THE SET UP :
Our story is already in train. It begins with Trump’s baseless attacks on postal ballots. The technical administration of American elections is decentralised — organised by states and counties across the country. Nominally, Trump and his political sycophants are trying to stop state and local officials from making voting-by-mail more accessible during a pandemic. But, in fact, the real aim is simply to push into the public sphere the false claims that mail-in ballots are prone to fraud. Each court battle or legislative fight gives them the opportunity to keep sowing those doubts, ready to be harvested later.
At the same time, with public polls stubbornly showing Biden maintaining a significant lead, Trump privately rages but publicly claims the polls are fake news meant to torpedo his overwhelming support. Relying, as usual, on his tactic of projection, he repeatedly claims that Biden and the Democrats are going to play dirty, that they will try to steal the election and rig the vote.
November 3, 2020
Fast forward to election day. Unlike 2016, when Trump and Clinton were blocks apart in Manhattan, this time Trump spends the day at Mar a Lago. After the morning photo op, when he and Melania cast their ballots, he tells reporters that he’s going to spend the day getting ready for a huge victory rally and mentions that there are thousands of Trump campaign volunteers in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Arizona and right here in Florida who are watching closely to make sure that Biden and the Democrats don’t get away with anything.
That evening, as polling closes and the first returns from eastern states start coming in, Trump’s campaign sees that the numbers portend a bad night. He’s ahead in Ohio but not by nearly enough. Pennsylvania and Michigan are tied, but they know that tallies from urban areas always come in late.
In addition, while there has not been a nationwide expansion of postal voting, many states have made it easier to request absentee ballots and millions more early votes and mail-in ballots have been submitted than in previous elections. Most states have not been able to procure new machines to count these ballots quickly, and officials have warned that it could take days for final results to be available.
The Trump campaign knows, as the scholars Charles Stewart and Ed Foley have documented, that there is a growing “blue shift” phenomenon, whereby the votes that are counted last (the provisional ballots, same-day registration, and postal votes) tend to tilt toward Democrats. This means that if the Republicans don’t have a convincing margin on election night in key states, then those states are likely lost.
Before midnight, they deliver the news to Trump: they think he will lose Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. Florida too, though that’s closer. Arizona is too close to call and even Georgia could go blue. It’s not a blow-out; Trump has come close in many swing states, but he has lost the election.
“It’s time to talk to our people,” Trump says. Thirty minutes later, he takes the stage at an outdoor rally in Florida, in front of thousands of cheering supporters. The teleprompter has been loaded with a short concession speech — his wife and three of his children stand behind him on stage. He approaches the microphone.
But he doesn’t read the speech. “Today was a very bad day for real America and for real Americans!” he adlibs, “because we won this election. But right now, just as I warned, just like we all knew would happen, Joe Biden and the Democrats are printing millions of fake ballots, they are helping illegal aliens cast fake votes by mail, and they are trying to steal your White House!”
