what will have to happen for trump to remain
We wanted to know: What'south the worst matter that could happen to our country during the presidential ballot? President Trump has broken countless norms and ignored countless laws during his time in function, and while my colleagues and I at the Transition Integrity Projection didn't want to prevarication awake at nighttime contemplating the means the American experiment could fail, we realized that identifying the virtually serious risks to our republic might exist the best way to avert a November disaster. So we built a series of war games, sought out some of the most accomplished Republicans, Democrats, civil servants, media experts, pollsters and strategists around, and asked them to imagine what they'd exercise in a range of election and transition scenarios.
A landslide for Joe Biden resulted in a relatively orderly transfer of power. Every other scenario we looked at involved street-level violence and political crunch.
Picture this:
On the morning time of Election Day, fake stories appear online claiming that Biden has been hospitalized with a life-threatening center assault and the election has been delayed. Every mainstream news organization reports that the rumors are unfounded, but many Biden supporters, confused past the bogus claims, stay home.
Yet, by late that night, most major networks accept called the election for Biden: The erstwhile vice president has won key states and has a slender pb in the national pop vote, and polling experts predict that his lead will abound substantially as Western states count an unusually high number of mail service-in ballots. The electoral higher looks secure for Biden, besides.
But Trump refuses to concede, alleging on Twitter that "MILLIONS of illegal ALIENS and Expressionless PEOPLE" have voted in large numbers and that the uncounted ballots are all "FAKE VOTES!!!" Social media fills with posts from Trump supporters alleging that the election has been "stolen" in a "Deep Land coup," and Trump-friendly pundits on Flim-flam News and OAN echo the bulletin.
Soon, Attorney General William P. Barr opens an investigation into unsubstantiated allegations of massive vote-by-mail fraud and ties between Democratic officials and antifa. In Michigan and Wisconsin, where Biden has won the official vote and Democratic governors have certified slates of pro-Biden electors, the Trump entrada persuades Republican-controlled legislatures to ship rival pro-Trump slates to Congress for the electoral college vote.
The next week is chaotic: A list of Michigan and Wisconsin electors for Biden circulates on correct-wing social media, including photos, domicile addresses and false claims that scores of them are in the pay of billionaire George Soros or have been linked to child sexual activity-trafficking rings.
Massive pro-Biden street protests begin, demanding that Trump concede. The president tweets that "REAL PATRIOTS MUST Bear witness THESE ANTIFA TERRORISTS THAT CITIZENS WHO LOVE THE 2ND Subpoena WILL NEVER Permit THEM STEAL THIS Election!!!" Effectually the nation, violent clashes erupt. Several people are injured and killed in multiple incidents, though reports disharmonize about their identities and who started the violence.
Meanwhile, Trump declares that "UNLESS THIS CARNAGE ENDS NOW," he will invoke the Insurrection Act and transport "Our INCREDIBLY POWERFUL Military machine and their OMINOUS WEAPONS" into the streets to "Teach these ANTI-AMERICAN TERRORISTS A LESSON." At the Pentagon, the Articulation Chiefs of Staff convene a hurried meeting to discuss the crisis.
And it'south not even Thanksgiving yet.
Supporters of President Trump await his Republican National Convention speech at a sentry party about Dripping Springs, Tex., on Aug. 27. (Sergio Flores for The Washington Post)
That dystopia is based on how events played out in one of the Transition Integrity Project's exercises. We explored the four scenarios experts consider near likely: a narrow Biden win; a big Biden win, with a decisive lead in both the electoral college and the pop vote; a Trump win with an electoral higher lead just a large popular-vote loss, as in 2016; and finally, a period of extended uncertainty as we saw in the 2000 election.
[The loser of November's election may not concede. Their voters won't, either.]
With the exception of the "big Biden win" scenario, each of our exercises reached the brink of catastrophe, with massive disinformation campaigns, violence in the streets and a constitutional impasse. In two scenarios ("Trump win" and "extended uncertainty") in that location was still no agreement on the winner past Inauguration Day, and no consensus on which candidate should be causeless to have the power to issue binding commands to the military or receive the nuclear codes. In the "narrow Biden win" scenario, Trump refused to go out office and was ultimately escorted out by the Secret Service — but only after pardoning himself and his family unit and called-for incriminating documents.
For obvious reasons, we couldn't ask Trump or Biden — or their campaign aides — to play themselves in these exercises, so nosotros did the side by side best matter: We recruited participants with similar backgrounds. On the GOP side, our "players" included former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, bourgeois commentator Bill Kristol and erstwhile Kentucky secretarial assistant of land Trey Grayson. On the Democratic side, participants included John Podesta, chair of Hillary Clinton'southward 2016 presidential entrada and a summit White House adviser to Neb Clinton and Barack Obama; Donna Brazile, the campaign chair for Al Gore's 2000 presidential run; and Jennifer Granholm, former governor of Michigan. Other participants included political strategists, journalists, polling experts, tech and social media experts, and old career officials from the intelligence community, the Justice Department, the military and the Section of Homeland Security.
In each scenario, Squad Trump — the players assigned to simulate the Trump campaign and its elected and appointed allies — was ruthless and unconstrained right out of the gate, and Team Biden struggled to become out of reaction style. In one practise, for instance, Team Trump'south repeated allegations of fraudulent mail-in ballots led National Guard troop to destroy thousands of ballots in Democratic-leaning Zilch codes, to adulation on social media from Trump supporters. Over and over, Team Biden urged calm, national unity and a fair vote count, while Team Trump issued barely bearded calls for violence and intimidation confronting ballot-counting officials and Biden electors.
