Today is election day in the US. The mid-term balloting has been underway for a few weeks, but today is the end. Votes will be counted, winners and losers declared and the Trumpists will embark on a series of ridiculous moves in a desperate attempt to undo the will of the voters. The Democrats will win the House, and they will take the Senate narrowly. The MAGA crowd will do all they can think of to prevent that from happening despite the fact that it really is too late. They will certainly file foolish lawsuits. They will likely hold demonstrations that could bring violence. They may even try to declare a national emergency to derail the process, which could include bombing Iran. None of it will work because they are not really the kind of people who could pull off any of this. What they will achieve is a great deal of anxiety and harm to the national reputation, but nothing more.
This journal is confident that the polls are fairly accurate and that, if there is a polling miss, it will be due to an undercount of Democratic voters. The truth is the people are angry. Prices have not come down and there is a war no one wanted but Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. They should be angry; they should be angry with themselves for backing the party of pedophiles and grift. But they will put the blame anywhere else. In the end, they will give the Democrats 234 seats in the House and 51 in the Senate.
The very first thing one expects of the White House is a flurry of lawsuits trying to prevent Democratic victories being declared. They are really bad at this kind of thing. In 2020, they sued in 63 different cases and lost all but one — the one win allowed them to be 6 feet from the counting of ballots rather than 10. The Democrats have the legal firepower to meet all of these challenges. While the judiciary can make this a very bad time for the opposition party, the track record of the judges in these cases has been hopeful. Last week alone, the Trumpists lost 3 cases in 5 days. The courts are not going to save the Republican Party.
The right will probably try to hold demonstrations as the states certify their elections. It will be an attempt to replicate the violence and intimidation of January 6, 2021, in the various state capitols. It will not succeed because any call for such demonstrations will tip off the entire country as to the time and place of the insurrection. It will not be spontaneous, and therefore, countermeasures are easy. And the nation will not be caught flat-footed as it was in 2021. If Mr. Trump calls for people to turn up at a certain place and at a certain time, the No Kings Movement will counter that call with greater numbers.
Mr. Trump has promised to return to beating up on Iran after the election, and there is a case to be made that it will start tonight. Militarily, there is absolutely no point to this. Iran is not going to fold short of 500,000 American troops marching toward Tehran, and that is off the table as the assets are simply not in place. Politically, it allows the White House to distract from the electoral disaster the GOP faces. It allows for a fictional narrative wherein the election was ruined by Iran, and the US is retaliating. About 15-20% of the population is still in the Trump Cult and will buy that nonsense.
Such a ridiculous hypothesis, however, would also be an excuse for the president to declare a national emergency of some kind. That would unlock certain powers that the president does not normally have, Be that as it may, none of those powers would allow meddling in the vote count. And while he may do it, the courts are almost certain to stop him.
The difference between now and January 6, 2021 is an exhaustion on the right that did not exist then. Three-time Trump voters are breaking with him over Iran and diesel prices. He did not deliver, and he is not ever going to be on the ballot again. His people are too demoralized to do what they did five years ago. One expects violence, but one does not expect it to amount to much.
Best of all in the land of the permanent campaign, the 2028 Presidential Race starts tomorrow.