Until or unless they get overturned
Every time the Trump legal team skates by yet another critical election deadline without contest, they redirect the attention of the hapless denizens of Trumpistan to the next important date and fill their heads with fanciful schemes of stealing the election.
First it was the various deadlines by which key states are required by law to certify their votes: November 20 for Georgia, November 23 for Michigan and Pennsylvania, November 24 for Nevada, November 30 for Arizona, and December 1 for Wisconsin. According to erstwhile Trump attorney Sidney Powell, the president had assembled an "elite strike force team" that was poised to to prove conclusively in court that there had been massive election fraud. She stated she would "unleash the kraken" in her legal efforts to overturn the election results and that her case would be "biblical" in scale. But these inflated claims soon proved to be nothing but bluster and bravado. The Trump team never alleged widespread fraud in the numerous frivolous lawsuits it filed in the 2020 swing states, nor has it ever produced the evidence needed to substantiate such an extraordinary claim. Giuliani asserted their legal strategy is to get to the Supreme Court, but so far they have declined to appeal the Third Circuit rejection of their broad challenge to the election results in Pennsylvania. The only significant action that was taken in face of the approaching certification deadlines consisted of a gross abuse of political power with corrupt intent: Trump used the weight of his office to urge key Republicans to break the law. But these efforts ended in failure.
Now that the state certification deadlines have passed, the next significant date is the December 8 "safe harbor" deadline. The slate of electors chosen by the people may not be contested legally beyond this point. In response to this looming cutoff, a number of Trump supporters and sycophants have refocused attention on the farfetched prospect of Republican legislatures executing an end run around the courts and simply replacing the electors chosen by the people with their own Trump-friendly slate. But, as I've explained
elsewhere, such efforts would swiftly run into insurmountable legal roadblocks. So all this talk is again just for show.
Once the December 8 deadline passes, the Electoral College will meet on December 14 and select Biden as the next president of the United States. My guess is then the talk in Trumpistan will shift to the date of January 6, the day on which Congress will formally count the electoral votes and declare the winner. This process can be delayed if a representative teams up with a senator to protest the count, and there will no doubt be a lot of hot air expended in the usual right-wing safe spaces about overturning the election results in precisely this manner as a last-ditch attempt to prevent Biden from assuming his duties as the duly elected president of the United States. But this scheme also can only end in failure. The Democrats can easily counter by delaying the results until January 20. No matter what happens, Trump will cease to be president on that day. If Congress cannot certify the results of the Electoral College by that date, the Speaker of the House
becomes president. Right now, that looks very likely to be Nancy Pelosi. But the Speaker of the House is not required to be a member of Congress, and the House could simply elect Joe Biden as the new Speaker. Are Republicans really going to risk incurring the intense public backlash and derision that would result from all this legal gamesmanship simply to have Biden as president in the end anyway? Is the GOP so afraid of the Trump mob of maddened supporters that they would jeopardize their political careers and the potential for party control over Congress in 2022? Of course they won't, and Trump knows this as well as any serious-minded person serving in government.
The truth is Trump is afraid that his status as loser of the 2020 election will prevent him from continuing to fleece his millions of his supporters once he is out of office. The soon-to-be-ex-president has loans amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars coming due in the near future and it is quite clear he has nowhere near the wealth he likes to claim. Hence he has engaged in an Orwellian scam to persuade his followers that the loser is, in fact, the winner. The man has always put his own priorities ahead of his duties as president, so it comes as no surprise he is willing to undermine the integrity of our democracy to suit his own financial and personal needs. That so many Americans allow themselves to be hoodwinked by a such an openly corrupt and illiberal man who treats them with scorn, condescension, and contempt remains an extremely unpleasant mystery.
