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Since Tuesday, there’s been stories, theories, and a few frivolous lawsuits but little hard evidence of any vast election-stealing conspiracy. 1/
President Trump has consistently remarked that Democrats would try to steal the election by mail fraud. Since he was president when he made the claim, you’d think he’d use the power of the federal government to foil such a plot. 2/
In fact, if there was a plot, and he failed to stop it, he would be in violation of his oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the constitution.” Either there was a plot and he failed to stop it, or there was no plot to stop. Pick one. 3/
This doesn’t mean there weren’t individual acts of incompetence, arrogance, poor decisions, and bias at the local level. State & federal judges inserted massive uncertainty into established election processes with no time to train or implement new procedures. 4/
In PA, the sec state’s office advised county officials to violate state law by providing pre-canvassing rejected ballot lists to (Democrat) poll observers so they could correct the defects. Many counties refused to do it but some did. 5/
This is likely the primary reason Justice Alito ordered the late ballots segregated and counted separately. This issue MIGHT need to be litigated. But not if it won’t affect the outcome. And it probably won’t. It was a cya bc “time is of the essence.” 6/
Trump’s words and his lawyers’ actions fit together in a lockstep story of gaslighting the public while privately trying to engineer the very thing that was claimed publicly. It was a bias conformation confidence game. 7/
Donald Trump is an expert—his whole life—at confidence games. Most Americans, even who voted for him, ignored it. This is the first race I’m aware of that the majority of both candidate’s voters weren’t voting for their guy but against the other. 8/
We knew that most Democrats were being encouraged to vote by mail. They did, in massive numbers. Many medically fragile of senior Americans also voted by mail, for obvious reasons. Trump lost much of the senior vote because of his mishandling of COVID. /9
We see now that anti-Biden (anti-leftist) votes were great in number and countered the anti-Trump. It was almost enough. I’d say you MIGHT have an argument if you argued that 60-day early mail and on-person advance voting didn’t allow time for issues to settle. /10
Early voting is a trend and a systemic challenge to our election processes. It may very well have cost Trump this election. Just like the broken GOP primary system won him the nomination in 2016. In 2016 Trumpists argued “you knew the playing field” and... /11
...the nomination was fair & square (despite draconian convention thuggery). Now the same folks say early & mail voting is “stealing the election.” Explaining why Trump lost (among MANY reasons) isn’t “stealing.” But Trump ran a confidence game & many of his marks bought it. /12
Trump lost, fair & square. The GOP did better than expected because of Trump’s LACK of negative coattails. Yay. Trump may have won if not for coronavirus. He may have won if not for early voting. But that doesn’t mean it was stolen. But if Trump’s lawyers somehow force... /13
...election officials to throw out ballots of voters who tried their best to comply with the rules as they knew them, & overturn 3 or 4 states on the thinnest of evidence, I’d say that would be thievery. /14
It won’t happen because the vast majority of election officials and judges value the results & hold sacred a cast ballot. There isn’t enough “there” there to overturn a few hundred thousand votes. If there was, FBI & Postal Inspectors would have found it before the election. /15
Trump knew it wasn’t there. He was told by his people. He played the confidence game and lost. The fact he’s still trying to play is who Trump is, who he’s always been. This is the Trump the voters rejected. /16
The Trump who as president has a decent legacy with the economy (never mind tariffs), regulation, Israel, Title IX, judges will be remembered as the snake oil salesman who went out like he came in. That will be his legacy & it’s a shame. /17 End
