With each passing day, our country's journalistic and political elite grows more and more contemptuous of claims by President Trump that widespread fraud and irregularities in this year's election call into question the legitimacy of Joe Biden's “win." The line that “no evidence” exists to support such claims has become sacred dogma to all those who pined for so long to witness Donald Trump's abasement, and who now refuse to admit that the glorious victory they have won could be marred by even the tiniest of flaws. It simply can't be, because the consequences of a bogus election are, for them, too horrible to contemplate.
This article, however, is not about the mountain of evidence that is accumulating to support the presence of fraud and malfeasance in this year's election. There is statistical evidence, there are witness statements, and there is the obvious fact of “relaxed” requirements for mail-in ballots, which just happened to favor Joe Biden.
But that isn't the question that interests me today. What I wonder, instead, is: assuming there was electoral hanky-panky in 2020, and assuming that, somewhere out there, conclusive evidence to prove it exists, the question is whether Democrats and Trump haters would even care. Would their devotion to Democratic norms and electoral integrity override their animus for all things Trump, and would they therefore concede defeat graciously, or would they instead dig in their heels, close their eyes and ears to the testimony of those who witnessed or participated in such fraud, and assert, against all reason, that Biden won, Biden won, Biden won, and — oh, by the way — BIDEN WON!!!
We all intuitively know the answer. For the Left, and for the political, cultural, and economic establishment in this country, absolutely nothing matters — nothing — more than the destruction of Donald Trump and his movement. That is why absolutely no anti-Trump narrative has been ruled out of bounds, or has even been subjected to critical analysis by Trump haters since the man descended the golden escalator in 2015. Even maligning the sitting President of the United States as a traitor, as a tool of a foreign enemy, based on the “evidence” supplied to a rival political campaign by a paid informant, is considered entirely defensible in this alternative universe where norms and values are turned on their heads.
The most depressing thing about this situation, though, is that, while we conservative patriots long ago wrote off most Democrats in Washington, D.C. as pathological Trump haters — as people who would not give President Trump the benefit of the doubt even if their lives depended on it (which, in a sense, they do, since he's the Commander-in-Chief) — the truth is that most establishment Republicans loathe the man almost as much as their liberal colleagues. As Carl Bernstein indicated recently, many GOP grandees only feign respect for Trump, because of their fear of offending rank-and-file Republicans. In reality, they despise this boorish lout, this unrepentant sexist and racist, as they see him, almost as much as a rabid Antifa street brawler would. Unlike the street brawler, however, prominent Republicans know when and how to keep their mouths shut.
If there was cheating and fraud in our recent election, therefore, the truth is that most of the establishment surely doesn't want to know about it, and, if the strongest possible evidence arose to that effect, they would disclaim and disavow it. To prevail in the present struggle, therefore, President Trump might not need Democratic support, but he certainly would need federal judges and justices appointed by Republicans to stand with him. He would need Republican state legislators to stand with him. He would need the Republican caucus in the House and the Senate to stand with him. And none of these worthless, needless to say, so far show any inclination to rally to the “lost cause” of “four more years." Most, in fact, view President Trump as they always have: as a joke and a political liability, at best, and as a walking travesty, at worst. They view Joe Biden, by contrast, as a harmless, even likable, known quantity. They furthermore look forward to a “return to normalcy” in the GOP, to a time when the news cycle won't be dominated by President Trump's intemperate tweets, and by their own moral and verbal contortions in trying to explain them away.
In short, President Trump's “allies” in Washington have always been fair weather friends. They embraced him temporarily and strategically when the political winds seemed to be blowing in his favor. They stuck with him in trying times, as when he was impeached, reluctantly, because Republican voters demanded it. Now, though, that he has seemingly been defeated and disgraced once and for all, they are ready — eager, in fact — to cut ties with him and move on. We should hardly be surprised at that.
The reality, therefore, is that, if President Trump is to prevail in this fight over the integrity of the 2020 election, if he is to to serve another four-year term, it won't be because the courts, or the state legislatures, or Congress, swoop in to save him. Trump's salvation lies, as it always has, with the one and only force in this country that has consistently stood by him: the American people (or at least a very large fraction thereof). Only they — only we — by an act of sheer will and by a show of our steadfast devotion, could possibly persuade the necessary political forces to fall into line. And even that may be a forlorn hope.
The Age of Trump, then, may end where it began: with Trump and ordinary, humble citizens on one side of a political-cultural battlefield, and with “our betters," the elitists, on the other.
That, at least, is the kind of battle that Trump is accustomed to fighting — and the kind that, much more often than one would have thought possible, he actually wins.