The American People Will Decide This Election
FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | October 1, 2020
“The explanation for the President’s crazed efforts is simple. Trump knows he is losing and so he continues to try to steal the election instead.”
This week’s presidential debate was a national embarrassment with President Trump wildly out of control and spouting lies about practically everything that came up. The polling following the debate showed that Trump’s performance did not serve him well, but that was not his aim in turning the debate into a 90-minute fiasco.
The reality show performance Trump put on was one more part in his months-long effort to discredit the November election and undermine voting by mail. His support for the Proud Boys and implicit support for white supremacy, and his call to arms for his followers to show up at the polls and, in essence, intimidate voters, took his incendiary actions to new heights.
The explanation for the President’s crazed efforts is simple. Trump knows he is losing and so he continues to try to steal the election instead.
The historically hypocritical effort by Senate Republicans to confirm a new Justice to the Supreme Court fits into Trump’s planned end-run around our democracy. Trump has made clear that his goal is to have the Supreme Court, not the American people, decide the presidential election.
Trump is assuming that the Republican-appointed Justices on the Court, and especially the three Justices he will have appointed – if Judge Barrett is confirmed – will elect him President. But that will require the Justices to choose partisan politics over their oath of office and their constitutional responsibilities, and it is by no means clear they will follow his bidding to do so, like indentured servants.
In the end, however, the American people will decide this election.
We have seen voters in other countries all over the world cast their votes in the face of threats, intimidation, and physical harm. American voters will do the same in the face of our blustering, bullying, autocratic President.
In terminology that Trump would fully understand: he can take his threats, his disruptive acts, his efforts at intimidation, his incitements to mob action, his effort to destroy our electoral process – and shove it.
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