After major news organizations had declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election last month, Republicans standing by President Trump had a ready retort to explain their refusal to accept the result: The media does not elect the president. Instead, they argued that the legal process must be allowed to play itself out and that ultimately, it is the Electoral College that decides the president.
Well, more than a month later, the Supreme Court has spoken, and the Electoral College has voted for Biden. There are no remaining excuses to avoid accepting that Biden is the president-elect.
Trump stood for reelection during a once-in-a-century pandemic, and it turned out to be closer than most expected. But he still lost. We called on Trump to concede and move on nearly a month ago. The case has only become stronger since then. But it is now time for Republicans to move on, whether or not he wishes to do so. There is no point in perpetuating the fantasy that Trump is going to make a comeback and be sworn in for a second term next month. There is no acceptable excuse to deny Biden’s victory.
The legal challenges have lost all viability. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt Trump’s election challenge a fatal blow by refusing, unanimously, to entertain the state of Texas’s lawsuit. The justices wanted no part of the Lone Star State’s ludicrous argument that supposed flaws in other states’ election processes had harmed its interests. This legal theory would have opened a Pandora’s box, threatening to destroy the entire federal system outlined in the Constitution.
On Monday morning, Wisconsin’s conservative-leaning state Supreme Court put another dagger into whatever remained of the Trump campaign’s hopes, throwing out its various challenges to more than 200,000 ballots that had been cast in that state.
While there are a number of other lawsuits still pending, none of them, if successful, would overturn the election.
It is the Electoral College whose word is truly final. And on Monday, throughout the nation, electors cast the votes that actually count. They delivered the coup de grace, electing Biden in 2020 by more than 70 votes.
If House and Senate Republicans insist, they can still use the machinery of Congress to gum up the works. They can make a spectacle of themselves when they reconvene next year and begin the normally symbolic process of counting the electoral votes. But a futile challenge to the count, undertaken solely in order to avoid Trump’s ire, would be a grave mistake.
Ideally, Trump will have by then accepted the electors’ verdict. But even if he cannot, then Republicans need to embrace reality with both eyes wide open and both hands on the wheel. Even if it earns them a sharp scolding on Twitter, it is better to live according to truth than to display self-delusion before one’s voting constituency.
Hillary Clinton’s decline since 2016 demonstrates that no one likes a sore loser. Trump would do well to avoid her fate by conceding now that the electors have spoken. But if he cannot bring himself to do this, then Republicans must not follow him off the cliff.
