregard for democratic institutions, his belief that he had powers beyond the constitution, his policies, his lack of political knowledge about how to get things done, his demeanor, his impeachment, and the general fact that both Democrats and moderate Republicans voted for Joe Biden. 

He lost the popular vote in 2016 and 2020 and his approval ratings were stuck in the mid-40s for almost his entire presidency. He was never broadly popular, and in Joe Biden, 81 million people saw a leader who would restore our pride, place in the world, faith in democratic institutions, and reliance on facts and science.

That, obviously, is not enough for the president or the Republicans who've decided to try and upend the election. There is no fraud. There was no cheating. There was only a free and fair election that saw a resounding rejection of a president that a majority of Americans did not want to serve another term. 

Trump's graceless response to his loss was to ignore the pandemic and the legislative process that might have resulted in more money being given to needy Americans until it was too late, and the rejection of a bill that funds the military because he wanted to keep Confederate names on military bases. For the latter, his veto was resoundingly overridden. He has not, nor will he ever, concede that he lost the election, and he will likely not attend President-elect Biden's inauguration or formally transition the presidency to him, which has been the foremost symbol of democracy after voting, that we have in this country.

Make no mistake: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be sworn in as our next President and Vice President on January 20th. Americans can then decide whether they want to be part of the problem or part of the solution. The president and those Republican legislators who are plotting against the duly elected government have apparently made their choice.