Election Night is still three weeks away, but I’m prepared right now to make a prediction with total confidence. Whichever presidential candidate is leading on that night, and however many ballots still need to be counted, Donald Trump will claim victory and dare the world to dispute him.
It might be at a moment when a “red mirage” makes it look like Trump is ahead, but only because absentee ballots have yet to be tallied.
Or it might just be because it’s what happened last time, when Trump took the advice of Rudy Giuliani and announced he had won although ultimately, he lost.
Reports of what went on behind the scenes on that night in 2020 make it clear there was a real debate in the Trump camp about whether to make that outrageous claim. But there won’t be a moment’s hesitation this time.
That’s because it will be just one more step in executing a massive MAGA election-disruption, dirty-tricks scheme that is already well underway on multiple fronts with the goal of preventing a Trump loss no matter what.
It’s a scheme that ranges from seeding local election offices with loyalists to changing election laws in key states (and coming really close to changing them at the federal level), to filing multiple lawsuits ahead of Election Day.
There are close to 90 of those lawsuits already. The New York Times reports they “are concentrated in swing states — and key counties — likely to determine the race.” It adds, “Several embrace debunked theories about voter fraud and so-called stolen elections that Mr. Trump has promoted since 2020.”
Meanwhile, Trump himself has been softening the ground for a wholesale denial of a Kamala Harris victory by repeating lie after lie: that it was unconstitutional for Democrats to nominate Harris instead of Joe Biden, that the only way Harris can win is by cheating, that the electoral system is plagued by voter fraud.
It’s important to call out all of this, in case somebody, somewhere still thinks that this will be a “normal” election in which both sides respect the process, let all votes be counted, and gracefully accept victory or defeat.
It won’t be, on one side. And we have to brace ourselves.
There is a very good chance that we won’t know the final election results within 24 hours of polls closing. Some key states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, don’t even start counting mail-in ballots until Election Day. Arizona and Georgia want to impose new rules requiring that all ballots be subjected to a laborious hand-counting process.
If the election is close — as polls suggest it will be — we may not know for days.
And that’s if everything goes smoothly, which is far from guaranteed.
Meanwhile, any window of uncertainty is the window of opportunity Trump supporters are counting on.
They wouldn’t have to convince everyone in America that he already won; all they would have to do is muddy the waters, get the right-wing media machine working and tie everything up in the courts.
So how do we fight back? By staying ahead of the schemers.
That means inoculation: raising the alarm early and often about the plotting, so fewer people will buy it. And countering falsehoods with facts.
It means mobilizing massive voter turnout to overcome voter suppression laws.
It means having a responsible mainstream media presence to counter the right-wing propaganda machine.
I think the last Trump administration cured a lot of reporters of the “bothsidesism” that brought us torrents of stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails. That’s good: What we’ll need in an atmosphere of deliberate Republican obfuscation is reporters who can keep their eyes on the ball.
I also hope, and believe, that there will once again be principled people across the country who will push back against attempts to disrupt the results. I’m thinking of the two Republican state legislators from Michigan that Trump flew to Washington in late November of 2020.
He wanted them to refuse to certify their state’s election results for Biden. Those two honest people, both patriots, wouldn’t do it.
So let’s buckle up because this 2024 roller coaster ride won’t end on Election Night; in fact, it might just be getting started.
And there’s plenty we can do to make it through safe and sound.
