Here’s a thought experiment that has a corollary in real life. Imagine it is the day after the November 2020 election. President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans have suffered sweeping defeats at the polls. Despite losing the popular and in the Electoral College, Mr. Trump refuses to concede the election. Citing “widespread voting irregularities,” Mr. Trump says he won’t relinquish the powers of the presidency until a “fairer, freer election” is scheduled, “probably during the next midterm election in 2022.”
Mr. Trump believes his Nuremberg-style rallies in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Florida should have won him a second term despite a national approval rating of 32 percent.
A faction of lame-duck Republicans at all levels of government desperately encourage him to declare a national emergency to deal with “the millions of illegal voters” who delegitimized the system by handing such a crucial election to vengeful Democrats. There are even unsubstantiated rumors of election hacking by the Chinese and Iranians that could prompt a declaration of war against the aggressor once “the bad guys” are identified to the president’s satisfaction.
Meanwhile, the Democrats and the winner of the presidential election file emergency appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court against the president’s unprecedented assumption of war powers in the absence of an actual war. Thousands of amicus briefs from across the nation’s political spectrum are filed in support of the Democrats’ argument that the principle of a peaceful turnover of power is at stake.
Mr. Trump, who has indictments waiting for him the minute he leaves office, refuses to wait for the Supreme Court to weigh in. Invoking Abraham Lincoln’s draconian actions during the Civil War, Mr. Trump moves quickly to impose restrictions on the press and threatens to jail hostile publishers, reporters and cable news hosts. He also accuses the Democrats of “colluding with foreign powers subverting the election.” He vows to forcefully put down any protests.
Meanwhile, a major attack on a mall in the heartland by unknown gunmen puts the country on edge. Was it the work of homegrown right-wing militias or foreign terrorists? No one knows. There’s another attack. Mass panic ensues.
Speaking from his fortified White House compound, Mr. Trump tells the American people it will take at least two years “to sort things out” and restore order. Until then, the results of the 2020 election will be ignored as he vows not to leave the country’s fate to “the forces of chaos and carnage,” also known as democratic rule.
How outlandish is this scenario in light of what is happening in Wisconsin and Michigan this week? Lame-duck Republican governors and legislators are scheming to strip incoming Democratic governors and attorneys generals of the power to enact policy changes they promised voters.
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, the Republican incumbent who narrowly lost the governor’s race last month, has indicated he might sign legislation passed by Republican legislators during a lame-duck session to strip his successor of powers that previous governors have taken for granted. Wisconsinites are enraged.
If Mr. Walker signs the bill that effectively knee caps incoming Democrats, his actions will be different only in scale from the scenario sketched earlier in this column, not in spirit. Mr. Walker is leaving office, but he and his fellow Republicans on the losing side of the midterm elections don’t want to give up an iota of power in their heavily gerrymandered state.
A similar outrage is happening in Michigan where the outgoing Republican governor has indicated that he will sign legislation sent to him by the Republican-dominated legislature that will strip power from his Democratic successor before she takes office.
Both Michigan and Wisconsin are following the lead of North Carolina, a state that has long been a laboratory of voter disenfranchisement, poll taxes and undemocratic power grabs when elections don’t go the way Republicans would like.
A Republican legislature stripping duly elected Democrats of power is old hat in North Carolina. This year they’ve also got an operative who appears to have illegally collected, hid and sometimes filled out the absentee ballots of elderly voters. Oh, and North Carolina has a super-restrictive Voter ID law, too.
After the evidence of absentee-ballot tampering emerged, the state board of elections is refusing to certify a U.S. House race “won” by a Republican over a Democrat by a razor-thin margin. The case is so blatant, state Republicans have offered only muted objections to calls for a new election next year. It turns out that the state’s politicians may have been cheating this way for years.
If we get used to our electoral will being thwarted now, it will be an invitation to the wholesale theft of our democracy later.
Tony Norman: tnorman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1631.
First Published: December 7, 2018, 5:00 a.m.
