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That’s the day the Electoral College meets, casts its votes, and declares a winner.
Of course, it was really all over on November 7, when the ongoing vote count put Pennsylvania in Joe Biden’s column. But Trump’s campaign to overturn the vote, and the Republicans’ indulgence of his infantile and near-psychotic resistance to losing—that will surely come to an end next Monday—right?
I wouldn’t bet on it. Since Trump equates being a loser with something worse than death, I expect he’ll not only continue to tweet that he really won, but also continue to pressure Republican elected officials to somehow overturn the election.
Only after December 14, those officials won’t be the governors and state legislators whom Trump’s been harassing over the past few weeks. They’ll be the U.S. senators and representatives who’ll convene in the new Congress in the week of January 4. Because on January 6, both the House and the Senate are charged with meeting in joint session to tally the Electoral College votes presented to them, accept the EC’s count, and proclaim a winner.
This invariably has been the most pro forma part of our entire election process, but this time may be different. The Constitution permits a few disconsolate members to move (in writing, the Constitution says) to reject the College’s findings, but that’s never gotten very far. If at least one House member and one senator sign on to such a petition, the two houses convene separately to consider it. Should a majority in each house reject the Electoral College’s choice, then the House elects the president (with each state delegation getting one vote) and the Senate elects the vice president.
To date, exactly one House member (Alabama’s Mo Brooks) and exactly zero senators have announced they’ll submit such a petition. As the Democrats will have the majority in the newly convened House, any such measure is sure to fail. But it’s not yet clear how many Republicans, if egged on by Trump and his besotted base, will vote for the petition anyway, in full knowledge that, because it won’t pass, their vote won’t actually overturn the election.
Okay, class: Who here thinks that Trump will accept the EC’s vote of December 14 and not pester Republican senators and House members to reject the EC’s tally? No hands? All right, knowing what you do about Republican senators and House members, who here thinks that hardly any of them will vote to overturn the Electoral College (not to mention, a clear majority of American voters)? Not many hands now, either. Who here thinks Trump will also pressure these senators and House members to announce they’re staying away from Biden’s inauguration because he didn’t really win? (They’ll have to announce their non-attendance because the event will largely be virtual in any case.) And that most Republican senators and House members will indeed stay away? Lots of hands on this one.
And that being the case, with Republicans effectively declaring Biden an illegitimate president—the nearest precedent for which is the South’s reaction to Lincoln’s 1860 election victory—Democrats and patriots and just plain people of goodwill should press Democratic senators like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin to agree to scrap the filibuster, which these selfsame Republicans will use to block every proposal from a president they falsely term illegitimate. Making the Biden presidency dependent on the whims of a party devoted to overturning the basics of American democracy and majority rule isn’t bipartisanship. It’s more like abetting treason.
