Should Biden win, Trump’s supporters will believe his victory to be illegitimate

Loading“We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election,” he said, citing no evidence whatsoever.Trump, a man whose life has been marked most notably by preposterous good fortune, was again casting himself in the role of victim.There was nothing surprising about the trend in the count given that encouraging early voting had been central to the Democratic Party’s strategy throughout the campaign.Indeed, in many areas a late drift back to the Democrats had been actively anticipated. For example, in Pennsylvania mail-in ballots are not counted until after polls close, and 70 per cent of mail-in ballots had been sent out to registered Democrats.Trump’s campaign would have been well aware of this, just as it would have known that in Michigan this election the mail-in vote was larger than the vote at polling booths.Trump further cast doubt on counts in Georgia, where his lead was whittled away as numbers from the Democratic stronghold of Atlanta came in as well as North Carolina, Wisconsin and Arizona, which to Trump’s fury had been called for Joe Biden by Fox News analysts some hours earlier.Democratic hopeful Joe Biden believes he can still win the presidency.Credit:AP“We won states and all of a sudden … it’s off. You know what happened? They knew they couldn’t win,” Trump said to cheering supporters in the White House.In case there was any doubt about Trump’s intent in his statement he made himself clear.Loading“This is a major fraud in our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court, we want to, we don’t want them to find any ballots at four o’clock in the morning and add them to the list.”In other words, furious that the tide appeared to be turning against him in a close election, Trump wanted to stop counting.Trump has no authority to direct state officials not to count votes; and he cited no irregularities that the Supreme Court might consider.This leaves open the possibility that he is seeking to find a scapegoat on which to blame his failure should he lose rather than trying to leverage the power of the Supreme Court in his own political interest.In a sense it doesn’t matter – the damage he has caused to American democracy is real either way.Should Trump legitimately win this election his anti-democratic instincts will be even more stark as he begins his second term, further alienating Democrats and Republican “Never-Trumpers”.Should Biden win, millions of Trump’s supporters will believe his victory to be illegitimate, seeding further resentment and division in a dangerously angry and divided nation.The division will only be exacerbated by the fact that the Supreme Court that Trump suggests should end his nation’s democratic process includes a conservative Associate Justice irregularly installed by his party only days ago.Any hope that his own party might seek to curb Trump’s worst impulses was dashed the moment Trump handed the microphone over to Vice President Mike Pence.After mouthing platitudes about the centrality of the right to vote Pence reverted to his habitual dewy-eyed flattery.“I really believe with all my heart that with the extraordinary margins, Mr President, that you’ve inspired in the states that you just described … I truly do believe that we are on the road to victory and we will Make America Great Again, again.”Trump Biden 2020Understand the election result and its aftermath with expert analysis from US correspondent Matthew Knott. Sign up to The Sydney Morning Herald’s newsletter here, The Age’s here, Brisbane Times’ here and WAtoday’s here. Nick O’Malley is National Environment and Climate Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He is also a senior writer and a former US correspondent.Most Viewed in WorldLoading

Source: https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/should-biden-win-trump-s-supporters-will-believe-his-victory-to-be-illegitimate-20201104-p56bls.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_world