What happened yesterday at the U.S. Capitol is a tragedy for American democracy and sits solely at Donald Trump’s feet. Trump spent months before the election occurred claiming that the election would be fraudulent, and when it wasn’t, he continued to spout his lies about voter fraud. During the first presidential debate, he told the Proud Boys, “Stand back and stand by.” He realized early on that he was likely to lose, and he has been fomenting rebellion and sedition for months. When Trump called on his supporters to march on the Capitol where the Electoral College votes were being officially counted and certified, he incited an insurrection, and he got an insurrection, which ultimately failed. The last time armed insurrectionists violently opposed a presidential election, the United States became embroiled in its bloodiest war, the Civil War. The first pitched battle of the current insurrection was quashed, but to end this, those involved need to be prosecuted for the treasonous behavior they have fomented and participated in.

I am not sure how these insurrectionists stormed and breached the Capitol grounds and pushed their way past the Capitol Police. I am sure there will be a congressional investigation into how this happened. I did hear on the news that the Proud Boys and others had been planning this for weeks, but the Capitol Police did not heed the warnings to the extent they should have. The news also reported that some of the insurrectionists used chemical deterrents on the police, the same deterrents the police should have been using on them. One woman was killed in the attack. She was Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran from San Diego, a QAnon believer, and a staunch Trump supporter.

Yesterday was a tragedy by any standard. It was a disgrace that our current president encouraged this to happen. The events yesterday at the U.S. Capitol saddened me, angered me, and terrified me. This attempted coup was unprecedented in the United States of America. It was a function of our Congress that should have been a mere formality lasting an hour at the most. Instead, some Senate and House Republicans thought it was a good idea to contest the election and further incite an insurrection. Those who have backed Donald Trump and his egotistical and fear-driven claims are just as responsible as Donald Trump and those who stormed the Capitol. Let me be clear, this was a terrorist attack. Domestic terrorism is, in some ways, worse than foreign terrorists because it comes from our own citizens, and this attack was encouraged by the sitting president. All those involved in this terrorist attack, whether they incited it, silently supported it, or carried it out, need to be punished severely. This election must serve as a dark event in American history in which we learn a lesson that the United States will not tolerate domestic terrorism and insurrection.

I believed yesterday would be a lot of posturing and a waste of time in Congress by those who remained loyal to Donald Trump and his lies. I thought we would only see a group of Representatives and Senators defy their oath of office. What happened was much worse. The President gave a speech to his insurrectionist calling on them to march on the Capitol, and while it was unsaid, he was also telling them to stop Congress from doing their duty. When the dust settled and the insurrectionists and terrorists were driven out of the Capitol, most of those who planned to object to the electoral votes changed their minds, but Senator Josh Hawley stuck to his guns, betrayed his oath, and called for the electoral votes to be rejected. His stubbornness, treason, and stupidity will continue to incite terrorism. He should be kicked out of the Senate and not allowed to serve his term. This has gone too far. Fox News and Newsmax are claiming fraudulently that Antifa stormed the Capitol, though no one credible is making that claim. These were Trump supporters. These are dangerous times and those encouraging insurrection, terrorism, and sedition must be punished.

I am not going to say much more about this. Honestly, it is too awful. However, I want to leave you with what Vermont’s Republican Governor Phil Scott tweeted in six successive tweets. I have combined them into one paragraph. I don’t often agree with Republicans, but I can at least respect Scott. He and his administration have kept COVID-19 cases low in the State of Vermont. He has never been a fan of Donald Trump. He refused to vote for President in 2016 and voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Here is what he said:

This is a very disturbing time for our nation. What we are seeing today at the U.S. Capitol is not a peaceful protest – it is an unacceptable attack on our democracy. The rioters have actively assaulted police officers, and they should immediately evacuate the Capitol building or be removed. Make no mistake, the President of the United States is responsible for this event. President Trump has orchestrated a campaign to cause an insurrection that overturns the results of a free, fair and legal election. The fact is the results of this election have been validated by Republican governors, conservative judges and non-partisan election officials across the country. There is no doubt that the President’s delusion, fabrication, self-interest, and ego have led us – step by step – to this very low, and very dangerous, moment in American history. The fabric of our democracy and the principles of our republic are under attack by the President. Enough is enough. President Trump should resign or be removed from office by his Cabinet, or by the Congress.

This is the Trump presidency. This is how we should remember what Trump has done for/to the United States: he led an insurrection to overthrow democracy.

As a child, I went to a couple of circuses that came to Montgomery, but it was only one or two times. My father did not like clowns, and so we rarely went. What I do remember is that there were some serious performers: lion tamers, acrobats, tightrope walkers. Then there were the outrageous acts: clowns, magicians, and other stunt-oriented artists. Just as Congress is a diverse group of politicians, a circus is a diverse group of entertainers. The two groups have a lot in common. Congress also has those who are serious and want to help Americans. Then there are those who are there just for theatrics, posturing, and acting like clowns.

