Donald Trump has made clear that he expects to lose the election but plans to do everything he can to cast doubt on the results, even at the cost of faith in U.S. democracy. That’s an enormous, ongoing piece of bad news that we live with every day. The good news is that Democrats and election integrity organizations and even a few good-faith Republicans aren’t just sitting around waiting for the worst. They’re mobilizing now to be ready with a response.
The Biden campaign and other Democratic organizations are readying a legal response, but that’s not all. A coalition of advocacy groups called Protect the Results has formed to get people into the streets if Trump refuses to accept the results of the election. (Daily Kos is part of the Protect the Results coalition.) A bipartisan group of officials launched the National Council on Election Integrity this month to defend the legitimacy of the elections. Still, Trump has corrupted significant parts of the government and will try to use that to maintain power. He’ll try to use the courts he’s packed with judges beholden to him. And of course he’ll use his giant media platform and throngs of conspiracy theory-driven followers.
Defeating Republicans will require all of us to get plugged in to GOTV efforts. On Mobilize, hundreds of Democratic campaigns are recruiting volunteers for all sorts of get-out-the-vote activities. Just click here, and search via zip code to find an event nearest you, and sign up to volunteer.
If the election goes to the House, House Democrats are getting ready, with Rep. Jamie Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, saying “We're going to have every constitutional and statutory tool on the table in preparation for defending the result.”
Democrats are trying to convince the major social media platforms to take steps to prevent false messaging and conspiracy theories from spreading, but so far the steps announced do “nothing but benefit Donald Trump and Republicans who are trying to sow confusion and misinformation,” according to Priorities USA head Guy Cecil. “They're not doing enough and what they're doing is late in the game.”
CNN reports, “While plans are being drawn up, there are concerns that Democrats simply won't have the messaging horsepower to counter Trump's bully pulpit—and Twitter account—if he claims victory on election night before states are called or claims that Democrats stole the election.”
Two things here: Traditional media outlets like CNN will have a thing or two to say about how that goes down. The integrity of the elections is not something to both sides, guys, and everyone at CNN and NBC and ABC and CBS and USA Today and freakin’ ESPN and People magazine needs to be ready for that.
Second, Donald Trump does not have the biggest Twitter account out there. He’s sixth. In first place? Former President Barack Obama. The third, fourth, seventh, and eighth biggest accounts belong to Katy Perry, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, and Lady Gaga, none of whom are Trump supporters, let’s say. So it’s not a given that Trump owns the Twitter response—if the people with the platforms are ready and willing to speak out to defend an election result that Trump doesn’t like.
But most of all, the best and most important way to keep Trump from undermining the legitimacy of the elections is for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to win so convincingly that no one but the bitterest of the Trump dead-enders can possibly believe him when he says the election was stolen from him. We need to crush him into the dust, electorally speaking. That’s the goal here, the way to both avoid much of the ugliness he hopes to unleash on us and to have 2021 be a productive year that starts to undo the damage Trump has done to this point.