Why This Election Aftermath Will Be Even Worse (Maybe Much Worse)

Brace yourself.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. — George Orwell, 1984

If you think the lies and distortions and know-nothing takes about FEMA are bad, just wait until this time next month. — Tim Alberta, October 2024

A desperate man without scruples has nothing to lose.

The last few days have given us a pretty good idea of what lies ahead, haven’t they?

Happy Sunday.

There’s less than a month until Election Day. Kamala Harris is a slight favorite, but it won’t be over on November 5. In fact, the worst will have just begun.

And, yes, it will be worse than the aftermath of the 2020 election. Potentially, much worse.

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How could it possibly be worse?

I’m glad you asked.

Donald Trump no longer sits in the White House, and he no longer holds the reins of the federal government; he doesn’t control the DOJ and there isn’t a Republican VP to mess with the counting of electoral votes. So, what could go wrong?

Let’s start with a throat-clearing caveat: Trump could win on November 5.

But what if he loses?

It doesn’t matter if the race is close. It doesn’t matter if Harris wins 270 electoral votes or 420. No margin will prevent Trump from claiming victory and MAGA from embracing his claims.

As we’ve seen this week with the MAGA lies about everything from Haitian immigrants to FEMA’s hurricane recovery efforts: No lie will be too flagrant. No invention too incredible.

Trump is already laying the groundwork: He will claim fraud; blame election “interference”; float conspiracy theories; blame migrants and voting machines. If he thinks it’ll work, he’ll make up stories about how Italian satellites rigged the election. Via CNN:

Former President Donald Trump has escalated his long-running assault on the integrity of US elections as the 2024 presidential campaign enters its final stretch, using a new series of lies about ballots, vote-counting and the election process to lay the groundwork to challenge a potential defeat in November.

Nonpartisan democracy experts say they’re seeing many of the same warning signs that were blinking red before Election Day four years ago, when Trump flooded the zone with election lies and conspiracy theories that he amplified after losing to Joe Biden. His campaign of deception culminated in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

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But how could it be worse than four years ago? Let us count the ways:

• Desperation. Trump knows he may face prison if he loses. A desperate man is a dangerous man, and Trump is a man without scruples who has nothing to lose if he burns it all down.

• His base absolutely expects him to win and will not accept the fact that he lost in a legitimate election. A Trump defeat will set off shockwaves of disbelief that he will ride into January — and beyond.

• This time, Trump has the infrastructure in place, including an entire political party that has been conditioned to acquiesce in or actively support his complaints — no matter how full of shit.

• He will try again to get GOP legislatures to overturn the results. In 2020, the GOP resisted his more flagrant attempts to vaporize millions of votes. This time, they might go along. Republicans control the legislatures in Georgia, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Arizona. (Democrats, however, control the governorships of North Carolina, Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.) Here’s a map of state legislative control:

  

• Trump has already flooded the zone with lawsuits. Last time, the courts were a firewall. This time, he has a Supreme Court majority that has shown a willingness to accommodate and protect him. Via The New York Times:

  Republicans have unleashed a flurry of lawsuits challenging voting rules and practices ahead of the November elections, setting the stage for what could be a far larger and more contentious legal battle over the White House after Election Day.

  The onslaught of litigation, much of it landing in recent weeks, includes nearly 90 lawsuits filed across the country by Republican groups this year. The legal push is already more than three times the number of lawsuits filed before Election Day in 2020

• The flood gates of disinformation are wide open. Far from combatting disinformation, Musk’s befouled Twitter will actively spread and amplify lies and conspiracy theories about the election. At Trump’s rally Saturday, Musk declared that,“I’m not just MAGA, I’m dark MAGA.”

  "President Trump must win to preserve the Constitution,” Mr. Musk said, after bounding to the mic with his hands in the air. “He must win to preserve democracy in America.”

  At one point, urging people to vote, he claimed, darkly: “If they don’t, this will be the last election. That’s my prediction.”

  

  The world’s most arrogant oligarch is all-in.

  And finally:

• Trump has given a green light to violence. He’s celebrated the attack on the Capitol and promised to pardon the January 6 rioters. The signals are all blinking red.

MAGA won’t accept defeat

This is the essential point. Four years of election denialism have consequences.

Democracy ultimately rests on faith and confidence, but Trump has destroyed whatever was left of the GOP’s immunity to merde-infested lunacy.

As Patrick Skinner notes below, something like 40% of Americans have been convinced that they cannot trust juries or the FBI; they have been told the media lies; and that they shouldn’t believe statistics about crime, employment, or the economy.