Contemporary circuses experiment with new circus formats and aesthetics, typically focusing on human artistry. Modern circuses tended to favor a theatrical approach, combining character-driven circus acts with original music in a broad variety of styles to convey complex themes or stories. A contemporary circus continues to develop new variations on the circus tradition while absorbing new skills, techniques, and stylistic influences from other performing arts. Congress has changed in much the same way. There is a lot of posturing and performances, but the difference is that circuses have a purpose of entertaining their audience, and Congress has the duty to makes laws that influence the daily lives of Americans through legislative debate and compromise. Congress has failed in this duty. They debate, but nothing gets accomplished because they refuse to compromise. The Constitution directs Congress to serve as the voice of the people and the states in the federal government. Yet, it is apparent, especially with the stunts and attempts to overturn the re ent presidential election, they no longer represent anyone but their quest for power.

In my opinion, the circus atmosphere of the U.S. Congress is not tied to one party affiliation. Both Democrats and Republicans have their own ridiculousness. The so-called Progressives of the Democratic Party attempts to block any compromise, just as the Tea Party and Freedom Caucus of the Republican Party do the same. Both want to punish those who do not align with their political philosophies. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) have no control over their respective party’s more radical factions. Pelosi can’t control the Progressives because they oppose her, and McCarthy has joined in with the insanity of his radical factions. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) does have greater control over his Democratic colleagues as they seem primarily to have the same goal, but the last few days/weeks have shown that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has lost control of many members of this party. If McConnell had control, there would not be at least fourteen senators, led by Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), who plan to reject Biden’s electoral votes from states Trump claims, without evidence, to have won. The two Republican Senators in Georgia, in a reelection fight, have now signed onto the effort, although it means they are saying that the voters in their state should be overruled in their choice for president.

In the craziness of the current political situation, it’s hard to figure out what’s going on, but the bottom line is there is a major fight over whether or not the United States will remain a democracy. On one side are Americans, Republicans as well as Democrats, who might agree on virtually nothing else, agreeing on the reality that Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 election fair and square, and by a significant amount. They recognize that he is the president-elect. On the other hand, Trump and his supporters argue without any evidence that the president has somehow been cheated of reelection. They are using the uncertainty their words have created in the minds of weak-minded and deluded Americans to argue that the election now must be reexamined. They have abandoned democracy and broken their oaths to the Constitution. Just as a reminder, the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate take the following oath:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Donald Trump and his supporters have become domestic enemies of the United States and our Constitution. They are also backed by foreign enemies, considering Trump’s allegiance to Russia. Few members of Congress are currently faithfully discharging the duties of their office. I lay more blame on Republicans in the Senate, especially Mitch McConnell, for Congress’s dereliction of duty. The fact that it took nine months to pass another, yet wholly inadequate, stimulus package to help struggling Americans showed that they no longer care about the American people. They only care about themselves. Quite frankly, I would not mind if every member of Congress resigned and pledged never to seek reelection, allowing an entirely new Congress to take over, one that would compromise and work to better this country. Congress desperately needs term limits. We need new blood and new ideas in our legislative branch. If the members of Congress knew they had limits to how long they could serve, they might be more amenable to compromise. They would not always be thinking of reelection and could accomplish their obligations to their government office. Currently, the absence of term limits merely perpetuates the circus atmosphere of the United States government.

The only sanity that can be found in the Republican Party are those who are opposing a very public attempted coup of the U.S. government. A few Republicans are standing on the principle of democracy. Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) called Trump’s Saturday phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State a “new low in this whole futile and sorry episode.” Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) characterized the call by saying it was “deeply troubling” and people should listen to the full recording. Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said the call was “absolutely appalling” and tweeted, “To every member of Congress considering objecting to the election results, you cannot—in light of this—do so with a clean conscience.” Former Senator John C. Danforth (R-MO), who has supported the political career of Josh Hawley, the first senator to back Trump’s challenge to the Electoral College votes, rejected those efforts. Danforth said, “Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen is a highly destructive attack on our constitutional government. It is the opposite of conservative; it is radical….”

The best voice of reason came from former President Barack Obama. Writing on Twitter about yesterday’s runoff elections in Georgia, Obama warned that Trump and his supporters are threatening “the fundamental principles of our democracy.” Obama went on to identify what at stake in Trump’s effort to stay in office despite his election loss: “Our democracy isn’t about any individual,” he wrote, “even a president.” Trump and his supporters have abandoned the core principle of the U.S. Constitution, as outlined in its Preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Trump cares only about one person: himself. He doesn’t believe in “We the People” but “I, Donald J. Trump,” and far too many Republicans have supported this belief. Luckily, at noon on January 20, we will return to the rule of “We the People,” and democracy will be restored. 

