What If: A Different Dynamic for a Democratic 2024

Let me state officially for the record that I am terrible at this prognostication shit.

Not just the fact that I never do well at the Powerball lotteries (cries), but that I'm terrible at plotting out how these 4-year presidential cycles go. When the horserace starts up and the primary candidates line up to get humiliated, I tend to be off by a candidate or three when the official lineups survive to their convention celebrations.

I mean, last year I jumped ahead of everything to try and guess the 2024 election results thinking that it was going to be a repeat matchup between Biden and trump. Granted, certain facts were unavoidable: Biden was the sitting incumbent and they always run for a second term; trump had bullied and cowed the Republican party into taking him back a third time as a candidate retained his maniacal MAGA voting base in spite of a few hopeful candidates like DeSantis and Haley challenging to be a fresh candidate for 2024. A second round of Biden v. trump was kind of a given.

What I hadn't counted on was a mainstream media desperate to hijack the electoral process to force their own choice on a national electorate, hammering on Biden for being too old over and over even as he beat down his younger primary challenger Dean Phillips by 90 percent of the party vote, as well as hammering on trump for also being too old as well as facing criminal indictments and 34 felony convictions no wait, the media still hasn't hammered him on that. Gee, wonder why... /sarcasm

We saw what happened after the early debate between Biden and trump got the media riled up for Biden's scalp: Biden read the room, realized he wasn't going to win back the Beltway mob that was a little too eager to throw the election to trump, and made the move to pass along his primary gains to his running mate Kamala Harris, ensuring a smooth transition for the Democratic campaign while giving the would-be kingmakers in the press both middle fingers.

So now, instead of facing the likelihood of a repeat performance of 2020 results - although possibly switching out Georgia for North Carolina, as things looked in the polls - we're facing a different dynamic for 2024, with massive enthusiasm boosting Democratic chances across the electoral board while the Republicans find themselves doubling-down on an older, out-of-touch, and hate-filled ticket.

I had posted the 2020 Electoral Map as a foundation for what the 2024 map would be when it was Biden:

from 270towin.com 

But now with Harris, what should we expect?

Well, electorally, probably more of the same. The partisan nature of the modern electorate has calcified most of the states into their Red/Blue status for the most part. Only a handful of states - Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina - would be considered battlegrounds, where the shifting independent votes and overall voter turnout matter a whole lot more than in say California or New York or Tennessee or (alas) Florida (Texas keeps threatening to flip, so voter suppression keeps that GOP Red).

But the way Harris is redefining the campaign - and spurring more voter interest at levels not seen since 2008 - is making it more likely the battleground states that went for Biden in 2020 are near-locks this election. Yes, I know the polls can't be trusted. And yet. Depending on what bounce Kamala gets post-convention this week, even on-the-fence states like Georgia and North Carolina could well turn into solid gains. Not merely winning by hundreds of votes but tens of thousands, well out of reach for trump and the GOP to whine that the election was "stollen".

Also 270towin.com 
I'm projecting Kansas and Nebraska to flip Blue
because Walz's appeal to the Midwest is THAT good!

So don't be surprised that trump whines "stollen election!" just like he did in 2020. This is the easiest part of any guessing game with how the 2024 November results play out: trump will scream that he "won" and never concede even the states he honest-to-God never had a chance to win anyway.

Remember this fact: trump can never admit he ever loses.

So what will trump do when confronted with the likelihood he is not only going to lose the popular vote for the third time in a row, but also the likelihood he is going to lose the Electoral College for a second time?

All the signs point to trump scheming with his cronies and state-level allies to stir utter chaos and not allow elections to get certified in the first place.

In 2020, trump and his cronies tried to cook up plans to have "fake electors" put in place to override the legitimate electors giving Biden the Electoral votes - from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona - in order to flip the 270 needed from Biden to trump. Those "fake elector" schemes didn't exactly work, and there's criminal trials and plea deals happening in Georgia, Michigan, and Arizona as we speak (with trump delaying the Georgia one to save his ass before this year's election). Obviously, setting up fake electors didn't help him.

So now trump is taking aim at making sure the votes from certain counties and states don't even count at all. Via Sam Levin at the Guardian (US):

Nearly three dozen officials who have refused to certify elections since 2020 remain in office and will play a role in certifying the presidential vote in nearly every battleground state this fall, according to a new report by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), a watchdog group.

The report underscores the concerns that Donald Trump and allies will attack the certification process at the local level as part of any possible effort to contest a loss in the election. In a presidential election, there are tight deadlines at the local, state and federal levels to certify the vote. Delaying the vote at the local level could cause states to miss deadlines and open up protracted court battles and give oxygen to conspiracy theories...

Certification is generally considered a ministerial duty and the officials charged with doing it can’t unilaterally decide not to officialize election results, legal experts say. Ballot disputes and discrepancies are typically adjudicated before an election moves to the certification stage.

“Each of these states have procedures for examining potential voter fraud and voter irregularities and none of those procedures concern the certification process at the country level. In other words, there are things you can do. County elections officials denying certification is none of those things. That’s not allowed under the law,” said Noah Bookbinder, the president and CEO of Crew.

No effort to block certification thus far has been successful. Each time that local officials have tried, they have been either forced to certify by a court, outvoted by their fellow commissioners or reversed course...

