In 2016, as the presidential election moved into high gear, Donald Trump began to set the table for his likely electoral defeat. Despite the kettle of dirty tricks his campaign cooked up to smear Hillary Clinton (with a major assist from WikiLeaks and Vladimir Putin), the release of the now-infamous Access Hollywood tape seemed likely to deep-six his campaign.
At that point, full of bluster and hogwash, he began to insist that he would lose the election only if the system were rigged. He also said that the electoral college was an unfair political tool designed to defeat him.
Then, improbably, he won the election. Suddenly, he loved the electoral college, as well he should have, since he lost the popular vote to Clinton by 3 million ballots.
In 2020, we were treated to rhetorical déjà vu all over again. This time, Trump knew he would be defeated. He claimed that the COVID pandemic was designed by the Chinese to harm his political prospects and that mail-in and early voting were processes rife with corruption. No matter that Trump himself votes early, by mail.
As most of us hoped, Biden won the election, and it was not by “a hair,” as Trump inadvertently admitted a few weeks ago, before he resumed lying again about a stolen election. Biden won by 8 million votes. Eight million votes is not “a hair”; 8 million votes is a decisive victory. Trump did not lose a “rigged” election; he lost because a majority of voters were sick of the vitriol, the lies, the incompetence, and the chaos.
Donald Trump knew that he had not just alienated women over his abortion stance and his lifelong practice of sexual predation; he had also alienated gays, immigrants, voters of color, Asian Americans, Jewish Americans, and anyone who managed not to be duped by the propagandists at Fox News.
Of course, it didn’t end there. Trump didn’t just complain and whine over his defeat; with help from some of the most amoral political operatives in the country, he began a campaign of bullying, harassment, intimidation, and his specialty of bringing frivolous lawsuits. He brought 65 of them, in fact. The courts tossed every one of those cases out for lack of evidence.
Not content to be humiliated in 65 separate courtrooms, Trump then sent his partner in crime, Rudy Giuliani, on a demented publicity tour with several other crazy lawyers. They ranted about Chinese and Italian satellites and dead Venezuelan dictators. Rudy Giuliani’s hair dye ran down his face as if his ears were leaking motor oil. One news conference was held in front of Four Seasons Total Landscaping Service, when it was mistakenly identified by the campaign as the Four Seasons Hotel. Needless to say, the crackpot publicity tour failed to generate anything other than well-deserved derision.
Then Trump did the unthinkable: Unable to accept his loss, he and his lackeys began to engage with alt-right paramilitary groups, inviting them to Washington for a last-ditch effort to “stop the steal.”
A review of what happened on January 6, 2021, is unnecessary, because only those who have been in a persistent vegetative state for the past four years would be unaware of the insurrection Trump set in motion on that day. It resulted in Trump’s second impeachment for gross dereliction of duty.
Now, this year, we are having a rerun of 2020; however, in the current version, MAGA loyalists and a number of fake electors from Trump’s previous attempt to subvert democracy are salting the earth on his behalf. MAGA acolytes have managed to run for—and win—election board seats in a variety of states, where they are actively plotting to hand the election to Trump, whether or not he actually wins. Moreover, a number of the fake electors from 2020 have now been appointed as actual electors.
In Georgia, three crazies on the state board of elections issued a new rule requiring the hand-counting of every ballot cast in the state. There are just under 8 million registered voters in Georgia. Even if a poll worker spent only 30 seconds counting each ballot cast, it would take over 60,000 hours to count the total by hand, or 2,500 days working 24 hours per day. There are 365 days in a year. It would take years for one person to count every ballot by hand. Clearly, there would be more than one person counting the ballots, but even so. They have deliberately adopted a lugubrious, unnecessary process to slow the counting of ballots—a process, by the way, that is demonstrably less accurate than machine counting. They have also empowered local election boards to refuse to certify the votes that are cast in their districts.
In case this seems perplexing to you, it needn’t be. The intent is clear: to prevent Georgia voters from influencing the outcome of the election if Kamala Harris carries the state. This is all because for Donald Trump, winning is more important than honesty, integrity, or the right of all American citizens to vote and to have their votes matter.
That is not all. Black voters are being purged from voter rolls. The ridiculous gerrymandering in red states, with preposterous laws forbidding the provision of food and water to voters waiting in ridiculously long lines because their neighborhood polling places have been eliminated, has led to the de facto, disproportionate disenfranchisement of voters of color.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is running his standard voter-intimidation playbook by targeting minority communities and broadcasting in no uncertain terms that if he loses, it will be their fault. This past week, he told a conference of Jewish Democratic voters that they would be to blame if he lost the election. He just seems incapable of not bullying, not threatening, not dog-whistling, and not fomenting hatred. He is indifferent to the fact that his inflammatory rhetoric makes it far more likely that another self-appointed MAGA mercenary with an AR-15 might shoot up another mosque, another synagogue, another church, another gay nightclub, or another government building.
Threats are the point, because fear is the desired outcome. He thinks he can frighten all of us into compliance. It certainly seems to have been effective among legislators from his own party who are clearly scared to death of what will happen to them if they cross him.
Here is the big message: This year, Donald Trump and his deranged sycophants are not going to wait until they actually lose the election before they spring into action; they have already sprung. Voter intimidation and obstruction are now at a level not seen since the days of Jim Crow.
Time for Democrats, independents, and that segment of the Republican Party that still has normal brain function to call it what it has always been: Donald Trump’s deranged attempt to steal yet another election.
Don’t let it happen. Make sure you are registered to vote (you may need to re-register if you have moved since the last time you voted, or if you don’t vote regularly); have whatever sort of voter ID your state may require; and have accurate information about your polling place.
If you can vote early, either in person or by mail, do it. If you vote early, you can then volunteer to drive people to the polls on November 5, especially those without reliable transportation.
We can all work to stop the steal: not through subterfuge, intimidation, or violence, but by showing up to vote.