When a joint session of Congress meets today (in what is sure to be a circus of the absurd), the task will be to count and confirm Biden’s win. Here’s what we can expect to see:

• Congress will meet around 1 p.m. Eastern time in a joint session convened in the House chamber and with Vice President Mike Pence presiding.
• Clerks will hand Pence the envelopes of states’ electoral college results in alphabetical order. He will read them aloud. Congress will vote on each one.
• When they get to Arizona, Senator Ted Cruz (Tex.) and a number of other Republican senators, as well as Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ.) and probably Mo Brooks (R-AL) among other Representatives, will object. They are supposed to object in writing and hand it to Pence to read. (But these lawmakers will probably try to make speeches, too. They should not be allowed to do this, but I doubt Pence will silence them.)
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) or other top House Democrats may respond, which may or may not be allowed by Pence.
• Then the House and the Senate split up and can debate each challenge for up to two hours. Leaders in both chambers want to quash these quickly. They will hold a vote on whether to accept the challenge. It will fail in each chamber because there are enough Senate Republicans who will not vote to reject the votes and the House is controlled by Democrats. Both chambers must vote individually to reject the votes or else the votes must be accepted.
• Lawmakers will rejoin in a joint session and keep going down the list of states. It is expected that Republicans will challenge all or most of the swing states that Trump lost, from Arizona to Georgia and on to Wisconsin.
• While this process usually takes no more than half an hour, this could stretch well into the overnight hours or even through the day Thursday. By the end, Pence will have to declare that Biden has won the electoral college and that Biden will be the next president. (Even though Trump has started pressuring Pence not to do so.)

All that’s left after this is to inaugurate Biden on January 20. But the rift in the Republican Party created by this day will remain long afterward, and if they allow Trump to continue with his insanity, it may very well be the end of the Republican Party. At the very least, it will be the end of the Republican Party as we knew it. It will no longer be the Party of Lincoln, but the Party of Trump. My fervent hope is that that this is a learned lesson for American democracy, and all Americans realize just how close we came to losing the democracy we hold so dear. Sadly, listening to the incredible and unbelievable stupidity of Trump’s supporters, it is a lesson that is unlikely to be learned because they no longer want democracy. They want a one-party system and the destruction of the Democratic Party. However, what they do not understand is they are destroying the Republican Party they proclaim they believe in. I’m afraid the circus that is our government will continue. They will carry on their imitation of “The Greatest Show on Earth” even though that circus ceased to exist in 2017, just a few months after the circus that has been the Trump administration began.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia have certified their votes and named slates of electors. As members of the Electoral College, those electors will meet today in their respective states to formally cast their ballots for President and Vice President — the next step in the process of finalizing Biden’s victory. Each of the state’s top election official will then send those ballots to Washington, where Congress will count them on January 6. Once that happens, Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th President on January 20 at noon. Sadly, however, I believe Donald Trump will continue to cry about the 2020 presidential election being stolen from him until his dying day. Just because we elected Joe Biden as President doesn’t mean we are rid of the cancer that is Trumpism and Donald Trump.

Paul Waldman wrote an editorial recently in the Washington Post in which he asked, “If you were dropped in from another country without knowing anything about the United States and surveyed our current political moment, what would you conclude about the Republican Party and the broader conservative movement it represents? As 2020 comes to an end, what is conservatism about?” On a side note, this question reminds me of an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine titled “Little Green Men.” In the episode, a temporal anomaly sends Quark, Rom, and Nog to 1947 Earth, where they are held prisoner in Roswell, New Mexico. The episode is an interesting look at what an outsider would have seen if they found themselves on a military base in the United States at the beginning of the Cold War. If Ferengis landed in the United States today, they would probably love the idea of a Donald Trump presidency because Trump represents the worst of Ferengi society. The Ferengi civilization centered around the concept of greed and earning profit and was built on free enterprise, in which earning profit was the sole meaningful goal in life, superseding all other endeavors no matter the cost to others.

Putting my Trekkie geekiness aside, let’s get back to Waldman’s question. During the nearly four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, no misdeed has been deemed too vulgar or corrupt for conservatives to defend. Now the Trumpists are waging outright war against democracy itself. You might be tempted to answer the above question with “Nothing.” I have said this numerous times, the Republican Party barely exists today and has been replaced by the delusional ideology of Trumpism built solely upon greed and hatred. Before the rise of the Tea Party, the Freedom Caucus, and Donald Trump, a Republican running for any office from dogcatcher all the way up to President would respond when asked what it meant to be a conservative by saying some version of the same four ideas: small government, low taxes, a strong military, and traditional social values.

While conservatives still believe in those principles, no one today could seriously argue that they are any longer the primary goals of the Republican Party. Instead, the one thing that unites the right and drives the Republican Party is hatred, especially of liberals. For years now, Republicans, and some Democrats, have not run on what they believe but what they hate. Negative partisanship — being more motivated by your dislike of the other party than by affection for your own — has consumed American politics. Republican hatred has consumed every policy goal, every ideological principle, and their commitment to this country. The difference between Republican hatred and Democratic hatred is that Democrats hate inequality and discrimination. In contrast, the Republican Party hates anyone that doesn’t fit their idea of a homogenous American society (i.e., white Christian superiority). Democrats believe in fundamental fairness; Republicans do not. 

