Michael Anton discusses what he calls the “Continuing Crisis” in the Claremont Review of Books:
“Polling Place Vote Here” by Scott Beale is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
A full understanding of what happened that Wednesday would begin with the ruling class’s decades-long betrayal and despoliation of what would eventually come to be called Red or Deplorable or Flyover America. But the more proximate cause was the 2020 election — easily the highest intensity such contest of my lifetime. Each side felt that the stakes were existential. The accuracy of those feelings doesn’t matter; their existence was enough to drive events.
As an incumbent seeking a second term, President Trump — even after the COVID lockdowns had tanked America’s previously supercharged economy — seemed to have a lot of things going for him: near-unanimous support from the base, high primary turnout even though he faced no opposition, a seemingly unified party, approval ratings not far from Barack Obama’s in 2012. According to Gallup, in September 2020 56% of Americans reported doing better than they had four years prior — a level that, in ordinary times, would all but guarantee an incumbent’s re-election.
But these were not ordinary times. It was also easy to see — and many friends and supporters of the president did see, and warned about — shoals ahead. The Democrats used the pandemic as an excuse to accelerate and intensify their decades-long effort to loosen and change American election practices in ways that favor their party. In the spring, they began openly talking about staging a coup: literally using the military to yank Trump from power. It’s one thing to hold a “war game” and plot in secret about a president’s ouster, but why leak the result? Only if you want the public prepared for what otherwise would look like outrageous interference in “our democracy.” Democrats and their media allies also, and for the same reason, assiduously pushed the so-called “Red Mirage” narrative: the story that, while you are likely to see Trump way ahead on election night, he will certainly lose as all the votes are counted. This was less a prediction than preemptive explanation: what you see might look funny, but let us assure you in advance that it’s all on the up-and-up.
In response (or lack thereof) to the other side’s assiduous preparations, the president, his staff, his campaign, and his party committed four serious errors of omission. First, they made hardly any attempt to work with Republican state officials — governors, legislatures, and secretaries of state — to oppose and amend rule changes that would disadvantage them and favor their opponents. As far back as the 2016 election, Trump had complained that Hillary Clinton’s popular vote total had been padded by several million votes by illegal immigrants. Yet he and the GOP did very little to tighten state election procedures. Second, after having failed adequately to oppose those changes, they mounted far too few legal challenges to get them overturned or modified. Third, having declined to challenge the changes, they barely even tried to ramp up their own mail-in voting operation to rival the Democrats’. Fourth, despite numerous loud predictions — both as boasts and warnings — that the election outcome would be unclear and disputed in several states, no team was assembled in advance to investigate and, if necessary, litigate the results. Florida 2000 came as a surprise to candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush. Nonetheless the Bush campaign was able to field almost immediately an army of lawyers, including experts on election law, headed by a former secretary of state, the wily James Baker. The Trump team had at least six months’ warning and, as far as I can see, did nothing to prepare.
H/T to “currencylad” at Catallaxy Files for the link.
