Next week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago will be characterised by a mood of relief among delegates.
The switch of candidate from the aged Joe Biden to his vice president Kamala Harris has put the party back in contention in this year’s general election, when it seemed set to be flattened by Donald Trump’s re-election bid for the presidency.
It still looks like a close race. And even if Ms Harris wins the vote she may not become president.
Much may also hang on how strongly Democratic candidates lower down the ticket perform. It may fall to the US Congress to uphold the constitution.
If Mr Trump “loses” to Ms Harris there are still arguably legitimate ways in which he could end up back in the White House.
Trump loyalists are already preparing for this fight – egged on with carefully unspecific rhetorical encouragement in rambling comments of the man himself.
Whether Mr Trump’s protests against his defeat in 2020 amounted to a “Big Lie” or evidence of a “Big Steal”, as a majority of Republicans now claim, he is preparing to do it again, if he loses.
At the very least America would be plunged into political and legal chaos, again, for months after the approaching election on 5 November.
It could be much worse. This month President Biden told CBS he is “not confident at all” that there will be a peaceful transition if Harris is elected president.
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“Now if I don’t get elected it’s gonna be a bloodbath,” Mr Trump told an audience in March, leaving it ambiguous whether he was only talking about the prospects for the car industry there in Dayton, Ohio.
Lesser politicians are clumsier.
Republican Ohio state senator George Lang apologised after declaring: “I’m afraid if we lose, it’s going to take a civil war to save this country.”
He did not withdraw his praise for “Bikers for Trump” or the slogan “Fight! Fight! Fight!”, also mouthed by Trump, fist aloft, after the assassination attempt on his life.
How Trump could win with the least votes – again
To win the presidency the successful candidate does not necessarily have to get the most votes from the people.
The victor needs the support of a majority of the electoral college – at least 270 out of 538.
Technically the election votes decide the make-up of the college, state by state. Membership does not directly reflect the views of the overall US population.
Republican nominees defeated in the popular vote, including Mr Trump and George W Bush, have become US president in three of the last seven elections.
In 2000, the dispute over Florida went to the US Supreme Court, which ruled in Bush’s favour. Since then Mr Trump has made three appointments which have tilted the court in his favour. The justices are likely to back him if there are any legal disputes.
Former president trying to sow seeds of chaos
Trump repeatedly tells his rallies that they have to do two things – they have to vote and they have to make sure that the Democrats don’t cheat.
This is just one example of how he is trying to undermine confidence in the legitimacy of the very democratic process in which he is competing. He is laying the ground in advance to challenge the results if they do not go in his favour.
The strategy is a familiar one in modern US campaigns, first formulated by the Republican strategist Roger Stone as “Stop the Steal” back in 2016, in case things did not go Trump’s way.
They did and at the end of his presidency, Mr Trump commuted Stone’s prison sentence for lying to Congress. As shown in the recent TV documentary, A Storm Foretold, Stone was bitterly disappointed that he did not get a full pardon but he has endorsed Mr Trump again in this campaign.
If Mr Trump loses the vote he may still have successfully spread chaos and confusion which calls the results into question.
There are then potential legal routes at state level and subsequently in Congress, which could even overturn the result in his favour.
This year, election officials have until 11 December to certify the results in their state.
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It is legally possible that alleged issues over the way the vote has been conducted could be used by some partisans to void the votes and nominate their own representatives to the electoral college instead.
Failing that if they don’t certify, their state’s votes could be excluded from the college, making it harder for Ms Harris to reach 270.
If no candidate reaches an outright majority, then the House of Representatives takes over deciding who should take over on a one state, one vote basis. The profusion of less populated “red states” making it almost certain that the Republicans would get to decide who should take the oath of office on 20 January 2025.
After the 2020 election a majority of Republican Representatives voted not to certify Biden’s victory.
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‘Zero chance’ of a fair election
Last month, Rolling Stone magazine reported that “in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania… at least 70 pro-Trump election conspiracists [are] currently working as county election officials who have questioned the validity of elections or delayed or refused to certify results”.
Of those 70, 22 have already “refused or delayed certification” in recent past elections in eight states. At a recent rally in the swing state of Georgia, Mr Trump singled out three obscure activist members of the local election board for “doing a great job”.
Mr Trump and his allies are doing what they can to discredit the election in advance, regardless of the consequences.
Mike Howell, executive director of the “Oversight Project”, at the influential Heritage Foundation, beloved of Liz Truss, has already decided: “As things stand right now, there’s a zero percent chance of a free and fair election… I’m formally accusing the Biden administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election.”
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When asked about possible violence by Time magazine, Trump replied: “If we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.”
He is continuing to sow uncertainty about the truth and legitimacy of many aspects of the campaign. This month he claimed that “nobody” showed up at a mass rally for Harris-Walz in Minnesota and that images of the crowd, which were shown live on TV, were doctored by AI.
Bernie Sanders, the left-wing US senator for Vermont, commented: “Donald Trump may be crazy, but he’s not stupid… clearly, and dangerously, what Trump is doing is laying the groundwork for rejecting the election results if he loses… if you can convince your supporters that thousands of people who attended a televised rally do not exist, it will not be hard to convince them that the election returns in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere are ‘fake’ and ‘fraudulent’.”
Trump of course broke his word to the mob he had invited to Washington DC on 6 January 2021 and did not go with them to the storming of the US Capitol. Nor did their violent protest stop vice president Mike Pence from making the final certification of Mr Biden’s victory.
Optimists hope that the firm judicial pursuit of those involved on 6 January – including a 22-year stretch in federal prison for Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys – will discourage another insurrection in support of Trump. If it comes to it some Republican congressmen and women might refuse to back an attempted steal.
What’s certain is that it will be too soon for Democrats to celebrate if and when the US TV networks “call” the 2024 election for Ms Harris.