Republicans have now turned their hatred of liberals into the hatred of democracy, the Constitution, and decency. When 18 Republican state attorneys general, more than half of House Republicans, and multiple conservative organizations all demand that the results of a presidential election where no fraud was found be simply tossed aside so that Trump can be declared the winner, something more profound has been revealed. The Republican Party has proved that its hatred of liberals is so foundational that it will abandon any pretense of commitment to democracy if democracy allows for the possibility that liberals might win an election. They have come to regard Democratic voters as essentially undeserving of having their will translated into power, no matter how large their numbers. This hatred of democracy for all may not be new to the Republican Party, but now, they’re willing to proclaim it even after they lost a presidential election by 7 million votes and a 306-232 electoral college margin. Forget all that inspiring talk about the genius of the Framers and their vision for democracy; if having an election means that the people Republicans hate might win, then the election must simply be nullified.

Everyone probably knows by now that the Texas Attorney General tried to have the Supreme Court throw out the election results — which the justices rejected Friday evening. However, we can’t get complacent and believe it was the final blow to Trump’s attack against democracy. It is not a matter of all’s well that ends well. What was alarming about the Texas effort was that it gained the support of so many others. Seventeen of 26 Republican state attorneys general. Nearly two-thirds of House Republicans, including the minority leader, Kevin McCarthy (Calif.). Every one of these individuals has forfeited any claim to believe in anything but fealty to Trump and their own political self-interest. (Who were these men and women who signed legal briefs supporting treason? Click “Read More” at the end of the post to see all of the names.) Because nothing could be less conservative, less consistent with supposed Republican principles, than urging a court to overturn a democratic election. For decades, Republicans have condemned what they saw as activist judges, but now, they are begging judges across the country and even the Supreme Court to become activist judges if it gets them what they want. Nothing could be less consistent with conservative principles than contending that one state should be able to instruct another about how to conduct its elections — or that federal judges should referee such claims. 

You might think that the Republicans signing on to a profoundly anti-American crusade against democracy are doing so out of fear as much as conviction, but the two are not mutually exclusive. All elected officials worry about contradicting their base, but in today’s Republican Party, that worry is almost wholly divorced from policy. Yes, you’d get flak if you voted to raise taxes, but the greatest danger comes from failing to fight the left with sufficient vigor. Horrifyingly, that danger is not only electoral but physical. The Republican leader in the Pennsylvania state Senate said she was told that if she refused to sign a letter demanding that Congress toss out her state’s votes in the presidential race, “I’d get my house bombed tonight.” It might not actually happen, but the point is that Republican officeholders understand well what their party values above all else and what kinds of transgressions will not be tolerated.

Trump has often cited the extraordinary loyalty he has received from his party’s voters; it’s one of the few things he says that’s true. But it isn’t because of Trump’s conservative policies and actions. If you ask a typical Trump supporter what they love about him, they don’t mention some substantive policy position (though some will say he is anti-abortion, but I think that’s because they are ashamed of their homophobic and racist reasons). They will usually answer that he is a fighter. The petty squabbles, the insulting tweets, the deranged conspiracy theories — the things that the Never Trumpers and most other Americans find repulsive and offensive are exactly what endears him to the Republican base, which speaks volumes about their character and morality. Trump fights angrily, bitterly, and endlessly because he is driven forward by his hatred of the people his supporters hate and the adoration he receives from their support. That’s what the base loves, and every other Republican knows it.

The fundamental Republican rhetoric for the 2020 campaign, starting with Trump but going all the way down the ballot, was that if Democrats were elected, then it would not be bad or even terrible, but apocalyptic and the end of everything you cherish. Towns and cities would burn, religion would be outlawed, America as we know it would cease to exist. These horrors were not presented as metaphors but as the literal truth, and the voters ate it up. In the face of that potential apocalypse, who could possibly care about mundane policy goals? The importance of everything else pales next to the urgency of stopping the cataclysm that would engulf us all if Democrats were to hold power. I received a call from my mother a few months back saying almost this exact thing. The Republican Party and the conservative movement are all about hatred today, and it might take a long time for them to change. 

With all of the lawsuits and attempts to overturn the election, Republicans have gone beyond the indulge-the-toddler-while-he-cries-it-out phase of this election debacle to a dangerous new stage: Incentivize the toddler. Reward his bad behavior. Encourage his belief, as poisonous to democracy as it is delusional, that the election was stolen. Republicans are laying the groundwork for a contentious new phase in American democracy.

