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WASHINGTON: Winston Churchill was not recognized for leaving his ideas unstated. One of them was this: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried.

President Donald Trump, who has professed admiration for, if not deep knowledge of, the British prime minister, is putting Churchills observation to one of its greatest tests by refusing to accept the results of an election that delivered victory for Democrat Joe Biden. Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, calls this a dangerous path for the United States.

Trump has forced a dusting off of the arcana of the procedures for the Electoral College, which for almost the entirety of the nations history has been a formality and not an instrument to overturn peoples votes.

A sitting American president is, for the first time, trying to convince the people that they should not believe the numbers that clearly demonstrate his rival’s win. Rather, Trump is making baseless claims of massive fraud, demanding recounts and calling for audits in an effort to discredit the outcome and, in the process, put democracy itself on trial.

It’s possible that the mercurial president is one tweet away from a change of heart, but so far that is not the case. And the sweeping majority of his fellow Republicans are allowing him to play this out.

Obama, who invited Trump to the White House soon after Trump’s election four years ago and pledged cooperation in the transfer of power, is not shocked that a man who never admits loss is refusing to acknowledge defeat now.

Im more troubled by the fact that other Republican officials, who clearly know better, are going along with this, are humoring him in this fashion, Obama told CBS’ 60 Minutes. It is one more step in delegitimizing not just the incoming Biden administration but democracy generally. And thats a dangerous path.

With one eye on Trump, Republicans may have the other fixed on Georgia, where they want his energy to help their candidates win two Senate runoffs in January and ensure at minimum that Biden has to deal with divided government. Republicans have seen how Trump batters dissidents, and few have chosen this consequential moment to cross him.

Republicans are sticking with him out of fear, said Eric Dezenhall, a crisis management expert who worked in communications in Ronald Reagan’s White House. Fear has always worked for Trump. Tantrums have always paid dividends.

“Republicans fear if they dont stand by him, one midnight tweet will cost them Georgia,” he stated. More broadly, “they dont want to anger him.”

Trump is utilizing not simply his sway over the social gathering but in addition the levers of presidency to maintain Biden at bay at the very least for some time longer.

An company little recognized exterior Washington, the General Services Administration, has held off on recognizing Biden because the president-elect, denying him entry to the cash, workplaces and equipment routinely afforded to the incoming staff. Biden has additionally been denied the categorised briefings that earlier presidents shared with presidents-elect in order that rising nationwide safety threats don’t catch the subsequent administration and the nation off guard. Trump put in loyalists on the Pentagon and fired his protection secretary after Biden’s victory.

In the meantime, a contagion of falsehood has been unfold from the shedding aspect, magnified on social media and given brute pressure by Trump himself.

In Philadelphia, a beleaguered metropolis commissioner on the panel liable for conducting and counting the vote stated he’s been shocked by the traction that wild tales of fraud have gained within the state that clinched victory for Biden. The commissioner, Al Schmidt, is a Republican.

One factor I can’t comprehend is how hungry individuals are to eat lies, he instructed CNN. Asked if he held Trump himself liable for that, Schmidt stated: “People needs to be conscious that there are dangerous actors who’re mendacity to them.

During a break from much more urgent electoral enterprise, his staff checked allegations of useless individuals voting. We seemed it up, Schmidt stated. “Not a single certainly one of them voted in Philadelphia after they died.

Trump can also be making unsupported claims of unfairness in 5 states, repeating allegations even after they’ve been firmly debunked. This as his supporters hail race calls by the media when these calls go their manner and denounce calls as illegitimate after they don’t.

Not everybody in officialdom shares the timidity of GOP lawmakers on the subject of standing as much as Trump.

The Homeland Security Department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has slapped down rumor after unfounded rumor about voting malfeasance and joined with state election officers in a press release declaring the election to have been essentially the most safe in American historical past.

By safe, they meant there was no proof that any voting system deleted or misplaced votes, modified votes or was in any manner compromised. That was a transparent repudiation of Trump’s unfounded accusations.

States have till Dec. 14 to complete the counting and certify the outcomes. That’s additionally the day Electoral College delegations are to fulfill of their respective states to solid and tally electoral votes, with a joint session of Congress set for Jan. 6 to affirm the depend and declare the official end result. It’s a course of thick with pro-forma minutia that Americans not often want to grasp however this time conceivably may.

The U.S. has lengthy promoted the vanity that it’s the worlds beacon of democracy. Now, essentially the most important software of democracy, the vote, is beneath assault.

The story of presidential elections the night time of, the day after and even weeks of indecision later has been certainly one of candidates swallowing the bitterness of defeat and smoothing the trail for the winner. Presidential transitions have unfolded as if by muscle reminiscence. The peaceable switch of energy has by no means been in query in dwelling reminiscence till now.

Perhaps the closest the U.S. has come to in the present day’s battle was the presidential election of 1876, when Samuel Tilden, the Democrat, appeared to win, solely to have Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican, finally declared the winner after slicing a deal to safe electoral votes in three Southern states in trade for successfully ending Reconstruction.

That election, in contrast to this one, didn’t contain an incumbent making an attempt to cling to energy. Nor did others that loom giant in newer historical past.

In 1960, Democrat John F. Kennedy defeated Republican Richard Nixon by solely about 112,000 votes out of greater than 68 million solid, although Kennedy held a determined benefit within the Electoral College. Nixon felt cheated and regarded difficult the end result however declined, conceding the morning after the election.

Al Gore, the Democratic nominee in 2000, gained the favored vote by about 540,000 votes out of 100 million solid. But he conceded twice at first prematurely on election night time, then once more weeks later when a choice by the Supreme Court handed Florida, and an Electoral College majority, 271-266, to Republican George W. Bush.

Bush had turned to the excessive court docket with a authorized case based mostly not on fraud however on his declare that voters had been denied equal safety as a result of Florida didn’t have correct requirements for recounts.

In 2016, Trump gained Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by a mixed 77,000 votes; Democrat Hillary Clinton referred to as him on election night time and publicly conceded the subsequent day. Her benefit within the fashionable vote of practically three million has animated the grievances of her supporters to this present day, however the Electoral College arithmetic was inexorable and to not be challenged.

Obama then welcomed Trump to the White House in a show to the world of the rituals of an American democratic transition.

In 2008, Obama had been the beneficiary of comparable graciousness. That’s when Republican rival John McCain conceded earlier than a crowd of supporters, changing their boos on the point out of Obama’s title to cheers and applause for the Democrat, for the method and for the historic achievement of the primary Black American to win the presidency.

I want Godspeed to the person who was my former opponent and will likely be my president, McCain stated.

Disclaimer: This put up has been auto-published from an company feed with none modifications to the textual content and has not been reviewed by an editor

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