One America, Two Realities: Biden-world and Trump-world
President Trump, left, still refrains from conceding the results of the 2020 Presidential election, in which he lost to President-elect Joe Biden, right, earlier this month. Source
American politics today appear to operate on two entirely different planes. In the reality widely acknowledged by the media, election officials, and the majority of the American public, Joe Biden is the president-elect: a transition team is being formed, prominent figures are jockeying over cabinet positions, and campaign promises are being made. Despite the Electoral College delivering a resounding victory for Biden, with 290 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, President Trump is operating under his own version of reality. Trump refuses to acknowledge that he lost the election — instead plunging his supporters into a frenzied search for voter fraud. The New York Times recently reached out to top election officials in every state and reported that no substantial evidence of voter fraud has been found to support Trump’s claims. Now, amidst the worst pandemic our species has encountered in more than a century, our already divided nation must endure another waiting game, wondering whether Trump will concede before President-elect Biden’s January 20th inauguration. While Trump has made it clear that he has no intention of conceding to President-elect Joe Biden, the Constitution calls for an end to his term at noon on January 20th, despite his effort to mount legal challenges in the six battleground states that Biden won by a small margin.
While most of Trump’s lawsuits already have been shot down in state court, his demand for a recount in Georgia was successful. Biden won Georgia by only 14,000 votes out of 5 million votes cast (with 99% reporting), a slim enough margin to trigger a recount under Georgia law. Will Trump’s efforts to invalidate ballots cast for Biden be successful enough to change the outcome in Georgia? In all likelihood, no, according to attorney John Yoo, a former legal advisor to President George W. Bush. Although Trump has the right to mount legal challenges, “we should be clear that these are ‘Hail Mary’ passes,” said Yoo. “These are very hard cases to prove and generally they don’t result in changes in the votes totals on the order by which President Trump lost to Joe Biden,” Yoo explained. Will these timelines come together as one? The answer is also likely no, or at least it won’t be by choice. It’s highly unlikely that we will see any sort of acknowledgement from the Trump Administration on Biden winning the presidency without claims that the election was rigged. Nonetheless, both Biden and Trump’s timelines will be forced to collide on January 20th as the constitutional process for electing a president states in the 20th Amendment that the candidate who receives the most electoral votes will become President of the United States at noon on January 20th. Bottom line: Trump does not need to concede for this to happen.
Many people are still questioning how far Trump will go in his fight for a second term. Will Trump try to bypass the Constitution once his term officially ends? He could try, but such efforts are likely to receive the same chilly reception from the courts as his lawsuits. Trump’s campaign has already lost lawsuits in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and dropped challenges in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia. According to The New York Times, Trump’s lawyers’ battle to prove systemic fraud on a national level has been based on a “smattering of unverified accusations about the voting or counting process, usually directly affecting too few ballots to change a state’s results.”
The real problem with Trump’s election fraud claims is the doubt they have cast on American democracy among his followers — almost half of voters in this election — who now believe that our election system is rigged. Trump's mission to delegitimize the vote and the manner in which it has been amplified by the media is dangerous for America’s democratic process. Disenfranchisement will be felt by both parties; many Americans who voted for Biden are angered by Trump’s efforts to disenfranchise minority voters, while many who voted for Trump feel as if their rights have been stripped from them due to Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of fraud.
The 2020 election will also impact relations between the United States and other countries, where the United States has always been perceived as the most powerful player on the global stage. Not only does the election have a direct impact on U.S, alliances and partnerships, it will also determine the role that the United States will play in the coming years in organizations like NATO and in global agreements such as the Paris Climate Agreement. While most Americans await anxiously for January 20th to arrive, most U.S. allies are already hopeful that President-elect Biden will restore the United States’ international commitments, abandoning the isolationist tendencies of the foreign policy adopted by the Trump Administration.