Even when all of their tactics fail and Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th President, they will move on to another phase of legal and political guerrilla warfare in which no tactic, no lie, no baseless claim is off-limits. Democracy cannot function this way.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 of the Constitution authorizes Congress to fix the day on which the electors shall vote and states that electors must meet the same day throughout the United States. Congress designated the date of the electors meeting in the 1936 passage of United States Code: Title 3, Section 7 [3 USC 7] which states, “The Electors of President and Vice President of each State shall meet and give their votes on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December next following their appointment.” The date of the Electors’ meeting for the 2020 Presidential election is set for this Monday, January 14, 2020. On Wednesday, West Virginia became the final of the 50 states and the District of Columbia to certify their presidential results. While the results of the election should be a foregone conclusion to any sane person in the United States, the President, his followers (including the attorneys general in 18 states), and Republicans in Congress have refused to accept a legitimate and legally conducted election of Joe Biden as President of the United States. For more than four years now, the Republican Party has descended into madness. It began long before, but the deterioration of their collective mental capacity has increased since the party chose Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for President in 2016.

The states’ certifications come as Trump has baselessly claimed that the election was rigged and sowed doubt about the outcome of the presidential race. Dozens of lawsuits challenging the results have been dismissed at the state and federal levels across the country since the November election. Now, these nutjobs have turned to the Supreme Court to beg it to hear their outrageous claims. There is no precedent or legal recourse for the Texas AG to file a suit with SCOTUS against other states for how they conducted their election. In no way does how other states handled their elections cause any harm to the State of Texas or any other state. Nowhere in the Constitution says that any state has the right to determine what another state does in their elections, especially when lawfully enacted by their state legislatures. States suing one another has in the past always been about border disputes, water rights, or interstate commerce. None of these apply to an election. While I doubt SCOTUS will accept the Texas AG’s case, we still have to wait. Article III of the Constitution does grant SCOTUS original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically “all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party.” However, SCOTUS has set precedent in the past that they do not have to accept cases where they hold original jurisdiction. Most legal scholars believe that the Texas AG’s lawsuit has no merit, and SCOTUS will refuse to consider it.

What worries me is not the casting of the electoral votes on Monday but the counting of the Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021. If a Senator and a Representative sign an objection to the votes cast by a state’s electors, then the joint session must be adjourned so the Senate can return to their chamber to debate the objection. The House will remain and hold a debate in their chamber (the counting of the electoral votes always occurs in the House chamber). The House and Senate have up to two hours to debate before they vote separately to accept or reject the objection. Once the vote has been cast, the Senators return to the House chamber, and the joint session will resume. The good thing is that BOTH the House and Senate must agree to accept the objection and throw out the election results. This is unlikely as the Democratically controlled House will not vote to throw out any election results. However, this process must be done as soon as an objection with the two required signatures is made. The counting of votes cannot continue until a debate and vote is completed and must be done each time there is an objection with the required signatures is submitted. 

What worries me is how much time this will take if the process is repeatedly done. It could delay the certification of the electoral votes by Congress for days. At the most, it could likely take 6-7 days if Republicans object only to the electoral votes by the states Biden won, and the Joint Session only meets for 8 hours a day. The length of time Congress would meet, I believe, would be controlled by Vice President Mike Pence, who is statutorily required to chair the Joint Session, unless he passes that responsibility to Pro Tempore of the Senate, Chuck Grassley (R-IA). If Republicans somehow stupidly did delay the count until after noon January 20, according to the Electoral Counting Act, the Speaker of the House would be sworn in as Interim President at noon on Inauguration Day when Trump’s term officially ends. She would serve as Interim President until the election is certified by Congress. Sadly, this would likely mean that Nancy Pelosi would have to resign to become Interim President. As far as I know, there is no option for her to refuse and pass it on to Grassley, who is next in the line of succession. If Pelosi is required to resign to become Interim President, the California Governor cannot just appoint her back to her seat. Members of the House of Representatives must be filled through an election, not appointment like Senators can be, so she would have to win a special election for her to return to her seat in the House. Whether she could return as Speaker of the House is a question of procedure for which I don’t know the answer. 

All of this sounds like mere speculation, but a delay in the Electoral College count process is a very real possibility. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) is already trying to frighten the more than 80 million Americans who voted for President-elect Joe Biden into thinking that there is a chance he and other Republicans in Congress could overturn the 2020 election results. To this end, Brooks has stated that he’s planning to challenge the Electoral College votes when Congress reviews them on January 6. As Brooks put it (without any evidence): “This election was stolen by the socialists engaging in extraordinary voter fraud and election theft measures.” Brooks also shared he’s actively seeking to recruit additional Republican members of Congress to join his efforts to prevent Biden from becoming the 46th president because, as he sees it, “Donald Trump won the Electoral College by a significant margin.” Even if he follows through with his threat, it won’t matter. It will only delay the inevitable.

