Joe Biden's lead in the popular vote is now more than 6 million. That's more than twice Hillary Clinton's margin.
The president, through his lawyers, is attempting to delegitimize the vote-counting process in the mind's of his loyal supporters. Indeed, he may have largely accomplished this. His hope that state legislators in key states will somehow nullify their electoral results and appoint pro-Trump Electors seems like a Hail Mary of historic proportions. I think it is more a matter of showmanship, pandering to the yokels, proving himself a "fighter," than actual strategy.
In the early stages of this effort there was a marked difference between what his lawyers were contending in court and what the Mad, Mad World of the pro-Trump Internet was spewing forth. In the latter case, the fantastical conspiracy theories, unhinged from logic and the rules of evidence, were flung about like digital confetti, supported by You Tube videos where some guy took a screenshot of his TV on election night and yelled, "See! Proof! It's all a SCAM!"
But after some of Trump's more circumspect legal teams dropped out of the case, understandably worried that losing one's credibility in a very public way is probably not a winning business plan, then came Rudy! And things have careened downward into insanity ever since.
The Great Election Steal of 2020 is, it has been said, the new Birtherism (another big lie that Trump was instrumental in spreading). It is also, I suspect, this generation's parallel to the myriad conspiracy theories surrounding the JFK assassination. The theories then didn't have to make sense, they didn't have to be backed by evidence, and they could often be substantially contradictory, but people believed them all. You were considered naive if you brought reason to that conversation. It was not one big lie then, but a seething Petri dish of lies, a whole cottage industry of book-hawking rumor-mongers. This is what we're in for these next few years.
Remember when it was Russians trying to undermine confidence in the electoral system? Those were the days. I think what we're seeing now, with the defeated incumbent trying to undermine the system, is the absolute lowest act of a very low president. When Never Trumpers like myself warned that "character matters," this is what we were talking about. The playing out, on the world stage, of one man's utter disregard for anything but what he perceives to be his own self-interest (and even there his perception is strangely out-of-whack). Indeed, he is a man bent away from true in a way that seems remarkably destructive. The nation means nothing to him when set against his own self-image, his brand, which means everything to him, and which justifies everything.
I think that justice will prevail and Biden will take office on January 20, but I'm guessing that the madness of King Donald will continue to play out on the media stage, before our eyes, for years to come, and it will not end well for him.
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