Reminder: Everything Is Terrible
Even if Kamala Harris crushes the debate and then wins the White House, America is seriously forked.
Tonight: I’ll be hosting a debate show! It’ll be me, Sarah, A.B., and Sam Stein. We’ll go live with a pre-show before the debate starts; you can hang with us during the debate; and then we’ll have thoughts and analysis immediately following.
I don’t want to give you flashbacks, but we did this for the Trump-Biden debate and at the first commercial break I said that we were witnessing a catastrophe. So, you know, come for the honesty.
Hang with us on YouTube here. We go live at 8:30 pm in the East.
1. A Storm Is Coming
While we wait, I want to remind you that beating Trump at the ballot box is only the first step. It is necessary, but not sufficient.
If Trump loses the election, he will insist that he won, no matter how implausible or falsifiable the claim is. Then he will attempt to overturn the result through legal maneuvering. These facts can be taken as given.
If his legal challenges fail, Trump will attempt extralegal maneuvers. What might fit into this category? Some of the things he attempted in 2020, obviously:
Pressuring local boards of canvassers to refuse to certify results.
Requesting that secretaries of state either overturn or refuse to certify results.
Asking state legislatures to take action on his behalf.
Organizing alternate slates of electors.
It is important to understand that “extralegal” does not necessarily mean “illegal.” It is possible for an election result to be overturned if enough of the mechanical processes are “legally” disrupted so that the 270 electoral vote threshold cannot be reached, thus throwing the election to Congress and state delegations. Which would likely result in a Trump restoration.
Such a scheme could, at least in theory, be executed without breaking laws.
If these extralegal maneuvers fail, Trump will then attempt a political challenge.
What would a political challenge look like?
Here’s one possibility: Republicans might argue that Kamala Harris cannot certify her own Electoral College victory because she is the sitting vice president. Never mind that vice presidents have performed this awkward function since the beginning of the Republic and never mind that the law requires it. The fact that the vice president is tasked with performing this function was of course part of the Trump strategy for overturning the election results in 2020/21—but in 2024/25 it might be used as to argue that Kamala Harris’s election is illegitimate and rigged.
I’m not saying such an argument would make sense or would come close to succeeding in derailing the transition. If attempted on January 6, 2025 during the congressional proceedings Harris would be presiding over, she and the parliamentarian would presumably swat it down in an instant. And if it took the form of a lawsuit, any responsible federal court would decline even to hear the case. It seems unlikely that even the Trump-friendly Supreme Court would give in. (Though it is only unlikely. On multiple occasions this Court has been willing to invent novel readings of the law in order to defuse the political anger of Trump supporters.)
But such an effort could still serve to taint the Harris administration from the start. Just consider the environment Harris would inherit in such a scenario:
She becomes president only after a protracted post-election battle.
Republicans control at least the Senate and the Supreme Court.
46 percent of the country swears up and down that she is illegitimate and stole the election.
Oh—and there’s maybe a recession coming down the pike in 2025.
All of which is why elected Republicans might go along with such a challenge: They’ll think that Trump can’t possibly win.
And that they can’t lose either way.