Joe Biden will receive his projected 306 electoral votes on Monday to secure his election victory when the electors meet in their respective states. He will have well over the 270 required to become the next President. Those votes will be counted in a Joint Session of Congress. While Brooks’s objection may be an interesting (and potentially frightening) constitutional thought experiment, in reality, it doesn’t matter. No Republican Senator signaled any enthusiasm for Brooks’ plan. In fact, they have been downright dismissive of it. However, if Trump starts lobbying Republican Senators, that could change. We all know there are crazy, idiotic, stupid, Trumpist Senators who could join in and sign an objection along with Brooks. The Alabama Congressman may very well be able to enlist one Republican Senator—or even more than one—to sign his objection on January 6, given that such grandstanding will ingratiate Republicans with Trump’s base. This will likely cause a delay of hours or maybe days if they continue their stupidity long enough. But that’s all it will be — one final delay. 

All of the grandstanding and claims of election fraud is dangerous to the United States’ democratic institutions. I am tired of this stupidity that has gripped the U.S. and the Republican Party. The Republican Party has only one chance to redeem itself in any way, and that chance is quickly slipping through their fingers as they continue to humor Donald Trump’s delusions. There is no doubt this election will go down in history as one of the most fucked up ever. Even the election of 1876 did not see this much stupidity from a losing side, and that election was the reason Congress passed the Electoral Counting Act in the first place. Regardless of the attempted delays the Republicans may try, come Inauguration Day, Trump will be yelling at TV screens in Mar-a-Lago, and Joe Biden will be sitting behind the Resolute Desk (after the White House is fumigated and disinfected first).

I have not spoken much about politics since Joe Biden won the election. I had hoped by now that Republican leaders would have stepped up to congratulate Biden on his win publicly. Yet, few have done so, and America is suffering because of it. They know, Trump knows, we all know that it’s over. Yes, until the Electoral College officially casts their votes and Congress certifies them, there will continue to be a cloud of uneasiness that one of Trump’s schemes will work, and that is only one of the problems at hand. The transition to a Biden administration should be going smoothly; instead, petty bureaucrats are holding up the transition process under some idiotic notion of loyalty to Donald Trump. What Trumpists do not seem to understand is that he cares nothing about them. Trump cares only for himself and no one else, including his family. As Trump fights the election results, the country is in a perilous position. The economy, health, and diplomatic relations of the United States are hanging onto the side of a cliff, trying desperately to hold on until January 20, but will the damage be too great by then? It may be, and that my greatest fear.

No matter what he says in public, Trump obviously knows he’s lost. Why do I say this? It’s because he is punishing the people of the United States for his loss. Trump is seeking vengeance against those he believes have betrayed him, which happens to be the American people. It isn’t just the more than 82.5 million people who voted against him (nearly 80 million of those voted for Joe Biden). I suspect he even blames the 73 million who voted for him because he believes they did not do enough to get him reelected. After the election, Trump claimed that he would push through a new stimulus package, but we all knew that came with the unspoken caveat that it was only if he won. Now that he has lost, there will be no stimulus package before the end of his term. Talks with congressional leaders to arrive at a coronavirus stimulus deal, which were active in the run-up to the election, have gone dormant—with no signs, they will begin again despite the clear need for more money to be pumped into the economy to withstand the ongoing effects of COVID-19 on the country. Trump will also not be extending student loan deferments. I received an email yesterday that said those deferments were coming to an end as of January 1, 2021.

Black Friday and Christmas shopping keeps many businesses in the black each year. How can that be the case this year when people barely have enough to pay for food or rent? As Dolly Parton sang, “Lord, it’s like a hard candy Christmas, I’m barely getting through tomorrow.” Unlike the song, though, we won’t “be just fine and dandy.” Furthermore, not many of us will be able to say, “still, I won’t let sorrow get me way down.” The families of over a quarter-million people will be without loved ones this holiday season. I filled my Amazon cart with the gifts for my family, and UPS will play Santa Claus for me this year because I will let Amazon wrap and ship those gifts to my family. I won’t be going home. I doubt I will even decorate for Christmas here. I rarely do since I am not usually here for Christmas, but even though I will be alone in Vermont this year, I just feel it is a waste of money to decorate just for me. I still think about the millions of Americans wondering how they will buy their children something for Christmas this year. It is difficult for many of them during a good year, but this is not a good year.

If the problems with the economy weren’t bad enough, the pandemic is surging like never before. Over 200,000 diagnosed cases a day. The surging coronavirus is taking an increasingly dire toll across the U.S. just as a vaccine appears close at hand. The nation has recorded more than 1,500 fatalities daily since Tuesday, death tolls not seen since May. On Thursday, the U.S. recorded more than 2,000 deaths. It is the highest level since the devastating spring in and around New York City. And what is the federal government doing about it? Donald Trump is playing golf at his club in Virginia. He continues to tweet in an effort to push any number of disproven or entirely fact-free conspiracy theories about the election. He is trying to push controversial military decisions, including planning to withdraw American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he has inquired about options to strike at Iran’s nuclear capabilities before he leaves office. He is also firing critical people in the government. He removed Secretary of Defense Mark Esper shortly after the election and has carried out a series of removals of civilian staff at the various government agencies. He is also rumored to be weighing the possibility of firing CIA Director Gina Haspel and has openly speculated about removing FBI Director Christopher Wray. 

