The 117th Congress will be sworn in today. In the most recent election, the Democrats maintained control of the House of Representatives but lost several seats to the Republicans so now their majority is only 11 seats. That’s a fairly slim edge in a body with 435 members. Control of the Senate won’t be decided until after the special election in Georgia for their two senate seats on January 5th. And then, of course, a joint session of Congress, presided over by Mike Pence, is scheduled to meet on January 6th to certify and accept the results of the Electoral College vote which resulted in 306 votes for Joe Biden and 232 votes for Donald Trump.
According to press reports, 140 Republican members of the House of Representatives plan to object to the acceptance of the electoral votes from a number of states that Trump lost. [Isn’t it interesting that voter fraud is only alleged in those states that Trump lost?] And now, apparently there are at least a dozen Republican senators who are willing to sign on to this circus and join them, in spite of objections from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. It will force a debate on whether or not to accept the results from a given state. Both the House and the Senate will debate this issue separately and then they must agree if the electoral college votes from a given state are to be rejected. Since the Democrats control the House of Representatives, there is virtually no chance that they will vote to toss out any electoral votes and hand the election to Trump. This circus will only delay the inevitable before Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are officially certified as the winners of the election. [We know that even after that, Trump will not accept the results!]
However, think about the following scenario. What if the Republicans had won enough seats to regain control of the House in addition to controlling the Senate? In that case, Republican House members joined by Republican Senate members would have the ability to toss out the slate of electors from any and/or all states and accept a separate slate of rogue electors for their given candidate to hand the election to Trump – in spite of the fact that Biden won the election convincingly by over 7 million votes. If this is not an assault on a government ‘for the people, by the people’ I don’t know what is.
The real question is, “Is this how all future elections will be conducted”? Will there ever again be an election in this country where candidates just live with the results? After all, the precedent has now been set to not accept the election results (unless you like the outcome) and hope that the election is settled in the courts or in the Congress as opposed to being settled at the ballot box. If this will become the new norm, whichever party controls Congress will essentially have a lock on power because they will be able to install a president from their party, regardless of the results of the election.
Since Republicans have already demonstrated a penchant for gerrymandering and voter suppression, those activities and more will continue to ensure that once in control of Congress, they will lock in that support. Those efforts have already allowed Republicans to gain control of more state legislatures than the normal population and voting patterns would warrant. It is no stretch at all to assume they will do the same thing to lock up the US Congress.
You can bet that Mitch McConnell is already looking past the 2020 election and the circus that continues by Trump and his supporters to try to overturn the election results. He knows that Biden will emerge victorious regardless of the theatrics. But Mitch, being the wily fox he is, is turning his attention to the elections in 2022 and 2024. He knows, and his Republican colleagues in the House know, that if they can regain control of the House of Representative in the 2022 midterm elections and Mitch can retain (or regain if the Democrats win the Georgia elections on January 5th) control of the Senate, they will be able to basically dictate who becomes president in 2024, because they will use every trick in the book to retain control of Congress. The current games being played to overturn a legitimate election could very well be a dress rehearsal for what is to come in 2024. And that could very well mark the end of democracy in America.
If you think that scenario is far-fetched and such blatant attempts to undermine the Constitution and democracy would be rectified in the courts, just remember that Mitch McConnell has been a busy little beaver pushing through conservative judge nominees to stack the Federal courts at all levels. In the end, it’s all about the math:
[Republican stacked courts] + [Republican controlled Congress] + [President like Trump] = Tyranny
The Republican House members and the Republican Senators are cloaking their objections to accepting the Electoral College results in the language of ‘there needs to be an investigation because there are a lot of people that don’t trust the results of the election.’ This in spite of the fact that there have been 61 lawsuits (so far) brought in multiple courts in multiple states to try to overturn the results of the election and 60 of the 61 have either been withdrawn or tossed out of court due to lack of evidence to support the allegations. The only case that was won was inconsequential and basically allowed some elections observers to stand a few feet closer to the ballot counters. So, to date, in spite of all of these legal challenges, there has been no evidence to support Trump and his supporters’ allegation of wide spread voter fraud. And yet they claim that people don’t trust the election results and there needs to be an investigation.
It’s like Trump and his supporters have been saying for months that someday there might be a fire at Trump Tower in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue. And then one day, they go in and pull the fire alarm, knowing full well there is no fire, that the sprinkler systems work just fine, and the building is perfectly safe. Once the fire alarm goes off, they hold a press conference in front of the building on Fifth Avenue and say that, “People are concerned there may be a fire so we called the NYFD and, in the meantime, we are evacuating the building. We intend to mount an investigation in the near future.
The only reason there is so much mistrust of the election results is because Trump and his sycophants have been propagating lies for months. It’s like a giant self-licking ice cream cone. Ice cream cones are supposed to be a treat and taste good. This one, on the other hand, tastes disgusting and should make any American who truly cares about democracy in this country sick to their stomach.
When I was working we had kiss asses that to try to get ahead. Unfortunately it worked. Performance counts but they seemed to fall between the cracks and get promoted. I believe Congress follows the same rules.