The Trump Legacy

Under an unending barrage of fraud charges, voters might begin to question the legitimacy of elected officials from the rival party as a matter of course. And the G.O.P. risks being seen as standing for disenfranchisement and the undemocratic position that a high level of voting is somehow detrimental.  What Trump is doing is creating a road map to destabilization and chaos in future years.  What he’s saying, explicitly, is if a party doesn’t like the election result they have the right to change it by gaming the system. Indeed, on Saturday night, Trump made his most explicit call yet for state legislatures to intervene with the aim of reversing the result, once again relying on false claims of fraud. “Hopefully the Courts and/or Legislatures will have the COURAGE to do what has to be done to maintain the integrity of our Elections, and the United States of America itself,” he wrote on Twitter.  Trump’s gambit, never realistic to begin with, appears to be growing more futile by the day: Georgia became the first contested state on Friday to certify its vote for Mr. Biden, and the president continues to draw losing rulings from judges who bluntly note his failure to present any evidence of significant fraud or irregularities. On Saturday, in perhaps the most stinging blow, a federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed a lawsuit by the Trump campaign seeking to invalidate ballots, ending Mr. Trump’s last major effort to delay certification of the state’s results.  It used to be the 3 to 8 year old kids whose rules were if I didn’t win, someone cheated.  We have now evolved to where we have elected an individual President of the United States who seems to believe that in spite a popular vote deficit of over a 5 million votes and an apparent electoral college vote of Biden’s 306 to his 232 he might actually believe that he won the election.  America elected an individual who is psychologically able to admit wrong doing, failure, or loss.  That lack of reality has cost more Americans loss of life than terrorism and many World Wars.  Whether or not America will realize the Trump legacy is complete and utter failure remains to be seen.  Even more dangerous to the country and to democracy is whether a major political party will ever acknowledge the election loss and the complete failure of their elected President to govern and to set an example for future presidents and future elected officials.