Trump continues to exact vengeance on those who oppose him. Over 82.5 million people opposed him. Even the Constitution opposes him at this point, which is why he will proceed over the next sixty days with a policy of destruction aimed at the people and institutions of the United States. Like Sherman’s March to the Sea in the Civil War, Trump will follow a “scorched earth” policy, destroying the United States’ health, infrastructure, and economy. He hopes this policy will break the back of the American people and its democracy that he believes turned its back on him, just as Sherman broke the back of the Confederacy and helped lead to its eventual surrender. If Trump allows things to deteriorate bad enough, he believes it will cause the Biden administration to fail. Republicans will immediately begin blaming Biden for all of the failures in the United States caused by Trump. He thinks this will allow him to remain relevant and rise again to be elected in 2024, which is likely if Republicans continue to humor his every whim. Biden has a new reconstruction of the United States to handle. He will be inaugurated and take over a divided, sick, and economically (and mentally) depressed nation. I hope, and believe, Biden will do better than the Reconstruction government from 1865-1877, and unlike in 1877 when the South enacted Jim Crow and racial segregation and inequality, the nation won’t be again abandoned to the wolves over a political compromise that undermined democracy like the Compromise of 1877 which ended Reconstruction. 

I think most of us knew that Donald Trump had no respect for democracy or the Constitution. So, it should come as no surprise that he’s lying, and lying, and lying again to claim he prevailed in the election that President-elect Joe Biden won decisively, fair and square. What no one knew for certain was whether the Republican Party would once again genuflect before Trump’s corruption and his indifference to the fate of our republican institutions. Some of us suspected they would, though I’d hoped they’d all have jumped ship by now. Sadly, the Republican Party has turned out to be as despicably ready to validate Trump’s falsehoods and authoritarian behavior as their worst critics feared. With precious few exceptions, Republican leaders have been quite happy to be complicit in Trump’s subversion. It’s absurd enough that managing Trump’s illusion that he didn’t lose is of such all-consuming importance in some quarters that we must endure even the possibility of extensive civic and governmental damage, all so that it can be slowly put out of its misery. That’s what we’ve come to, but it won’t be for much longer.

If it weren’t for Republicans trying to destroy the democratic ideals of the Constitution, all of this would be a comedy of errors, a satirical political movie filled with the absurd. But it’s very much real. When news broke last Saturday that Trump’s reign of terror was ending, the president was on a golf course that he owns in Virginia, playing his final round as a non-loser. In Washington, about 125 of his worshipful supporters gathered on the stoop of the Supreme Court to “stop the steal,” then circled the U.S. Capitol seven times, because that’s how the Israelites conquered Jericho, according to the Book of Joshua. And a pair of Trump’s most loyal surrogates made a defiant stand on the gravelly backside of a landscaping business (Four Seasons Total Landscaping that was likely mistakenly booked by the Trump campaign thinking it was the Four Seasons hotel). However, this Four Seasons is in an industrial stretch of Northeast Philadelphia, near a crematorium and an adult-video store called Fantasy Island, along State Road, which leads — as being associated with Trump sometimes does — to a prison. Trump’s campaign began on a golden escalator and ended in a dingy parking lot between a porn shop and a crematorium.

On every front, these legal efforts are already falling apart. Indeed, the Associated Press reports that senior officials and allies privately admit that claims of large-scale voter fraud — the basis for efforts to overturn the results — aren’t actually meant to be proved. The strategy to wage a legal fight against the votes tallied for Biden in Pennsylvania and other places is more to provide Trump with an off-ramp for a loss he can’t quite grasp and less about changing the election’s outcome, the officials said. That’s extraordinary: Trump allies are claiming in many high-profile forums that the lawfully cast votes of millions of Americans are illegitimate, mostly to create space for him to process his rage and grief over losing. It’s extraordinary that Republican senators and members of Congress, most of the conservative news media, and leaders of industry are all pretending like they think there might be election fraud just because the president’s feelings are hurt. All this sets up another possibility. With Trump unlikely to formally concede, you can see a kind of Lost Cause of Trumpism mythology on the horizon, in which many supporters continue believing the election was stolen from him and squeamish Republicans betrayed him by not fighting hard enough against it. These same people will ignore the fact that federal, state, and local election officials have said the election “was the most secure in American history” and that there was “no evidence” of any compromised voting systems. It simply won’t matter to them as they will see it as fake news, doing as Trump has trained them to do: ignore news they don’t like by claiming it’s fake news.

