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Regardless of what has occurred for the reason that election two months in the past, or what might occur within the subsequent few weeks, Joe Biden will nearly assuredly be inaugurated the president on Jan. 20, and Donald J. Trump’s official reign of presidential terror will finish that day.
But, that’s chilly consolation, as we now have trudged by means of these final months of President Trump attempting, at each flip, to overthrow the need of the individuals by overturning the election he misplaced in November. Even if his final loss is inevitably secured, it appears as if he’s burning down the village as he retreats.
Trump has primarily claimed that fraud occurred throughout the election in massive swing-state cities inside counties which have massive African-American populations — cities like Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. But there’s an issue with that implicit principle, as The New York Times identified in November: “All three cities voted pretty much the same way they did in 2016. Turnout barely budged, relative to other areas in these states. Joseph R. Biden Jr. saw no remarkable surge in support — certainly nothing that would bolster claims of ballot stuffing or tampered vote tallies. Mr. Trump even picked up marginally more votes this year in all three cities than he did four years ago.”
Trump didn’t lose this election within the cities, he misplaced it within the suburbs. But that thought is antithetical to the struggle Trump needs to wage in America between the suburbs and what he deems problematic “inner cities” and “Democrat-run cities” — code for the place concentrations of Black individuals and different individuals of shade reside. That prevailing racialized notion in conservative politics is a part of the hazard that Trump’s marketing campaign to undermine the election poses: It threatens to strengthen efforts to disenfranchise Black voters and different voters of shade who disproportionately vote for Democrats sooner or later.
Trump has contended that his problem to the election is about “ensuring that Americans can have faith in this election and in all future elections.” As Jay Willis identified in The Washington Post, “Even after Trump’s presidency ends, that message will pave the way for G.O.P. politicians and judges to further one of their party’s and the conservative movement’s most important ongoing projects: restricting voting rights.” He continued: “Trump lost this election, but he can still help Republicans win in the future.”
Conservatives in America — whether or not they had been performing beneath the banner of Democrats 100 years in the past or beneath the Republican one at the moment — have engaged in a marketing campaign for racial exclusion on the poll ever since Black individuals — solely Black males at first — gained entry to the franchise.
Trump not solely tried to erase Black votes after they had been forged, he tried to suppress them earlier than they had been forged. This is nothing new amongst conservatives, however Trump has dragged the apply out of the again rooms and into the sunshine of day as soon as once more, giving it a telegenic, digitally contagious persona.
And the Republican Party, or a minimum of massive parts of it, appears to have embraced Trump’s method of constructing voter suppression a front-and-center, out-in-the-open central tenet of their electoral technique.
As Eric Levitz identified in New York Magazine: “The G.O.P. is now a party that has no compunction about nullifying the voting rights of its opposition to retain power. And once a party has liberated itself from the shackles of respecting its detractors’ rights, much else becomes permissible.”
We have heard a lot discuss how Trump’s bogus battle weakens democracy by inflicting individuals to lose religion in elections. But we don’t speak sufficient about how for Black individuals and different racial minorities, this isn’t solely about religion. For them, it’s about having the ability to take part in elections in any respect.
Now Trump’s battle strikes to Congress, the place a bunch of Republicans plans to problem the counting of state Electoral College votes. This effort, too, is predicted to fail. But it can present yet one more spectacle on a grand stage for the lie that Trump and his sycophantic courtiers have sown: that the political machine in liberal cities stuffed with Blacks, hipsters, gays and gangs stole elections from the true Americans within the hinterlands.
What we’re seeing unfold earlier than our eyes will not be about constructing belief in elections, it’s anti-patriotic. It will not be about making certain that each authorized vote is counted. It’s about trying to legally restrict whose ballots will be counted.
Trump is trying to pull Jim Crow into the Twitter period.
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