[I was on Trump'southward voter fraud commission. I sued information technology to find out what it was doing.]
In every practise, both teams sought to mobilize their supporters to take to the streets. Team Biden repeatedly called for peaceful protests, while Squad Trump encouraged provocateurs to incite violence, then used the resulting chaos to justify sending federalized Guard units or agile-duty military machine personnel into American cities to "restore guild," leading to still more violence. (The exercises underscored the tremendous power enjoyed by an incumbent president: Biden tin telephone call a news briefing, but Trump tin call in the 82nd Airborne.)
Similarly, Team Trump repeatedly attempted to exploit ambiguities and gaps in the legal framework. (There are more than y'all might call back.) Team Trump repeatedly sought, for instance, to persuade country GOP allies to ship rival slates of electors to Congress when the popular vote didn't go its style. With competing slates heading to Washington for the January. half dozen joint session of Congress that formally counts the electoral votes, Trump supporters argued that Vice President Pence, in his chapters every bit president of the Senate, had the power to determine which electors to recognize. In contrast, Democrats argued that the Firm of Representatives had the ramble authority to cull which electors should be accustomed in the effect of a deadlock — or, alternatively, the power to forbid the joint session from taking identify at all. (Nosotros didn't resolve this kind of standoff in our exercises; information technology'southward not articulate how such a stalemate would exist settled in existent life.)
[Trump is incorrect. Concession speeches aren't binding at all.]
In the "Trump win" scenario, desperate Democrats — stunned by yet some other election won by the candidate with fewer votes later credible claims of strange interference and voter suppression — likewise sought to send rival slates of electors to Congress. They fifty-fifty floated the thought of encouraging secessionist movements in California and the Pacific Northwest unless GOP congressional leaders agreed to a series of reforms, including the division of California into 5 smaller states to ensure meliorate Senate representation of its vast population, and statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico.
While both parties appealed to the courts every bit well every bit to public stance, the legal experts in our exercises pointed out that the judicial system might well avoid rendering decisions on the central bug, since courts might see them as fundamentally political, rather than judicial, in nature. Other players noted that in that location was, in any case, no guarantee that the losing side would accept a ruling from a highly politicized Supreme Court.
National Guard troops line up outside the White Business firm on June two. President Trump has at times threatened to use the war machine to quell unrest in American cities. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Mail service)
Only in that location'southward some skilful news: This kind of do doesn't predict the future. In fact, war-gaming seeks to forecast all the things that could go wrong — precisely to foreclose them from happening in real life. And if the Transition Integrity Project's exercises highlighted diverse bleak possibilities, they as well suggested some ways we might, equally a nation, avoid democratic collapse.
Get-go and foremost, congressional and state leaders, including legislators, governors, land secretaries of state and state attorneys general from both parties, tin can commit to protecting the integrity of the electoral process against partisan meddling. State officials tin ensure that voters have detailed, accurate and timely data about where, when and how to vote, and brand sure they understand that nobody tin abolish or postpone the election. State officials tin likewise eliminate administrative hurdles that may prevent voters from meeting mail-in ballot deadlines through no fault of their own, and recruit enough poll workers to ensure that all voters can vote and all ballots can be counted. Finally, they tin take steps to protect the election officials who manage vote counting from harassment and intimidation attempts, and establish — in accelerate and on a bipartisan basis — standards for adjudicating any competing claims almost how to allocate a country'southward balloter votes.
[Trump's bogus attacks on mail-in voting could hurt his supporters, likewise]
Meanwhile, military and law enforcement leaders can prepare for the possibility that politicians will seek to manipulate or misuse their coercive powers. Partisans, including Trump, may try to deploy law enforcement, National Guard troops and, potentially, active-duty armed services personnel to "restore order" in a mode that primarily benefits one party, or involve troops and law enforcement in efforts to interrupt the election-counting process. The federal response to this summertime's protests in D.C.'s Lafayette Square and Portland, Ore., suggests that this is not purely speculative. To avert becoming unwitting pawns in a partisan battle, war machine and police force enforcement leaders can issue clear advance statements well-nigh what they volition and won't do. They can train troops and police officers on de-escalation techniques and on the vital need to remain nonpartisan and respectful of civil liberties.
A woman shows her support for Joe Biden in front end of the White House on Aug. 29. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
The media besides has an important part. Responsible outlets can help brainwash the public most the possibility — indeed, the likelihood — that there won't be a clear winner on election night considering an accurate count may take weeks, given the large number of mail-in ballots expected in this unprecedented mid-pandemic election. Journalists can too help people understand that voter fraud is extraordinarily rare, and, in item, that there'south nothing nefarious almost voting by mail. Social media platforms tin commit to protecting the democratic process, by quickly removing or correcting false statements spread by foreign or domestic disinformation campaigns and by ensuring that their platforms aren't used to incite or programme violence.
Finally, ordinary citizens can assist, besides — perhaps most of all. As the jurist Learned Manus said in 1944, "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies at that place, no constitution, no law, no court tin can save it . . . while information technology lies in that location, it needs no constitution, no police, no court to salve it." This is as truthful now equally it was then: When people unite to need commonwealth and the rule of law, even repressive regimes can be stopped in their tracks. Mass mobilization is no guarantee that our democracy will survive — but if things go as badly as our exercises suggest they might, a sustained, irenic protestation movement may be America's best and final hope.
The president with members of his family on the concluding night of the Republican convention last month. Some fear that Trump may not concede if he loses the election in November. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/09/03/trump-stay-in-office/
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