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| (Chris Kleponis–Polaris/Bloomberg/Getty Images via Time) |
Of the many worries that have dominated the public consciousness throughout this deeply unsettling year, one keeps coming up again: that Donald Trump will refuse to leave office even if he loses the upcoming election. Trump himself recently reignited these concerns when he refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power, ominously saying that "we're going to have to see what happens." But the concern has been around since well before that, with even as prominent a figure as Bernie Sanders warning that it could happen.
Well, I'm here to tell you not to worry. Sort of. There is plenty to worry about in terms of what will happen between now and January 20, 2021, but if Donald Trump is the clear and official loser of the presidential election, I for one fully expect that his presidency and his reign of terror will end on that date. I could be wrong, but I really don't think I will be. I'm not the first person to examine, and ultimately dismiss, these concerns,* but I also want to take a look at why this (I believe) irrational worry persists—even when there's a much likelier possibility that would also let Trump stay in power.
Obviously, it's not as if Trump has any deep, abiding respect for rules and norms or democracy in general. So why am I so sure he will leave office if he loses? For one thing, because I don't think he enjoys being president. I don't think he ever really expected to win the first time, and I don't think the job is very fun for him. He could resign, of course, but only one president has ever done that previously, and only after major wrongdoing was revealed. He could decide not to run for reelection, but the last sitting president to do that was Lyndon B. Johnson, who was basically admitting his own failure by doing so. To do either of those things would look like a surrender on Trump's part—an admission that he no longer believes he has what it takes to be president. Obviously, someone like Trump is not about to make that sort of admission or give his enemies that kind of a win. But if he actually loses the election, on the other hand, no one would perceive it as some kind of show of weakness for him to leave office. It's just what would be expected at that point. He could very easily rant about how the election was rigged and he was the rightful winner while at the same time claiming his hands were tied and he had no choice but to leave office, and his followers would believe all of it. As ex-president, he could still command the same following and use his platform to talk about how he should have gotten a second term, meaning he would have all the fun of the presidency (the millions of rubes who hang on his every word and view him as a modern-day prophet) with none of the actual responsibility. I would almost be surprised if he's not secretly hoping he loses, and his completely awful campaign makes that idea all the more believable.
But even if Trump doesn't jump at the opportunity to leave the White House, so what? Which actual institutions are loyal enough to him that they would ignore the results of the election and commit literal treason to keep him in power? The "deep state" that he's claimed is his mortal nemesis? The military, among whom his approval rating has been in decline to the extent that a recent poll of active-duty service members found Biden with a four-point lead? Plenty of Trump's supporters might be willing to go along with it if he decided to try and stay in office past the end of his term, but are they willing to form their own militias and fight against the police and the US military, of which Joe Biden would become the commander-in-chief at noon on January 20, 2021? Even if Trump proclaims himself president for life, without someone to back him up he's still just one feeble, flabby narcissist. A few federal marshals should be able to remove him from the White House pretty easily.
Again, this doesn't mean that we have nothing to worry about between Election Day and Inauguration Day even assuming Joe Biden wins. There's plenty of reason to imagine Donald Trump would claim the election was rigged even after the results had been certified, as a way to soothe his ego if nothing else. Even if he himself doesn't make this claim, plenty of his supporters would discount the election results anyway. It's entirely likely we would see sporadic acts of violence from his more unstable, QAnon-believing followers. Many others might turn out to protest in the streets, resulting in scenes similar to those from the anti-social distancing protests earlier this year but perhaps more extensive and even angrier. It would very likely be an ugly few months, and Joe Biden's inauguration would certainly not put an end to it. But these are quite different concerns than any worries about Trump trying to stay in power past the end of his term.