Just because it hasn't happened before doesn't mean it won't happen now. trump has broken a centuries-long Good Faith effort by our governments to abide by the ceremonial acts of bipartisanship, especially when it comes to elections. Granted, we've had broken and corrupt elections at local, state, and arguably federal levels over the years, but for the most part they were aberrations or part of local corrupt political machines that our Civil Rights era of the 1960s and 1970s cleaned up.

The last time I can think of an honest-to-God broken electoral process - to be fair, elections like 1960 and 2000 were procedural question marks (it's just that the Supreme Court over-reached in deciding the 2000 results) - at the Presidential election level was 1876 when the Republicans raised a stink about the electoral results from several states, which forced a congressional committee to "recommend" the results in such a way the Republicans with Hayes won (literally by one committee vote).

It's painful - not ironic - that trump is aiming to stir enough chaos this election cycle to force a repeat of 1876: Get enough (Republican) elections officials to refuse to certify results, which will deny Electoral counts for Harris (and himself) to where no one gets over the 270 hurdle to win the College, and then force the matter into a possibly-Republican-controlled House of Representatives to anoint trump "the winner" even if trump officially loses the popular vote by more than the 7 million in 2020.

If there's any good news, it's that 1) the states where trump's cronies can pull these stunts were likely going Republican in the first place, 2) the battleground states where trump could try this and fail - like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona - have enough pro-election players in office to prevent this from happening, and 3) there's a chance the voter turnout in enough states will be so overwhelming for Harris/Walz that the local elections officials will have no legal excuse to avoid certifying and not even risk it for trump's sake.

Because much like the fake electors scheme trump and his cronies cooked up, the plans to force non-certification are likely violating a lot of state and federal laws as well (via Marina Villeneuve at Salon): 

“I think there's every indication that Trump and perhaps other candidates will try to disrupt or overturn results if they lose,” said Ben Berwick, a former DOJ trial attorney who is now counsel leading advocacy group Protect Democracy’s election law and litigation team.

Berwick said four years after Trump and his allies failed to overturn the results of the 2020 election based on unsubstantiated allegations, the rule of law still weighs against such legal arguments. Protect Democracy released a March report that stressed that courts and lawmakers have created a certification process that will hold up to manipulation.

“Bottom line is, there is really nothing that local election officials and state election officials can do legitimately or legally to overturn election results,” he said. “That doesn't mean it won't be tried...”

Isn't it just like a convicted felon (trump) to think that illegal acts are perfectly normal things to do? But I digress.

Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, a 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and the co-author of the book “How to Steal a Presidential Election,” said he's more troubled by potential scenarios where Trump and allies could exploit gaps in existing election law, put pressure on state legislatures or governors and get their case to the Supreme Court.

All those scenarios, Lessig said, require more than actions by local election officials alone.

“I think all of these strategies require something more than just as county officials or election boards screwing around with the results,” he said. “We don't know what's actually being planned, beyond what we've seen on the surface so far.”

What may end up happening will be the same thing that happened in 2020: trump will scream that "illegal immigrants voted" or that Democratic officials "switched out ballot boxes" or some other "stealing my win" excuse. Anything to claim that "the wrong people voted that shouldn't have." And yet for all that screaming, when trump and his lawyers are called to prevent their evidence of "voter fraud" they still won't be able to present evidence that massive voter fraud on the scale they're claiming even happened. They will find scattered individual cases of potential fraud usually committed because that voter was confused, not criminally involved in a conspiracy.

It will then be up to the courts - at the state and then federal levels - to accept trump's conspiracy claims without any actual basis in fact. Many courts won't, because they have to rely on evidence on which to base their decisions. This is something that can well vex the US Supreme Court itself, which we've seen bend over backwards several times to give trump all the wiggle room he needs to escape accountability.

Can a Roberts Court truly throw out all lack of evidence and simply go by trump's claims lies that the 2024 election results were wrong if Harris actually wins? If they do that - if at least five Justices side with trump in spite of the popular and Electoral votes, if they decide on a matter more far-reaching than anything settled in Bush v. Gore - we will have a judiciary essentially invalidating the very concept of free and fair elections for all time.

Gods help us if that happens.

The best way to make sure it doesn't? Massive voter turnout on a scale so convincing for Harris/Walz and the Democrats that any claim of fraud by trump is laughable, to where Roberts and the other Far Right justices won't even risk the end of the U.S. Constitution to save trump.

Elections still matter. Voter turnout still matters, especially in this election cycle, when trump is poised to lie and bluff and bully his way out of certain electoral doom.

For the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY AND THE CONSTITUTION, America, get the vote out this election cycle and vote for Kamala and Tim and for every Democrat up and down the ballot. Get the vote count for Democrats over 81 million again, while trump and JD show every sign of sliding well below the 74 million trump got in 2020.

P.S. one of the other funny thoughts I've had if trump tries to pull off his "don't certify" stunt with local elections officials: Many other elected officials like state legislators and U.S. congresscritters are going to rely on those same election results. It's been proven that not everyone votes a party line: Some candidates will get more votes than others from the same party due to various Indy/moderate voters refusing to vote a straight ticket down the ballot. What happens in a county where trump doesn't win it and screams at the elections official to not certify, but a lower-ticket guy like a state Senator did win and needs that election certified to keep his seat? They can't cherry-pick the ballots: Either the voter was legal to submit a ballot or not at all. 

This could lead to a rather interesting dynamic where the state-level Republicans can't side with trump in order to keep enough seats to control the state legislatures to try and steal the election for trump anyway. This particular paradox can prove most interesting...