Let’s be clear. Donald Trump may legitimately win the Presidential election a month from now, and if he does, we sincerely hope our country continues to prosper and do well on his watch. After all, he will have inherited a powerful and robust economy from the man he belittles every day. Think of it. Business is good. Retail sales are strong, inflation is subsiding, and demand for workers is expanding.
But let’s also be clear. Donald Trump plans to become the 47th President of the United States whether or not he wins the forthcoming election a month from now. He will not concede if he loses. He will never acknowledge that Kamala Harris (nor anyone else, for that matter) could have possibly beaten him. You can make book that his plans have been finely honed to claim victory, notwithstanding the election's final results.
Trump’s playbook is not new. It is well established in history, and it rarely turns out well for nations victimized or corrupted by the machinations of power-seeking political climbers. They invariably focus on attacking the so-called failings of the legitimate political order. Their strategy is always to attain power and rarely to relinquish it peacefully. Destroying confidence in elected representative government has often been a requisite to the usurpation of power by power-hungry charlatans and corrupt politicians. It is a well-worn and often successful strategy.
It isn’t difficult to determine whether Donald Trump is hungry for power to accomplish some grand strategic objective for the nation or to satisfy an immense but sordid ego. He has never articulated a vision for the country. His motivation for running seems to be to occupy the White House, enjoy the trappings of power, rub shoulders with world leaders who otherwise would not accord him the time of day, and strut about on the world stage. His vile attacks on the integrity of our elections, which are considered to be among the most successful elections in the world, strongly suggest that the nation should gird itself for the chaos Trump seems prepared to inflict on the country again if the election does not go his way.
Donald Trump intends to be the judge of what a fair and free election is. If he wins, the election will have been fair and free. If he loses, it will have been rigged and stolen. That is his dull and tired but dangerous election mantra.
It has become abundantly clear that Donald Trump is determined to wage war on the integrity of our elections. There could be nothing more unsettling to the American success story than a severe diminution in the confidence the nation has in its elections. Make no mistake. Trump will be loath to acknowledge the strength and resilience of our economy as the country prepares to vote. On the contrary, his election strategy requires crippling any notion that things are going well in America and especially in the American economy. Remember the promise of now-jailed and soon-to-be-released Trump acolyte, Steve Bannon. He confided that the Trump game plan would be to “flood the zone with shit” regardless of how well things may be going in America. Trump’s henchmen are prepared, indeed determined, to claim fraud in the event the election does not go Trump’s way. Trump and his sycophants fully intend to create as much chaos as they can in the aftermath of the election if the voters select his opponent, Kamala Harris.
Millions of voters will go to the polls having been convinced by Trump and his acolytes that this election has been so corrupted that it is senseless to stand in line to vote when the fix is already in. It is shameful. American elections have, correctly, long been viewed as an example to the rest of the world. Trump’s reckless and determined efforts to impugn the integrity of our elections are shameful and enormously dangerous.
Without a shred of evidence, Trump and his acolytes, including high-profile individuals who know better, will claim that our election is going to be corrupted by millions of illegal voters. Donald Trump knows no constraints when fanning the flames of dissent. Trump, of course, has no evidence of widespread election fraud, but he knows that there are always those who will believe it. After all, the leader of their party is feeding them these lies. Create enough smoke, and there will always be those prepared to assume a fire is raging. Listen to him. Listen to what he is telling the world. “Our elections are bad, and a lot of these illegal immigrants are coming in. They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in. And these people (Democrats) are trying to get them to vote.” His unfounded charges are a libel against America. Even the staunchly conservative, right-wing Heritage Foundation’s database of confirmed election fraud cases lists less than 100 fraud cases between 2002 and 2022 out of billions of votes cast during that time.
Trump is even trying to impugn the integrity of votes cast by members of the military who are serving abroad. Republican President Ronald Reagan signed legislation in 1986, The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, to facilitate voting by members of the armed services and other citizens residing abroad. Under this program, ballots are sent to qualified registered voters who cannot be in the United States to vote. Local election officials (Democrats and Republicans) verify the identity and eligibility of these mostly military voters who register to vote absentee just as they would for anyone living in the country at election time.
Trump has lashed out, claiming falsely that anyone living overseas can get a ballot mailed to them even if they are not eligible to vote. This is, of course, nonsense and a curious charge to make, given that about 60% of military voters tend to vote Republican. Then again, Trump’s lashing out could suggest that he continues to be off balance and disgruntled ever since Biden dropped out and Kamala Harris emerged as his Democratic opponent. It is hard to divine what Donald Trump’s reaction will be should he lose to Kamala Harris a month from now. Wishing her well and promising his full cooperation as she assumes the office he has sought since being turned out of office four years ago seems a mighty stretch. More likely, he will say that this election, too, was stolen from him.
We don’t know if Donald Trump will incite violence once again as he did after his last election defeat at the hands of America’s voters. Yet, imagining Donald Trump congratulating Kamala Harris and wishing her well seems a stretch too far.
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Novels by Hal Gershowitz
Let me point out one, only one of many, fallacies you are writing here. Re: Trump claims people in other countries can request a ballot and receive it without question. Your response: This is a strange accusation considering most of the military overseas vote Republican.
My response: I don’t know if Trumps claim is true. Neither do I know it is false. Unfortunately, no one in the left really cares to do the work to find out, do they? Furthermore, if most of the military overseas vote Republican it stands to reason it wouldn’t be any of those overseas voters that Trump would be worried about so your line of logic there is flawed. To say the 2020 election was fraudulent may or may not be the truth. There again no one in the left cares to work to find out. Please do not respond to me about all the suits filled in court having been thrown out. In most of those cases the courts were never shown evidence. They were denied for lack of standing. I know you people have heard this again and again. You just refuse to see the truth in the events. No standing means that the person or persons bringing the suit have no skin in the game, so to speak. The lawyers who brought the cases to courts were not affected by the events so the judges refused to hear them. The bottom line: If the judge didn’t think that the claimants vote was nullified for any reason the cases were thrown out for no standing. For clarity, I don’t know who the lawyers were representing in these cases so it’s possible they did not have standing. I’m only pointing out that no evidence was EVER presented in any of these cases. It was never proven that fraud did NOT A happen.
The fact that the Democrat Party used every possible unethical method to pack the votes ONLY in blue states and only in pivotal counties should at the very least suggest suspicion and indicate concern.
Lastly, I don’t know your finances but here where I live people are not rich. You can spew that inflation is down, but it certainly isn’t showing up in our grocery stores or our energy prices. You can see gas prices going down, but that’s only because whomever is running things in DC opened up domestic drilling. That is a rabbit hole I’ll save for another day.
Please draw the logical conclusion. Such a man should never be back in the White House. However hard you must hold your nose, voting for Harris is the only patriotic option. Not voting is no solution; it amounts to a vote for Trump. Endorse and vote for Harris.