There is, however, a much more realistic concern about how Trump could illegitimately remain in office: simply by stealing the election. While an American president refusing to step down after his term of office expired would be unprecedented, a stolen election would be far from it—Trump's party, after all, has attempted to tip the electoral scale in its favor through shameless gerrymandering, needlessly restrictive voter ID laws and other such dubious means. It was only 20 years ago that the Republican candidate was handed the presidency on a silver platter when five conservative Supreme Court justices put a halt to the recount efforts in Florida, after all. And this election will be very unusual, given the ongoing pandemic and the likely far-higher-than-normal use of mail-in ballots. It is absolutely believable that the Trump campaign and Republican governors will seek to have substantial numbers of absentee ballots discounted for this or that reason, and the courts certainly might give them what they want. With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg there are now only three liberal justices on the Supreme Court, meaning that if a Bush v. Gore-esque situation were to occur once more, Trump's prospects of victory would be quite good.
By no means is it certain that this is what we're headed for. In fact, if the current polls align with the actual votes cast, it would require far more than just stopping a recount in a state or two or getting a few absentee ballots thrown out for Trump to be certified as the winner. But it is much more believable that Trump and the Republican machine could steal a close election than that Trump would succeed in remaining in office even after Biden is certified as the official winner.
So why is it the latter possibility and not the former that seems to be getting all of the attention? Probably for a few different reasons. For one thing, I think many liberals and other anti-Trumpers would secretly on some level prefer the Trump-ignores-the-election-results scenario over the other one. It's more dramatic, for one thing. Most Americans have already lived through a presidential election where the courts essentially thwarted the democratic process and installed the Republican as president. A rerun sounds neither appealing nor exciting. On the other hand, a president essentially attempting a coup to stay in power would be a very new thing, and a major break from political reality as we've known it. It's easy to fantasize about what would come next—would this be the event that brings tens of millions of Americans out into the streets in protest? Would we all be faced with a clear choice between saving democracy or living in a world straight out of our favorite dystopian novels? Would Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refuse to accept the wrong that had been done to them, and serve as the leaders for a new opposition movement that wouldn't rest until Trump was defeated? Would the #Resistance finally transform into La Résistance and no longer just be a hashtag? Terrifying as it all may be, it offers the possibility that political life would no longer be dreary and isolated—filling out a ballot every few years, and perhaps donating some money and time to your favorite candidates—but rather full of danger and adventure, and would certainly offer a greater sense of purpose than anything that's been possible under Trump's rule so far.
Another likely reason that the possibility of a stolen election has been so relatively overlooked is that it requires us to confront some disturbing realities—realities that go far beyond Trump. It means acknowledging that our elections could be undermined and manipulated not by some foreign adversary but by our own elected officials, by our own judiciary, and by a major political organization that has been around for over one and a half centuries (i.e. the Republican Party). It's easy enough to say ex post facto that an election wasn't fair, as an excuse for why your preferred candidate lost. But admitting to yourself in advance that your candidate could be cheated out of victory even if they do everything right is considerably more terrifying. It also makes all of the fervent talk about the importance of voting ring a bit hollow, for obvious reasons. It is, in a way, much less frightening to imagine Trump simply losing the election but refusing to abide by the result. That way, at least his obstruction of democracy would be blatant and likely bring a swift and severe reaction. If the election comes down to some protracted court battle that ultimately results in Trump's reelection, that would certainly result in some protests and a lot of ruffled feathers—but if the 2000 election is anything to go by, we'd still end up suffering through four more years of President Trump.
This focus on the evils of Donald Trump himself instead of on those of the system that helped saddle us with him has been a consistent throughline of the past four years. It is, no doubt, a big part of the reason we ended up with Joe Biden as the nominee—the candidate who voters perceived as most likely to successfully get rid of Donald Trump, even if he may have been the least likely to seriously disrupt the political status quo. I am one of the many who feel that this shortsighted focus on Trump has already steered us wrong in a major way, and I do not look forward to the ramifications yet to come from it. Whether one is worried about the unlikely possibility of Trump staging a coup or the much likelier one of the Republican Party stealing the election, there is not too much than can be done between now and Election Day. But it couldn't hurt to start thinking more about the corruption of our whole political system instead of obsessing over Trump himself.
*The hosts of the podcast Chapo Trap House, and Matt Christman in particular, have talked pretty extensively about it. When writing this post it was impossible to avoid rehashing some of the points they made, so for the sake of fairness I wanted to give them credit here.
