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In the end, all of Donald Trump’s efforts failed to contain the blue wave. The old line that “victory has many fathers and defeat is an orphan” was never more fitting. Democracy held, and we have numerous heroes to thank.
Despite the Republican tilt of the federal judiciary, Trump’s ploys were so offensive and egregious that he managed to lose the courts, decisively. As the exclamation point, literally on election eve the Supreme Court, without a single dissent, rejected Trump’s last-ditch appeal to allow the Justice Department to challenge some 20,000 voters in California. And the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a nationwide ban on the Justice Department threatening criminal prosecution of local election workers.
Trump’s score on major appeals to the courts is now zero wins and 30 losses. But the courts were far from the only heroes of the story. The coalition of pro-democracy groups anticipated, monitored, challenged, and blocked every major Trump scheme. They had close allies in secretaries of state as well as state attorneys general.
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An unlikely set of heroes were the Republican state and local election officials who defied Trump’s demands, at considerable risk to themselves. In six states, Republican officials refused all Trump demands for voter information—Georgia, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Idaho, Utah, and West Virginia. In Alaska, Florida, and Kansas, Republican election officials handed over only information that was public record.
The strategy of citizen groups such as Indivisible to flood the zone with unprecedented early voting and massive turnout both to cast ballots and to block both MAGA vigilantes and disruptive “observers” from the Justice Department and ICE also contained major mischief.
Rather than serving the Trump strategy of intimidating voters and depressing turnout, reports of these threats redoubled civic solidarity and raised turnout to record levels. The prime worry of pro-democracy groups, the seizure of ballot boxes or voting machines, did not materialize either.
And despite Trump’s offer last week of a million-dollar reward for reports of election fraud leading to apprehension and conviction, no vigilante efforts at disruption were reported. There were long lines in many places, mainly the result of unprecedented turnout levels and not voting disruptions. Even some deliberate reductions in the number of polling places in some areas could not prevent a blue tsunami.
Astonishingly, after contending for months that electoral fraud was rife and that extralegal incursions were necessary to stop it, Trump meekly said, in phone interviews with both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, that he accepted the results and looked forward to working with Democrats. One of the benefits of a blowout victory is that it is beyond challenge. On the other hand, Trump being Trump, that acceptance could reverse tomorrow.
One possible concern going forward is White House and Justice Department collusion with MAGA-aligned state officials to refuse to certify results. While every state provides for recounts in the case of very close elections, typically a spread of half a point or less, it is illegal to refuse certification for frivolous or partisan reasons.
According to Ian Bassin of Protect Democracy, the remedy for a winner denied certification is to go into court and get a writ of mandamus, compelling officials to certify the winner under penalty of contempt, as happened in Cochise County, Arizona, in 2022.
The survival of democracy itself is as significant as the epic results of the blue wave. Had democracy buckled, no such wave would have been recorded.
During the past year, in the face of legitimate worries about a possible Trump coup, I wrote in several Prospect pieces and in my memoir, Notes for Next Time, that I expected that we would have an honest election; that Trump would be repudiated; and that the work of rebuilding affirmative government as a force for social justice could resume.
As Yogi Berra famously said, it’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. As a journalist, I’ve never gone further out on a limb. As a citizen, I’m grateful that the limb held.