And most important of all: After four years of the Big Lie, Trump has successfully convinced Republicans not to trust election results. Via Gallup:

Republicans’ faith in the accuracy of the election results nationwide has sunk 16 points since the 2020 election, now registering 28%. This follows an 11-point decline to 44% in 2020 from 55% in 2016, the last time a majority of Republicans were confident.

What does loss of faith mean?

Nearly half of Republicans say they won’t accept the results of the presidential election if their candidate loses, and some of them say they would “take action to overturn” the results, according to data released Tuesday….

Only 29% of Republicans said that the electoral process is free from corruption, compared to 56% of Democrats. One of the biggest gaps was in response to the statement, “Votes are counted accurately.” Only 43% of Republicans and 84% of Democrats agreed….

The threat of violence is also rising.

Last week, the Public Religion Research Institute found that 1 in 6 Americans supports political violence, including about 1 in 4 Republicans.

A survey from the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University released in May found that 36% of local election officials experienced harassment or abuse, and 16% were threatened.

Seven-in-10 election officials surveyed said threats increased from 2020, and just under three-in-10 said threats stayed about the same.

A Reminder: The Big Lie is Just a Pretext

I wrote this two years ago:

The real threat to democracy is not the Big Lie. It’s something worse.

This is not to suggest that election denialism or conspiracy theories are not dangerous; they are, of course. But the House January 6th Committee has reminded us of something important: The whole Big Lie thing is ludicrous, risible, inane bullshit. It is an entire political belief system based on demented theories about Italian satellites, Venezuelan voting machines, and the hallucinations of Mike Lindell.

But that’s not the point.

You may have noticed how the various claims from Rudy/Dinesh/[Insert name of insane Republican] are ever-shifting. A bogus charge is made, it is debunked, and it is quickly replaced with the next fabrication, and so on. It’s an endless morphing chain of guano-soaked nonsense. But despite the parade of absurdities, no factual refutation ever seems to stick.

Why? Because the lies don’t matter. Only the outcome counts.

In other words, millions of Americans don’t necessarily believe something crazy and bogus. They believe something much worse.

The Big Lie is the pretext for the refusal to accept the peaceful transfer of power to political opponents who are seen as evil and dangerous.

Forget about the dropboxes, mules, and rigged voting machines; nobody really cares about the votes or the counting of votes. It’s not about that; it’s about winning — or to be more precise, defeating the enemy.

A subtext of right-wing politics now is that the other side simply cannot be allowed to win. They hate America, they hate God, and they will destroy everything you hold dear.

It’s the Flight 93 election forever. It’s Jan. 6th . . . forever.

Thank God for the dogs.

Baby Eli was telling Auggie not to look.

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Auggie has some thoughts about how we should spend the rest of the day, after I finish this newsletter.

Nota bene

Don’t miss these stories, because you can’t make this stuff up:

• 'Trump Bible' one of few that meet Walters' criteria for OK classrooms (oklahoman.com)

  Bids opened Monday for a contract to supply the state Department of Education with 55,000 Bibles. According to the bid documents, vendors must meet certain specifications: Bibles must be the King James Version; must contain the Old and New Testaments; must include copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights; and must be bound in leather or leather-like material.

  A salesperson at Mardel Christian & Education searched, and though they carry 2,900 Bibles, none fit the parameters. 

  But one Bible fits perfectly: Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. Bible, endorsed by former President Donald Trump and commonly referred to as the Trump Bible. They cost $60 each online, with Trump receiving fees for his endorsement. 

• JD Vance praises Marjorie Taylor Greene hours after she suggested Hurricane Helene was man-made — The Independent

  Senator JD Vance had kind words for Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene — just hours after she suggested that a mysterious “they” can control the weather and inflicted Hurricane Helene on Republican voters in Georgia and North Carolina.

  Greene is well known for repeating nonsense conspiracy theories. She’s voiced her belief in “Jewish space lasers”and has been cozy with QAnon ideas both before and during her time in office.

  She made her latest bizarre claim on X, this time concerning the weather.

  “Yes, they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done,” Greene wrote.

  Before making the claim that the weather can be controlled, she shared an image of the areas most affected by Hurricane Helene overlayed with an electoral map.

• Truth Social Users Are Losing Ridiculous Sums of Money to Scams (gizmodo.com)

  [New] documents obtained by Gizmodo reveal the site has also been flooded with scammers who are swindling users out of enormous sums of money. We’re talking about people who’ve lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in a relatively short period of time.