Republicans are backing Trump’s childish claims to make sure his voters in Georgia turn out for two Republican senators in the January 5 runoff election. For the next month and a half, Georgia is going to get nasty. The Republicans have already started their subversion of democracy. In Georgia, two GOP senators called on the state’s Republican secretary of state to resign, alleging irregularities and mismanagement without offering evidence. Only four of 53 Senate Republicans have congratulated Biden on his projected victory. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin recently told reporters, “there’s nothing to congratulate [Biden] about,” while Missouri’s Roy Blunt said the president “may not have been defeated at all.” It’s the latest sign of the Republican Party destabilizing our democratic ideals and practices. The journey towards authoritarianism predates the Trump administration, but Trump has accelerated these efforts. Now, according to data released by an international team of political scientists just before the November 3 election, we know it’s possible to quantify the extent to which the Republican Party no longer adheres to principles of democracy, the rule of law, and their commitment to free and fair elections. Under Trump, they have abandoned respectful treatment of political opponents and the avoidance of violent rhetoric. The Republican Party under Trumpism is dangerously close to fascism.

Republicans are turning their back on democracy, not only because of the Senate races in Georgia but also because they fear Trump. True to form, they are also doing it to weaken Biden and make it harder for him to govern. Republicans feel that if the party doesn’t fight for a recount and investigations of non-existent voter fraud, the Trump loyalists will leave the party. It seems to be less about the president than it is his voters. The Republican Party has to realize that Trump supporters need to be left behind. If the Republican Party wants these voters, they are encouraging their racism, homophobia, misogyny, conspiracy-driven hatred, etc. They represent the worst in America, and as long as the Republican Party humors them and Donald Trump, they are destroying the very fabric of American society and ideals. Sure, the Republican Party might lose ground, but then they could concentrate on rebuilding the party into a party that believes in the good of the country, even if we disagree on what that means.

Over the last few years, the willingness of many American voters to elect any clown with an R beside his or her name on a ballot, especially in my home state of Alabama and other solidly red states, has considerably dumbed down the already scarce pool of competent conservative candidates. But what I suspect is happening here is that this is merely another in a long line of absurd pandering from Republicans, hoping that fluff over substance will again win the day. When will Republicans in this country get tired of the constant bickering and nastiness? Many Democrats already have. Now, we are about to have a Democratic president who is agreeable to many people, especially blue-collar workers, because he’s promising to tone down the hatefulness and hostility, restore respect and decency to the White House, and be a president to all of America. Decency doesn’t keep the “oh my God, the liberal president is going to …” money rolling in.

Biden will very likely be a very popular president, even in very red places. It is clear to most voters that Biden won’t run for re-election so that he won’t be beholden to anyone. Republicans need a way to make Americans hate him. There’s a new day coming to America. There’s a chance for people to stop this insanity and put an end to the mind-numbing idiocy that has thrived in this country. We’re never going to agree on everything. Conservatives are still going to be conservative. Progressives are still going to be progressives. Moderates will still sway one way or another. But, hopefully, we can all agree that these sorts of stunts — in which elected officials blatantly lie and play upon phony emotion to sow division and anger — are intolerable. Because if these Trumpists are willing to lie to you about something as important and as sacred in this country as the election process, if they’re willing to undermine democracy and raise bogus questions about our elections, what won’t they lie about? What lie won’t they tell you to get your vote or your money? We all deserve better than this. And we should all demand it.

As Kenny Rogers sang:

You got to know when to hold ’em,
Know when to fold ’em,
Know when to walk away,
And know when to run.

There are words of wisdom there for Donald Trump. He’s holding onto a hand that he’s going to lose. He needs to fold and walk away. A lot of Trump’s resistance is his overinflated ego, but I suspect he’s also scared.  His creditors are about to call in his millions of dollars in debt. Four hundred million of which is about to come due, but Forbes estimates that he has a total debt of $1 billion.

Furthermore, the State of New York will be indicting him, and even if he pardons himself, which has dubious legal standing anyway, he would not be pardoned for any state crimes. So, when he leaves office, he may need to know “when to run” to a country without extradition treaties with the United States. His gamble in defrauding his creditors, the American people, and our allies are not going to pay off. Even if he is privately saying he will run again for president in 2024, it might just be from a prison cell. After all, Eugene V. Debs, the American socialist and five times presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America, ran for president from behind bars in 1920, but that was a different world back then. Still, he received 919,799 votes (roughly 3.4%).

The end is near for Trump. His resistance to come to terms with the truth and his juvenile efforts to resist Biden’s transition are undermining democracy and endangering our country’s national security. Intelligence operatives have already admitted that the instability and confusion caused by the 2000 election were part of the reason they missed all the signs of the terrorist attack on 9/11. Trump is endangering all Americans for his fragile ego. The Republican Party needs to move on from Trump and expel him from the party to save the Republican Party from the destructive nature of Trumpism. It’s a house of cards at this point, and it’s about to come crashing down. Let’s just hope it doesn’t cause more damage than we can repair.