Yesterday's vote by the Electoral College confirming Joseph R. Biden, Jr. as President-elect and Kamala Harris as Vice-president-elect put yet another stake through the heart of the zombie coup being orchestrated by Donald J. Trump against the democratic process. One might imagine that this would mark an end to Trump's grotesque obscenities, but they will not. More amazing still, not only will Trump continue to fulminate about imaginary fraud and overturned elections, but so will a significant number of GOP elected officials. At the very least, the counting of the Electoral College vote before a joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021 will see another futile and profane attempt to "protest" the lawful result of the election on the part of Republican members of the House and (perhaps) the Senate.
Trump's motives in this malignancy are murky but not entirely inscrutable. He is raising a great deal of money (more than $200 million at recent count) from supporters through repeated appeals for funds to support his efforts to "right" the election. Since we are no longer in the throes of an actual campaign, he is free to use this money however he likes, as long as he declares it as income. Beyond this pecuniary incentive, Trump obviously thinks that perpetuating the fantasy of a stolen election is strategically wise. His brand is built on grievance, and since he cannot credibly claim to be aggrieved at the state of a nation that he led for four years (at least not until Joe Biden has been in office for a few hours), he now can gnash his teeth and spit venom over election fraud. This charade, he thinks, will carry him to 2022 and beyond.
The motivation of the many GOP office holders lining up to endorse Trump's attempted coup is less clear. In part, it may be a fear that the Biden presidency will enjoy an automatic "recovery" dividend. If Biden oversees the dissemination of a vaccine and is at the nation's helm as the pandemic ends and the economy recovers, voters are likely to reward him with rising approval rates just as the midterm election cycle begins. In order to blunt that effect, Republicans may feel they have to "pre-soften" Biden's political purchase, bringing him as low as possible lest he rise too high.
But this can only account for a part of the malicious foolishness being displayed by so many Republicans at all levels of government. At basis, they must be falling in line behind Trump because they believe that he will continue to be a kingmaker in GOP politics for the next 2-4 years. Republicans are so acclimated to Trump's ownership of their party that they assume it will persist indefinitely. In this they are mistaken. They have misunderstood the nature of Trump's appeal and the dynamics of his hold on the Republican Party.
Trump never offered his followers a coherent vision or set of principles. He channeled the anger of different communities about waning economic opportunity, demographic change, or advancing secularism. Nothing he said or did was particularly creative or original, but it felt new and compelling because it was transgressive and came from a position of genuine power. That type of impact has a finite shelf life, however. The same memes and catch-phrases ("Lock her up!") recycled over and over again from the station of a private citizen will not garner as much attention, especially from the half of the nation that is surfeited with Trump's nonsense and is now freed from having to worry about what he will say next. This will most likely roll Trump into a vicious cycle. Losing some of the nation's attention will make him petulant and resentful, which will lose more of the nation's attention, and so on...Becoming boring will make him more boring, which in turn will make him more boring...
Trump's hold over the GOP has always derived from his power as kingmaker during the primary electoral cycle. His followers made up enough of a motivated core of activist voters so that Trump could effectively eject Republicans from electoral office with a sign of his displeasure (as he did with Mark Sanford, former governor of South Carolina, who lost his House seat in a primary in 2018). But the next GOP primary is two years away, and Trump will have to find a way of remaining relevant until then. As a candidate and president he was the perfect foil for vicarious rage. As a loser who is waiting in the wings for another chance, his anger can only be impotent and pathetic, unless he can find a forum in which it at least appears significant and influential. This last challenge will be an uphill climb for someone of little initiative, limited knowledge, and almost no imagination.
Trump's toadies in the GOP have bet on the wrong Kraken. Nonetheless, their assaults on democracy will no doubt go on through the winter and into next spring. The dividends they expect will never materialize, but will they ever pay a political price for their sins? It is difficult to say. Until they do, we will never know which of their stunts is the final insult to our collective intelligence.
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